The Groan Gets Desperate

As a Conservative victory – even if small – looks increasingly likely, the voices over at the Grauniad become ever more shrill. They really don’t like the idea that the British electorate might not be too enamoured with their authoritarian, socialist utopia and will reject it. Today, Martin Kettle wades in with some wonderfully absurd scaremongering hyperbole. Apparently, Cameron will “steal” the election and cause a constitutional crisis.

Might Britain be facing a constitutional crisis this weekend?

No. Nothing to see here, move on, please. Oh, there’s more? I thought you’d done.

It seems somehow so, er, unBritish to discuss such a possibility with any seriousness. And yet, with the opinion polls still pointing to the possibility of a hung parliament on Friday, it simply cannot be ruled out. And nor can it be assumed that we will simply muddle through.

Oh, FFS! Britain has weathered hung parliaments before and while the current system exists will do so again. There are procedures in place to deal with it. It all depends on who has a sufficient number of seats to command the house. Brown, as incumbent PM will get first stab – although if he is third in the popular vote and third in the number of seats, that command may not be as obvious as it would seem and there is no guarantee that the LibDems will want to play ball with him.

If Cameron gets the most seats, then in the failure of a Lib/Lab pact, he will have a go at forming a government. Pretty straightforward and no constitutional crisis to be seen.

Let’s be clear what kind of a crisis this might be. Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the Conservatives emerge on Friday as the largest party in votes and seats, with around 300 MPs. Assume, too, that Labour is second in both votes and seats with about 210 MPs. Then assume also that the Liberal Democrats come in third in votes and seats with around 110 MPs. Yes, I know all this is unlikely. Equally, though, it’s by no means impossible.

Perfectly possible. It doesn’t change the above, though. However, if Brown does try to cling on, he will be facing the same problem that Ted Heath faced back in 1974. The outcome is likely to be similar.

Friday morning dawns with this result. So who gets to govern? Very clearly, Labour has had a terrible defeat. Its chances of remaining in office in such circumstances would rightly be poor.

Well, quite. Brown’s Labour party would have been rejected by the electorate. That’s what happens when we have elections. In such a circumstance, it really should not remain in power. Brown should do the honourable thing and resign, making way for Cameron to form a government. That’s what should happen. What is likely though is this:

But suppose Labour, under Gordon Brown (we can forget the idea of an instant leadership coup), is quick to offer the Liberal Democrats a coalition government, with at least five Lib Dem members of the cabinet, and an offer to introduce the Alternative Vote Plus system, subject to referendum, before the next election.

This is entirely possible. Clegg has not been too positive about a deal with Brown, though, so it’s all speculation.

Note what is being suggested here – and also be clear what is not being suggested. All I am posing is the possibility that Labour, though defeated, tries to win time to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to stop the Conservatives taking office and that the Lib Dems agree to look at the option. I’m not saying the discussions would produce an agreement and I’m certainly not saying that it would be a good one. All I’m posing is the possibility that Labour might try and that the Lib Dems would be sufficiently interested to look at the offer. In effect, all I am suggesting is something quite modest, that Brown might remain in power over this weekend to see if the idea is a runner.

Yes. And? So? No constitutional crisis here. It happened in 1974. That it would be morally wrong is another matter.

It is increasingly clear from David Cameron’s interviews over the past few days that the Tories would not merely oppose such an effort (perfectly reasonably on one level) but that they might also, much more controversially, try to disrupt and overturn it.

Yes. And? So? Having won the popular vote and the most seats, this would be an entirely reasonable response. If you have won an election, it is reasonable to expect to form a government. It is also perfectly reasonable of them to disrupt any deals that might keep Labour in power – after all, Labour would have lost the election.

Cameron seems to be suggesting that in the circumstances imagined above, he would do two things: first, he would declare the Tories the winners…

Because they would be the winners.

…second, he would encourage the view that Labour was trying to steal an election it had lost.

Because that is precisely what they would be trying to do, just as Heath tried to do in 1974.

You only have to imagine what Saturday morning’s Sun, Mail and Express would look like to see how real a threat this would be.

Oh, please! Really! A party wins an election and it becomes a threat? Only in the deluded pages of the Guardian can we see such rampant paranoid bollocks.

Would either Labour or the Lib Dems have the nerve to go on trying to cut a deal with the Murdoch and Associated papers howling that they were trying to steal the election?

The howling would not be just from the papers – it would be coming from every one of the people who voted for a new government.

The February 1974 precedent is not much help here, since Labour (which was in the position I am hypothesising for the Tories this time) did not actually claim victory or actually charge Ted Heath with attempting to defy the voters – and it certainly did not have many newspapers at its beck and call either.

The situation is precisely the same. The rhetoric doesn’t change it. The newspapers are an irrelevance. If Brown uses the LibDems to try and cling onto power, he will be defying the will of the electorate. Cameron, in such circumstances is right to challenge this. The Guardian, however, will try any old trick, any rhetorical device, to keep their discredited masters clinging to the levers of power. Just imagine the reverse – the Tories had just lost and tried to hold onto power and Labour were challenging deals made by an incumbent Conservative PM, would Kettle be stamping his foot and scweaming and scweaming then? Yeah, thought not.

Of course, in many respects, the Tories would have a morally strong position to govern in such circumstances, even stronger than Wilson had in February 1974.

In all respects.

The difference, however, is that the Tories seem willing to muscle the conventions and the constitution aside and begin their effort to govern with an out-and-out challenge both to convention and the cabinet secretary. What’s more, and more important, I suspect they would get away with it.

Note the word “seem”. In other words, Kettle is scaremongering. He is making it up as he goes along. We don’t know for certain what will happen, but if Cameron challenges the idea of a Lib/Lab pact in the face of the Conservatives having the most seats, he will be within his rights to do so and no constitutional crisis applies. And, yes, I would expect him to get away with it – he would, after all, have won the election – albeit by a small margin, which may be no bad thing.

If events pan out the way I am positing, it would be the Conservatives, not Labour or the Liberal Democrats, who would, in fact, steal the election. It would be our very own Florida 2000 – but with newspaper editors rather than supreme court judges tipping the balance.

What was that about a very British coup?

What utter claptrap. If Kettle thinks that comparisons with 1974 are inappropriate to this situation, his drawing a parallel with Florida in 2000 takes the proverbial – there being no comparison whatsoever. The Groan and its morally and intellectually bankrupt journalists; egregious to the bitter end. It is far worse than anything the Murdoch press can come up with; and if they are the underbelly of the media, the Guardian is the slime in which they slither.

I have a sneaky feeling, though, that the Conservatives will do better than the polls suggest. If I’m right all this will be moot. We’ll see, eh?