General Election 2015 is Lose/Lose for Labour

The polls on the eve of the general election point to a Miliband government, but one requiring vote by vote deals with the SNP to survive. If I were a Labour supporter I would be very concerned indeed.

Both main parties are neck and neck in the polls. The Tories need a reasonable margin over Labour just to match their seat numbers. There's a chance the polls are underestimating Tory support and underestimating Labour's. But they would have to be wildly wrong to allow the Tories to achieve a haul of parliamentary seats that would outnumber Labour + the SNP's total. And that is what the Tories have to do. Nicola Sturgeon has promised to "lock the Tories out of government", even if the rest of the countries votes Tory and gives them more seats than Labour.

Unless there's an upsurge in Conservative votes that the polls aren't predicting (like there was in 1992 when the electorate belatedly realised Kinnock was going to get in and turned out en masse to vote against him) Miliband will be PM on Friday but will have to rely on the SNP to get his legislation through, even if he comes second in the election to Cameron. If Cameron can't partner up with other parties to achieve a majority (as the polls suggest he won't be able to), Miliband will, regardless of how much such an arrangement lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the British people. Concessions to the Scottish separatists will be necessary if a Miliband government is to survive from vote to vote and from week to week. But he would rather that than not govern at all, whatever he says to try and placate nervous English voters before the vote. 

Miliband, who has already lurched his party to the left, will be forced to move further leftwards by the far left in his own parliamentary party and by the SNP, both of which, due to the lack of a in-built majority, will be pivotal to the survival of his premiership.

Labour's first Queen's Speech will probably sail through. The SNP will be happy to back it, as it puts the Labour fly firmly in the SNP's web ready to be influenced to achieve their own separatists and leftist agenda. In order to provide an legislative agenda for the first year that will gain adequate support from the Labour left and SNP, the speech will be chocker full of Miliband's most populist left wing policies - bankers bashing, rich rinsing, business bashing policies a plenty, similar to Miliband's ideological French soul-mate François Hollande. The effects on the British economy will be similar; high unemployment, an exodus of wealth creators, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, industrial relations unrest as unions get more and more confident, powerful and demanding under "their" government and, eventually, a reckoning with reality.

That reckoning will come after a year or so, with the backdrop of a faltering economy about to crash to the ground as economic gravity inevitably reasserts itself. Of course, all this will come to a head quicker if the pending Euro crisis re-emerges if Greece crashes out of the Euro due to its own populist left wing leader's reality-defying ideological policies. But, assuming external crises don't occur to bring all this forward, by 12 to 18 months, Miliband's premiership will already be tarnished in England by several concessions he will have to have made to survive key votes in parliament. Now Miliband will be forced to moderate his ideological fervour and he will be at his most vulnerable. He will experience revolts from his own MPs as he is forced to move away from a left policy agenda to address the real issues the country is experiencing. The SNP will be even more important to Miliband's survival at this point.

The Labour government will limp from crisis vote to crisis vote. Miliband will experience humiliation at the hands of Alex Salmond, the SNP's leader in the Commons as well as his own left wing, and ridicule throughout the land. We can look back to the John Major years, when, after a string of lost mid-term by-elections, Major lost his Commons majority. He had to battle the Tory right from week to week, who took every opportunity to undermine him to promote their own utopian ideas and often massive egos, and he had to rely on DUP support to govern with a majority in parliament. Major's reputation was trashed in the eyes of voters as he was made to look weak, as was the Conservative party's generally. It has never fully recovered (evidenced by their failure to win a majority since then).

The DUP, being Unionists and with no strong left/right ideology (economically at least), weren't particularly demanding. The SNP will be a totally different proposition for Miliband. He'll struggle to contain them, even if he turns out not to be the weak leader people think he is.

The aftermath of this scenario is long term damage to Labour's reputation, possibly leading to a generation of being locked out of power. It's almost as if the election is lose/lose for Labour.

I'd find that funny if it wasn't so serious for the future of the country.

Red Ken's Brass Neck And Red Ed's Regret

You've got to admire the brass neck of Labour's Mayoral candidate, Ken "do as I say not as I do" Livingstone.

As Everyone will be aware he was caught out arranging his financial affairs in the most tax efficient way possible, despite condemning others who did the same as evil, tax dodging "rich bastards".

Hypocrisy in Labour politicians being par for the course the issue probably would have blown over by now had it not been for Livingstone's accusations that Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate, had similar arrangements. Boris and Ken had previously covered this territory and Ken knew full well the accusations weren't true.

Red Ken's accusations inevitably led to calls for all the candidates to reveal their financial affairs for public scrutiny. His attempts to avoid disclosure then, when forced, the revelations that he (and to a lesser extent the Lib Dem candidate - they always have to be "equidistant", don't they?) had paid a significantly smaller proportion of their income in tax than Boris, have made all the headlines over the past few days.

Now, Ken is attempting to make out that it was the Tories who made everyone's tax affairs an issue, saying it's a distraction from the "real" issues facing Londoners. In reality it was him, by making false allegations that inflamed the whole topic. The fuss being made about individuals tax affairs has been a distraction, not least as it was only Ken that had a big problem with tax efficient arrangements. But the original revelation on Livingstone's tax arrangements was very much relevant as it showed him up as the hypocrite he is. His response also revealed him to be and out and out liar. Boris Johnson would have to be condemning, and proposing the jailing of, serial adulterers to reach the same levels of hypocrisy as dear old Ken.

Mayoral elections are very much about the individuals as well as their policies. How trustworthy are they? Can we trust them to do what they say they are going to do? etc. Ken, like many politicians on the left in this country, has shown himself not to be trustworthy. His chances of winning are now looking very slim.

After losing in Bradford, Ed Miliband really can't afford to lose in another Labour orientated city like London, especially during a mid-term Tory government. He will hope the inevitable gains Labour will see in the local elections (the Tories will be defending a very high water mark result from 2008) will overshadow his failure in London.

How Red Ed must be regretting going for his colour-sake, Red Ken, now.

Old & Sad, Good News For The Tories

One of the funniest things about by-elections is the sight of the defeated parties' members and supporters attempting to spin the result positively.

So, given the Tories finished in 3rd place with their share of the vote plummeting to just 12.8%, it is beholden on me to pronounce the result a success for Cameron & Co.

Of course, it wasn't a success for the Tories, although, arguably, you can put their poor result down to tactical voting (in this case Tories positively voting for the LibDem coalition candidate). However, there is one silver lining in Labour's victory for their opponents.

When analysing whether a result is good or bad for your "team" in any game, business or election, you have to consider what the alternative result would have meant. In the case of Oldham East and Saddleworth, Ed Miliband absolutely had to win it. His leadership is being questioned by many in his own party who have been very uncomfortable with having the Unions' candidate foisted upon them. If Miliband had been the first opposition party leader in 30 years to lose an MP in a by-election then his position would have been very shaky. He could well have faced a rebellion and been replaced.

So, as desperate an attempt to see a positive in this result for the Coalition as this post may be, the truth is that, it is now looking increasingly likely that Ed Miliband will survive until the next election.

Now that really is good news for Labour's opponents.

Our Political System Is Broken - Is PR the Only Option?

So, despite the Conservatives making impressive gains, Labour suffering a Michael Foot-esque collapse and no sign of the much hyped Cleggmania promised by the polls before the election, we find ourselves with a hung parliament.

If the results for the two main parties on Thursday had been reversed, in terms of share of the vote, Labour would have been returned to power with a thumping majority. Brown would be hailed as a master tactician, the great Houdini with an unquestionable mandate to govern for five more long years. The Tories would have been pilloried as pathetic losers, which is what they would have been. There certainly wouldn't be any talk of adopting Proportional Representation (PR) as a electoral system and the Liberal Democrats would continue to have been ignored as the irrelevance they've been for the past 90 years.

But that wasn't the case. Our First Past The Post (FPTP) system produced a hung parliament for the first time since the mid 70's. Such is the in-built advantage to the Labour party, the Tories needed an enormous swing from their 2005 position to win power, even by the slimmest margin. It's clearly unfair that such a bias exists and electoral reform is required to fix it.


All three parties offer electoral reform of one kind or another. The Liberal Democrats are well known for their support for PR, unsurprising as it benefits them in that it would place them in position of king maker a lot more often than FPTP does at the moment, as every election will result in a hung parliament unless one party can get over 50% of the vote. Labour offered a referendum on changing to the Alternative Votes system. Again, cynical self interest prevails here. This system would have delivered an even more disproportionate number of Labour MPs and even fewer to the Tories. See this analysis from Patently. The Tories offer the least radical plan, they propose to get the Electoral Commission to do what they should already be doing and redraw the constituency boundaries so they all broadly contain a similar number of voters. They hope this will reduce the bias to Labour and make for a more level playing field (between Labour and Conservative anyway).

However, the Tories will find that their plan will not completely remove the bias as it has more to do with the difference in distribution of each parties vote as well as overall levels of turn out in different areas of the country, something they can do little about. Their belief in FPTP seems oddly misplaced therefore. PR would actually have benefited them more, especially in 2005 when they were just 3% behind Labour in the national share of the vote.

The truth is that many, on the left of politics, have convinced themselves that the majority of British people hold centre-left political opinions. They base this on combining the Labour and LibDem votes and conclude that it must be so. I don't necessarily believe this and think voting patterns would change in a PR system, but this is clearly the belief of many Guardian and Independent writers and their more politically sympathetic readers.

The motivation for many of the political activists advocating PR is not that it is fairer or would engage more people in the democratic process, although they'll say say this is so, but really they want a system that will lock out the "evil Tories" once and for all. This goes some way in explaining the sudden urgency and passion we are seeing for PR to be made the one non-negotiable position in Nick Clegg's talks with David Cameron. They want it implemented without delay so any future election will produce a centre-left coalition that will rule permanently.

The situation we are now in has brought the LibDems onto centre stage and, although the Conservatives could rule as a minority government without them, they would prefer to have their support to form a more stable coalition government. The failure of Nick Clegg's party to attract any additional support from their 2005 position weakens his position significantly in negotiations. He also needs to be wary of those on the left of his party who can't abide the Tories and want nothing to do with them. Clegg himself is on the right of his party, as Cameron is on the left of his. Both have a tightrope to walk between partisan backbench/activist opinion and pragmatism for the national interest. 

It is telling that, at a time of national economic crisis, when the country is fighting in Afghanistan and we face serious social problems at home, the only topic being discussed by LibDems and the media is electoral reform to the exclusion of everything else. It's an issue, granted, but not the only one and not even the most pressing. I've even heard LibDem politicians suggesting this hung parliament crisis is evidence that we need to move away from FPTP to PR, despite this situation being the norm in every country that has PR. Such bare faced disingenuity proves, if anyone still needed proof, that there's nothing new or different about LibDem politics.

Rather than holding the country's future to ransom over self serving demands for cursory electoral reform, the LibDems should rise to the challenge the people have set them (albeit inadvertently) and agree a programme for government that addresses the immediate crises we face. This is their chance to prove they can put the nations interest first and take part in a government that could make a real difference to this country on the economy, society and eduction, crime etc, all the areas any party serious about power has to address. In doing so, I would hope they'd show themselves to be more worthy of support than Labour and that they could advance in a way the polls suggested they might before the election, eventually replacing Labour as one of the two main parties.

Any agreement should address the genuine concern felt in the country about our political system. An official review of the system and a national debate should take place to fully inform the people and ensure the consequences of any recommended proposals are fully understood before people are asked to decide in a referendum.

I think the current focus on electoral reform is too narrow though. Any review shouldn't just be about FPTP vs PR. It should include a review of the relationship between the executive (government) and parliament including House of Lord reform.

It may be that FPTP could be the most effective way of choosing who governs if combined with a reform of the relationship between then government and MPs that allows more effective scrutiny and debate of policy and legislation. PR may still be desirable, but in itself, it doesn't really address the core faults with our parliamentary systems currently (other than denying the existence of single party majority governments). These faults allow majority governments to govern pretty much unopposed and unscrutinised if they get a big enough majority. This kind of reform plus beefing up review and amendment powers MPs have over government legislation would more precisely address the disrepute that parliament is held in currently. FPTP is good enough for the US (although there are critics there too, of course) but their system has stronger checks and balances on the executive by the legislature. If the bias to Labour can be resolved and the playing field levelled, FPTP could still be a goer with reform of the separation of powers between government and parliament.

But if, after a public review and debate, the people want a fully proportional system that reflects their votes for smaller parties more accurately and they accept the consequences in terms of more hung parliaments, weaker governments, political horse trading of policies etc, then so be it. At least they would do so on a basis of understanding. I know I'd be more confident I'd make the right decision given time and information.

So what should Cameron do if Clegg refused to join the Tories in government without PR being pushed through? I'm of the opinion that anything other than a Con/LD coalition would be too unstable to recommend to the Queen as a viable government in our current economic climate. An informal arrangement where the LDs provide support on certain issues just won't do. It allows the LDs to wimp out of taking responsibility at a time when some very difficult decisions need to be made. Inevitability, when the going gets tough the LibDems will get going, right out of any responsibility for policies that could be unpopular but necessary and the government will collapse. I can't imagine such a set up lasting more than 12 months, if that.

So, if Clegg refuses to cooperate on reasonable grounds, Cameron should explain to the people that Britain needs strong government and not some Heath Robinson affair that will be crippled in dealing with the crises we face as a country and that the LibDems are not allowing such a stable arrangement to occur. Labour will try to seize the initiative and form a government with the LibDems, but they don't have enough seats, even together. They would need an equally precarious agreement with all the rest of the parties to form a majority government. I don't think a Lib/Lab pact will come to pass, I don't think the people would accept a coalition of the defeated. Instead we would have another General Election and this time the people would have the chance to punish those that put their party before country and we'd see a decisive result.

Spatchcock Coalition Is The Last Thing We Need

Following the Leaders' Debate last week and the subsequent surge in LibDem support, the threat of a hung parliament looms large over Britain. For some it seems like a good idea, a chance to smash the old discredited two party system. But, in truth, it would be a disaster for the country.

The Mayor of London sums up one reason why it would be disastrous: The need to address this country's financial crisis:

Boris Johnson: “The last thing we need when you need some very difficult decisions taken for the budgetary health of this country is a hung Parliament and the endless dickering around between some spatchcock coalition between the Liberals and the Labour government staggering on, without giving this country the new start and the new medicine that I think it needs.” - Hat tip to Tory Landlord 

Another reason a hung parliament, leading to a Lib/Lab pact, would be disastrous is the gerrymandering of the electoral system to ensure any future election is stitched up for the left.

This headline from The Independent illustrates the agenda Gordon Brown will be working to in a hung parliament situation (one, no doubt, The (not really very) Independent would approve of):

How would Labour stitch up the electoral system? Well, Brown's last-second conversion to electoral reform, just before calling the general election, is proof of his cynical motives. If he was serious about reform he'd have chosen a Proportional Representation system. One that produces a result that is actually proportionate to the way people vote. Such systems aren't perfect and I'm not a fan of PR myself, but then neither is our current system with its appalling Labour bias that could lead to Labour ending up with the largest number of seats even if they finish third in the popular vote! But no, instead he goes for the Alternative Vote system. A system that the BBC proved would be even more biased towards Labour. See Patently Rubbish: Why Labour Wants AV for a great explanation of Brown's true motives.

Clegg has not made PR a make or break issue for supporting Labour in a hung parliament. He is only asking for "Fairness in the voting system". And, as the LibDem's Shirley Williams admits, Clegg is likely to be seduced by the AV system on offer from Brown. If only because it further cripples the Tories. As always with hung parliaments, manifesto pledges go out of the window and politicians do secret back room deals to get themselves into power. It is likely such a government would be dogged by in-fighting, horse-trading and compromise that would lead to a early general election when it all collapses in a heap. The one thing they will ensure that they implement will be the electoral reform that would be so beneficial to their own self-interests.

It is also very likely that highly destructive in-fighting within the Labour Party will break out as Brown struggled to maintain his leadership position against coup attempts that will follow Labour's poor performance (especially for an incumbent party) at the General Election. This will just add to the weakness of the government and cripple its ability to address the financial crisis, let alone deal with any of the other urgent issues facing this country. Markets and the pound will fall adding to our economy's instability at the worst possible time.

The truth is that the LibDems almost certainly can't win the election outright. They are very unlikely even to be the largest party in a hung parliament. The reality is that they will just end up denying the Conservative victory and a decisive rejection of Labour. Worse, they are far more likely to prop up Labour in power than unite with the Tories to form a Change Coalition. And if the Tories lose this election after the reforms Cameron has put them through, reforms some older members in the grassroots are still unhappy with, they may react by lurching to the right and once again become unelectable for a generation.

It won't just be 5 more years of Labour, it could be 10 or 15!

Why I'm Not Joining Labour

Another great spoof from The Red Rag website. This time of Labour's "Why I'm Joining Labour" web widget...



Also, after the interminable spoof Cameron posters over the past month, this made me laugh...

Disappointing Start To Election 2010

If it isn't bad enough that we're going to have to put up with months of electioneering, Monday's efforts, if indicative of what is to come, are worrying if not predictable.

My main gripe is with the broadcast media more than the politicians, however. I say broadcast as I've not had a chance to review the papers today, but assume they will follow in a similar style.

The Conservatives, at least, attempted to present some substance on their NHS plans by publishing the first in a series of "draft manifesto" policy announcements planned for the next few weeks. They also launched a poster campaign...

Labour, rather more negatively, published a dossier analysing Tory spending promises and tax plans and said it showed that their sums didn't add up.

And the Lib Dems probably did something or said something No one was listening, I'm afraid. 

So, all good so far. Then both Labour and Tory announcements had problems.

• David Cameron seemingly watered down the Tory's previous commitment to married couples' taxation reform. They later clarified that they were committed to reform, but the damage was done.
  
• Alastair Darling's dossier turned out to be almost as dodgy as Alastair Campbell's last effort at dossier writing. But, more significantly I believe, he exposed splits in opinion over future taxation policy and not a small amount of hypocrisy over the Government VAT plans (he said he refused to rule out a VAT increase but was attacking the Tories for saying exactly the same thing previously).

So, all normal rough and tumble of a political campaign then. What has irked me was the coverage I saw on BBC (and I have no doubt ITV and Sky were just as bad). The focus was entirely on Cameron's gaffe. The News at 9 even led with it as their top story - the most important thing that had happened in the world that day. I'd not extend this criticism to Newsnight, which handled the events of the day quite well, I thought.

What worries me is that, rather than attempting to inform the public of what the Conservatives were saying about their plans for the NHS and the deficit they focused on what was a relativity trivial slip up. 

They covered Alastair Darlings dossier respectfully and obediently used the "black hole" sound bites that would have appeared in their Labour press briefings. Labour should be very pleased with the coverage they got from that. I saw only a little (certainly not in-depth) analysis of the inaccuracies and dodgy assumptions made in the document. And I saw absolutely NOTHING about the really substantial story, the differences of opinion at the top of Government with regard to their taxation policy.

Given our dumbed down broadcast news services, it is no surprise that trivia is preferred over substance. It seems that if you want to get coverage you need to be negative or make a gaffe (no matter how small - it'll get blown up out of all proportion).

I hope the politicians, at least, try to have reasonably positive campaigns in the hope they will get fair coverage. But I can't see it, can you?

It would be nice to believe that, should there be a change in Government later this year, and with the already certain refresh of many MPs (due to the expenses scandal), that a new relationship between media and political establishment could be forged. Gaffes should be reported, of course (especially if they happen regularly and reflect some kind of personality defect), but not entirely at the expense of the substantial points being made. Let's have a bit of balance.

Thay say we get the politicians and media we deserve, though. So that doesn't say very much for us, does it?

From Hope To Dope

The Independent On Sunday is running a list of possible political posters made up by various ad agencies. Some of them are very funny. My favourite being one based on Obama's 2008 "Hope" poster...

As funny as the Independent posters are, they are all negative. Sadly, this is probably an accurate sign of things to come but I hope not. The contrast between a positive and negative message in the Hope/Dope posters above is certainly stark. At the General Election it would be great if the parties could focus more on why we should vote for them rather than why we shouldn't vote for their opponents.

The Independent's posters remind me of my favourite Economist front cover lampooning Brown's pathetic class war strategy to regain Labour's core vote. A strategy that seems to be splitting the cabinet. 

Glasgow North East By-Election Result

I've heard and seen a lot of positive media coverage for Labour over it's inevitable by-election victory in Glasgow North East. The result is being portrayed as a boost for Gordon Brown that cements his position as Labour leader until the election next year.

I've no doubt it does cement his position. After all, there's no one with the balls (oops, sorry Harriet - or ovaries) to challenge him unless he really was doing so badly that he lost, what must be, one of the safest Labour seats in the country. But is this really such a great result?

It would be churlish to suggest it isn't at least a reasonable result considering the unpopularity of Brown's government generally. But many Labour supporters are portraying this as evidence that "we can still win". While I understand their desperation for crumbs of comfort after such a prolonged period of political failure, I just don't see their case for this at all.

Usually, in order to determine the success or failure of an election campaign you look to the previous result to assess changes in support. But, all this constituency can tell us is how well Labour is doing against the SNP. And even this isn't completely clear, as the previous incumbent was in the role of Speaker at the last election so didn't face opposition from the Tories or Lib Dems and didn't stand as an official Labour candidate. To further cloud the issue the SNP had a disastrous start to their campaign when their first choice candidate had to pull out due to revelations about his personal finances.

The most relevant election to compare this years result to is 1997's, when Michael Martin last stood as a Labour party candidate proper. A lot is being made of Willie Bain's majority being over 8,000 votes, as if this is impressive. Considering Labour problems nationally and the incredibly low expectations of them, I guess it is impressive. But compare that majority with the one they got in 1997: 17326 - more that twice the size! In that poll they managed to get a whopping 71% of the votes against just 59% this time.

This, at least, gives you a view of the extent to which the seat is terminally Labourite. The result tells us very little about Labour's popularity nationally. In Glasgow NE they got away with campaigning as an opposition against Scotland's governing party.  But in a general election they will be up against David Cameron's Tories and will have to defend their record in government. It's being said that the by-election result isn't a great result for the Conservatives as they made no progress with their share of the vote, showing they continue to struggle for support in Scotland. This may be true, but one good thing for them does seem to have come out of this...

Gordon Brown will be Labour leader at the next election. Cameron will be celebrating that fact.


UK Polling Report: Glasgow North East Seat Profile