The broken sauna
Apologies for the 4-day gap between posts but the campaign feels like it's been running out of steam (not that it had much in the first place), and so do I. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems seem to be stuck in a holding pattern of laying into Tony Blair on Iraq and hoping that this will reduce Labour's support, or its turnout, by enough to wipe out the Labour majority. This is a long shot strategy and if the polls are anything to go by, the effects are inconclusive. There has probably been a small shift to the Lib Dems in the last few days and if their supporters turn out in greater numbers than Labour they could win a few dozen more seats, although this will mainly be at the expense of the Tories rather than Labour.
Whilst the Lib Dems are playing Iraq as the one real policy (apart from electoral reform) where they have an obvious and clear difference from the other parties, for the Tories this is their last hope (provided the polls are not catastrophically wrong) and as pure a piece of opportunism as you would expect from a party that seemed to build up all its momentum just before the campaign started, only to look progressively weaker as it has dragged on. Michael Howard is hoping that voters will forget that Tony Blair is something pretty close to a lame duck now, even if Labour's majority does hold up well on May 5th. Labour is no longer synonymous with Blair in the public mind, and as we move through the third term he will be looking more and more like he is keeping the seat warm for Gordon. In the event of rapid economic collapse (an unlikely but possible scenario given the US administration's propensity for fiscal recklessness) Brown may suddenly find the rug pulled from beneath him, but this is very much an outside shot.
In these circumstances it may well be that many key players in the Labour camp are quite happy for the news stories to continue to focus on Iraq as their hope is that this will continue to sour the reputation of Blair whilst diverting the public's attention from any of the actual election issues where Labour might be vulnerable (migration, public service reform, etc.) If the 'Vote Blair, Get Brown' posters which the Tories had printed but didn't use are still in a warehouse somewhere, they might think about flogging them off to the Brownites. As Labour posters they would be a good way of keeping the vote up in key constituencies.
I have been tempted to revise my predictions of a 36%-36% tie in terms of vote share between Labour and the Tories, with a Labour majority of 42, but I am going to stick with them for two main reasons:
1) I still don't think that the problem of the Tories scoring lower in the polls relative to the actual election has been ironed out, whatever the pollsters say.
2) I think turnout is going to be low - lower than in 2001. We'll probably see very high turnout in a few key marginals but outside of that no-one can be bothered. To give an example, I went for a drive today round the Chelmsford East and Maldon consituency - safe Essex Tory country. Back in 1987, when it was even safer Tory country, there were nonetheless a lot of posters up in windows - mainly Tory, but they were there all the same. Ten years later, in 1997, there were still quite a few. This time - almost none. One landowner had put John Whittingdale (Tory) posters all over his farm, but no-one had any on their homes. Even in Braintree, which is a Labour marginal, there are a lot less posters than there were in 2001. Now just because the posters aren't there doesn't necessarily mean less people are voting, but I'll wager that there is a rough link. I think 55% is a reasonable assumption for the turnout figure this time round.
The other problem that springs to mind is that the campaign is too long. Not just because I've been having to post on this damn thing for 4 weeks, but because most of the interesting policy discussions took place in the first couple of weeks, and since then all we've had is "Tony Blair is a liar over Iraq" - which, if true (or even if not true), has been a strong suspicion of many of us for at least 2 years anyway. This degree of repetition and scraping the bottom of the barrel can't help but turn people off the whole campaign in droves. And if you've made it this far into the blog without giving up... congratulations!!!! Your reward is tomorrow's Daily Express headline. Maybe we should get all the comment contributors together for a beer when this bloody thing is all over...
Whilst the Lib Dems are playing Iraq as the one real policy (apart from electoral reform) where they have an obvious and clear difference from the other parties, for the Tories this is their last hope (provided the polls are not catastrophically wrong) and as pure a piece of opportunism as you would expect from a party that seemed to build up all its momentum just before the campaign started, only to look progressively weaker as it has dragged on. Michael Howard is hoping that voters will forget that Tony Blair is something pretty close to a lame duck now, even if Labour's majority does hold up well on May 5th. Labour is no longer synonymous with Blair in the public mind, and as we move through the third term he will be looking more and more like he is keeping the seat warm for Gordon. In the event of rapid economic collapse (an unlikely but possible scenario given the US administration's propensity for fiscal recklessness) Brown may suddenly find the rug pulled from beneath him, but this is very much an outside shot.
In these circumstances it may well be that many key players in the Labour camp are quite happy for the news stories to continue to focus on Iraq as their hope is that this will continue to sour the reputation of Blair whilst diverting the public's attention from any of the actual election issues where Labour might be vulnerable (migration, public service reform, etc.) If the 'Vote Blair, Get Brown' posters which the Tories had printed but didn't use are still in a warehouse somewhere, they might think about flogging them off to the Brownites. As Labour posters they would be a good way of keeping the vote up in key constituencies.
I have been tempted to revise my predictions of a 36%-36% tie in terms of vote share between Labour and the Tories, with a Labour majority of 42, but I am going to stick with them for two main reasons:
1) I still don't think that the problem of the Tories scoring lower in the polls relative to the actual election has been ironed out, whatever the pollsters say.
2) I think turnout is going to be low - lower than in 2001. We'll probably see very high turnout in a few key marginals but outside of that no-one can be bothered. To give an example, I went for a drive today round the Chelmsford East and Maldon consituency - safe Essex Tory country. Back in 1987, when it was even safer Tory country, there were nonetheless a lot of posters up in windows - mainly Tory, but they were there all the same. Ten years later, in 1997, there were still quite a few. This time - almost none. One landowner had put John Whittingdale (Tory) posters all over his farm, but no-one had any on their homes. Even in Braintree, which is a Labour marginal, there are a lot less posters than there were in 2001. Now just because the posters aren't there doesn't necessarily mean less people are voting, but I'll wager that there is a rough link. I think 55% is a reasonable assumption for the turnout figure this time round.
The other problem that springs to mind is that the campaign is too long. Not just because I've been having to post on this damn thing for 4 weeks, but because most of the interesting policy discussions took place in the first couple of weeks, and since then all we've had is "Tony Blair is a liar over Iraq" - which, if true (or even if not true), has been a strong suspicion of many of us for at least 2 years anyway. This degree of repetition and scraping the bottom of the barrel can't help but turn people off the whole campaign in droves. And if you've made it this far into the blog without giving up... congratulations!!!! Your reward is tomorrow's Daily Express headline. Maybe we should get all the comment contributors together for a beer when this bloody thing is all over...
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