Following the UK's annual conference season, the political outlook for 2010 appears to be a little more opaque than before.
What many thought would be a depressing experience for those attending the Labour conference was inaccurate once the conference had started in earnest. The mood was more upbeat and united than expected and has given some short-term encouragement to party activists.
Whist the Lib Dems shot themselves in the foot, the Tories treated champagne as if it was cocaine (not to be consumed in front of the servants or dogs).
Whilst Labour had received a very temporary boost in the opinion polls it is still doubtful if there has been any major shift so far, in how the Government is currently perceived. What has helped Gordon Brown was that there were no signs whatsoever of a leadership challenge, so a united front was shown to the public (party conferences in the UK are the subject of intense and unrelenting scrutiny by all forms of the media). Mainly as a result of the approaching general election which has served to make all aspects of the Labour party more disciplined and more focussed.
As the general election draws closer (on or before 3 June 2010), the comparisons between the Government and opposition will become more and more searching and the scrutiny of the Conservatives will increase exponentially. However, the Conservatives large lead in the polls has (at present) an air of permanency.
Following Labour’s Conference it is quite clear that Labour will hammer a few key themes as part of its electoral campaign;
Stewardship of the economy with an unrelenting attack on the Conservatives economic policies and their experience and competence.
That the Conservatives cannot be trusted to continue to deliver high-quality public services even if a Labour Government will have to reduce levels of public expenditure.
Attitudes to the EU will undoubtedly be used by Labour in an attempt to demonstrate that the Conservatives are still the same old ‘reactionary’ political force that they were seen to be in the latter days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership.
Labour also has to persuade voters that they are still relevant and have policies to take the country forward (e.g. its proposals for a National Care service). However, this is an area where the Brown leadership has singularly failed over the past two years.
Whilst Labour had received a very temporary boost in the opinion polls it is still doubtful if there has been any major shift so far, in how the Government is currently perceived. What has helped Gordon Brown was that there were no signs whatsoever of a leadership challenge, so a united front was shown to the public (party conferences in the UK are the subject of intense and unrelenting scrutiny by all forms of the media). Mainly as a result of the approaching general election which has served to make all aspects of the Labour party more disciplined and more focussed.
As the general election draws closer (on or before 3 June 2010), the comparisons between the Government and opposition will become more and more searching and the scrutiny of the Conservatives will increase exponentially. However, the Conservatives large lead in the polls has (at present) an air of permanency.
Following Labour’s Conference it is quite clear that Labour will hammer a few key themes as part of its electoral campaign;
Stewardship of the economy with an unrelenting attack on the Conservatives economic policies and their experience and competence.
That the Conservatives cannot be trusted to continue to deliver high-quality public services even if a Labour Government will have to reduce levels of public expenditure.
Attitudes to the EU will undoubtedly be used by Labour in an attempt to demonstrate that the Conservatives are still the same old ‘reactionary’ political force that they were seen to be in the latter days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership.
Labour also has to persuade voters that they are still relevant and have policies to take the country forward (e.g. its proposals for a National Care service). However, this is an area where the Brown leadership has singularly failed over the past two years.
As the general election approaches, whilst some parts of the media will become much more partisan (e.g. The Daily Mail and The Sun) many others will want to be seen as more neutral and therefore Labour will have more opportunity to get its message across to voters than it has done so recently.
Furthermore Labour has to shore up its vote on its left with it needing to win back support from the Nationalists in Wales and Scotland, hence an energetic campaign claiming that a vote for nationalism is a vote for a Conservative Government.
The Labour party’s fortunes are still in a parlous state, whilst the Conservatives have access to large funds and have spent a lot of resources on targeting the key parliamentary seats that will decide the outcome of the next election. However, the Trade Unions will subsidise Labour and should ensure that that the Labour party has access to substantial amount of funds and other resources, although not any comparative level that the Conservatives will still enjoy.
It is undoubtedly true that the main opposition party, the Conservatives remain favourites to win the next general election, but the situation is not yet set in stone. Unlike in 1997, when Labour came to power, although the governing party is unpopular, the opposition have not yet persuaded the electorate that they are a credible AND reliable alternative.
However, Labour face the problem that David Cameron and his leadership group have been extremely successful in re-inventing the brand image of the Conservatives and it will be much more difficult for Labour to paint the Conservatives as unreconstructed free-market fanatics who will slash and burn public expenditure in all areas.
Cameron has already pledged to keep spending levels on Health and International Development at the same level as the current Labour Government plans in order not to be exposed to head-on attacks about wanting to slash public spending across the board.
Like most previous elections in the UK, the support for the incumbent Government will increase as polling day approaches and consequently the Conservative’s lead in the polls will narrow. It depends on how much the Labour party can either revitalise itself in the coming months (which is unlikely to be significant) OR it can persuade the electorate that the Conservatives are unsuitable for Government and undeserving of voters’ unqualified support.
The Conservatives have a large lead in the level of funding available to them compared to the Labour party. The have already outspent the Labour party in the key seats they need to win over the past three years and this investment in the key seats will undoubtedly produce some positive returns for the party regardless of what the national mood will be.
Despite Conservative protestations that they have an electoral mountain to clim, the reality is somewhat different. The Conservatives quietly made major advances at the last general election and hollowed out a large number of Labour MPs majorities. Allied with the tax-dodging Michael Ashcroft's donations from the tax haven of Belize targeting of all marginal seats, the mountain is more of a hill.
The relatively poor performance of the Liberal Democrats at their annual conference the previous week to Labour’s has also muddied the waters as voters will be less persuaded that voting Lib Dem is more of an attractive choice than what’s on offer from the main parties. However, a poor Lib Dem performance is a double-edged sword as Labour expects more of disillusioned Lib Dems to switch to them rather than the Conservatives. However, at previous elections it was the Lib Dems ability to take more seats from the Conservatives than Labour that helped Labour achieve comfortable majorities in Parliament.
However, in recent years voters disillusioned with Labour have switched their support to the Lib Dems (as well as to the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales) in many Labour-held constituencies. Labour can therefore expect some benefit from the perceived poor performance of the Lib Dems, but may yet continue to lose votes to the Nationalists.
If the Lib Dems were to hold the balance of power in a Westminster Parliament, then an accommodation with the Conservatives cannot be ruled out. However, it is more likely to be with the Labour Party, especially with Gordon Brown offering a vote on the Alternative Vote (AV) system after the 2010. The Lib Dems have long been campaigning for Proportional Representation and although the AV system is not their preferred option (STV is), the prospect of a referendum on PR would be enough for them to prefer to support the Labour party.
If Labour wins (unlikely) or there is a Labour/Lib Dem coalition (a possibility), then UK policy as regards the EU will continue very much as before (constructive engagement). However, if the Conservatives win outright (currently quite likely), then the mood music will change dramatically. However, a vocal aggressive pragmatism is likely to emerge, with Ministers sounding far more belligerent in public than they would be around a negotiating table.
The modern-day Conservative party is a far more Eurosceptic party than that under Thatcher or Major. Whilst the number of influential pro-EU Conservative politicians has decline dramatically, the number of eurosceptics within the parliamentary party has been strengthened greatly. In fact, euroscepticism is now one of the few defining political positions shared by a large majority of the party. A Conservative UK Government will have to be seen (domestically) to be pandering to the prejudices over the EU, whilst still trying to find an accommodation on most issues with other Member States in the Council of Ministers.
It looks like the UK, if a Conservative Government is returned, will return to its bellicose nationalism for domestic purposes (e.g. Major's Beef wars) whilst marginalising any influence it will have because of its overt behaviour and because of the highly questionable allies it has in the European Parliament.
Be prepared for the British national interest to be sacrificed in the pursuit of a scarcely veiled xenophobia towards the EU whilst trying to become more and more Atlanticist (as if George Bush was still in the White House). What Cameron, Hague and their neo-con supporters seemingly fail to realise is that Obama wants a UK fully engaged in the EU, so it can act as a respected partner rather than a marginalised and angry island on the periphery of the continent reduced to little more than George Orwell's Airstrip one.
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