Is it just me, or are Party leaders becoming a bit like
football managers? After a quite brief season of intense press scrutiny and
with boys and girls commenting on the way ‘they,’ would have conducted business
instead, the resigning of Ed, Nick and ‘the other one’ seemed silly didn’t it?
I felt like I was watching Sky Sports News last night, not
the BBC. “Well, you, know…I..erm…jus couldn’t get the boys in gear.” Says Ed to
Gaby Logan, panting in front of the Labour banners sadly pasted on the wall
behind him. “This season we were punished when Villa, sorry, West Ham got all
pumped up. Know what I mean?” It seemed that the consensus amongst both senior politicians
of all parties and commentators more widely, was that resignation was
inevitable. But is it, and should it be the fault of a single man for the
failing of an entire movement to connect with the Nation?
Nick Clegg stepped down with some strong words for the
electorate. He said that, “grinding insecurities and globalisation had lead
people to reach for new certainties: the politics of identity, of nationalism,
of us vs them.” Where it is clear that the electorate have punished the Lib
Dems for their part in the coalition it seems that the idea of the Liberals
loosing votes has been undermined by the fact that the largest proportion of
their vote share in 2010 ended up in the Conservative pocket. If it were merely
that those voters, who in 2010 had voted with the Lib Dems in order to lean
left of the Tories, felt disenfranchised, surely their votes in the main would
have hopped back into the laps of Labour or to one of the other protest
parties. That didn’t happen. Perhaps Nick is right and the country is in a
state of mind quite different from 2010. NatCen’s recent social attitudes
report suggests that since 1994 the general public have become much more ‘right
wing’ (or at least amenable to ‘right wing’ policies as defined by NatCen.) The
report suggests a swing back to the ‘left’ somewhat since 2010. So, whereas
discussions surrounding a certain inherent conservatism are beginning to emerge
(last night’s Newsnight,) I fail to see it.
Prospective young voters don’t turn out, a recent ComRes
poll suggested 37% of those aged 18-24 were going to vote this election. Research
from the Hansard society suggests that Scottish Voters are significantly more
likely to say that they are certain to vote: 72 per cent, compared with a national
average of 49 per cent. As well as this, only 16% of those voters aged 18-24
throughout the UK say they are certain to vote which stands contrary to the
overall recorded turnout for this election and purports a national turnout of
over 66%. This statistic is unrepresentative of the true image and skewed a by
a large turnout in Scotland, especially amongst young voters, for the SNP. So this
being said, are the English are inherently conservative given that it is likely
that a large proportion of the population remain unrepresented due to their own
ommissive behaviour on polling day.
When Ed resigned it wasn’t long before Blair’s ‘top babe,’
Mr Hutton made an appearance suggesting a return for the Labour Party to the ‘Blairite’
politics that helped them win in 1997. As Ken Livingston rebutted yesterday,
talking about Ed Miliband, “the idea that if you somehow change the driver
everything’s going to be alright doesn’t make sense to me.” He is right. Any
failings of the Labour Party in communicating their message are much more
fundamental than who leads them at Westminster. Perhaps, sadly for Labour activists
who believe in the increasingly opaque vision of Labour, todays Independent
Editorial finishes with this, in reference to Ed and Nick Clegg: ‘Their two
successors would do well to start thinking about a truly progressive coalition
of the two parties.’ Is it a thought?