HEAT FROM COPENHAGEN

Those who expected the Copenhagen summit to deliver something that would determinedly roll back climate change were always likely to be disappointed.

The chance of 193 heads of government agreeing to anything substantial was slim, and not just because of Chinese intransigence or President Obama’s predicament in the US senate.

Politicians, even unelected ones, have a shrewd suspicion of what their populations will put up with and know, even if they cannot say it in public, that protestations of concern about climate change run far ahead of people’s willingness to change their lifestyles, jobs or homes for what they perceive to be the worse.

In the UK, all three main parties make the right noises on climate change but not ones that are too loud in case the public takes fright at what might be demanded of it.

The party that goes beyond that takes a risk that it will be painted as the one that wants voters to live in unheated homes, never travel abroad and eat only what they can grow.

Consider climate change for a moment purely politically, rather than in terms of science or its affects on the developing world.

The Liberal Democrats turned out their largest contingent on a demonstration since the Iraq march with ‘the wave’ in December and have to an extent carved out a place as the party determined to tackle climate change without the sort of authoritarianism associated with the Green Party.

There is certainly an audience for that – people who want to act locally to make a change globally. There is also a serious case to be made for investment in ‘green’ industries, so that climate action is not associated with mass unemployment as old industries close.

But to make that case in the face of the worst recession for decades, and in the face of the party’s inept posturing as ‘tough’ on public spending cuts, will be hard indeed.

The Lib Dems can hardly promise ‘savage’ spending cuts coupled with restrictions, in the name of climate change, on things people like doing or consuming, without ending up with the support only of a small minority of paragons of altruism.

Tory leader David Cameron was half right when he argued that presenting climate change as a matter of doom, disaster and joylessness would alienate the public from the action needed.

His party is of course in thrall to business interests that want to do no more than tinker, and has a large contingent of climate change deniers with which to contend.

Liberal Democrats cannot leave it to the Tories to present climate change adjustment in attractive terms.

The party has a selling point here, which it should never throw away by yielding to the temptation to frighten rather than encourage.

THE THIRD HORSE

A flurry of speculation has arisen this winter about whether the polls point to a hung parliament and what the Liberal Democrats could or should do, were this to come about.

This has in turn led to a flurry of speculation about what the Lib Dems might ‘demand’ as kingmakers,

Be careful what you wish for. Past experience suggests that one cannot successfully campaign for a hung parliament because voters are afraid of the prospect.

The party cannot dodge the perfectly reasonable question of how it would respond, though it can and should avoid being foxed by interviewers into coming down in favour of either Labour or the Tories.

Either course would be politically suicidal ahead of an election, and so it has been right to say that it would wait to see which party had won the greatest support – though that could mean seats or votes.

The coming general election is shaping up to be only the second in recent times that was not a foregone conclusion, and the experience of 1992 is not one the Lib Dems would wish to repeat.

They suffered a crushing setback, squeezed as voters realised they had a genuine choice of alternative governments, a situation not helped when the party started to talk of hung parliaments and electoral reform in the campaign’s final week, raising a spectre of instability.

Plenty of MPs will admit they have been helped by the racing certainty that Labour would win the last three general elections – telling wavering supporters that there would be no purpose in their voting Tory to ‘get Blair out’ since the polls made it clear Blair would not be ‘got out’, and therefore they could safely continue to vote Lib Dem.

If the general election appears nationally to be the two-horse race – a concept beloved of Lib Dem propaganda in other circumstances – the Lib Dems will be the third horse. And if another party established an unassailable lead, the Lib Dems may do better, but have no influence since there will not be a hung parliament.

The closer Labour and the Tories get to each other, the more likely there will be a hung parliament, but also the more likely the Lib Dems will suffer a squeeze.