General Election countdown: kicking the can down the road

48 hours before Britain votes in the 2015 General Election, the outcome is as clear as mud, except all agree that there will be no clear outcome. An army of psephologists note that the two major parties remain neck and neck, with the Tories perhaps a point or two ahead. A point or two ahead does not translate to an overall majority however, and pundits are now fully focused on what happens after the votes are counted.

If, as seems likely, the Tories end up with the most seats, and the most votes, David Cameron will surely insist on remaining in Number 10 to try and form a Government as a first move.  He may be there for some time. If Nick Clegg holds onto his Sheffield Hallam seat and remains the Lib Dem leader, I suspect he’ll favour a Conservative–led arrangement over Labour (Mr Clegg is a Conservative in all but name), but there are several ambitious Lib-Dem MPs who track closer to the left, notably Tim Farron, the slippery Lib Dem President. Farron wants to replace Nick Clegg, so even the Lib Dems may be split on which major party to support.

Ed Miliband has re-iterated that he will not do coalition deals with the Scottish Nationalists, acknowledging perhaps that the Tories have tapped into English voters’ fears of Labour having to dance to Ms Sturgeon’s bagpipes, but the mathemathics almost certainly point to some sort of arrangement with the SNP if Labour wants to get a Queen’s Speech through Parliament. Although much discussion has centred on the Queen’s speech, the real stumbling block would be Labour’s first Budget, because it’s easy to dress up a Queen’s Speech with vague rhetoric, whereas a Budget….. that is much harder to dissemble.

Mr Cameron’s position as Prime Minister is also subject to speculation. Bear in mind the Tories have not won an outright majority since 1992, and while the right wing headbangers have kept quiet during the campaign, failure to win the Election outright may presage a coup, with the right seeking to remove Mr Cameron, possibly in favour of Theresa May or Boris Johnson.

Boris is popular with voters, but not much liked within the ranks of Tory MPs. Neither is he a right-winger. Mrs May famously described the Tories as “the nasty party,” essentially pointing her finger at the Thatcherites, so the two leading candidates are hardly natural leaders of the right.

For both Labour and Conservatives, the day after polling day already looks horribly messy, and the odds of another General Election later this year are shortening rapidly.

This election has also cast into doubt the efficacy of a First Past the Post system. For the first time, Conservatives and Labour are no longer guaranteed a duopoly of power, because the old certainty of British politics: left vs right, has fractured.

The surge of support for minority parties with special interests such as green issues, or immigration, has broken the two-party system, and both major Parties have been astonishingly complacent in response.

Nevertheless, there is growing support within certain progressive elements of the Labour and Tory political classes that a proportional representation voting system may better serve the longer term constitutional and political interests of the UK.

PR would create a more European-style politics, such as in Germany, where smaller parties become more influential within broad political blocs – the Christian Democrats (broadly centre right) and the Social Democrats (broadly centre left). This system has much to recommend it, not least because German regional politics is also well-served through the powerful Lander, or State Governments, which retain significant political sovereignty.

What is clear is that politics in the UK, from the election of its politicians to the administration of government via a bloated and old-fashioned Whitehall, is increasingly sclerotic. Meanwhile, CrossBorderCapital estimates that $360bn of foreign capital has left these shores during the last 15 months, driven partly (but by no means only) by election uncertainty. Hot money it may be, but it signifies that UK is not, currently, a popular investment destination, and that perception is unlikely to change for some time yet.