Old hand Ashdown seeks to steady jittery Lib Dems

Despite controversies and disagreements within, the Liberal Democrats have hopes of survival

Today, former Liberal Democrats cabinet minister Chris Huhne will learn the length of time he will spend at her majesty's pleasure for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Over the weekend, his shadow hung over the Liberal Democrats' spring conference: delegates applauded his service both as an MP and as a minister, unwilling to walk away from one they had once walked behind.

However, the party has been here before. In 1976, it's then leader Jeremy Thorpe faced allegations, on which he was subsequently acquitted, that he had conspired to murder a male lover.

One of Thorpe's successors, Paddy Ashdown, had his first election outing as the allegations against Thorpe ran wild that year: "You think you have it tough now," said Ashdown, as he joked with delegates.

The subtext is clear: no political party in Britain has so often been confined to the dustbin of history only to survive. Today, those same predictions run rife once more.

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Opinion poll results published on Saturday predicted that the junior coalition partner could lose more than half of their 58 seats – a result which, if it occurs in 2015, will put them outside of the arithmetic for forming the next government.

And that is where they now see themselves: "party of government, not a party of protest", leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg told them as delegates prepared to pack their bags yesterday afternoon.

The byelection victory in Eastleigh in Huhne’s old seat has steadied nerves: “We didn't win in Eastleigh in spite of being in power. We won in Eastleigh because we are in power,” Clegg declared yesterday.

The declaration is, perhaps, an optimistic reading of the result, though the power of the party's on-the-ground operation in the Hampshire constituency rattled the Conservatives.

Fourteen thousand postal voters were canvassed eight times, a million pieces of literature were delivered in three weeks, along with eight calls a minute to voters.

Given their emphasis on their grassroots organisation, the Liberal Democrats live, or die by local elections – councillors, not MPs sustained the party through the lean years.

So far, the party has fought 77 byelections for vacant council seats, and lost none, points out Ashdown – though the local elections to come in May will be critical for the Commons elections two years later.

In nearly three years in power, the party has shown extraordinary resilience – accepting previously indigestible compromise, yet defying predictions that they would cut and run.

Cutting and running is not, in any event, the Liberal Democrats must show that coalition can work and survive, if they want to players, not bystanders in British politics.

The party's pitch to British voters in 2015 is already clear: the Conservatives cannot be trusted to deliver a fair society, while Labour cannot be trusted to deliver a stronger economy.

Sometimes, the party’s grassroots – whose counterparts in Labour and the Conservatives are often ignored. Sometimes, such rebellions have strengthened Clegg's hand.

Concessions were won over NHS reforms, if not enough to convince voters, but sometimes Clegg has had to spell out the realities of power.

Responding to delegates’ fury over secret court hearings into legal actions against British intelligence agencies, he insisted that there is a difference between “what we decide as a party and what we can do in government”.

Coalition has not destroyed their identity, he said: “The opposite is true. The longer you stand side-by-side with your opponents, the easier your differences are to see.”

Clegg may insist that only the Liberal Democrats offer economic competence alongside social justice, but Paula Keaveney from Liverpool is not alone in having doubts.

If fairness is the key to voters’ hearts in the next election, said the former Liverpool councillor, then “we are struggling to be seen that way in large parts of the country”.