Liberally uninformed

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

My prediction about British politics—which, I admit, is almost wholly uninformed—is that, when Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister in a couple of years (if not sooner), Labour will move left, and the LibDems will have to readjust their position towards the center, which is to say, towards a more distinctly liberal position.

Since the rise of Labour, the LibDems have repositioned themselves to fill whatever vacuum there was to the left of the Tories. They can do this now with surprising flexibility because of their hybridity, being the product of the union of liberals and social democrats. When they tried it before, it led to the Asquith-Lloyd George schism and disaster. When Labour was Old Labour, they were convincingly centrist; now Labour is New Labour, and the LibDems seem on their left on most issues. Could they move to the center again? Their leadership seems tilted towards SDP (and therefore Labour) veterans; is their gauchisme is a cause or a product of this? The party, however, understands itself as liberal, not social-democrat.

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But let's say that the LibDems move to the center, or rather, that they budge a bit while Labour moves leftward. Would that be good for the Liberals, that is, would it translate into more votes—a lot more—and thus lead to the sought-after displacement of the Tories as Britain's second party? Somehow I doubt it, first because I think Gordon Brown is more of a pragmatist and less an ideologue that he leads on, and second because the LibDems seem to be benefiting (although not that much) from their anti-war stance, which differentiates them from both Labour and the Tories.

If the issue of the war goes away, or if it's blurred under a Brown government, only the pursuit of some disastrous policy would do Labour in, and then the electorate might turn to a Conservative government (after all, they've actually governed in the last ninety years). The best liberal hope? A hung parliament that forces a LibLab pact and gives the LibDems credibility as a governing party. But that's also unlikely, not only because "England does not love coalitions"—as Disraeli famously put it—but also because the LibDems have demanded some deviation from First Past the Post as a requirement to join any coalition, and that demand has always been a dealbreaker.

All that said, I beg to be corrected.

INSTANT UPDATE: The Guardian argues that the LibDem gains (11 seats and a move to 2nd place in over 50 constituencies) were due to more than just the war.

ANOTH[E]R UPDATE: An unidentified Liberal MP is quoted in the Guardian:

But the risk is that the Lib Dems could end up being seen as a party of the left, especially following the defection of the veteran leftwinger Brian Sedgemore and other Labour supporters such as Greg Dyke. 'We have to be very careful to place ourselves; we have to avoid the cul-de-sac of thinking that winning Labour seats means embracing leftwing policies.'