Why Cameron must fear a narrow election victory

British Conservatives used to tout policies that polled well — tax cuts, curbs on immigration and European federalism — only to compound their image as xenophobic misers. A popular idea can still lose votes if it confirms suspicions about the party proposing it.

Ed Miliband is learning the same lesson. A month ago, the Labour leader promised to freeze energy prices if elected in 2015. The policy is rapturously popular. But most polls have shown the opposition party’s lead shrink since its announcement — one, by Ipsos Mori, to vanishing point. The energy idea, however attractive by itself, may have hardened voters’ suspicion of Labour as the party of easy answers and free money.

And so David Cameron has rarely looked more likely to remain prime minister in some form beyond 2015. But “in some form” is a mighty caveat. Continuing his coalition with the Liberal Democrats is a messy but manageable prospect. If, however, he scrapes a small majority of his own — the only kind of majority he can realistically win, given the vagaries of the electoral system — he will govern as the helpless chattel of his own party’s right wing. For a glimpse of that future, look to Washington, and the daredevil recklessness of the Tea Party movement as it holds Congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama and America itself hostage.

The Tory right seethes at any sign that Cameron or those around him would secretly rather govern with the Lib Dems than rely on their own MPs to pass legislation. And they quibble with any comparison between themselves and the Tea Party. The American right, they point out, is taking on a president from the opposing party. Cameron would have much less to fear from his own side. Moreover, America’s separation of powers gives legislators the clout to cause trouble in a way Britain’s parliamentary system, with its bias towards the executive, does not. In any case, the Tory right is pragmatism incarnate compared with the Tea Party.

But Cameron would be a fool to count on any of these supposed safety valves. Despite the blue rosette on his lapel, many Tories — in parliament and the wider “movement”, itself American in inspiration — regard him as an apostate, the British equivalent of a Republican In Name Only. They have fruitfully hounded him for concessions throughout his premiership (most spectacularly, a referendum on EU membership) and would hardly relent if he became arithmetically dependent on them to govern. The Westminster system privileges the executive only when it commands a comfortable parliamentary majority. A prime minister without one is his party’s plaything, as John Major, the last Tory resident of 10 Downing Street, can advise Cameron.

Above all, while radical Tories are not quite as impetuous as radical Republicans, there is still a vein of zealotry there that warrants the comparison. Both believe free-market capitalism is a vote-winner, if only it is explained properly to people (who, presumably, are suffering false consciousness when they ask for more public spending). Both define politics not as the art of the possible as but a moral crusade in which compromise is a cosy euphemism for lack of principle. Both resent the near enemy (their moderate party leaderships) as much as the far enemy (the opposing party). Both misremember past leaders as unbending ideologues: Margaret Thatcher here, Ronald Reagan in America. And in an anti-politics age, both purport to stand for Everyman against the elites.

The difference is mainly one of emphasis. The Republican right’s ultimate grievance is big government. For the Tory right, the enemy is European integration; it is not so much the Tea Party as the Sovereignty Party.

More than enough words have been written challenging the beliefs and tactics of the Tory right; it is now more pressing to highlight that, in a year and a half, they could be the power in the land. A narrow Cameron victory in 2015 would see to that. And yet he must strive to win all the same.

The election campaign being prepared by the Tories is compared by insiders to the party’s effort in 1992, which dissuaded voters from gambling on an unconvincing Labour opposition. But if that election is about to repeat itself, so might the events that followed it. The Tory right saw Major as a Conservative in name only so they turned him into a prime minister in name only. For five years they made the most of parliamentary arithmetic to push him around. It was not just a personal trauma for him but a corporate disaster for the Tories, who have never won a general election since.

There are only three plausible outcomes for Cameron in 2015: outright defeat to Labour, another coalition with the Lib Dems and a sliver of a victory. Despite the right’s paranoia, there really is no evidence that he privately hopes for the middle option. But if he does, it would take a very tribal Tory to blame him.

— Financial Times