Best Laid Plans
Andrew Rawnsley joins a growing list of political commentators to argue that the outcome of the general election will challenge as never before the Westminster model of government which is based on a completely discredited First Past The Post voting system.
If Labour had any sense the party would come out strongly in favour of home rule for Scotland and elections to the House of Commons based on proportional representation, but I suspect the voters will have to deliver what Rawnsley refers to as a "punch in the mouth to the entire system of Westminster government" before the political establishment comes to its senses.
General election 2015: the main parties are all staring into a pitch-black night of the soul
By Andrew Rawnsley - The Observer
The Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems each face an existential crisis the other side of this election
Adding a shade of grey: Sir John Major. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
As the distinguished philosopher Michael “Iron Mike” Tyson once put it: “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.” The story of this election is the parties making plans – and then getting thumped in the chops. This most tightly gridded and claustrophobically choreographed campaign is not going to schedule for anyone.
The Tories set out with a plan so simple that even the dimmest of their candidates could be expected to follow it. Say often enough that Ed Miliband isn’t up to being prime minister. Say often enough that the economy is now doing well. Say often enough that Labour’s numbers don’t add up. Add amplification from your allied propagandists in the rightwing press and the Conservatives roll back to power.
It sounded quite plausible. To many Labour people, it sounded terrifyingly plausible. At the outset of the campaign, there was deep neuroticism in Labour’s ranks. For the Tory plan is one that has traditionally worked in British politics. When a party has the lead on economic competence, the preferred candidate for prime minister, the advantages of incumbency, plus the majority of press support and the most money, the conventional rules of political gravity say that they ought to win. David Cameron was apparently so confident that he told a meeting of his backbench 1922 committee: “If we can’t beat that complete shower of an opposition, we don’t deserve to be in politics.”
The plan has not gone to plan. The economic numbers are not translating into polling numbers because many voters don’t think they are experiencing a recovery or, even when they do, they aren’t willing to reward a Tory party that they distrust for other reasons. Ed Miliband has proved a more resilient opponent than either they or many in his own party anticipated. The more positive Conservative messages have been introduced too late. Says one senior Tory: “It is not so much the campaign as the two years leading up to it. We should have switched into ‘let sunshine win the day’ much earlier.” When David Cameron hired Lynton Crosby, I wonder whether he took the precaution of paying his Aussie strategist on a no-win, no-fee basis. The Tories do seem to be gaining traction with some voters by mongering scares about the SNP, but they have had to resort to the dangerous tactic of being the English nationalist party because everything else they have tried hasn’t worked. Talking up the Scots Nats and how they would interact with a Miliband minority government is a line of attack that presupposes the Tories have lost.
Labour had a plan. Gather up the non-Tory votes, especially the leftish chunk that had supported the Lib Dems and stopped doing so when they got into bed with the Conservatives. Go large on the NHS and inequality. Rely on Ukip to inflict damage on the Tories, get a leg-up from the seat distribution and Labour would be over the line with about 35% of the vote. That plan would be pretty close to success, but for one thing. The flaw in the plan was its assumption that Scotland would again send a reliable lump of Labour MPs to Westminster. Models that try to forecast the election result currently have the Tories and Labour with between 260 to 280 seats apiece. Add the seats that Labour is projected to lose to the Scottish Nationalists and Mr Miliband would be within touching distance of a small parliamentary majority or close enough to think he might manage as a minority government. Labour would be confident this weekend and the Tories would be in a very advanced state of panic. But it is Scotland that has capsized the 35% strategy.
So on this, the penultimate weekend of the campaign, our Opinium poll again has the two biggest parties in a statistical dead heat. So does the poll of polls. As we approach the final leg of the most polled campaign in our history, the big picture is basically unchanged. There is even more intense speculation about what sort of permutation of hung parliament we will be looking at on 8 May. Another consequence is absent from the conversation, but is going to be huge the other side of polling day. Each of the traditional parties is going to face an existential crisis. Even if Labour manages to avoid the scale of obliteration at the hands of the SNP currently implied by the polls, it is clearly going down to an extremely heavy defeat in the country of the party’s birth. If that costs Labour power at Westminster, it is going to be a pitch-black night of the soul for the party and not just in Scotland. The left are going to say that Scotland was lost because the party was not left wing enough. That is far too simplistic as an explanation for what is happening north of the Tweed, but it is certainly going to be said. The other side of the party are going to say that, without a reliable supply of MPs from Scotland, Labour will have to be that much more attractive to swing voters in England in the future. And the agonising will not be much less intense even if Ed Miliband does get to Number 10.
A crisis about their future also faces the Lib Dems. They say they are braced for the almighty whack that they are about to get from the electorate, but I am not convinced they yet fully appreciate just how much it is going to hurt. They did their duty by the country, as they saw it, by going into coalition. They fulfilled decades of dreaming by finally securing a place in government. They have rather stoically endured the punishment that they have received over the past five years. At the moment, they are sustained by the thought that they could lose MPs and yet still be a pivotal player in the next parliament because they, unlike the SNP or Ukip, could deal with either Labour or the Tories. But I don’t think it should be entirely assumed that the Lib Dems will want to go into another coalition.
If they drop below a certain number of MPs, several senior figures fear they wouldn’t get a good enough offer from Labour or the Tories to make it sensible to accept. Some put the threshold at retaining around 30 MPs. Some nearer 40. Some don’t sound convinced that another power-share would be good for them in almost any circumstances. If Nick Clegg tries to make the case for another coalition to his party – and that’s assuming he holds his own seat in Sheffield – there will be opposing voices saying the Lib Dems would be better off convalescing on the opposition benches.
The darkest of the existential crises about to hit the established parties is probably the one that faces the Tory party. In an attempt to liven up their campaign, they disinterred Sir John Major to add a dash of grey. This sent a double-edged message. Sir John led the Tory party back in the day when it was capable of winning a parliamentary majority. That was 23 years ago, an eternity in politics. He is a reminder of how the Tories upset expectations when they won in 1992. He is also a reminder of how his government subsequently fell apart before going down to a devastating defeat in 1997 from which the Tory party has never properly recovered.
If the Tories yet again fail to win a majority, that will be the trigger for a massive argument about why not. The right will say (because this is what they always say) that they failed because they were not sufficiently right wing. The moderate wing of the Tory party will say that they did not modernise enough. The argument that Tories have been having with each other ever since that 1997 defeat will resume with new intensity. And that will be true even if David Cameron is the prime minister of a minority government or another coalition. He will be a goner if he loses Number 10. And even if he scrapes back in you wouldn’t want to put money on him lasting the duration of the next parliament. Those words about “not deserving to be in politics” if he couldn’t trounce Ed Miliband will come back to bite him. Even Tory commentators are remarking on how disengaged he appears to be as if there is a bit of his id that secretly yearns to lose. Perhaps there is. For the Tory leader must know what a nightmare awaits him if he is a no-majority prime minister for a second time around.
These multiple agonies for the parties will be accompanied by an overarching crisis. Parliament will have to handle the influx of a large block of separatist MPs, the first time this has happened since Irish Nationalists held the balance in the early 20th century. On top of which, our electoral system must surely return as a live issue. The only decent argument in favour of first past the post is that it is designed to guarantee stable, single-party government. For the second election in a row, it looks extremely likely that it will fail to do what it says on the tin. The way in which votes are turned into power, the most fundamental stuff of democracy, will be in question. That will be a punch in the mouth to the entire model of Westminster government.
As the distinguished philosopher Michael “Iron Mike” Tyson once put it: “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.” The story of this election is the parties making plans – and then getting thumped in the chops. This most tightly gridded and claustrophobically choreographed campaign is not going to schedule for anyone.
The Tories set out with a plan so simple that even the dimmest of their candidates could be expected to follow it. Say often enough that Ed Miliband isn’t up to being prime minister. Say often enough that the economy is now doing well. Say often enough that Labour’s numbers don’t add up. Add amplification from your allied propagandists in the rightwing press and the Conservatives roll back to power.
It sounded quite plausible. To many Labour people, it sounded terrifyingly plausible. At the outset of the campaign, there was deep neuroticism in Labour’s ranks. For the Tory plan is one that has traditionally worked in British politics. When a party has the lead on economic competence, the preferred candidate for prime minister, the advantages of incumbency, plus the majority of press support and the most money, the conventional rules of political gravity say that they ought to win. David Cameron was apparently so confident that he told a meeting of his backbench 1922 committee: “If we can’t beat that complete shower of an opposition, we don’t deserve to be in politics.”
The plan has not gone to plan. The economic numbers are not translating into polling numbers because many voters don’t think they are experiencing a recovery or, even when they do, they aren’t willing to reward a Tory party that they distrust for other reasons. Ed Miliband has proved a more resilient opponent than either they or many in his own party anticipated. The more positive Conservative messages have been introduced too late. Says one senior Tory: “It is not so much the campaign as the two years leading up to it. We should have switched into ‘let sunshine win the day’ much earlier.” When David Cameron hired Lynton Crosby, I wonder whether he took the precaution of paying his Aussie strategist on a no-win, no-fee basis. The Tories do seem to be gaining traction with some voters by mongering scares about the SNP, but they have had to resort to the dangerous tactic of being the English nationalist party because everything else they have tried hasn’t worked. Talking up the Scots Nats and how they would interact with a Miliband minority government is a line of attack that presupposes the Tories have lost.
Labour had a plan. Gather up the non-Tory votes, especially the leftish chunk that had supported the Lib Dems and stopped doing so when they got into bed with the Conservatives. Go large on the NHS and inequality. Rely on Ukip to inflict damage on the Tories, get a leg-up from the seat distribution and Labour would be over the line with about 35% of the vote. That plan would be pretty close to success, but for one thing. The flaw in the plan was its assumption that Scotland would again send a reliable lump of Labour MPs to Westminster. Models that try to forecast the election result currently have the Tories and Labour with between 260 to 280 seats apiece. Add the seats that Labour is projected to lose to the Scottish Nationalists and Mr Miliband would be within touching distance of a small parliamentary majority or close enough to think he might manage as a minority government. Labour would be confident this weekend and the Tories would be in a very advanced state of panic. But it is Scotland that has capsized the 35% strategy.
So on this, the penultimate weekend of the campaign, our Opinium poll again has the two biggest parties in a statistical dead heat. So does the poll of polls. As we approach the final leg of the most polled campaign in our history, the big picture is basically unchanged. There is even more intense speculation about what sort of permutation of hung parliament we will be looking at on 8 May. Another consequence is absent from the conversation, but is going to be huge the other side of polling day. Each of the traditional parties is going to face an existential crisis. Even if Labour manages to avoid the scale of obliteration at the hands of the SNP currently implied by the polls, it is clearly going down to an extremely heavy defeat in the country of the party’s birth. If that costs Labour power at Westminster, it is going to be a pitch-black night of the soul for the party and not just in Scotland. The left are going to say that Scotland was lost because the party was not left wing enough. That is far too simplistic as an explanation for what is happening north of the Tweed, but it is certainly going to be said. The other side of the party are going to say that, without a reliable supply of MPs from Scotland, Labour will have to be that much more attractive to swing voters in England in the future. And the agonising will not be much less intense even if Ed Miliband does get to Number 10.
A crisis about their future also faces the Lib Dems. They say they are braced for the almighty whack that they are about to get from the electorate, but I am not convinced they yet fully appreciate just how much it is going to hurt. They did their duty by the country, as they saw it, by going into coalition. They fulfilled decades of dreaming by finally securing a place in government. They have rather stoically endured the punishment that they have received over the past five years. At the moment, they are sustained by the thought that they could lose MPs and yet still be a pivotal player in the next parliament because they, unlike the SNP or Ukip, could deal with either Labour or the Tories. But I don’t think it should be entirely assumed that the Lib Dems will want to go into another coalition.
If they drop below a certain number of MPs, several senior figures fear they wouldn’t get a good enough offer from Labour or the Tories to make it sensible to accept. Some put the threshold at retaining around 30 MPs. Some nearer 40. Some don’t sound convinced that another power-share would be good for them in almost any circumstances. If Nick Clegg tries to make the case for another coalition to his party – and that’s assuming he holds his own seat in Sheffield – there will be opposing voices saying the Lib Dems would be better off convalescing on the opposition benches.
The darkest of the existential crises about to hit the established parties is probably the one that faces the Tory party. In an attempt to liven up their campaign, they disinterred Sir John Major to add a dash of grey. This sent a double-edged message. Sir John led the Tory party back in the day when it was capable of winning a parliamentary majority. That was 23 years ago, an eternity in politics. He is a reminder of how the Tories upset expectations when they won in 1992. He is also a reminder of how his government subsequently fell apart before going down to a devastating defeat in 1997 from which the Tory party has never properly recovered.
If the Tories yet again fail to win a majority, that will be the trigger for a massive argument about why not. The right will say (because this is what they always say) that they failed because they were not sufficiently right wing. The moderate wing of the Tory party will say that they did not modernise enough. The argument that Tories have been having with each other ever since that 1997 defeat will resume with new intensity. And that will be true even if David Cameron is the prime minister of a minority government or another coalition. He will be a goner if he loses Number 10. And even if he scrapes back in you wouldn’t want to put money on him lasting the duration of the next parliament. Those words about “not deserving to be in politics” if he couldn’t trounce Ed Miliband will come back to bite him. Even Tory commentators are remarking on how disengaged he appears to be as if there is a bit of his id that secretly yearns to lose. Perhaps there is. For the Tory leader must know what a nightmare awaits him if he is a no-majority prime minister for a second time around.
These multiple agonies for the parties will be accompanied by an overarching crisis. Parliament will have to handle the influx of a large block of separatist MPs, the first time this has happened since Irish Nationalists held the balance in the early 20th century. On top of which, our electoral system must surely return as a live issue. The only decent argument in favour of first past the post is that it is designed to guarantee stable, single-party government. For the second election in a row, it looks extremely likely that it will fail to do what it says on the tin. The way in which votes are turned into power, the most fundamental stuff of democracy, will be in question. That will be a punch in the mouth to the entire model of Westminster government.
