Get used to cross party co-operation

No wonder the pollsters - or at least most of them - got it all wrong. Never before has there been so much topsy-turvy cross-dressing in British politics. With dizzying speed, the two main political parties spent much of the election campaign leapfrogging each other from left to right across the ideological divide, says Nick Clegg, i's new columnist

The Conservatives, the party of economic orthodoxy, campaigned to rip up Margaret Thatcher's greatest creation, the EU's Single Market. They went out of their way to offend their core vote - the elderly in homes of their own - with a raid on people's property to pay for social care. And the party of the "small state" championed intrusive price controls on energy companies which they'd condemned as "Marxist" when Ed Miliband first proposed them.

The Labour party, meanwhile, appealed to angry pro EU Remainers by, er, backing Theresa May's "hard" Brexit plans to quit the Single Market and end Freedom of Movement. Their most expensive policy - ending repayments for University tuition - amounted to a massive deferred tax cut for the highest paid graduates, while they had little concrete to say about welfare cuts hitting the very poorest.

To underline their surprising commitment to the rich, Labour staunchly defended the right of the most wealthy retirees to continue receiving free entitlements like TV licences, and conjured up hocus-pocus taxes on the "top 5 per cent" which they know will never be paid. You couldn't make it up.

The Conservative manifesto was a programme of economic self harm. And the Labour manifesto was a programme of socially regressive tax and spend. Still, judging by the defeat I suffered at the hands of both in Sheffield Hallam, this shameless shape shifting pantomime did the Conservative and Labour parties no harm: the Labour vote held up strongly, while thousands of Conservative voters who used to lend me their votes gave my anti-Brexit views short shrift and voted for Theresa May instead. By voting Blue, they got Red.

Coalitions of chaos

But perhaps the strangest role reversal of all concerns the vexed issue of coalitions, pacts and deals. The Conservative Party based their whole election campaign on spine chilling warnings against a "coalition of chaos" - a crass soundbite designed no doubt at vast expense by Sir Lynton Crosby. 'The Lib Dems have, given the bruising experience of the 2015 election, shunned all talk of coalitions' Yet the Conservatives happily participated in the country's only fully fledged Coalition Government for five years from 2010 to 2015 and now find themselves stitching together the most dismal of Coalitions (in all but name) with the DUP.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats - a party dedicated to the kind of electoral reform which makes coalitions inescapable - have, entirely understandably given the bruising experience of the election two years ago, shunned all talk of coalitions and even ruled out any deals of any type at all. And Labour, a party which shared power with the Liberals in Westminster in the 1970s, in Holyrood and the Welsh Assembly with a variety of other parties since, and is even governing in a local coalition with the SNP in Dumfries and Galloway today, now spits on the very idea of power-sharing with barely concealed disgust. Again, perhaps this is not too surprising, given the venom with which Labour MPs condemned the Coalition Government as some mongrel creation which needed to be demonised at all costs.

Where is talk of political reform now?

Still, it's peculiar: the parties of the left and the centre-left in Westminster who have traditionally shown the greatest interest in political reform are keenest to shun any talk of working across party divides; while the party of unthinking tradition on the right merrily ducks and weaves to cobble together whatever deals it can get.

Of course, in Labour's case there is a further, cold political calculation at play. Even though they lost the election and trailed the Conservatives by 55 seats, Labour is now telling itself that with one more heave they will get into power on their own. Why sully their chances with tricksy deals with other parties? All Jeremy Corbyn needs to do is keep up his serene and avuncular smile and Tory infighting, Brexit and a souring economy will do the rest. He'll waft into Number 10 on his own in good time (or so they think).

So the motives are mixed. Desperation is driving the Tories to power sharing. Trepidation is driving the Liberal Democrats away. And complacency means the Labour party will just sit tight. All this would be fine if it was no more than a Westminster parlour game. But it's not. Because our country faces a pile-up of crises the likes of which we have not experienced for at least a generation. 'This, surely, is the time when politicians should be prepared to reach out to each other'

Reaching out

A decelerating economy now slumping to the bottom of the G7 league. Increasing paralysis in our public services. A vice-like squeeze on millions of ordinary incomes. And a clueless approach to Brexit in which neither the Conservatives nor Labour appear to be prepared to put the country first.

This, surely, is the time when politicians should be prepared to reach out to each other? It is difficult to exaggerate the impending damage which could be inflicted on the economic, social and political fabric of our country unless wiser political leadership prevails. And that, inescapably, requires working across party boundaries in a hung Parliament. The public, soon enough, will tire of turgid political point-scoring and will welcome anything which can steady the ship. The markets will welcome anything which reduces risk. The Brexit negotiations will get precisely nowhere without a cross-party approach. Everyone in Westminster will refuse to use the words coalition, pacts or deals - but that's precisely what the country will get.

Nick Clegg is i's new columnist. Hear him in conversation with Ian Birrell at the Politics Festival on Sunday 24th June, 3.30pm. i is the official media partner of the Politics Festival, which will take place at Kings Place, London from 23rd to 25th June 2017. kingsplace.co.uk/tpf

Read more at: inews.co.uk/opinion/nick-clegg-get-used-cross-party-cooperation-will-need-brexit-talks/