Given that Canadian politics hasn’t merited much attention recently (summary: coke snorting ex-MPs and more secrecy from the Harper government) it’s worth turning to something far more exciting: Great Britain’s election on the 6th of May. Six months ago it looked like the Tories would walk away with it without even having to make an effort. David Cameron’s party had a commanding lead in the polls and the British electorate seemed ready to toss out the withering corpse of New Labour (in power since 1997) without a second thought. Yet an expenses scandal has poisoned the atmosphere of British politics and a TV debate (the first ever of its kind in Great Britain) has blown the campaign wide open. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg looks poised to double his party’s seats and perhaps even defeat the incumbent Labour Party in the popular vote (not since the early twentieth century have Labour placed behind the Lib Dems). Excellent summaries of election developments can be found on the BBC or The Guardian. More than anything, it is the narrative of the campaign that interests me here. The great advantage of Presidential television debates (a staple of election campaigns in most democracies) is the opportunity they present for the construction of grand master narratives designed to compel the electorate. The forces that shape these narratives are twofold:
First, they represent a response to the perceived national sentiment. Barack Obama’s brilliant Presidential campaign captured the imagination of a public disenchanted with the brutally incompetent and malicious Bush Administration. Yet campaign narratives also aim to mould the national sentiment, driving crucial wedges into the electorate and staking out the ground on which a campaign will be fought. Britain’s election has become a three-way race, increasingly dominated by a supercharged Liberal Democratic narrative. Labour seems content to dig in its heals and repeat words like “competence, experience, prudence” etc. The Conservative narrative initially seemed the most compelling when Labour was its only rival. Yet after the recent debates it’s clear that Cameron and his crew have yet to reshape their campaign adequately to counter the surging Lib Dems. Here’s a summary of the campaign narratives as they appear in the party manifestos:
Labour “A Future Fair for All”: Stay the course: maintain fiscal stimulus that has kept Britain from sinking deeper into recession; aim for deficit reduction over the course of several years but keep funding for critical public services like education and healthcare. Essentially a “substance over style” shtick. Gordon Brown made sure to drive this point at the start of Thursday’s debate.
Conservative “An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”: Big Society not Big Government, shrink the “bloated” state: cut spending in all areas except health and foreign aid; allow charities, trusts, voluntary groups and co-operatives to set up new Academy schools, independent of local authority control, and to run other public services; reduce immigration; aggressively reform government by removing 150 MPs from the House of Commons and giving more power to communities and local councils. Cut civil service and offer positions to members of the public in schools, libraries, etc; resist deeper integration into Europe and put future European treaties to referendums.
Liberal Democrat “Change that Works for You/A Fairer Britain”: Resist the “old politics” and the two-party duopoly; make the electoral system fairer by allowing citizens to “sack” MPs perceived to be corrupt and introduce Single-Transferable Vote; maintain front-line services and gradually reduce dept; scrap the expensive Trident nuclear programme and apply a prudent foreign policy autonomous from the United States; pursue a closer relationship with the European Union
So, given these narratives, what is the public sentiment that they are responding to? What exactly are they trying to achieve in terms of moulding the mood of the electorate?
Of all three, the Conservative narrative is the most ideological: fundamentally, it is founded on the principle that the state is a large and bureaucratic leviathan whose many functions could be better served by “people power” and the entrenchment of “traditional” values. Whatever one thinks of this (I don’t personally agree with any of the consequent policies such a belief produces) it makes for a compelling narrative, particularly after thirteen years of Labour governance and a multi-billion pound deficit. Its effect is enhanced by the manifest disillusionment among the British electorate following the expenses scandal, which tainted the public perception of all things political and, most of all, of politicians themselves. It is a variant of the basic conservative narrative which tries to rally support by creating or taking advantage of suspicion about the state in order to make it smaller and “give power back to the people”. In the case of this Tory manifesto, the title actually states this explicitly. But there is a flaw in this narrative which dulls its sharpness among the class-aware British electorate. David Cameron already suffers from a perception that he’s an out of touch member of the ruling class (not entirely unfairly; he is a fifth cousin to the Queen). The underlying message of the Conservative manifesto [“An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”] sounds particularly naïve given this perception. The very notion of a “Big Society” over a “Big Government” doesn’t sound very attractive during a recession in which governments around the world have had to take unprecedented measures to secure and stabilize their economies. The manifesto goes even further, suggesting that parents effectively take over schools and sub-contract responsibilities currently held by local councils to private companies (based on the Swedish “Free School” model). The narrative of mass public participation in social services and schools is a compelling one, even if it’s not the least bit viable in practice. Moreover it risks alienating vast swaths of the electorate, particularly in the working and lower middle classes. What kinds of parents, in reality, have time to do the work of local councils responsible for education? In practice, the notion of mass public participation pitched by the Tory manifesto could only ever be a reality for the upper echelons of the middle class. Thus, rather than bringing together disparate class groupings within the electorate, this kind of populism is more likely to exacerbate existing perceptions of the Conservatives as a party which is fundamentally class based and out of touch. Even if David Cameron becomes the Prime Minister (somewhat likely given recent polls although a Conservative majority seems improbable) he’ll find that his narrative of “change through the Big Society” will be unattractive to a sizeable chunk of Great Britain.
*As a side note, a second component of the Conservative campaign consists of leveraging Britain’s (many) right-wing tabloids to lob personal attacks at Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown. None of these attacks seem to have made any impression on recent polls.
The narrative contained in Labour’s manifesto hardly merits such a detailed analysis. Quite simply, it tries to build on Gordon Brown’s reputation as a competent economic manager; suggesting that a Conservative government of any kind would lead to critical cuts in health and education (not an unfair assessment). Labour support is so concentrated that even its 5-8 point dip in the polls brought on by the Liberal surge has hardly hurt its likely share of seats in the next Parliament. Even if the incumbent party places third in the popular vote (as polls suggest it may) it could emerge with the single largest seat count in New Westminster. More recently, Labour has tried to tweak its approach by calling for a campaign of “substance over style” (a clear attempt to portray the Liberal Democrats as idealistic, spend-happy dilettantes…very similar to the charges routinely directed at the NDP here in Canada). Overall, this technocratic approach to the campaign hasn’t paid off for Labour.
Now to the Liberal Democrats who haven’t received much attention until recent weeks. Nick Clegg’s stunning debate performances have already led many commentators to predict the demise of Britain’s two party system with many speak of an “existential crisis” within the Labour Party. Polling surges of the kind are hard to gauge, especially when the draconian First-Past-the-Post electoral system obscures the potential for pure democratic representation. (To give an example, even if all three parties received exactly 33% of the vote, the Lib Dems would take home just over a hundred seats while Labour and the Conservatives would each get well over two hundred). Yet there does seem to be something irresistibly compelling about the Liberal Democratic narrative: as a member of Canada’s NDP, I’m used to seeing the message of “resisting the old politics” have only limited effectiveness (in truth, the functionality of our electoral system is even more broken and indefensible than Britain’s but I digress…) but, in the context of the expenses scandal and, among other things, the Iraq War, this message seems to be catching on like wildfire. There seems to be an attitude among many centrist/non-ideological voters that the two regular alternatives represent failed policy and, for want of a better phrase, the “old politics”. The Liberal Democrats opposed the Iraq War, support reforming the electoral system, and have succeeded in opening up a serious public discussion about the future of Britain’s nuclear arsenal. It’s highly unlikely that Nick Clegg will become his country’s next Prime Minister but, given the success of the Lib Dems and their narrative of “change” in recent weeks, major shifts could be occurring beneath the bedrock of British politics.
Other Parties: Besides Britain’s regional parties (like the Scottish and Welsh nationalists) the two key parties to observe beyond the principle three are the British National Party (BNP) and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Both represent right-wing populist revulsion about immigration and integration into Europe. The former has roots in the English fascist movement and a (deserved) reputation for racism and particularly anti-Semitism. Yet the party has grown by leaps and bounds under its leader Nick Griffin, who has expanded BNP policies into a national platform and gained a wider public platform for the party. Griffin is himself campaigning in a Labour stronghold in East London, hoping to blame unemployment in working-class communities (brought on by the recession) on immigration to secure support. The BNP won two seats in the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections with this message but, in the context of a general election, it can expect much greater scrutiny and is unlikely to win any seats. UKIP recently emerged as the second largest UK-based party in the European Parliament (tying Labour with thirteen seats). Unlike the BNP, UKIP seems very poorly organized and is very unlikely to enjoy electoral success: (a video recently posted by the BBC shows its leader unable to identify key points in his own manifesto). In the context of such intense voter disillusionment, both parties won major victories in the European Parliamentary Elections, in a development which many believed would lead to a surge in support for Euroskepticism and anti-immigration politics. The existence of parties like the BNP and UKIP deserves attention, but unless one of the major parties implodes during the next two weeks, both are likely to remain on the fringe of British politics.
