Niall Ferguson: The Unappealing Choices After an Inconclusive British Election
[Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch, professor of history at Harvard and a contributing editor of the FT.]
It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question “Who Governs Britain?” in February 1974 – the answer, of course, was “Not you” – has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons.
But this election result was only a surprise to consumers of mainstream media hype. It turned out that all the brouhaha about the performance of Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in the first presidential-style television debate mattered not a jot. Indeed, his party lost five seats.
The dire state of the economy all but guaranteed a Labour defeat but it was not sufficient to give David Cameron’s Conservatives a majority. The fundamental skew of the electoral map against the Tories denied it to them, just as serious students of the subject had predicted months ago. Changes in demography and population density; the growth of small parties; the extinction of the Conservative vote in Scotland; and the post-Thatcher critical mass of people who fear Tory cuts – these factors together always made it unlikely that Mr Cameron would win this election outright.
The Tory leader has often been criticised from the right of the party for his unwavering “One Nation” centrism. But it is hard to believe that any other strategy would have delivered more seats in a country that no longer has a natural Conservative majority.
Now what? To some commentators, this looks like a very European result. The third-party Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power, just as their Free Democrat counterparts frequently have in Germany since the war. Britain’s choice now, it seems, is between a blue-yellow coalition or a red-yellow one. Either way, we are going to end up with some version of proportional representation. That could make the Lib Dems a near-permanent fixture in government.
But does Mr Clegg really have the leverage to extract electoral reform from one of the two big parties? I think not. The Tories wouldn’t benefit from it and disbelieve in it. The incorrigibly cynical Gordon Brown might offer it, but a Lib-Lab coalition would lack both a majority and legitimacy.
Even aside from PR, is there enough common ground for a Cameron-Clegg coalition?..
Read entire article at Financial Times (UK)
It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question “Who Governs Britain?” in February 1974 – the answer, of course, was “Not you” – has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons.
But this election result was only a surprise to consumers of mainstream media hype. It turned out that all the brouhaha about the performance of Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, in the first presidential-style television debate mattered not a jot. Indeed, his party lost five seats.
The dire state of the economy all but guaranteed a Labour defeat but it was not sufficient to give David Cameron’s Conservatives a majority. The fundamental skew of the electoral map against the Tories denied it to them, just as serious students of the subject had predicted months ago. Changes in demography and population density; the growth of small parties; the extinction of the Conservative vote in Scotland; and the post-Thatcher critical mass of people who fear Tory cuts – these factors together always made it unlikely that Mr Cameron would win this election outright.
The Tory leader has often been criticised from the right of the party for his unwavering “One Nation” centrism. But it is hard to believe that any other strategy would have delivered more seats in a country that no longer has a natural Conservative majority.
Now what? To some commentators, this looks like a very European result. The third-party Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power, just as their Free Democrat counterparts frequently have in Germany since the war. Britain’s choice now, it seems, is between a blue-yellow coalition or a red-yellow one. Either way, we are going to end up with some version of proportional representation. That could make the Lib Dems a near-permanent fixture in government.
But does Mr Clegg really have the leverage to extract electoral reform from one of the two big parties? I think not. The Tories wouldn’t benefit from it and disbelieve in it. The incorrigibly cynical Gordon Brown might offer it, but a Lib-Lab coalition would lack both a majority and legitimacy.
Even aside from PR, is there enough common ground for a Cameron-Clegg coalition?..