If Labour loses the General Election due to be held by the beginning of June, historians may well look back on the 6th October 2007 as the date that the government’s chances of remaining in power were effectively ended. David Cameron and George Osborne, in the week before, had given well-received speeches to the Conservative Party conference, amid much speculation that Gordon Brown would call a snap election. Labour had been leading in most opinion polls since the summer, but the Prime Minister’s eventual decision not to call an election was seized upon by opposition leaders as being symptomatic of a party unprepared to risk defeat.
Since Brown announced his decision, Labour has very much been on the back foot. Opinion poll after opinion poll has given the Conservatives a comfortable lead in terms of vote share. Just three national polls since Brown’s decision not to go to the country have shown Labour in the lead, the last time by just 1 point over two years ago. The Conservatives, by contrast, have generally had a fairly consistent double-figure lead, their peak coming in September 2008 when an Ipsos MORI poll put them 28 percentage points ahead of Labour.
Yet despite these grim figures for Labour, party shares appear to have evened out at about 40 percent for the Conservatives, 30 to Labour and 20 for the Liberal Democrats, and there has been increased speculation in recent months that the next election will produce a hung parliament, with no one party gaining an overall majority of MPs in the House of Commons. Some Labour optimists have even suggested that Brown may be able to cling on to his job, winning an unprecedented fourth successive term for Labour.
It is the British electoral system which provides Labour with much hope in this regard. The populations of Labour-held seats are generally much smaller than those with Tory MPs, meaning that Labour MPs need fewer votes on average to be elected to Westminster. At the 2005 General Election, the Isle of Wight, a relatively comfortable seat for David Cameron, had over 100,000 registered voters. By contrast, Rhondda, in south Wales – where Labour won two of every three votes cast – is home to less than half that number. Indeed, in 2005 in England, the Conservatives won more votes than Labour, despite which they received 90 fewer MPs.
The task for a Labour victory, therefore, is not quite as daunting as it would appear. The most recent opinion poll, undertaken by ComRes and published on 2nd February in the Independent, put the Conservatives at 38 percent, Labour on 31 percent and the Liberal Democrats at 19 percent, which, on a uniform national swing, would actually bring about a hung parliament. David Cameron would have the largest number of MPs though, with 302 out of a total of 650.
Even so, Labour would be likely to take such a result as an indication of support, conveniently ignoring the inbuilt bias of the electoral system, which would result, if it were Labour were leading 38 to 31, in a majority for Brown of over 100 seats. Nevertheless, if the polls are consistent in predicting such a relatively narrow Tory lead, a hung parliament is likely to be more than simply the subject of speculation.
However, it is dangerous to assume that there will be a uniform national swing. One important factor to consider is the extent of tactical voting. In Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997, Liberal Democrat and Labour supporters voted for the party most likely to defeat sitting Conservative MPs. Although the level of anti-Labour sentiment at the forthcoming election is not quite at the level of vitriol aimed at John Major’s party thirteen years ago, it is likely that many nominal supporters of the Tories or the Lib Dems will back the party more strongly placed to defeat Labour in their constituencies.
Much also depends on the scope of regional variation. Labour’s support in Scotland, for example, appears not to have declined to as great an extent as in the rest of the country. Meanwhile, in the south of England – excluding London –Labour faces annihilation. Indeed, it is likely that the outcomes in Labour to Conservative swing seats, especially in the Midlands, will decide whether the election of 2010 will be the first since 1974 to result a hung parliament.
If this were to be the result, Nick Clegg would have the role of kingmaker, with Brown and Cameron both attempting to woo him in order to support their respective parties in a coalition government. The Lib Dems are committed to a form of proportional representation, so for Clegg to be willing to enter a coalition with either party, he would probably demand an embrace of a commitment to electoral reform. If Labour had avoided outright defeat purely by virtue of an unfair electoral system, it would put Brown in quite a dilemma. However, before such eventualities can be considered, there is a long campaign ahead. In politics, after all, a week is a long time.
