The Conservative’s victory in last Thursday’s general
election came as a surprise to many and is described by Owen Patterson (MP for
North Shropshire) in the Sunday Times today as “a stunning victory”. Although Mr Cameron has a 12 seat majority in
Parliament, he only had just under 37% of the votes cast. Furthermore while not all non-voters will be of
the plague-on-all-your-houses persuasion, it is reasonable to assume that most
of them, if not completely apathetic, are antipathetic to the options that were
put in front of them. And that is not
even taking into account the unregistered fans of Mr Russell Brand (at least
before his recent damascene conversion to realpolitik after his late night
sojurn with Mr Milliband), many of whom have very strong views on issues, even
if they chose not to register to vote this time round.
So the best that one can say that Conservatives have the support
of somewhere between 25% and 35% of the electorate and an even smaller
proportion of the population that are of voting age. And while the right (if I may characterise it
as such) fared rather better if you include UKIP (12%) and the DUP and UUP (1%),
bringing the share of the vote to just over 50%, compared with 44% taking Labour,
SNP, Plaid Cymru and the smaller socialist parties together, this is far from a
majority of adults in the UK.
Finally, we are pretty certain that there are many, mostly former
Lib Dem votes, who voted tactically, to “keep Labour and the Scottish
Nationalists out” (just as there are many who voted Labour "to keep the Tories
out”). These votes are certainly not an endorsement
of the Conservative manifesto.
So the conservative victory may have been stunning both in
that it was not predicted by many, and in the sense that it was absolute
according to the rules of the game, which is rigged anyway. But it is certainly not an outright endorsement
of Conservative policy by the people of this country, let alone the red-in-tooth-and-claw
tory policies that are already coming to the fore in the new governments
statements of intent. Indeed, given that
the conservative vote encompasses a range of tactical votes from anti-socialist
Liberal Democrats through to tactically-voting UKIPpers, as well as a core
vote, we could be talking of 15-20% who have given wholehearted support to Mr
Cameron’s manifesto.
This was not intended as a piece about the unfairness of First Past the
Post; that is apparent to all and there are many others who will address this (in
an earlier blog I published election data for 1945-2010 that amply supports this
view). It is about how I think politicians
should interpret and respond to the outcome of elections under this flawed
system. Once elected they say that they
represents everyone, including those who did not vote for them (Nicola Spurgeon
pompously said this in a speech yesterday, but at least in Scotland the
majority of those who voted against her probably share her anti-austerity ideas).
In the coming 12 - 24 months I think the British electorate will come to understand, and appreciate, the influence that Lib-Dems wielded in the last government, ensuring that the extremes of Tory policy were mitigated. This influence is no longer there but Mr Cameron would do well to temper his policies
to reflect the mood of the country, and not pander to the extremes in his own
party, which he will be tempted to do in order to sustain his majority
in Parliament. If he does not then he
may see democracy take to the streets and that, if it gets out of hand, will be
unfortunate.
