Party politics: A plague on all their houses?

April 02, 2012, 11:29 AM GMT+0

Will events of the past few weeks cause lasting damage to British politics, asks John Humphrys

The last couple of weeks have been an extraordinary period in British politics. For the Coalition Government it’s been the most uncomfortable stretch since it came to power almost two years ago and may prove to be a turning point in its fortunes. For Labour, losing the supposedly safe by-election in Bradford West, it’s been hardly any more cheering. None of the main party leaders commands a positive rating; all of them have far more detractors than fans. Does all this amount to just a rocky period for British politics? Or is something more fundamental going on?

Until recently the Coalition may have been pinching itself at its luck. Opinion polls showed that it was generally managing to keep its head above water despite the fact that it was having to impose unpopular policies on the country and presiding over an economy that is still virtually stagnating and causing unemployment to go on rising as a result.

It is true that the Liberal Democrats, the junior partners in the Coalition, have been polling badly but they had always known this would happen. Both of their usual sources of support ‒ voters who like to protest at any government and people on the left disaffected with Labour ‒ were bound to abandon them once they joined up with the Tories to form a government themselves. But the Lib Dem high command took the long view: if they could prove themselves in government over five years, then maybe the votes would start to come back.

For the Tories support has remained remarkably high. Few would have predicted back in 2010 that two years on, YouGov would be reporting a three-point lead for the party over Labour in the week going into a Budget.

The Budget: aftermath

But the Budget itself changed all that. Whatever the merits of the Chancellor’s measures, it’s now clear they’ve proved enormously damaging to the Tories and succeeded in denting the reputation of the Chancellor, George Osborne, as a master political strategist. The Budget came to be understood by the public as imposing a tax on grannies in order to pay for a tax cut for the rich. That may not be a fair summary of the complexities of Budget arithmetic, but politics is not a fair business.

When Mr Osborne then lost a spat with a Labour MP, John Mann, about the imposition of VAT on hot pasties, it provided a propaganda coup for Labour, whose focus groups had been telling them for a long time that charging the Tories with being ‘out of touch’ rang bells with voters.

As if that weren’t all damaging enough, the cash-for-suppers affair seemed to show the party as not just out-of-touch with ordinary voters but all too in-touch with the rich and powerful and seemingly willing to take their money in donations to the party in return for influence. The newspaper sting in which Peter Cruddas, a billionaire who had only recently become a Tory Party treasurer, was caught offering dinners in Downing Street in return for very big donations instantly led to his resignation, but the story has left the risk of lasting damage to the party and its reputation.

The Tories plead that it is usual for all party leaders to entertain donors, and that no one has come forward with any evidence to suggest that government policy was actually changed by such donations; unlike, they will point out, under Tony Blair when there were allegations that government policy was affected by donations to Labour from Grand Prix boss, Bernie Ecclestone. Even so, the whiff of sleaze over party funding is difficult to clear.

Petrol problems and Bradford win

On top of all that, the Government then fell on its face over the tanker drivers dispute. Advice to motorists that they should top up their tanks ‒ and even store petrol in jerry cans ‒ led to panic buying that exacerbated the shortages that the advice was meant to pre-empt, and then quickly followed by a U-turn in the advice itself. To many, all this looked like simple government incompetence, and politicians know that incompetence more than anything else is corrosive of electoral support. No wonder Tory backbenchers are so much less cheerful than they were a fortnight ago.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, must have been thinking all his Christmases were coming at once. Until last Friday morning, that is.

The result of the Bradford West by-election was humiliating for his party. A safe seat was lost to the former Labour rebel and now leader of the Respect party, George Galloway, who won it with a thumping 10,000 majority over his old party. All the main parties suffered a huge loss of support in the constituency.

Commentators are attributing this sensational result to all sorts of things, including local factors, the particular appeal that Galloway’s longstanding opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had to the unusually large Muslim vote in the constituency, and to Galloway’s own unique charisma. But there is no getting round the fact that, given the chance, voters abandoned all the main parties in droves. What will be the consequences?

Changes needed?

Within the parties themselves, there will be urgent questions about what needs to change. Tories are already muttering about George Osborne, saying that he cannot go on doubling up the roles of chancellor and chief party strategist. It’s also being argued that the party needs a ‘big beast’ to be in the role of party chairman, ready to tour the broadcasting studios to put up a robust fight when things start to go wrong, as they have over the last couple of weeks.

For Labour, Ed Miliband has said the party needs to learn lessons from the mauling it received in Bradford and will be going up there again to try to learn them himself. But some in his party think that he is the problem, having failed to make an impact on the public. That seems to have been confirmed by the large negative rating he has in the polls. Local elections next month will prove a big test for him and if Labour does not do well in them, there may be calls for him to be replaced.

But is change within the parties what voters are looking for, or do they want something quite different?

Some natural Tory voters may switch to other parties on the right, like UKIP, which has often benefited from disaffection with the Conservatives. Fed-up Labour voters are unlikely to head off in the direction of the Lib Dems while the latter remain in bed with the Tories, so there may be room for a new party on the left.

This is what has happened in Germany where die Linke is making inroads on the Social Democrats’ vote. And in France the surprise of the presidential election (which takes place in three weeks) has been the rise on the left of the anti-capitalist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who threatens the fortunes of socialist front-runner, François Hollande. Perhaps, in Britain, Mr Galloway sees an opportunity here for Respect.

Or it could be that voters will just turn their backs on party politics by not voting at all, or seeing the future of political involvement as lying with extra-parliamentary action, such as that pioneered by the Occupy movement? Is that the more likely consequence of the political tremors of the last couple of weeks?

What’s your view?

  • How disaffected do you feel by the political events of the last two weeks?
  • Has your fundamental attitude to the Coalition Government changed or not?
  • Do you think the Budget and the rows over 'granny taxes' and 'the pasty tax' have made you feel that the Government is ‘out of touch’ or do you think that’s just a slogan its opponents throw at it?
  • Do you think the Cruddas affair will have a lasting effect on Tory support or not?
  • What do you make of the shenanigans over the tanker driver dispute: was the Government incompetent or do you think it acted properly?
  • Do you think Labour’s loss of Bradford West was a flash in the pan or means something more significant?
  • What advice would you give each of the parties to ‘up their game’?
  • Are you attracted by parties outside the mainstream, like Respect?
  • Are you disenchanted with party politics altogether or do you think this is just a bad patch?
  • And do you think British politics is moving away from dependence on the parties, or do you think it will revert to the essentially three-party system we have been used to for so long?

Let us know your views by using the comment box below.