Ideas@TheCentre

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Flat Champagne from a Poisoned Chalice – early UK election report

Peter Saunders | 07 May 2010
‘By the time you read this, Britain will have gone to the polls and we may know who the next government will be. More accurately, perhaps two-thirds of Britons will have gone to the polls, for unlike Australians, Brits are not forced to vote. In the last two elections, only 6 in 10 bothered to do so. This time, turnout may be boosted by the introduction of televised leaders’ debates, which have stimulated some interest, and by an extension of postal voting. Nonetheless, disillusionment with politics remains widespread.

Disenchantment set in last year when we discovered that hundreds of MPs had been milking the system. Four parliamentarians are currently before the courts on charges arising from the expenses scandal, but it is widely felt that many more have got away with it.

Voters are also disillusioned by the failure of all parties to acknowledge the scale of the cuts that will be needed to restore the public finances. After four weeks campaigning, nobody is any wiser how the massive deficit is to be reduced. Not that we can really blame the politicians for their coyness; polls and focus groups all confirm that as soon as anybody mentions cuts, voter support ebbs away. In a democracy, the electorate gets the politicians it deserves.

Then there was the Brown gaffe. Describing a lifelong Labour voter as a ‘bigoted woman’ exposed the gulf that exists between the political class and those they feign to represent. All the parties are run by well-healed, well-educated middle class people who only ever visit the proletarian badlands when there are votes to be harvested. In this election, this schism was exposed more vividly than ever before.
Many voters have had enough. But where is an electorate to go when it wants nothing more to do with corrupt, patronising or haughty politicians?

Some will have voted for the novelty of the Liberal Democrats knowing nothing about their policies. Some will have backed UKIP (the get-Britain-out-of-Europe party), or one of a flock of Independents standing across the country on ‘clean-up-politics’ tickets. Significant numbers of white, working class Labour supporters will have flirted with the BNP (the fascist party which pretends it isn’t), and significant numbers of middle class intellectuals will have abandoned Labour for the Greens (who may win their first seat in the trendy parts of Brighton). Rusted-on Tories in the shires will have swallowed their misgivings about Cameron and done their duty with a heavy heart. But I’m guessing the overall winner will be the To-Hell-With-You-All Party.

Not that it will make much difference who gets elected. The dull logic of international market forces will drive policy-making for the next few years, whoever is in Downing Street, and if events in Greece are anything to go by, it’s going to be a rough ride. The Governor of the Bank of England says that whoever wins is destined to become so unpopular that they could become unelectable for a generation. The victor on election night will be supping flat champagne from a poisoned chalice on Friday morning. Professor Peter Saunders is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. This article is part of his weekly piece on the UK election.