Nothing is certain in this most unpredictable of General Elections. Yet perhaps we can be sure of one thing: that the David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg trio is unlikely to survive the year. Whatever the result, someone will lose. And whoever does is likely to be replaced. Every General Election in the past forty years has been followed by at least one of the big three going shortly afterwards. Last time, it was Gordon Brown who went, the time before Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy. Someone will fall this time. And who, in each party, is poised to replace them when they do?
1. Theresa May (Conservative)
One of the very few leading Tories to have made a good impression in this parliament, the Home Secretary would nevertheless have to win over traditionalists still wary of her after her “nasty party” comments a decade ago. With May only likely to become leader if the moderniser Cameron loses, this might be an issue. However, she certainly came off best out of her spat with the unpopular former Education Secretary Michael Gove and seems closer to achieving the leadership than any other Tory woman since Margaret Thatcher forty years ago.
2. Boris Johnson (Conservative)
Although not even in parliament at the moment, Johnson’s general success as London Mayor would leave him well placed for the leadership, after he becomes the elected MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in May. His election as MP can be presumed and assuming he is able to get out of his final year as mayor, the leadership could be the next step. Doubts persist as to whether Johnson is a seriously credible political character, however, and he has certainly had plenty of scandal in his past. Despite this, he could potentially wipe out the UKIP threat and attract many other non-Tories. Even if Cameron wins the General Election, Johnson, easily the most popular Tory politician in the country, could still prove a threat to him.
3. Chuka Umunna (Labour)
Despite being in Opposition, Labour have produced far more potential leaders recently than the Tories. Umunna, often seen as either the “British Obama” or the “black Blair,” is still in his thirties but has impressed many. The Shadow Business Secretary does have a somewhat unfashionable Blairite manner, however, and has a tendency to storm out of TV interviews.
4. Yvette Cooper (Labour)
Blair and Brown were friends (at first). The Milibands were brothers. Likewise, the Shadow Home Secretary is married to another potential leadership contender Ed Balls. It is inconceivable they could run against each other. But if she were to succeed, Cooper could become Labour’s first woman leader.
5. Ed Balls (Labour)
Balls came third in the 2010 contest (after the Miliband brothers) and though generally successful as Shadow Chancellor still seems far more popular within his own party than outside it.
6. Andy Burnham (Labour)
Another strong contender in 2010, the still youthful Shadow Health Secretary has excelled in his portfolio but like Balls, probably appeals to Labour people more than the floating voters he would need to win over in a future General Election.
7. Tim Farron (Lib Dem)
With the Lib Dems widely expected to lose half of their seats in May, the unpopular Nick Clegg might well survive as leader simply due to a lack of any credible alternative leader. Lib Dem President Farron remains unknown to most of the public. Then again, the same was true of Clegg when he became leader in 2007.
8. Danny Alexander (Lib Dem)
The lack of strong Lib Dem contenders (Sarah Teather is standing down, Vince Cable is widely seen as too old), means the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is a real possibility as the next Lib Dem leader. His Scottish constituency is seen as highly vulnerable, however.
9. Caroline Lucas (Green)
As a former leader and the party’s only MP, Lucas is already seen by many as a much more credible option than the current leader Natalie Bennett.
10. Douglas Carswell (UKIP)
The ex-Tory MP is often much more convincing than the gaffe-prone Nigel Farage. Should UKIP fail to fulfill it’s lofty ambitions, the first ever UKIP MP could be the man to seize the helm.
(NOTE November 2016: Three of these are in fact now party leaders including May! Not bad going by my standards. Only Farron became leader in 2015 though and Balls and Alexander are no longer MPs).
Why David Cameron and the Tories are losing the election
The economy’s apparently good, the press is pro-Tory. So why do people still not want the Tories?
These should be good times for the Tories. The economy has apparently recovered. The Opposition leader Ed Miliband remains unpopular. The press are overwhelmingly pro-Tory and can be relied upon to bash Miliband. So why does almost every opinion poll released shows Labour at least slightly ahead? Why don’t people like the Tories? Why, in short, is the party which has not won a General Election outright since April 1992, apparently losing again? Here are some possible reasons…
- The Tories are not getting credit for the economy: And perhaps, why should they? Cameron has, after all, spent much of his leadership blaming any economic failings on the last Labour Government. Having denied all responsibility for any economic failures, why should the Tories now expect to be seen as responsible for any economic success?
- The NHS: This is a big election issue for many people and most people haven’t forgotten Andrew Lansley’s botched attempt at “reorganising” the Health Service after the last election. No one was warned about this beforehand and though it was eventually abandoned, the memory of this and past Tory governments’ poor record on the NHS, has understandably made voters extremely wary of the Tories on the subject.
- Cameron has mishandled the TV debates: Although only a recent issue, Cameron has made himself look both cowardly and foolish by refusing to be more helpful in the negotiations concerning the TV debates. Cameron’s attempts to blame the media for the debacle have largely failed and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Prime Minister simply fears debating Ed Miliband one on one.
- Immigration: Many Tory voters have been disappointed by the Tories’ failure to meet their promise to cut immigration numbers.
- Many Tories have never liked Cameron: Cameron’s failure to win outright in 2010, combined with his support for liberal issues such as gay marriage, has ensured that many of his party supporters have never warmed to him.
- The boundary system is unfair: It currently strongly favours Labour. Even if the Tories were a few points ahead in the polls, they still probably wouldn’t win a majority. Why hasn’t this been reformed? Because the Tories’ coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats blocked such efforts a few years ago.
- The rise of UKIP: This is hitting all three traditional parties but there seems little doubt the Tories are being hurt more by it. Even if Nigel Farage’s party only wins a handful of seats, the right wing vote may well be split in many seats.
- Ultimately, the Tories have achieved little so far: By the end of Mrs Thatcher’s first four year term, she had won the Falklands War, while Tony Blair had brought peace to Northern Ireland by the end of his. Cameron has been in power for five years yet aside from the economy, his premiership seems most likely to be remembered for hiking up student tuition fees, unleashing dramatic spending cuts while failing to get a handle on either immigration or the deficit. Tory defeat is not yet inevitable but Cameron will have to think fast if he wants to pull the first Tory election win since 1992 out of the hat.(NOTE November 2016 JUST WRONG!)
Leaving Downing Street for the last time
Suddenly, peacefully or with plenty of warning? A quick guide on how to do it
For a Prime Minister knowing when to leave the political stage is essential. But also how. Is it better to send out a warning about your planned departure years in advance or to take friends, colleagues and public totally by surprise? In the wake of David Cameron’s perhaps accidental announcement that he would not run for a third term,can the past offer us any guidance?
The warning shot (Tony Blair, 2004)
Blair’s decision to announce his plan to retire came under very different circumstances to David Cameron yesterday. Whereas Cameron is yet to win a single election outright and is about to enter a potentially fraught election campaign, Blair was a year ahead of a third easy election win, had just suffered a minor heart ailment and had an obvious successor impatiently waiting in the wings in the shape of Gordon Brown. In retrospect, Blair admits the announcement fatally undermined his authority during his final three years in power up until 2007.
The accidental warning shot (David Cameron, 2015)
In the light of this, Cameron’s possibly accidental decision to announce he will stand down before 2020 looks inept in the extreme. Why, after all, has he announced this at the start of an election campaign in which the Tories will be stressing the importance of leadership above all else? Why has Cameron stirred things up further by speculating as to his likely successors? How can Cameron possibly claim he will serve a full term when his successor will need some time at least to establish themselves before election day? The questions continue.
On and on and on (Margaret Thatcher, 1987)
If there’s one thing worse than openly stoking the fires of speculation by anticipating an end date for your leadership its refusing to admit the possibility of retirement at all. Thatcher’s declaration after her third consecutive election victory that she would “go on and on and on”in 1987 ultimately sealed her fate. She went. Brutally. In 1990.
Sudden impact (Harold Wilson, 1976)
Wilson’s decision to resign suddenly at the age of sixty in April 1976 took the world by surprise. Nearly forty years on, this still looks like the best way to do it.
Ed Miliband: myths and reality
Separating the truth from the tabloid fiction…
As the election campaign begins, an air of mystery continues to surround the Opposition leader. So what exactly is true and what is false about the Opposition leader? Find out below…
- Myth 1: Ed Miliband has “next to no experience” of office: Untrue. As Minister of the Cabinet Office and then Environment Secretary under Gordon Brown, Miliband has three years of cabinet experience. David Cameron, in contrast, had no cabinet experience at all on gaining office as PM in 2010. Nor did Nick Clegg or, for that matter, did Tony Blair when he became Prime Minister in 1997. Miliband is also older and has been an MP for longer than Cameron had in 2010.
- Myth 2: Ed Miliband went to public school: Untrue. Unlike Nigel Farage, Miliband never attended public school. He attended Haverstock Comprehensive.
- Myth 3: Ed Miliband’s father Ralph Miliband was unpatriotic: Untrue again. Miliband Senior spent three years fighting for the British Navy during the Second World War.
- Myth 4: Ed Miliband is in the trade union’s pocket: This seems very unlikely. Miliband distanced himself from the unions in his acceptance speech as leader and has been in conflict with UNITE for many years’ since.
- Myth 5: Ed “stabbed his brother in the back” for the leadership: Nonsense. Ed ran against his brother David in a free and fair leadership contest. If he stuck a knife in David Miliband’s back, then the same is true of Cameron, Clegg, Thatcher or anyone who has ever defeated anyone else in a leadership contest.
The day the election got personal
Michael Fallon’s attack on Ed Miliband backfired. But do personal attacks ever work?
It was supposed to be a debate about the future of Trident. Instead, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon injected a calculated shot of venom into his comments on the Opposition leader Ed Miliband.
“Ed Miliband stabbed his own brother in the back to become Labour leader,” he began. “Now he is willing to stab the United Kingdom in the back to become Prime Minister.”
Fallon’s comments referred to the suggestion that Ed Miliband would be prepared to abandon Labour’s commitment to renewing the Trident nuclear weapons system if doing so meant ensuring a power sharing deal with the SNP. Labour figures had already widely rejected this idea.
Fallon’s words were sure to have been approved beforehand by Tory campaign supremo Lynton Crosby. But the attack backfired horribly for the Tories particularly after Fallon twice refused to say whether he thought the Labour leader “a decent man” in a subsequent interview.
Leading Tory Tim Montgomerie described Fallon’s attack as “embarrassing. Way too personal”. Voters are more likely to have been impressed by the quiet dignity of Miliband’s response.
“Michael Fallon’s a decent man,” he said. “But today he demeaned himself and he demeaned his office. The defence issue is too important to play politics with.”
By any stretch of the imagination, Fallon’s words were bizarre. For one thing, Ed Miliband defeated his brother in a fair and open leadership contest in 2010. The contest caused plenty of upset within the Miliband family but there is no suggestion Ed betrayed his older brother. Why would there be? Should David have won automatically because he is the older brother? There is no royal line of succession in the Labour Party. Had David Miliband won, would Fallon now be arguing he had stabbed Ed in the back to win the leadership? Did Ed stab the other candidates in the back too? Did David Cameron stab David Davis in the back to win the Tory leadership in 2005? Of course not. Fallon is talking nonsense. His attempt to link the issue to defence in a bonkers attempt to question Miliband’s patriotism is absurd too. The Daily Mail already attempted this in 2013 when they attacked the Milibands’ late father. It backfired on them too.
This election is unusual in that for the first time since 1979, the party led by the least popular of the two party leaders appears to be winning. The Tories have to do something fast to break the deadlock. But as with Churchill’s disastrous “Gestapo” speech during the 1945 election, they have totally shot themselves in the foot.
If these negative personal attacks continue, the Tories will lose and they will deserve to lose (Apparently not).
Why are our newspapers so Tory?
Our press is supposed to be free: so why the endless Miliband-bashing?
Why is Britain’s press so pro-Conservative? With a week to go until polling day, the two main parties remain firmly neck and neck. Yet a glance at the day’s newspapers on any day of the campaign would suggest a strong lead for the Right in Fleet Street if nowhere else. The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail consistently support the Tories, the Express now supports UKIP, while the Murdoch-owned Times and Sun fiercely back the Tories too. Only The Guardian and The Mirror back Labour. The Independent, now owned by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, supported the Liberal Democrats in 2010. The strict guidelines which manage TV coverage of the election do not apply to Britain’s “free” press. Every day sees an endless round of Miliband bashing. So why is our press so pro-Tory?
Some would argue that the newspapers are merely following public opinion. The fact that most newspaper proprietors position their papers to adopt a pro-Tory position, suggests that they believe most of their readers are likely to be Tory and are thus less likely to be driven away by pro-Tory content. From this, some people conclude, the fact that most of our newspapers are Tory suggests that most British people are Tory. A good argument? Well, no. in reality, our newspapers are much much more Tory than the British public ever is. In the 2010, over 71% of newspapers bought can be accounted for by the Tory press. Yet less than half that figure voted Tory in the last election. The Tories have not actually won a General Election since 1992. This makes no sense if the public are as pro-Tory as the press is.
Could it be then, that our press bosses merely like to back a winner? Rupert Murdoch, certainly seems to have shifted the support of his newspapers in accordance with those parties judged most likely to win moving The Sun, for example, from a pro-Labour position in 1970 (an election which Labour unexpectedly lost) to a pro-Thatcher positions in the Eighties, then pro-Blair after 1997, only switching back to the Tories when Labour defeat began to seem inevitable under Gordon Brown.
Even during the Blair years, however, it should be noted the Mail and Telegraph remained defiantly Tory. It also should be noticed that the press remained vigorously pro-Tory even during the height of Cleggmania in 2010 when it briefly seemed possible the Lib Dems might actually achieve the impossible and win. The press also remain hostile to Labour now, even as many pundits predict a Miliband premiership as the most likely outcome of the 2015 General Election.
The simple truth is that most of our newspapers remain resolutely pro-Tory simply because of the political leanings of their proprietors. Richard Desmond, the editor of the Daily Express is a former Labour supporter but recently gave a £1 million to UKIP. The Daily Mail despite being damaged by the reaction to their attacks on Ed Miliband’s late father in 2013 continued to run endless personal attacks on Miliband, sometimes backfiring as in the case of the recent story about Miliband’s pre-marital love life. The Murdoch papers and the Mail and the Telegraph all remain ideologically hostile to the Labour cause. Cameron’s refusal to initiate press reform after the Leveson Report made him look more compliant too. The press barons could not have a better puppet than David Cameron. The system is unfair but do not expect things to change any time soon.(This still holds true).
Why Labour lost
Last Thursday’s election result destroyed Labour’s hopes of power. So what went wrong?
It’s hard to believe now but as recently as last Thursday, Ed Miliband appeared to stand on the precipice of power. Labour were widely judged to have fought a good campaign and opinion polls throughout the campaign had shown the parties to be consistently neck and neck. But on the night, as we now know, to Tory and Labour surprise, the Tories secured an overall majority, something that had seemed almost inconceivable a few hours before.
What went wrong? In retrospect, the following reasons perhaps explain why Labour had probably lost before the campaign even began:
The Miliband Factor: The Tory press have always been keen on the “wrong Miliband” theory, arguing that David would have made a more convincing leader than his brother. Even if one takes this at face value (and there seems little doubt these same papers would have attacked David just as much as they did Ed, had he won), it’s hard not to feel David Miliband has become hugely overrated and Ed underrated. David, after all, in office was frequently indecisive, dithering particularly over whether to endorse Gordon Brown and frequently arrogant. Ed, contrary to expectation, performed generally well in the election “debates” and largely campaigned well. That said, there was an image problem there. Ed remained less popular than Cameron and it is no coincidence that all but two of the twelve General Elections in the last fifty years have been won by the Labour or Tory Party with the more popular of the two leaders. A more charismatic leader would certainly help Labour next time.
Record breaking: The Tories repeated the mantra that the global economic slump was a result of Labour overspending until they were blue in the face. It wasn’t true. Labour spending only took off when the banks needed bailing out, something which only occurred when the global crisis was in full swing and which had the Tories’ full support at the time. But this didn’t matter. Labour didn’t defend their record and in the end many people came to believe the Tories’ claims.
It was the economy, stupid! ultimately, most indicators now suggest the economy is now doing well. It is difficult for an opposition to argue with this.
Finally, many things suggested Labour were simply not yet ready to return to power. In truth, few parties return from a thirteen year stint in office after just five years in opposition. The Tory majority is only 12 – their smallest since the war (aside from the recent Hung Parliament). Revitalised and under a new leader, Labour should easily be able to overturn it.
All politicians are supposed to have a hinterland: a realm of interest and experience beyond the Westminster Bubble, which they typically in Britain, inhabit. The late former Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, for example, with whom the term is often associated, had a huge range of experience and cultural and classical knowledge outside the political sphere and was much the better and more rounded a figure for it. Margaret Thatcher, in contrast, although in many ways more successful than him politically, had almost no interests outside politics and thus had a boring and miserable retirement, often spent making a nuisance of herself.
Chris Hallam's World View 