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

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 Bearing in mind problems with an outdated registration system in much of the country and well-established postal vote fraud, Britain’s elections must now rank as 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

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.
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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