The Wee Mo
We now have a clearer picture of our new three-party architecture as we head into the last 10 days of the .
The Tories are in the lead, but not by enough to give them an overall majority. The Lib Dem bubble has not burst -- they are now regularly second in the polls -- but the momentum has gone, at least for now. And Labour is now regularly third, a startling phenomenon which for some reason is the most under-reported and under-analysed feature of the campaign.
I should add that the is evenly enough divided for the election still to be wide open. But it is generally agreed that an overall Labour victory is now the least likely outcome -- and if the Tory vote continues to strengthen Labour is unlikely to be the largest party in the new Commons either.
David Cameron was the main beneficiary of the second leaders' debate. True, Nick Clegg held his own and came away from Bristol having demonstrated he was no one-debate wonder. But Mr Cameron got the momentum. Not, to be sure, what American presidential candidates call The Big Mo, when they become front-runners and pull away from the rest of the pack. More accurate to call it The Wee Mo: enough to make Mr Cameron the front-runner but not yet enough to give him an overall majority.
One of the key dynamics during the rest of the campaign will be whether or not the Tories can add a couple more percentage points to their share of the vote to give them outright victory. It's certainly possible -- much will hang on the final debate on Thursday -- but as things stand at the moment it's reasonable to conclude that the most likely outcome is Tories as largest party without an overall majority.
My guess is that, in these circumstances, Mr Cameron would attempt to form a minority administration rather than do a deal with the Lib Dems. Mr Clegg would be under huge pressure from his generally leftish rank-and-file not to sup with the Tories and would have to insist on radical electoral reform (a much purer form of PR than the AV system Labour is offering) if he was to be allowed to help them in any way. Mr Cameron would be under immense pressure from his anti-PR rank-and-file to do no such thing. His troops would be angry that he failed to win the election outright and would be in no mind to let him agree to a reform that would mean the end of majority Tory governments.
Just how a minority Cameron government would perform -- or last -- is anybody's guess. Harold Wilson formed a minority Labour government in February 1974, proceeded to give the unions all they wanted, from huge pay rises to the TUC-drafted Employment Protection Act, then called another election eight months later -- only to scrape home by a couple of seats. In the current economic climate it's not clear what goodies Mr Cameron could shower on voters before calling a second election; indeed, everything he needs to do to our indebted economy would likely make his administration pretty unpopular, PDQ.
The Labour priority in what remains of the campaign is not to come third, which would be even worse than managed in 1983 (and from which it took Labour 18 years to recover). Looking at the current state of the Labour campaign, it is not clear to me that Labour election strategists know how to do this. Yesterday's excruciating appearance of an Elvis impersonator at a Gordon Brown event does not suggest to me that this is a campaign which will come storming back from the doldrums in the last 10 days -- but then I never was a fan of Elvis.
Labour has been in denial since the Lib Dem surge: it has ignored its demotion to third place by consoling itself with the thought that it could still end up largest party in terms of seats, even with a low share of the vote. Now that looks less likely (though by no means impossible) it is dawning on Labour minds that this election could be what Andrew Rawnsley called on This Week an "existential threat" to the party's very existence.
The recriminations in the Labour camp are already surfacing but so far have remained behind closed doors. Relations between Peter Mandleson and David Milliband, on the one side, and Ed Balls and Harriet Harman on the other are already reported to be fraught. If Labour continues to bring up the rear end in the run up to May 6th I suspect some of these tensions will break out into the public domain.
The Tory campaign is not without its tensions either -- after all its strategists have managed to throw away a -- but the prospect of coming first (with or without an overall majority) will concentrate Tory minds and keep their disagreements bottled up (at least til after May 6th).
Finally, can Mr Clegg summon up the energy and intellect to come away from the third debate with a renewed bounce? Or is this as good as it gets for the Lib Dems -- a historic performance but not quite as transformative of our politics as it looked 12 hours after the ?
The answer to that will almost certainly determine the outcome a week on Thursday. Stay tuned!
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