Equidistance does not mean Split-The-Difference

Votes vs Values: Did we get it right in 2010? Where to strike the balance in 2015? These were the questions asked at an excellent fringe organised by the SLF and Liberator at party conference. It was a crowded panel, but to my mind one speaker stood out: Neal Lawson.

Neal comes from a Labour background, though the organisation he leads, Compass, has recently opened up to welcome others from different parties. Neal spoke about how he wished Labour had engaged more in coalition negotiations in 2010, how he hoped Labour would get this right in 2015, and how, given electoral mathematics and the offers on the table, the Lib Dems made the right decision in 2010. However, Neal also called for Liberal Democrats to come out reject equidistance (the principle that the Lib Dems are equally close to Labour and the Tories) and announce that, given a choice and all other things being equal, we would prefer to work with Labour. This New Statesman article from 2012 still seems to accurately sum up Neal's opinion.

Neal's contribution was fantastic. In many ways, his pluralism embodies the best of modern politics. But (in my opinion) he's wrong here. Neal spoke well and in good faith - with a kindness and pluralism that deserves an honest answer - so let me set out why I disagree with him. 

First, I want to set out what equidistance is not. It's not that we sit in the middle as a split-the-difference party, halfway between Labour and the Tories on a simple left-to-right political spectrum. We have our own views and values, and defining ourselves with respect to other parties is unhelpful. We're a progressive political party, with liberal, progressive ideas. What we want to achieve are liberal, progressive goals.

Now, there are those in the Labour party who are also progressive, and I'd be delighted to work with them. But that does not mean that I am closer to the Labour party than the Tory party - there are more than enough old dinosaurs in the Labour movement who would make things difficult (witness this extraordinary intervention by David Blunkett on immigration) and there are also a handful of progressive Tories (though there are clearly fewer in the Tory party than in the Labour party). I could continue to discuss the approach of the Tories and Labour for many more paragraphs, but actually a discussion of whether these parties are progressive misses the point - in achieving progressive goals, I don't care who we work with. So what if David Cameron is not progressive if he is prepared to sign up to a progressive approach to government?

It's this achievement of progressive goals that matters most. I'd certainly prefer that Nick Clegg dropped the approach that in a hung parliament "we would prefer to work with the party which has the largest mandate from the British people" (I'll start refering to this in the future as the "Clegg doctrine"). In a hung parliament, no party has a complete mandate from the electorate (and if there is a 70% turnout, a party with 35% of the vote has less than 25% of the total possible vote - hardly a glowing endorsement in any event). If there is a majority for progressive politics in the House of Commons, then we should work with that majority to achieve progressive goals. It's what we exist for. Why on earth should we sign-up to simply prop up a non-progressive government with little effective mandate?

So, Neal, there's my answer. We are not a split-the-difference party sitting in the middle of a left-right spectrum between the Tories and Labour. That's a misreading of equidistance. We are a progressive party, who share ideals with progressives in other parties. If other parties also want to share the progressive label and sign up to be part of the progressive movement - then that is fantastic and their choice. But it's the movement we're aligned to, and not the parties that form the movement. It's the achievement of the progressive goals that matter: we'd work with any other party to achieve those goals. And that's the reason why we're equidistant. Because we genuinely will work, without prejudice, with either Labour or the Tories, to achieve our own liberal, progressive aims.