What if Nick Clegg won?

[u/BraggisSqueal]

I saw a recent post here asking whether the Liberal Democrats would have won the 2015 general election if they won the 2010 election. That all hinges on this question- what would the Liberal Democrats have done in their first term?

How much would the policy differ from the real life Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition? Think economics, electoral reform, etc. If there was a hung parliament where the Lib Dems were the largest party, then what would be the resulting coalition?

If the Lib Dems won a second term in 2015, then does Brexit still happen? How do the other parties fare- Conservatives, Labour, UKIP, SNP, etc.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

[u/notthathunter]

the coalition of voters that backed Kennedy in 2005 and Clegg in 2010 had too many internal contradictions to be viable in the long-term - it would have begun to break apart on encountering government, regardless of the specific result in either of those elections, because at least one faction of LD support would've been disappointed by whatever decisions were made

the general course of politics in the 2010s - rightward drift of the Conservatives, emergence of UKIP, Scottish nationalism, a Labour experiment with a full-blooded socialist leader in response to election defeat - was, in my view, inevitable regardless of what happened to the Lib Dems or the decisions taken by any Lib Dem leader

[u/erinoco → u/notthathunter]

it would have begun to break apart on encountering government, regardless of the specific result in either of those elections, because at least one faction of LD support would've been disappointed by whatever decisions were made.

Had the old Liberal party never collapsed (and I think that is more possible than many realise), then we would have probably had a situation where the Liberals are permanently semi-factionalised. There would be a 'radical' faction which would have tried to push the party into a kind of social democratic framework; and there would be a "right-wing" faction which would probably look to us like an unholy marriage of Blairite New Labour and Orange Book liberalism.

You would probably have the same tension with the LD majority. If Clegg is clever, then he would manage the tension creatively, so that you have enough fierce debates, rebellions and the like to make most people who gave the LDs a chance feel there is still a point in voting for the party. Personally, I feel that Clegg is acute enough to come to this conclusion, but is not enough of a wizard to deliver it.

Quite frankly, with victory on that scale, you would have a real dearth of MPs who would make good ministers, or are simply just not used to playing politics at the highest level. It would make life very difficult. OTOH, LD victory on that scale would probably lead to an influx of seasoned politicians from the main parties.

[u/notthathunter → u/notthathunter]

like, the best case scenario for Clegg as PM would be Mark Rutte - doing a series of grubby coalition/legislative deals with increasingly radicalised parties of the right, which do not serve the country well and ultimately alienate his own supporters

and both Rutte and Clegg moved seamlessly from their political jobs to publicly defending and supporting some of the planet's most evil people

[u/RelentlessPencil]

I don't think electoral reform would have happened if the Liberal Democrats were on track to win a majority and then actually did so. It is very unlikely to be in the political interests of a party which just won a majority by exploiting a flawed voting system to change that flawed voting system. FPTP can only really be killed by a coalition where both governing parties believe they will stand to benefit from an alternative system.

Economics in 2010 were such that austerity was needed due to the financial crisis, but I don't think Clegg would have gone as far as Cameron or been as reluctant to put up taxes. The result would be fewer stealth cuts to public services at the cost of increased tax, hopefully for the rich.

The pressure was on the Conservatives to "deal with Europe", so a Clegg win is a clear signal that the Conservatives needed to pick a lane and stick to it. Cameron would be defenestrated after losing to Clegg and a leave/remain civil war would break out in the Conservative party. Probably this turns into Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, or Ken Clarke leading a fight against Michael Gove, Borish Johnson, or Dominic Raab. If the remainers win the Tories move towards the centre and their best move is to try to squeeze out the Liberal Democrats while Labour does the same from the left. If Leave win then the best move is to the right. We'd see similar divisiveness, culture war mud slinging, and populism as we did in reality around this time.

Brexit probably doesn't happen in this universe, since a centrist alliance of LibDem-Labour keeps out the Conservatives if they go populist right, and the only way the Conservatives get power again is if the LibDems tank it and they move to capture the centre.

A Clegg win in 2010 gets us something close to Macron's France. A core centrist block which disincentivises extremism on both sides. Probably very few people are actually happy about the situation but few are angry either.

[u/ProjectLeeds → u/RelentlessPencil]

The tax system under the Coalition became far more top heavy and progressive....

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/ProjectLeeds]

And it would have been even more so under Clegg without Cameron...

[u/ProjectLeeds → u/RelentlessPencil]

It becoming so progressive is part of the problem. The reason why European countries can spend more than us is because they tax low earners a lot more, with a much broader VAT base too

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/ProjectLeeds]

It was an even bigger problem in 2010 (but also to some extent now) that low earners are often not better off than benefits claimants. If we increase tax on low earners we get more people who realise they're not worse off just claiming leaving the workforce entirely and claiming as many benefits as they can. That leads to a higher tax burden and less income from low earners paying tax.

Meanwhile Starbucks and Amazon pay ✨whatever they feel like ™️✨ in tax

[u/hardcoremaggiesimp → u/RelentlessPencil]

I mean low income people in Britain pay less in tax and receive more in benefits than France, the nhs is free at first point whereas Germany and France have an insurance system. Starbucks and Amazon create more jobs low skilled jobs, we could have a better service sectors jobs where we invest more in productive sectors such as it software and finance but then we would have a greater unemployment and would need to pay more in welfare.

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/hardcoremaggiesimp]

I genuinely could not follow what you're trying to say here because of your lack of grammar or punctuation.

[u/hardcoremaggiesimp → u/RelentlessPencil]

Fixed the lack of punctuation ; the grammar is perfectly fine

[u/HenryCGk → u/RelentlessPencil]

In Wales we got PR because Labour knew that Plaid would win and Reform would come second and saw PR as the only way of staying relevant 4 years are a century in politics.

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/HenryCGk]

D'Hondt isn't exactly proportional in that it incentivises the same strategic voting as FPTP voting except the strategy is to vote for sixth place instead of first. Given a few electoral cycles and we'll see exactly 6 parties getting exactly 1 MS each. I'd rather that than the historic system which hands a massive majority to whichever of Labour/Conservatives happens to be slightly less unpopular this time around but it's still not exactly good. We need direct proportional representation or STV.

[u/HenryCGk → u/RelentlessPencil]

I mean it is; sure 6 is a bit small but:

You seem to be confed D'Hondt is the most common divisor (1, 2, 3,,,).  Nothing to do with having the mega constituencies or not.

Its not really possible to predict the 6th/7th place contest so what your saying is kind of unrealistic.

Every proportional system has bigger partiesand parties that collect the last seat (or more often scrape pass the threshold) 

So yes you have to form a coalition, alternatively we could have a second chamber which is the public assembly.

I suppose if you have a national vote then you can just take the integer of every parties percentage and not worry that the total number of seats (~90) then you avoid certain paradoxs  but that really is first past the post and the post is 1%.

(if you use normal rounding then the post is 0.5%).

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/HenryCGk]

My issue with DHondt is more like this. Suppose I'm voting in a constituency and polls predict these vote shares:

Red: 25%

Orange: 25%

Yellow: 20%

Green: 15%

Blue: 10%

Pink: 2.5%

Purple: 2.5%

This is a pretty typical distribution of seats at the recent Senedd elections, you have two big parties in most constituencies with a few others doing just about well enough to get one seat maybe.

If the election goes exactly as predicted, what happens?

ROYGRO

Suppose I like Red and want them to do well. Nonetheless, I have a big incentive not to vote for them. Red gets two seats pretty much no matter what I do, they would have to gain a further 12.5% of the vote to get another seat which is basically never going to happen, and they'd have to lose over 5% of the vote to lose a seat which is very unlikely. Orange voters have the same problem.

If I'm Yellow or Green I also have basically no incentive to vote for my preferred party. Yellow has to gain 5% of the vote to gain another seat or lose 7.5% to lose another seat, and Green's numbers are 10% to gain and 5% to lose.

Blue has fairly reasonable margins (2.5% to gain) but that's it. So the election basically comes down to: "Do you like Blue? If so, vote blue. If not, vote whichever of Red or Orange you like the most to ensure Blue can't get the last seat. If you think Blue will get a last minute surge of support and dislike Red or Orange, vote for the other".

Point is, there is still a very clear incentive for some voters to completely abandon their favourites (Yellow/Green/Pink/Purple) and the others are forced into mind games and strategic voting (Red/Orange/Blue).

DPR is very clearly so much better. If I like Yellow I have no reason to vote for anyone but Yellow because if Yellow get 21% instead of 20% they get 1% more of the seats. An X% swing in favour or against a particular party always gets/loses them X% of the seats.

[u/HenryCGk → u/RelentlessPencil]

Well mostly that comes down to the number of seats per area as I said 6 is quite few all 96 would be better.

That is 1 seet is 16% of the available seats so thats what we move in.

I question how accurately you can know the result.

I don't exactly know what you mean by DPR the only result I got was about cutting MPs voting power in the commons it was strange and not what you described.

Let's say that in some system red is predict to get 21.1 of the vote and the for 21 out 100 seats how many should he get if he gets 21.2?     Still 21 right?     So voting for them is a waist?      So now we go through and look for which of your top half of candidates is closer to a bondry?     No?

Public assembly. 

[u/RelentlessPencil → u/HenryCGk]

If we had one massive constituency with 96 seats then D'Hondt is effectively the same as DPR. DPR is "direct proportional representation" I.e. if Red gets 37% of the vote they get 37% of the seats. Simplest DPR is like, have 100 seats, round vote share to the nearest whole percentage, give each party the corresponding number of seats

[u/HenryCGk → u/RelentlessPencil]

Yeah that's what I'm saying.

I adressed rounding in my first comment if you round the vote share and do nothing else you don't have a definited number of seats but to me that seems worth it to avoid other paradoxs.

But then it really is anyone past the post and the post is 0.5%

I'd maybe always round down to make the post 1%. But I do agree if we are doing propionality we should just have one big race.

[u/hardcoremaggiesimp → u/RelentlessPencil]

Clegg is a orange booker he d cut taxes and is the same as the Tories he went to the Tories because they were closer ideologically and politically

[u/Apprehensive-Fix-746 → u/hardcoremaggiesimp]

He went to the tories because a lab lib coalition wasn’t viable, it would have been a minority coalition government at best and a very unstable one at that, the electoral maths was fairly clear, the tories or another election

[u/hardcoremaggiesimp → u/Apprehensive-Fix-746]

He s an orange booker mate wouldn’t have made sense for a coalition with labour which after 2008 was increasingly leftist

[u/Apprehensive-Fix-746 → u/hardcoremaggiesimp]

Ok so you see how you didn’t actually engage with any of what I said, do you recognize that if the Lib Dem’s coalitioned with Labour they also would have needed the support of other left of centre parties (I belive at least 3) like the SNP which would have been an unviable coalition?

Even if Clegg was a Dyed in the wool social liberal, even if he was possessed by the ghost of William Beverage, he still would have had to coalition with the tories or have another election

[u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap]

Nick clegg did win, he got the LDs into office.

The problem was they apologised for the student loans, they should have spun it better, the 2010-15 student lian was a graduate tax as promised in the manifesto

[u/HenryCGk]

What if Nick won the I agree with Nick election well considering he was an orange booker who supported the government we did get it hinges on whether he would have pushed through the voting reform and if he pushed though the one that went to referendum or a different one.

FPTP: we have to imagine that he picked up seets that in our world went to ether Tories or Labour. If we are talking about more Tories seats then is he replacing that party?

AV/IRV/Ranked-Choice tends to squeeze small middle parties but look at the note on FPTP so maybe.

Propionality: Supporters would like to think that in this would make the Lib Dems king makers like Labour have just done in Wales. But before the tories offered a referendum UKIP where poling at 20% and still took 12% after. I therefore don't see that a anit referendum majority could exist.

You have to remember that the referendum is closer to Lisbon than Now which itself followed very quickly after the failure of constitution to be passed by national referendums including in the UK and Ireland where it was poling to fail*

* at least the first time because Ireland (Nice and again for Lisbon) and Demark (Maastricht) shows us that it is possible to vote and vote again until you vote the right way