Coffee House interview: Julian Astle

Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider’s information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn’t really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did it make?
 
Well, times have changed. What the party thinks, what it does, and, crucially, what it won’t do, really does matter. So to help us here at Coffee House, Julian Astle, a friend of the Lib Dem leadership and director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank, has agreed to answer a few questions.

Daniel Korski: In a recent YouGov poll the Lib Dem share of the vote amongst 18 – 24 year olds went as low as 7 percent. In the same poll and in the same demographic, UKIP polled 8 percent. Given that on the three historical occasions when Liberals and Conservatives have formed a coalition government the pact has divided the Liberals and been electorally disastrous, and the polls now look awful, will the coalition be the death knell for the party?

Julian Astle: In the short term, I don’t doubt that the party will pay a price for joining the coalition: parties that do unpopular things (like introducing tax rises and spending cuts to eliminate a £150 billion budget deficit) tend to become unpopular.