The lost Lib Dems are a long way from a great centrist revival

Although by-elections are often splendid melodrama, long-term significance is harder to establish. Chesham and Amersham is no exception. The Liberals will be delighted, and relieved. Who can blame them? Their party appeared to be going nowhere. According to some opinion polls, they were in danger of falling behind the Greens. Now, the Tories will be hoping that there are no more by-elections in Southern England.

But the Liberals still have a fundamental problem. What do they believe? The current ones actually call themselves Liberal Democrats, the “Democrat” bit being a ghostly vestige of the SDP. Yet “Liberal” is a great name with a proud history. Tacking on Democrat turns it into a botch. It is as if today’s Lib-Dems do not feel themselves to be worthy heirs of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George. If that is what they did think, they would be right, but this would imply a degree of self-knowledge which they are far from possessing.

So what should a modern Gladstonian believe? First, “Trust the people”: one of Gladstone’s favourite phrases. Though Liberals need not be out and out libertarians, they should be on the side of freedom, at home and abroad. Liberals ought to be internationalists. Second, another phrase is attributed to Gladstone: “Money is best left to fructify in the pockets of the people.” He never quite used those words, but he believed them. After all, he was the last Chancellor of the Exchequer who seriously contemplated abolishing income tax. He was also in favour of peace abroad, plus financial equilibrium and practical improvements at home. “Practical improvements”: clearly, the agenda of modern governments is far larger than Gladstone would have contemplated and the same is true of the taxes which have to fund it. Yet a Gladstonian would insist on three points. First, that the improvements should indeed be practical. Second that they should be administered as economically as possible. Third, never forget that governments spend wealth. They do not create it.

Out of all that, an impressive centre-party programme could be created. It would attempt to harmonise the social generosity of the Left with the economic hard-headedness of the Right. You no longer have to choose between your hearts and your heads, Liberals could say. We will satisfy both. This could easily win over a large section of the electorate, as Tony Blair proved.

But there is a problem. Most Liberal activists and MPs are not centrists. They are best described as angry faddists. They have no enthusiasm for individual freedom and really belong on the Left, except that they are based in constituencies where Leftism has to be concealed. They claim of course to be the Nice Party, which arouses scornful laughter and indeed outrage from the big two parties, which have experienced the lies with which Lib-Dem canvassers pollute the doorstep.

There was an attempt by some Liberals to espouse centrism, in the Orange Book. But it was too reasonable and sophisticated for most Liberals. The likelihood is that they will opt to remain the party of protest, appealing to those who are drawn to “none of the above”. There are always a lot of them, until a General Election, when most voters will accept the need to choose one of the above to form a government.

It might seem as if Sir Keir Starmer too will not want any more by-elections in the South of England – 622 votes for Labour: the Party’s worst by-election result ever. It was indeed embarrassing. Even so, some of his supporters found consolation. Polly Toynbee is an obvious example. She and others like her hate Boris Johnson. They cannot bear the thought that he might win another election and they will embrace any allies who might help to prevent this. They are heartened by the willingness of Labour supporters in Chesham and Amersham to vote tactically. Their dream would be a red/green/yellow (as in Liberal) alliance to turn the Tories out.

That is the theory. The practice is harder. For years, Tories have warned voters of the threat from the Liberals; “Vote Liberal, get Labour.” Chris Patten described the sort of Liberal supporters he found especially irritating. Just because they had a Georgian-style house and belonged to the Wine Society, they thought that they should further demonstrate their high-mindedness by voting Liberal. But if people like that realise that a Liberal vote could mean a Starmer government – the Tories might win back Bath. 

As for Sir Keir, he just has to pray that there are no more by-elections behind the Red Wall.

Apart from hoping to avoid by-elections, the Tories ought to draw one conclusion from Chesham and Amersham. To defeat assaults on the Blue Wall, they have to win an intellectual battle, on housing. Otherwise the Liberals will claim that the Tories and their corrupt friends will “concrete over” – then add the name of the most beautiful part of the constituency in question. The Tories have to insist that we need new houses but that new will not mean ugly. Until the War, it was widely assumed that new housing developments would be attractive: garden cities, arts and crafts et al. Since the War, that has changed. When people think of new housing, they fear that it will consist of tower blocks or matchboxes: that “social housing” will often mean social-problem housing. The government has to reassure the Home Counties that this will no longer be true. It is possible to find brownfield sites, disused agricultural buildings and scruffy marginal farm-land. It is also possible to build attractive houses that are high density. Think Bath, the New Town in Edinburgh, the surviving bits of Bloomsbury, the Grosvenor and Cadogan estates. Terraces, squares, crescents and indeed mansion blocks can accommodate large numbers of people and please the eye. At present, the Tories are in danger of being caught between two fires: nimbys, who want no new houses and the young who fear that they will never be able to afford a house. The nimbys have to be reassured on beauty: the young, on availability. This should not be impossible, and there is one obvious point. Many nimbys have children and cannot necessarily afford to buy them an old rectory in the Chilterns.

Chilterns leads us to HS2. Assuming that it does go ahead, those responsible should crack on with the project, which will not be as disruptive as its critics allege. The government should do everything possible to ensure that as much as possible of the work in Tory constituencies is completed before the next election.

Election timing lends urgency to housing policy. Where that is concerned, three years is not a long time. Equally, winning intellectual battles requires a formidable Cabinet Minister. That excludes Robert Jenrick, who is simply not up to it. His successor will have a crucial role in winning the next election. If he is retained, he will have a crucial role in losing it.

In Chesham and Amersham, thousands of Tory voters stayed at home. While it would be foolish to assume that after making their protest, they will automatically return to the fold, that is still the likeliest outcome, if the government and its ministerial team display competence. Sometimes, that seems a big “if”, but Boris does want to win. Despite Chesham and Amersham, Polly Toynbee still has grounds for despair. The likelihood is that the Tories will regain Chesham and Amersham in 2024, and hold on to Hartlepool.