To millennials of a certain age like me, the Liberal Democrats will forever be associated with Nick Clegg’s fateful decision to ditch his campaign pledge to abolish tuition fees and instead back a Conservative government that tripled them.
Fortunately for my bank balance, I was unaffected by this decision, but the fury at the sense of betrayal under Nick Clegg was something that shaped a whole generation’s politics and not just for the slightly cringe-worthy apology video and many many silly remixes of it.
I promise this isn’t a long-planned rant about the Lib Dems, the point here is that their actions in government tainted them for the best part of 14 years.
Yet, at the last general election, their wetsuit-donning messiah Sir Ed Davey seemed to finally give the Lib Dems a break from their coalition past – not to mention the questions he personally faced over the Post Office scandal – and in 2024 they gained more seats than under Cleggmania, a whopping 72 MPs, making them the third-largest party in Parliament.
Their strategy seemed to target middle-class voters upset by Brexit. Those who were sick of Tory chaos and infighting and who had some reservations about Labour, possibly because of the Corbyn years. Their targeting of the so-called “Blue Wall” – upmarket constituencies held by Conservative MPs – became associated with seats that contained branches of upmarket bakery Gails.
It might, therefore, come as a surprise to swing Tory-Lib Dem voters to see Sir Ed Davey’s party sign a series of coalition agreements with Zack Polanski’s Green Party up and down the country.
Liberal Democrats have deals with the Green Party in the south London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth; Babergh District Council in Suffolk; Huntingdonshire District Council in Cambridgeshire and most controversially in Birmingham city council.
There, they have been blasted by Labour’s Mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker, who accused them of ignoring the concerns of the local Jewish community over their decision to join up with the Greens.
The community had written to Sir Ed Davey to complain about what they called the local deputy leader’s “hateful” views and to urge him against a deal with Polanski’s party.
What has surprised some about the Green-Lib Dem alliances is how they’re occurring despite Davey’s own very robust denunciation of Polanski.
Before the local elections he told the JC he was “shocked” by Zack Polanski’s comments about the Jewish community’s “perception of unsafety”: “It’s a real threat. Do you not talk to people in the Jewish community? Has he not talked to the CST [Community Security Trust]?
“I was staggered. How dare he say it’s perception. It’s a reality.”
But beyond the concerns of a small local Jewish community, alliances with the Greens pose some reputational risk for the Lib Dems.
In the 2010s, Brighton council, which was run by the Greens at the time, was regularly in the news headlines. It struggled to pass a budget (a legal requirement), with several Green councillors rebelling against their own council leadership, recycling rates dropped and the Greens angered local binmen after imposing meat-free Mondays on the refuse collectors, a measure later dropped.
That being said, given Labour presided over a bin strike in Birmingham that lasted for around 17 months, accusations of incompetence are easy to throw.
But nonetheless, there is some trepidation about the alliances with the Greens from Lib Dem sources that the JC has spoken to.
This week, Zack Polanski has made headlines by being photographed in a shirt calling for the release of a murderous Palestinian terrorist. Something he doubled down on despite criticism.
Polanski has also shared a post on social media by a Holocaust survivor saying that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to "a Holocaust".
In the build-up to the local election, there were countless stories about Green councillors making obscene headline-grabbing comments. Some of them were suspended, others continue to serve the party in local government without sanction.
I daresay that there will be more stories about the Green Party that have the potential to embarrass the Lib Dems, especially if these stories come from councils where they’re working together.
These deals, perfectly legitimate and democratic – despite the complaints of their political rivals – risk harming the Lib Dems with the very same Conservative voters they targeted so effectively in the last general election.
They were under 1,000 votes from unseating Jeremy Hunt at the last general election in the leafy Surrey seat of Godalming and Ash. In the 10 constituencies they came closest to winning at the last election, only one of those is currently held by Labour, the rest are all Tory-held.
While there is unlikely to be viral videos of Sir Ed Davey apologising for local Lib Dems choosing to ally with local Greens, I suspect that the Conservative attack unit will be looking very closely at what material the councils they run will be able to provide for future leaflets.
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