"If the Lib Dems were planning on dumping the Tories, this is how they'd do it ..."

[muriel_volestrangler]

An interesting take on the delicate balance of seats in Westminster, what the Lib Dems might do, and Danny Alexander's "they're coming for your child benefit" claim:

...
Note that in all the scenarios outlined above, the Lib Dems have control over who occupies 10 Downing Street. Even with the Tories doing ten seats better than the best case and getting 300 seats, Cameron isn’t prime minister unless the Lib Dems say so. (If they chose not to do that, the Labour route to power would be 250 Labour seats plus 48 SNP plus 27 Lib Dems equals 325, almost certainly via minority government rather than coalition.) But it would surely be very difficult for the Lib Dems to exercise their kingmaking role in favour of Labour. If the Tories are ahead in both the popular vote and the number of seats – which is the projection implied in all these numbers – it would be hard for the Lib Dems to jump the other way. Also, they’ve just kept the Tories in power for the last five years. In effect, they would be voting against their own record.

All true. The only way the Lib Dems could plausibly deny office to the Tories (on these numbers) is if they were able to establish a narrative about how the Tories’ plans for the next term are unconscionable. They would have to say things like, we know what the Tories are like in private, and what they really think; we know how far they want to go. One term was justifiable, but give them five more years and they will destroy the welfare state. The national interest dictates that we have no choice except to kick them out of government.

If the Lib Dems were contemplating doing that, they might well start leaking stories about terrible things the Tories had thought about doing in the last Parliament. The stories might look a lot like the one on the front of today’s Guardian: ‘Revealed: Tory plan to slash £8 bn benefits.’ In that scoop, Danny Alexander revealed ‘secret’ Tory plans to cut £8 billion in welfare spending, mainly from child benefit. Or they might set up a story like the one on the front of today’s Times, which says ‘Lib Dems to revolt over fresh pact with Tories’. First sentence: ‘Nick Clegg will face huge resistance from within his own party if he tries to push through a second coalition deal with the Conservatives, according to Liberal Democrats at every level.’

I’m not saying the Lib Dems are definitely plotting to dump the Tories. If they were, though, this is exactly how they would be giving themselves the political space to do it.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/04/30/john-lanchester/episode-16-the-balance-of-power/

[mwooldri]

1. Problem is Nick Clegg is trying to play both sides of the field.

When the message is "we will ensure that the Tories don't cut too much and Labour don't spend too much" and seeing how effective they were in coalition... then the choice is clear - vote for the candidate you would like to vote for if the LibDems weren't running. The Tory Dems would vote Tory, the Lab Dems would vote Labour, and the SDP Dems would vote Green in England & Wales and SNP in Scotland.

[T_i_B]

2. Whenever I've seen the Lib Dems at this election....

...I've been left with the impression that all they are about these days is keeping Nick Clegg in a cushy job. Nothing else seems to matter muuch to them.

[Ken Burch]

3. And it looks as though, if Clegg does hold onto his constituence(Sheffield Hallam),

he will only do so because of tactical support from normally Tory voters(the Conservative candidate's campaign appears to have collapsed there)

Seems pretty likely that, if the LibDem/Tory coalition does not survive, Clegg will be forced to stand down as leader. I'm stil amazed that the party allowed him to stay on and fight this election, given the massive and possibly irrepairable damage he'sdone to them.

[T_i_B]

4. "collapsed" is the wrong word.

It appears very much that the Tories have fielded a paper candidate in Hallam. That is, a candidate who's on the ballot paper and does the bare minimum beyond that.

This in turn has allowed Clegg to use such things as the "Harthman letter" (a letter from a previous Tory candidate in Hallam endorsing Clegg) to run as a surrogate Tory in an area which is affluent and conservative by nature.

The Lib Dems have also been flinging resources at Hallam while ignoring everywhere else in the area. For instance, I live in a neighbouring constituency and our Lib Dem candidate is a paper candidate who doesn't bother turning up to hustings meetings.

But by the same token, the constituency where I live is fairly marginal at present, and not bothering in Sheffield Hallam allows the Tories to fling more resources at winning in the Constituency where I am.