ANALYSIS:The British election campaign is already under way and it will be a marathon, writes MARK HENNESSY
INSIDE ONE of the Royal Horticultural Society’s halls in Westminster on Monday, Conservative leader David Cameron stood in front of a gigantic poster of himself declaring that he is the man to protect the National Health Service (NHS).
The billboard poster tells us something about Election 2010 in the United Kingdom. Firstly, it is about Cameron – wearing an open-necked shirt – and not the Tories. The election will be won, if it is to be won, by Brand Cameron.
Secondly, it is about the NHS, perhaps the last great totem in British life. Heading into hard times, Cameron must convince the electorate that the NHS will be safe in his hands if he reaches No 10 Downing Street.
Thirdly, the poster – 1,000 copies of which were erected throughout the UK yesterday – is illustrative proof that the Tories have money and that Labour does not, even if it would be slow to put up a poster carrying Gordon Brown’s image right now in any event.
And, fourthly, it is about the UK’s near trillion-pound national debt, a nightmare that means that the next occupant of No 10 is going to have to govern in a time of near-unprecedented difficulties.
In the first chapter of his leadership, Cameron did much to soften the Tories’ traditionally hard face through the focus on his late son’s health difficulties and his declared commitment to public services and the green agenda.
The image is harder to sustain now that the Tories have gambled on emphasising the need for public service spending cutbacks – even if the party tries to mask the problems ahead by insisting that fabled “frontline” services will be protected.
The Labour Party under Brown was despondent in the autumn but signals that the worst of the recession may be over have put some life into the party’s step. That should intensify if their belief that these signals will get stronger between now and May is correct.
Undoubtedly, the election race is tighter than it once was. The latest polls show that the Conservatives have a 10-point lead over Labour, with 40 per cent to Labour’s 30 per cent.
Election analysts divide on what such a result would mean, with some claiming that it would give Cameron a 22-seat majority in the House of Commons: a tighter margin than any prime minister would be comfortable with, but a majority nevertheless.
However, Plymouth University’s Prof Michael Thrasher’s analysis supports the theory that the UK is heading for a “hung” parliament, something that the British have never much liked in the past.
His figures indicate that Cameron would be 15 seats short of a majority, with 311 MPs, with Labour losing 100 seats, nearly one in three of its existing crop of MPs. Such an outcome could send financial markets into a tail-spin.
Thrasher’s analysis, based on byelection results and using a much larger sample than
is normal for opinion polls, shows how difficult it is for both Brown and Cameron to win. Brown loses his majority with just a 1.6 per cent drop in support.
However, Cameron needs a 7 per cent swing from Labour to win even a two-seat majority – though the size of the swing needed falls if he hurts the Liberal Democrats as much as, or more than, Labour. But he needs a swing of 10 per cent or more if he is to govern.
Labour got a 12 per cent swing in 1945 and 239 extra seats, but it needed the exhaustion left by the second World War to bring that about. New Labour, under Tony Blair, was triumphant with a 7 per cent swing.
Margaret Thatcher won by less, with just 5.3 per cent.
In such a situation, a country’s third-largest party would normally be expected to trumpet its ability to decide the outcome, but the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is determinedly avoiding any such bravado.
Yesterday, he insisted that the British public are the king-makers and not him as he put forward a motherhood and apple pie list of priorities that his party will fight for once the election is over.
He is right to be careful. The Liberal Democrats stand on 17 per cent in the latest series of opinion polls, far below the 23 per cent rating the party enjoyed in the months before the 1997 general election that brought Tony Blair to power.
Secondly, his own party is divided on its coalition preferences and divisions within the Liberal Democrats, as they have shown so often in the past, are difficult to manage and nearly impossible to hide from view.
Both Cameron and Brown, conscious of the mathematics, have started to make cooing sounds in the direction of the Liberal Democrats, though they may not be all they seem.
Brown, for example, is now prepared to offer changes to the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, though the Alternative Vote goes nowhere near what the Liberals want, and would be based on a promise for the next parliament and, even then, only after a referendum.
Cameron, on the other hand, has said that there are “a lot less disagreements than there used to be” between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, though he has refrained from putting out any “teasers” to the smaller party.
Clegg’s room for manoeuvre is limited: the majority of his rank-and-file do not want an alliance with the Conservatives and the seats of many of his existing team in the House of Commons are under threat if there is a “Cameron tide”.
Furthermore, he must worry that he will be seen by voters not as the king-maker of British politics – and therefore one to support – but the bringer of instability and therefore one to avoid. It is a difficult balancing act.