Normally, British election campaigns last around a month, since the incumbent government usually gets to decide when the election is held. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition changed all that by fixing the length of Parliament, so that 7 May 2015 has been the known E-day for years. As a result, Britain’s election campaign essentially began on Friday. Also unlike previous campaigns, this one has more than the usual three players (Conservative – a.k.a. Tory, Lib-Dems, and Labour), but also the United Kingdom Independence Party and the Scottish Nationalists. Thus we see five parties each with a claim on a large chunk of the British electorate.
Yet as 2015 dawns, none of them seem capable of anything but tripping over themselves.
Start with the smaller parties: UKIP and SNP. Both have decided they can build themselves up by moving away from their traditional bailiwicks, which makes sense if done right. For UKIP, however, the problem of deciding between its libertarian past and populist present could create openings for the Tories (Telegraph). Still, that’s not nearly as much of a risk as the “Nats” are taking. The SNP is openly offering to prop up a Labour government (Herald and Scotsman), after battling Labour up north for over forty years. The Nats are presuming that their success in the 2014 independence referendum (yes, they lost, but they carried Glasgow on a massive anti-Tory message) can be followed with major push for left-wing votes. Yet they’re ignoring the slew of anti-Labour voters who gave them their initial 1990s breakthrough, voters that could go right back to the Tories.
Of course, this assumes the Conservatives are competent enough to take advantage of these opportunities…something that hardly seems likely given their latest campaign efforts.
Isabel Hardman (Spectator) takes stock:
The Tories want to encourage voters to stay on the (apparently German rather than British and apparently heading nowhere) road to recovery, even if that involves leaping around between different measures of the deficit in order to give the impression of momentum.
The “different measures” refer to deficit reduction: in actual numbers about a third, in percentage of GDP about half. Of course, the Tories went with the latter, more counter-intuitive figure…and promptly started a row with the press and damaged their credibility on what was supposed to be their signature issue.
Of course, Labour used the same percentage-of-GDP figure to claim the Conservatives will reduce public spending “to the levels of the 1930s,” but in their infinite wisdom used Tory PM David Cameron’s face on the ad. In one fell swoop, they thus reaffirmed everyone’s wariness about their own leader (Ed Miliband) by using their chief opponent as the face of their campaign instead.
Finally, there are the Lib-Dems, who have spent decades running as the anti-establishment party of protest…until they joined the aforementioned coalition. Now, they’re throwing away all of that and campaigning as the permanent party of government (Spectator). Somehow, they are surprised that less than half of their 2010 voters are still with them.
As Hardman herself noted in the above link, “you might be forgiven for hoping that those weeks until 7 May go rather quickly.” Indeed, I suspect the only joy voters might get will be putting much of these five out of their political misery…except that the SNP and UKIP are certain to gain seats (and thus be pleased with the result), and the Lib-Dems just might remain the minor coalition partner to Cameron or Miliband.
As for those two, the fact remains…despite their best efforts, someone will have to be elected Prime Minister.
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