In an exclusive interview with The Herald, Wallace, now Lord Wallace of Tankerness, admits that with opinion poll ratings touching as low as 11% and with the cuts agenda still to bite, the political waters in the run-up to next spring could become very choppy for the Scottish Lib-Dems, but he is confident his party will rise to the challenge. The former deputy first minister, who as Advocate General is the Lib-Con government’s only law officer in the House of Lords, said: “We were told in 1999 when we entered coalition in Scotland with Labour we were going to get whacked and it didn’t happen. “We’re not going to sit back. We’ve got an election campaign to fight and we will have to fight it on explaining why we have done things.” An opinion poll last week showed four out of 10 people who voted Liberal Democrat would have switched their vote if they had known the party would team up with the Tories. However, Lord Wallace defends UK party leader Nick Clegg’s decision to form a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives. “I don’t think people should feel betrayed because before the election we indicated we were prepared to work with other parties if we didn’t get a majority. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone,” he says. “If you’re prepared to stick with it and have confidence in what you’re doing, then there’s no reason to be afraid, shy or bashful in selling this.” The 55-year-old politician suggests the forthcoming Holyrood poll will not be so much a referendum on the Lib-Con coalition but on the previous Labour UK government’s record. “We shouldn’t suddenly say this is all our responsibility, getting us in this financial mess. It wasn’t our responsibility,” he says. “We were the responsible party going into coalition government, knowing what the challenges were. It would have been irresponsible to run away from that. “I don’t underestimate the electorate’s capacity to recognise where the ultimate responsibility for the mess is. It’s not ours.” Yet in stressing this point, Wallace also acknowledges the first electoral test for the coalition in the devolved elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the local elections in England, will be a tough one for his party. “I’m not going to say this is easy or it’ll be sweetness and light, and I don’t underestimate how tough it will be. But equally I don’t join the doom and gloom merchants who say it’s going to be dire, it’s going to be desperate. If we did, it probably would be dire and desperate. We’ve got to be out there on the front foot,” he declares. On the controversy over holding the AV referendum on the same day as next May’s Scottish parliamentary elections, Lord Wallace is sanguine and brushes aside the concerns. He openly admits boosting turnout was one of the considerations for proposing simultaneous polls, as was saving money -- an estimated £17m -- as well as voter fatigue, but he dismisses the opposition parties’ arguments that the proposal is a sign of disrespect that will lead to the Holyrood election being overshadowed. “Many countries combine polls in that way. It’s an insult to suggest we couldn’t cope with it. The first Scottish election took place when there was military intervention in Kosovo and the campaign for the second Scottish election was coincidental with the war in Iraq and no-one suggests issues of health and education were overshadowed or properly debated in those election campaigns. “However much the referendum on AV is important, it does not rank alongside the war in Iraq in terms of a competing agenda in the media.” He adds: “It’s proper respect to the electorate to say ‘we are not going to ask you to keep going backwards and forwards to the polling stations’. I’m sure both campaigns will be properly argued. I don’t think there will be confusion. It’s a binary referendum -- yes or no. It’s not as if the Scottish election is being fought on a new system. The Electoral Commission, subject to some detail still to be resolved, says it is deliverable.” With Labour and the Nationalists against holding the referendum on May 5, and with 44 Westminster Tory backbenchers now supporting the opposition, the parliamentary mathematics is beginning to look bad for the coalition, putting the intended date in doubt. Lord Wallace says: “It has to get through parliament. It would be improper as a parliamentarian to say we can avoid proper parliamentary process but that’s certainly what the Government will argue for, and that’s what I’m confident we will get.”
