Steve Richards: A hung Parliament may hang the Tories
Dialogue between some Labour MPs and a few Lib Dems is intense and serious
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Independent Minds
The next election will be the first since the two contests in 1974 to be fought against the background of a frightening economic context. At the moment no party leader is sure of the path towards recovery or even precisely what form the recovery will take. As Gordon Brown has admitted, leaders here and elsewhere are in uncharted waters. Similarly in 1974 neither Harold Wilson nor Ted Heath had a clear idea what the consequences would be of the miners' strike and soaring inflation. They were in uncharted waters too.
In both the elections in 1974 the outcomes were unexpectedly close. The February election resulted in a hung parliament. The one that followed in October produced only a tiny majority for Labour, one that soon fell away. In effect, Labour ruled as a minority administration for more than five years, formally supported towards the end by the Liberals in the Lib-Lab pact.
I am still sceptical about the next election leading to a hung parliament. The close results in 1974 are the exception to the normal pattern. Nonetheless the arguments are starting to pile up in favour of an indecisive outcome. The Conservatives need to win a 1997 type swing in reverse to secure a majority. Currently they have fewer seats than Labour won under Michael Foot in 1983. The distribution of seats continues to favour Labour. The Liberal Democrats tend to perform well in the seats they already hold and will be hard for the Conservatives to remove.
The other day an expert in voting patterns told me to expect not only regional variations but variations within regions. The era of the uniform swing is over. He also suggested that the impact on voting at general elections of the devolved parliaments had not been fully thought through. To take one example Labour might do better at the general election in Scotland because by then there could be significant momentum away from the SNP. The anti-incumbent vote would be directed against the SNP, the rulers in the Scottish parliament.
But above all it is the economic crisis that makes me believe an outcome without clear resolution is possible. With David Cameron and George Osborne still playing student-like games, taking time last week to discuss whether it would be clever of them to make an "apology", it is not surprising they have yet to seal the deal with the electorate. Politically it will not get better than this for a main opposition – a long serving government that made competent economic management its main selling point afflicted by a deep recession.
Yet so far they have failed to rise to the challenge. Cameron's proposal yesterday to freeze the BBC licence fee was typical. The policy is a sensible one. The BBC still has layers of managers in ill-defined jobs and could cope with far fewer of them. But in the economic context the proposal is puny, suggesting that Cameron thinks in New Labour-like incremental terms when he leads in an era far removed from the mid 1990s.
At least the current opinion polls give Cameron some cause for optimism. Few, if any, Labour MPs expect to win next time. But a surprisingly large number still believe it is possible that they could form the biggest party in a hung parliament. This is where the Liberal Democrats not only become relevant in the future, but acquire relevance now. For perverse reasons senior Lib Dems never seemed to relish the prospects of a hung parliament, as if doing so would somehow challenge the purity of their uncompromising policy commitments, a purity of impotence.
But recently there has been a change of emphasis, a willingness to contemplate the possibility in public of working with other parties. At their recent spring conference, Vince Cable, said, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that he intends to prepare for various post-election contingencies by outlining possible scenarios on whiteboards, a technique he used when he was chief economist at Shell. Together with Chris Huhne, then a City analyst, they mapped out possible scenarios concerning political stability in Nigeria and the future of Norway's regulatory framework.
A hung parliament in Britain will not lend itself to such neat analysis. Political stability in Nigeria is much more straightforward. But at least they are talking about the possibility of sharing power.
For the first time in years the party leadership is genuinely "equidistant" between Labour and the Conservatives. Nick Clegg cannot see how he props up a Brown government, but he is no fan of Cameron's either. Copying the Tony Blair rule book, Cameron sought to form a relationship with Clegg early on. But Clegg was not interested in playing Paddy Ashdown to Cameron's Blair and the two of them have little contact.
What gives some senior Labour MPs hope is the continuing private interest being shown by senior Lib Dems in an arrangement with them after the election. One former cabinet minister, who is no fan of Brown's but who is convinced that the economic situation demands left of centre solutions, tells me that the dialogue between some Labour MPs and a few Lib Dem MPs is intense and serious.
The former minister has discovered recently a key factor in a hung parliament which I have cited in this column before. The leadership of the Lib Dems is committed to what is called a triple lock before entering any form of arrangement with another party. The leadership must get the support of its parliamentary party, the executive of the party and the membership. That is quite a lock. Lib Dem MPs are telling some of their Labour counterparts that there is no way their membership would support any arrangement with the Conservative party. Therefore the only conceivable option would be some kind of deal with Labour if it was the biggest party.
The Liberal Democrats' triple lock leads me to conclude that it is highly unlikely they will be able to formalise an arrangement with either of the two bigger parties. I suspect a hung parliament would produce a minority single party administration. But some of the private discussions taking place informally between MPs work on a significant assumption. If the Lib Dems were to make the leap it would be more likely with Labour and with both parties having to raise their game considerably.
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Comments
It is more likely that Labour will be all but wiped out at the next election than that we'll have a hung parliament. Labour could end up not even being the main opposition party in the Commons.
Look at this twaddle:
Cameron's proposal yesterday to freeze the BBC licence fee was typical. The policy is a sensible one. The BBC still has layers of managers in ill-defined jobs and could cope with far fewer of them. But in the economic context the proposal is puny, suggesting that Cameron thinks in New Labour-like incremental terms when he leads in an era far removed from the mid 1990s.
The civil service has layers of managers in ill-defined jobs and under Golem Brown, with his insane belief that complexity is genius, more and more have been created. Golem Brown has an idea, then makes it as complex as possible in the belief it shows how clever he is, then an army of people carry out the idea and another army of people sort out the mess created by the first army.
Give it up, Richards, your hero is a busted flush. He's finished. And he could finish off the Labour Party, already next to bankrupt (interesting, the Labour Party in the same mess as Golem Brown, who'd have thought?) could it survive the harsh world of being the third party?
We can expect nothing less from an institutionally corrupt council.
Steve Richards is right to worry that his beloved NeoCon Warmongering SCUM are heading for the spanking of the century. But it will not only be the Lib-Dems who benefit from five years of incompetent yankee cocksucking.
Was not the 1979 election fought out against a 'frightening economic context'? I think so, therefore the road Mr Richards goes down from there is one of his own choosing.
From then on it is didactic nonsense. Is the 'Independent' truly independent when this idiot still gets space?
Any way, I seem to remember Teflon Blair said he would consider PR when he was worried about getting only a tiny majority. This was soon forgotten after he got in with a landslide majority. The LibDems will never trust NuLabour again.
Now is the time for an INTERIM NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. We need more than ever to make the sort of changes that will be resisted by both the major parties for fear of them losing their stranglehold on the electorate. We need to give ourselves a Parliament that represents US and OUR needs. We should be able to vote for the party that best represents our individual beliefs knowing that vote will count towards the make-up of the House. We need to remove these career politicians who move round the Country to safe seats. We need better representation on Environmental issues. We definately do not need fringe parties such as BNP using tactical voting to gain seats.
The choice is ours, it need not be Labour or Conservative. We need not keep making the same mistake over and over. Honestly, freezing TV licence fees during a Global Financial Crisis, pathetic, vote garnering pointless politics.
Time to say enough is enough http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/2564
1) Form a coalition government with whichever party received the most votes (this is important so as not to be accused of hypocrisy for 2 and 3 below) that also wills that 2) and 3) below be implemented.
2) Implement STV, PR, or similar.
3) Hold another election under the new system at the first opportunity.
Ta-da, a properly representative government!
I expect the Lib Dems to do relatively well, because they invariably do when they're given an equal amount of Media exposure. The fact that they've also got recently the anointed Vince Cable on their side might give them an extra bounce, especially if their campaign reminds the voting public, day-after-day, that he was the only DUDE who openly criticised & predicted that Brown's mismanagement of our debt-riddened economy would end in tears. I also expect them to do really well at New Labour's expense, so they'd be mad to a deal with these Westminster career clowns.
All in all though, for better or worse, I expect a sizeable Tory majority if not a landslide. In truth, if a relative heavyweight like Ken Livingstone couldn't beat Boris in London - who was mocked mercilessly for his supposed buffonery - then Gordon Brown's political lightweights haven't got a hope in hell, certainly not after all the mind-blowing damage they've done to this country.
And, as we get closer to a real Election, even Mr Richards is going to struggle to put a positive spin in his commentaries to protect & make excuses for his New Labour chums.
By the way, Cameron hasn't apologised. His spin merchants said he had, but he didn't. Clever, eh? Read Dominic Lawson in this paper today.
"They share the same broad, Keynsian approach to solving the economic and financial crisis."
The thing about politicians and Keynes is that the politicians summon his theory in the bad times and then forget about it in the good times, usually believing that having surmounted the pervious crisis via their own genius they now know the secret to everlasting boom times.
If electoral reform was not in fact discussed what has happened to the LibDems' alleged aim of electoral reform. Has Clegg come round to the view that he would like head his very own minority elective dictatorship under first-past-the-post?
I agree with you.
Electoral reform is the fundamental consitutional reform required if we are to become a democracy. We thought we were progressing in that direction when NEW Labour put an unequivocal reform commitment in their 1997 manifesto. However, we did not reckon with the party tribalists who reneged on this commitment when they got a huge phoney unrepresntative overall majority even though they had in fact the support of a mere 31% of the total electorate - taking into account abstenions.
I now see a hung parliament as the sole chance of in fact getting reform in the foreseaable future This howerver would entail the LibDems "blackmailing" one or other of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee who under our barmy system swop places every so often and ram their minority policies (increasingly similar since under FPTP they both have to capture the votes of the marginal seat floating voters whose guru is mainly Murdoch) down the throats of the majority.
Clegg seems to have forgotten about electoral reform and his concern now is above all not to be seen favouring either of the "main" parties particularly a declining NEW Labour party.
,
This is a daft attitude since. if we got a system which represented in pariament what the electorate had actually voted for, we would always need either a coalition or (as in Scotland at present) a true minority government ie a government that is recogised as "minority" because it has a minority of votes and does not have a phoney unrepresentative majority as almost always occurs under FPTP.
Here again contrast the Scottish government, which is a minority government but has one more seat than its nearest rival - Labour, with the Westminwter government which is also a minority government but is not termed so because it has a completely phoney overall majority of 65 seats even though it has 65% of the vote against it and does not have the support of 79% of the total electorate.
And yet we had Jack Straw defending this situation by joyfully declaring that "we won fair and square"!
Yes! The best illustration of this which I regularly cite because it is such a bizarre symptom of a system that the powers that be are prepared to fiercely defend, purely on the grounds of party tribalist vested interest (even though this is the somthing they would never admit)it. I refer to the result of the 1983 election
The LibSDP got more than a quarter of all votes cast which on any rational basis would have given them around 167 seats in the House. THEY GOT 23! At the same time Thatcher - with 56% of the vote against her - got 397 seats (with only 17 percentage points more votes than the LibSDP) giving us another minority elective dictatorship with a phoney unrepresentative majority of 144, just about equal to the LibSDP deficit.
Thus some new thinking was completely shut out by a system where the opinions of one group of voters (those voting Tory) were worth ten times more than the opinions of the voters for another(new) party (those voting LibSDP).
And we - the majority - continued to have her vicious greed is good policies, which are the basis of the present financial disaster, rammed down our throats.
Oops not allowed to mention that. I'll go and sit in the naughty corner
http://frankowenspaintbrush.wordpress.c
The LibDems have done well out of New Labour and will continue to do well out of New Labour. They did well in 1997 when Labour voters turned to them in Tory-LibDem marginals. And they'll do well when Tory voters turn to them in Labour-LibDem marginals at the next election. My estimate is that Labour will be annihilated at the next election, squeezed on all sides by the Tories, LibDems and even the SNP in their heartlands. It's not now a question of who'll govern the nation next, it's just a matter of a desire to be rid of the current shambles.
The nation has a sacred mission, just as it had on that bright spring morning in 1997. The mission that time was to get rid of an incumbent government the nation had grown to despise with a passion. Remember, the economy was in good shape in those days, but it didn't help the Tories. The economy is a shambles now and it isn't going to get much better.
Golem Brown can try another fiscal stimulus, but it won't work. They work if they're introduced early, before problems manifest themselves. Now, putting extra purchasing power into the hands of people won't have the same effect. People aren't stupid. They know that bills will have to be paid eventually, so extra money goes into paying down debt, or into savings (even as meagre as the returns are). More infrastructure works just means more people able to put away for the day of reckoning.
Doing nothing is often the best solution in a downturn. All evidence seems to suggest that Golem Brown's policy of chucking printed money after bad is just making things worse, the downturn longer and the recovery less sure-footed.
To me the most amazing 'non event' lies in the LibDems not making any headway in the polls under present circumstances of a Labour Party likely to hold even fewer seats than the Tories currently do post the next election. These surely are the conditions under which they become the "second party" displacing an existing incumbent which this time around, would be Labour and yet they still only poll an average 15% ...
We have another year to go and during that time, anything can happen but thus far, the only people making an attempt to communicate on 'equal terms' with the electorate are the Tories and David Cameron. Labour is now locked into a 'bust' because they are too busy defending past mistakes and it is far too late to dump Brown.
Clegg as LibDem Leader is a disaster and Vince Cable whilst a good 'showing' originally, is now fading away and dumping Charlie Kennedy for Ming, a truly big mistake. Whilst 6 months back a Hung Parliament would have been my 75% bet, today the reality is that David Cameron has 'turned a corner' and a 60-70 seat majority for the Tories is now most likely. What will be interesting is the composition of the rest of the House.
Brown will obviously go and only Reid is possible as an interim Leader for the "wilderness years" but what about the LibDems ?
Yes, he was right that Northern Rock would be nationalised, but that doesn't make that the right decision. In fact, it was the wrong decision. Northern Rock should've been left to its fate. All that nationalisation has done is weaken the financial system. Funds that would've flowed into other financial institutions have flowed into the "safe bet" of Northern Rock. Northern Rock has seen such massive inflows of cash that it repaid circa 15 billion GBP back to the Treasury in the year since nationalisation. That 15 billion GBP flowing into other institutions might've strengthened the rest of the sector.
I can see a hung parliament. Who the largest party? Don't know.
Take a glance at Canada. The Conservative government runs a minority government. Before Xmas it almost fell because an extraordinary opposition consensus challenged a budget statement. The Harper Tories only survived because they prorogued parliament rather than face a motion of no confidence over the budget. It helped that opposition Liberals were broke and between leaders.
I can see similar problems happening here. Whoever wins.
My view is that the Great Recession is so serious that a Grand All Party coalition is necessary to see us through the years to 2012. Then normal politics can resume.
France and Germany's stance at the G20 is bizarre. Angela Merkel said that it is up to national governments to respond in their own way.
Erhm? Sorry love but the point of the G20 is intended to create a global response. China, India, Brazil et alia are far more important than either Germany or France.