Despite the invasion of the Ukraine, Boris Johnson seems unable to escape the basic questions of his suitability as both Prime Minister and leader of the UK Conservative Party. However, it cannot be forgotten just how big a swing in seat count is required for Labour Party leader Keir Starmer to move into Downing Street after the next election. A Fabian Society paper written in 2019 highlights that Labour, for example, needs to win 123 seats at the next election—which is almost twice as many as they needed in 2019. Further complicating the Labour position is the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) grip on the Scottish seats, which appears unlikely to change. In the South West, the Labour Party barely exists. Traditionally Liberal Democrat (Lib Dem) territory, their usual vote share was supplemented by Labour supporters voting tactically. But after 2010, when the Lib Dems entered into a coalition with the Tories, many swore to never do so again. The left vote fractured even more, the Tories swept into power, and, currently, continue to hold many seats in the South West.
This has given rise to calls for a ‘Progressive Alliance’ (PA) for a number of years, wherein Labour and the Lib Dems would have a pre-election agreement to streamline the centre-left choice in Tory-safe seats. Many think a PA is a necessity if Labour are to win the next election, but there are two grounds from which one could form: first, an agreement to simply get the Tories out of government and, second, a deal to push through a set of policies that otherwise could not be passed. This distinction can be distilled into whether PA is a tactic or long term strategy. Both could be problematic for Labour; neither will happen.
Shared Policy Platform as a PA Strategy
In theory, a shared policy platform is not out of the question, especially if there is a consensus on a set of policies that is imperative to pass. For example, if the Conservatives adopt a No Net-Zero stance, a set of environmental policies may unite the two parties enough to make a deal. Furthermore, the current policy divergence between Labour and the Lib Dems is quite narrow. Looking at both Labour’s and the Liberal Democrats’ party websites, it is akin to two people making the same point in slightly different ways. But it is this nuance that distinguishes between the political parties.
A PA on these grounds is not a viable long-term electoral strategy as the agreement is limited to the extent that Labour and Lib Dems can agree on a big enough policy platform to run together. The strategy here would broadly consist of getting into office, pushing through the necessary legislation, overseeing the implementation of these policies, and then (unless a new policy platform can be agreed on), running against each other at the next election. If Labour and the Lib Dems do create a shared platform in the first place, their time in government would be taken up by tackling the biggest issues they agree the country is facing. This means this parliamentary period would consist of creating and implementing policies around solving the housing, environmental and the cost of living crises—where broad agreement on how to tackle these issues are shared.
The difficulty for both parties would come in the next election period. A shared policy platform would be unlikely to be recreated as differences in how the two parties think the policies should be built on and delivered means that there would likely be a reversion to pre-PA politics. The Labour Party, however, would not own the policies of the last Parliament in the same way as if they had formed a majority government. The policies are, by definition, shared. There would be no appeal Labour could make to the difference they made in power compared to the Lib Dems as the latter held such a large stake in both enabling and forming the policies. Thus, as a long-term electoral strategy, this form of a PA would be detrimental to Labour’s electoral prospects.
Coordinating Left-Wing Seats as a PA Strategy
The other possible form of a PA consists of coordinating the seats that Labour and the Lib Dems contest in so as to maximally harm the Tories’ election hopes and minimising the harm done to each other. This rests on the premise that Britain actually does have a left-wing majority, but that the electoral system is set up to exploit the divisions on the left and reward the unity found in the right-of-centre of British politics. This is the form that most people think of when they envision a PA. However, they likely do not recognise how big of a risk this would be to take. Implied in this model is that individual voters are not smart enough to choose who they really want. This is decidedly not the best way to woo potential voters.
It is up for debate as to whether the Tory/Brexit Party alliance falls into category one or two of alliances, but it should be considered to be in the latter rather than the former. This is because the actual Brexit policy was not worked out; the agreement was to get rid of the Remain-preference in the House of Commons and there was a power structure they wished to change, rather than build a shared policy platform. There is nothing that binds the Lib Dems and the Labour Party together in a similar way to the Conservative-Brexit Party’s former alliance. First, the Brexit Party was more of a pressure group that became subsumed under the Tories. The Lib Dems are too big for that to happen. Instead, they would most likely be in coalition with Labour as the scarring from the 2010-2015 coalition (where the Tory Party almost pushed the Lib Dems into extinction) has not faded from Lib Dem memory just yet.
Second, although both Labour and the Lib Dems would rather not see the Tories in power, it would be untrue to suggest that the parties are politically motivated for this to happen to the same extent that the Tories and Brexit Party were motivated to push Brexit through in 2019. There would not be the same underlying ties binding the agreement in place, and the partnership could easily fall apart once in government.
Why We Do Not Already Have a PA
There is already a tacit PA between Labour and the Lib Dems in the way the parties allocate their resources. As mentioned previously, in the South West, the Labour Party scarcely exists. In fact, my home constituency celebrated a £20 donation from a trade union as the largest trade union donation for quite some time. The point here is that Labour knows they cannot contest every seat and so don’t in places they know they will not win. Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon, and Cornwall are all examples of this. The Labour Party hopes that the Lib Dems win in these areas in order to take seats away from the Tories, not so that Labour can govern alongside Lib Dem.
Ultimately, calls for a PA are misplaced, short-sighted, and damaging for our politics. They ignore how formidable the Tory “comms machine” is, and they overlook the extent to which the Lib Dems are seen as heterogeneous with Labour among voters.
Above all, PA activists ignore the mentality within the Labour Party. When Labour feels like it could win, it believes it can by itself. If Starmer looks like he could seriously challenge Johnson (or the next Conservative leader) and gain a majority of seats in the House of Commons, then the Labour Party will back him to do so. There won’t be a PA formed in either of the two ways I have suggested in order to improve the likelihood of victory even further.
The Labour Party will still need some sort of alliance to get into power. However, both options look farcical at worst and convey a defensive and pessimistic tone at best. Neither of these options are good for presenting a convincing case to the electorate. If Labour cannot win an election on their own, how can they be trusted to run the country? Suggesting a PA is beneficial—or a likely outcome—for the Labour Party lacks any basic political nuance. So, as long as their electoral prospects are good, the Labour Party will go solo. And even if their election prospects are gloomy, it is clear that going alone would still continue to be the most strategic move.
Max Brewster is a first year undergraduate student studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at Keble College, University of Oxford.