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.

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

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

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

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

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

The absence

News that Labour is set to change its campaign strategy, moving Gordon Brown more centre stage, brings to mind David Hare’s play Absence of War.

I say ‘brings to mind’ – as a result of working on a forthcoming Radio 4 documentary on representations of New Labour I have just seen the 1995 television version of Hare’s play, sadly only available from the BBC Library.

After gaining unique behind-the-scenes access to Labour’s 1992 campaign Hare wrote about a Labour leader during a close election, which (spoiler alert) the party loses. Hare’s ‘George Jones’ is a kind of Neil Kinnock – a firebrand socialist whose rhetoric and commitment had once touched audiences.

However, as leader, Jones imposed discipline on an anarchic party to make it electable and in the process his closest aides had imposed discipline upon him, afraid he would revert to type and say the wrong thing.

As the campaign begins Jones is then trapped behind words and phrases that were not his own. He is also being undermined by some of his closest Parliamentary colleagues. This caution means that Labour’s campaign goes nowhere. To save the party from defeat Jones decides to go back to how he used to be, speaking not from notes written by others but from his own heart.

Yet at a major rally he discovers that his heart can no longer supply those inspirational words, so enmeshed had he become within an inauthentic politics and he is forced to read out his speech like a good little leader.

There is no suggestion that Brown is about to be set free like Jones, even though he threatening to invoke God against the Conservatives. Hare’s protagonist mouthed platitudes in which he did not believe: Brown does not seem to have that problem.

There are however wider echoes between the play and the current campaign. About Labour at a particular time, The Absence of War also addressed a more general proposition – that the more parties package themselves, in the hope of improving their electablity, the less they are true to themselves and so stop engaging the passions of the electorate.

Now, maybe things are not as simple as Hare presents them – but does he not have a point? For, after a second leaders debate in which Brown’s case was reduced to one word (‘Risk!’), Cameron’s to ‘New’ and Clegg’s to ‘Different’, the relationship between politics and authenticity must be worth discussing.

Professor Steven Fielding

Mr Clegg Goes to Washington

"This ignorance was, it turns out, Clegg’s greatest weapon..."

When most people turned on their televisions to watch the first leaders’ debate they probably knew – or thought they knew - all they wanted to know about Gordon Brown and David Cameron. For good or bad their images had already been firmly fixed in their minds.

Of Nick Clegg however many were blissfully ignorant. This ignorance was, it turns out, Clegg’s greatest weapon. For when the viewers saw this seemingly nice young man with the striking yellow tie talk direct to camera and distance himself from the two ‘old parties’ and offer them a ‘new politics’ they had no reason to disbelieve him.

If only because they had had not been paying much attention to politics, so far as many voters were concerned, Clegg had no past, he was new: if not The Man With No Name, he was The Man With No Image.

Pity, if you will, the other two. For to be leader of either the Labour or Conservative parties is to be – no matter how hard your spin doctors work – a man mistrusted. One index of quite how bad are their images is their representation in fiction.

As I argued in the Guardian recently Tony Blair has an awful set of fictional representations. You might think that he deserved them. But these do not all originate from reactions to the invasion of Iraq. In fact, soon as ‘Tony Blair’ set foot on the stage, page or screen – even before 1997 - he was cast as media-obsessed, spin-centric and disingenuous. This might have said something about the real Blair – but it also said something about how writers represent those who seek and hold political power.

The Deal, Peter Morgan’s 2002 play for Channel Four, imagined the Brown-Blair relationship and speculated about how it was that the latter lost out to the former in 1994. In 2002 Gordon Brown was the hero – if Blair was superficial, Brown was substantial; if Blair was the blow-in to Labour, Brown was rooted, soaked in the party’s ethos; if Blair was disloyal it was Brown’s loyalty to John Smith that cost him the leadership. But look at Brown as depicted in The Trial of Tony Blair and Confessions of a Diary Secretary both of which were broadcast in 2007: childish, petty and sulky.

Right from the start Cameron too has got the sharp end of the stick. In Confessions of a Diary Secretary he is presented as a silly ass suffering some severe problems with his cycling shorts. In the 2009 documentary-with-made-up-bits When Boris Met Dave things are even worse: as a student he shown liking Sade.

Where is Nick Clegg? Nowhere to be seen. When politics is screened the LibDems as a whole hardly get a look-in.

The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, broadcast on BBC1 in 2006, reduced the 2005 election campaign to two middle aged Labour and Conservative candidates fighting in a supermarket car park. The LibDem turns up just as the police arrive.



As it happens he is also given a flea in his ear by our heroine but then this series was about Pritchard, who wins the election after creating a party of similarly politically disenchanted women. In 2010, Nick Clegg is our Mrs Pritchard – or more likely our Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

Frank Capra’s film might have been released in 1939 but it reverberates through not just US but also UK politics. Showing how an idealistic young man untouched by politics (for which read corruption and selfish ambition) cuts through the party games to actually stand up for the interests of the people, it is the model for any number of later screen fictions about politics.

Mr Smith has also been consciously or unconsciously evoked by plenty of politicians – both Obama and McCain did it in 2008 - keen to present themselves as the ‘outsider’ candidate. It is an image which in these disenchanted times can be pretty potent.

For Clegg the danger is that this is a one-off – how can you preserve your image as the outsider when the whole purpose of your being is to get inside? 

Professor Steven Fielding

Spot the politician

"Yet the internet and social networking sites remain poor relations when it comes to political communication..."

One thing you might not have noticed about Labour’s first two election broadcasts of this campaign: there were no politicians. The first consisted of a man facing a crossroads played by one of Britain’s more accomplished actors, with a voice-over from a former Dr Who. The second consisted of Eddie Izzard. But there was not a glimpse of Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Harriet Harman, or anyone else from Westminster.

 







This, in fact, has been the pattern for party election broadcasts since the 1980s, which is perhaps why the absence of politicians did not give rise to any comment. Occasionally a party might give viewers soap opera-style insights into their leader’s background and private life. What was dubbed ‘Kinnock: the Movie’ set that particular template, being so effective Labour showed it twice during the 1987 campaign. But these are rarities, and no one is expecting Labour to give Brown the Hollywood treatment this time.

The British Film Institute is now showing examples of ten past election broadcasts on its screenonline website, with introductions written by Philip Cowley and myself. What you will see there is how far their character has been transformed, from what (to modern eyes) are fairly tedious and incredibly long, straight-to-camera addresses to the pocket dramas we now take for granted.

The first election broadcasts were transmitted in 1951, when there were only 750,000 sets in the country, concentrated in affluent homes in South East England. This is why Labour’s first go consisted of two of its posher members making a pitch for the middle class vote, safe in the knowledge that no workers were watching. The broadcast also contained the first example of a rabid rebuttal, when Christopher Mayhew delicately corrected what he assured viewers were the undoubtedly honest mistakes contained in Sir Anthony Eden’s broadcast for the Conservatives the previous evening.

For a time, political commentators credited election broadcasts with a profound sway over voters' minds; by the mid-1960s the consensus was that they did not play a decisive role in changing voting intentions, although they might reinforce them. Sometimes, they could actually harm a party’s chances – as when the ‘war of Jennifer’s Ear’ derailed Labour’s 1992 campaign.

In our multi-channel world, the importance of the election broadcast has probably diminished: they are very easy to avoid these days. Perhaps one reason why the main parties have agreed to participate in the leaders' debates is because they need newer means to engage the voters.

The television producer Peter Bazalgette recently argued that now each party has its own YouTube channel, election broadcasts were redundant. He proposed that if the parties wanted to make their case on television they should pay the commercial rate. I am sure ITV would like the extra revenue. It is certainly notable that Labour first showed its broadcast this campaign on Youtube before they were shown on TV. Yet the internet and social networking sites remain poor relations when it comes to political communication. An insight into the changing nature of how the parties try to appeal to the people, the party election broadcast looks likely to stay with us for a few more elections yet.

Professor Steven Fielding

And now for something serious...

"... just voting might start a process that leads to the parties taking them more seriously..."

We have been told that this is going to be a Mumsnet election, the parenting website whose users are principally affluent, ‘aspirational’ women in their thirties and forties concerned with ‘quality of life’ issues. They are the latest version of the classic ‘swing voter’ who lives in the kind of marginal constituency that now supposedly decide general elections - the Worcester Women for our own times, the British cousin of the American Soccer Mom. Since 1997 many other names have been coined for what is basically the same group of women. In 2005 Labour focused on the School Gate Mum. Last year the Conservatives said they would woo Holby City Woman. More recently Douglas Alexander referred to Take a Break Woman as critical to Labour’s fortunes in 2010.

At the risk of sounding post-modern, all these groups are obviously made up; they only matter because the parties (and journalists) think they matter. Those who study elections are sceptical that any one group holds the key to a general election: when support shifts from one party to the other it is pretty much the same across social groups. The real significance of these groups of phantom women lies in what they say about how the parties think about the electorate, about who is important (and who is not important) to them - and why.

Alexander’s invocation of Take a Break Woman is in this regard really interesting, if only because he got it so wrong. Those who read Take a Break are not the affluent, early middle aged women whose votes he is trying to chase. The kinds of women who read that august weekly have, in fact, long been disregarded – and continue to be ignored - by Britain’s political class.

Let me declare an interest. I was commissioned (by a drinks company whose name will soon become obvious) to write a report on the politics of women in their twenties and early thirties in the social groups C1/2 and D, many of whom work in part-time jobs, all of whom are on below average incomes and a significant number of whom have to juggle their work with caring for pre-school or young school age children. When asked in a survey that accompanied the writing of the report what were the biggest issues affecting their everyday lives, the top answer – at 58% - was ‘money worries’. We gave these women a name, and because it had to alliterate we called them the ‘Lambrini Ladies’. The report is out now.

These women are a ‘lost political generation’. They are amongst the most disengaged from formal politics, and the most likely not to vote – even before the campaign began many had already decided that it was not for them. This has always been the case – young women on lower incomes have long seen politics as something that men do, and have failed to connect their everyday lives with Westminster where middle aged, middle class men (and a few women) get together and shout at one another. They are, we suggest disengaged at least partly because the parties have failed to engage with them.

Our report points to a problem shared by all the main parties. But it also gestures to - as they say in cheesy management manuals –an opportunity. Our findings very much accord with a recent Observer poll of Netmums users. Now, those who go on the Netmums site – not to be confused with the more middle class Mumsnet (do keep up) – are very much in the same mould as those we talk about. The Observer poll revealed that while Labour had lost ground with such younger, lower income women the Conservatives had failed to make a strongly convincing alternative case. Their votes are up for grabs. But no-one is talking about them, even in a campaign that looks like it will lead to a hung Parliament.

Why? One answer is that they live in the wrong constituencies – too many are in safe Labour seats – although how ‘safe’ some of those are now might be questioned. In any case, we estimate that there are about four million Lambrini Ladies, and they are everywhere, even in the marginals where just a few votes can determine who becomes an MP. Of course their very disengagement plays against them – the parties only talk to those who they think will vote, like affluent middle-aged women. But if the parties started to address the kinds of issues that these women consider important, then they might make a difference. For what the Lambrini Ladies want are concrete, specific policies that plausibly promise to make their lives a little bit easier. What they do not want is politics as soap opera – they might watch East Enders but that does not mean they want the leaders’ wives gushing on about how their husbands are wonderful fathers who make the coffee in the morning. Pictures of David Cameron holding a baby will not wash – these women know what a baby looks like. In the accompanying survey they were asked if they were proposing to vote because politics was like a soap opera – only 6 % said so. The rest had more serious reasons, although many of them were negative, it seems that – if nothing else - it is dislike of Labour (25%), the Conservatives (18%) and even the Liberal Democrats (9%) will get many Lambrini Ladies into the polling booth.

In a few weeks what can be done? That is very much up to the parties. It is also up to the women themselves. One reason why we are told that this is going to be a Mumsnet election is because the kind of women who use the site demand to be heard. Young women on lower incomes who find making ends meet a daily problem do not tend to be that kind of woman. They do not have the cultural resources which many of those once referred to as Worcester Women simply take for granted. There are lots of deeply embedded issues that need to be overcome here, but just voting might start a process that leads to the parties taking them more seriously.

Professor Steven Fielding