Now is not the time for Labour, Lib Dems and Greens to make an electoral pact

The Labour Party’s mistake is to think that, when it talks to itself, the voters aren’t listening. Every time it loses, it starts talking about changing the voting system and doing deals with other parties. What the voters hear is that the party is a bad loser and wants to change the rules.

Other than that, a “progressive alliance” is a great idea. Polly Toynbee, the grandee of Lib-Labbery, has called for Labour and the Greens to stand down in favour of Sarah Green, the Lib Dem candidate, in the Chesham and Amersham by-election, likely to be on 17 June.

The Conservatives won 55 per cent of the vote in the general election but, says Toynbee, many of those voters were “Tories who only stayed loyal for fear of Jeremy Corbyn”. The arithmetic is credible in a constituency where a majority voted to Remain in the EU referendum – but it relies on a mood in the country against the government, a mood that looks on by-elections as a chance to make a protest.

I think that mood isn’t there. The success of the vaccines is still carrying all before it, and people think, despite the latest glitch, that the country is heading in broadly the right direction.

The problem with a progressive alliance is never the mechanics. In a first-past-the-post voting system, it makes sense for parties to cooperate if they have a common interest. But that is the sticking point: what is their common interest? What would a progressive alliance be for?

That is why parties so rarely stand aside in each other’s favour, despite the incentives of the electoral system. The main recent example was the Brexit Party at the last election, because the priority of “getting Brexit done” was so clear and overwhelming.

So there is unlikely to be a pact in Chesham and Amersham, or in Batley and Spen, the other imminent by-election, in a Leave seat where Labour is hoping to avoid the fate that befell it in Hartlepool. The most that is likely to happen, as Andrew Grice wrote last week, is that Labour won’t try hard in Chesham and the Lib Dems will ease off in Batley.

The mistake often made by Labour people is to assume that they are part of an anti-Tory majority that fails to find expression because of the vagaries of the voting system. This is only sometimes true. You would have thought the coalition government of the Conservatives and Lib Dems would have cured Labour-minded supporters of a progressive alliance of that idea. Admittedly, it was a long time ago, but Len Duvall, the leader of the Labour group on the Greater London Assembly, seemed surprised when Tories, Lib Dems and Greens united to deny Labour the committee chairs last week. “Green and Lib Dem candidates ... are betraying their progressive values,” he thundered.

The thing about a progressive alliance is that the politics has to come first: the parties have to unite around a common cause. That takes leadership, but it also requires a cause, and I just don’t see one at the moment.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator