The effect of the new government in Scotland
If I haven’t blogged very much about the new UK government, it’s mainly because it’s so hard to blog about from a Scottish perspective.
Most of the interesting things they do don’t apply to Scotland, and you can only blog so much about their deficit reduction plan.
I’ve found two good articles about this.
The first one is by Iain Macwhirter:
[F]rom a Scottish perspective it’s hard to pass much of a judgment on the performance of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition so far because, in terms of domestic policy at least, it’s almost completely passed Scotland by. Of the many initiatives that have been launched by the coalition in its first 100 days, very few actually apply here, apart from the deficit reduction programme and that hasn’t been implemented yet.
The second one appeared in the Caledonian Mercury, and it describes well how radical the new government is in England:
England is embracing the free market, a smaller state and weaker local authorities and Scotland is sticking with what it’s got – comprehensive education, a totally state-run health service and powerful councils.
…
So, if all this is happening in England, where does this leave Scotland? The blunt answer is: in a mess. Scotland is going to get the cuts but without the reforms. It is going to see swathes of public servants thrown out of work but without anything new structurally to take their place.
Although it might not have been the coalition’s intention, I think it’s becoming abundantly clear why Scotland needs full independence, or at the very least full economic autonomy. The alternative is the abolishment of Scottish devolution, and that wouldn’t go down very well north of the border!
Political honeymoon
YouGov have measured the popularity of the new government (PDF here).
The overall approval rating of 60% (vs. 33% disapproval) is perhaps not great.
However, what I find astonishing is that it seems to be popular in the entire country:
- Both sexes (men 62%, women 57%)
- All ages (18-34 61%, 35-54 56%, 55+ 61%)
- Both social grade bands (ABC1 65%, C2DE 53%)
- All countries/regions (Scotland 58%, London 55%, South of England 70%, Midlands/Wales 58%, North of England 49% [vs. 44% against])
In fact, the only group against the government is Labour voters, who naturally enough disapprove (25% for, 68% against).
Both Tories and LibDems approve (by 87% and 69%, respectively).
I dare say this is very positive.
I’m sure a Tory-only government wouldn’t have been that popular in Scotland, for instance.
Hopefully the new government will make good use of its honeymoon with the voters!
Into the rose garden
The UK has finally become a normal European country.
That must be the unavoidable conclusion from the fact that we’re now ruled by a real coalition government, bringing together liberals and conservatives.
I welcome it.
It’s not that I’m fond of the Tories at all. However, it was clear that Labour were very, very tired and in need of some time in opposition to regain their strength.
I was also very worried about what a majority Tory government would do, in particular whether they would ruin our relationship with Europe beyond repair.
I would have loved to see a pure LibDem government, but it was never realistic for the party to jump from about 60 seats to more than 325.
So I think the Lib-Con coalition is the least bad option. As I wrote back in October:
Of course, it’s unlikely that the LibDems will get a majority, but it’s not at all impossible that the Tories will need their votes to gain power, which would be a great outcome: The LibDems could prevent the Tories from doing anything really stupid in Europe, and the two parties could probably agree on a feasible economic recovery plan.
I don’t agree with those LibDem supporters who think the party had to team up with Labour. If you can only work with one party, why don’t you join them instead? Also, I’m sure teaming up with a tired party would simply have lead to a Tory landslide shortly after the savage cuts (that unfortunately are necessary) had been implemented.
I also don’t agree with those who think the LibDems should have remained pure and refused to govern. If you get a chance to implement a large part of your manifesto, is that not better than seeing other parties’ manifestos implemented instead?
Politics is the art of the possible (to quote Bismarck), and if you just want to be idealistic and not see how sausages are made, you should probably put your efforts into charity, not politics.
The Times has found an appropriate poem, Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
They then conclude that “David Cameron and Nick Clegg dared to open the door into the rose garden.”
I wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic about it, but I think this government is a better outcome of this election than I had dared hope.
A letter to my Tory friends about PR
Dear Tory friends,
you might not normally listen to what I’ve got to say, given that I’m a liberal and so on, but I have something to say to you about proportional representation.
You want to keep first-past-the-post, because you think it’s the best chance for you to form a government once in a while.
You might have heard about Blair’s idea that PR would lead to a “progressive century”. This is based on the idea that Labour and the LibDems normally get a majority of the votes together, so logically they should always get a majority together under PR.
It’s nonsense, though.
If that was the case, most European countries would have a permanent government, but that doesn’t happen anywhere. In all democratic countries, power sometimes changes hands.
Perhaps that will require another right-of-centre party to emerge that can attract voters from the left-of-centre parties. Perhaps the the left-of-centre government will just screw up so badly that a majority of the population will start supporting the Conservatives.
The main thing is that PR will not keep either side out of power permanently.
Of course the frequency of Tory governments might change, but which party is it that FPTP actually is favouring?
Labour.
At the moment, Labour can get a majority in parliament with about 30% of the votes, while the Tories need close to 40%.
As an aside, let me point out that most observers would say that sociologically Britain is not less conservative than Denmark, which had right-of-centre governments from 1982 to 1993, and again from 2001. Surely that’s better than what the Tories achieved here under FPTP?
Also, remember that there are different versions of PR. Some of them would favour Labour slightly, others the LibDems, and still others the Tories. You are in a strong position to choose which one.
I hope this will make you reconsider your opposition to PR.
All the best,
your friend
The LibDems have a duty to make it work
I’ve already argued that the LibDems made a huge error when they decided not to explore the possibility of a coalition with SNP in the Scottish Parliament and with Plaid and the Tories in the Welsh Assembly:
This is ridiculous! If they want to work only with Labour, why don’t they join Labour?
The same now applies in Westminster.
The LibDems keep saying that proportional representation is needed, and this will of course lead to many more coalition governments.
Because of this, the LibDems have a duty to demonstrate that coalitions can work.
To be concrete, they should do their very best to try and form a coalition with the Conservatives.
This is probably the only realistic option, given that Labour don’t have a majority together with the LibDems.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they should enter a coalition with the Tories no matter what the terms are.
The important thing is that a coalition is explored thoroughly, and if it fails, it has to be because the Conservatives wouldn’t agree to reasonable terms, not because it’s easier to stand on the sidelines.
Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
Most of the last polls before tomorrow’s election are now out, and they seem to point to a result along the lines of Con 33-37, LD 26-29, Lab 24-28.
There’s also a Scottish poll predicting Con 17, LD 22, Lab 37, SNP 21.
If I put the average of the figures into the Electoral Calculus Regional Predictor and shift LibDem support slightly towards the north of England, I end up with a seat prediction of Con 288, LD 98, Lab 232.
The Tories seem to be doing better in Lab-Con marginals, but this is to some extent cancelled out by the LibDems doing better in Con-Lib marginals.
Let’s therefore assume that Labour lose another 20 seats to the Conservatives, and that the LibDems win another 10 seats from the Tories, and we end up with my final prediction for tomorrow: Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212.
In many ways this would be an excellent result: The Tories would probably end up in power, but without being able to do whatever they fancy. Labour would have to find a new leader, and the LibDems would have demonstrated how bad the electoral system is if they got more votes but fewer seats than Labour.
The LibDem victory in 2014/2015
FiveThirtyEight has an article about how the LibDems normally need two elections to win a seat:
[T]hey tend to win seats not in a single election cycle, but after first reaching a critical threshold of support an election before. While still losing to the major party in the constituency, this baseline of support provides the “plausibility” factor that can turn tactical and ideological voters to the party.
[...]
In 2005, seats that the Lib Dem picked up showed a particular voting trend from 1997 to 2005. In nearly every case, the 2001 election saw a swing to the Lib Dems, usually pulling votes from both Labour and the Tories. And, the stronger that swing was in 2001, the bigger the swing they experienced in 2005. Similarly, many of the seats in which they made progress but did not win in 2005 are now key pickup opportunities for the Lib Dems in 2010.
I did some quick calculations to see how much this matters.
At the moment, the LibDems notionally hold 76 seats and are in second place in another 194 seats.
If there is a uniform 5% swing from Labour to LibDem, the latter will get 118 seats, but they will suddenly be in second place in 332 seats!
In other words, although a LibDem vote can seem wasted in many constituencies, it might just prepare the ground for a LibDem landslide in 2014 or 2015.
What David Cameron didn’t learn from Lisbon
I was watching Andrew Marr’s interview with David Cameron this morning.
Cameron was asked repeatedly whether he was going to raise VAT, and he kept saying it wasn’t what he wanted to do; however, if you listened closely, he didn’t rule it out.
It reminded me of an interview Marr did with Cameron just before the Lisbon Treaty was ratified: Cameron stuck to his line that he would call a referendum so long as it wasn’t ratified, but he refused to discuss what he’d do if that happened before he became PM.
As we know now, a lot of Tories felt upset and betrayed when Cameron swiftly dropped the idea of a referendum two weeks later.
Cameron said he had never promised a referendum under these circumstances, but lots of people had believed he’d call a referendum no matter what.
In other words, Cameron thought he was being really clever by talking only about what he’d do if things went his way, but when they didn’t, people felt betrayed.
I can’t help thinking the same story is repeating itself when it comes to VAT.
Cameron probably thinks it’s clever not to talk about a VAT increase that perhaps won’t be necessary, but he’s forgetting that the vast majority of people will have understood him as ruling out higher VAT, and they’ll feel majorly betrayed when Cameron has to increase the rate to 20% (as seems very likely).
The third debate, King, and the secret hopes of the Tories
Most pollsters agree that Cameron won the third debate and that Brown lost it.
However, swing voters seemed to think Clegg did best.
FiveThirtyEight have published a post-debate analysis of seats, and for the scenario where the Tories advance a tiny bit while the LibDems take many votes away from Labour (Con 36, LD 31, Lab 24), they predict Con 335, LD 144, Lab 140.
In other news yesterday, Mervyn King (the governor of the Bank of England) was reported to have said that “whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be.”
I was very disappointed that nobody confronted them with this quote in yesterday’s debate, but it makes me wonder whether the Tories are making a huge mistake by trying to win this election.
Just imagine the next general election in 2014 if the Conservatives have had a very small majority of 335 (out of 650) while the LibDems have been the official opposition…
If King and the IFS are right, and if the Greek crisis starts affecting the UK, the country would have seen four extremely painful years, full of strikes, unemployment and bankruptcies, and it would all be blamed on the Tories.
Meanwhile, Clegg and Cable would have been pointing out all their errors every week at the despatch box.
I can’t help thinking the Tories would secretly prefer a hung parliament that would allow them to share the blame.
Why are the Tories so keen on FPTP?
In the UK, the LibDems want to introduce STV (which they argue is the best form of proportional representation – I’d prefer the Danish system), and Labour have recently decided to support AV; however, the Tories remain committed to FPTP (although they want to reduce the number of constituencies by 10%, which they probably think will help them).
I’m a bit puzzled, though.
The current system is helping Labour at the expense of both the Tories and the LibDems (although it hurts the latter much more, of course).
In other words, the current system is making it almost impossible for the Tories to get a decent majority.
Is it just because they remember the 1980s so fondly that they can’t imagine never getting a decade of unrestricted power again?
Realistically, the rise of the three-party system means that’s very unlikely.
If they really think single-party majority government is so superior, shouldn’t they aim to introduce an electoral system that gives 350 seats to the largest party, 250 to the second-largest one, 50 to the third one, and none to any other parties, even if their share of the vote were 33%, 32% and 31%, respectively? 
Back to reality: If the Tories agreed to proper proportional representation, it’s likely that a coalition of centre-right parties would get a majority in parliament quite often, probably more often than the number of times they can expect to get a workable majority under FPTP.
So it really won’t be that painful, and wouldn’t it be nice never to see a Labour majority in Westminster again?