THE LIBERAL Democrats grassroots have overwhelmingly backed the decision to go into coalition government with the Conservative Party, with just 12 delegates out of 1,600 voting against.
The approval of delegates was not needed under the party’s rules for the coalition pact, since MPs and the party’s governing body, the Federal Executive Committee, had already approved it in sufficient numbers.
However, the delegates’ vote, which was considerably better than had been expected, is, nevertheless, a major boost for party leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, as he embarks on governing alongside the prime minister, David Cameron.
Joking with party members shortly after the vote, Mr Clegg, who was given a standing ovation when he stood to address the meeting, said the verdict had been “too much, it is a North Korean result”.
The Birmingham gathering had proved to be “a brilliant example” of getting people to sign up to stepping into the unknown, when you allowed people to express their own concerns and hopes.
Saying he had spent 40 years fighting the Tories, Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable said he did not want to spend any more of his life fighting old battles.
However, leading party figures, including climate change secretary Chris Huhne, insisted they would not tolerate any attempt by the Conservatives to repeal the Human Rights Act.
Cardiff-based delegate Hugh Minor said the party had taken the best of the three alternatives available to it, following the outcome of the election, which left no one party with a Commons majority.
However, Mr Minor echoed a view shared by other delegates that the party would not have enough influence over justice, immigration and security issues, given Conservative home secretary Theresa May’s right-wing views.
“What I have heard about Theresa May does leave me concerned, but it depends on what restraints are on her. Maybe she has been put in there not to do right-wing things and to restrain those on the Tories’ right-wing who would be her natural backers,” he said.
Former party leader Charles Kennedy, who revealed yesterday that he had not backed the deal when Liberal Democrat MPs discussed it last week, did not address the hurriedly called conference.
In an article for the Observer, Mr Kennedy, who led the party between 1999 and 2006, said the coalition pact had driven a strategic coach and horses through the long-nurtured hopes of creating a realignment of centre-left politics in the United Kingdom.
“It is hardly surprising that, for some of us at least, our political compass currently feels confused and that really encapsulates the reasons why I felt personally unable to vote for this outcome when it was presented to Liberal Democrat [MPs],” he wrote.
Another former leader, Lord David Steel, said party activists in his former Commons constituency last week had been filled with “questions, doubts and anxieties” about the alliance. “We all had an instinctive horror of collaboration with the enemy.”
However, he said he believed that Mr Clegg had had no other option but to agree a deal, since Labour and the Liberal Democrats could not form a majority government. “We have not just to hope this coalition works – we have got to make damn sure it does.”
Delegates agreed a number of amendments to the motion put before them, including one from the party’s governing body that noted negotiations with Labour had “not been fruitful” despite the Liberal Democrats’ “best endeavours and good faith”.
Delegates also pressed Mr Clegg, who is in charge of constitutional reform, to push for proportional representation (PR) voting in local elections and restated their demand for the use of PR in Commons elections.
