General Election 2010: campaigns, choices and consequences

We have the hung parliament all of the polls have consistently promised.

In producing this situation the people have clearly chosen what, for each, has been their least-worst option. Nationwide and in Scotland this has left the smaller parties uncompetitive for reasons unique to each.

The least-worst options

The least-worst option for Labour voters has seen party stalwarts focus on retaining power rather than see their party consigned to a long exile from government. They summoned what it took to shore up their party to this end and they succeeded in doing just that – very particularly in Scotland where they yielded nothing.

The will of the party faithful to do this was fed by the greater clarity and forcefulness Gordon Brown found in the post-Rochdale closing says of the campaign, as he fought to stay in the only world he knows.

This late development in Brown’s performance came when, in desperation, he cut himself free from the groomers and spinners and found the core worth in an unvarnished sow’s ear.

The least-worst option for Conservative voters was born of a party in need of regeneration through power; and a new vote alienated from an increasingly rudderless and talentless Labour party and desperate for the smack of firm government.

These voters were driven mainly by thirst for change at all costs. In fear for the country’s economy, with the rogue engine of the collapse in Greece threatening to bring down the UK next, the additional Tory vote was focused on creating a position where the country’s financial predicament might be addressed with a rigour that it does not trust Labour, on performance, to deliver.

The Liberal Democrats were stopped dead in the water in this situation. As an untried party without experience of government and carrying a higher risk factor for that reason, they could be nobody’s least-worst option. However attractive they may have seemed, new support that might have moved to them chose the reassurance of the hold-fastness of Labour or the anything-but-the-Labour-messness of the Conservative vote.

Electoral Reform

Of the national vote:

• Liberal Democrats got 57 seats for 23%.
• Labour got 258 seats for 29.1%
• Conservatives 306 seats for 36.1%.

Nationwide, it took just over 0.4% to elect each Lib Dem MP; just over 0.1% to elect each Labour and each Conservative MP. So four times the number of voters were needed to send a Lib Dem MP to Westminster as opposed to what was needed to secure a seat for either of the two main parties.

In Scotland it took 0.9% to elect each of Labour’s 41 MPs – and 17% to elect the Conservatives single MP. Here it took almost 19 times as much of the electorate to elect a Tory MP as a Labour one.

The stark disenfranchisement of a significant proportion of the electorate in the current voting arrangements means that electoral reform must come now. Whatever he does to get it, Nick Clegg cannot afford to lose this one opportunity to bring it about.

This could see the return of Labour, with the Lib Dems and many others in a Rainbow coalition that may not last long. But if it delivers a fairer electoral system before it dies, it will have achieved a necessary and healthy change  for a UK in serious need of root and branch revision.

The imperative of UK constitutional reform

At the heart of this mess is the unresolved position of England in the United Kingdom. This is the largest and the wealthiest of the four home nations and the only one unable to control elements of it own domestic affairs.

This leaves Westminster acting simultaneously as an uber-Government responsible for a spectrum of common interests of the entire UK – and as an English parliament. But this is an English parliament in which MPs from the other home nations vote and, on occasion, radically influence the decisions taken.

We have written on the wrongness of this situation – in essential fairness and in constitutional governance – several times in the course of this general election campaign. Righting this properly is an imperative even greater than electoral reform.

However, this issue is, in the 2010 General Election result, hard wired to the need for electoral reform.

The Conservatives won 40& of the English vote, a clear mandate from that nation.

How will England – already, post-devolution, alone among the home nations in lacking any control whatsoever of its own domestic circumstances – react, if its chosen government is set aside by deals between the Labour Party it has soundly rejected and a random medley of AN Others, which may include the SNP?

There will be no integrity in the SNP case for an increase in Scotland’s devolved powers or its independence if it simultaneously capitalises on a fellow home nation’s disenfranchisement to seek selfish advantage. Scotland, of all of the home nations, should find fellow feeling and champion the English cause.

Alternatively, of course, if the Conservatives govern the UK, it will leave Scotland disenfranchised. This might see a minority Conservative administration or a Conservative-Liberal Democrat collaboration finding expression either as a full coalition or, more probably, through an informal ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement.

Such a situation would not square with Scotland’s strong Labour majority and its single Conservative MP (even with 17% of the Scottish vote needed to elect that one representative).

Immediate electoral reform is an imperative.

Scotland, devolution and political dishonesty

The choice of the least-worst option has been clearest of all in Scotland where there has been no change to the overall position of the three main parties.

Here the main impact of the campaign itself was to highlight the unfinished devolution process which leaves a situation open to fraud on voters through deliberately misleading campaigns. This fraud was perpetrated with total commitment by Labour and, in varying lesser degree by the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and by the SNP itself.

As we have said, the 2010 general election campaign was one of the most dishonest.

This centred on making cynical political use of the unresolved constitutional morass described above.

With Westminster informally acting also as the missing English Parliament, a national campaign for election to Westminster seats includes a focus on key domestic issues like health, education, policing and transport – which are devolved to the other regions but upon which Westminster legislates on behalf of England.

With a population as yet imperfectly schooled in the specifics of which powers are reserved to Westminster and which are devolved to the Scottish Parliament (and to the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland), there was an open door to fraud on the electorate.

The Labour Party, in a fight for survival that was as unprincipled as such struggles must, by definition, always be, marched first, fast and unequivocally through this door. Its manifesto utterly blurred the distinction between the matters reserved to Westminster and those devolved to Holyrood. Its elected representatives will at least be in a position to vote on reserved matters as they impact on Scottish interests – but will have absolutely no leverage rights on the matters devolved to Scotland. And these are the matters that most immediately affect people’s lives – like health, education, policing, transport.

This manifesto held out promises of popular (and currently unfundable) actions to be taken in these devolved matters which are not within the powers of Westminster nor within the current authority in Scotland of the Labour Party at Holyrood.

The other parties followed Labour swiftly through this  door of deception, and proceeded, in varying degree, to cement the voters’ unknowing constitutional confusion.  In order of speed through that door, we saw the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and finally the SNP  – which is at least currently capable of delivering something on these devolved issues, although not via the house to which we were electing representatives.

The price to be paid for this opportunism is further debasing of the coin of politics and an electorate with deliberate obstructions now set firmly in the path of its grasp of the new political context within which it votes.

The campaign

The 2010 campaign, conducted in circumstances of unparalleled fiscal ill health and peril, was one of the most dishonest seen.

Starting with the strategic confusing of the electorate on what powers are reserved and what are dissolved, the campaign went on to treat major national problems by pretending they weren’t there.

The serious and immediate issues facing the country as a whole remained unaddressed, with voters offered reassuring scenarios no party will have the financial latitude to deliver.

There was no admission of the fiscal realities of the UK’s current situation, no laying out of a range of options and consequences, just a blend of competitive scaremongering and groundless assurances.

There was no debate on the pros and cons of continued membership of the European Union and no discussion on immigration, both matters of real concern to very many voters.

Similarly there was no serious address of the country’s military interventions in the affairs of other countries, nor on the related matters of appropriate defence strategies and their impact on the national budget. Neither was there a focus on the calibre of the current management of what passes for defence strategy and, crucially, of the armed forces themselves and of the management systems governing key issues like defence procurement. This entire cluster of concerns has been left to the coming introduction of a Strategic Defence Review to which all the parties have signed up.

Without wide-ranging discussion and debate, the anxieties at the heart of each of these matters above – and the poor management that cripples them all, remain unaddressed.

In Scotland

The overall position of no change between 2005 and 2010 in the number of Westminster seats held by each of the parties disguises shifts which may be small but are significant.

• Labour has strengthened its position in a demonstration of its rootedness in Scotland’s once-industrial heartland, where the vast majority of its population is located. Within the Scottish Parliament it has a mediocre, lack-lustre and monotonous leader in Iain Grey and few alternatives to hand in the party in Holyrood. The return of Henry McLeish is improbable – and it is not impossible that the SNP might compete for his contribution. The Former First Minister, McLeish, has come through the painful oblivion of his exile from Scottish politics (on the basis of a very minor incident that always was, as he described it himself, ‘a muddle not a fiddle’). He has emerged as a real force, objective, experienced and wise. Somewhere, somehow, Scottish politics needs him.
• The Liberal Democrats in Scotland are now associated with and have contributed to an immediate position of real influence in the emergence of how the UK is to be governed in the immediate future. It may be part of a lever that brings electoral reform in the adoption of a Westminster voting system that fairly reflects the balance of political affiliation in the electorate. As its Scottish leader, Tavish Scott, has now settled to his return to prominence in his party. The stability of his views and actions has matured and his development from this base will be interesting to follow.
• The Conservatives have seen their vote grow, albeit very modestly but must view that as an opening to be pursued vigorously and immediately – particularly since another election may not be far away. Whether or not the brake is the now long-distant memory of Thatcherism, Annabel Goldie is a massive electoral asset to the party. Here is a politician with rooted values, a no-nonsense set of pragmatic perspectives, a real ability to listen to, connect with and remember people she meets en passant and a sense of fun. She doesn’t fit their mould but the Cameronians will sideline her at their party’s peril.
• The Scottish Nationalist party (SNP), Scotland’s current governing administration, is in the most ambiguous and  disabling position in any Westminster election. It offers no UK-wide electoral option, as do the three main UK parties. It’s political philosophy involves secession from the UK and removal from its UK parliament. It has a small number of MPs (6) maintaining a watching brief at Westminster and causing legitimate mayhem where possible – backing the Impeach Blair campaign (a very worthy cause) and triggering the investigation into Blair’s alleged cash-for-honours scam (another such). The SNP is at once involved in and disengaged from Westminster – a classic come-to-me-go-from me situation. Its conduct of the 2010 campaign was damaged by the fact that it has clearly not discovered and distilled an electorally convincing attitude to this conundrum.

We will shortly be publishing a separate analysis of the SNP’s current position which, among other things, will examine issues embedded in its 2010 General Election campaign.

Now for some fun

Best campaign

For us the best campaign was the one mounted by the Scottish Conservatives. In Argyll at least, it was more high profile and more fun. Scottish party leader, Annabel Goldie, spent significant time in Argyll supporting Gary Mulvaney’s campaign. Leading members of the national  party – William Hague, Francis Maude and Dr Liam Fox, visited. Then there was Team Mulvaney (during the school holidays and university vacation) and finally there was the Scottish Job – the alternative motorcade of three Minis – red, white and blue, whizzing around Scotland – including Argyll – in the last sweep of the campaign.

Rivals plead poverty and point to the Tories’ Ashcroft fund. They would be better advised to examine their own imaginative poverty. Politics needs to lighten the spirit and delight the heart as much as to engage the brain. The Tories called this one with good judgment, keeping the balance where it needed to be. The other parties need to raise their game.

It’s not about money. It’s about inventiveness and mass attack. Every party has members who will offer support-in-kind in matters which would lend themselves to imaginative and attractive campaigning. It might be spray painted second hand cars. It might be a timber lorry for a weekend, with the back of it decked out as a floating bandstand, acting as a recruiting sergeant and a high-stage mobile soapbox. It might be a flotilla of boats, racing in sails in party colours. It might be a James Bond-style team of skiers making mincemeat of the black runs in the Cairngorms in party livery. It might be tying yellow ribbons around every tree in a city park or a community woodland – and making a carnival of it when all the other parties come out to play with their own ribbons. Whatever it is, it needs to be fun, it needs to embrace the carnivalesque, to be informed but not didactic.

Best moment of the campaign

This was in Dunoon, captured by the photograph at the top.

It was a Saturday morning when two rival political factions were street-walking: the Tories with Gary Mulvaney and Annabel Goldie and the SNP with Mike Mackenzie and party activist, Dave McEwan Hill. The two groups kept on bumping into each other in Argyll Street with Ms Goldie’s good natured banter on these occasions appreciated by Mr McEwan Hill.

Then, as they met yet again and it threatened to rain, the knowing and quick witted McEwan Hill, held his umbrella courteously over Goldie and Mulvaney, as if to keep them dry.

The umbrella was a large yellow SNP-branded golf-sized job – and provided the political picture of the week: SNP take Goldie and Mulvaney under their umbrella. Brilliant.

This was politics at its most attractive.

And a last note on communications

All the parties need to get into today’s world in campaign presentation and reach. There is no excuse for not making the maximum use of Internet-based technology – which is cheap, widely accessible, environmentally sound and can be interactive. In Argyll, the Scottish Green candidate was by far the most sussed and, already using Twitter and Facebook, began an experiment with Skype-In sessions – which is to continue.

They’ve all got from now until next year, when the focus will certainly be on the Scottish parliamentary elections, with the lively possibility of another general election before or shortly after that. They’ve not got a moment to lose.