Farewell to old certainties

The rise of smaller parties and the relatively static position of Labour and the Conservatives has made the outcome of next Thursday’s poll difficult to predict. Could it be that the two-party system is on its way out?

When the history of these times comes to be written, it will be clearly seen that the date on which the British political system changed for ever was 18 September 2014, when the Scottish people flooded the country’s polling stations in the biggest turn-out since the introduction of universal suffrage and delivered a narrow vote in favour of retaining the Union. The British political establishment threw its metaphorical hat in the air, revelling in an ill-judged sense of relief and self-congratulation. Even the Queen purred.

How short-lived was that triumphalism would be demonstrated within days. As soon as the pollsters got to work on the political arithmetic, it became evident that the groundswell of nationalism that had led 45 per cent of those who voted to opt for independence was far from mere emotional enthusiasm for the idea. Those on the losing side were asserting more than a nationalist fervour; they were rejecting the existing certainties of Scottish politics, and in doing so the future of the UK’s political system.

Until last autumn it had seemed probable to most commentators that next week’s general election would be won by the Labour Party with little difficulty. It would have been a victory by default, however, as a result of the impact of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) protest vote in Conservative marginal seats and the predictable loss of probably half the Liberal Democrat MPs in the House of Commons because of the slump in their popularity as a direct result of their compliant role in the Coalition Government.

But all that changed as it swiftly became apparent that Scotland’s resurgent nationalist vote would sweep all before it, and that the primary victims would be those Scottish Labour MPs who had for so long taken the electorate – and their own election – for granted. The latest polls suggest that the Scottish National Party (SNP) could take at least 50 of the 59 Scottish seats; one even put the figure at an astonishing 57 seats, leaving Labour and the Liberal Democrats with one each and meaning the loss of 40 Labour seats.

As a consequence of this extraordinary shift, it has been a commonplace to observe from the outset of this most remarkable general election that the only certainty is that the outcome is uncertain. That indeed remains the case in terms of which party patchwork will form the next Government, but in my view there is another certainty: that the two-party system that has prevailed in these islands since the eighteenth century has collapsed and that politics will never be the same again.

Those who retain the old certainties will refute this. I have spoken to a number of former MPs from all parties in the last few weeks of this campaign and most of them, while accepting the current volatility of the electorate, believe that after a bit of a shake-out, the political world will carry on much as before. I was reminded of Hilaire Belloc’s poem On a Great Election:

The accursed power which stands on Privilege(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge) Broke – and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne)

The people I have been meeting and talking to are men and women with vested interests, professional politicians who necessarily cling to outdated assumptions about how political loyalties divide. And that is the point here: the world has changed, the loyalties that framed our traditional politics no longer exist, and the fragmentation of our political system – as we can already see in this current election – is here to stay.

This can be demonstrated both by looking at the nature of this election and at the history of political allegiances since the Second World War. In the immediate post-war election, won by Clement Attlee in 1945, 88 per cent of the electorate voted Labour or Conservative and 9 per cent Liberal; six years later, when Winston Churchill was returned in 1951, an astonishing 97 per cent went to the two major parties. In 1970 it was still 87 per cent, with 7.5 per cent for the Liberals, and in 1983, the post-Falklands War election – and the first to be tested by the alliance of the Liberals and the then emergent Social Democratic Party – the two big parties took 70 per cent and the Alliance 25 per cent.

In 2010, and probably to be repeated on Thursday, the proportion will give about 66 per cent to the Conservatives and Labour, divided roughly equally, and the remaining third to the minority parties. It is, of course, how that “roughly equally” is apportioned on the day that will decide whether David Cameron or Ed Miliband embarks on the exercise of attempting to form a government.

Yet what really divides them? Lord (Kenneth) Baker, a former Cabinet Minister under Margaret Thatcher, quite correctly points out that there is “a great deal of ­communality” in their policies and suggests a grand coalition should one day be considered in the interests of the future of Britain. It is what used to be known as a government of national unity and, who knows, it could appeal to the public thirst for a new way forward.

Before then, there remain questions to be answered about the make-up of the next government, and this, too, is a source of anxiety for the general public. The pollsters have started asking people their view of the importance of the impact of small parties – and the figures show that it worries people. This is probably because of the strategy of the Conservatives and Ukip to portray the Labour Party as at the behest of the fearsome Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP, but it is quite astonishing that it is rated as a more significant issue than Europe, pensions or crime. Admittedly, education and the economy top the “worry” list, but who could have predicted a year ago, when looking at the concerns of the electorate for the future, that Europe would feature so far down the list?

And what can this mean for the likely impact of Ukip? This is meant to be the party for anti-Europeans, among a few other things, and yet the British public, while registering its enthusiastic support for the party, is more concerned about how small parties might destabilise the British Government than about the troubled relationship between Britain and Europe. What I think it actually reveals is that Ukip, while purporting to represent our national sovereignty against an over-mighty European Union, is the all-purpose anti-Tory party.

This brings me to the end of old loyalties. As The Tablet has reported in the last few weeks, in the analyses of the political parties and the extent to which religious faith is important to them, there have been some important spiritual influences on our politics. Perhaps the most powerful outside Northern Ireland that has been reflected here is the importance of the Catholic vote to the Labour Party. Yet what is happening in Scotland shows that this now counts for little. There are vestiges of tribal loyalty, but they are meaningless.

There are, of course, still the faithful. The sandal-wearing Liberal Democrat so beloved of caricature will soldier on. The colonel, too, and his missus in the cushioned comforts of Conservatism. The Labour lefties with their eyes still raised towards the prospects of the New Jerusalem and preserving our mountains green. But the electorate is weary of them and their sullied record. The taint of self-serving corruption in the House of Commons still hangs in the air, as heady as the Victorian dust of the old Palace as it slowly falls to bits.

British politics is changing and will continue to do so. This election, so unlike any of the 10 elections I have covered since February 1974, may have been difficult to predict, but it can show us the way forward to a future in which faith in the political system might possibly be restored.

Julia Langdon is a political journalist.