After the Coalition formed, my room for manoeuvre shrunk

The excitement was palpable. “We’re the centre of attention” whispered newly elected Liberal Democrat MP’s as they pressed through the massed ranks of the broadcast cameras. Old political hands gave a nonchalant shrug as they passed the scrum of political editors packed around the door. We were in Smith Square, central London, minutes from the House of Commons, meeting in the Local Government Association offices two days after the British people had not elected a Government. It was May 2010, and a year before Scotland would vote in its fourth devolved election.

As I walked from the tube station towards the media scrum, late after the Edinburgh shuttle and the Heathrow Express, I was accosted by BBC Newsnight’s Michael Crick.

We had jousted outside a fire station in Glasgow during a by-election. He recognised the face, and said: “Ah a Scottish politician who’s done Government. Come down to tell your colleagues how to do it?!” Tempting as the offer of live TV always is, I declined his kind invitation.

The UK General Election that led to the formation of the first peace-time coalition government had been one of highs and lows for Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg had starred in the “new” TV debates. Not new to Scots, as we’d had them from the 1999 Scottish General Election campaign, but new to the London political classes. But the outcome had been disappointing. We’d lost seats in England and Wales.

In Scotland, Edinburgh South had agonisingly stayed Labour despite a heroic effort by Fred McIntosh and the local party.

There were other near misses, but Scotland retuned an overwhelming verdict of no change. South of the Border, Gordon Brown was hammered. In UK terms, it was clear who had lost the election, rather than won it.

As Friday dawned, so did the realisation that Nick Clegg and his parliamentary party were between a rock and a hard place.

To duck coalition was to say we can’t accept the responsibility of government. I thought that was unlikely as Chris Huhne, David Laws and Danny Alexander had made clear their desire to do things in politics by being a Government. I agreed. I’d taken the same approach to the Scottish Parliament.

What other point is there to politics other than to put your policies into action? To deliver change.

I was phoned that day and urged to make a meeting of the Westminster parliamentary party on Saturday afternoon.

After a refreshingly blunt and brief introduction, Clegg asked for views on the options. A Tory minority government. Supporting that Government but not taking Ministerial office. A full blown coalition or opening discussions with Labour.

Time, he observed, was not on our side. There was immense political, financial and economic pressure for a Government to be formed. Central bankers were observing that the country needed stability and there could be a run on the pound. It sounded like the late 1970’s.

I was very clear about my role. It wasn’t my Parliamentary Party. I could vividly remember the look on Jim Wallace’s face as his mobile rang with another call from Paddy Ashdown after the 1999 Scottish elections.

Jim, as leader of the Scottish Lib Dems. took the calls but made his own decision. So May 2011 was a House of Commons decision for Lib Dem MPs.

Any deal with the Tories would make fighting the Holyrood elections, then a year away, impossible. It wouldn’t matter how good the agreement was or if we had delivered our entire manifesto. Going in with the Tories was not a strategy that would find favour north of the Border.

Scottish MP’s got it. They didn’t need a telling, even in the North-east where Aberdeenshire Lib Dems don’t have to battle Labour representatives so joining with the Tories seemed less of a political challenge.

I sensed that MP’s fell into two tribes. Those who favoured a minority Tory government having fought them all their political lives and those who said the party had to recognise the reality of the election result. But the meeting asked the leadership to continue talks with the Tories and open discussions with Labour. I offered to help with Labour as I knew Iain Gray well, but Danny Alexander wanted a tight control on negotiations.

He was quite right. Freelancing discussions lead to crossed wires, tactical mistakes and no one quite knowing who said what to whom.

The Saturday meeting finished with Clegg going out to speak to an enormous rally. David Laws did media interviews keeping options open. I had unbreakable business back in Shetland on the Monday and headed for home.

There was a further tartan aspect to that frantic weekend. The desperate efforts of Alex Salmond to be involved.

He had Angus Robertson, his Westminster leader phone Alistair Carmichael, our Scottish spokesman. The SNP line was a Government of every colour should be formed, led by Labour and involving Northern Irish MP’s, the new Green from Brighton, Plaid Cymru and, of course, the Nationalists.

Salmond wanted to prop up Brown in Number 10 despite Labour losing the election. It took opportunism, even Nationalist opportunism, to a new level.

Salmond got so desperate, he sidelined Robertson by phoning Carmichael late at night as Alistair was in the midst of a Paddy Ashdown caucus.

Salmond’s position on a Labour-led UK Government was of course at odds with Scotland where the SNP Government were working hand in glove with the Tories in the Scottish Parliament.

Salmond’s positioning became academic as the negotiations with Labour faltered. The arrogance of their top London team, personified by Ed Balls, meant no deal was possible. And when John Reid observed that they should be in Opposition it was all over for Brown. Lib Dem MPs then had no choice.

It was now Monday. The financial markets were rumbling. William Hague, leading for the Tory team, had made a big offer on the voting system for the House of Commons; the pressure was immense. The parliamentary party was boxed in and made the only call it could.

But immediately, the mantra became the 5-year fixed term of the new Westminster Government. Every Lib Dem MP on the news channels trotted out the line that we would be judged in 2015 on what we had achieved in Government. That was, and is, true. But not if you were leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, and less than 12 months from polling day.

The Scottish dimension was now crystal clear. Clever Nationalists knew that if the Lib Dems went in with the Tories they could exploit that in coming Scottish elections. Some of my Westminster friends got that. Chiefly Charles Kennedy.

Charles and I sat next to each other through that Saturday meeting. He publicly opposed the coalition with the Tories for many strong political reasons. But the biggest one was that as a genuine radical Highland politician, who’d beaten Tory Hamish Gray in 1983 to win a Westminster seat aged 23, he knew what the political impact would be. He was sadly right.

As the Government was formed I felt strongly that Clegg, Alexander and my own MP, Alistair Carmichael who became Lib Dem whip and therefore deputy government whip, really deserved the chance to put their ideas and policies into Government. But I had a deep sense of foreboding about the impact in Scotland. That came graphically home as the Scottish Parliament resumed business. My weekly jousts with the First Minster were always an occasion to push on the issue of the day. The job of the Leader of the Opposition parties is to deliver a reasonable newsline and then pray the press use it.

After the Coalition was formed, my room for manoeuvre shrunk. Once George Osborne had delivered the Emergency Budget it was non-existent.

Any time I asked a question on Government expenditure, Salmond had the easiest riposte – it’s all your fault, we are coping with London cuts.

Trying to avoid any mention of money in the middle of a recession and holding a Government to account isn’t that easy!

Should I have declared UDI? The thought occurred…often. I discussed strategy with valued political friends – party convenor Craig Harrow, Charles Kennedy, and in Holyrood, Nicol Stephen, Jeremy Purvis and Liam McArthur.

My parliamentary group in Edinburgh were deeply unhappy about the London coalition. Especially those who had been in the Lib Dem/Labour coalition as ministers.

Ross Finnie knows how coalition works. He fretted about what it would do to us. He was right. They were all right. But split parties do even worse was our calculation. And what happens when the coalition do the right thing and cut tax for the lowest paid, taking hundreds of thousands of Scots out of tax altogether?

Would I disown that too? No of course not – I had campaigned for progressive taxation.

I asked people outside politics. The advice was consistent. The people of Scotland won’t understand the constitutional niceties of a political party saying one thing in Scotland and another in London.

In Holyrood’s chamber, clever positioning would be sized on by opponents. And when Clegg, Cable and the rest stepped out of the ministerial car north of the Border, the press would have a field day.

The Lib Dems are a federal party. Be one was the verdict. UDI wouldn’t wash.

2010 went on but a car crash loomed around the corner – funding universities. Mike Crockart was prescient on this.

At a celebration party for the new Edinburgh West MP in late May 2010, Mike told me that his biggest worry was tuition fees. “We’ve all signed a pledge and been photographed doing it.”

The coalition agreement allows an opt-out, I observed. The parliamentary party must be agreed. That’s not what’s going to happen, he prophesised. And he was right.

In the Scottish coalitions between Labour and the Lib Dems, there were tough moments, awful meetings, the odd ghastly row.

But when it came to the bit, if Donald Dewar and Jim Wallace couldn’t see a political fix that both parties could live with, a policy was stopped.

So I will never understand why Vince Cable was allowed to make a Commons statement on the Browne Report into Higher Education funding in England on the day it was published and commit the Government to its findings.

Kristy Williams, my opposite number in Wales, and I conference called with Nick and said what would happen if the party reneged on its election promise.

We both feared the electoral consequences and for the same reason.

Despite protestations to the contrary from BBC Scotland and STV, the average Scots voter’s perspective on politics is massively influenced by “big” news.

The national 10pm bulletins punch serious holes in Scots’ understanding of what’s devolved and reserved.

So despite having an impeccable record on abolishing tuition fees in Scotland – fees imposed by the first Blair government – Scottish Lib Dems were dragged into the political gutter by the decision in London.

Clegg and his team then decided to front foot their U-turn which was certainly a brave strategy. From their perspective the only one.

The London parliamentary party spilt 3 ways and voted accordingly. One of the cardinal rules of coalition politics, that of holding your troops together, was lost. So the party had broken a very public promise, had split and the leadership was saying the policy was right.

It was that point that I contemplated spending more time practicing my golf swing than politics!

But in some dark nights I thought of how hard candidates like Alex Cole-Hamilton and Alan Macrae were working.

They had local campaigning challenges. Mine was handling an increasingly agressive press. It wasn’t personal. It was that most journalists had grown up with Thatcher too. Like me! “How could you?” was the toughest question.

But the die was cast. We were in for a very rough Scottish Election.