Politics
The British General Election, 2010: Does the Campaign Matter
Apr 19, 2010
Geoffrey Pridham, University of Bristol, UK
Geoffrey Pridham, University of Bristol, UK
This is the 18th general election since the end of the Second World War, inclusive of that in 1945; and it already looks like becoming one of the most interesting in terms of the main issues but also possibly one of the least certain as the outcome seems increasingly an open one. This is especially as prospective support for the three main parties has already been changed significantly since the campaign started the week before last. At the same time, there is a distinct though not clearly channelled desire for change after thirteen years of Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Last week the various political parties published their manifestoes. These are usually long and detailed documents (the Conservative Party even produced their manifesto in hard-cover book form, a first time this has been done). On the economy, the most serious issue because of the financial crisis, the Labour Party promised no immediate cuts in spending or tax increases but plenty of pain in the next parliament as well as a promise to create 200,000 jobs for the young unemployed (which has become socially a really pressing problem); while the Conservatives (also known by their historical name of the Tories) offer a more radical approach with an emergency budget within 50 days in order to start cutting the budget deficit. This immediately highlights one main difference between these two parties, with Labour arguing that such a hasty and radical approach risks provoking a double-dip recession. Generally, there is now an emerging consensus across the parties that tough action needs to be taken towards the banks; and this reflects public anger at the way in which banks have continued to behave shamelessly despite other people continuing to suffer from the recession (at the weekend there was a report that Goldman Sachs, the world’s biggest investment bank, is paying out £3.5 billion in bonuses to its staff). The Liberal Democrats have even promised in their manifesto to break up the banks.
Interestingly, constitutional issues are present especially on the part of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats and have acquired some visibility in the campaign. The Liberal Democrats advocate a proportional representation electoral system and a fully elected second chamber (presently called the House of Lords). Labour wants referenda on an alternative vote system for the House of Commons and an elected Lords; while the Conservatives, less enthusiastic about constitutional reform, nevertheless supports reducing the number of MPs as their way of “cleaning up politics”. This unusual emphasis on such issues is because there is a strong expectation with significant support among the public for a “hung parliament” – a peculiarly British term for an election result where no party obtains an overall majority of seats (in a House of Commons with 650 seats, that means winning at least 326 of these). Labour’s conversion to electoral reform reflects their low expectation of winning an absolute majority and belief that a deal with the Liberal Democrats might keep them in power.
The trend in party support has for some time until recently been for the Conservatives as the largest party although at a level of support (usually below 40%) which questions their ability to acquire an absolute majority. In this sense, there has been a stark difference from the situation before the 1997 general election when a revitalised Labour Party under Tony Blair was well ahead in the opinion polls with very encouraging figures for an absolute majority – and this indeed was the case on election night in May 1997. David Cameron, the young leader of the Conservatives since 2005, has copied the Blair model in his stated aim to modernise the Conservative Party; but sceptics remain unconvinced that he has really changed his party much apart from altering their public relations and image with quite some flair. That makes the Conservatives’ main appeal factor Cameron himself, which does present a dangerous vulnerability for them should their campaign go wrong. The other problem for a straightforward alternation in power between the governing and the main opposition party has been the parliamentary expenses scandal that erupted volubly last year. The regular and in some cases outrageous claims by most MPs for their domestic expenses to be met by public expenditure has reinforced public antipathy towards the political class as a whole and thus deepened a worrying rejection of parliamentary politics. The abuse of the system of expenses was evident among all the main parties but especially Labour and the Conservatives simply because they had many more MPs than the Liberal Democrats for instance with their 63. This scandal, which has continued to provoke public distaste, obviously therefore complicates the simple transfer of power as it is difficult to estimate how exactly it will affect voting behaviour on 6 May. Will it have the effect of reducing turnout or will it somehow act as a motive force behind support for one or other party?
This election campaign has also been noted for its first-time utilisation of electronic means of campaigning, such as was evident in the last two presidential elections in the USA and especially in the Obama campaign of 2008. But the greatest novelty of this British election has been the introduction of TV debates between the three party leaders. This question has hovered in the political background before many general elections in the past forty years; but the usual problem has been the decision of the current prime minister against granting the opposition leader equal status. This time, the opportunity has arisen through a combination of ad hoc circumstances. These included pressure from the media, the reluctant agreement of prime minister Brown who became convinced he had nothing to lose because of his widespread unpopularity and Cameron’s perhaps over-confident belief that he ran no serious risk with his winning public appearances in the face of Brown’s well-known uncharismatic manner on TV and Clegg’s impression as a political lightweight and somewhat awkward manner in speaking up for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons. It is a reasonable guess that TV debates are here to stay for future general elections despite, or perhaps because of, their powerful impact on the public recently. There was in fact a first TV debate not of the party leaders but of the three (shadow) chancellors on 29 March. This was widely recognised as being carried out in a reasonably civil manner and to have been fairly informative given the constraints of TV appearances with their tight timing.
Last Thursday, the first of the three TV debates took place in a studio in Manchester and was broadcast to an audience of nine and a half million viewers. It had an immediate and dramatic effect. As Bob Worcester, the opinion pollster, wrote this weekend: “Up to now this election has been static; now it’s electric. Before last Thursday’s television debate, the Liberal Democrats were a sideshow; now they are centre stage. They are not going to win this election, but Nick Clegg’s win has affected its dynamics big time”. All surveys since this event have recognised a clear win by the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg; and in the last few days some of them have even put his party in first place ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives. The real danger for the latter two parties is that the Liberal Democrats successfully harness the desire for change that is so evident in this election. The obvious loser of the first debate has been Cameron, who was widely expected to “win”; and it now looks as if his agreement to a three-party debate was a grave miscalculation. Clearly, the second debate on 22 April is going to be crucial: will it confirm the new turning point or will Clegg’s impressive performance on 15 April seem like a passing wonder? The third and final debate will take place on 29 April, just one week before election day. The topic then will be the economy, the themes of the first two debates being respectively home affairs and foreign policy. It is evident that these debates have become the central feature of the campaign; and, so far, at least, they have turned into a dramatic campaign event with a great potential for altering electoral behaviour. Since they have undoubtedly aroused public interest, with a sense that those held on 29 April and 15 April offered some serious debate, they may also help to counter if not reduce public distaste for politics.
Inevitably, the introduction of these TV debates has drawn comparisons with the USA from where the idea originally came (several TV documentaries have provided an overview of the TV debate experience from the 1960 campaign between Kennedy and Nixon onwards). Some have argued there are important differences: that in the UK there is a parliamentary not a presidential system and that top politicians have for some years been familiar for the British public through the parliamentary TV channel which broadcasts parliamentary debates and, most visibly, the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions, when the leaders of the opposition parties confront the head of government over a wide range of issues. Indeed, one incumbent prime minister in the past argued against election campaign debates on grounds of this half-hour question time on Wednesdays providing precisely that function. Others have noted in the light of last Thursday’s debate that the American influence is marked: with the studied calmness, the keep smiling strategy, the pre-cooked one-liners and what one newspaper has summarised as “the lecterns, the steamlined colour scheme, the bland host, the instant and incessant spin, even the carefully colour-coded ties”.
Finally, one does need to put these campaign developments into perspective and to maintain some distance from media hype. Expectations of the second debate must be strongly influenced by the first one and thus place an impossible onus on Clegg to repeat his performance when the other two leaders – and Cameron especially – will be very determined to beat him and undercut the new flow of support towards his party. The Liberal Democrats certainly benefit from an unprecedented recognition factor in being granted equal status with the two main parties in the debates; but they still have an enormous task ahead in overcoming the obstacle facing any great increase in their seats coming from the first-past-the-post electoral system. The crisis this past week with the cancelling of air flights because of the volcanic ash from Iceland has become a campaign event in the sense that Brown has been handed an unexpected and welcome opportunity to shine as crisis manager looking after the interests of the public. Uncertainty currently reigns about how long this crisis will last; but already this and the first TV debate between the leaders have together dominated news in this past week. We are thus presented with a far more interesting general election campaign than anyone could have expected on 5 April when the election was called, even though the eventual election result may not represent such a dramatic shift in party support as the media and many of the public are wondering about at the moment.
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Geoffrey Pridham is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, formerly Professor of European Politics at the same institution. He has long specialised in work on post-authoritarian democratic transition and consolidation, firstly in Southern Europe and from the early 1990s on Central & Eastern Europe. His research over the past decade and a half has focussed on the relationship between European integration and post-Communist democratisation. His books include: "The Dynamics of Democratisation: a Comparative Approach" (2000); and, "Designing Democracy: EU Enlargement and Regime Change in Post-Communist Europe" (2005). Many articles in recent years have looked at this change in Slovakia, Latvia and Romania.
