General Election tea leaves and the death of two-party politics

The 2015 General Election will be a watershed in British politics. Both major parties are polling between 30-35% of the vote, and the likelihood of either Mr Cameron or Mr Miliband achieving an outright majority is receding every week.

Mr Miliband’s so-called 35% strategy, which sees Labour squeaking in by appealing to their traditional core vote, has been dealt a hammer blow by the resurgent Scottish Nationalists. Labour could be left with fewer than 10 Scottish MPs in London (they currently have 41).

Rumours that Alec Salmond is to seek a Westminster seat suggest that he sees a new opportunity to use the likely increase in SNP representation in London as a lever to go into Coalition with Labour.

Mr Salmond could negotiate, say, his support for Mr Miliband over the course of a five-year Parliament in return for legislation that commits the Government to another referendum on independence after 2020. This gives Labour five years in office, during which time they’ll use SNP support to push through their legislative agenda, and gives Mr Salmond the guarantee he seeks for a new vote within ten years. Whether or not the two parties can work together in London is a moot point. There is no love lost in Scotland between Labour and SNP, but needs must, and Mr Miliband may need those Westminster Scottish Nats if he wants the keys to Number Ten.

For the Tories, an outright majority also seems a distant prospect.  Every time Mr Cameron turns rightwards, on immigration, or the EU, or tax cuts, to appease the 30 or so hard core Tories on the right wing, he loses votes from the centre ground. History shows (pace Mr Blair) that the centre ground is essential to return to Downing Street. A pact with UKIP is out of the question, and the Liberal Democrat vote nationwide is at an all time low.

In any case, the left-leaning MPs in the Lib Dems are more likely to side with Mr Miliband than Mr Cameron, so he cannot count on Mr Clegg bringing the whole party with him in coalition negotiations. Mr Clegg’s Sheffield seat is also looking far from safe.  Lib Dem MPs are, however, famously difficult to shift once they win their seats, and while their national poll rating is less than 10%, within Lib Dem constituencies support is likely to be much higher. It would not be surprising if upwards of 30 Lib Dem MPs are returned to Parliament in 2015, and that may be enough to give them a seat at the table as the major parties negotiate a Coalition.

If Mr Cameron had been brave he should have called the bluff of the 30 Tory ultras long ago and ‘encouraged’ them to join UKIP. Having scoured the Parliamentary Party of the rebels, he could then build bridges with the centrist Lib Dems, such as David Laws, Danny Alexander and the rest of the ‘Orange Book’ wing, as well as disillusioned Blairites, to form a natural party of the Centre.

That option is now closed however, and Mr Cameron will continue to be held to ransom by the diehards who will stop at nothing to remove him, even at the cost of power in 2015. 

Where else do the major parties look?  UKIP is polling in the high teens and may end up with half a dozen seats, and the Greens are attracting disillusioned Labour and Lib Dem votes to poll at their highest level (7%) for many years. If these two parties deliver between 8-10 seats in a new Parliament, they also could be in play.

What is abundantly clear is that the two-party system of Government that has dominated for decades is on a path to extinction.

Both major Parties have seen their support bases hemorrhaging. The Tories are dying off (the support base is mostly over 60), and Labour is wholly reliant on the Trades Unions. And, ideologically, Labour’s ‘the State knows best’ is increasingly at odds with the public mood; voters just don’t trust Governments to spend their money wisely.

The 2015 House of Commons could have as many as four or five minor parties with enough seats to play a key role in the formation of the next Government, each extracting their pound of flesh as the price for support.

For psephologists and political anoraks, the prospect of so seismic a change in the way the UK is governed is hot news. For everyone else, the economic uncertainty that such an outcome inevitably creates is hugely concerning. Optimists however, argue that the experience of the last four years illustrates that coalition Government is perfectly possible, indeed it may even be desirable as a means of re-energising the electorate to take an interest in who governs them.

It may also enable the much-needed reforms of our clapped-out system of Government  (dismantling Whitehall, introducing new ways of enfranchising voters via proportional representation, and giving real power to local authorities) to generate the fillip we so desperately need.