Bubblevision - by Richard... Sunday, May 09, 2010

Bubblevision - by Richard... Sunday, May 09, 2010

As the political pundits desperately try to work out the unknowable, what most certainly has not been factored into this ongoing drama is the low-grade inadequacy of the main players.

Far from having all the facts at their fingertips during the election campaign, with a complete and accurate grasp of the situation, it seems the Tories didn't have the first idea of what was going on. Right up to the last minute on the Friday, they believed The Boy was going to be sauntering into Downing Street by midday. Some of the chaps had even been resting up through the latter stages of the campaign, in order to be ready to take hold of the reins, to guide the ship of state and all that crap.

This and much more is brought home in a piece in the Mail on Sunday, below rather confirming that the Tory high command are so far up their own backsides (or each others') that the only way they can see daylight is through the gaps in their teeth.

Once again, of course, we are seeing "bubblevision", where being at the centre of things, far from conferring perfect vision and insight, creates a peculiar kind of political blindness. And the people thus afflicted want to form our government? God help us all. 

RESHUFFLE THREAD

They were sure they had it in the bag - even after the exit poll came in

By JAMES FORSYTH

Last updated at 1:08 AM on 9th May 2010

David Cameron seemed confident the Tories would win the election

As Election day approached, the Tories became increasingly confident of outright victory. 

On the eve of the poll, the Tory number counters thought the party would win between 320 and 330 seats and the Liberal Democrats up to 100.

Such a result would have left Labour in chaos, struggling to stay above the 200 seat mark.

It would also have put David Cameron in No10. Even if the Tories did not make it to 326, the number needed to be certain of a majority, they would have got over the line given the DUP’s guarantee that it would support the party in these circumstances.

On polling day, Conservative Campaign Headquarters was full of optimism. Several senior figures were resting up in anticipation of having to start work in Downing Street the next day. 

Even the exit poll, showing the Tories falling short, could not dent the mood.

Key figures reassured newspaper executives that Cameron would be at the Palace kissing hands just after lunch on Friday.

As the night wore on, it became clear that the country was in hung Parliament territory. But at CCHQ, Cameron’s top aides still looked cheerful. Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, had a big smile on his face, as did Steve Hilton, his chief strategist.

The mood was only turned when Michael Ashcroft, the party’s controversial vice chairman, went off – to general surprise – and did a BBC interview in which he blamed the leaders’ TV debates for Cameron’s failure to win a majority.

 

More...

• Forget deals, just go it alone, says ex Tory chairman Tebbit
• Is it any wonder the vote was a shambles?
• 7 in 10 say Brown should quit now: New poll reveals that most voters want Tories to govern without Lib Dems
• MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Brown has lost. So has Clegg. We need a new government. By tonight
• TIM MONTGOMERIE: Remember who deserves the last dance, Dave
• DAVID ROSE: The English have chosen a new leader. Why must they pay to put him in office?

In the morning, there were multiple meetings as the Tory high command tried to work out what deal they could strike with the Liberal Democrats and what they could sell to their own party.

Before Cameron delivered his speech setting out a ‘big, open comprehensive offer’ to the Lib Dems, there was a conference call with the Shadow Cabinet. It was stressed that the Tories had to avoid driving Nick Clegg into Labour’s arms. 

Tory vice chairman Michael Ashcroft blamed the leaders' TV debates for Cameron's failure to win a majority

As one member of the Shadow Cabinet put it to me: ‘You can’t not play this game of poker.’ 

Cameron also called former leaders of the party and various big beasts to talk over what he was going to say – seen as proof that he understood the importance of squaring the party to what he was about to do.

Meanwhile, other key players warned people of the danger the party was in, and how a deal between Clegg and Labour could see the two parties rig the voting system to keep the Tories out of power for a generation.

What has surprised the Tory Party is that the leadership actually wants a coalition with Lib Dems in the Cabinet. 

Many people have been surprised by talk of a Tory coalition with the LibDems

When jobs were put on the table, most Tories assumed this was being done safe in the knowledge that Clegg would not accept for fear of his party – which would have to ratify the move – rejecting it. The Tories thought the leadership was just trying to show the electorate they had tried to make things work.

But it has become clear that the leadership really does think that a formal coalition is the best outcome. The rest of the party are not so sure. 

One senior figure told me: ‘Allowing Clegg into the TV debates was a nearly fatal mistake, how much bigger a mistake would it be to allow him into government?’

Another influential figure warns: ‘If they think they can stitch up a deal without regard to backbench opinion, that will come back to bite them.’ Indeed, a coalition deal would be durable only if it was supported by the overwhelming majority of Tory MPs.

The leadership wants a coalition rather than an arrangement where the Lib Dems simply agree not to bring the Government down because, in the words of one Shadow Cabinet member, ‘if they’re in, they’re more amenable to making things work’.

The obvious stumbling block to any arrangement is proportional representation. Any offer that does not include that would not be acceptable to the Lib Dems. But any offer that did include that would be unacceptable to many Tories.

Ways round the problem are being explored. One option is to divide things into three. First a boundary review after every Election to ensure that all constituencies are of equal size. 

Second, fixed-term parliaments – a long-standing Lib Dem goal. Finally, a referendum on PR, but after an inquiry that, unlike the Jenkins Commission, would not be biased in favour of change.

If all that was required for a coalition deal was an agreement between the leadership of the two parties, it would be on. 

But the fact that outside the leadership there is little enthusiasm and much hostility makes things very uncertain.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1275522/UK-ELECTION-RESULTS-2010-They-sure-bag--exit-poll-came-in.html#ixzz0nRNH96F4

A gamble that failed - by Richard...

By my reckoning, the count is 22 – the number of seats in which the Tories came second and the UKIP vote was greater than winning majority. BNP managed this 13 times and, when the combined votes are taken into account, the UKIP/BNP vote was greater than the winning majority in 41 seats.

In theory, at least, this means that these two parties, separately or in combination, deprived David Cameron's Conservatives of their winning majority. Potentially, the Conservative score could have been 347 instead of 306 – a comfortable majority of 22 over the baseline 225.

That said, it cannot be assumed that everyone who voted for the two minority parties would have voted Conservative had there been – as Booker puts it in his column today (link to follow) - a more robustly Conservative alternative, along the lines of the Thatcher offer in 1979, or had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty been on offer. 

However, in some seats the margin between victory and defeat was so narrow that what I call the "UKIP effect" can be more or less assured. For instance, in Bolton West, the Labour majority was 92 and the UKIP vote was 1,901. Dorset Mid & Poole North, the majority was 269 and the UKIP vote 2,109. In Hampstead & Kilburn, the majority was 42. UKIP scored 408 and BNP 328 votes. 

Quite what the extent of the effect might have been though, will remain controversial, and it is a question the media and the politicians are reluctant to answer. But one thing is for sure – against one of the most unpopular governments in living memory, Cameron has managed to drag defeat from the jaws of victory.

To future generations, Booker writes, it may seem that the most remarkable feature of the 2010 election was that, after 13 years of one of the most disastrous governments in history, as Britain faces its worst economic crisis for decades, the Tory party failed to win a clear victory. He adds:

From the moment Mr Cameron emerged from nowhere as leader in 2005, his defining characteristic was his ruthless drive to create a new "Not the Conservative Party", in his own image. On issue after issue, from his infatuation with "greenery" and global warming to his insistence that his followers should not “bang on about Europe”, he sought to ditch traditional Conservative values and to pursue the Lib Dem, Guardianista "centre" vote. As for his party's more traditional core supporters, he did not so much take them for granted as treat them with contempt. 

Such was the deliberate gamble of Mr Cameron's leadership, and the verdict of last week's election was that the gamble has not come off. For five years, it has been evident to anyone in touch with grassroots opinion that a broad swath of natural Tory supporters – including many readers of this column – have watched the antics of Mr Cameron and his little clique of close allies with bewilderment, frustration and dismay. Rarely can any Tory leader have aroused in many of his potential voters so little positive enthusiasm, even if many did last week reluctantly support his party.

Booker is then one of the few journalists who takes the "UKIP effect" seriously. Although support for its individual candidates may have looked derisory – with the media and others quick to put down the small parties – UKIP actually polled some 917,832 votes, making it easily the fourth largest party. And, if it has deprived Cameron of 20-plus seats, it has rewritten political history.

The decision to abandon his core vote and go for the woolly centre, sucking up to the Lib-Dims in the hope that they would gravitate to the Tories, has not paid off. 

Even though little Nick Clegg has lost some seats, his party's share of the vote increased by one percent over 2005, delivering him 6,827,938 votes. Taking the near million UKIP votes and the 563,743 polled by BNP, Cameron gambled on ditching 1.5 million to gain a share of the near 7-million Lib-Dim votes. The gamble failed, leaving him with a party virtually indistinguishable from that of the other main parties, and his tenancy of No 10 Downing Street still in doubt.

With the only certainty now that there will be another general election in short order, Cameron needs to walk away from the wreckage of his current strategy or he may yet experience an even bigger failure as the "UKIP effect" takes its toll once again. 

On the other hand, last time in 2005, I wrote that it could, "conceivably, deny the Conservatives power at the next election," then adding: "Dispute this if you will. Debate it by all means, but it does not seem to me safe to ignore it." Well, they did ignore it and they are quite capable of doing so again. They really are that stupid.