The Superfluity of Coalition Politics

Keir Starmer has done something right. Yes, those words have been written down by me. Your eyes do not deceive you. On his visit to Scotland on Wednesday, he took time out from his hard hatted photo opportunities to say there would be no deal with the SNP before or after the next election. There would be no coalition government. Clearly, the Labour leader has taken heed of reports the Tories were planning on talking up an alliance between him and Nicola Sturgeon. Indeed, the Tories are always on the look out for useful divide and rule situations, and the prospect of an independence referendum is one of them.

Clever avoidance politics? Our learned comrade, Mark Perryman doesn't think so. By advocating a vote for Labour everywhere and ruling out alliances with other parties, Labour is on a hiding to nothing. He says, "If Keir is ruling out a coalition in any circumstances he’s ruling himself out of Number Ten short of the kind of surge in the polls there is absolutely no evidence of his leadership attracting." With the right united under the Conservative banner, the "progressive parties" competing for the anti-Tory vote can only ever benefit the Tories.

As it happens, I agree. The primary objective at every general election must be the removal of the Tories, or preventing them from gaining office. After the last 11 years, it should be obvious why. There is no damage they won't cause or amount of people they won't let die to stay in power and preserve the interests they organise and articulate. But there are ways and means of reducing competition between anti-Tory parties to get them out, and one way not to do it is declaring Labour's intention to forge an alliance with the SNP from the rooftops.

We don't have to go far back in time to remind us why Mark's recommendation isn't a good idea. The Tories dined out on the prospect of Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond allying to break up Britain and scrap its nuclear arsenal. What the Tories did was whip up a climate of inchoate fear to mobilise enough voters for an entirely undeserved victory. Rather than dealing with the acute sources of uncertainty and misery, i.e. themselves, their propaganda and allied media machine projected it all onto their opponents. And it worked. It didn't matter Ed said there wasn't going to be a coalition or a deal, as soon as the Tories started running it was too late. This line came back at me time after time on the doors in Stafford, so it cut through. For his sins, and they are legion, Starmer has got the plausible deniabilities in early. I suppose he has learned something about blunting attacks before they happen.

How about an open pact of assistance between the English parties? Does this avoid the problem? I'm afraid it does not. Despite the received wisdom that Boris Johnson is a positive politician, his programme is anything but. He talks about levelling up, but does nothing about it. And this means without any positive achievements to their name in 2023/24, the Tories are going to emphasise the fearmongering again. Their hope lies not in persuading opposition voters of their merits but turning out the already-convinced, and this job is easier if there's an identifiable "them" to kick against. In 2019, it was the establishment looking to steal their referendum votes. In 23/24, it would be the same pitch: they want to undo Brexit/break up Britain. Any formalised alliance looks like a conspiracy to mug the voters, and allows the Tories to cast themselves the plucky underdogs fighting for every day Brits. It's a heady brew and many are all too willing to neck it. Hence the business of alliances in our dysfunctional politics cannot be handled indelicately. They have to be informal, below the radar and annoyingly, formally forsworn by whoever is the Labour leader. This was true for Jeremy Corbyn, and it remains the case for Keir Starmer.

But this as far as this qualified defence of Starmer's ruling out a pact with the SNP goes. He is not for any kind of alliance, even of the quiet paper candidate sort. His politics are entirely top-down and authoritarian. In the unlikely event of winning an outright majority, there won't be any electoral reform, which sets the clock ticking for the next ruinous Tory government. And in the event of Labour becoming the biggest party in the Commons without a majority, one can easily imagine him ploughing on as if Labour did have a majority. Such a government wouldn't last very long. Our best bet at getting the Tories out, unfortunately, lies in the hands of a leadership with a rigid political imagination backed by a dominant faction not that fussed about winning anyway. It's enough to make any talk about coalitions and informal understandings seem superfluous.

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