Fantasy Politics (1)

Is it possible that the downturn could lead to the complete rewriting of the political rule book?

In the wake of the Budget and Darling's not surprising but still shocking revelation of the mountain of debt that the country now sits on top of it's becoming a media truism that David Cameron and his party are now entering the last lap of their procession to power and that only the most dramatic of events can prevent this from happening.

The bookmakers and the pollsters are both equally convinced that it's more or less a done deal.

A poll on Thursday showed the Conservative Party with a lead in excess of twenty points again for the first time since last autumn and the arrival of the banking crisis. "The Daily Telegraph" gleefully announced that this would result in a majority of more than 150 for Cameron and the beginning of a long spell in the wilderness for Labour.

While not for one moment questioning the validity of the poll or the truthfulness of those who responded to it it may be worth stopping for a moment and indulging in a little harmless speculation, as well as some fact based analysis, of exactly how big a task still exists for the Conservatives if they are to become the next party of Government.

Firstly, that 20 point lead. There is a lot of polling and anecdotal evidence that suggest that it is a "soft" lead - that those questioned prefer the idea of a Cameron government over one led by Brown in theory, but will they still be as convinced by the prospect after a hard fought Election campaign?

The Conservative strategy appears to be to say very little, to make few promises, to ensure all policy statements are as warm and fuzzy and possible - in short to keep their heads down and wait for the voters to elect them on the basis of "time for change".

The difficulty with this idea is that, while they may be given a free ride by the media for the moment - after all they are the party of Opposition and don't need to have carefully constructed policy for all (or any) area - will they be able to ghost through a five or six week campaign fought out on 24 hour news channels, the internet and beyond, and still maintain the public trust and goodwill that the polls suggest they have at the moment.

Then there's the actual figures contained in the polls. In the two years leading up to the Blair victory in 1997 he was running consistently twenty per cent + up against John Major. No dips back to single figures, no Prime Ministerial bounces following a good media event. A steady, consistent, lead month after month.

And then he did the almost impossible and translated that polling lead into real votes. The magnitude of Blair's win is sometimes forgotten in the light of what came afterwards.

On the night Labour made a net gain of 146 seats (in fact it was almost all new wins - they lost very few seats they already held). A truly remarkable performance. 45% of the popular vote and the biggest Labour majority ever.

Cameron is going to have to achieve something very much along those lines in order to become Prime Minister.

In order to achieve an overall majority he will need to win 325 seats - at the last General Election the Conservatives won 208. So, even factoring in the boundary changes that will "gift" ten seats to the Conservatives that Labour currently hold, Cameron and his party will need to win 107 seats that they don't currently hold and lose none of the ones that they presently have.

I'd say that was a fairly tall order.

When Blair won his victory the Lib Dems had 46 seats, today they have 67. They are projected to lose almost half of them , based on opinion polls. But opinion polls notoriously understate the level of Lib Dem support and don't take into account the increased use of tactical voting, it's more likely that they will fall back to the 1997 level, dropping about twenty.

Even if, and it's by no means certain, the Conservatives were to pick up all of those, they would still need a net gain of another 87 seats to be able to govern alone.

When you start looking at the regions and at individual constituencies it becomes increasingly difficult to find more than fifty where the Conservatives are almost certain to be able to take the seat from Labour. And let's not forget that they have marginal seats of their own which both Labour and the LibDems will be targeting (although hopefully not both in the same seats).

So, let's assume that, on the night the conservatives fall short of the winning post. They are the largest single party but don't have an overall majority. Who can they turn to for help and support? Their only traditional allies are the Unionist parties of Northern Ireland - they currently have ten seats and that's unlikely to change by more than one .

Cameron would be able to count on their support and form a minority government, provided he'd made 97 net gains and was happy to rely on the support of the Unionists.

But what if he was up only 96 or 90 or 86 or even less?

And this is where we enter the area of "hung parliaments" which is slowly gaining some support among commentators who find it difficult to see where Cameron is going to make the gains he needs.

Let's say Cameron has made a net gain of 90, 20 from the LibDems and 70 from Labour :
that's a rough seat breakdown of CON 288, LAB 286, LDem 42 - assuming all other parties stay the same (30ish).

The problem that Cameron has is, that unless the LDem vote collapses totally, he's going to have to make a lot more than 90 net gains. If the LibDems hold 40 of their current seats and even if Cameron pulls the Unionists into an alliance, he's still short of the winning post.

So what's the other option - on the above figures Labour + Lib Dem + non-unionist "others"(less independents) = approx. 350, more than enough to vote down any measure introduced by the Conservatives.

Is it therefore possible that these parties would band together to govern "in the best interests of the country" and keep Cameron out of Number Ten?

There's some disquiet within the Liberal Democrat Party about the idea, (less [at least publicly] from within Labour) but it's certainly been talked about.

Here's one possible scenario : the Election result works out as supposed above. Cameron maybe even making a net gain of 100 seats but still short of an overall majority.
After a few days of fevered speculation and "crisis talks" the Lib Dems announce they will support the Labour Party allowing them to remain in office, in return for Cabinet seats and an undertaking to make serious plans towards introducing PR for Westminster Elections.

Brown, knowing that the electorate have rejected him and being a proud man, steps aside as party leader and a pro-temp leader (Harman, Johnson, even Straw) takes charge until such time as an internal election is held.

Clegg would want a meaty position - Foreign Secretary or Home Office (on a Conservative win of this magnitude Jacqui Smith would have lost her Redditch seat in any case) , with David Miliband (as de facto leader of the remaining Blairites) taking the other. Cable would become Chancellor (goodbye, Darling), Huhne would take on a"liberal" responsibility, environment or health, and there would be one or two other jobs further down the pecking order for "rising star" LidDems (e.g. Sarah Tether). The Nationalist partys could be brought into the coalition too, delivering their 11 seats; a SNP MP could go to the Scottish Office as minister and a Plaid Cymru representative to the Welsh Office.

After Labour's leadership contest the new leader would have Jon Cruddas as their deputy (keeping the left within the Very Big Tent) and some of the younger Labour "stars" would move a step or two up the ladder.

The spin would be that "extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures" and the whole thing would be sold as a "Government of National Interest".

And David Cameron, after winning the popular vote and the most seats would still be leader of the Opposition, sat waiting for the Alliance to crumble.
(In passing, Cameron has already been leader of the Opposition for longer than Blair was)

If the review of PR came back favourably this would very probably be the way in which all future Governments were constructed, the days of huge majorities and ruling by fiat or strength of numbers gone forever.
Every single piece of legislation would have to be designed with the interests of all the parties involved taken into account. It might well be messy and difficult to manage but the excesses and downright stupidity of some of the legislation (both passed and proposed) of the past twelve years would never even make it to the White Paper stage.

The Labour Party, grateful for the chance they were given, might even be forced to listen to the more progressive voices that exist within it and remember what they are supposed to stand for and to believe in and return to governing for the people rather than being obsessed with governing the people.


So, in this fantasy world, there's the possibility that the economic crisis will have remoulded the shape of British politics - ended the two party adversarial system, brought a true sense of consensus to government, ended the "might is right" argument whereby a Party with a huge majority can bulldoze all opposition and public opinion to get their own way on every single matter and provided an opportunity for the Labour Party to reform itself from top to bottom without spending years in the wilderness of opposition.