Cameron's victory was stunningly unexpected, but his party represents less than 25% of the people

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.