If Cameron is a "loser" we're going to see a lot more of them

If this is losing, I'll have a bit of that please...

One thing I find difficult to get my head around is how so many people consider Cameron to have been a loser in 2010.

The argument goes that Gordon Brown was a terrible Prime Minister, that a solid majority was ripe for the picking for the Tories and Cameron totally screwed it up.

I'm afraid I don't really buy it.

Yes, Brown was dreadful but for all kinds of complicated reasons it was always a big ask for Cameron to get a majority. In 2005 they were still way behind. The way Labour's vote is distributed across the country makes it hard for the Tories to get enough seats even in a bad year for Labour (indeed 2010 was the red team's second worst vote share since WWI). UKIP shaved some of the Tory vote away, enough to perhaps cost them a dozen or more seats by some calculations. The Lib Dems were surgent in a way not seen in previous elections. Etc. etc. etc.

I'm not trying to make excuses for Cameron. I am not a huge fan of his. It's just that the narrative that it was there for the taking and he bollocksed it up does not stand up to serious scrutiny. He actually got a larger share of the vote than Blair did in 2005 (which delivered Labour a solid majority) but it wasn't enough for him to get over the line.

Many across the political spectrum and within his own party really do consider the Prime Minister a loser though because of this lack of a majority. His own side mutter darkly about how if he does not win a majority next time then he will have twice failed the electoral test and will be forced out as leader, even if the Tories are still the largest party and can form a government. They cite Thatcher and Blair with their thumping majorities and highlight how by comparison Cameron came up woefully short, but that wilfully ignores how the political landscape has shifted over the decades.

Other countries where their Prime Ministers and Chancellors regularly have to share power and often go on to win successive election victories (i.e. remaining in power, not having a majority!) must look upon our hung parliament discourse with bemusement. For them, the dynamics of compromise and coalition are completely normal.

Many psephologists now think that hung parliaments in the UK will become the norm despite us retaining First Past the Post for the foreseeable future. The vote share of the two main parties combined has gone from around 97% in the 1950s to around 65% in 2010. The trend is clear, people want to vote for alternatives to red and blue. Whether it is Lib Dem, UKIP, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Mebyon Kernow and a multitude of other smaller parties, in the consumer and internet age we like to be able to exercise a much wider choice. This is not Cameron's fault and the idea he can somehow reverse all of these trends is completely unrealistic.

I think the analysts are right and we will see more coalitions/minority governments. Politics is now much more volatile and unpredictable than it once was. If I had to put money on it I would wager that in the next 20 years we will see at least half of the governments being led by someone who was unable to muster a majority at the ballot box.

If Cameron is a "loser", I suspect we're going to see many more such losers walking into 10 Downing Street in the not too distant future.

The Majoritarian Muddle

There's an interesting piece from Dan Hodges yesterday in which he suggests that many Tories are so sick of having to govern in coalition with the Lib Dems that they may actually prefer to be in opposition.

This is a phenomenon that I witnessed first hand in the run up to the 2010 general election. At the time I was doing a lot of media and in one of my radio studio appearances I was chatting to a right-wing commentator who I knew from previous conversations was considering a potential future career as a Tory MP. The subject of electoral reform came up and he stated in blunt terms that if first-past-the-post was ever abandoned for Westminster he would quit politics. For him it was not enough to have power, it had to be absolute power for his party alone.

As a long-standing pluralist, I find this attitude hard to understand. Some might suggest that as a Lib Dem I would say that. But I thought this long before I joined the party. Compromising with colleagues is something that almost everybody does all the time in the "real world". Extending this across party boundaries within politics should not really be controversial and yet, somehow, it is. Well, in this country at least. Most other countries have political systems that ensure the most likely outcome is the sharing of power in various ways. Very few have such a brutal winner-takes-all system as the United Kingdom.

Even under first-past-the-post, it seems likely that the smaller parties will continue to eat away at the long-term vote share for the big two. Indeed, across the world the "Westminster model" is now usually returning hung parliaments. This could well lead to more opportunities for coalitions in the UK. If this is correct, Conservative and Labour MPs and activists are going to have to get used to sharing power. The sort of monumental strop that numerous backbench Tory MPs are now throwing will be utterly counterproductive.

The idea of working with one's political opponents has been anathema to the main parties for the last 60 years. The "winner" of the election gets a majority of seats and pushes through what they want. That has been the basis of our politics for so long that it is a genuine culture shock to find ourselves in a world where constant compromise is necessary. That is as true for the Lib Dems as for anyone else, which is perhaps surprising given they are the party of electoral reform - but that shows how deeply embedded our previous settlement was. We need to see a culture change in this country's body politic. Instead of compromise with political opponents being seen as weak, we need to accept it as an inevitable part of policy making. No one party has a monopoly on good ideas and our country can actually be strengthened by ensuring that more than one political philosophy and tradition has input into that process.

And if we can all accept this, then maybe next time we have a coalition the MPs that form the backbenches will have a slightly more realistic expectation of what can be achieved and perhaps be grateful for the opportunity to contribute, rather than equate compromise with betrayal of their principles.

This post was first published in the New Statesman online

Now Cameron has to prove himself wrong

Just under three weeks ago I wrote a blogpost speculating about what could happen in the event of a hung parliament and how we could end up with a Lib Dem/Tory government. I focused on how were that to happen, given all the negative comments by the Conservatives in the run up to the election about how disastrous hung parliaments would be. I then went on to say:

Cameron would not be able to easily escape his election campaign words and predictions. In fact the only way he would be able to get out of it is to prove himself wrong and make a success of a coalition government. Which would of course kick away the last prop of the argument against proportional representation that his party has been so viscerally opposed to.

I think it's fair to say that was mildly prescient. We are now in exactly that situation and Cameron has gone further than I ever thought possible in trying to put things in place to make this coalition work. People always said that Cameron was looking for his "Clause 4 moment" and I think he has found it in this bold step, albeit it was actually the best option available to him (and I think the country) in the short term. Still he has seized it with both hands.

But what I said in the quoted section above it absolutely bang on. Either this government is a success and the arguments against hung parliaments (and by implication against proportional electoral reform) are weakened, perhaps fatally, or the coalition is perceived to have failed and hence Cameron by his own lights has also failed.

We are now in the bizarre situation where the leader of the Conservatives has to fundamentally disprove the key argument used by his own party against electoral reform (it leads to weak unstable government) in order for him to succeed.

I keep saying it but we really are through the looking glass now.

So where's this market crash then?

"A hung parliament will cause a market crash!"

"We need an overall majority or sterling will tank!"

"Uncertainty will kill us all!"

OK, I made that last one up but they are the sort of things senior Tory spokesmen were saying about a hung parliament before the election. And yet, lo and behold no party has an overall majority and we are still fine. Actually, better than fine the FTSE100 is up by nearly 5% this morning.

I expect much of that rise can be attributed to the EU stability package but notwithstanding that, if no one party having overall control was such a big deal you would have expected those rises to have been cancelled out at least and possibly gone into reverse.

Charlotte Gore blogged about this earlier today and said:

“The Tories” they cry, “were BLUFFING! We haven’t got a deal and the markets haven’t crashed! Ooo the liars! ”

Ah. No. Sorry. Isn’t it just as plausible that the markets are rising on the back of confidence that a deal will be done (and considering the deadline set by Nick Clegg) at some point today, and that this deal will be putting the economy and sorting out the deficit as their top priority either way?

That's as maybe but that is not what the Tories were saying before the election. They were very clear that a hung parliament per se would be bad, irrespective of any deals. In fact the deals themselves were considered to be part of the problem ("smoke filled rooms" etc.).

So that argument is blown out of the water now. No party gaining an overall majority does not automatically lead to market chaos, even in extremely adverse financial circumstances.

Another prop under the argument against electoral reform has just been kicked away.

Exit poll - Conservative minority, Lib Dems on LESS seats than now!

Just seen the BBC/ITV/Sky exit poll. It says:

Con: 307
Lab: 255
Lib Dem: 59
Others: 29

Which if right would put Cameron as the leader of the largest single party but 19 seats short of an overall majority.

However.

I am not totally clear on the methodology they have used for this exit poll. The fact that it has the Lib Dems on 59 seats, 4 less than the party has right now seems pretty odd given how the election campaign has gone. Adam Boulton said as much just now on Sky implying that the picture might well change as the results come in.

I expect the Lib Dems will get more seats than that but as I blogged earlier I think it is likely that we will end up in hung parliament territory.

Don't forget, the last time things were very close (1992) the exit poll got it very wrong!

Let's see how things pan out as the results start to roll in.

Cameron might end up having to prove himself wrong

Ever since the Lib Dem surge started nearly two weeks ago, David Cameron and any other Tory within hearing distance of a microphone has done their best to try and scare the bejaysus out of anyone listening that a "hung parliament" (I prefer to use the less pejorative balanced parliament) would be dreadful for this country. "It would be calamitous for the economy!". "It would lead to weak ineffectual government!". "It would be politicians behind closed doors stitching it up for themselves!". Etc. etc. etc.

He was at it again today in a Q&A session I just saw a clip from on the news saying that a coalition government would be weak and would lead to lots of dithering.

The thing is though, now that Nick Clegg has ruled out any chance of entering into an agreement with Labour if they come third in terms of vote share if they insist on still having the PM, (and given the current polls this seems quite possible) then if that happens, the only realistic coalition possible would be with the Tories. Clegg has been careful not to promise anything in this respect but my point is if Labour are ruled out (assuming they come third) then Cameron's only realistic chance of governing in a balanced parliament if the Tories got the most votes (I will explore what might happen if the Lib Dems came first in a future post) would be to come to some sort of arrangement with one of the other two parties. Again realistically it could not be Labour so the Lib Dems could be the only game in town for them.

Maybe he would go ahead leading a minority government under those circumstances. Maybe it would be a less formal "confidence and supply" type arrangement.

The problem will come if somehow we end up with a Lib/Con coalition. I'm not predicting this would happen. Indeed I think on balance it probably won't. But if it was to then Cameron would find all the thousands of words he and his colleagues had used to traduce "hung parliaments" would be used against him by the Labour Party and others. Any slight sign of uncertainty (which happens in all governments given that they are made up of human beings wrestling with complicated decisions) and his quotes about "dithering" would be thrown at him. Any movement in the markets and the quotes about a "collapse in market confidence" would be chucked his way. Etc. etc. etc.

Now I happen to believe that there is no reason why a balanced parliament cannot be strong and stable in and of itself. I really do not buy all this stuff being bandied about weak government automatically ensuing. You've only got to look at some of the countries around the world who have proportional systems and regular coalitions to see that this talk is nonsense.

But Cameron would not be able to easily escape his election campaign words and predictions. In fact the only way he would be able to get out of it is to prove himself wrong and make a success of a coalition government. Which would of course kick away the last prop of the argument against proportional representation that his party has been so viscerally opposed to. And also make him look pretty stupid.

Perhaps the best way to mitigate this right now and allow him to keep his options more open would be to lay off the "hung parliament" bashing and instead focus on the actual campaign issues.

UPDATE: I modified the post slightly to account for the fact that Clegg only ruled out a deal with Labour if they were third and insisted on having the PM.

The hung parliament doom-mongers

I know I keep blogging about hung parliaments but it's the polls wot made me do it. For example there is one just out from Channel 4 that shows that in 60 of the marginals that Cameron will need to win, the Tory lead has slipped from 7 points to just 2 now. If that is right then Cameron cannot win a majority.

Timothy Garton Ash has a good piece in the Guardian today entitled "Don't be afraid of a hung parliament". In it he argues that we should not be intimidated by an unholy alliance of currency traders and the Daily Mail. He's right. It is now starting to feel like the electorate is being blackmailed by the market into voting Conservative. This tactic could backfire horribly. People don't like to be told how they should vote.

The doom-mongers cry that there will be a run on sterling and we could end up having to go cap in hand to the IMF unless there is a "strong" government after the general election. Really? Are Germany on the verge of having to do that? After all, they have had coalition governments for many years.

The truth is that it is the "strong" governments of the last 30 years that have got us into this mess. Perhaps if those governments had had to win the argument more often rather than just whipping through the votes then we might have been in a better position now. Imagine if Vince Cable who called the market problems years before they occurred had had some influence on economic policy instead of being pilloried by Brown and his acolytes. Maybe the worst of the economic crisis could have been averted.

Garton Ash also makes another very good point in this little snippet:

The very term "hung parliament" is calculated to deter. Like "hung jury", it suggests crippling indecision. But a hung parliament is actually a stronger parliament, since the executive is more dependent on the goodwill of the legislature. Properly arranged, this produces not weak government but limited government, something Conservatives have traditionally favoured.

Indeed. I would have thought that the constraints that a hung parliament could place on executive power would be right up the Conservatives' street. I wonder why it isn't...

Would a hung parliament be so terrible?

There is much coverage this morning of the market dip yesterday which seems to be being attributed to the possibility of a hung parliament.

The first thing I want to say is that my suspicion is that the markets are really dipping on the possibility of Labour being the largest single party (and hence in minority or coalition government) following the 2% Tory lead YouGov poll at the weekend. There being a hung parliament has been a distinct possibility for quite a while but a 2% Tory lead on a uniform national swing would make Labour the largest party. I think that is what the markets are reacting to.

But for a moment let's consider the possibility that what the markets are really spooked about is a hung parliament even if the Conservatives are the largest party. My response would be why? There are plenty of countries around the world who manage their economies perfectly well without one political party having total control. Also, do the markets seriously think that George Osborne is the only person who should steer us into recovery? Surely if he was forced to listen to expertise from other parties such as Vince Cable in order to decide what to do then he is less likely to make mistakes?

I hope that the Conservatives do not start to try and use the market wobble as evidence that the country must give them an overall majority. The British public will not take kindly to being coerced into voting a particular way by market sentiment. Don't forget, many people feel that they have been royally screwed over by these very same markets in the last two or three years.

If anything, I would suggest that a time of economic crisis such as now is the very time that a government needs to win arguments (rather than whip them through) and carry the majority with them.

Wasn't it George Osborne himself who said we are all in this together?

Tories dissolving a hung parliament quickly would be hypocrisy

Something I have heard frequently is that if we were to end up with a hung parliament after the general election with David Cameron's party having the largest number of seats then he would quickly go to the country again to try and get a majority.

Firstly, I am nowhere near convinced that this would be the case. If the result was so close as to deliver a hung parliament then there would be no guarantee that Cameron would end up in a better position after a second election. Indeed he could end up in a worse position and perhaps not even have the largest number of seats.

But secondly, let's assume that he does decide to dissolve parliament after a few months, say in the Autumn. Wouldn't this go against everything that the Tories normally say about our electoral system? They say that it gives the public the opportunity to express their clear view which should then be respected. Even though I disagree with our electoral system, to be fair to the Tories they are usually consistent on this and when they have lost in the past they have accepted the "will of the people". They have also of course accepted this will when they have won.

So why would they not accept that the will of the people is to give no one party overall control? There is nothing in our constitution that says one party must have an overall majority. By the Tories usual logic, there is in fact a very strong argument for saying that if there is a hung parliament then that is the will of the people and Cameron should respect that and try to govern as part of a minority or coalition government.

I do not see why Cameron should pick and choose which "clear message" from the electorate he should listen to.

Nick Clegg is right to rule out a coalition

So it looks like Nick Clegg has decided to go for option 3 as I highlighted in this post back in November. He has ruled out a formal coalition with either of the other main parties. Instead he would look to support a Queen's Speech that included the following:

1) Investing extra funds in education through a pupil premium for disadvantaged children.

2) Tax reform, taking 4 million out of tax and raising taxes on the rich by requiring capital gains and income to be taxed at the same rate.

3) Rebalancing of the economy to put less emphasis on centralised banking and more on a new greener economy.

4) Political reforms, including changes to the voting system and a democratically elected Lords, that go further than proposed by Labour

I think on balance that this sort of approach is the right move. I have been asked numerous times by both Labour and Conservative activists which party I would want to go into coalition with and I have seen our senior MPs asked this over and over again. There is a danger that if we don't nip this in the bud it will dominate any discussion featuring the Lib Dems in the next few months and we find ourselves constantly being put in the position of defining ourselves in this way. Instead, Clegg has now set down the red lines in terms of what we would want to see before offering cooperation and has also eschewed the possibility of ministerial office for himself and colleagues.

I do wish that number 4 had been defined a bit more clearly though. Electoral reform can mean all sorts of different things. Far better to have said Single Transferable Vote and leave people in no doubt what we mean.

The interesting thing about this list though is that from what I have seen and heard I would imagine the Conservatives would have problems with some of these, especially number 4). It might mean that the party cannot support a Queen's Speech from them, however frankly that's their problem. There seemed to be a feeling around a few months ago that a hung parliament could be a nightmare scenario for the Lib Dems as pressure was put on us to agree with or vote down a putative Queen's Speech. As I said at the time:

The idea that Cameron could try to corner the Lib Dems ... I do not think is likely to work. It would be perfectly reasonable for us to support the things we agree with and oppose those we do not. If that meant voting down a Queen's Speech (if we were forced into that position) then so be it.

Now that Clegg has laid out the terms by which we would be willing to discuss supporting a minority government (of either main party), I very much hope spokespeople of both red and blue hues are regularly put on the spot and asked if they would be willing to support the Lib Dem principles outlines above.

That would make a nice change and I think people would be interested to hear their responses...

Why we should not be afraid of a hung parliament

With the latest Ipsos MORI poll for The Observer showing a reduced Conservative lead to only 6% (Con 37%, Labour 31%, LD 17%) talk of a potential hung parliament has reared its head again.

Indeed if these figures are put into the UK Polling Report swing calculator then we get the following:


So, the Conservatives would be only 2 seats ahead of Labour as the largest party but 38 seats short of an overall majority.

Before I continue I will just caveat that this is the narrowest lead for the Tories for almost a year and it could turn out to be a blip or an outlier. It is possible that Labour got a fillip from its recent by-election victory and that the polling numbers will return to within the range of the more typical recent trend in the next week or two (i.e. over a 10% gap).

However, for the purposes of the rest of this blogpost I want to discuss the practicalities of a hung parliament and what that might mean for the Lib Dems, seeing as various other bloggers, pundits and commentators are speculating on this today following this poll.

I have seen comment along the lines of "Lib Dems have most to fear from a hung parliament". Indeed Andrew Rawnsley writing in the Observer today on this subject says:

The prospect induces a jostle of emotions: a rare sensation of hope for Labour people, a creeping dread within Tories and a combination of both thrill and terror among Lib Dems.

Later in the same article he says:

For the Liberal Democrats, a hung parliament is usually seen as a dream scenario which would elevate Nick Clegg from also-ran to kingmaker with the power to choose the government with a twitch of his thumb. It would not work out like that. A hung parliament could as easily be a total nightmare for the Lib Dems. Imagine that the Conservatives have the most seats. Even if the Tories were interested in a coalition with the Lib Dems, the Conservatives are implacably opposed to electoral reform, the sine qua non if Mr Clegg were to try to sell a Lib-Con pact to his party. It is most likely that David Cameron would form a minority government, produce a Queen's Speech and a first budget, probably one full of cuts suggested by Vince Cable, and then dare the Lib Dems to defy the will of the electorate and look "irresponsible" by voting it down. This approach to governing without a majority has worked well for Alex Salmond's SNP government in Edinburgh. Cameron would likely try to copy Harold Wilson. He governed for a short period after 1964, when Labour got a very small majority, and after February 1974, when Labour did not have a majority at all, and then went for a second election to seek a stronger position.

I'm afraid I don't buy this "nightmare scenario" for the Lib Dems. A hung parliament is the sort of scenario that the Lib Dems been waiting for for years. It would finally give us a chance to wield some real power and exert our influence on policy and politics in a way that had been denied to us previously.

Let's have a quick rattle through the scenarios and see how they could all result in a "win" for us. I am going to assume for the purposes of this that the votes and seats are as outlined above.

1) In this scenario the combination of the Lib Dems with either of the two main parties would produce a workable majority. This would be the point of maximum leverage as we could negotiate with both Labour and the Conservatives. For me and I suspect many of my party colleagues the sticking point would be a commitment to a referendum on electoral reform. Labour may go for this, (although I am sure Brown would have to go as Rawnsley suggests elsewhere in his article as a pre-condition) although I accept that propping up a Labour administration would be very fraught. However if this was the price of getting the holy grail of a referendum on electoral reform then it may be that my party considered it worthwhile.

2) Another option is to go with trying to forge a coalition with the Conservatives. It may be very difficult to get them to accept the price of a referendum on electoral reform as part of the deal given their implacable opposition to this. However it is not impossible. The referendum could be proposed with the agreement that the different parties could campaign for or against it. Just declaring a referendum need not imply that they wish for the change to be implemented. It would simply be giving the people the option and allowing the debate to take place. Even this might be too much for the Conservatives of course but it is at least an option that could be explored.

3) If neither of the above scenarios come to pass then the other option is for the largest party (in this case the Conservatives) to form a minority government. In this situation they would require the support of at least another 38 MPs each time they wanted to pass a bill so the Lib Dems would be well placed to provide this voting block and would likely have their views taken into account as part of the legislative drafting process. The idea that Cameron could try to corner the Lib Dems as Rawnsley suggests above I do not think is likely to work. It would be perfectly reasonable for us to support the things we agree with and oppose those we do not. If that meant voting down a Queen's Speech (if we were forced into that position) then so be it.

I think scenario 3 is most likely and I do just want to finally explore a potential unintended consequence of it that I have not seen discussed anywhere else.

If Cameron was to form a minority government and then have to use all his political and diplomatic skills to try and govern like this by convincing enough non-Conservative MPs each time he wanted to pass a piece of legislation then he could find he begins to undermine his own case against electoral reform. One of the major arguments against a proportional system is that "First Past the Post" produces "strong government", i.e. big majorities which seem to be seen by default as a good thing. However in this situation, not only will FPTP have thrown up a hung parliament (proving that even FPTP does not always prevent this as its proponents often imply) but its primary cheerleaders, the Conservatives will find themselves having to disprove their own case in order to be a successful government. If they are successful in doing this then one of their key planks against a more proportional system is kicked out from under them, by themselves.

Any of thse scenarios would also of course give the Lib Dems the chance to show what we are capable of when we are in a position to wield some real power and influence on the executive either from inside or outside the government. It would be up to us to seize this opportunity and prove to the electorate that we can do a good job in this position and hence that it is worth voting for us. That is an opportunity to relish, not be afraid of.

I think we can derive significant "wins" from any of the situations described. All it would take is the will to do so.