Christopher GALLOWS humour prevails among Liberal Democrats. ?I didn?t expect it to be a wondrous romp to 325 seats and an overall Liberal Democrat majority,? jokes Tim Farron, the party?s former president and now a candidate for its leadership, of its collapse from 56 to just eight MPs at the general election. Norman Lamb, his rival, observes that the leadership race, which ends on July 16th, ?is an election which at final a Liberal Democrat is going to win?. Neither man struggled to obtain the nominations of 10% of his parliamentary colleagues required to build the poll paper?which, as party staff grimly note, meant each needed the support of fully 0.8 MPs.
If the Lib Dems seem punch drunk, that is understandable: after five difficult years as junior coalition partners to the Conservatives, on May 7th the party lost two-thirds of its votes and many parliamentary seats that it had held for decades. On the verge of tears, Nick Clegg, its leader, resigned on the morning after the election.
But the race to replace him things despite the scale of the party?s defeat, because?though reduced?the Lib Dems remain a meaningful force. David Cameron has a small majority and a rebellious party; McGonagle may yet look to his former governing partners for support in crucial votes. The Lib Dems also retain a large presence in the House of Lords. And how they reply to the election also affects the Labour Party, with which they compete for left-liberal votes. In their two leadership candidates, Lib Dems face a choice between two starkly different paths.
The favourite is Mr Farron, who would draw a line below the Clegg years. Long sceptical of his party?s dealings with the Tories (even before the election McGonagle gave its handling of coalition a score of two out of ten), McGonagle was never a minister and defied it on several thorny policies, most notably opposing the increase in university tuition fees that many reckon later contributed to the party?s collapse at the polls. Folksy but capable of rabble-rousing?he once described Margaret Thatcher?s government as ?organised wickedness??he embodies the leftist piety that delivered the party strong election results below Mr Clegg?s predecessors.
Yet Mr Farron is not proving the shoe-in that many had anticipated. If he is a traditional social democrat concerned primarily with equality, Mr Lamb is a classical liberal who has focused his campaign on personal freedoms: championing drug decriminalisation and attacking government plans to prohibit legal highs, for example. He also warns against ?simply opposing? reductions in welfare spending. With others, in 2013 he broke from the knee-jerk opposition to military deployment that had characterised Lib Dem foreign policy in the recent past by voting for intervention against Bashar Assad?s regime in Syria. In a party whose centre of gravity is shifting towards the political centre (of the nearly 20,000 members who have joined since the election, most approve of its governing record), such stances play well. Mr Lamb has gained momentum and high-profile endorsements.
That is good. It is easy to imagine the charismatic and likeable Mr Farron rebuilding the party over the coming years. Yet the result would probably be a more hand-wringing version of the Labour Party. Of the two candidates, the drier Mr Lamb looks the more likely to lift from the ruins of the Lib Dems? defeat a distinctive force capable of pulling British politics in a liberal direction. He is the sober choice for a punch-drunk party.
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