The turkey has been picked clean, the New Year hangover cured and everyone is back at work. And the phoney war has begun.
So far we have heard Gordon Brown insist that Labour will fight every inch of the way, David Cameron maintain that the NHS will be his “number one priority” and Nick Clegg claim that Labour and Tories are “increasingly alike”.
And we have heard Alistair Darling claim there is a £34 billion shortfall in Tory spending plans, and the Conservatives respond that this is “complete junk from start to finish”.
And then we have heard Mr Cameron say that, if elected, he would form an
In a speech at the Oxford School of Drama Mr Cameron recently observed that “the next general election is no more than 153 days away.” It promises to be a long 153 days.
Speculating on who will win is one of those pointless exercises that so animates politics. If the polls still favour the Conservatives, smart money seems to be edging towards a hung parliament.
Political tactics come and go in weeks, in an election year, overnight. December’s idea, that Labour were planning a class war against David Cameron, seems to have fallen away, with Mr Brown telling Andrew Marr at the weekend that his jibe about Tory policy being dreamt up on the playing fields of Eton was just a joke. For that reason alone, we need to be careful about reading too much into a tactic simply because it makes the headlines.
The recent courting of the Liberal Democrats may be different, however. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives actively wants a coalition. No party ever does. But in the event of one, it seems sensible to have made overtures. At this stage, it the Liberal Democrat vote that is being courted. “We are surprisingly close to the Lib Dems on a number of important issues so if you really want to see your favoured causes become policy you would be sensible to vote for us.” In time, however, the courting may shift from the voters to their leader.
If there is a hung parliament it will benefit Liberal Democrats and psephologists. It may even make politics more interesting. But a weak leader, a neutered government, political horse trading, marriages of convenience, endless briefings and counter-briefing, the shadow of a coup – none of this will inspire public confidence, let alone calm City nerves.
Moreover, if we arrive at such a hung parliament after a five-month campaign of political bickering, public frustration may already be woefully high.
It is interesting that all the main party leaders have recently spoken about the need for honesty and integrity over the coming year. In his New Year’s message Mr Cameron spoke of an election “free from fake political dividing lines”, while in his Mr Clegg claimed how his belief in politics had been tested “to breaking point” in 2009 and remarked that “if we as leaders want people to turn out to vote at all at the next general election, we have got to show people our convictions, not just dividing lines, our beliefs, not just sound bites.”
Such statements are par for the course. Politicians need to criticise politics and imply that they themselves are different if they are to win the electorate.
They may mean it this time, although it is difficult to see how one party can refuse to comment on another’s accusations, something that immediately turns into the kind of tit-for-tat squabbling that so bores the electorate.
Whether or not they do, it is easier at this stage to see who will lose in 2010 than it is to see who will win.
Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos.
