Elections in the UK

Although I have not been posting any of this here, I have been making a number of predictions on the UK election, most of which have turned out to be reasonably accurate so far. I'll recap:

The day of the election I bet a friend that the final results would be
Tories: 307
Labour: 230
Lib Dems: 90.

Now with the exception of the Tory call, this is pretty off. My reasoning was that everyone was predicting 100+ and even ~120 seats for the Lib Dems, and that I thought this was very optimistic. The fundamentals of the system had not changed (still a plurality single member district election), the party identification rates in the country were largely unaffected by the surge in support for the Lib Dems, and the surge was largely based on the performance of Clegg in the first debate, which was followed by underwhelming performances in the subsequent debates. The first debate made the Lib Dems seem viable, but was probably not enough to dispel anxieties about wasting the vote.

So I adjusted my expectation of the Lib Dem vote so that it would be below what was being predicted. I would have gone lower (with the balance going to the Labour party), but I wanted to remain reasonably close to the prediction made by my friend, for no reason other than saving face if the prediction was off.

It was obvious (I believed at least) that there was no way there could be a Lab-Lib pact; this was clear as soon as it was evident that together they could not command a majority. What's the point then, really, if you are going to take all the heat for sustaining "an unelected leader" in Brown as PM, or denying the Tories an opportunity to form a government, if you are probably going to have to go back to the polls in a few weeks/months. (I should note that I agree there is nothing morally illegitimate about Brown forming a government even having come in second to a resurgent Tory party; rather, I think that the conservative and middle-class press would hammer on about this as being illegitimate such that it became very costly politically). And besides, it was clear that the Tory leadership (we'll have to see about the base) was so lusty for power that it would have given Clegg the abolition of the monarchy if he'd have asked. So I predicted the day after the election that there would be a Tory-Liberal government in place before Friday May 14th.

The big question would be the terms of the coalition, specifically whether the Tories would push ahead with their "fuck you" emergency budget. I suspected that (1) they were being told by the ministry of the exchequer (or whatever it is) that they couldn't take the money out of the system this year, (2) that they had received the endorsement of the Financial Times and Economist, both of which harshly criticized the emergency budget cuts proposed by the Tories, on the basis of a winked suggestion that if elected they wouldn't really go through with it, and (3) the fact that the Lib Dems campaigned against it would give the Tory leadership an opportunity to back away from the plan. If they went ahead with the budget, I suspected that it would be very difficult for the party activists in the Lib Dems to support their leadership, but that the leadership would feel compelled to support the budget so as to (1) get a real taste of power, (2) avoid a quick election.

Additionally, I suspected that they would give the Lib Dems something in the way of electoral reform, but that it would be a real cynical job. Possibly a commission to study electoral reform, but apparently Tony Blair had already given that to the Lib Dems before and promptly ignored the recommendations. More likely, a heresthetically rigged referendum on an insufficient proposal. Specifically, I suggested that the Tories would "offer an electoral reform that is less proportional than what the Lib Dems want and better for the Tories, but enough of a reform that Lib Dems might be stuck agreeing with, and they'll have it in a referendum with a 55% threshold." And we can, of course, get even more cynical: a referendum with "three options: status quo, AV, and whatever works in the Tories' favour, and the status quo stays if neither of the other two options gets above 50%.Of course the Tories, as the dominant partner in the government, will likely have a substantial advantage in campaigning when they come out against AV in the referendum (but I don't know the details of British referendum law, or whether there even is a standing law on the matter).

From this I predicted at least 8 months of a Tory-Lib pact. The election would depend on whether (1) the Tories had gone through with the asshole budget, and (2) whether the damage done by the budget would have severely undermined the fragile economic recovery.

Well today the deal has been released. And I think that the Lib Dems are in long term trouble. Not only are the Tories going ahead with the cutting-spree,  but they have even placed one of the Lib Dems most right-wing MPs in the cabinet position responsible for doing so.

They are going ahead with ""Accelerated" action to cut the budget deficit: £6bn of spending cuts this year " and "Measures to promote financial stability and support business growth," which of course means business tax cuts. The 1% NI tax is scrapped, meaning that there will have to be more cuts elsewhere to make up the difference (between that, the business tax cuts, and the higher threshold for poor families before having to pay taxes, you'd think they weren't really concerned about the deficit at all).

Well what about electoral reform. Surely if the Lib Dems are going to be responsible for making drastic cuts that they opposed throughout the campaign, then they must have got something in the way of electoral reform? Right?

1. A referendum on AV, which is a weaker form of the AV+ offered by Labour, neither of which would be anywhere close to proportional representation, and therefore barely address the major inequality of the system (see here or here).
2. A cut in the number of MPs, which in either a AV or first past the post system can only make it less representative.
 3. Fixed elections every 5 years. If you are going to have fixed elections, I'd much prefer it to be every three or four years. I'm somewhat sympathetic (but not terribly) to the claim that the U.S. House of Representative system of voting every two years impedes long-term strategic planning, but I see four years as a perfectly reasonable amount of time. The point is that the more frequent, the more democratic. This does not make it necessarily better in terms of governance (elections once a month would probably be disastrous), but given that all the parties were complaining about the electoral system in terms of how it was not democratic enough, this seems to be a movement in the opposite direction.
4. Of course, "a review of Scottish MPs voting on England-only legislation" so that the Labour party will be weakened even further.
5.  And a true shocker: "55% of MPs required to bring government down in confidence vote." Which is basically meant to make it so that even without the Lib Dems the Tories can survive a non-confidence vote (it would then take 358 votes instead of 326 to defeat the government. Or seen another way, the government would need only 292 seats to hold onto power, which the Tories have).

So the Liberal Democrats get to walk back their opposition to, and even made to share responsibility for, a substantial cut in government spending during the midst of a very fragile recovery; and they get a referendum (which I still expect to be heresthetically rigged) on a voting system that doesn't really overcome the massive disparity between their vote share and their seat share that results from the current system. They also get rid of the Tory plan to scrap the inheritance tax, and a rise in the tax threshold so that more low-income families don't have to pay income taxes.

As one Lib Dem MP put it "I can't believe how much they've offered us....The Tories have basically rubbed out their manifesto and inserted ours. We'll have to cope for four or five years with our flesh creeping, but still."

I think they are going to find the coping very difficult indeed. The Tories get power; they get to continue trying to soften their image; they get to foreclose the threat of a move toward AV+ or a proportional representation scheme that would have been more detrimental to them.

The Lib Dems? Their activists will be in revolt (it's begun); their leadership will be responsible for policies they have opposed; their English constituency (who are mostly middle class could-be Tories, who find the Tories to be just a touch too cruel) likely will be drawn toward the Tory party as that party's image is softened, while the Scottish constituency moves toward Labour or the SNP.

I would be shocked if this lasts 5 years; but I suspect that it will last more than 8 months. Its chances of lasting even that long, however, depend largely on whether the emergency budget plunges the country into a double dip recession. If it does, it'll be a tough policy to walk back. The Tory base is not going to want to see that walk back and will probably be adamant that Cameron stick with it. The Lib Dem base will demand that it be reversed, but probably won't stop there and will demand a firm break with the Tories.