Further to this, note this Ipsos Mori poll of marginal constituencies. Forget the headline; note what is being said here. These are Labour seats where the Conservatives can win with swings of 5-9%. The Lib Dems can pile up third-place votes all they like. They can leap into second and it makes no more difference. What counts is the gap between the Conservatives and Labour. And the Clegg surge has made no difference to the Conservative-Labour gap.
South of about 37%, the net Lib Dem damage to the overall Conservative story is limited if we have enough margin over Labour - i.e. insofar as the Lib Dem votes come more, net, from Labour than the Conservatives. Of course they take some high-profile Conservative victims such as Letwin, they take a good few Labour seats where they begin second, and they take some three-way marginals. But they will also take votes from Labour in many areas that split the anti-Conservative vote allowing us to take these seats. The (complicated) net impact of these four effects combined on the Conservative final seat tally is much less than you might think.
North of 37%, even allowing for tactical voting to work for us rather than against us this time and various other advantageous swing factors, the Lib Dem vote would very suddenly become a big problem, because vast numbers of their second-place votes suddenly become decisive to get them seats. North of about 40% they would have an overall majority even if the Labour vote collapsed to a degree I (let alone the less optimistic) would consider implausible.
But up to the mid 30s we should see rises in the Lib Dem vote as just as much opportunity as threat. From the Conservative perspective, the Lib Dems can come a close second in as many previously-safe Conservative constituencies or current Conservative-Labour marginals as they like. They can also take as many northen English, Welsh and Scottish Labour seats as takes their fancy.
What we need for outright victory here, with the Lib Dems in the low 30s, is probably a margin over Labour of something slightly below 10% (assuming the non-uniform seat distributions of the vote swing favours us - e.g. by electors voting tactically to get the Labour candidate out), versus the about 6-7% margin we needed when the Lib Dems were about 20%. That should be eminently achievable - indeed, only a little above what we needed before and certainly in the region of what we were aiming and hoping for. At something like 13-14% margin (e.g. Conservatives on 35-36% with Labour on 22%), we win even on uniform swing and could expect a large majority after differential swing.
The Clegg surge is simply not enough, at this stage, that we should be allowing it to deflect us from focusing on Labour. Furthermore, it might easily disappear of its own accord as quickly as it arose, or just not turn into votes in ballot boxes on polling day. Spending all our time talking about the Lib Dems or the dangers of a hung Parliament or trying to smear Clegg personally, and missing the opportunity to attack Labour, is simply a gross error. If we keep our guns focused on Labour, we can kill off the Labour vote and harvest a feast of seats from its carcass.
And even if Clegg were to surge further, or we were not to manage a 10% margin over Labour, even then what really counts is our seats margin over Labour. Clegg isn't going to form any sort of coalition with Labour if the Conservative votes and seats margin over Labour is non-negligible, for the following reasons:
- Even the Lib Dems are not entirely without principles. Clegg said that in the event of a hung Parliament he would allow the Party with the strongest mandate from the voters to rule. If the Conservatives have considerably more votes than Labour, then we need only ensure that we have more seats, also, to make it clear that for Clegg to keep his promise then we must be permitted the Administration.
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If Labour polls below 25%, its only hope for surviving as a major party over the medium term would be for it to be kept in government by the Lib Dems. Introducing PR at that point would probably leave the Lib Dems as a smaller party keeping a larger Labour Party in government. In contrast, if the Lib Dems were to step back and allow the Conservatives the Administration, the Conservatives would enact a boundary reform that would take away the Labour seat distribution advantage, with the consequence that next time, even a Lib Dem vote of 30-35% and a Labour vote of 20-25% (and Labour could do much less well than that) would leave the Lib Dems as much the larger Party. The Lib Dems could then have Labour as the junior partner in a coalition, get PR, and entrench the Lib Dem position as the main governing Party.
- Labour at backbench MP level is traditionally even more anti-PR than the Conservative Party. They believe all that stuff about the importance of a constituency link, of independently-minded MPs not subject to centralised whips, and the ability to decisively kick out a failing government if the voters want it, every bit as much as any FPTP-worshipping Conservatve activist. The chance of Gordon Brown being able to deliver Labour backbench votes for PR is located somewhere just South-West of Zip.
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If Labour polls below 25%, Gordon Brown isn't going to be Labour leader, so whether he is prepared to sell the Labour Party's soul to stay in power will be neither here nor there.
In short, the Lib Dem surge makes the likelihood of a Conservative Administration greater, not less. Whereas before it was just about plausible that the Labour Party could get lucky, come ahead on the seat count, and struggle on as a minority administration, that scenario has been swept away. It is virtually certain that there will be a Conservative Administration now. The only question is whether it has an overall majority. The key to securing that overall majority is the gap between the Labour and Conservative voting shares. That gap would also be the key to the stability of a minority Conservative administration and what it could achieve.
The reality is this, folks: Clegg's surge means we've won, not lost. The only question left is: how big? The answer is: that depends on how resolutely we concentrate on our real enemies, Labour, and keep our fire fixed on them.
