Why a breakdown in Starmer and Davey’s bromance could cost Labour dear

The unofficial Lib-Lab pact has broken down in Mid Bedfordshire, where Nadine Dorries says she will stand down after failing to win the peerage Johnson tried to secure her, writes Andrew Grice

The fear among some Labour and Lib Dem figures is that if both parties stick to their guns, they will shoot themselves in the foot (Getty)

Although Labour and the Liberal Democrats deny they have agreed an anti-Conservative pact, Westminster’s worst kept secret is that there is an informal one.

Sensibly, the two opposition parties do not duplicate their resources and target them in areas where they are most likely to defeat the Tories, leaving the other party to make the running where they are stronger. And so, the “bromance” between Keir Starmer and Ed Davey has never been more important – or more at risk of heartbreak.

Labour’s soft-pedalling helped the Lib Dems win famous parliamentary by-elections in Tory-held Chesham and Amersham; North Shropshire and Tiverton and Honiton. The Lib Dems helped Labour over the line in Batley and Spen. All done without trumpeting a deal; voters who want to see an end to 13 years of Tory rule (or give the Tories a kick in the ballots) don’t need to be told which rival party to support; they are doing it by themselves.

The non-aggression pact will hold in the three by-elections to be held on 20 July. Labour is top dog in Boris Johnson’s former Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat while the Lib Dems will channel their efforts into Somerton and Frome, a seat they held from 1997 to 2015. Labour came second in Selby and Ainsty in 2019 and will probably emerge as the stronger challenger to the Tories.

However, the unofficial Lib-Lab pact has broken down in Mid Bedfordshire, where Nadine Dorries says she will stand down after failing to win the peerage Johnson tried to secure her.

Both Labour and the Lib Dems are already campaigning there and both insist they are the main threat to the Tories. I’m told Starmer’s initial instinct was that the Lib Dems had the best shot, but then some advisers urged him to go all out for the seat because a Labour win would show the party was on course for general election victory next year. As one Labour insider put it: “This would cement him as the prime minister-in-waiting and send a signal that we don’t need to rely on the Lib Dems.”

Labour’s seriousness about Mid Beds is shown by its decision to put Peter Kyle, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary and a trusted Starmer ally, in charge of its campaign. Shadow cabinet colleagues are visiting. Labour officials point to the party’s second place behind Dorries in 2019 and say their polling does not suggest the Lib Dems are storming ahead of Labour, as they did in previous by-election campaigns.

However, the Lib Dems insist they are better placed than Labour to win over soft Tory voters in a seat where Dorries had a majority of 24,664 last time. They point to their gains in May’s local elections.

The fear among some Labour and Lib Dem figures is that if both parties stick to their guns, they will shoot themselves in the foot by splitting the opposition vote and hand Rishi Sunak a much-needed pressie. Neal Lawson, director of Compass, which campaigns for cross-party cooperation, told me: “Up until now, Labour and the Lib Dems have clearly cooperated in by-elections to effectively squeeze the Tory vote – it’s electoral madness to compete rather than cooperate and potentially let the Tories through by default. Labour should focus all just energies in Uxbridge and Selby, leaving Mid Beds to the Lib Dems. Party leaders should publicly thank voters who lend their support in the national interest.”

Remarkably, endorsing pacts in public is heresy in Starmer’s Labour Party. Lawson, a former Gordon Brown aide, was this week threatened with expulsion from the party after 44 years of membership for retweeting in 2021 a Lib Dem MP’s call for some voters to back Green candidates in local elections and describing it as “grown-up progressive politics.”

I think Lib Dems have a stronger claim to be the challenger in Mid Beds because the ceiling on their potential vote in constituencies like this is higher than Labour’s. Research group More in Common, says the Lib Dems, despite a poll rating of only 10 per cent, are “overperforming” among soft-left voters and in the traditionally Tory blue wall in the south, with their support “efficiently distributed”.

Its focus groups suggest Lib Dem supporters in the May elections haven’t decided how to vote at the general election but gave the Tories “a wake-up call” to see if they listen. The Mid Beds by-election would offer the chance of another protest vote.

Understandably, Starmer wants to win a majority under his own steam and not rely on the fourth biggest party. Labour strategists hope to do better than expected in the blue wall as voters decide to endorse the likely next government rather than a smaller party.

Yet the reality is that Starmer needs the Heineken effect the Lib Dems bring to the party; they can reach parts of the electorate Labour cannot. He knows the same unofficial understanding Tony Blair had with Paddy Ashdown, his Lib Dem counterpart, contributed to Labour’s landslide in 1997. Indeed, Starmer will need such a swing just to have a majority of one.

Perhaps the on-off bromance between Starmer and Davey could survive a blazing row over Mid Beds but it might be hard to get the relationship back on track for the contest that really matters next year. Starmer won’t admit it, but the Lib Dems could make all the difference then.

So Starmer should play it long in Mid Beds and allow the Lib Dems to emerge as the challenger; whether he likes it or not, he will need Davey’s party come the general election.