Reflections on the Final Prime Ministerial Debate

Posted by Dr Simon Parker

The final prime ministerial debate took place in the impressive surroundings of Birmingham University’s Great Hall—although the carefully chosen local audience did not appear to contain any students or lecturing staff. Was this a portend of what the next government had in store for UK higher education I wondered?
Certainly the message from all three of the party leaders as they debated the economy was unless you work in a school, a hospital or a police station don’t assume you will have a public sector job in five years time. Further, if you are lucky enough to keep your job forget any thoughts that your salary may keep pace with inflation or that you will be able to retire when you expected to on the pension you were promised.

This was not going to be a cheery “things can only get better” debate but rather—“if you elect him or him things can only get worse”. On the “sick men of Europe” Cameron went straight for the Lib-Lab solar plexus —“Let me tell you one thing I wouldn't do: with Greece so much in the news, I can guarantee you that I would never join the euro, and I'd keep the pound as our currency”, carefully avoiding mention of the fact that Germany’s Euro-based economy was the only one with deep enough pockets to bail-out the Greeks while the Bank of England is nervously gripping the threadbare towel of its AAA rating.

Earlier in the week “the much respected” Institute for Fiscal Studies (it says here in the BBC’s editorial guidelines) announced that all three political parties were not telling voters how they intended to tackle the vast continent of debt they had not pledged to cut or offset through tax raises. As elephants in the living room go—this was a pretty large one—ranging from 75% of the ‘elephant, what elephant?’ component of the Liberal Democrat manifesto to just over 80% of Tory plans to nearer 90% in the case of Labour.

One of the serious flaws of the partitocratic prime ministerial debate format is that highly experienced interviewers—and they come no more experienced than David Dimbleby—cannot disrupt the conspiracy of silence/audience dumb show that these spectacles have become (although Dimbleby did attempt to ‘clarify’ a non answered question that he was clearly irked the leaders had managed to duck). Had the leaders faced a genuine interlocutor rather than each other’s mild rebukes, the elephant denying non-recognition pact might have been broken by the following aperçu from the IFS:

Labour & Liberal Democrat plans imply tightest sustained squeeze since April 1976 to March 1980 and spending cuts as deep as Conservative plans imply not delivered over any sustained period since Second World War.
Brown’s “shock, horror” warnings that the Tories will take £6 billion out of the economy this year was calculated to distract attention from the fact that Labour plans to take as much as £52.4 billion “out of the economy” in the next five years, the Lib Dems plan to cut £46.5 billion and the Tories an eye-watering £63.7 billion. Neither Clegg nor Brown took the opportunity to point out that Cameron plans to pay for every 4 out of 5 pounds worth of debt in spending cuts and only 1 in 5 through increased taxation. This will impact massively and disproportionately on the poor, people on benefits and those employed by the public sector and those who are reliant on public services. As the IFS pointed out, when Ken Clarke was Chancellor in 1993 the Tories pledged a cuts to tax raising ratio of 1:1, Labour’s will be 2:1 and the LibDems eventually 2.5:1.

In pointing out that the banks will benefit from a 3p (one assumes in the pound) cut in corporation tax and that millionaires will disproportionately benefit from increasing the threshold on inheritance tax, Brown attempted to paint a picture of the Cameronites as “the same old Tories”. The best Brown could come up with is “I think this is unfair”, while Nick Clegg offered to switch taxes from the rich to the less well off so that more money could go back into the pocket of the questioner—a woman called Adina who lamented the fact that in her view Brown’s government is taking more and more from the average worker's payslip.

Clegg suggested that the way that we might get out of this mess was to all grab a paddle and to stop rowing in opposite directions, and as in Bristol, the yellow worm headed for the top of the screen at Nick’s suggestion of a Council for Financial Stability. The public like consensus-style emoting and are unimpressed by negative personal attacks that both Cameron and Brown engaged in—especially on the subject of immigration—where mention of the Clegg ‘amnesty’ has become a ritual opportunity to engage in a bit of populist group mugging of “soft touch” Nick.

“I agree with David on this”, intoned Brown in full anti-anti-bigot mode, “because I can't see how you send out anything other than the worst possible message if you give an amnesty to people who've come here illegally”. Suddenly wanting to stop any more foreign people living here or to complain about the jobs, houses, and benefits that the ones who were here (no doubt illegally) were denying “good families” like Mrs Duffy from Rochdale was not “ridculous” or “bigoted” but common sense.
Not to be outdone, Cameron warned that if the Liberals had their way the 600,000 people who were living here illegally “would be entitled to bring a relative each into our country”, as the ghost of Stechford could be heard faintly whispering, “Two and a half million votes David, two and a half million votes…”. To be fair Cameron did not promise to pull up the drawbridge to Fortress Britain, but he was determined to drop it only once a year and pull it up really quickly if that nice retired diplomat from Migration Watch tells us Britain is full. Clegg, despite being beaten-up by his adversaries was not prepared to join them by “agreeing with Gillian”. In a rare moment of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, Clegg rounded on Cameron and insisted that the cap would not apply to the 80% of foreigners from the European Union, whom Mrs Duffy seemed to be most concerned about.

“Yes or no, do 80% of immigrants come from the European Union, which wouldn't be affected by your cap? Yes or no? Clegg demanded.
“It's affected by having transitional controls”, Cameron hit back, “I've answered your question. You should answer mine”. Er…well not quite, since transitional controls apply to candidate countries, not to ones already in the EU. Only UKIP and the BNP are offering withdrawal from the EU and even UKIP aren’t planning forcibly to repatriate the EU nationals who are already living here.

On the subject of jobs there was a general consensus that the loss of manufacturing was a major disaster for cities like Birmingham. Cameron stated that “in the last 13 years, we've lost 60,000 jobs in manufacturing”, and then said, “We've been losing manufacturing industry faster than the 1980s”, Perhaps he is too young to remember the first Thatcher government though he did admit—“It's been a complete tragedy.” We need to rebuild by, “…investing in our science base and making sure great universities like this are producing the scientists and entrepreneurs of the future”. Suddenly a ray of sunlight shone through the stained glass of the Great Hall, was this the knight in shining armour Britain’s universities had been praying for? Let’s check the manifesto shall we….here we are, it says the Conservatives will “Work to improve the way that universities are funded so that students get a fair deal, disadvantaged young people don’t miss out and researchers get the funding they need…” Marvellous! I now have the perfect line when my kids ask me for more pocket money—“I am working to improve the way your allowance is funded, but owing to the £67.5 billion cuts that we are going to have to make in the next five years you can’t have it just yet”.

All three leaders had rehearsed their lines well and disappointingly there were no more own goals. Just to be sure Dave, Nick and Gordon couldn’t rip their radio mikes off quick enough by the end of the show. According to various ‘instant polls’, Cameron had come across better than the other three but Clegg also clearly had another good night and managed to get several all important nods of approval during the occasional cut aways to the questioner. Brown on the other hand, came across as troubled and off his game, despite trying to win audience sympathy with the “as you saw yesterday, I don't get all of it right” quip. Even Mandelson in full 1,400 rpm spin mode in the post-debate interview looked tired and dispirited. Gordon Brown may know how to run an economy but he certainly doesn’t know how to run an election, whereas Cameron and an impressively slick Tory election machine clearly do. Lord Kinnock has smelt that kind of defeat before and has already admitted that the gig is up.

The great challenge for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats is whether they can persuade sufficient numbers of Labour voters to dump Gordon in the marginals in order to stop the Tories gaining an overall majority. Despite all the fanfares and hoo-hah, it seems that the prime ministerial debates have taken us back to exactly where the election started—Labour are the underdogs and are expected to lose, the Lib Dems will improve their share of the vote but will struggle to improve their share of the seats, and the Conservatives remain the party to beat with the prospect of more than half the House of Commons seats turning blue on May 7th moving towards near evens odds. It’s going to be a fascinating election night!

Coalition Making Dutch style

Posted by Dr Rob Aitken

The Conservative party political broadcast portrays a hung parliament as producing an endless round of self-serving politicians haggling over the spoils and failing to govern effectively. This is undoubtedly Tory scaremongering as they are afraid they will not achieve an overall majority that they took for granted. However, it also reflects a lack of experience in negotiating stable coalition governments in balanced parliaments, despite the recent experience in Scotland, Wales and local government. In contrast in the Netherlands, like most European countries, coalition governments and coalition formation are regular features of politics without it seeming to cause the sort of political meltdown that the Tory’s portray.

After a Dutch election – the next one is due in June – a senior politician is appointed by the Queen as an informateur. The informateur meets with all party leaders to discuss their policy priorities and their views on potential coalitions. The informateur then reports to the Queen on what group of parties is most likely to be able to form a stable government and key areas of policy similarities between them. The informateur then leads a process of negotiation between the parties to form the basis of a coalition government. Once the basis of a governing agreement is reached the Queen appoints a formateur to put together a government. While coalition negotiations take place, the existing government remains in office as a demissionaire government without the power to initiate new policy.

Coalition negotiations take a number of weeks or months, as the aim is to produce a detailed programme of government for the next four years. This covers details of spending plans, major policy initiatives and even agreements on how the government would respond to changing economic circumstances – eg the balance between tax cuts and spending increases if the economy does well (or vice versa). Once the politicians have reached agreement on a programme of government each party then calls a national conference. Each party has to agree to allow their politicians to enter a coalition based on this programme of government. Only then does a new government take office.

There are two important points here. First, that there is a shared understanding of the process and (informal) principles of coalition formation. Second, that the aim of the negotiations is to form a stable government based on an agreed four year programme. This can take a little while but has the advantage that the government takes power with a clear programme of government that has been agreed and approved by the parties involved, not just politicians in dark rooms. Furthermore this is a government based on parties that won the backing of a majority of voters in the election unlike any British government since the Second World War.

Coalition Government and Electoral Reform: Some Theory and Practice

Posted by Tom Flynn, Politics PhD student

So much of the election debate (particularly in the main stream media) has been around the issue of a hung parliament, and the subsequent coalition that would be required to form a Government. Nick Clegg’s recent revelation, that he’d refuse to prop up a Labour Prime Minister if the Labour Party finishes third in the popular vote, therefore throws up a number of very interesting possibilities. It might, of course simply mean that we’ve totally misconstrued what Nick Clegg said. It is quite plausible, for example, that he was signalling to the Labour Party that should the Lib Dems finish second, then it would be a case of the former joining the latter in government – meaning Clegg himself might demand the position of Prime Minister, supported by a few high profile Labour ministers in some key roles. Of course, if this were to happen, it’s difficult to imagine Gordon Brown himself taking a lesser position in government – leading almost certainly to a Labour leadership election.

Or perhaps the reason this is all so surprising in the first place is because it’s been difficult to see a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition in the face of Cameron’s point blank refusal to look at the voting system used in general elections. And this is the real point of this entry – to address the misunderstanding of how electoral systems work that politicians, the media, and commentators appear to have fallen prey to.

I’ll break the argument down into a number of sections.

SOME REALITY
1. The Liberal Democrats want proportional representation because they (quite correctly) realise it will lead to an increase in the number of seats won by the smaller parties – themselves included. They also believe in changing to a voting system known as STV (single transferable vote), which is one of several systems that involve ranking candidates in order of preference rather than simply marking X next to the one most preferred.

2. The Conservatives reject any idea of proportional representation, as they believe it will remove the link between ‘the electorate and the MP’.

The current perception is that these positions are entirely contradictory – and that a compromise would be impossible. Therefore how could Nick Clegg possibly form a Government with the Conservatives? This assumption though, is based entirely on a conflation of preferential voting and proportional representation.

SOME THEORY
Let me illustrate the difference with an example.

Constituency A has the following results from the 2005 general election:

Conservative: 45%
Labour: 25%
Lib Dem: 17%
Green Party: 13%

Now, under the current system, the best strategy for the Labour party would be to persuade all Liberal Democrat and Green voters to switch to them, in order to beat the Conservatives. If the argument is successful (as it often has been), we might end up with the following result:

Conservatives: 45%
Labour: 55%
Lib Dem: 0%
Green Party: 0%

The problem for the Liberal Democrats and Greens has traditionally been that many of its supporters have accepted such arguments, leaving the smaller parties unable to challenge for seats effectively.

Consider the same situation under STV. Under STV, votes from the least-preferred candidates are ‘transferred’ to more-preferred candidates until an overall winner emerges. Let’s assume that the majority of voters have the following preference orderings:

Conservative Voters: Conservative > Lib Dem > Labour > Green
Labour Voters: Labour > Lib Dem > Green > Conservative
Lib Dem Voters: Lib Dem > Labour > Green > Conservative
Green Voters: Green > Lib Dem > Labour > Conservative

Now let’s see what happens:

Greens get knocked out in round one, which gives:

Conservative: 45%
Labour: 25%
Lib Dem: 30%

Labour are then knocked out in round two which gives:

Conservative: 45%
Lib Dem: 55%

In short, preferential voting has delivered a result that seemed impossible under single preference voting.

Back to Reality
What is important for this argument, of course, is that this result has nothing to do with proportional representation. STV can be deployed within single constituencies – maintaining the link between MP and the electorate, whilst at the same time also going some way to addressing the problems that smaller parties face with tactical voting. STV does not guarantee proportionality of parliament overall; it is just a different way of choosing the individuals within it.

The question is this: will Nick Clegg and David Cameron realise this, and come to a compromise on electoral reform – making a Lib Dem/Conservative party coalition a possibility?

Discover what your MP’s been asking: free access to parliamentary records between now and the election

Posted by Kirstyn Radford, Politics Librarian, J.B Morrell Library



The University of York Library already subscribes to legal databases from this host, but we haven’t previously had access to the Parliament service. Follow the instructions on the website below to register for a personal account for the duration of the promotion.

The Justis Parliament database provides a single cross-searchable interface to House of Commons parliamentary questions and debates, parliamentary papers (both official and unpublished) and a legislation tracker allowing you to follow the progress of a bill. Of course the bulk of this material is already free-to-access from the UK Parliament website http://www.parliament.uk/, but you may find the Justis interface faster and more intuitive for searching and saving results.

You can access Justis Parliament:
Directly at www.justis.com/freeparliament/
or at nearly a thousand public libraries in England – ask yours if it’s taking part.

With an archive back to 1979 – further than any other electronic public repository of this material – Justis Parliament provides the most intuitive route and the only single-entry point into every element of Hansard and numerous other governmental archives. Justis Parliament gives users the chance to:

• See all MPs’ parliamentary questions and answers


• Keep an eye on Bills going through parliament


• Get the lowdown on Select Committees and debates


• Refine your searches like no other database, helping separate the relevant from the irrelevant.
  
  Go to http://www.justis.com/default.aspx or http://www.justis.com/freeparliament/and start your search today!

Three new coats of constitutional paint

Posted by Dr John Parkinson

In the wake of the expenses scandal, every political party is trying to pitch itself as the solution, not the cause, of our allegedly-broken politics. Each party is proposing constitutional reforms. How do the ideas of ‘the Big Three’ measure up?

Much of the detail in the proposals is like shuffling the deck-chairs on the Titanic. Take the Labour proposal of the Alternative Vote. This is not a step towards ‘democratic renewal’, it’s a relatively minor reform to what will remain a constituency-based, party-controlled, first-past-the-post seat allocation system. Australia has AV, yet I don’t see anyone holding up Australia as a model of democratic virtue and public probity. Why? Because just like in Britain, two parties have a lock on the Australian House of Representatives and thus on government. Their party-system is driven by internal factional allegiances and external links with business or unions, not constitutency demands. AV might allow voters to vent spleen at a particularly nasty candidate, but most voters choose not to exercise that choice, and follow party-issued ‘how to vote’ cards anyway. Even if they all thought things through, AV does nothing to alter the fundamentals of FPP power politics.

Take further devolution or local control policies. The Conservative and Lib Dem manifestos are full of this stuff, and the Labour manifesto (rightly, in my view) attacks that as a ‘free for all’ in which local elites grab control of public services. But Labour’s ‘Total Place’ agenda does precisely the same thing, and continues a decade-long trend of overloading localities with responsibilities that they neither want nor need. What people want is a local hospital that is clean, accessible, and provides a good service; they want to know that their local school is delivering pretty much the same quality as the one down the road. They don’t want to have to move down the road, or pretend to be good Anglicans to get their kids educated C of E, or set up their own neighbourhood school. All three parties pursue a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow called ‘Choice’, and keep failing to notice that they deliver only pseudo-choices, or that choice fails to deliver what people want. They are not getting any closer to the rainbow, and never will.

Other ideas are equally weak. Lowering the voting age to 16 will not magically increase the system’s legitimacy; indeed, it might lower it in the eyes of older voters. Creating local referendums will simply hamstring local councils, and one wonders why, if referendums are good enough at the local level, are they not good enough at the national? What’s good for the goose appears not to be good for the gander. Electing the Lords will not magically remove a major source of unfairness if it continues to be subservient to the Commons; and either way will introduce a new field for party politics.

Big change needs major shifts in the institutional architecture. Proportional representation; perhaps equal representation in the upper house; more coalition government; an elected Lords but only with greatly enhanced scrutiny and review powers, not the lapdog presently proposed; regional and local government with proper legislative and tax-raising powers. What is being offered is portrayed as if it’s going to make those big changes. Rot. They are new coats of paint on an increasingly-dilapidated house.

Professor the Baroness Haleh Afshar OBE on the panel for the BBC Radio York General Election debate!

Haleh was on the debating panel alongside the three prospective parliamentary candidates for the York Outer constituency. This was a live programme in front of an audience invited by the BBC from around North Yorkshire. You can listen to the debate at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007jxb5#synopsis

Reflections on the second prime ministerial TV debate

Posted by Dr Simon Parker

If the theme of the first prime ministerial debate had been ‘I agree with Nick’, the story of Thursday night’s encounter in Bristol and indeed the entire week’s campaigning since Clegg’s first triumphant performance in Manchester was ‘Let’s Get Clegg!’. That morning’s Daily Telegraph claimed that payments to support a research assistant when Nick Clegg was Home Affairs spokesman had been paid into his private account by three registered Liberal Democrat donors was a taste of the beastings that Clegg can expect from now until polling day. While the Daily Mail dedicated its entire front-page to Clegg’s “Nazi Slur on Britain”. “I have gone from Churchill to Nazi in less than a week”, complained the leader of Britain’s “Yellow Peril”. An ironic comment given that the great war hero warned voters that voting Labour in 1945 would be equivalent to voting for the Gestapo. Plus ça change…

No stranger to damaging stories involving donations and loans from wealthy friends, Lord Mandelson entered the studios of Radio 4 to decry the ‘disgusting’ attacks on Mr Clegg orchestrated by the Conservatives’ answer to Alastair Campbell – former News of the World editor Andy Coulson. Mandelson was at pains to point out that he abhorred everything that the Liberal Democrats stood for and that Mr Clegg was a very bad thing, but smearing one’s political opponents was not what British democracy was all about. Semi-colon, dash, open square bracket, close square bracket as my Twitterati friends might say.

4.1 million viewers (more than 5 million less than last week) tuned in to watch Sky News anchor Adam Boulton referee what promised to be a far more heated contre temps than round one. And so it proved—‘Get real, get real’ jibed Mr Brown at Clegg’s plans to postpone spending an alleged £100 billion on a replacement for Trident. Citizen Dave got irate at some Labour “scare-mongering” about making the elderly pay for prescription charges. “Will he withdraw the leaflets?” Cameron angrily intoned. “What about the eyes, the eyes aren’t in the manifesto”, retorted Brown. Teeth, pills and glasses have been a staple currency of British politics ever since Aneurin Bevan resigned from the Cabinet over the introduction of charges for dentures and specs—but at least as Tony Benn memorably remarked the “pershhonalities” were now fighting on the “isshues”.

How we pay for the need of the elderly is always a key “isshue” for although they may not tweet, the over sixties vote at four times the rate of the young (didn’t Marx once write something about the tradition of all dead generations weighing like a nightmare on the brains of the living?). So as well as promising to maintain the free bus pass and TV licence, Cameron pledged to allow elderly householders the right to stay in their own homes and their descendents the right to inherit them. This will come as welcome news to the Shadow Chancellor whose own personal inheritance could cover one sixth of Osborne’s planned emergency budget cuts.
The opening discussion on Europe took a predictable course—Gordon and Nick are broadly in favour of ‘Europe’. David and his party are generally against, but they don’t want to leave. Nick wants to hold a referendum so that we can all leave, but he would like us to be a lot more European. Gordon thinks that referendums on European membership are a bad thing but a good thing if they allow the Alternative Vote system (assuming it results in the election of more Labour MPs). At the end of the day, as Nick Clegg reminded a rather worried looking Eurosceptic builder from Bristol, membership of the EU is basically a choice between straight bananas or more paedophiles.

A question not unrelated to the visit of Pope Ratzinger and the Catholic Church’s beleaguered attempts to ‘move on’ from the abuse of children in its care. All three men welcomed Benedict XVI’s visit and condemned the Church’s policies on homosexuality, embryo research, and contraception in almost equal measure. The one rare point of consensus in the evening was when Gordon Brown said that it is a very good thing that we no longer treat gay people as if they should have less rights than straight people. The other two leaders nodded their heads in approval. This in itself was a remarkable moment. Who would have thought, even 10 years ago, that the three parties representing over 90% of the popular vote would have unanimously agreed on reproductive rights and gay equality?

The consensus was short lived, however, when as if in homage to Mr Cameron’s 40 year old black seafarer from Portsmouth, Sky News found a woman who had herself been an immigrant 11 years ago but thought perhaps there were too many people like her here now. Cue a series of near identical responses to last week. Clegg wants border police and exit controls. Gordon Brown promised to get rid of foreign chefs and ‘surplus’ overseas students (as the comedian Mark Steel would say – nasty foreign students coming over here, propping up our underfinanced universities, paying money to British landlords, and buying goods in British shops—who needs them?). Both Dave and Gordon rounded on Nick for declaring an amnesty for clandestine migrants who had been here for many years who could be paying taxes to the Treasury instead of extortion to criminal gangs. Brown thought this would act as an incentive to more illegal immigration, Clegg challenged Brown to say what he would do with the estimated 1 million already here. Brown’s answer appeared to be “deport them all”. “But you don’t know where they live”, retorted Clegg, uncharitably. Brown’s rueful smile suggested that with the aid of Google Street Maps and a network of drones, the UK Border Agency was working on a solution to that very problem.

The most interesting part of the evening, however, was when a questioner asked whether the candidates would welcome a hung parliament. Cameron, who had prefaced many of his remarks with “If I were to be the next Prime Minister…” did not quite threaten the fiscal Armageddon and plagues of locusts that Ken Clarke assured us would follow anything less than a thumping Tory majority, but he joined with Gordon in insisting that when it comes to Westminster government—one is company and two’s a crowd.

The more sociable Mr Clegg offered the hand of friendship to both sides, in the knowledge that political cooperation is not seen as such a bugbear by most voters, and indeed focus group viewers were ‘dialling up’ as the Lib Dem leader espoused the benefits of a ‘war council’ to tackle the financial crisis and to continue with Labour’s inter-party working group on care for the elderly (which will double as the House of Lords reform committee). But the hard-to-get Mr Cameron was having none of it—on the subject of keeping Trident and nuclear power, he didn’t agree with Nick he agreed with Gordon. Clegg’s new found political friendships appear to have faded quicker than a cloud of volcanic ash.

Given his much more assured performance on Thursday night, Labour will be hoping that by jabbing one-twos at his opponents, Brown will have established the Tories as too much of an economic risk and the Lib Dems as too much of a security liability. Conservative supporters can take heart from the fact that their leader came across as much more prime ministerial than in the first debate, and more sure of his ground—especially on national insurance as ‘a tax on jobs’. The Lib Dems knew that this debate was all about consolidating last week’s dramatic poll gains, convincing the public that it is now a genuine three horse race, and that Clegg has the leadership qualities and electoral support needed to be a potential prime minister. It is because Clegg has managed to sustain his initial pace that the election race is still wide-open, and why the final debate next Thursday looks set to play a decisive role in the outcome of the general election.

The Quasi-International, Semi-Papal, Ride-My-Bike-To-Work Debate on Foreign Affairs

Posted by Mr Steven A Zyck

Thursday night's debate, half of which was intended to focus on international affairs, did a surprisingly good job of avoiding the role that Britain has played and will play abroad. In between questions about what personal steps the prime ministerial candidates had taken to "green" up their travel habits and what they thought about an impending visit by the Holy Father, very little was offered with regard to daunting challenges that the UK faces: a now-nuclear North Korea and a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, an Israeli government which conflates bravado with foreign (as well as domestic) policy, a Pakistan which is experiencing destabilising internal security challenges, a Sudan heading into a fraught referendum on the independence of the country's South in 2011 and a series of other countries, Yemen perhaps chief among them, which have been undergoing slow-motion disintegrations.

Gordon Brown, while clearly grasping these issues, attempted to offer more fear than solutions. His answers to security and foreign policy questions focused on "getting real about the dangers we face", including improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that "kill and maim" our troops and a "chain of terror" linking extremists around the world. While in many respects – aside from his Bush-esque references to a "chain of terror" – I found myself agreeing with what he said (as in "yes, the world is a dangerous place"), the Prime Minister's answers offered little in the way of justifications for past decisions (Iraq) or strategies for the future. The same could be said of Nick Clegg, whose comments regarding international conflict focused upon his (admirable) opposition to the war in Iraq and the need to ensure that we work with partner countries and regional powers better next time circumstances force Britain into the fray. However one gets the impression that he may be a more reluctant warrior – even when a warrior is called for – than his opponents.

David Cameron's retorts were perhaps the most informative though also perhaps inconsistent. His answers regarding Afghanistan – which admittedly interested me the most – were apt (though vague) in noting the need for a more effective political strategy and for "getting the aid right" in order to wage a more integrated stabilisation campaign. Yet he also came across as the most isolationist – a fact which does not mesh with his party’s manifesto – in seeming to question the link between fragile states abroad and British national security at home. Of course, such a tactic was likely a ploy intended to spark the attention of voters hoping to see troops home from Afghanistan in short order, though I personally found it troubling. The pressure on any future Prime Minister to declare a premature victory in Afghanistan and withdraw – thus allowing the country to become a launching pad for the attempted overthrow of the Pakistani government – will be great, and mixed signals should not be sent.

At the end of the debate, I am still left wondering where, in particular, Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron stand on a number of key issues. What implications will their administrations have for funding of the Department for International Development (DFID), the Foreign Office or the Stabilisation Unit? Will they use reconstruction and civilian stabilisation assistance as a means of addressing fragile states? Will they work with others, such as the African Union, Arab League or ASEAN to promote the capacities and involvement of these regional bodies to address conflicts within their domains (rather than sending troops abroad)? Will they plan to continue the Labour government's virtuous use of budgetary support – working directly with governments in developing and conflict-affected countries – to deliver between a third and half (depending on how you calculate it) of Britain's overseas development assistance (ODA)? What do they see as more integral, building large and effective security services in war-torn environments – with police reform having been the only sector of intervention specifically mentioned – or social or economic activities such as agriculture or education?

Another unaddressed question – and perhaps I am more sensitive to this issue as an American – is what sort of partner will the UK be for America. Right now we have a window. The Obama Administration will need British support for cementing security gains in Iraq, for pursuing a decisive agreement which combines Palestinian liberty and Israeli security, for preventing Iran from getting closer to "the bomb" (and triggering a likely devastating response – for everyone – from Bibi's administration) and for reducing global poverty. Mr Brown rightly raised the Anglo-American relationship (primarily in accusing Mr Clegg of anti-Americanism), though doing so perhaps made him appear a bit of a second fiddle. The other candidates gave little indication as to where they stood on this broad issue and, most urgently, upon the Obama Administration's re-invigorated attention to a Middle East peace agreement. One might assume that they would continue to support American efforts, particularly if they appear likely to bear fruit, though some reference to this issue would have been beneficial (and may have been a useful signal to constituencies abroad).

Yet, still, after that debate and the divergent views provided, I'm still looking for the meat in the debate. I'm looking for the issues that went ignored or under-addressed, particularly those pertaining to international development and the stabilisation of fragile states. What have we done wrong in the past – besides perhaps taking too long to get better kit to the fighting men and women – in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how will we do it better next time? There will be a next time.

That said, there are no votes in making other countries' citizens safer and richer, and I should be impressed that international assistance is mentioned at all. Still, one has to admit that a debate on international affairs in this day in age which, by my count, managed to avoid a single reference to China or India is impressive indeed. While I am thrilled to see the British adopt my homeland's love affair with the televised political debate, the UK may wish to cease allowing ordinary people – the "Joe the Plumbers" of Bristol and elsewhere – to set the agenda for these debates. America's tendency to allow the debate moderators, who are commonly highly regarded media figures and policy experts, to select questions may not be as democratic, though it at least ensures a far more comprehensive treatment of the issues which deserve attention.

Is there a Cross-Party Consensus on International Development?

Posted by Dr Tom Harrison

There was not that much on international affairs in yesterday’s ‘international affairs’/‘foreign policy’ debate, so it is not particularly surprising that there was no direct focus on the parties’ policies on international development, but several of the issues covered (such as policies on climate change and immigration) have major implications for developing countries.

In the build-up to the election, the vast development blogosphere (see the list on my website for some of the more influential ones) has been turning its attention to the parties’ policies on development (see Lawrence Haddad’s blog for a detailed comparison of the different parties’ positions, a blog from Duncan Green at Oxfam on what impact the election might have on the development sector, and the One Campaign for statements by the leaders of the three main parties). Much of the focus has been on the points of consensus. All three main parties have committed to meeting the longstanding UN target of spending 0.7% of GDP on aid by 2013. They are also committed to keeping the Department for International Development (DFID), which was established in 1997, as an independent department with its own cabinet minister.

There is therefore an important element of consensus that aid levels should be not only sustained but increased (aid will, of course, remain a small proportion of government spending in comparison with any of the major departments). This is evidence of the effectiveness of the vigorous campaigning of development groups, including the Make Poverty History coalition and others in 2005 around the G8 summit at Gleneagles. DFID’s international reputation has also played a part: DFID’s work is by no means perfect, but it is pretty uncontroversial to say, in the words of a recent IPPR report, that ‘DFID is recognized as a world-leading development agency and is widely seen as an example of best practice’ (more on this below).

However, this consensus on the 0.7% target obscures a number of important areas of difference, or potential difference (in some cases we just do not know enough to judge):

1. Although the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have followed Labour in declaring their proposal to make the 0.7% target legally binding, there are still questions over what such legislation would mean (see Lawrence Haddad on this). One of the issues here is the thorny question of what exactly counts as development spending – should it include spending on climate change adaptation, for example, or should that money be additional? In practice, agreement on a 0.7% target does not mean there is full agreement on the size of the aid budget or on how much of the aid budget should be spent through DFID (on this point, see a recent piece in The Observer).

2. The biggest differences are probably over the way in which aid money should be utilised, with the Conservatives putting more emphasis on the private and voluntary sectors based on what, in their Green Paper on International Development, they call their ‘natural scepticism about government schemes’. Conservative proposals include, for example, a plan to ‘consider funding insurance schemes, bursaries, or targeted vouchers for the poorest children to attend a school of their choice’ (see Kevin Watkins in The Guardian for a critique of this proposal) – evidence from past experiences suggest such schemes risk diverting attention from the quality of government-run services and that the poorest are least able to take advantage of ‘choice’ due, for example, to a range of hidden costs (transport, school uniform, books, etc.).

Another Conservative proposal, highlighted on their website, is for ‘cash on delivery’ or ‘payment by results’ (eg a government would receive aid money for education retrospectively based on how many children reached a specified level of education). CAFOD produced a useful briefing on the pros and cons of the idea last year (see also a response by Owen Barder, one of the key advocates of the approach, and an ODI blog from last year raises some relevant issues). It seems to me that the biggest issue with ‘cash on delivery’ is that it assumes that where governments do not provide key public services it is because they lack the incentive to do so rather than because they lack the capacity to do so, and that this risks penalising some of the poorest countries where state capacity is weakest. It also seems to take a rather narrowly economic and depoliticised view of the nature of incentives and how they impact on government actions (a good example of the need for interdisciplinarity?).

Other Conservative proposals feel more like gimmicks. There is a proposal for a ‘MyAid fund’ initially worth £40 million where people can vote on how aid money is spent and for a Poverty Impact Fund, also worth £40 million initially, ‘to support innovative British NGOs which find it hard to access government funding at the moment’. It is hard to see how the ‘MyAid fund’ could avoid increasing the proportion of money going to high profile causes that are already relatively over-funded at the expense of issues that receive less media attention. It is also hard to see the need for a new dedicated fund for small NGOs – it is inevitably harder for smaller and newer NGOs to access funding, but this is only a problem if we think it is a priority to have more such organisations and, if the grants are going to be small, then the costs of administering the fund are presumably going to be rather high.

Collectively, these proposals do indeed reflect ‘a natural scepticism about government schemes’, but what is not clear is how wide-ranging the impact of that scepticism would be. DFID’s reputation is based not just on a sustained commitment to aid spending but, more importantly, on the way in which that money has been spent. Under the so-called ‘country-led model’, efforts (not always perfect by any means, and sometimes a very long way from perfect) have been made to utilise aid money in a way that does not undermine the capacity of recipient country governments by channelling it through government budgets and in accordance with the priorities of developing country governments (or at least priorities agreed with those governments). We probably do not know enough about Conservative proposals to assess exactly how far they would diverge from this approach.

3. Policies on international aid are definitely important, but the UK’s policies on a range of other issues – such as climate change, migration, trade rules and decision-making processes in international institutions – are at least as important for developing countries. See a recent blog from Alison Evans from the Overseas Development Institute for more on these wider issues and also a blog by Owen Barder who offers his own list of key issues.

While the cross-party consensus on the importance of international development spending is important, it is the willingness to deliver on those spending commitments and (most importantly) the nature of the policies to be pursued that will matter for developing countries. Looked at like this, the areas on which we know there is cross-party consensus on international development are actually rather limited.

Of devolution and coalitions

Posted by Dr Andrew Connell

Interesting to see today’s Guardian reporting Ed Balls- always seen as Gordon Brown’s ‘mini me’ – as saying that ‘coalition politics is not the British way of doing government’. True enough at Westminster, perhaps, but Scottish and Welsh politicians have come, over the last 12 years, to accept (if not always embrace) the politics of coalitions and minority government - and of course, it is Labour’s devolution settlement which has brought this about.

There are two ways in which this might affect the outcome of this election. The first relates to Labour’s electoral support. For many years Labour in Scotland and Wales presented itself, quite successfully, as the natural party of government. However, the 2007 elections to the devolved legislatures seriously challenged this, giving Scotland a minority SNP government and Wales a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition. So Scottish and Welsh voters have seen nationalists making a reasonably successful job of exercising power in Edinburgh and Cardiff, and might as a result be more willing to return nationalist MPs to Westminster.

The second possible effect relates to how a hung Parliament might be resolved. Devolution has given all three main UK parties experience of working away from the traditional expectations of Westminster. Labour and the Lib Dems have worked together in government in both countries. In Scotland the Conservatives have become quite adept at using their position in a parliament with no overall majority to influence the minority government, while in Wales after the 2007 election they joined a serious and realistic attempt to construct a Plaid/Tory/Lib Dem coalition.

So coalition (and minority government) politics is not quite so alien to the British experience as Ed Balls might suggest. Both Labour and the Conservatives have people at Holyrood and Cardiff Bay who know how to make coalitions and minority governments work. But whether the London-based party machines will use them if the time comes is another question.

International Affairs and the Election

Posted by Dr Jim Buller


Tomorrow sees the second leadership debate which will be held on the subject of international affairs. What role will international affairs play in the forthcoming election and what should we expect from the leadership debate tomorrow night?

Historically, international affairs have rarely played a prominent or important role in British election campaigns. It is true that many commentators cite Margaret Thatcher’s ability to exploit Falklands War as a decisive factor in securing a Conservative victory in the 1983 General Election. More recently, it is argued that Blair’s decision to support the US invasion of Iraq was primarily responsible for the significant drop in support that Labour experienced at the 2005 election.

However, the work of academics in the 1980s has cast doubt on the importance of the so-called ‘Falklands factor’. For example, Dave Marsh, David Sanders and Hugh Ward have argued that it was the nascent recovery of the British economy which was more important in explaining Conservative success in 1983. Moreover, the Iraq issue itself may have been less responsible for declining Labour fortunes in 2005 than is sometimes believed. Instead it was how this issue amplified the electorate’s mistrust of Blair, not to mention how it fed in to the broader climate of scepticism towards the political classes, that was crucial. And therein lies the rub. International issues on their own rarely influence electoral choice in the UK. But they can make a difference if they impact more generally on perceptions of leadership competence or party unity. Europe and its impact on the Major Government in the 1990s would be another example in this context.

So what are the key issues between the parties in the area of foreign and defence policy, and what are we to expect in the debate tomorrow night? On the issue of Europe, all parties have pledged to cooperate with their European partners and work through the EU to deliver a range of goals, ranging from economic policy through to the environment. The Conservative manifesto is notably more sceptical, with proposals to: ensure that no Tory government would pool sovereignty in any area of policy in the future without a referendum of the British people; renationalise competence in certain area, such as employment policy and criminal justice; and to introduce a Sovereignty Bill which would make it clear that ultimately authority in Britain ‘stays in this country, in our parliament’.

On the issue of defence, all parties have accepted that a strategic defence review will have to be held after the election, amid longstanding reports that there is an unsustainable gap between the commitments of British armed forces and the resources available to meet them. Arguably the most eye-catching of proposals is the Lib Dem promise to rule out the like-for-like replacement of Trident, something that the Conservatives and Labour oppose. On the more specific issue of Afghanistan, there is a wide-ranging consensus. All three parties have pledged to keep working towards a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan, while at the same time pressing other NATO members to take on more of the burden in this military theatre.

So what should we expect from the debate tomorrow night? Of course making predictions is a risky business. However, bearing in mind Clegg’s success in the first debate, I would be surprised if both Brown and Cameron don’t challenge him on the Lib Dem proposals concerning Trident. What will be interesting is how aggressive these attacks are. Currently Labour’s best bet for staying in office looks like a coalition with the Lib Dems. Moreover, recent media reports suggest that Cameron will continue to desist from a more belligerent stance towards Clegg, preferring to try to portray himself in these debates as a Prime Minster in waiting. Hostile or not, how well Clegg deals with these attacks will be an important factor in terms of whether the Lib Dems can sustain their momentum from the first debate.

I would expect Brown to be criticised for his record (as Chancellor) of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his perceived ambivalence towards the armed forces. If the audience contains members who have lost their sons in battle, and one is allowed to ask a question, then things could get sticky for Brown. I suspect Labour strategists will have spent a lot of time this week preparing for this eventuality.

Finally, how big an issue Europe will play in the debate is not clear. The Tories’ more Euro-sceptical stance will be attacked by Brown and Clegg. Cameron’s recent decision to pull the Conservatives out of the European People’s Party will be portrayed as evidence that Britain will become a weaker and more marginalised member of the EU if the Conservatives get back into power. Cameron in return may try to highlight the more pro-European stance of the Lib Dems, in the hope that such attacks will resonate with Euro-sceptical British voters. But, as mentioned above, Europe as an issue is not high on the electorate’s list of priorities, something that all three leaders understand. As a result, it is not clear how animated these exchanges over Europe will become.

Overall, this debate offers a range of issues that the Tories, and Cameron in particular, ought to do well on. If he cannot score higher than the first debate, and Clegg continues to do well, then things may get even more interesting than they already are.

Northern Ireland: Sectarian headcount underway

Posted by Dr Roger Mac Ginty, University of St Andrews

The election in Northern Ireland matters greatly to the people of Northern Ireland – some constituencies there regularly produce the highest turnouts. In the rest of the UK, the election in the Northern Ireland is usually confined to a few words at the end of the news bulletin. But if this election produces a hung parliament, then one of the major UK parties might depend on MPs from Northern Ireland.

There are eighteen constituencies up for grabs. In 2005 Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) were winners with nine seats, followed by the pro-united Ireland Sinn Féin with five, the moderately nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) with three and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) – traditionally Northern Ireland’s largest party – with just one. Issues such as the economy, the cuts facing the public sector, the war in Afghanistan, or global warming don’t really matter in Northern Ireland elections. Instead, the polls become sectarian headcounts in which Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists primarily vote to stop being represented by an MP from the other side. Added into the mix are the intra-group battles, in which Sinn Féin and the SDLP vie to be the pre-eminent representatives of Catholic-nationalists and the DUP and UUP vie to be the leaders of Protestant-unionism.

For this election, a few interesting dynamics have been thrown into the mix. Firstly, a new party, Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), has emerged to represent those unionists who feel that the DUP has betrayed the unionist cause by entering into the devolved power-sharing Assembly with Sinn Féin. TUV regards Sinn Féin as ‘unreconstructed terrorists’. While it may not take any seats, TUV will draw votes away from the DUP. Its energetic leader, Jim Allister, is proving to be a major irritant for Ian Paisley Junior in the North Antrim constituency. Secondly, it will be interesting to see if the DUP have been damaged by the various shenanigans involving Northern Ireland’s power couple, Peter and Iris Robinson. Iris is standing down at this election, but revelations about her private life are bound to have an impact on DUP supporters who favour less forgiving strands of Christianity. Moreover, persistent allegations about the Robinsons’ property dealings, and Peter’s increasingly angry rebuttals (he’s had a few television meltdowns), may mean that the DUP’s recent electoral ascendency has reached its high point.

A third ‘unpredictable’ in this election is the extent to which sex abuse allegations concerning Sinn Féin Gerry Adams’ brother impact on the Party’s share of the vote. My guess is that it will have little effect, but what if further allegations emerge over the coming weeks? Moreover, having been in the devolved Northern Ireland government for a number of years, Sinn Féin can no longer claim to be ‘revolutionary’, ‘excluded’ or ‘outsiders’ – all slogans they used to mobilise their vote in the past. Militant ‘dissident’ republican groups are likely to try to stage some attacks in the run up to the election in the hope of embarrassing Sinn Féin.

A final unpredictable comes from the unionist unity pact in the Fermanagh South Tyrone constituency. This seat is held by Sinn Féin, but the DUP, UUP and TUV have declined to field candidates. Instead they are supporting an independent unionist. Cue a nasty sectarian headcount that pits Catholic voter against Protestant voter. Demography makes this one difficult to call. But the interesting aspect of this sectarian battle is that it is supported by David Cameron. How? Well, the Ulster Unionist Party has formally merged with the Conservatives to form the ‘Ulster Conservative and Unionists – New Force’. And this party – with a formal link to the Tories – is not standing in Fermanagh South Tyrone in order to facilitate a unionist victory. Bet David Cameron won’t mention that in the remaining debates: ‘Come and join the Big Society – except if you’re a Catholic from Northern Ireland’. Just after the close of nominations, Sinn Féin withdrew their candidate from the South Belfast constituency to leave just one nationalist candidate (SDLP) against two unionists. The unionists may come to a voting pact in that constituency in the coming days.

For once, a genuinely interesting electoral battle awaits us in Northern Ireland. Who knows, if none of the main UK parties can muster a working government, they may have to come calling to the Northern Ireland parties, most likely the DUP (as Sinn Féin refuses to take its seats in Westminster). Fasten your seat belt though. The DUP Environment Minister denies that climate change is manmade. Perhaps he could be your next Environment Minister? Even if one of the UK parties gets a slim majority, attrition (by-elections, rebellions and defections) is likely to mean that some sort of arrangement will have to be made with minor parties. Cue some very dirty deals that will cost the UK taxpayer a lot of money.

You can follow NI election on journalist Eamonn Mallie’s twitter page (http://twitter.com/eamonnmallie) or on the Slugger O’Toole blog (http://www.sluggerotoole.com/)

1992 and all that

Posted by Dr Andrew Connell

There are things about this election that remind me quite strongly of 1992: a tired government, a Prime Minister who took office in mid-term seeking to win his own popular mandate, and a feeling that people are wanting a change - but with an Opposition still trying to establish their credibility as a government-in-waiting, and none of the sense of sea-change (as Jim Callaghan put it) that was so strongly present in 1979 and 1997. If this election were to follow the 1992 pattern, we’d see Labour re-elected with a small but (barring any great internal divisions on the lines of the Conservative split on Europe in the 1990s) workable majority.

But of course this is not 1992. The most obvious difference is, of course, the position of the Lib Dems. The jump in their support in the polls since last week’s TV debate has attracted most of the attention, but in terms of their ability to get MPs elected, a lot has changed over the past 20 years. 18 years ago the Lib Dems won 20 seats; in 2005 they won 62. The big leap, of course, came in 1997, assisted by tactical voting and a highly unpopular government, but the Lib Dems have a remarkable ability to keep hold of what they’ve won. The ‘Clegg effect’ has been the great surprise of the campaign so far; but if, after May 6, the Lib Dems are in a position to make or break a government, it’ll be the result of two decades of local campaigning as much as of 90 minutes on television last Thursday.

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1974 and all that

Posted by Prof David Howell

Expectation of a hung parliament and Liberal optimism call up memories of February 1974. A few weeks ago the BBC ran the complete night-next day coverage of that election in order to make the point. The parallel was made to me in much more earthy terms by Dennis Skinner as the election was about to be called. Yet 1974 was a different political planet, the miners' strike, the three day week, Edward Heath asking "Who Governs?", Harold Wilson
looking very much a loser and Jeremy Thorpe down in Devon as yet untouched, at least in public, by scandal.

The language of conflict and crisis expressed a politics of class with its inequalities that has been airbrushed from this campaign. In Scotland and Wales the Nationalists made advances that shocked English provincialism. The election meant the ratification of a shift to intransigent Unionism, the prelude to the Ulster Workers' strike that smashed the first fragile attempt at power sharing. 1974 was a milestone on the road to Thatcher, arguably on the road to Scottish and Welsh devolution and definitely killed any serious British belief in an early settlement in the Six Counties. Politics would never be the same again. To borrow from Yeats, in 1974 "All changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born".

Perhaps some expectations now are born of too easy a transfer from this very different world. In February 1974 Labour led the Conservatives by four seats but received fewer votes. The Liberal rise from a much lower base than now drew differentially from the Conservatives. Labour could call on sentiments of solidarity in its core support now eroded by Thatcher's destruction of communities and Blair's pursuit of Middle England. Immediate
reactions by politicians and commentators suggest a belief in something similar but the export of beliefs to different contexts is a dubious aid to understanding.

I remember the Saturday morning after the February election, walking along Downing Street. Behind the door of No 10 Heath was refusing to quit and was seeking a deal with Thorpe. In 1974 a hung parliament was seen as an abnormality. Once Heath's attempt had failed Wilson headed a minority government, cut no deals and tried for a majority in an October election achieving only the thinnest of margins. Now with the prospect of a hung
parliament a serious possibility the past may be an inadequate guide. Much depends on the size of the parliamentary parties and the Liberal contingent unlike in 1974 will be a major player.

February 1974 became a keenly fought contest with a high turnout against a dramatic backdrop of power cuts and candles, a growing sense that the major parties were losing control of the spectacle. Now the power cuts and candles are echoes of a lost world but the loss of control is palpable. I remember the excitement of that night 36 years ago, maybe May 6 will in that respect be another 1974.

Assessing the Polls

Posted by Prof Neil Carter

If you’d said to me a week ago that the Liberal Democrats would lead in two opinion polls over the weekend, I would have just laughed. Yet here we are in uncharted territory following the remarkable shift in the polls over the last few days. Previously, the first week of the campaign had seen very little movement in the polls. Yes, some individual polls were giving the Conservatives a lead in double digits, whilst others put the gap with Labour at just two points, but individual polls should be treated with considerable scepticism. It is better to look at the average of a whole raft of polls, and this figure was showing just a very slight narrowing of the Conservative lead over Labour to around 6% or 7%, which would leave David Cameron as the leader of the largest party in a hung parliament.

But, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, ‘a 90 minute prime ministerial debate is a long time in politics’. By universal acclaim, Nick Clegg ‘won’ Thursday’s debate, and subsequently the polls have, without exception, reported a dramatic transformation in the electoral landscape. In the five polls published since the debate, the Liberal Democrats have leapt from around 20%-22% to average 31%. For the first time since the SDP-Liberal Alliance led one poll in 1985, they have taken a clear lead in two of those polls. The Liberal Democrats are drawing support from both of the major parties. The Conservatives seem to have suffered the most, slipping to an average of 32%, which effectively undoes all the good work put in by Cameron since he became leader. Labour has slipped to third place in most of those polls, averaging just 28%. In short, we seem to have a genuine three party contest.

What does this mean for the election result? To be honest, it is impossible to tell at this stage, because we don’t know if the swing to the Liberal Democrats is uniform across the country, and, specifically, what is happening in the much touted marginal seats. But if the Liberal Democrats are drawing support from both the other parties, and the Conservatives remain well short of 40%, then we are likely to get a hung parliament. There needs to be a really big swing to the Liberal Democrats for them to start winning significant numbers of seats from either of the major parties, because the support for the other parties is geographically concentrated. So they would almost certainly remain the third largest party measured by seats won, albeit holding the balance of power. One interesting feature of the shift to the Liberal Democrats is that it is particularly large amongst young - under35 – voters, who hold no strong party affiliation. That poses the party with a problem: this is the section of the electorate that is least likely to bother to vote. Obama got this same group to turn out for him after months of high profile campaigning, but the Liberal Democrats have few resources and little time to persuade them to do so.

Will the polls bounce back? Quite possibly. The Tory and Labour attack dogs are starting to come out in force (as I wrote this blog Norman Tebbit came on air and like Simon Parker on Thursday night – see below - I was reminded of the 1980s). They are trying to expose the policies of the Liberal Democrats to greater scrutiny, although neither Cameron nor Brown will make it too personal for fear that they will appear too negative. Much may depend on this Thursday’s debate. Last week Clegg probably had the easiest job of the three candidates: he just needed to come over well and offer something different to a public deeply disenchanted with the established political system. Yet he did so with style and substance: Clegg looked the part and he also had something to say that was distinctly different from his opponents. But this week the spotlight will be on him. With the focus on international issues this time, his opponents, particularly David Cameron, will try to trip him up on policies where the Liberal Democrats hold views that may not have widespread appeal, such as their strong support for the EU, sympathy for the Euro and their plan not to replace the Trident missile system. If Clegg stumbles, and Cameron overcomes his uncharacteristic stiffness (maybe he over-rehearsed?), then the polls might start swinging back to the Conservatives. But it is hard to see Gordon Brown being anything other than Gordon Brown – he seems totally unsuited to the debating format. So, Clegg probably has most to fear from Cameron (especially as Brown apparently ‘agrees with Nick’ on almost everything anyway), but if he comes through well again, then the Liberal Democrats could even benefit from a snowball effect as more and more wavering voters join their bandwagon – then we really would be into a new electoral landscape. So, we await the next debate with surprising anticipation.

Rather like 1997, the public has fallen out of love with a government that has been in power for over a decade, but unlike 1997 people haven’t embraced Cameron in the way they did Blair (for a while). Clegg offered them a new and superficially appealing option last week – can he cement the relationship over the next couple of weeks? Either way, I’m confident that we will see continuing volatility in the polls over the next week or so, and perhaps all the way up to the election itself.

Tuesday 20 April is the deadline to register to vote

Posted by Neil Carter

Don't let yourself be disenfranchised!
Tomorrow is the last day that you can register to vote in the election. If you aren't registered, or you want to find out how to check that you are registered, you can do so on this website: http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/

Reflections on the first prime ministerial TV debate

Posted by Dr Simon Parker

One thing that every social network savvy commentator appears to agree on is that the Britain’s first series of prime ministerial TV debates is also likely to be its last in this format. The 1970s stage set, the appalling lighting, dodgy camerawork and the wooden dialogue made me wonder if I had accidentally switched to an episode of ‘Life on Mars’. An impression that was confirmed when the camera trained on a late middle-aged man who enquired what the candidates planned to do about the problem of immigration.

Cameron rushed to pledge that his government would reduce immigration by a factor of 10 and impose rigid annual caps on work permits. Brown countered by enthusing about the prospect of our restaurants being liberated from non-European chefs (black pudding bhaji anyone?). While only Clegg questioned the wisdom of leaving a special baby care unit unstaffed because there are not enough EU resident nurses to run it.

Clegg was vulnerable on the subject of regional migrant quotas –which unlike Australia and Canada where some of the states and provinces are bigger than the UK—would be difficult to enforce and unpopular with employers, but Cameron failed to push the point home. However, when Brown and Cameron tried to outdo each other in the ‘prison works’ stakes, Clegg was far more convincing in showing that with a youth offender recidivism rate of 90%, prison certainly doesn’t work in terms of cutting crime. When the subject moved onto education Clegg began to come across as the new boy in the playground who everyone wants to be mates with—“I agree with Nick”, Gordon and Dave chorused as Nick promised upper sixth former Joel smaller class sizes, a freedom of education act and an end to the micro-management of the curriculum. Which is ironic, given that the post-16 curriculum has never been so diverse, or the range of qualifications on offer so varied, nor have such a high proportion of Joel’s generation gone on to university. Brown missed a chance to celebrate achievement here, which he can’t afford to do in the remaining debates.

Not many middle-ranking servants of the people and defenders of the realm would have enjoyed last night’s debate though. Mr Cameron’s efficiency savings mean that a great many of them will need to leave Her Majesty’s Service until enough money has been saved to pay off the deficit. Surplus rear admirals are going to get dry docked by the LibDems, and under Labour the local police will be served with people’s ASBOs if they fail to rid the streets of anti-social louts or face a hostile take-over from the neighbouring constabulary. Which prompts the question—should we not extend the principle to failing national governments?

My 11-year-old daughter and her friend were forced to watch most of the debate before ‘Outnumbered’ came on. Who did you think was the most convincing? I asked. Who would you most trust? Although they struggled to muster enthusiasm for any of the three speakers, it was Cameron least, and Brown second, with Clegg just shading it. Meanwhile over on BBC1 Ben’s mum was trying to explain by means of a series of equally meaningless synonyms what “inappropriate” meant. All the candidates agreed that MPs taking large amounts of public cash for moats, duck houses and lavish home improvements had been very inappropriate. “Does that mean naughty?” enquired Ben. “Yes,”conceded his weary mother, while the rest of us drifted back to our iPhones and laptops for a bit of welcome social networking distraction from the debate on the other channel. Never mind the polls, if @Nick Clegg can out trend Justin Bieber (who the young people tell me is a popular R&B artist from Canada) then tonight was his night.

A Voter’s Guide to the York Constituencies

Posted by Prof Neil Carter

Most people living in or around York will be voting in one of two constituencies: York Central or York Outer. Since the last general election the Boundary Commission has redrawn the electoral map to create something akin to a doughnut : York Central corresponds to the inner city of York, whilst York Outer completely encircles York Central by linking up all the surrounding villages and conurbations, such as Huntington, New Earswick, Osbaldwick, Heslington (including the University campus), Fulford, Bishopthorpe and Rawcliffe. Students living on campus, will be registered in York Outer, but the majority of students living off campus will be in York Central.

York Central is very similar to the old City of York constituency, currently held by Labour. Hugh Bayley, the incumbent MP, is standing again for Labour and must be favourite to win. He had a majority of just over 10,000 in 2005, which would have been roughly the same had the last election been fought on the new boundaries. However, he is likely to be pushed much harder by the Conservatives, who just edged out the Liberal Democrats to come second in 2005. Historically, York has been a classic Labour-Conservative marginal: between 1987-1992 it had the smallest Conservative majority (147 votes) in the country. After Bayley won it for Labour in 1992 he built up a thumping 20,000 majority, but that halved over the two subsequent elections, and although it is not a top Conservative target seat I expect the Conservative candidate, Susan Wade-Weeks, to make it quite a close contest this year. The Liberal Democrats have never really built up a strong base within the city, but they have a strong presence in local politics and if the party does well through the national campaign, then their candidate, Christian Vassie, could make this a three horse contest. The Greens almost saved their deposit in 2005 and have built up local roots through their two councillors in Fishergate ward: success for the Green candidate, Andy Chase, would be to secure the 5% needed to save his deposit, but I wonder if Labour defectors to the Greens in 2005 may return to Labour with the prospect of a close national result? UKIP did well in Yorkshire in the 2009 European elections and their candidate, Paul Abbott, will be hoping to attract the strong local anti-EU vote.

York Outer is a completely new constituency made up wards from several constituencies: Vale of York, Ryedale, Selby and City of York. It has been calculated that the notional result in 2005 would have given this seat to the Liberal Democrats, very narrowly ahead of the Conservatives. In short, it is a genuine Liberal Democrat-Conservative marginal seat. In the 2007 local elections, the Liberal Democrats won 16 of the council seats that make up the constituency and the Conservatives won 8, but the Liberal Democrats tend to perform better in local elections. Madeleine Kirk, the Liberal Democrat candidate, has plenty of campaigning experience, having contested Yorkshire seats in the last three elections, and she will be working hard to persuade Labour voters to support her if they don’t want the seat to fall to the Conservatives. The Conservative candidate, Julian Sturdy, will have strong support from the national party as York Outer is number 3 on the Conservatives’ list of target seats – essentially it is a seat they must win to form the next government. The upshot is that the Labour candidate, James Alexander (a former University of York student), may well find that his vote is severely squeezed as this election becomes a two-horse contest. That said, the UKIP candidate, Judith Morris, may well find strong minority support in the rural fringes of York for her party’s anti-EU message. Because it is a marginal seat, I expect York Outer to receive considerable media attention during the campaign - and that all the candidates will be promising that they best represent the interests of York students!