I have tried very hard not to blog about the General Election, but with a week to go I have crumbled at last. The occasion for this is the final leaders' debate scheduled for tonight, on the subject of the UK economy.
Even on the relatively superficial level on which the debate will probably be conducted, judging from the previous offerings, this is an intriguing prospect. In the red corner we have Gordon Brown, acknowledged as one of the most formidable Chancellors in living memory, whose grasp of economics is formidable, but who has the problem of defending his record as Prime Minister, and particularly the regulatory lapses that allowed the banks to get themselves (and the rest of us) into so much financial strife. In the orange corner we have Nick Clegg, clearly a nice enough bloke, but whose real economic powerhouse, Vince Cable, will only be an onlooker tonight. And in the blue corner we have David Cameron, faced with the problem that the Conservatives have been less than forthcoming about their economic strategy to get us out of this fine mess. My tax colleague who moves in Tory circles in Cameronland (aka Witney, Oxfordshire, not Houston misspelt) assures me that DC understands fiscal policy, but it is difficult to tell when he says so little in detail about it. And it is worrying that he thinks George Osborne is the best potential Conservative Chancellor when he has the likes of Kenneth Clarke and William Hague on his front bench; this suggests he thinks there are more important front bench roles than Chancellor, and believe me, there aren't!
But is it fair to level that accusation solely at Her Majesty's Opposition? There has been a marked reluctance shared among all the main UK political parties to admit to, respond to, and set out policies to deal with, the true magnitude of the economic crisis facing this country, which is, at least from the perspective of sheer scale of the government deficit, by far the biggest ever to face this country. And that is saying something given that we have fought two World Wars in the last 100 years and experienced the Great Depression.
Of course it is palpably obvious why no-one has grasped this particularly poisonous nettle. Announcing that we will all be paying for the banking crisis for the short, medium and long term is hardly likely to attract huge numbers of votes, particularly if you set out in detail the tax rises and public expenditure cuts that would be necessary to effectively deal with the matter at hand. John Smith and Gordon Brown's experiment along those lines in 1992, widely credited with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, is sufficient evidence to dissuade any but the bravest politician from too detailed an analysis of our economic woes prior to an election.
But the trouble is, if you are unwilling to parade your economic and fiscal strategy before the electorate for fear of frightening the horses, you run the risk of leading those of us who consider these matters in depth (admittedly, I fear, a tiny proportion of the electorate) to assume that you are saying nothing because you have nothing to say, and have no idea how to cope with a crisis of this magnitude. Thus I run the risk of being very depressed by tonight's debate, if all we are offered is vacuous sound bites rather than real solutions to an all too real problem. And nothing much in this campaign so far leaves me at all optimistic in this respect.
Which takes me sailing off the subject of the economy and onto more general observations about the election, because I like elections, recognise their vital importance and like to think that everyone else does too.My thoughts after 3 weeks of this campaign are as follows:
1. I think a lot of old political affiliations have been shaken by such issues as MPs' expenses, and that there is thus increased volatility among the electorate, and consequent increased unpredictability about what will happen on May 6th.
2. I also think, partly as a consequence of the above, that an awful lot of people have yet to make up their mind how to vote, which makes opinion polls even more than usually unreliable. I have a feeling that many will vote for the least of a number of evils, rather than actively voting for the party they wholeheartedly agree with.
3. The phenomenom of tactical voting has been with us for a long time now, again as a symptom of a greater desire to vote against parties than for them, and continues to increase in importance election by election. To my mind this is on balance regrettable, both because it encourages negativity and because it enhances a highly noticeable tendency, perhaps inevitable in the modern media-saturated age, to look upon one's vote as a factor in the national picture rather than a factor in one's own constituency. We are not, after all, electing a President, but 650 local MP's, and it might be preferable for more people, particularly in the media, to remember that. Of course it might help in this respect if most people's vote was not a complete irrelevance. I am careful not to plaster my own political allegiances, such as they are, all over this blog, but they are actually pretty meaningless in any event, as I live in Altrincham and Sale West, not only the sole Conservative seat in the North West but a pretty safe one too (they even held it amidst the carnage of 1997). So I could vote Red, Orange, Blue or any other colour under the sun (actually UKIP would be the only other colour under Altrincham and Sale West's sun, and I don't think we'll be going there on May 6th - Greens, wherefore art thou?) without it making the slightest difference to Graham Brady's future job prospects. Given that more than half of the UK electorate appears to be in the same position, perhaps we are deluding ourselves about the importance of our participation. "If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Make It Illegal", said Emma Goldman; a bit cynical even for me, but you can see where she was coming from.
4. I think the apathy and uncertainty arising from the above factors has made this a two-tier election campaign. Visit a local marginal such as Manchester Withington (Lab / Lib Dem) or Warrington South (three way) and you will see large numbers of election posters, reminiscent in some respects of 1997, when my late mother's home town of Dawlish turned orange overnight. But walk around a more predictable constituency like my own or Stretford & Urmston, and you could be forgiven for not noticing there was an election campaign taking place.
5. I also suspect that the minority parties will perform better at this election than they have for some elections past, both because of the fracturing of old party allegiances that I mention above, and because there may be some sense of inevitability about a hung Parliament (depending how the polls move, particularly after tonight) and thus a feeling that now may be a good time to be more adventurous with your vote. Tactical voting may also be a factor here. Thus I could envisage Nigel Farrage winning Buckingham for UKIP (the Conservative hierarchy loathe John Brecow with a passion, so he shouldn't count on massive Tory support in what was a very safe seat). I would also like to think that the Greens had a chance of winning Brighton Pavilion, but I do wonder whether its status as a potential Labour / Conservative marginal might get in the way of that. As for Barking, surely not? If the loathsome and ineffectual Mr Griffin got into Parliament I really would lose faith in the political system. And I am sure we will have a few more Scottish and Welsh Nationalists knocking around Westminster for the next 4 or 5 years too.
6. I suppose we should expect the two main parties to huff and puff about a hung parliament, given that the electoral system has led them to expect their turn next, and to exercise unfettered power once they get that turn. It does seem to be something of an indictment when the best reason you can come up with for not voting Liberal Democrat is "it will let the other lot in", let alone "we will have the IMF here in a matter of weeks". But actually, given the magnitude of the crisis we face, might it not be helpful to have more brains engaged in finding the right solutions? How about a government of national unity, involving all three main parties? Now there is an idea to conjure with, but not, one imagines, this side of the election.
So all-in-all it promises to be an interesting election, with the outcome seriously in doubt entering the last week of the campaign> I just hope that the economic aftermath demonstrates that the politicians do indeed have some far-sighted and sensible ideas for ameliorating the dire economic situation. We can hope.....
Mark Simpson
29 April 2010
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