Election 2010 Blog up for several awards

We are pleased to report that the social media campaign that we ran during this year’s general election has been nominated for three awards.

The How-Do Public Services Communications Awards have shortlisted the blog in two categories – Most Innovative use of New Media and Best Low Budget Campaign.

The campaign has also been shortlisted in the Charted Institute of Public Relations Pride Awards 2010 (Midlands Region) for Best Use of Digital PR. The blog - which ran from February through June, and featured both staff and Phd students from the School - generated media coverage for the university estimated at a value of £4 million and material from it reached an audience of some 46 million people.

Thanks to all who took the time to read.

Same candidate elected, in two different constituencies, for two different parties

The parliamentary constituencies of Feverford in Kent and Trough in Hertfordshire are not especially well known. But linking these two seats - one Conservative, one Labour - is one astonishing fact, somehow missed in all the acres of coverage about the election. They are represented, with the aid of a false beard, by the same person.
In fact, the election of James Stewart-Blundel (the Conservative) and Jim Blundel (Labour) occurred over 50 years ago and is (of course) a work of fiction. This most strange of political coalitions, two parties embodied in the same person, is contained in the 1953 novel Gentian Violet by Edward Hyams, best read as a commentary on the stifling atmosphere of 1950s consensus politics. For more on political fiction, including toilets and killer robots, try this article, in the latest edition of Total Politics.

Professor Philip Cowley

Why we need a stronger Electoral Commission

The election may be over – Thirsk and Malton notwithstanding – but the fall out from the polling station queues continues. The Electoral Commission’s Interim Report came out last week. It makes for fascinating – and at times, revealing – reading.
Problems occurred at 27 polling stations, across 16 constituencies. The Commission estimate that they involved at least 1,200 people. As a proportion of the 40,000 polling stations in action during the day (or the 29.6 million people who voted), they are a tiny proportion, but some of the administrative cock-ups found are pretty dire.

The next Great Reform Act? Pull the other one, Nick.

"...for someone who says he has embraced a new way of doing politics Clegg’s grand rhetoric bears all the hallmarks of the spin and over-selling which the previous Labour administration was said to be guilty of..."

Nick Clegg has called the new government’s measures to reform politics ‘the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great reforms of the 19th Century’, indeed since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The new Baldwin?

"I for one think that the past is as much of a guide to the future as our current neophilia. On that basis, LibDems beware!"

Few Liberal Democrats have put their coalition with the Conservatives into historical perspective. This is partly due to all politicians’ intoxication with the supposed novelty of any situation these days, something they share with most of their fellow citizens. How many times did Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg assert their embrace of a ‘new politics’?

And the election should be called....

"The election battle will be succeeded by the battle of the election books..."

Philip Cowley has asked us what we would call the last election? I think we should name it the Don’t Know Election.

But what would you call it?

"...if you were going to name the 2010 election, what would you call it?"

The opening book in the ‘Nuffield’ election series – The British General Election of 1945 – lists a series of ‘named’ elections: 1874, when the Liberals went down in a flood of gin and beer; the Midlothian election of 1880; the Khaki election of 1900; the Chinese Slavery election of 1906; the People's Budget election of 1910; the 'Hang the Kaiser' election of 1918; and the 1924 ‘Zinovieff letter’ election.

Forget the 55% rule. This is what will really limit Parliament

"...the routine defeats of the government by the upper House, and the subsequent negotiation and compromise between the two – could still be seriously limited..."

Leave aside for now the fuss about the 55% rule and its impact on parliament. For all the talk about preventing votes of no confidence from dissolving parliament, defeats on votes of confidence are already extremely rare. The truth is that most votes of confidence are dull affairs, in which all the MPs of each party simply rally to the flag, and the government survives.

What’s happening to the BNP?

"It’s tempting to write the BNP off...but...one of Griffin's saving graces will be the distinct lack of leadership calibre among potential would-be-successors..."

Aside from a bigoted woman in Rochdale and the rise of Nick Clegg, one of the stories of the 2010 campaign was the prospect of a breakthrough by the BNP. This was especially true in outer-east London, where all eyes focused on the ‘Battle of Barking’ between Labour incumbent Margaret Hodge and BNP leader Nick Griffin. Eyes also focused on local elections, where the BNP looked poised to take control of Barking and Dagenham council.
As I predicted in an earlier blog, the performance was a disappointing one. When all votes had been counted Griffin was pushed into third while his party lost every one of their seats on the local council. The BNP went from being tipped to take over the borough to being kicked out in one night. Their activists went from anticipating control over a £200 million budget to being, in the words of Griffin, “heartbroken”. What happened?

Before answering the question a reframing exercise is needed. Despite media claims which have followed the election, the core BNP vote did not collapse. The party more than doubled their number of votes, saved more than 60 deposits and their average vote in seats contested stood at around 3.8 per cent, down only 0.5 per cent on the result in 2005 despite standing more than three times as many candidates. The party also polled well in several seats where there was little or no campaigning on the ground. Even in Barking, Griffin attracted more BNP voters than in 2005 and, in fact, received more votes than any BNP candidate in the party’s history.

These votes, however, were swamped by a resurgent Labour vote and a boost of 11 per cent in turnout. This turnout enabled Hodge to increase her majority in a contest which saw almost 100 Labour MPs lose their seats. The mobilization of the Labour and anti-fascist votes owed much to the activities of the Hope Not Hate campaigners in and around Barking.

Reflecting the changing nature of anti-fascist opposition, these campaigners even recruited the help of an Obama strategist and employed innovative techniques to mobilize the anti-BNP vote. The campaign was also geared around Margaret Hodge, who took the campaign and Griffin’s challenge incredibly seriously and personally. In the face of this approach, the BNP’s pavement politics didn’t have a chance.

Yet there were internal problems too. In the weeks leading up to polling day, a court had ruled that the party’s membership policy remained discriminatory, a leading activist allegedly threatened to kill Griffin and the party became engaged in what many activists saw as an unnecessary dispute with Marmite (an early version of the BNP broadcast had featured a Marmite logo and, unsurprisingly, Marmite took legal action). Nor did footage of a BNP organizer brawling in the street with Asian youths improve prospects.

These factors combined to stifle the breakthrough. After returning from the count in Barking, Griffin perhaps took his mind back to 1979. The parallels between the performance of the BNP in 2010 and the National Front (NF) in ’79 are striking. Like the NF, Griffin ignored calls for a more targeted approach and went ‘all out’ by fielding 338 candidates, the largest number in the history of the extreme right. And like the NF, when this strategy failed to deliver the party descended into their favourite pastime: infighting.

This infighting has since escalated to the point of rival activists setting up their own website to call for far-ranging changes inside the party. Some of these activists are very influential and respected voices. The changes they propose are organizational rather than ideological: greater financial competence and transparency are the main ones.

But they also provide a striking insight into the political incompetence which has been at work inside the BNP. For instance, some claim that over the past year the BNP has distributed in the region of 30 million leaflets which feature a mobile phone number that was no longer in use.

This infighting will head in one of two directions. Either the activists coalescing under the banner of greater professionalism and financial transparency will exit and establish their own organization. Or, Griffin will hang on and be forced to make significant internal changes to acquiesce their concerns, most likely by opening up party accounts or distancing himself from a businessman in Belfast who has grown increasingly influential within the party.

It’s tempting to write the BNP off. But I said this week in The Guardian, one of Griffin’s saving graces will be the distinct lack of leadership calibre among potential would-be-successors. Some have too much baggage; others have sat in a council chamber but flounder in the face of media scrutiny. Griffin might have handled Question Time badly, but he’s easily the best of a bad bunch. He’s also keenly aware of the mistakes made in the 1970s, and his leadership is based on a party constitution which makes it virtually impossible for him to be removed. Success or significant internal reform will need to be delivered, and delivered promptly if the party is to endure in their current form.

Matthew Goodwin

What’s 5% between friends?

One of the most striking statements of the last few days was William Hague’s claim that ‘the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May, 2015’. That is, by the way, 7 May. One for the diary, maybe? And it’s all because of this clause in the coalition agreement:

The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

This has provoked a series of complaints, about being its supposedly undemocratic nature. It would, for example, stop a government defeated by one vote on a vote of confidence, as Callaghan was in 1979, from having to go to the country.

Although it’s not very clear from the coalition agreement, what the scheme is doing is decoupling two concepts: ‘confidence’ and ‘dissolution’. So a government that lost a vote of confidence (like Callaghan’s) would still be expected to resign. But, unlike at present, that would not trigger an (almost) automatic general election. Instead an alternative governing majority would be sought, perhaps under a new Prime Minister, perhaps under a new arrangement of parties. If no alternative could be found, then parties would come together to trigger the 55% dissolution requirement and an election would be held.

One problem that many of those arguing against this have is that fixed term parliaments were a manifesto pledge for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats (though not the Conservatives). And here’s the problem: if you have fixed term parliaments, then you need a mechanism of some sort that prevents the governing party ending them at will. Else, how do you simply stop the government deliberately losing a vote of confidence, and triggering an election, whenever it likes? A fixed term parliament, without some mechanism to stop that sort of manoeuvring, isn’t fixed at all.

But even if you accept that the ideas are worth considering, there are still all sorts of interesting questions:

1. Why 5 years? Most recent UK Parliaments have lasted for four years. Moreover, Scottish, Welsh and London elections are on a four-year cycles, establishing Westminster on a four-year cycle as well – and starting now - would also ensure that they didn’t occur on the same days.

2. Why 55%? If the aim is to stop a party collapsing its own government, then 55% seems very low. Whilst it would work in this particular parliament, in most recent elections (including 1983, 1987, 1997, and 2001) the government would have had enough MPs to trigger the 55% hurdle on their own. The Scottish Parliament, which has a similar scheme, has a 66% hurdle, and that would be more significant.

3. How is this to be embedded? It is not clear what this ‘binding’ resolution is. Westminster doesn’t have binding resolutions, or laws. What is to stop a government – with a majority, but not 55% - simply repealing the bill establishing fixed parliaments, and then triggering an election? It might look a bit shifty, but it could always be justified in the ‘good of the country’ or something similar.

4. Did anyone consult the Queen about this, since formally dissolution is in the hands of the Monarch?

5. And what effect will this have on party discipline? Before, governments always had recourse to making an issue a vote of confidence, which would make all but the most recalcitrant MPs come back into line, for fear of triggering an election. Under the proposed scheme, losing a vote of confidence might bring down the administration, but as long as it could muster 55% it wouldn’t need to go to the country.

These are interesting times to be studying the constitution; they might also be interesting times to be studying party discipline.


Professor Philip Cowley

An end to New Labour...

"Would either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown want to claim the paternity of the Lib-Con coalition..."

The New Labour government is now, finally, at an end. After thirteen years, it passes into history – and in a strangely anti-climactic way. There was no sturm und drang, no (with the greatest of respect to Jacqui Smith) cathartic Portillo moment for its opponents on election night, no flag waving on Downing Street for the incoming government, although I am sure plenty of Bolly will be spilt in the pubs and clubs of Notting Hill over the next few days.

One reason for this lack of drama is that the end has been so long in coming. Since 2008 few could have had any expectation that Gordon Brown would win a fourth victory for his party. How he must be regretting not holding that much-trailed election in the autumn of 2007. The other reason is that – apart from the brief flurry of hope yesterday – since the results were confirmed on May 7th there was really only one game in town, and it wasn’t one to which New Labour was invited to play. And finally, there is the context for the election itself – continuing financial instability and the generally agreed need to cut government spending on an unprecedented scale. Things can only get better? Not until they get very much worse.

When Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994 he talked of making sure the twenty-first century would be the ‘progressive century’ in the same way as the twentieth century had been the ‘Conservative century’ given how long that party held national office. The basis for this progressive century was to be a new relationship between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. For division between these two parties Blair – following David Marquand and many others – claimed had allowed the Right to rule.

For a time Blair brought the two parties together – and even offered Paddy Ashdown a place in his Cabinet and created a Cabinet sub-committee on which Labour ministers and leading Liberals discussed policy. There was also, most crucially, Lord Jenkins’ Independent Commission on the Voting System, which proposed AV plus – a half way house between Proportional Representation and the Alternative Vote. Blair however backed off from putting this to a referendum as he had promised, in part because his Cabinet – where Gordon Brown had a very loud voice – rejected the need for electoral reform. At the time Labour had a majority of 179 and was confident of at least two more election victories under the old system.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there is an irony, then, in the events of the last few days. New Labour leaves office with the Liberals in coalition with the Conservatives, a party now led by a man who has described himself as ‘progressive’ and has said his government will be, above all things, ‘fair’.

Margaret Thatcher has claimed that one of her greatest achievements was – by destroying socialism - the creation of New Labour. As Thatcher also said on the verge of leaving Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister: ‘It’s a funny old world’. Would either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown want to claim the paternity of the Lib-Con coalition? Probably not; not just yet anyway.

Professor Steven Fielding

The Alternative Vote, why bother?

The campaign for and the outcome of the General Election has put electoral reform firmly on the political agenda. Somewhat surprisingly the alternative vote (AV) has become the most discussed option for replacing the current first-past-the-post system (FPTP), embraced by Labour, and even allowed by the Conservatives to be voted upon in a referendum. This potential acceptance by the two major parties is understandable, as AV is for them the safest option, and least likely to break their joint hegemony over British politics.

When thinking about the different ways in which elections can be organised, the first question to be answered is whether one wants each constituency electing only a single MP, or multi-member constituencies.

Elections for single member constituencies can be organised in three fashions: first-past-the-post, alternative vote, and approval voting. But irrespective of which of these is used, all single member constituency systems are prone to disproportional outcomes, which means that the shares of votes and shares of seats can diverge widely.

AV thus does not solve the problem of dis-proportionality that lays at the root of many demands for electoral reform. It may even turn out less proportional than FPTP. In other words, it is also likely to yield parliaments where a vote share of only 35% yields 55% of the seats (as was the case for Labour in the previous parliament). because Labour and the Conservatives are most likely to be in a position to benefit from this, it is quite understandable that they favour AV if the call for electoral reform cannot be stifled any more.

What is ‘solved’ by AV is a ‘problem’ that hardly anyone cared about, namely that an individual MP be elected with fewer than 50% of the votes in his/her constituency. AV changes this by asking voters to rank their preferences for the candidates. If no candidate has an absolute majority of first preferences, then the one with the fewest first preference votes is eliminated, and his/her votes are allocated to the other candidates on the basis of the 2nd preferences on those ballots. Applying this, if necessary repeatedly, will guarantee that the eventual winner will have been supported by a majority in the constituency (a ‘majority’ that then consists of a mixture of 1st preferences, plus added 2nd preferences, possibly 3rd preferences, and so on). But this does not do anything to diminish the discrepancy between vote shares and seat shares across the country as a whole, and which motivates much of the support for electoral reform.

AV may even prevent a party that is more preferred than any of its competitors from winning in a constituency. Take, for example, a constituency with three candidates on the ballot, let’s call them Harriet, Chris and William. Voters are asked to rank their preferences for these on their ballot papers. A possible outcome would be the following:

40 % of the voters give 1st preference to Harriet, 2nd preference to Chris, and 3rd to William.;

35 % give 1st preference to William, 2nd preference to Chris, and 3rd to Harriet;

25 % give 1st preference to Chris, 2nd preference to William, and 3rd to Harriet.

Because none of the candidates has more than 50% of the 1st preferences, Chris is eliminated because he got the smallest number of 1st preferences. The 25% of the ballots which ranked Chris first are now allocated to William and Harriet, depending on the second preferences. In the example above, everyone who ranked Chris first ranked William second, so all these votes are transferred to William, who thus obtains a comfortable majority of 60% (35% + 25%) and wins the seat.

But actually, Chris, who was eliminated, was more preferred than either Harriet or William! 65 % of the voters prefer Chris over William (40% + 25%), while 60% prefer Chris over Harriet (35% + 25%). All that this shows is that the ‘majority’ with which William would be elected under the AV system, is an artificial one.

All in all, AV does not solve the biggest problem that leads to the call for electoral reform. It does not yield more proportional outcomes than the current FPTP system, which is exactly why both Labour and Conservatives can conceivably live with it without giving up their dreams of an absolute majority of the seats. And finally, AV can easily lead to the elimination of a candidates who is more preferred than any of his or her competitors.

In a next contribution to this blog more about other alternatives to FPTP.

Professor Cees van der Eijk

Clingendael 1 LibDems 0

"Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road..."

With a group of eager-to-learn postgraduate students on an MA Programme in International Relations, I recently undertook a one-day crash course in negotiation at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations at Clingendael.

Here’s what I learnt.

First, zero-sum negotiations are hard. What you gain, I lose - and trust is a problem. It’s like buying a second-hand car from a stranger. What we really want is positive-sum or ‘integrative’ negotiation. I trade what I value less for what you value less and vice versa. We package different issues so that we can both win. That’s all pretty straightforward.

Slightly less intuitive is the route to optimising the outcome when the negotiating partners have unequal resources. The weaker party may maximise their own benefits by allowing the stronger party to take more. Looking for equality may be sub-optimal for the weaker party.

For all of this to work, however, there are some background conditions that need to be secured: a clear negotiating mandate, clear priorities, commitment to a relationship that extends across time, measurable outputs. Could any of this help Mr Clegg on the neatly-chiselled points of his painful dilemma?

It’s clear that the junior partner in any negotiation can overplay his hand – and end up with nothing (or, rather, nothing more than he began with). But, of course, the senior partners also have a very great deal to lose in walking away.

Uncertainty has a place in any real world negotiation but in Mr Clegg’s circumstances this is multiplex almost to the point of bewilderment. It’s possible to lose and the stakes are very high but the value of a win may justify some very high-risk behaviour.

Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road.

Professor Chris Pierson

ConDemnation?

"But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?"

Amidst all the speculation regarding negotiations about the creation of a post-election arrangement between the Conservatives and LibDems I haven’t seen any reference to the last time the Liberals (as they were then) put in a minority government.

Actually, they did this twice in the 1920s, first in 1923 and then in 1929. Neither time will give Nick Clegg much comfort.

After the 1923 election Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resigned as his Conservative government had lost its majority, although with 258 seats (and 38.5 per cent of votes) his remained the largest party in the Commons. After some hand wringing Henry Asquith decided that his 158 Liberal MPs should allow Ramsay MacDonald to hold office, the two parties sharing a common position on free trade. They supported Labour on a supply and confidence basis. The MacDonald government however lasted just ten months, after losing a vote of confidence, having achieved very little of substance.

The resulting 1924 election saw Baldwin return to power with a working majority. The Liberals, having angered many of its supporters for enabling Labour to hold power for the first time, lost 118 seats and its share of the vote collapsed from 29.7 per cent (and virtual parity with Labour) to 17.8 per cent. They would never again enjoy such a strong position as that held in 1923.

After five years as Prime Minister Baldwin lost the 1929 election. This time Labour had become the largest party in the Commons but at 287 seats MacDonald was still short of a majority. The Liberals, by now led by David Lloyd George, had 59 MPs (albeit elected by 23.6 per cent of voters) and again allowed Labour to take power. This time, however, there were some strings attached – specifically a royal commission on electoral reform. Unfortunately for the Liberals by the time Labour left office in 1931, amidst a grave financial crisis, it had failed to pass any legislation.

Of course, just because this earlier Liberal experience of supporting minority governments was so miserable does not necessarily mean it will be in the future. But what was it that Karl Marx said about History repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce?

Professor Steven Fielding

Oh dear...

"It turns out to be all leaflets and trudging and stubby pencils..."

Anyone who doesn’t enjoy politics would be well advised to avoid today’s papers. Not only is there the masses of detailed analysis of the election results that always follows an election – loads of wonderful pie charts, tables, and multi-coloured maps – but there’s also story after story about hung parliament discussions and possibilities.

I would, though, recommend one piece in particular: Suzanne Moore’s column in the Mail on Sunday. Moore stood as a candidate at this election, in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She is a little coy about her performance (she got 285 votes, or 0.6%), but the piece is worth reading for the insights that standing gave her about politics:

It is easy enough to watch The Thick of It and read spin-doctors’ diaries and look at blogs and imagine endless sophisticated strategising. It turns out to be all leaflets and trudging and stubby pencils and rows of people counting paper under strip lighting. It’s not about grand policy statements but listening to people rant about parking. Or the arms trade. Or their burst pipes. Or their rents. Or Afghanistan. Politicians, I now realised, over-promise because somehow punters ask them.

To which, the only response is: welcome to politics.

Perhaps all columnists in major papers – especially those who frequently pontificate about the political process – should be made to go through a similar experience, so that they understand what it is that they write about.

And yes, the same would apply to politics academics.

Professor Philip Cowley

Despite expenses, incumbent MPs do well

One of the most intriguing – and unexpected - features of Thursday’s election was the relative success of local, incumbent, MPs. The BBC/ITN/Sky exit poll found that in Labour held seats with new candidates, the Con-Lab swing was 7.5%. But in seats with incumbents, the swing was just 4%. The former would have been enough to win a majority for the Conservatives.

The latter was not. In other words, all the work put in by the much maligned incumbent members of the Parliamentary Labour Party over the last few years in their constituencies – holding surgeries, answering letters, dealing with constituents’ problems and so on – may have been enough to prevent a Conservative majority.

Of the top 100 Conservative targets, there were just nine Labour-held seats which the Conservatives did not take. Of these nine, eight were held by incumbent MPs.

You can see this in seats close to the University of Nottingham, where one popular hardworking local MP, Vernon Coaker, survived, despite holding exactly the sort of seat that the Conservatives were winning elsewhere. And in Broxtowe, right next door to the University, another equally hard working and popular local MP, Nick Palmer, almost hung on, limiting the Lab-Con swing to just 2.6%, and losing by a mere 389 votes.

Of course, there can be other factors involved. Lots of these target seats had relatively large non-white populations, for example, and there is some evidence that those types of seats also performed better for Labour.

What’s surprising, though, is that there is any effect at all. A growing incumbency factor has been building up in recent elections, but most people suspected that the expenses scandal would counter-act that this time – that this may be the very worst election to be an incumbent, and the best to be a challenger. Not so. It may be that with many of the ‘worst’ expenses offenders gone, expenses was nullified as an issue – and that those remaining MPs were able to dig in.

Professor Philip Cowley

Localised elections, localised incompetence

“An Englishman, even if he is alone”, said George Mikes, “forms an orderly queue of one.” Some of Thursday night’s queues to vote appear to have been a bit less than orderly. Of all the claims made about the problems at polling stations, the most ludicrous is that poor electoral administration prevented a higher turnout.

Obviously this is literally true, but to secure a rise of just one percentage point in turnout requires more than 400,000 extra voters. Nothing in the reports so far indicates that we are talking about that many people; I’ll be surprised if the numbers proved to have been ‘denied’ their vote even hit 4,000, if that. That would represent a rise of 0.01% in the turnout.

The second bizarre claim is that the problems were caused by a ‘surge’ in turnout. There was no surge. Estimates of turnout put it at about 65%, just four percentage points up on what it had been in 2005. This is a lower turnout than in the 75 years at every election between 1922 and 1997.

We managed then without turning people away; competent electoral administrators should have been able to manage yesterday. The problems seen are on Thursday are much more to do with localised incompetence -- and penny pinching by councils – than any great surge in voting.

No doubt the Electoral Commission will get it in the neck for this. If there’s a national commission dealing with elections, then it’s inevitable that that is where the finger will point. Yet although the Commission provides oversight, much of the delivery of elections is decentralised, run by local councils – and it’s here that the problems appear to have been.

Here’s the interesting thing: one of the big ideas in British politics is that of localism, decentralisation, the idea that the centre shouldn’t always run things. That’s exactly how the UK runs its elections. And whilst most councils run elections very well, others don’t. What you saw on Thursday was localism in action, for good or ill.

UPDATE: A comment below makes the point that the population has grown in recent years. True, and in total more people voted on Thursday than in elections up until the 1970s. But at the same time, we now have much more widely available postal voting – 15% voted by post during the last election, most people think the figure will be higher this time – and so the footfall in polling stations on the day will still be less now than in almost all post-war elections. (Without knowing the precise number of postal votes, it’s difficult to say, but even if the rate stays the same as in 2005, I estimate you have to go back to 1945 before you find fewer people passing through polling stations on the day). Also, polling stations now stay open for longer (it used to be until 9pm, now it’s 10pm), so there’s even less excuse.


More importantly, I wasn’t arguing that this was unimportant, and that people shouldn’t be annoyed. Merely that, when blame is being apportioned, it should go where it is deserved – those councils that cocked-up – and not where it doesn’t. This is localised incompetence, and we should deal with it on that basis.

Professor Philip Cowley

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

This has been, without question, one of the most intriguing and unpredictable of elections in living memory. For political scientists and media commentators alike, it generated huge anticipation and a real sense of excitement about the outcome.

Blog sites like this one have attracted much attention, particularly from journalists looking for insight and new angles.


The television debates also injected a sense of dynamism and freshness to the well-worn routine of election campaigning, which used to be dominated by morning press conferences, poster launches, and carefully stage managed events.

However, for all the excitement amongst the commentariat, academics and other assorted anoraks, it appears that the wider public has not been so engaged. When I talked recently to BBC East Midlands chief political correspondent, John Hess, we both noted the lack of posters in windows and the absence of car-stickers compared to what was once commonplace in previous elections.

Highly impressionistic, of course, but there did seem to be a mismatch between the way the election was generating interest amongst analysts and the lack of visible evidence of much popular engagement. This was probably reflected in the very high number of 'don't knows', ‘not quite sures’ and ‘might change my minds’ right up to the eve of voting.

Vindicating that lack of connection between people and politics, turnout looks like it will be about 65 per cent. This is better than the 61.4 per cent in 2005 and the even poorer 59.4 in 2001.  But those were elections where the outcome was never really in doubt. 

This time round, we expected that electoral uncertainty – combined with the interest generated by the TV debates - would lead to a much higher figure.  In some places, turnout did exceed 70 per cent – people were turned away from the polls in the end - but the overall figure looks much worse than in every other election since 1945, none of which saw turn-out drop below 71.4 per cent. 

The campaign, then, has not reversed the deep-set popular disillusionment with the political class, one made only worse by the 2009 expenses scandal.  Only time will tell what effect the parties ongoing attempts to resolve the present Parliamentary stand-off will have on this continued sense of disenchantment with those who exercise power in our name.

Professor Paul Heywood

“A Nation Divided ..”

This blog, which has offered something for everyone, from the anorak to the anarchist, has come in for some criticism for its neglect of the smaller parties. Here’s nearly a last chance to put this right.

The Scottish Jacobite Party stood two candidates in the General Election and mustered a grand total of 290 votes. Following the party’s strategy for government is not entirely straightforward (no pledge card or contract with the voters here) but its proposal to re-draw the boundaries of Scotland to include much of northern England (allowing for the inclusion of four additional clubs in the Scottish Premier League) is surely an interesting and innovative move.

It’s clear following the results across the U.K. that there is a swathe of non-metropolitan England that wishes for ever to be ruled by Tories. The rest of the island would seemingly be happy to be under the governance of almost anyone else. Rather than reform the voting system, why not just re-draw the national boundaries? The few disaffected Scottish Tories can move to Witney or Henley. Marooned Lib Dems and Labour supporters could just head north. The South-land could become Victoria and the north country could become, well, how about Sweden II - or maybe just Utopia.

As they all say, it’s time for a change.

Professor Chris Pierson

The Unintended Consequences of Electoral Reform

Once the nature of the May 6th poll became clear, Labour figures have keenly reiterated their party’s support for a referendum on electoral reform, seeing this as the means of creating a ‘progressive alliance’ with the LibDems. As Steven Fielding noted back in February on this blog, it was precisely in anticipation of a hung Parliament that led Labour came out in support of the Alternative Vote.

A more proportional electoral formula would certainly provide fairer representation and bring Britain into line with other European democracies. But if – a big if - the LibDems are open to talks, then careful attention must be paid to which of the many alternatives to first-past-the-post should be adopted. The unintended consequences of electoral reform need to be confronted now.

I have noted in previous blogs that the public has consistently placed immigration as the most important electoral issue after the economy. During the campaign however the main parties did their best to park the issue. Our current electoral system allowed them to do this, as it exists on the basis of a two (sometimes three) party cartel.

A more proportional formula could change this cosy set up. First-past-the-post has many faults but it has prevented anti-immigration parties from winning Commons seats. As Matt Goodwin has noted here the BNP has won an increasing number of council and European Parliament seats. So far in 2010, UKIP and BNP together have received 5% of the popular vote, compared to 2.9% in 2005, indicating some rise in support—and these figures are probably suppressed by tactical voting.

But the BNP still remains marginal in terms of the national debate on immigration. However the experience of many other European countries—France, Denmark, the Netherlands, for instance—shows that once installed in a national parliament the ability of parties like the BNP to set the terms of the immigration debate is immeasurably increased. This has had the result of intensifying a particularly negative focus on the place of Muslims within their respective national identities

So, while some Labour and LibDem sympathisers might hope that their two parties can come to some ‘progressive’ agreement based around electoral reform they need to be aware that the consequences may be far from progressive because they might create longer term grounds for the further rise and growing influence of the anti-immigrant right.

Dr Lauren McLaren

Electoral chaos and surprises aplenty

The most significant outcome of this election campaign is - undoubtedly - the
 Conservatives' inability to win an outright majority in the House of Commons. This in spite of the first-past-the post electoral system, which consistently boosts the proportion of seats of the largest party on the basis of votes won (with some 36 % of the votes, the Conservatives stand to get about 46% of the seats). If this was the most significant outcome, it is then one of the least surprising, given the dynamics of the 2010 campaign.

Some of the more surprising outcomes of election night have been:

• the failure of the SNP and Plaid Cymru to make significant gains

• the large local variations around a general swing

• the Greens winning their first MP

• Peter Robinson’s defeat in Belfast East.

• And last, but not least, the failure of the BNP to gain any seats (in spite of them getting more than twice as many votes as the Greens)

Perhaps the most surprising – and worrying – discovery has been how badly organized the electoral process has been in some parts of the country. The queues of people waiting – and some times failing – to vote tell their own story.

The rise in turnout compared to 2005 was modest: what would have
happened if it had reached even 1990s levels of more than 70%? Bearing in mind problems with an outdated registration system in much of the country and well-established postal vote fraud, Britain’s elections must now rank as 
amongst the worst run of the world’s developed democracies.

Professor Cees van der Eijk

Election of losers

This has been an election of losers. David Cameron failed to seal the deal and Gordon Brown has seen Labour lose over 90 seats. The biggest losers however are the LibDems. Yet while the high hopes of Cleggmania have taken a very hard knock, they still have a chance to clutch victory from defeat.


During the campaign Clegg made some very unwise pronouncements – about not dealing with Gordon Brown and how the party that won the most Commons seats and most votes should be given the chance to govern. The logic of what Clegg said means that the LibDems now have apparently no option but to rebuff any overtures from Labour and support the Conservatives who will not deal with Gordon Brown. Maybe Clegg will decide his personal credibility rests on living up to his words. Maybe his fellow MPs will decide otherwise when they meet on Saturday.

For – poorly though they performed on May 6th – the LibDems have a once-in-a-generation chance to get electoral reform – and the only party offering that at the moment is Gordon Brown’s Labour party. As projections stand Labour and the LibDems together still fall short of a Commons majority – but one wonders how the SNP and Plaid look upon a return of the Conservatives to power.

The Daily Mail and the Sun will all scream that Cameron has won. He hasn’t. No-one won the 2010 election. But do the LibDems have the political fortitude to ensure they win the post-election campaign? It will be an interesting meeting on Saturday.

Professor Steven Fielding

Philip Cowley - reactions to results

The BBC/ITN/Sky exit poll shows no one party with enough seats to form a majority. The Conservatives have done well, putting on almost 100 seats, but not well enough. But - if the exit poll is right - there are also not enough Labour and Lib Dem MPs to form a coalition majority either. Most importantly, however, the poll shows things to be on a knife-edge, and close enough so that any strange results could tip the balance. It promises to be one of the most exciting election nights in living memory.

12:05am
The first three seats - the three Sunderland seats - have seen turnout rise by about 5 percentage points. If that is repeated across the country, overall turnout will remain below 70%. However, it is perfectly possible that turnout will be more variable, and the increase will be greater elsewhere.


Professor Philip Cowley

What counts as a majority?

In all the pre-election discussion, much attention focuses on the number 326. It’s half of 650 (which is the number of seats in the new House of Commons), plus one. And anyone who reaches 326 is therefore guaranteed of a majority in the Commons.

But there’s good reason to be sceptical about 326 being the target number.

For one thing, the election in Thirsk and Malton is not taking place today – because of the death of the UKIP candidate. It is, or should be, a safe Tory seat. But until it actually counts, who knows? (I mean, who knows what it would be like were it be contested in by-election-like conditions, as the difference between a hung parliament and a Conservative government?). As of today, 649 seats are up for grabs.

Then there’s Sinn Fein MPs, who don’t take their seats. At present, there are five of those. If we assume they hold all five seats, and make no gains, that makes 644 seats actually up for grabs. (It’d be one of the ironies of a really close election that Sinn Fein gains would actually be good for David Cameron...)

And then there’s the Speaker and three Deputy Speakers, who don’t vote (except in tied votes). Assuming John Bercow is returned in Buckingham and continues as Speaker. That leaves three Deputy Speakers, two of whom have retired. Assuming the one remaining Deputy Speaker, the Conservative Alan Haselhurst holds his seat and continues in office, that leaves two to be filled. The Conservatives could attempt to argue that both have to be from the ranks of the Opposition (given that there is normally parity across the four, and that both Haselhurst and Bercow represent Conservative seats, albeit formerly in the case of the latter). That effectively reduces the number of seats in play by another one.

That makes 642, rather than 650. And means a majority of 322 would provide David Cameron with a majority, at least until the end of the month. And figure of 323 would mean he had a majority whatever happens in Thirsk.

In practice, on day-to-day business there’s also the fact that the other Northern Irish MPs often have lowish turnouts in Commons votes, which could also bump up his majority by a handful.

These sort of minor details often go unnoticed. But in an election which is going to be this close, every seat could matter.

Professor Philip Cowley

A cautionary note about penultimate polls

"Nothing about a trend ensures its continuation – but beware..."

We’ve had a massive nine opinion polls, on the eve of the election. That’s almost double the number we had in 2005.
The Conservative lead varies from four points (TNS BMRB) to 12 (Angus Reid), although the shares of the votes being predicted for each of the three parties are more stable.

The Conservatives shares range from 33-37, although all but one are 36+/-1.

The Labour shares ranges from 24-29, although all but one are 28+/-1.

And the Lib Dem shares range from 26-29, although all but two are 28+/-1.

None of these polls – assuming a uniform national swing – would give the Conservatives a majority of seats, although they’d be pretty close on some. We suspect anyway, that there won’t be a uniform swing, and all the indications are that the Conservatives are doing better in the Con-Lab marginals they need to win. But maybe not by quite enough to win outright.

But here’s a trivia question. In the last four elections, there have been a total of 21 similar polls. How many have under-stated the Labour vote? Answer: just one.

At the last election, four of the polling companies over-stated Labour’s performance, whilst one, NOP, got it spot on. In 2001, all six over-stated Labour’s performance, as did five companies in 1992. In 1997, four companies over-stated Labour’s share of the vote. Just one, ICM in 1997, has a polling company under-stated Labour’s eventual performance. Nothing about a trend ensures its continuation – but beware...

The BBC/ITN exit poll will be out at 10pm.

Professor Philip Cowley

“Were you up for Balls?”

"So it is a fifteen-times-in-a lifetime event – and there are not many of those! Perhaps in these anti-political or post-political times, we still think that somehow it matters..."

“Were you up for Portillo?” became a sort of catchphrase in the aftermath of the 1997 Election. Those who could say ‘yes’ were deemed to be those who really cared. Hah! The Enfield result was declared at 2.41 a.m. Barely past bedtime.

My son was up for Portillo – and he was five at the time! “Were you up for Freeman?” (Kettering; Friday, 1.37 p.m.) is a much more real benchmark. Only at this point could the committed really consider turning in (expect for those in Northern Ireland, whose vigil still had some way to run).

Why do it? Personally, I was convinced that if I went to bed at any time on 1st/2nd May, 1997, I would wake to find that I had dreamt up the whole thing. Perhaps elections still have a rarity value? I calculate that the average British adult may get to vote in about fifteen General Elections.

So it is a fifteen-times-in-a lifetime event – and there are not many of those! Perhaps in these anti-political or post-political times, we still think that somehow it matters.

We may be deeply disillusioned about what we get but we may still reckon that it’s important, even if we are not quite sure how and why. Perhaps, we just like the human drama or the catharsis that comes when the mighty are fallen. “Were you up for Cameron?”

That’s one that would really make you pinch yourself!

Professor Christopher Pierson

Would a hung parliament be bad for business?

According to an online survey - run by The University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation (UNIEI) - businesses are worried about the potential impact of an inconclusive election, according to an online survey.

A survey suggests a majority of smaller business owners feel that a hung parliament would be bad for the economic situation.

The quarterly UK Business Barometer found that those who were pessimistic about the situation following a hung parliament outnumbered the optimists by three to one. Out of more than 100 respondents, almost 55 per cent felt a hung parliament would worsen economic prospects ‘somewhat’ or ‘greatly’, compared with 18 per cent who thought it would improve the economic situation.
 
In a parallel survey, the UK Business Adviser Barometer, the split was even more pronounced. Among more than 180 business advisers questioned, 59 per cent felt economic prospects would worsen if there was no outright winner on May 7th, compared with 13 per cent who felt they would improve.


Professor Philip Cowley said; “In comparative terms, there's nothing for business to worry about with a hung parliament or a coalition. There's no evidence that economic performance is any worse in political systems that have hung parliaments, or coalitions.

“Indeed, in the past advocates of proportional representation always used to argue that one reason for Britain's relatively poor economic performance in the 1970s was that we had single party government – and thus saw regular u-turns in key policies – compared to countries such as Germany which had coalition government and were thus more stable. The extended periods of one-party government that we have seen in the UK since 1979 (first under the Conservatives, then under Labour) mean that we hear that argument rather less these days.

“The fear for business is not so much the hung parliament itself, but the reaction of the parties to it. What businesses (especially in the City) fear, is a government unable to take difficult decisions, a period of drift and indecision, caused either by a party trying to govern in a minority administration (and thus looking ahead to a second election) or an unstable coalition. But a stable coalition could be as able to take difficult economic decisions as a single party government.

“It is therefore the reaction of the parties to the result, rather than the result itself which is the problem.

“Moreover, there is a problem in seeing this issue as a clear divide between a government with a majority or one without. A Conservative majority of, say, 10 will not in practice be very different to a Conservative minority government, short of a majority by 10. Neither would be especially stable. A small Conservative majority will be easily hit by backbench rebellions – as happened the last time the Conservatives were in power with a small majority.”

The UKBB and UKBAB surveys, which are completed online, assess current business conditions through a series of topical questions aimed at smaller businesses. The questions change each time the surveys are circulated.

The surveys assess current business conditions through a series of topical questions aimed at smaller businesses and their advisers. The surveys are issued bi-monthly and more information, including results and analyses, can be found on the web at www.ukbb.ac and www.ukbab.ac. Businesses and advisers wishing to contribute as panellists on the project should visit the appropriate barometer website to register.

Does the level of turnout matter?

"...does it matter for the prospects of the parties how many people will flock to the polls? "

It is generally expected that turnout in the general election will be somewhat higher than in 2005, when it reached 61%. It is unlikely, though, to reach levels in excess of 70% which were common in the 1990s and earlier.

An increase is expected because the feeling that the election will be one of the closest since a long time, and that there is still everything to play for. The expectation that there is much ‘at stake’ possibly in the form of unprecedented political change will also contribute to a likely increase in turnout.

But does it matter for the prospects of the parties how many people will flock to the polls?

If the tendency to abstain is not the same for the potential supporters of the different parties, the level of turnout will affect election results, in terms of vote shares and possibly also in terms of seats. Politicians and political advisors (and journalists too) are fully aware of the possibility of turnout affecting the outcome.

In many elections we see that politicians who did poorly at the polls point to low turnout amongst their supporters to ‘explain’ the disappointing results. It almost seems as if they derive some solace from this interpretation that says that their supporters stayed home, but did not ‘defect’. But do such explanations hold water? Can the level of turnout be blamed for any particular party’s disappointing electoral showing?

Assessing the consequences of abstentions for the overall result is difficult, because it is impossible to ‘rerun’ reality with different numbers of people going to the polls. Researchers have therefore invented a number of different ways to estimate what would have happened if turnout had been lower than it actually was, or higher.

Reviewing a large number of such analyses Lutz and Marsh conclude that “The main finding ... is that turnout does not matter a great deal, no matter what method, dataset or period of time the authors apply”.

In our own research we asked non-voters what their choice had been had they voted after all. We did so in the context of last year’s European Parliament elections, which are a excellent occasion for such studies as turnout was only 34% (in the UK) as compared to 61% in the 2005 general election.

This 27% difference in turnout should give an excellent opportunity to find whatever effects exist on vote shares. If in the European elections of 2009 the same level of turnout would have been obtained as in the general election of 2005, the vote shares of the various parties would hardly have been different, for each less than half of 1 percent.

Obviously, the effects on vote shares would have been smaller yet for smaller differences in turnout. This finding replicates what had been found earlier for other elections in the UK (see, e.g., van der Eijk and van Egmond, 2007), and for other elections in the western world.

Low levels of participation may be bad for all sorts of things –bad for the development of a feeling of citizenship, bad for the inclusiveness of the political system, and bad for the development and strengthening of partisanship.

It does not mean, however, that the composition of Parliament would be different or the colour of the ensuing government, with different policy majorities, if only more citizens would have been motivated to turn out and vote.

Cees van der Eijk and Eliyahu Sapir 

Looking both ways at once

Last week, we pointed out the interesting finding lurking in a ComRes poll, which showed that on one of the central dividing lines of this election, the public appeared to have contradictory views.

Some 61% wanted the Government to “maintain current public spending plans in order to keep the recovery going”, whilst 57% wanted them to “cut public spending now to avoid higher taxes later”. The public seemed to want both of two completely contradictory stances.

Amusing (or depressing?) as it was, of course, this didn’t tell you how many of the public held such contradictory views, merely that the ‘public’, in the aggregate, did. Thanks to Andrew Hawkins of ComRes, however, who has now supplied some more detailed data, we can identify Britain’s confused voters in a bit more detail.

First, there’s a handful of respondents who refused to answer one or both of the questions, along with 15% of the sample who said that they didn’t know to one or either option.

That leaves four more substantive groups. There were those who a) wanted spending maintained and not cut (26%), and there were those who b) wanted spending cut and not maintained (21%). That makes 47% of the survey who took a logically consistent position.

But a full 31% of the sample came out in favour of both options. That is, they wanted spending both cut and maintained. That is more than came out for either a) or b).

There was also some 7% who rejected both options. In itself, this isn’t illogical (and certainly not as illogical as wanting both options). I might reject both options because in fact I favour increasing spending, an option that wasn’t provided.

Or I could favour maintaining spending but not ‘in order to keep the recovery going’, but for some other reason. Similarly, I might want a cut in public spending, but not ‘to avoid higher taxes later’. So we should assume some of those 7% are answering logically.

Equally, however, we suspect that some are just inconsistent. With no other way of dividing them, let’s split them 50/50.

That makes roughly 50% - just half – of voters who gave consistent answers to those two questions, whilst 35% - or more than a third – who gave inconsistent answers. And remember: this was hardly some minor, trivial, issue, but one of the key dividing lines between the two main parties.

Who’d be a politician faced with voters like that?

Professor Philip Cowley

Politician in sex denial shock

I watched the last of the prime ministerial debates with a group of lively postgraduate politics students in a hotel in Leuven, the beautiful medieval town twenty miles from Brussels. No-one showed much interest until David Cameron turned to the subject of inheritance, when he delivered this gem: “passing your family home on to your children” is “the most natural human instinct of all”.

This unrepresentative sample of the British electorate could think instantaneously of at least three human instincts that were by any measure more natural than passing on the family home, at least one of which was also much more fun.

Gordon Brown made much in the debate of the Conservatives’ proposals on inheritance tax as a millionaire’s charter. But none of the mainstream parties can claim to have promised to do very much on the question of inheritance.

As they huffed and puffed to make much of the fag-paper’s breadth that divides them on this as on many other issues, it was clear that no-one in the political mainstream will seriously address this question of the transmission of privilege (and disadvantage).

In fact, and at least for three or four years after 2000, Labour’s record on the reduction of (especially child) poverty was not at all bad (though it has slipped back since then, as the recent Joseph Rowntree Trust report made clear.

In its early years, it introduced Sure Start and the Child Trust Fund. But these were overwhelmed by the traffic carrying income inequality in the opposite direction. On social mobility, the record is one of grim under-achievement; made to look tolerable only by the still worse record of the Tories who preceded them. For just the latest depressing round of evidence, see the Marmot Review.

Inheritance is not natural. Some of the keenest defenders of private property throughout history have scorned the idea that we have a right to that which our parents earned (or stole or themselves inherited).

Seneca and St. John of Chrysostom provide two classical sources. A thoroughly modern liberal like John Stuart Mill was a severe critic of inheritance. It was once regarded as in the mainstream to argue that the increment in land values that adjacent development brought belonged not to the lucky landowner but to the community at large.

But such a view now seems to be off-limits, at least to politicians; though, by contrast, see Phillipe Legrain’s recent article in the Financial Times.

And yet more, much more of a radical stance on questions of property is required of us if we are even to pretend to takes seriously the issues of environmental change and is social consequences which stand before us as an inconvenient (if still, for some, an unproven) truth.

But we have almost certainly lost the capacity to think this big. We don’t want to address questions of social mobility because we hope to be able to transmit such advantages as we now have to our own children in what looks like a very uncertain world, one in which we have largely lost faith in our capacity to forge effective collective solutions.

When we hold up our politicians for ridicule for their small-mindedness and unwillingness to think of the long-term and the big picture we should remember this. If there was a real popular will to address these things, there’d be a politician to stand for it. When we see our politicians, we are not just viewing a screen or a gazing up at a podium, we are looking in a mirror. Who is to blame if we don’t like what we see?

Professor Chris Pierson

Philip Cowley in Reuters debate on hung parliaments

Sound quality is iffy for for the first few seconds - bear with it!

Watch live streaming video from ilicco at livestream.com

Hung!

"This brief tour through of Britain’s political past reveals something else: to be Prime Minister you do not need to be a party leader or the leader of the biggest element in a coalition..."

The prospect of a hung Parliament has provoked the Conservatives – along with their allies at the Daily Mail - into trying to scare the living daylights out of us.

Some horror stories have a basis in fact. Does this one?

David Cameron in particular claims to fear for our country’s future should the election not produce a party with a working Commons majority. He also has longer-term concerns should any resulting coalition government abandon the ‘decisive’ nature of the current electoral system.

Cameron asserts that changing first-past-the-post means perpetual hung parliaments. That of course would depend on which electoral system replaced the one we presently have.

But to what extent has first-past-the-post delivered ‘decisive’ outcomes? And when it hasn’t – and even when it has - what has been the result?

How decisive were the governments elected with apparently workable majorities as recently as 1992 and 2005? In both cases internal party divisions often brought the business of government to a halt. Colleagues at Nottingham have in fact made a name for themselves analysing parliamentary rebellions and establishing quite how far the Parliamentary Labour and the Conservatives are often coalitions of the unwilling.

But let’s look further back in history, to the start of the twentieth century. So indecisive was the election held in January 1910 another one followed in December, which saw the Liberals and Conservatives finish on virtually the same number of seats. The Liberals led by Asquith however stayed in power thanks to the support of Labour and Irish Nationalist MPs. Despite that, it was this Liberal government that brought Britain into the First World War – quite a decisive act all things considered.

A wartime coalition was created in 1915. A year later Asquith was unseated as Prime Minister by his erstwhile colleague Lloyd George. The former however remained party leader and many Liberal MPs refused to support the new coalition, which was now mostly composed of Conservatives. Lloyd George = still a the Liberal - led this Conservative dominated coalition to victory in 1918 and continued to govern until 1922.

The 1920s saw the Liberals, Conservatives and Labour contest four elections - 1922, 1923, 1924 and1929 – on relatively equal terms. In fact, only two of these saw a party win a working Commons majority – three party politics is certainly not conducive to decisive outcomes.

The minority Labour government elected in 1929 and supported by the Liberals ended in 1931 after the Cabinet split over how best to balance the budget. Prime Minister MacDonald was however persuaded (by himself more than anybody) that the world recession required him to form a coalition government including all Conservatives, some Liberals and a small number from his own party. This ‘National’ government went on to win the 1931 and 1935 elections. Despite not leading the biggest party in the coalition MacDonald remained Prime Minister until 1935.

It was this government that in May 1940 gave way to the Churchill coalition. Neville Chamberlain who gave way to Churchill after Labour said it could not work under him remained Conservative leader until his death in November: only then did Churchill become both Prime Minister and party leader.

We associate the post-war period with two party politics and decisive general elections. We are right to do so - except for 1950. And 1964. And February and October 1974. Even at its supposed height of effectiveness ‘first-past-the-post’ was unreliable.

Cameron is wrong, then, if he thinks that first-past-the-post invariably delivers ‘decisive’ results and ‘decisive’ governments. Sometimes it does and sometimes – as in 2010 maybe - it does not.

This brief tour through of Britain’s political past reveals something else: to be Prime Minister you do not need to be a party leader or the leader of the biggest element in a coalition. Nick Clegg the next Churchill? Ramsay MacDonald more like.

Professor Steven Fielding

But what do they believe in?

"Perhaps party manifestos or leaders speeches could contain a short utopian vision of a better world..."

Utopias tell us about people’s visions and dreams of a good life. People who create utopian visions think about what’s wrong with their world. They identify core problems with the present and cast their minds forwards to imagine a world in which these problems have been solved.



They tell us what’s wrong with the now. And they take responsibility for trying to offer alternatives: they tell us about the about the good life. They offer social and political criticism, vision and detailed alternatives. Perhaps party manifestos or leaders speeches could contain a short utopian vision of a better world.

This could give us an idea of the kind of world desired by our potential leaders. It might help us to see the differences between them more clearly. Nowadays, utopias are mostly written by musicians and creators of fiction – here’s one from Alanis Morrissette...



...and another from Bianca Paras...



...and the science fiction write Kim Stanley Robinson has written several, exploring climate change, testing different scenarios and imaging in different futures for humans and the natural world.

Modern politicians tend to shy away from them, partly because utopia has become a term of derision: unrealistic, excessively idealistic or naive In a vox pop session on Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning someone said that The Good Society “sounds like a good idea but is unrealistic”.

And that’s a real stumbling block for utopias in our society. Politicians don’t want to look silly. In fact, the whole point of utopias is not their realization. Utopias are imaginary spaces in which to think about what’s wrong with the world and how it could be made better.

They are (literally) noplaces. ‘Nice ideas’ that are unrealistic can have a real value. They can help us to think about where we would like to be, offer inspiration and perhaps catalyse action.

It’s a big mistake to think that utopias are visions of perfection that can be created in the real world. Dangerous things happen when people think like this. Some people would say that Hitler had a utopian vision, for example.

A despicable one: a world purged of ‘imperfections’. This was a utopia that justified mass murder. And the same pattern informs some religious fundamentalism today. So utopias can be a really dangerous and deadly political tool. 

But, used carefully, they can be illuminating, inspiring and exciting. They can help us to work out what kind of world we want to life, and what a good life might look like. I think that could be useful.

Lucy Sargisson

Nothing more disagreeable

"We say we want the truth, we say we want them to be honest; but we don’t really – we want them to make us feel good about ourselves..."

‘The trouble with the public is they’re f*cking horrible’. That’s what Peter Mannion, the made-up – and rather sympathetic – Conservative in The Thick of It said after being confronted by the people’s ill-considered – some might even say bigoted - opinions about his own good self.




Of course a real politician would never express such a view. Not in public anyway. Not while they’re still seeking office. Yet, the only real shock about Gordon Brown’s ‘bigot’ comment is not that he said what he said but that so many claim to be shocked that he – or indeed any politician – said it.

Consider for a moment the situation. A hugely motivated individual whose every waking hour over the last months has been devoted to sucking up to people whose ill-formed views will decide his fate finally comes face-to-face with the beast. Actually she isn’t being especially unreasonable, but he cannot say he disagrees with some of her views for it’s her vote he needs. Instead he must smile, nod like an idiot and quietly die inside. No wonder he explodes in private. You don’t have to be psychologically flawed to do that, just a normal human being.

It has always been so.

Anthony Trollope used his own miserable time as a Liberal candidate in the 1868 general election to inform his depiction of campaigning in The Duke’s Children (1880). There the author says of canvassing that: ‘[p]erhaps nothing more disagreeable, more squalid, more revolting to the senses, more opposed to personal dignity, can be conceived’. For it casts, he stated, poor men and women as the ‘flattered’ instead of the ‘flatterers’, leading the ostensibly solicitous candidate to privately hate those whose rudeness he had to publicly indulge.

Of course Trollope wrote as a snobbish member of the upper-class – elections turned the world upside down he moaned - and he was, frankly, a terrible candidate.

Eighty-five years later however Dennis Potter’s 1965 BBC television play Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton mirrored the humiliation and physical discomfort sketched out by Trollope. Potter – a socialist and working class boy made good who contested a constituency in the 1959 general election - depicted the travails of a young intellectual Labour candidate. Barton’s cynical agent sniggers: ‘canvassing can make you throw up if you’re the sensitive type’. This Barton proceeds to do, in some poor soul’s front garden after meeting voters who are completely dismissive about politics; support his party, but for all the wrong reasons; or set a large dog on him.

When politician meets public anything can happen – which is probably why until this week Brown only met loyal party members. But if Brown’s episode says a lot about him it also says much about us, the voters, and what we expect from politicians.

We say we want the truth, we say we want them to be honest; but we don’t really – we want them to make us feel good about ourselves, and by the way we can be as casually insulting about them as we like. But if a politician lets the mask slip, then God help them. Potter’s play ends brilliantly – and disturbingly – when his agent turns to camera and addresses the television audience: why are our politicians so flawed he asks – it is, he says your fault.

Professor Steven Fielding

Small earthquake in Chile

"We might think that what happens in Chile is merely a small earth quake of no significance for us but perhaps it tells us a lot more than we might think about the end of New Labour..."

We seem to be in the twilight moments of the dominance of the Third Way in British Politics with Labour running consistently third in election polls.


Explanations for this decline largely focus on the weaknesses of Gordon Brown’s leadership and the impact of the recession. But look elsewhere, and you see that New Labour’s problems are echoed across the globe.

It might have escaped many people’s notice in this country, but the paradigmatic Latin American Third Way Government of the Concertación in Chile recently came to an end. It had been in power for 20 years. A look at its experience can give us some clues about why New Labour’s electoral success was always likely to be ultimately self-defeating.
.
The Concertación Government was a coalition of the Centre Left. During the Pinochet Dictatorship (1973-1989) the party leaderships went through a process they called ideological ‘modernisation’, premised upon an embrace of liberal democracy and the liberal market and a rejection of structural alternatives of the social democratic and socialist kind. This it is argued by the party leadership resulted in their electoral success.

But as I have demonstrated in relation to the Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh), the party of the popular classes of the Concertación, modernisation brought about a closing of ideological and political space: alternatives to neoliberalism were dismissed as outdated. Thus when unions protested about the privatisation of pensions or the introduction of fees in University they were labelled irrational. There was an individualisation of social ills; social problems such as unemployment and crime were re-framed as due to a lack of skills and/or civility. Crime and insecurity became key features in political debate. Party elites focused on governing as opposed to maintaining their relationships with their party base with parties becoming activated only at election time and internal elections an affair between elites behind closed doors.  Sound familiar?

For the parties of the Concertación this resulted in a hollowing out of internal democracy, decline in membership, disillusionment between activists and leaderships and the increasing disenchantment of their union allies. For the Government of the Concertación their relationship with society moved from the mediation of collective interests to a televised relationship with individuals in the electorate. Socially there was a move to the right in sections of the working and under-classes in relation to questions of crime and insecurity accompanied by an erosion of past left-wing political identities and loyalties. Again, it is striking how much of the Chilean experience echoes that of the UK.

For the Concertación their process of modernisation ultimately undermined their political identity and unity leading to the election of a coalition of the political right ‘La Alianza por el Cambio’ (Alliance for Change) who argued that Chilean politics needed change, to reconstruct 'Chileaness' and to combat insecurity and crime



We might think that what happens in Chile is merely a small earth quake of no significance for us but perhaps it tells us a lot more than we might think about the end of New Labour and the rise of the political right in British politics.

Dr Sara Motta

The Nice Party Turns Nasty?

In her foreword to the Green Party manifesto, Caroline Lucas suggests that the Liberal Democrats have dumped their positive attitude towards government intervention, in favour of the view that ‘the state is a problem’. The ‘nice party’, she writes, ‘have just got nastier’.


The implication that the party has abandoned its cuddly social liberalism in favour of a mean-minded economic liberalism is intended as a slight, but will be music to the ears of many Lib Dems.

Not least among these will be David Laws, who has been arguing for some time that his party’s economic liberal tradition has been suffering from benign neglect. In the opening chapter of The Orange Book, published in 2004, Laws wrote that between the 1930s and the 1980s the old Liberal Party had embraced ‘forms of soggy socialism’ at the expense of a commitment to ‘free market principles’. The Liberal Democrats now had to reclaim those principles.

If the Lib Dems of 2010 seem ‘nastier’ than their predecessors, one might think, it can only be because Laws’ project to restore economic liberal values to their rightful place has succeeded.

One might think that – but one shouldn’t, for two reasons. First, because you cannot reclaim something that you never lost. Although the party certainly did experiment with ‘soggy socialism’, the Liberals never dispensed with economic liberalism in the way that Laws suggests.

Through the 1950s and beyond the party provided a political home for numerous economic liberals – not just sometime leader Jo Grimond, but also figures like Arthur Seldon and Alan Peacock – many of whom played a significant role in shaping Liberal thought.

Publications like The Unservile State and Radical Alternative, although now long forgotten, show the clear imprimatur of these economic liberals.

Second, because any reassertion of ‘nasty’ economic liberalism that has taken place has not obviously dampened the party’s commitment to ‘nice’ social liberalism. The Liberal Democrat manifesto is more explicitly redistributive than its Labour or Conservative counterparts, and reveals an obsession with fairness which borders on the pathological.

Although the party may no longer have the headline-grabbing tax policies of 1997 or 2005 – no penny for education, no fifty pence rate for the highest earners – it is no less socially liberal for their absence. A pledge to cut tax for the poorest is arguably more progressive than a pledge to raise tax for the richest – though, as it happens, present Lib Dem policies would do both of those things.

None of which is to say that a Liberal Democrat government would be ‘nice’. Whichever party is in government after May 6th is going to be forced to make cuts, and Nick Clegg has already signalled his intent to be as ‘savage’ as the situation demands. But there is no reason to believe that the Lib Dems are any ‘nastier’ than they ever were.

Matthew Francis

Proportional (mis-)representation?

"...it’s the beauty of politics that predicted outcomes are often confounded..."

The surge is support for the Liberal Democrats has prompted much talk about proportional representation. One of the received wisdoms about PR, one which has been stressed especially by Cameron’s Conservatives, is that it leads automatically to coalition and therefore weak governments.

Leaving aside the question of whether coalition governments are necessarily weak (there is plenty of evidence from our European partners that they do not have to be), is it true that PR always leads to coalitions?

It might be instructive to look at the example of Spain. There, the architects of the post-Franco democratic constitution deliberately established a PR-based system in the very hope that it would create coalition governments.

Their aim was to ensure there was no repetition of Spain’s previous experience of democracy under the Second Republic in the 1930s, when the President was able to intervene in politics in such a way as to undermine the elected premier.

So, the 1978 Constitution under a restored monarchy gave the prime minister very extensive political powers to ensure political stability, but then sought to temper those powers by designing an electoral system which would ensure the need to build politically inclusive coalitions.

As so often, the best laid plans went awry. What has been Spain’s experience of coalition government? In practice, it has been non-existent: since the return of democracy, there has not been a single national-level coalition government in over thirty years of democracy.

To be sure, there have been several minority administrations, which have depended for survival on a series of deals with minor (usually regional nationalist) parties – but no formal coalitions.

Indeed, four of Spain’s ten administrations since 1977 have enjoyed absolute majorities, and only three have relied on any formal support from other parties. Moreover, there has been remarkable political stability at national level, with just five premiers since 1977: Adolfo Suárez (1977-81), Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo (1981-82), Felipe González (1982-96), José María Aznar (1996-2004) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (since 2004).

How do we explain that? In part, it is down to the particular form of proportional representation chosen. Spain, in common with several European democracies (and as also used in European parliamentary elections), operates the d’Hondt system – a somewhat complex list system named after Victor d’Hondt, the Belgian mathematician and lawyer. Under d’Hondt, seats are awarded one at a time according to the highest average, obtained by dividing the number of votes by the number of seats plus one in a given constituency until all seats are allocated. (There’s an online guide to calculating d’Hondt outcomes).

But the real key to the explanation lies in the way that electoral boundaries were drawn. In Spain, a crucial element was to draw boundaries in such a way as to over-represent rural votes, in the hope of countering the expected left-leaning urban vote and thereby favour the centre-right. In technical terms, there is a high ‘index of disproportionality’ in Spain, reflected in the fact that it takes far more votes to elect a deputy in Madrid than it does, for example, in Soria.

What happened in practice was that the Socialist party increasingly picked up rural votes, leading to their crushing electoral majority in 1982, which ushered in fourteen years in power (and four consecutive elections wins).

The key point here, though, is that proportional systems vary in their degree of proportionality. It’s a question of design: there are many different possible systems out there, and how proportional they are varies widely.

It may be that the particular system favoured by the Liberal Democrats – Single Transferable Vote – would encourage coalitions, but there is no law that says PR necessarily leads to coalitions.

What’s more, once it’s in place, people’s voting behaviour may well change. But it’s the beauty of politics that predicted outcomes are often confounded.

Professor Paul M Heywood

Trust the people?

"As Andrew Hawkins of ComRes noted in his commentary, ‘clearly a lot of people are very confused......’"

Sunday’s ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday/Sunday Mirror contained two questions designed to tap into one of the central dividing lines of the election – what to do about public spending. Its findings are very revealing.

First, they asked this: “The Government should maintain current public spending plans in order to keep the recovery going”

Agree: 61%
Disagree 29%

Perhaps not surprisingly, younger people and those in poorer social groups were most likely to agree. Good news for Labour, you might think, given that this is their stance, and they appear to have almost two thirds of the public behind them.

But then they asked this: “The Government should cut public spending now to avoid higher taxes later”.

Agree 57%
Disagree 34%

As with the previous question, younger people and those in poorer social groups were the most likely to agree.

These are two totally contradictory stances – and yet the public want both of them. They want public spending both maintained and cut.

As Andrew Hawkins of ComRes noted in his commentary, ‘clearly a lot of people are very confused......’

Professor Philip Cowley

New Labour and the unions

When New Labour came to power in 1997, British trade unions were jubilant. Immediately upon entering office, the Labour government signed up to the Social Chapter of the European Union and introduced the minimum wage.
Nevertheless, the statutory union recognition legislation was watered down and social partnership was not institutionalised beyond the Low Pay Commission. European social legislation was implemented in a minimalist way and Britain continued to function as an obstacle to a further development of the Social Dimension in the EU. Most importantly, however, New Labour did not repeal the anti-trade union laws by the Thatcher governments of the 1980s. Trade unions still have to run a highly complex and rigorous ballot of their members before announcing a strike and must give an advance notice of seven days of any strike action to their employer. A complete ban on solidarity and secondary action has remained in place.

In the case of recent strikes by British Airways cabin crew, key figures in the Labour government even went on air criticising Unite, the trade union organising BA cabin crew. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the strike “unjustified and deplorable” and the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis referred to the planned strike as “totally unjustified”.

Yet several British trade unions, including Unite, continue to support New Labour in the run-up to the current general elections. There is, for example, Unite 4 Labour; the endorsement by the General Secretary of the GMB union; and a poster campaign by Unison.

Such a trade union commitment to support labour parties is not uncommon in Europe. Historically, labour parties and trade unions emerged in tandem as the two arms of the increasingly organised working class at the end of the 19th, or the beginning of the 20th century.

This historical legacy continues to have a strong impact on trade unions. In Sweden, although the Social Democratic government implemented a whole range of neo-liberal policies between 1994 and 2006, the main trade union confederation LO regularly put its bureaucratic apparatus at the disposal of the Social Democrats during election campaigns. In Germany between 1998 and 2005, the Social Democratic-led coalition government under Gerhard Schröder introduced a whole range of restructuring measures within the so-called Agenda 2010, including drastic cuts in pension and unemployment benefits. Trade unions did not like it, they organised demonstrations, but they refrained from criticising the Social Democratic Party openly during election campaigns.

Norwegian trade unions are a noticeable exception here. They have shown how a more independent position can result in more influence on policy-making as well as a revival of the close relationship with the Social Democratic Party. In 2000 and 2001 the then Social Democratic led government implemented several measures of neo-liberal restructuring against the wishes of trade unions. When the party then experienced one of its worst defeats in the 2001 elections, trade unions did not simply turn round and renewed their pledge to the party. On the contrary, prior to the 2005 elections they put forward their own political agenda, submitted related questions to all political parties and then endorsed those parties to the electorate, which had responded favourably. It was this focus on policies, rather than unquestioning support of the Social Democratic Party, which made clear to the latter that it first needed trade union support, if it wanted to return to power and second, that it could not take this support for granted, but needed to earn it with pro-labour policies.

Importantly, the policy programme by the trade unions rejected any kind of ‘third way’ policies. They made clear that only parties, which opposed any further privatisations or the outsourcing of public services to private sector providers, would receive their endorsement. While accepting that reform of the public sector was needed, unions put forward the Quality Municipality Project as their alternative, which focuses on reform through changes within the public sector including the incorporation of the expertise of the workforce. Trade unions have clearly been able to move the Social Democratic Party to the left again. Since the return to power by the Norwegian Social Democratic Party at the head of a three party coalition in 2005, old ties with the trade unions have been strengthened, the Prime Minister meets the President of LO, the main trade union confederation, on a fortnightly basis to discuss policies and any neo-liberal restructuring measures such as privatisation of the public sector are off the table.

Perhaps a similar, more independent strategy would also be more fruitful for British trade unions?

Professor Andreas Bieler