Will this election be the sixth political earthquake in 10 years?

Gradually over the last few weeks of campaigning an apparently foregone conclusion has translated into the most uncertain of outcomes. It feels as if the political earth is moving under our feet. Why? Well, during the last decade no fewer than five political earthquakes have struck the United Kingdom. So unsteadiness is not exactly surprising... but what were these five seismic events?

1.      The global economic crash of 2008

This was not strictly a political event, but it has had deep political ramifications. It happened on the watch of the Labour government led by Gordon Brown, who did not see it coming. But then nor did many people foresee the banking disaster which overtook the world, so I am not going to apportion political blame. Suffice to say that an under-regulated banking industry gambled recklessly, broke a number of their own institutions and did lasting damage to the global economy.

The austerity that followed through the remaining Brown years, then under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition and finally the Cameron/May administrations was designed to prevent the UK economy from total disaster. Even now, 40 years on from 1976, governments are still haunted by the spectre of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, going to the International Monetary Fund for a humiliating bailout. However, for the people at large, there is a sense that they are being punished for the fecklessness of a handful of bankers who are themselves so rich that they are utterly immune to the ravages of government cutbacks. After nearly 10 years of government cuts, there is a growing and heartfelt cry that enough austerity is enough.

2.      The 2010-2015 Coalition

We are not used to coalition governments. Before 2010, the last was the wartime coalition from 1940-45. In peacetime, we have to go back to the National Governments of the 1930s. As the old two-party system weakened, the Liberal Democrats had over previous elections built up their number of seats until in 2010 neither of the major parties could govern on their own. Entry into the coalition was always going to be fraught with danger for the Liberal Democrats. They had enjoyed success at the local level for a while, sufficient to enjoy a taste for government in boroughs, cities, counties and devolved assemblies, but a vote for them at the national level could always be cast secure in the knowledge that they would not form a government or even participate in one: it was a safe form of protest.

The history across the democratic world of coalitions between two unequal partners is full of examples of the junior party being savaged at the polls afterwards. In 2015, right-leaning voters who had previously supported the centrist Liberal Democrats reckoned that they might as well vote Conservative. Left-leaning voters were furious that the Lib Dems had thrown in their lot with the enemy and voted Labour instead. Any who wished to register a protest could throw in their lot with UKIP.

Yes, the Lib Dems would with hindsight have been better advised to control entire government departments instead of participating in every departmental team, thus avoiding the charge of being complicit in all the perceived evils perpetrated by the coalition. And yes, it was a major mistake to promise in advance the abolition of university tuition fees, knowing that a hung parliament was likely enough for them to have a good chance of participating in government. And yes, this error was compounded by voting to increase those fees rather than abstaining, which would have been perfectly possible. But the chances were that, however unfairly after they had in the national interest entered the coalition, they would suffer dreadfully in the 2015 election. And suffer they did, being hugely reduced as an electoral force.

The impact of the coalition years has been to restore two-party politics to England and Wales. The Lib Dems will take some years to rebuild their strength, probably again through their usual tactics of consolidation at the local level and occasional by-election successes. This election has followed too soon on their 2015 defeat for this process to have made much headway. Also, when Nick Clegg resigned as their leader, they only had 7 MPs from whom to select his successor. They must hope that their gene pool is deepened soon, if not now. In particular, they must desperately hope that Jo Swinson and Ed Davey recover the East Dunbartonshire and Kingston & Surbiton seats that they lost to the SNP and Conservatives respectively in 2015.

3.      The 2014 Scottish independence referendum

Referenda offering the choice between two opposite directions inevitably induce a sharp polarisation of opinion. The Scottish independence referendum was no exception to this rule. The vote was close, leaving Scotland almost equally divided between the nationalist and unionist camps. This division of opinion remains, and the bitterness and unpleasantness that were engendered by the referendum campaign have not died down. The vote was in favour of the status quo, so why do I regard this as a seismic event?

Firstly, the referendum defined the independence question as the primary issue in Scottish politics for some time to come. Despite stating that the 2014 vote was a once-in-a-lifetime one, the SNP not surprisingly wish to hold another referendum, justified by the Brexit vote of 2016. So central has the independence question become in Scotland that further demands would surely have been made for a further vote (or even further votes) on this issue. The Brexit vote is perhaps more an excuse for a further independence referendum than a reason. However there will doubtless be further such votes in Scotland and they will continue either until there is a majority for independence or (as has happened in Quebec) the desire for separation melts away.

Secondly, in the aftermath of the 2014 vote against independence, the SNP managed to effect the electoral destruction of the Scottish Labour Party which had dominated Scottish politics for many years. Left-leaning Scottish voters saw the SNP as the party with the energy and drive to represent them not only at Holyrood but also at Westminster. For Labour, the loss of 40 seats in Scotland, many previously regarded as rock-solid safe, was and still is a disaster.

Now it may well be that the SNP has already experienced its high water mark. Arguably, by concentrating on their primary issue of independence they have failed to provide Scotland with effective governance. Or at least that is a widely held perception. Moreover, electorates grow tired with governments after a while and seek a change. At this point, the Scottish electorate are not looking back to Scottish Labour to provide an alternative to the SNP. The Scottish Conservatives have a personable and charismatic leader in Ruth Davidson, under whom they are attracting right-leaning and/or unionist voters and look like making inroads into the SNP vote, probably taking some seats from them in the Borders, in Perthshire and in the North East. The more seats that the SNP lose, the weaker will appear their demands for another referendum – at least for now.

4.      The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party

Under Ed Miliband’s leadership, the Labour party introduced some critically important changes to its rules for electing its leader. In the interests of allowing a wider choice of leader, some right wing Labour MPs then facilitated the insertion of Jeremy Corbyn’s name on to the ballot paper. On 12 September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn swept into the Labour leadership on a strong tide of support particularly from new members of the party and “supporters” who had paid £3 to be so registered.

So the Labour party gained a leader from its left wing who was very much out of step with the majority of the parliamentary party, while yet enjoying strong support from the party’s rank and file members. In June 2016, Labour MPs passed a motion of no confidence in their leader by a majority of 172 to 40. Jeremy Corbyn then submitted himself to a further leadership election, and again he won comfortably.

Some of the new leader’s support comes from “entryists” from the old hard left who were excised from the party initially under Neil Kinnock’s leadership and then more emphatically so under Tony Blair. However, there is no doubt that many of the enthusiastic supporters of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour party form the tip of an iceberg with a broader base in the country as a whole. They include those who are fed up with the long years of austerity, those who feel let down by the political elite and those who simply want something different. Crucially, many Corbyn supporters are young idealists or young voters who feel that the odds are stacked against them. There is a strong echo for example in the supporters of Bernie Sanders in the USA.

On the other hand, many traditional Labour voters and even some supporters who like his policies are concerned about his leadership qualities, decisiveness, strength under pressure and grasp of detail. The deep fissures in the Parliamentary Labour Party are partly about these questions as well as about ideology. There are therefore widely held reservations, both within the Labour party and outside it, about its electability as a government.

The 2017 Labour manifesto is actually written on this premise – it is a document based on the assumption that it will never need to be enacted in government. For example, privatised railways and utilities are certainly far from being flawless, but older voters’ memories of the performance of their nationalised predecessors will not incline them to be tempted by renationalisation proposals. Those whose memories do not go back that far could find these ideas superficially attractive. And the sudden promise to abolish university tuition fees (which were introduced by the last Labour government) looks like a cunning plan to attract student voters. Overall, the manifesto reads as an exercise in electoral damage limitation while also being an ideological statement.

5.      The Brexit referendum in 2016

The British decision to leave the EU represented a huge shifting of the tectonic plates, partly because of its unexpectedness but mainly because of its far-reaching ramifications. Like the Scottish independence referendum, it polarised opinion. London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, the rest of the country to leave. Young people broadly voted to remain, older people to leave. This election therefore takes place under the shadow of Brexit. It will be followed almost immediately by the start of the negotiations with the EU about the terms of withdrawal and the shape of the UK’s future relationship with Europe. Without Brexit, the election probably would not have been called. It is the Brexit election, although it has been so little mentioned that observers of the campaign might be forgiven for wondering whether this really is the case.

The referendum also removed another party from the board, as UKIP had in effect achieved their objective. Nigel Farage had as UKIP’s leader been virtually a one-man front for the party, so his withdrawal as leader (not for the first, but presumably now for the last, time) left them without their figurehead. Their tendency to fall out with each other also helped to drain their support rapidly away. When the election was called, UKIP had to all intents and purposes been absorbed by the Conservatives.

The ways in which different age groups voted in the referendum highlight the possibility of impending intergenerational conflict. Young people have a number of reasons for feeling aggrieved at the world that older generations are handing over to them. Their predominant support for staying in the EU was outvoted by their seniors. They rightly have concerns about the environment that they inherit and about an increasingly unstable and violent world. They carry forward high levels of student debt; they find that their expensively acquired university degree is often far from a passport into a good job; they find the housing ladder inaccessible; they will need to work until their old age in order to pay for their elders’ health and social care; they will find it much harder to retire (when eventually they can) with much of a pension. Their compliance (or apathy) under these circumstances has been remarkable, so eventually surely this worm will turn – and not before time. When they do become more politically aware and active, where will they look? To be sure, not towards the well-worn (and to them failed) parties and movements of the past.

So will this election be the sixth political earthquake in 10 years?

Theresa May called the election with the Conservatives miles ahead in the opinion polls. This lead was pretty much confirmed by the local elections on 4^th May. A month later, and only three days before the general election, the opinion polls do show wide divergence (probably caused by the different changes in methodology the pollsters introduced after they made such poor predictions of the result in 2015). But they are unanimous in showing a sharp drop in the Conservative lead and a very solid rise in support for Labour. Some show a small enough Conservative lead for there to be another hung parliament, while a plausible but improbable polling error would enable Labour to be the largest party when the dust settles on 9^th June. So what has happened?

The earthquakes described above are always likely to be followed by aftershocks, so such volatility is really not all that surprising, but there are of course a number of factors at work. When the election was called, Theresa May seemed to be doing a good solid job with her Conservatives able to be trusted to get on with Brexit, and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn seemed to be in a mess. So it all looked like a done deal – a Conservative landslide with a majority probably over 100. But then the election campaign put these assumptions under the inevitable microscope, and people started to wonder what sort of an outcome they really wanted, and more to the point did not want.

Less than a year after becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May was in control of her party and nothing much had gone wrong – yet. For sure, troubles lay ahead, especially the Brexit negotiations, but that was in the future. She was still enjoying her honeymoon with the electorate. So she considered, she calculated, she consulted her close coterie of advisors and she called the election she had said would not happen before 2020. But of course her ministers, her candidates and her party were not at all prepared. If they had been put in a state of readiness, the cat would have been out of the bag – the election would not have been a surprise. But then the element of surprise was lost because the Conservative campaign was defensive, negative, repetitive and short of ideas. The party’s unpreparedness was shown up in the manifesto catastrophe. Theresa May overestimated her own ability to look and sound prime ministerial and shied away from opportunities to bestride the stage as PM. She came across as evasive, while of course “strong and stable” all too rapidly became “weak and wobbly”. Crucially too, she underestimated Jeremy Corbyn, who managed to avoid the gaffes committed by his alarmingly incapable immediate underlings such as Diane Abbott. In fact he came across as affable and disarmingly plausible, indeed far more likeable than the Prime Minister, albeit with many unanswered questions about his capabilities and his attitudes.

The electorate started to ask itself whether it could trust such a Conservative leader with a large majority, and its answer was “No”. Moreover, the Conservatives had in effect swallowed UKIP. There is some truth in the adage that “you are what you eat”. Under the close inspection that a general election invites, the Conservatives therefore started to look far less attractive as a party of government, and certainly not one to be let loose with a landslide majority.

Meanwhile, Labour benefited from their strategy of offering promises on which they were not expecting to need to deliver. Their candidates across the country could encourage their constituencies to vote for them, safe in the knowledge that Jeremy Corbyn would not make it through the door of Number 10. Meanwhile, activists skilled in the use of social media targeted young voters in the hope that this time they would actually turn out in numbers and cast their votes – mainly for Labour of course.

The Liberal Democrats are still not seen as genuine alternatives, except in a fairly small number of constituencies. In Scotland, the rules and the issues are very different, and the SNP is very much present as an alternative to the Conservatives. But in most of England and Wales, if people are not going to vote Conservative, they have to vote Labour if they are to make any difference or else they don’t vote at all. So that is why things have moved as they have.

But what will be the outcome? Perhaps, if voting means choosing between two pretty unappealing alternatives, staying at home will be a popular decision. This could be the low turnout Brexit election of 2017. My guess is that the Conservatives will be returned, but Mrs May will not get the majority she was hoping for. Perhaps it will be about 50? But she could even suffer a net loss of seats, in which case presumably she will also lose her job. Her honeymoon with the electorate would have turned into divorce in about 4 weeks. Will Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister? Almost certainly not, and if he did it would have to be with support from the SNP plus probably Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Irish SDLP. The price that would need to be paid, particularly to the SNP, would be eye-watering and destabilising. And how would the Brexit negotiations pan out? How indeed?

Enough speculation. We will know soon enough. And then I will post again after 8^th June.