Could a Progressive Alliance oust the Tories from government?

This month marks the second anniversary of the 2019 General Election when Boris Johnson’s Conservatives secured 56.1 per cent of the seats in the Commons, a clear majority, in spite of having won just 43.6 per cent of the votes cast, an indisputable minority. 

Labour returned just 31 per cent of MPs, fractionally less than its 32.1 per cent vote share. The Liberal Democrats did even worse, 1.7 per cent of seats for an 11.6 per cent vote share. Provoking further doubts about the extent to which elected representation reflects the will of the people, purists could water down each vote share by a third since turnout was only 67.3 per cent.

As Boris Johnson prepares to both blow out and keep alight the two candles on his anniversary cake, electoral prospects haven’t changed much. After all the government’s recent troubles, Labour stands roughly about even with the Conservatives in opinion polls, at around 38 per cent of the vote. 

Even with Labour a point or two ahead, projections from these figures suggest the Conservatives would still be the largest party after an election, most likely with a small overall majority.

Must Labour lose next time? And along with it, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Nationalist parties too? As things stand, prospects are grim for the opposition parties. It’s little wonder that minds are turning again to consider if some of Progressive Alliance, cooperation between parties at election time, could lead to the ousting of the Tories from government.

Informally and unacknowledged, there is already some evidence Lib-Lab mutual consideration in recent byelections. The Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has suggested publicly that the two parties should only concentrate their efforts in constituencies “where they can win”. 

The Labour campaign took its foot off the pedal in Chesham and Amersham this summer, where the Liberal Democrats routed the Conservatives in a byelection.

This month in Old Bexley and Sidcup, the Lib Dems barely went through the motions. The Conservatives held onto the safe seat, but the swing to Labour was over 10 per cent, more than enough to bring big gains if repeated elsewhere, Labour’s vote share on a low turnout went up to 30.9 per cent while the Liberal Democrats plunged from 8.3 per cent in 2019 to a deposit losing 3 per cent.  

Reports suggest that Labour is returning the compliment passively in North Shropshire, where voters will choose a replacement for the disgraced Tory, Owen Paterson, in a fortnight. On paper, this looks excessively generous since Labour was in second place in both constituencies in 2019, albeit with a relatively paltry 23.5 per cent and 22.1 per cent vote share. 

It seems Labour strategists are satisfied that the LibDems have enjoyed some good council elections in Shropshire recently, which is just the sort of rural constituency which has proved fertile byelection fodder for them in the past. 

In practice, both safe Tory seats were long shots for the other parties, so Labour has not conceded much. There remains some puzzlement that Sir Keir did not put his personal stamp on Labour’s opportunity by visiting Ted Heath’s former stronghold in Old Bexley. Perhaps he feared being associated with failure, perhaps he thought voters would betray their old blue allegiance more easily if their noses were not rubbed in it, perhaps he was too busy with his Shadow Cabinet shuffle. 

Potential cooperation between Labour and the Liberal Democrats has been made easier because of the awful lessons taught to the LibDems by their participation in the Coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives. 

Their partners targeted their seats in 2015 successfully. Their tally of MPs plummeted to a handful, and their traditional base of support in councils was severely eroded. 

Today’s Liberal Democrat leadership vow “never again” to a national deal with the Conservatives. Conversely, they know that Labour is up for it. The two parties had an arrangement of sorts in the 1970s which kept Labour in office. 

In 2010 Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were enthusiastic proponents of “a rainbow alliance” to be led by Gordon Brown, even though the maths after that election suggested it was an impossibility.

The organisation “Best for Britain” believes that a Rainbow Alliance could rise again. The group has moved on from opposing Brexit to campaign for an internationalist, law-abiding, UK. 

Last week Best for Britain (B4B) published a major polling analysis which found that the Conservatives would be denied a parliamentary majority and standing as the largest party if Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens could agree to field a single unity candidate in 154 battleground seats, all of them in England. 

Their so-called MRP, or multilevel regression and post-stratification, analysis would give Labour 261 seats in England, to the Conservatives’ 254. Maths would leave the Tories short of a majority even if they retained their current representation in Scotland and Wales and rekindled backing from the DUP. 

Such a scenario would decapitate the likes of Iain Duncan-Smith, Dominic Raab and, most likely, Boris Johnson. It would also require Labour and the LibDems to reach an accommodation with the SNP to form a government. Tory Strategists are certain that memes of Starmer in Nicola Sturgeon’s pocket would be box office poison for both these parties. 

Others in favour of pursuing the progressive alliance idea include Tony Blair, Neal Lawson of Compass and Clive Lewis MP, an unsuccessful Labour leadership candidate in 2020. But most political scientists caution against it. 

Professor Robert Ford of Manchester University counts off the reasons. First comes “Boris No Mates”: the Nationalists and LibDems aren’t going to align with the Conservatives come what may. Next, precedent suggests that parties can only deliver a maximum of 60 per cent of their voters if they stand down in a pact. 

The other 40 per cent might abstain or some could go to the Conservatives given polarisation around Brexit. In the new published political science “Bible”, The British General Election of 2019, Professors Sir John Curtice, Stephen Fisher and Patrick English, suggest that Nigel Farage’s Brexit party may have cost the Conservatives 25 gains by standing in target seats, even though the Brexit party helped incumbent Tories by not putting up candidates in constituencies they already held. 

The nationalist yellow has nowhere to go outside the rainbow. Unionist Labour and Liberal Democrats will most likely continue to stand in Scotland. Still, they can remain on nodding terms with SNP with a firm promise to grant a referendum once in government at the time of Holyrood’s choosing.

With just 2.7 per cent of the vote last time, the Greens are more problematic allies. Their main support comes from disillusioned Labour and LibDem voters, which gives them little incentive to get back in bed with them. 

Johnson has also systematically set about giving the Conservatives a greenwash. In local government, the Greens have shown themselves ready to cut deals with the Tories. 

The Best for Britain model gives them one seat – the one Caroline Lucas holds already in Brighton – but their votes would need to transfer to give the LibDems the potential extra nine MPs. The Greens would surely demand a bigger sweetener before joining any formal pact.

Finally, the Labour Party constitution and internal democracy are likely to put the kibosh on formal alliances with other parties. Any anti-Tory alliance at the next election is set once again to amount to little more than informal decisions by campaign teams on the ground and tactical voting.

The reality of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brexit may inspire his opponents to work together more vigorously to defeat him next time. There is one decision that could energise party machines to act, not least in their own interest. Constitutional change is never a winner on the doorstep, and it won’t be in future. 

It would, however, be a powerful motivator of cooperation for campaigners if all relevant parties committed in each of their manifestos to introduce proportional representation and to abolish the appointed House of Lords, by act of parliament and without any referendum. 

It would be a bold move for Sir Keir Starmer, but without it, Boris Johnson may continue to have his electoral cake and eat it.