In the end, just two Lib Dems voted against the coalition’s VAT rise — Bob Russell and Mike Hancock. Nick Clegg will be relieved that so few chose to rebel against a tax increse that, after all, his own party campaigned against during the election.
But there’s little comfort for the Lib Dems in today’s Independent/ComRes poll, the third in quick succession to show a slide in their support since the Budget. The poll puts Clegg’s party down 5 points at 18 per cent, with the Tories up 4 to 40 per cent and Labour up 1 to 31 per cent.
Contrary to expectations of some on the left, it is so far the Tories who are gaining at the Lib Dems’ expense. So long as the elixir of electoral reform remains within their reach, the Lib Dems will want this coalition to work. But fears that they are the convenient fall guys for George Osborne’s cuts are growing by the day. And the old excuse that the Lib Dems receive less airtime than the Tories and Labour no longer applies.
New Statesman Poll of Polls
Conservative majority of 12.
The challenge for Clegg is, as Philip Stephens writes in today’s Financial Times, to find a story that “goes beyond the claim that his party is a civilising influence on the government”.
The introduction of the Alternative Vote for Westminster elections, against the wishes of the Tories, would provide Clegg with just this — one reason why the timing of the referendum is such a pressure point in the coalition.
In addition, as my colleague James Macintyre argued yesterday, when there is a resuffle, Clegg should push for more influential positions in the cabinet.
But above all, one feels that the Lib Dems need to find an issue, aside from electoral reform, on which they can clearly and publicly distinguish themselves from the Tories. It could be Afghanistan, it could be Trident, it could be inequality. Whatever it is, Clegg needs to find it — and soon.
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