I thought I'd write a story in the form of a counterfactual. In fact, since the story is written as a view from 2022, it's a counterfictional!
The 2010 general election was one of the more exciting elections of the early 21st century. It brought in the three term Cameron Government, the realignment of the left and the splintering of the Labour movement. The election was a close affair, with polls showing a small lead for the Conservatives right until the last week of the election, when Secretary-gate derailed the Labour campaign.
When the election was called at the end of March, the Tories had a 3% lead in the polls. This steadily grew as the impact of the National Insurance tax rises were felt, and the electorate realized that the newly announced increases in VAT (to 19%) and a further penny on NI would further hit them in the pocket. A hammer blow to the Labour campaign came on the 23rd April when the recovering economy slipped back into recession posting a decline of 0.2% GDP.
The big turning point in the race came the following Sunday, when footage was released showing a recording on a mobile phone of the Prime Minister shouting and throwing newspapers in the face of a secretary after she had shown him reports of the second leaders debate. He had done badly when talking about the economy in the debate, when he said that after the current recession there would be no more returns to boom and bust.
Even the Daily Mirror turned against the PM when images of the crying woman were shown on TV pictures over and over again. Labour slumped to 26% and the Tories were returned to power with an 80 seat majority.
David Cameron went on to cut public spending, bringing back strong growth for the 2014 election which he went on to win strongly. The reforms to the public services allowed them to increase productivity against the economic backdrop, the schools reforms led to many new community schools being created by motivated parents moving Britain up the international league tables. The major disappointment has been the failure to tackle 'Broken Britain' as Britain still has too many problems in society.
Meanwhile the Labour party fell apart. After the election Gordon Brown resigned immediately. Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, took over in a caretaker capacity and built enough support to mount a leadership campaign against Ed Balls and David Milliband. In the end she won, after Ed Balls was knocked out and his support transferred to Harman. With that support she beat Milliband by 61% to 39%, and started to put forward a left leaning shadow cabinet.
Harriet Harman appointed Ed Balls as the shadow Chancellor and Yvette Cooper as shadow Foreign Secretary. The husband and wife team making history in the process as they got two of the three top jobs, albeit in a shadow capacity. Things started well, but soon soured when David Milliband resigned as shadow Home Secretary after being under pressure to dismiss half the male police chief super-intendants to promote female counterparts.
Milliband's resignation citing 'Political correctness gone mad' started the downfall of Labour as a ruling power. After the proposed 60% tax rate on earnings above £200,000 was accepted by Harriet Harman, quickly followed by an 80% tax for bankers alone judged by the 'court of opinion', 97 MPs on the right of the party defected to the Liberal Democrats, making them the new official opposition. At subsequent elections, Labour support haemorrhaged further to the low levels of 24 MPs we see today.
It could all be so different. What would have happened if Gordon Brown had called an election on the weekend of the 27th February?
The Tories had been losing ground to Labour since the beginning of the year and the lead had contracted to 6%. Then a poll on the eve of the Tory Spring Conference gave them only a lead of 2%. Gordon Brown talked to his advisers during a trip to his Welsh conference that weekend and decided that he should grasp the nettle. With the lead so narrow he could hope to turn the election result into a hung parliament at the very least.
David Cameron made a good speech at the Tory conference, but this was trumped by the evening when Gordon Brown announced on television that he would be going to the Palace the next day to ask for a dissolution of Parliament. The headlines the next day told the public that the game was on.
After one day of finishing the business of Parliament, the 'duck-island parliament' was consigned to history and the nation rejoiced. Or they would do, if they hadn't to face one of the most bruising election campaigns in history.
Gordon Brown and David Cameron immediately set off on trips to the marginal constituencies, whilst their campaign teams started to get the election literature printed. There had been some questions in the press around who was leading the Tory election campaign effort, with disagreements being cited between Steve Hilton, Andy Coulson and George Osborne. The snap election gave them no time to fully sort out the details and this would come to hurt them later in the campaign.
On the Friday, the day when Gordon Brown should have been facing the Iraq inquiry, which was now suspended, Labour launched their manifesto. Their message was upbeat about Cancer care, halving the deficit and care for the elderly. The Tories were still trying to nail down how to provide their married couples tax incentive and so their mainfesto was delayed.
The first leaders debate came and went the following Thursday with no-one coming out on top. David Cameron did himself no favours when he looked evasive over the couples tax allowance and Gordon Brown had some difficulty explaining why he had called the election now - was it due to the polls? He had mislead the public once before by saying that calling off an election was on no account of the polls.
The polls were still showing a slight Tory lead but the Lib-dems had eaten a couple of points of both main parties. The Tory manifesto was published the following Monday showing an agreed plan for shared allowances for families with children under the age of 5. Some of the right wing press and the influential ConservativeHome website lambasted the tame policy calling it a non-policy.
There were further problems for the Tories when it became clear that confusion in the campaign team was causing scheduling difficulties. One school in Norwich suspended lessons for the morning waiting for the Tory leader to arrive whilst he was shaking hands at a hospital in Ipswitch. The headteacher went onto TV to accuse the Tory leader of not being interested in her school children's education.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown continued his tour of the marginals. A viral poster campaign showing the Tory leader in riding breeches chasing down a fox caused a political storm but highlighted the Tory leader's position on fox hunting and his upper class background.
Going into the third week of the campaign Labour had pulled ahead slightly in the polls. Mr Brown faced a difficult situation when he was berated by an angry pensioner in Ealing. He made policy on the hoof and announced that there would be a 50% reduction in council tax for over 70's in the next budget. It had worked before in 2005, and he was determined to put the Tories on the back foot. No-one knew whether he had meant it for a year, like in 2005, or longer, but the Tory poster attacking the cynicism backfired when he announced in the final debate that it was policy for the entire length of the next parliament. Financing the policy became a question that the Tories constantly asked, but the Prime Minister refused to state where the money would come from.
The new policy added an extra point to Labour's slim lead in the days following his announcement, but David Cameron forcefully put the message across that he could not go on making spending pledges while promising to half the deficit in the final leaders debate. This brought the parties level on 37% going into election day.
After a fraught day with many recounts, the polls were shown to overstate Labour support but the result was that the Tories were short of a majority by 10 seats. With the Lib Dems demanding electoral reform to provide support, the Conservatives went it alone as a minority administration.
Initially, the Tories seemed to be reasonably popular and the new PM had good approval ratings. David Cameron's Queen's speech showed that he would try to push through equal sizes of consistuency seats and a reduction of MPs to 500. Although this was designed to level the playing field and remove Labour bias, it was not well received by the public, and gerrymandering accusations seemed to stick. Other bills had public support, but everything hinged on whether the emergency budget could be passed.
The reduction of 10% in the education budget proved to be especially unpopular and Labour and the Lib Dems promised to vote against the budget. The Tories believed that showing resolve would win out, even if they had to face a new election. This theory was soon to be tested when they lost the Budget bill amid raucous scenes in the House of Commons.
Gordon Brown again led Labour into the second election, he had stayed on after defeat for just this circumstance. He had gained in popularity against the 'mean' Government, and Labour was now 2% ahead of the Tories in polls which had reduced Labour's weighting. The election was dominated by the deficit again, and Mr Brown's decision to abandon Trident to finance a small increase in the education budget and reduce the deficit proved popular. His late conversion to the AV+ system for Westminster, as espoused by Roy Jenkins, brought added support from Lib Dems and going into election day Labour were 6% ahead.
Again the polls had overestimated Labour support but they emerged as the largest party in a hung parliament, 5 short of an overall majority. After a weekend of deals between the parties, David Cameron resigned and Gordon Brown was reinstated as Prime Minister. Nick Clegg had announced earlier that he could not work with Gordon Brown, but the promised PR referendum swung him.
With a reasonable combined majority, budget votes would not be a problem for the popular new Chancellor, Vince Cable, but he was the victim of vicious briefing, believed to be coming from the new Home Secretary Ed Balls. The tensions within the Government continued to rise and with the PR referendum won in May 2011, Nick Clegg demanded that Gordon Brown sack his long time friend. When Mr Brown refused, Nick Clegg demanded that the PM resign to keep the coalition intact.
Very surprisingly for everyone who knew Mr Brown, he agreed. The last year had been exhausting for the PM and he couldn't carry on fighting for his political life. He was replaced by Ed Milliband, beating his brother by 8% in the Labour electoral college vote. He faced the new Tory leader, Jeremy Hunt, at the dispatch box for the next two years until the coalition fell apart over the proposed 100 days detention without trial legislation.
Nobody would have expected in those days, for PM Hunt to lead a Con-Lib coalition with David Laws as his deputy but as his third term gets under way its interesting to see what might have been.
Squiffy.
