Tomorrow's British election has been billed as the most unpredictable contest in 70 years, notwithstanding the overwhelming expectation that it will yield yet another hung Parliament.
Back in 1945 the result may have been unexpected but it was also unequivocal: The Labour Party, for the first time in its history, won by a landslide. An electorate that had hung on Winston Churchill’s words during his tenure as the wartime prime minister chose to ignore his warnings about the “extreme socialism” his ideological opponents would usher in.
Wartime exigencies may generally have been viewed as a necessary evil, but they also created the impression that it wasn’t, after all, such a bad idea for the levers of economic power to be controlled by the state. The government led by the relatively uncharismatic Clement Attlee — witheringly referred to by Churchill as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing” — proved to be among the most consequential that Britain has witnessed. On the international front, it acknowledged that the days of the British Empire were numbered by fast-tracking Indian independence. It could certainly be argued that its haste in this particular respect set the stage for a monumental tragedy; on the other hand, efforts to hang on to the “jewel in the crown” — a course the Conservatives might have been inclined to pursue — may have yielded even more catastrophic consequences.
Domestically, Labour nationalized key components of the economy, established an affordable housing scheme and made health care universally accessible with its National Health Service (NHS), midwifed by Aneurin Bevan. Back then, the Attlee government’s achievements were relatively uncontroversial. In a nod to the popular mood, the Conservatives — who regained power in 1951 under Churchill — argued against further nationalization, but did not strive to roll back Labour’s progressive measures. The postwar welfare state remained effectively unchallenged until 1979, which witnessed the next most consequential election in the country.
The advent of Margaret Thatcher inaugurated a new era, and when Labour returned to power under Tony Blair in 1997, it chose to retain her platform for the most part, even venturing into realms where Thatcher had feared to tread. The NHS, though, remains a sensitive zone, and has resurfaced this year as a prominent area of contention, with Labour under Ed Miliband arguing that it alone can protect the health service from the vagaries of gradual but steady privatization.
David Cameron’s Conservatives contend that the NHS will be safe under them, too, albeit with somewhat less credibility, given that the present government’s so-called austerity measures have focused largely on spending cuts, and the survival of the NHS is contingent upon a healthy funding regimen.
Whereas Labour has latched on to the NHS as a key policy issue, the propaganda against Miliband has largely been focused on portraying him as effectively a puppet of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which is derided by both sides of politics in England as a separatist outfit.
The SNP long ago supplanted Labour as the most popular party north of the border, and opinion polls this time around hint at the possibility of a clean sweep by the SNP in Scotland. Even if that does not occur, it is more or less bound to emerge as the third largest party in the House of Commons. Chances are therefore high that, in collaboration with Labour, it could help to wrest power from the Tories.
Miliband, however, has vowed not to enter into a coalition with the SNP, or even an understanding that would enable him to lead a minority Labour government. In the latter respect his commitment has been derided by senior figures within his party, and it is not inconceivable that he could change his mind in the light of the political arithmetic that emerges on Friday morning.
On the other side, Cameron faces the prospect of a Conservative leadership contest should he fail once again to win a clear majority. Back in 2010, he was propelled into No 10 Downing Street by the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to enter into a coalition. But despite having their leader, Nick Clegg, as deputy prime minister, the Lib Dems’ influence on policy remained marginal, and the disillusionment they have inspired is likely to manifest itself in tomorrow’s results.
Besides, even if the unlikely event of the Lib Dems securing enough seats to offer the Tories a second chance at a coalition, powerful voices among the Conservatives are opposed to renewing the contract. The alternative may turn out to be some sort of arrangement with Nigel Farage’s xenophobic and Euro-phobic UK Independence Party (UKIP), an outfit that has hoovered up support mainly from those who bizarrely see the Conservatives as too liberal or progressive in some respects.
In the absence of a clear result, Britain may be compelled to reconsider the viability of its first-past-the-post electoral system, which affords candidates (and parties) a majority on the basis of a relatively small proportion of the vote. Its democratic inadequacies have generally elicited the response that at least it enables political stability — unlike much of the rest of Europe, where various forms of proportional representation (PR) invariably lead to coalitions or minority governments.
A second successive hung Parliament would perhaps fatally undermine that particular argument, though. A better case against PR rests on the basis that party lists, in place of constituency candidates, would make it even harder to relate to politics by erecting yet another barrier between the electors and the elected. However, a second round of voting, as in France, or preferential voting, as in Australia, could render the British system less undemocratic without eliminating constituency candidates.
That’s not the only systemic flaw, though. The past couple of decades have demonstrated the lack of clear space, in terms of policy and ideology, between the main contenders for power, which in turn has fed into apathy and cynicism. The presence in Britain of a nationwide force clearly opposed to neoliberal capitalism, along the lines of Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain, could have thrown an intriguing spanner into the works. Tomorrow’s result will nonetheless be interesting, not only in terms of the potential coalition it throws up but also as an indicator of the level of political engagement — and of how far Britain is from a course that would rescue it from the sharply rising disparities of wealth that have blighted it in the recent past.
