By Paul Goodman
I worked with Tim
on ConservativeHome's General
Election review. So it's scarcely surprising that I agree with its
main conclusions. The campaign was good on the ground, poor at the
centre. To concede three election debates with Clegg was a blunder.
The manifesto should have pushed a retail offer to voters, not floated a
general idea (and one, furthermore, that hadn't been focus
group-tested).
Immigration and welfare reform were pushed too late. This was at least partly because Team Cameron was "fighting the last war" - pushing a "decontamination strategy" when voters were ready to hear a Conservative message. More evidence for this turned up last weekend, in the form of the £300,000 adverts that showed people "coming out" as Tories.
We should have won. It's bad for Britain that we didn't. And it's well worth continuing to hold the Party leadership to account over it - not least to try to ensure that the same errors aren't repeated next time round. It's true, as Tim writes, that "electorates have become much more volatile" and that "every week we read of politicians (and people from all walks of life) enjoying the highest or lowest ratings ever. It is much easier to achieve large swings than in the past".
However, the election wasn't fought in "perfect electoral conditions", for the following reasons -
- Britain no longer has a two
party system. Voters
no longer reflexively divide up by backing either a party of labour or
one of capital. The share of the vote taken by the two main parties has
been in long-term decline (part of the volatility of which Tim
writes). So the age when Oppositions automatically gained when
Governments became unpopular are gone. The Greens, UKIP, and the BNP
between them won 6 per cent of the vote last time - not much in the overall scheme
of things, but a figure minor parties would have killed for 20 years
ago. And although their election tally was a disappointment for the
Liberal Democrats, they still came in at 23 per cent. The next
election may see a move back to two party politics, but there's no reason
to think that it will be a long-term shift.
- The expenses scandal
damaged the Conservatives. Tony Blair had a smooth run up to
the 1997 election, in the sense that Britain wasn't rocked by crises
during it. David Cameron had to grapple first with the banking collapse
and then by the expenses scandal. I believe that an Opposition ought
to be robust enough to cope with an economic downturn - and indeed to
gain from it, in electoral terms. The expenses scandal was different.
It was bound to dent trust in the established parties still further, and
cause people to stay at home rather than vote for Cameron (or for
anyone else). This is what happened. Turnout rose to only 65 per
cent. The view of a third of the electorate is "a plague on all your
houses".
- We needed to lead Labour by roughly 8% to get a bare majority. On paper, the lead was actually nearer 10 per cent, but let's accept the lower figure for the sake of the argument. With the same lead, Labour would have a majority of nearer 88. I believe that First Past The Post is a better system for Westminster elections than any other. But it's leaving the Party with a towering mountain to climb - partly because present arrangements are unfair to us, but largely because of the way the votes are distributed. Cameron faced a tougher fight on the same system than previous Conservative Prime Ministers. If the voters throw AV out in a referendum, but "fair seats" falls in the Commons for one reason or another, a Tory majority at the next election looks as far away as ever.
