You may think, given my specialised professional interest, that I would have some idea by now what this United Kingdom election campaign is about. But I am embarrassed to admit that I haven’t got a clue. In spite of being bombarded by party press briefings that ping into my phone and my addictive consumption of all the coverage on offer through the multiple platforms made available by modern technology, I am quite unable to provide you with a clear statement of what is at the heart of this electoral contest. So I apologise.
Clearly, I have failed you. The limits of my political comprehension — or maybe my patience — have been tested and found wanting. Maybe you should try shopping at another commentator outlet. Then again, I am obviously not alone. Could it be that there is general mystification about the basic messages of the main parties? Is it possible that, if asked to name a single distinguishing idea that each party represents, almost everybody (including most of the supposed experts) would be at a loss? Oh yes, there is certainly the Conservatives’ Long-Term Economic Plan, which, as they never tire of repeating, is working splendidly — but what does it consist of again? You probably have a vague idea that it involves reducing public spending more than Labour would and encouraging the growth of jobs more than Labour would — but beyond that? And then, what is it exactly that Labour stands for?
They admit that they would have to cut public expenditure, too — but their cuts would be inherently nicer because they would be Labour cuts, not Tory ones. But most of all, they would govern on behalf of not-rich people whose lives they understand in a way that the Tories never can. And basically, that is it. Perhaps the real reason that Prime Minister David Cameron has sabotaged the televised leaders’ debates — and that Ed Miliband is secretly relieved that he has — is that neither of them has any desire to engage in real substantive argument. By which I mean the kind of argument that offers up and then fearlessly defends Big Ideas and fundamental beliefs from which policies — and criticism of the other side’s policies — understandably flow. (“We will do that because we believe this.”) For a public debate to have any point — to be anything more than a reality TV endurance test — there must be not just disagreement between the participants, but some kind of logic to the dispute: Some plausible connection between the sides’ underlying values and the course of action they are proposing.
The presentation needs to work on two levels: The ideals and precepts must be justified in themselves and the specific measures have to be seen as clearly arising from them. For the life of me, I cannot see why this should be so difficult for the Tories. (Labour is another matter.) There are perfectly credible candidates for a Conservative Big Idea. The most obvious is Iain Duncan Smith’s moral mission to reform welfare so that chronic benefit dependency is seen for the social tragedy that it is and the Conservatives become the only party making a truly progressive attempt to end the poverty of low expectations and dead-end lives.
It is true that Cameron often does talk like this — and that he mentions “rewarding work” in almost every speech — but would you be inclined to identify this as the overarching clarion call of the campaign? Probably not, because it no sooner gets uttered than it is swamped by a zillion distractions and confounding initiatives that suggest a loss of nerve and an absence of singular purpose. There is no sense of driving force, of urgency and commitment under fire which could set alight a live television debate — and the wider Tory campaign. We have to assume that this is deliberate. That Cameron and his team are uncomfortable with Big Ideas and unequivocal moral positions, that what they want is the day-to-day flexibility of instant minute adjustments to a fuzzier, more amorphous message that can respond to the latest polling feedback.
If that is the way you think, then live debates present an impossible dilemma. Either you remain “flexible” and look shifty or you commit yourself to some explicit statement and lose your future manoeuvrability. But never mind the charade over the debates. That is only one aspect of a wider vacuum in the Conservative campaign: The positive aversion to impassioned opinion and arguments of principle. In last Friday’s Telegraph, Sir John Major made an eloquent and moving demand that Labour rule out any future coalition with the SNP because, he said, this would imperil the Union and so create a historic constitutional crisis. His contribution to this debate was startling not only in its emotional frankness, but in the gravity of its warning. It challenged Miliband in unmistakable terms (saying in effect, “Do you have any idea what it is at stake here?”). But its tone made a sad contrast with the official Tory campaign posters, which feature a jokey image of Miliband with his arm around Alex Salmond under the banner: “Your worst nightmare just got worse.”
Why be flippant about something as critical to the future of the nation as this? Are Tory leaders embarrassed by sincere displays of feeling or just completely uninterested in anything beyond the minutiae of electoral gamesmanship? It may well be that Sir John’s intervention had the blessing of Team Cameron and was designed to be a proxy for its own view.
Coming from an elder statesman, it could be seen as less openly partisan and opportunistic. But should seriousness of intent and outspoken national pride be confined to retired prime ministers? Maybe I am just trying to answer a question that hasn’t been asked, namely “what is this election for?” After all, the idea that elections are called for a reason has gone. It is no longer the case that the government immediately falls as the result of a dramatic vote of no-confidence, as in 1979 when Labour was forced to call an election after losing a parliamentary confidence motion by one vote.
No more can a sitting government decide either that it has reached the optimum point in its own tenure to gain greatest advantage, or that the population has become so restive and dissatisfied that it is no longer viable to remain in office. (In both those circumstances, the prime minister had to offer some sort of legitimising pretext for asking for a further mandate.)
We are now in a new era in which general elections just happen at an appointed time. In the political emergency that followed the indecisive result of the 2010 election, the introduction of fixed-term parliaments seemed (to some people) like a good idea. It was stability that was wanted and reassurance that the whole fragile coalition structure could not be blown apart by a shift in the wind.
But it is really very important to understand how serious a breach this is with the traditional politics of British parliamentary life. We have gone from a system in which immediacy and responsiveness to events was paramount, where a sitting government could collapse and be replaced within weeks if it was judged unacceptable, to one in which elections are predictable five years away. What this means — as indeed Britain is witnessing at the moment — is that there is a grindingly tedious, fractious build-up in which virtually no proper government business is done and the words of every politician must be regarded as entirely for effect. (The US example is almost too painful to contemplate: American politics is already consumed by the next presidential election, which will not happen until November 2016.)
So here it is: Britain facing an election that has no sense of purpose, no comprehensible arguments and no public enthusiasm. Is this hell?
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2015
