THEY’RE OFF in the British general election campaign. Though stumbling and with an attempt to dislodge one jockey before the first fence, the race appears likely to be one of the longest in the recent history of what are normally four-week contests. May 6th remains the most likely day.
Wednesday’s failed mini-heave by two ex-ministers against prime minister Gordon Brown hardly warranted the term “plot”. It was more an ill-timed testing of the water, a last hopeless chance before the election to displace a prime minister of whom many Labour MPs and cabinet members privately despair. But to do so would probably be to invite for certain the defeat already anticipated. Brown survived easily but was hurt electorally, with only the most lukewarm signals of support from cabinet heavyweights.
In the opening days of the New Year, Labour, a strong team with a hapless leader, and the Tories, a bunch of unknowns led by a relatively popular but untested David Cameron, have begun to rehearse the economic argument that will be the central theme of the election: whether the Labour three-card trick of reducing the deficit while increasing spending is plausible. Or whether the Tories will destroy the possibility of recovery through severe immediate public spending cuts.
The race, until recently by most accounts a certain Tory win, has been given new spice by the closing of the poll gap by Labour, now 13 years in power, to between nine and 10 percentage points. The Conservatives, because of the vagaries of the British first-past-the-post system, need a swing of over seven points on the last general election to secure the slimmest majority, 10 points to get a governing majority, an extraordinary but possible Becher’s Brook-like hurdle. And so talk has now turned to the interesting possibility – some say probability – of a hung parliament with the Liberal Democrats (and unionists ?) holding the balance of power.
So some uncharacteristic wooing has been under way. Mr Brown, in a weekend TV interview, suggested common ground with the Lib Dems on electoral reform, the environment and public services. And Tory leader David Cameron insisted there was “a lot less disagreement than there used to be” between their parties.
However, the truth is that while the Lib Dems are currently silent on their preferred partner, few doubt it would be Labour. Not least of the Tories’ difficulties would be the Lib Dems’s price – introducing a proportionality to the voting system that would be devastating to the Conservatives at the next election, and a positive engagement with the EU, anathema to the majority of Mr Cameron’s deeply Eurosceptic party. And to win an overall majority, Mr Cameron in particular needs to create clear blue water. His party must take significant numbers of Lib Dem seats and will probably want to campaign on the “dangers” of instability that coalition government supposedly represents.
For beleaguered Mr Brown, though showing signs on Wednesday in the Commons of a new vigour and spirit, the race promises a bruising uphill run all the way.