If the numbers fit right there would be a Con-Lib coalition in 1978/9 as there was in 2010.

Cabinet positions for Steel, Penhaligon, Beith and Johnston and things suddenly look different from a Liberal perspective.
Steel would want to get so close as to enter into a formal coalition. It ought to be remembered that the polling for the Liberals was pretty dire in 1978, so being tarred with the same brush as Thatcher could lead to a complete wipeout for them. And even if there were a coalition, I'm pretty sure that there would be no way in hell the Liberals would be given four portfolios, as their support was so low, that might well mean the majority of Liberal MPs would be cabinet secretaries.
 
Steel being 'tarred with the same brush as Thatcher' ???

LOL

If the Liberals are under 10% and the Conservatives are over 40% then its Thatcher who should be worried about being tarred with the same brush as Steel.

If the numbers are right then the Liberals will form an agreement with the Conservatives - if they didn't it would be tantamount to saying that the Liberals were Labour's rustic wing - and Home Secretary David Steel is a big inducement.
 
If the Liberals are under 10% and the Conservatives are over 40% then its Thatcher who should be worried about being tarred with the same brush as Steel.
You do know how coalitions generally tend to work right? The junior partner usually comes off a lot worse than the larger one.
 
You do know how coalitions generally tend to work right? The junior partner usually comes off a lot worse than the larger one.

Sure but was that known in 1979?

Its a bit difficult to explain your purpose if you're given an opportunity to join a government and then turn it down.
 
Sure but was that known in 1979?
Yes, why wouldn't it be?
Its a bit difficult to explain your purpose if you're given an opportunity to join a government and then turn it down.
Steel could just say the same thing he said when the Liberals didn't take ministerial posts after the Lib-Lab pact was signed. Or whatever all the other parties that sign confidence and supply arrangements in other democracies do. Just because political parties generally exist to exert power over policy, that doesn't mean they automatically must join the government whenever called upon to do so.
 
Yes, why wouldn't it be?

Well the LibDems (or for that matter anyone else) in 2010 didn't expect to get pulverised at the following election so why would the Liberals in 1979 expect it.

Steel could just say the same thing he said when the Liberals didn't take ministerial posts after the Lib-Lab pact was signed. Or whatever all the other parties that sign confidence and supply arrangements in other democracies do. Just because political parties generally exist to exert power over policy, that doesn't mean they automatically must join the government whenever called upon to do so.

Well who knows - its a hypothetical discussion about what might have happened in a niche situation 40 years ago.

I think the Liberals would have been prepared to join a coalition - having been totally out of power for several decades and with the likelihood of not being given another opportunity for several decades the temptation to 'show what you can do' would have been strong.

And if they didn't it would have been possible for one or two Liberal MPs to have joined the Conservatives in the same way that Lloyd-George's own son did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwilym_Lloyd_George
 
Well the LibDems (or for that matter anyone else) in 2010 didn't expect to get pulverised at the following election so why would the Liberals in 1979 expect it.
The Lib Dems weren't the first party to enter into a coalition as a junior partner. I seem to recall that, shortly after becoming PM, Cameron asked Merkel about her experiences running coalitions, and she said that something along the lines of ' the smaller party always loses.'

The Lib Dems knew that they would likely lose a significant number of seats when they agreed to the coalition. They didn't expect to lose nearly 50 seats, but even a loss of a fifth of that number would likely be enough to see all Liberals in a hypothetical 1978 parliament lose their seats.
And if they didn't it would have been possible for one or two Liberal MPs to have joined the Conservatives in the same way that Lloyd-George's own son did:
Doubtful. Plenty of Liberals had been known to defect to the Tories or Labour in the first half of the century, but that was because their was a political realignment going on, and because the Liberal Party had declined to the point that those who hoped to become ministers any political future in that direction.

By the 1970s, the Liberals had been an irrelevance for a number of decades. The result was that all the types who had left before were now gone, and what was left was a handful of loosely connected anti-estabilishment types who were often in the Liberal Party precisely because they objected to the two party system. If they so desperately wanted a government job, they wouldn't have joined the Liberals in the first place. And looking at the Liberal MPs around this time, I find it difficult to believe that any of them were so desperate to become a minister that they would have defected to achieve that ambition.
 
The Lib Dems knew that they would likely lose a significant number of seats when they agreed to the coalition. They didn't expect to lose nearly 50 seats, but even a loss of a fifth of that number would likely be enough to see all Liberals in a hypothetical 1978 parliament lose their seats.

I doubt they thought that in 2010 - from what I remember the LibDems thought they could play a double game of looking 'responsible' with their government positions while still playing the anti-Conservative role. It was only the hammering they received in the 2011 local elections which revealed the reality to them and even then they still believed (as did everyone else) that things such as incumbency and tactical votes would keep their losses in 2015 to a minimum.

The Liberals of 1979 would think likewise and perhaps even more so as the likes of Beith, Freud, Penhaligan, Wainwright and Big Cyril were far more regional and national figures than the nobodies elected in 2010 and defeated in 2015.

Doubtful. Plenty of Liberals had been known to defect to the Tories or Labour in the first half of the century, but that was because their was a political realignment going on, and because the Liberal Party had declined to the point that those who hoped to become ministers any political future in that direction.

By the 1970s, the Liberals had been an irrelevance for a number of decades. The result was that all the types who had left before were now gone, and what was left was a handful of loosely connected anti-estabilishment types who were often in the Liberal Party precisely because they objected to the two party system. If they so desperately wanted a government job, they wouldn't have joined the Liberals in the first place. And looking at the Liberal MPs around this time, I find it difficult to believe that any of them were so desperate to become a minister that they would have defected to achieve that ambition.

Certainly - but when an actual opportunity to join a government comes the dynamic changes.

After all David Steel was telling the Liberal Conference in 1981 to 'Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government'.
 
I believe the Liberals supported Thatcher's union legislation.

Plus they'll support various other economic, social, defence and European policies Thatcher had.

If the numbers fit right there would be a Con-Lib coalition in 1978/9 as there was in 2010.

Cabinet positions for Steel, Penhaligon, Beith and Johnston and things suddenly look different from a Liberal perspective.
As a long standing member of the party I am pretty much sure that that is not an accurate characterisation of the Party's position. The party believed in prices and incomes policy and arbitration, rather more similar to Labour than to Thatcher's take on things. the only thing they supported about the Union reforms and this was only in part related to the closed shop. Actually the party position could be most accurately described as favouring a German style industrial partnership approach. It is hard to think of a single policy in the Conservative manifesto of 1979 that Liberals agreed with. This was a party that believed in European federalism, and devolution favoured a prices and incomes policy, arbitration of industrial disputes, proportional representation. I cant think of any foreign or defence issues where the Liberals had more in common with the Tories than the Labour Leadership, any Social ones or any economic ones either Now if the extreme left was running the party that's another thing..
 
Even if they lost, they had recovered ground by election day, surely that means they ran a good campaign?

Steel would give Labour his support if possible, but if the arithmetic made that impossible, he would likely reluctantly do a confidence and supply deal with Thatcher, partly because that would be the only way to get a functioning government, and partly because the Liberal Party were in a rather difficult position during this period. They had looked to be on the brink of extinction at times, and a fourth election in five years, (which is what they would risk if they support an unstable Labour government) would be highly unlikely to appeal to them.

The Liberals/Lib Dems leaning left was really a thing in . Prior to that, the Liberals if anything leaned toward the Tories in the post war decades. Their manifestos were often very pro-free market, sometimes even more so than the Conservative ones, and I believe both Grimond and Thorpe would be regarded as 'Gladstonian Liberals'.
The Liberal party itself had never supported a conservative government in peacetime, ever. Whilst Grimond could be characterised as free market he himself always regarded himself, whether rightly or wrongly as leading a party of the left and his speeches always spoke of the realignment of the left . The period of the Liberals leaning slightly towards the Tories was only between 1950 and 1964 at the party's deepest nadir and was largely rejected by the time of the Orpington campaign.
The point that is being overlooked is that in the Liberal party post war the leadersahip could not itself decide to go into coalition. Thorpe wanted to accept Heath's offer in 1974 the party would not allow it and the party hated Thatcher far more than Heath, and I mean boiling overwhelming absolute hatred, which may not be fair but certainly existed and has not gone away even after her death. To join a coalition or even give confidence and supply post the uproar over the Lib-Lab pact would have required the Party Council and then the Party special assembly to vote for it. After the substantial changes in those bodies post the Llandudno party assembly (and others) in the late 1960's there was a very solid leftish slant in these bodies. No deal with Maggie would have passed.
 
Yet there was a series of alliances between Liberals and Conservatives - the Liberal Unionists and National Liberals being the most prominent. While local agreements in places like Bolton and Huddersfield allowed the election of Liberal MPs and saved the Liberals from being a party restricted to the remotest Celtic fringes.
 
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