Baffled, belittled, betrayed

Why IS this Election so odd? Because, says PM’s Oxford tutor, the main parties’ stance on gay marriage, Europe and immigration has left Britons...

TOMORROW the Queen dissolves Parliament and the Election campaign begins. It will be the strangest Election of modern times and leaves the experts baffled. Most expected that, with economic recovery, and Cameron ahead of Miliband in the polls as favoured Prime Minister, the Tories would pull ahead. That has not happened. Labour and the Tories remain neck and neck. Only a fool, or a social scientist, would predict the outcome.

The two major parties now attract a diminishing share of voters – about two in three in 2010 compared with more than 96 per cent in 1951. Voters have a wider choice than ever before.

In England, they can opt for three other alternatives – not just the Lib Dems, but also Ukip and the Greens – all of whom score more than five per cent in the polls. In Scotland and Wales, there is a further alternative – the Nationalists.

The weakening of the two party system makes a hung Parliament very likely. But, curiously, a small overall majority for the Tories or Labour could prove even more unstable than a hung parliament.

The Tories would be at the mercy of their Eurosceptic Right wing, as John Major was in 1992. He had a majority of just 21, and used to say that he was at the mercy of 13 of them who were quite mad. They made his life a misery when he sought to ratify the Maastricht Treaty reforming the European Union.

A Labour government with a small majority would be at the mercy of its Left wing which opposes austerity.

Labour, contrary to Tory propaganda, is committed not to a splurge in public spending, but to public expenditure cuts, though less severe than Cameron and Osborne are proposing. But Labour austerity would disappoint the expectations of its supporters, many of whom look for rapid improvements in the NHS and social care.

Speaking two weeks ago at the London School of Economics, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon advised English voters to support the Greens or what she called ‘ progressive’ Labour candidates, that is candidates opposed to austerity. She hopes to create an anti-austerity bloc in the next Parliament, composed of the SNP, Greens and Left-wing Labour. That would cause problems for Miliband even if he won a majority.

BUT, obviously, a hung parliament is more likely. The key question is whether it will lead to stable government, as it did in 2010. Many then thought, including myself, that the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition could not last. But it has, and with a comfortable majority of 78 in the Commons it has never really looked in danger of being brought down in Parliament.

The danger in 2015 is that no majority coalition can be formed. Under our electoral system, Ukip and the Greens are unlikely to win many seats. That is why both support proportional representation. The SNP, which may well win many seats, will not deal with the Tories and will not join Labour in a coalition.

If, as is likely, the Lib Dems lose seats then, even if they were prepared to enter another coalition, that might not be able to secure the 325 seats needed for a majority. This would mean that no two parties – other than the Tories and Labour – could command a majority. We would have a fragmented hung parliament. There would have to be a minority government.

The last minority government following a General Election occurred in February 1974 after Ted Heath had gone to the country in the middle of a miners’ strike asking the voters to decide ‘Who Governs?’ The voters, however, refused to give a clear answer and, in the fragmented hung parliament that followed, Labour governed as a minority for seven months. There was then a second General Election in October at which Labour won a small majority.

Minority governments do not last long and, being dependent on bargaining with other parties, find it difficult to take long-term decisions. The longest-lasting was between 1929 and 1931, but that was buttressed for part of the time by a pact between Labour and the Liberals.

In the past, the Prime Minister could try, as Labour did in 1974, to escape from the minority situation by dissolving Parliament. But the 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, providing for fiveyear parliaments, makes that option more difficult.

Besides, there is no reason to believe a second General Election would, as in 1974, deliver a majority government. It could easily reproduce the same result. Why have we entered this messy period of multi-party politics, and will it prove more than a temporary condition? I believe it will, because it stems from a new social cleavage in British politics, a cleavage between those who have benefited from globalisation, from social and economic change, and those who have been left behind.

The two major parties, together with the Lib Dems, represent the beneficiaries. Their leaders all believe Britain should stay in the EU. They all broadly welcome immigration. They all favour gay marriage. But many voters do not favour these things, and feel unrepresented by the mainstream parties.

The typical Ukip supporter is not, as we used to think, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, a retired Army officer spluttering over his gin and tonic at the 19th hole, but a working-class voter or small businessman or shopkeeper who feels betrayed and belittled by the system.

Blair’s New Labour sought to win over graduates and middleclass professionals – those who aspired to leave the working class. Cameron’s Conservatives sought to distance themselves from the image of the ‘nasty party’ by rejecting Thatcherism and embracing modernisation; while Cameron and Osborne, liberal-minded men, seem remote in lifestyle and understanding from those left behind. Ukip, in consequence, is now the most working-class party in English politics.

The SNP in Scotland is different from Ukip in many respects. But it, too, represents the left behind. The vote in the independence referendum last September was a class vote. Labour areas in the west central belt around Glasgow voted ‘Yes’ to independence, while middle-class SNP areas in Perthshire and Aberdeenshire voted ‘No’.

West Dunbartonshire, with nearly the lowest life expectancy in Scotland, voted ‘Yes’, East Dunbartonshire, with nearly the highest, voted ‘No’.

ALEX SALMOND and Nicola Sturgeon are doing to Labour in Scotland what Nigel Farage is doing to the Tories in England. The SNP could well be the third-largest party in the next Parliament, even though it will probably secure fewer votes than the Lib Dems, Ukip and the Greens. That will strain the Union to breaking point.

In England, Cameron says if you vote for Farage you will get Miliband. In Scotland, Miliband says if you vote SNP, you will get Cameron. But, to the left behind, Cameron and Miliband are equivalent – members of an Oxbridge liberal elite who represent the exam-passing classes who do not understand the aspirations of the less fortunate.

That is why the multi-party system is here to stay and why we are about to enter an era of political instability. Anyone seeking a quiet life should go abroad for the next six weeks.

l Vernon Bogdanor’s books include The Coalition And The Constitution.

We are about to enter an era of political instability