British elections may never be the same again

And so the beast was slain, the News of the World, dead.

The Labour Party is rejoicing, and rightly so, in many ways this is their best week since the election last year. Ed Miliband killed at PMQs this week, their MPs Chris Bryant and Tom Watson have led on this since the start, and Cameron is reeling. A Survation poll in association with Channel 4 News shows that only 9% think David Cameron is handling the controversy ‘well’, and the Liberal Democrats, despite the party’s general hatred for News Corp have been largely absent from the debate due to being tied into the coalition. Labour have an opportunity to lead, and they have taken it.

This is good for Labour. For the first time in years they are able to paint themselves out as the champions of morality against a corrupt elite, they can launch a moral crusade, what’s more it is one that binds the whole party together and which reaches right across the political spectrum. Almost no one, of any political persuasion, would disagree that the allegations surrounding News of the World activities are horrifying. New Labour made it clear it was comfortable with elites and they proliferated around the party and its leadership, but Ed Miliband has nothing to lose, only the Mirror backed Labour in the last election and the media environment has got barely friendlier since then. He has nothing to lose by attacking them. I do not believe that the Labour Party can win an election on this but it has, temporarily at least, given them a sense of unity and purpose, a mission all of their own, and something to whack the government with.

What’s more this story has the potential to run and run. The News of the World may be deceased but Rebekah Brooks, who has achieved almost pantomime level of villainy in all this, remains at News International, and in any case, these revelations from the News of the World may be just the tip of the iceberg. Other newspapers are noticeably quiet, which suggests that they may have something to hide, and the timing is also bad for the News of the World. It is summer, Parliament will soon be on recess, and there will be almost no news. Here there are parallels to the expenses crisis, as an apparently corrupt elite has its crimes drawn out before the general public. That happened over a summer too, and one of the reasons it lasted so long as there were always new revelations to reveal, the full scale only became apparent in drips and drabs.

If this indeed proves to be the case it will be a deeply uncomfortable summer for David Cameron, who has worked hard to establish close links with News International. To be fair, he is not alone. Every Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher has made it a priority to woo Rupert Murdoch. You can see why; he owns a massive amount of the news media and his tabloids, at least, are not newspapers which mess around when they want something. He has the appearance of power, and his newspapers have always gloried in that appearance. The headline from the day after the 1992 election is the famous cliché: ‘It was the Sun wot won it’.

Such claims of media power are overblown. Academic research does not support the claim that newspapers define political preferences; rather they are more closely affected by things like the views of your friends. Newspapers, it seems, do tend to affect what political issues you think are most important, but not your actual view on them. Now there are those who read papers and believe everything they say, but those are mostly a sort of feedback situation. People who already believe something, may read a choice of newspaper which simply backs up their own views. Nor do readers necessarily appreciate the political slant of the newspapers they read. Chris Patten, former Tory party Chair, reveals in his book Not Quite the Diplomat that research by the Conservative Research Department after the 1992 election showed that most Sun readers thought it was a left-leaning paper.

Rupert Murdoch does not define who wins elections. Rather he uses his deft political nous to predict who will win elections and then back them. In conjunction with this he uses the myth of his own power and standing to strike deals with politicians who either believe the myth is true or don’t want to test the theory that it is false. What does Murdoch want in return?

Murdoch is very right-wing, no one denies this, but he is, first and foremost, a businessman before all else. I would highly recommend Nick Davies revealing book Flat Earth News to anyone interested in these issues. It is an investigation by Davies which has been throwing up these revelations and Flat Earth News covered phone hacking and other ‘dark arts’ years before they entered mainstream consciousness. It is not a perfect book, I think it sells journalists too short, Davies’ left-wing biases are made quite clear and it can get ranty but it is well worth a read, especially now.

One thing Davies covers is the business practices of Murdoch, and a clear pattern emerges. Over and over again Murdoch has made deals with politicians in exchange for changes in laws and rules to benefit his businesses. There is an excerpt from the book here.

We can see this behaviour now. Murdoch was reticent to back Cameron for a long time, despite lobbying from Cameron’s friend Brooks. He eventually relented in late 2009, and News International began to back the Conservatives strongly. When the debates happened and the Clegg bounce occurred his papers visibly panicked. On the one hand there was a risk of a government including Lib Dem figures who owed him no favours, but perhaps even more dangerously the myth would have been blown. In short, Murdoch’s power would have gone and he would not have been able to secure the political favours he wants to expand his business, first and foremost is to take total control of BSkyB.

Fortunately for Murdoch the Conservatives came close enough to a majority that they could have said to have won.

Yet what politician will cosy up to Murdoch now? The dangers of the historic closeness between media and political elites have now been exposed in a visceral and extremely visible way. Ultimately this could be a true shift in the way elections are fought in this country. No politician will want to get as close to someone like Rebekah Brooks every again for fear of getting burned as a result.

Those rebellious coalition MPs

Professor Philip Cowley (founder of revolts.co.uk, THE source for data on parliamentary rebellions and co-editor and author of the definitive guide to last year’s general election) published a wonderful little blogpost about government backbench rebellions this morning.

There are some fascinating tit bits of information. Backbench rebellion is at an all-time high, amongst Conservative MPs higher than under John Major. According to Cowley MPs there is now a rebellion in almost half of votes.

Given that we are in the first parliamentary session of a new government this is, in some ways, quite shocking. New governments tend to have stable parliamentary majorities and new MPs have historically preferred to attempt to prove their loyalty. The good news for the Government is that the two government parties tend to rebel on different subjects and not at the same time, so when Conservatives rebel Lib Dems remain loyal, and vice-versa, meaning bills will usually pass on the votes of one of the two parties. Of course coalition means that, unlike in the Labour years, the backbenchers are not united in their issues with the government. Lib Dem backbenchers are generally to the left of the government, Conservative backbenchers are generally to its right.

This explains some of the rebellion, as does the size of the government majority itself (77), which gives licence to decent sized rebellions as MPs know it will take a large-scale rebellion to defeat the government.

At the same time, however, I am told that MPs, rightly, or wrongly, increasingly view rebellion as a ticket to re-election in marginal constituencies. Voters, particularly voters for the MP’s political party, generally like their MP to be a ‘maverick’ figure, and indeed there are obvious advantages to, say, being a Lib Dem MP and being able to put on your election leaflets that you voted against tuition fees.

Politics is localising. Modern elections are increasingly fought on a constituency by constituency basis and MPs in marginal constituencies are increasingly elected on wafer-thin majorities. A hundred votes can decide the MP in some seats and a maverick vote in the right policy area might just be enough to do just that.

Tory MP Pushes Quick Referendum

This blog was originally posted to Keane on Politics by Kristofer Keane.

A Conservative MP has submitted an amendment to the Scotland Bill calling for a referendum on Scottish independence to be held this year.  Jacob Rees-Mogg, a character of some infamy in Scotland, submitted the amendment yesterday which would require the referendum to take place within four months of the passing of the Bill.

Rees-Mogg's amendment would have a referendum asking us:

"The Scotland Act increases the powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

Should there be full independence for Scotland instead?"

Apart from the already much alluded-to desire by unionists to get a referendum by as quickly as possible in the hope they can still win it, the question is skewed as it plays the actual powers of the Scotland Act against full independence - unlike Salmond's question there is no possibility for the status quo or to demand further powers short of independence.

Presumably, the Tory backbencher hopes that the option of some more powers against independence would help secure a unionist win while also preventing a call for greater financial powers - a result which the SNP are probably more likely to win than full independence under their own planned question.

It seems unlikely that the amendment will pass, although it could have support from strongly unionist Tories and Scottish Labour MPs.  If it did pass, I think a question being pushed by an MP from the south of England rather than of Scotland's own design would, if anything, make an independence campaign win even more likely as it would further erode Westminster's claim to supporting a degree of Scottish self-determination.

In the long run, I still believe a referendum in 2014/15 is more likely. I know that 24 June 2014 has been posited as a possible date for being the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.  And if English Tory MPs keep trying to push Scotland around in the mean time, it can only help to bolster support for independence.

GREAT SCOT! The SNP win a majority at Holyrood

Well, what a result, I’m sure most people have seen it already, but here’s the final result table, all changes from the notional results.

Party	Constituencies		Change		Regions		Change		Total Seats	Change
	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats
SNP	45.4%	53	+12.5%	+32	44%	16	+13%	-9	69	+23
Labour	31.7%	15	-0.5%	-20	26.3%	22	-2.9%	+13	37	-7
Conservatives	13.9%	3	-2.7%	-3	12.4%	12	-1.6%	-2	15	-5
Lib Dems	7.9%	2	-8.2%	-9	5.2%	3	-6.1%	-3	5	-12
Scottish Greens	-	-	+0.1%	0	4.4%	2	+0.3%	+1	2	+1
Others	1.1%	0	-0.9%	0	7.7%	1	-2.9%	0	1	0

The SNP have gained an unprecedented absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, an impressive feat by any standard, but just to underline how impressive it is I should remind readers firstly that the Scottish electoral system was designed by Labour particularly to guarantee that the Scottish National Party would never win a majority. This is not supposed to happen, an absolute majority at Holyrood is not supposed to be possible. The best ever previous result was Labour’s in 1999 when the party achieved 56 of the Parliament’s 129 seats, 9 short of a majority.

The SNP victory can be described in many ways, a tsunami, a wave, I heard one Scot refer to it as ‘a massacre’. Nowhere was untouched. The party swept through every part of Scotland. In Labour’s Glasgow heartland, it took 5 of the 9 constituencies and topped the regional poll. In Lothian it now holds 8 of the 9 constituency MSPs in a region that had previously shown incredible diversity, only Edinburgh Northern and Leith survived and even there Labour’s Malcolm Chisholm beat off the SNP by only 595 votes. In its North East Scotland stronghold it not only swept the 10 constituency seats, the party even managed to gain a MSP on the list.

Lothian will make particularly miserable reading for the Lib Dems, where they once held 3 constituency seats, on the notional boundaries, they were not even compensated with a single regional seat. In Edinburgh Southern Mike Pringle saw the SNP come from fourth to take his seat. The Lib Dem’s Highlands stronghold doled out the pain against them too. In Argyll and Bute there was a 17.8% swing against them. If I was incumbent Westminster MP Alan Reid I would be very worried. The party lost its two Highlands seats, in one of its UK strongholds. At Westminster the Highlands are dominated by Lib Dems, with Danny Alexander and Charles Kennedy making their homes there, and the party even lost North East Fife to the SNP which is Ming Campbell’s seat at Westminster. In Fife too, the SNP took Kirkcaldy, partially covered by the constituency of one G. Brown.

Labour

Labour has claimed that actually their vote held up rather well, and that losses to the SNP are due to Lib Dem voters switching to the SNP. This isn’t totally accurate in my opinion, as Labour has lost votes on both ballots, especially on the regional one. Labour has also lost seats and votes in seats and regions where the Lib Dem vote was already negligible. For example in the West of Scotland the Lib Dems went from 5.2% of the regional vote to 1.4%, but Labour also lost 4.6% of the regional vote itself as the SNP gained 15.5%. This argument also begs the immediate question: why did Lib Dem voters switch seemingly en masse to the SNP. If Labour’s argument is accurate it suggests that the Scottish Labour Party provided no attraction to former Lib Dems. This is bizarre considering that the two parties were in government together only four years ago North of the border and that the Scottish Lib Dems used to earn the nickname ‘rural Labour’. It is also worth remembering that Ed Miliband has made taking left-leaning votes from the Lib Dems a priority. Either, therefore, the SNP has taken votes from both the Lib Dems and Labour and some Lib Dems have gone to Labour, or Labour has no attraction for Scottish Liberal Democrats. Neither of these scenarios particularly commends itself.

The fact that Labour dropped votes is also counter-intuitive given that with the coalition at Westminster Labour is now in opposition. This is a mid-term election and political science tells us that in mid-term elections opposition parties gain seats. This is the presumption Labour fought the election on. They fought the campaign like it was a local election, against the coalition in Westminster. They argued that only a Labour win could protect Scotland from the Westminster government. This is clearly counter-intuitive for the SNP is, itself, a left-of-centre party, a social democratic party. Party members are often fully open with their hope that if Scotland ever becomes independent that it will emulate the social democratic models of Scandinavia. The SNP is at least as left-wing as Labour.

Labour has to ask itself some serious questions. Devolved institutions means devolved elections and devolved elections need devolved parties. Instead of behaving like an independent party-within-a-party with a proper vision for Scotland the Scottish Labour Party has acted like it was fighting a local campaign. It has weak leadership and behaved with a certain arrogancy. In my Scottish election guide I quoted the political scientist Gerry Hassan, it is worth reiterating the quote, the party “has long prided itself on its radical traditions and a romantic view of itself... but it has increasingly become a conservative party, the political establishment.”

If recent elections should tell us anything it is that people today hate the establishment. Labour needs to remake itself into a party that is convincingly anti-establishment. It also needs to work on its talent at a devolved level. The party has many impressive, capable and talented Scottish members; Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander, John Reid, and Jim Murphy are all big interesting characters with political talent, so why is it that the best person the Scottish party could find to be its candidate was Iain Gray? I do not think I would be saying anything that no one else has said by suggesting that the man is not exactly inspirational. He has a really admirable background working in places like Mozambique, but he is not exactly what you call charismatic and up against Alex Salmond, a man who exudes blokey good humour and likeability from every pore he does not compare well.

In most countries with strong sub-national government, for example Germany, lower levels of government are used as a training house for political talent. Top political talent in states move up to the national level. On the other hand when a party thinks it has a good chance of winning a lower level of government it will sometimes deploy a top dog from national level to lead the local branch. For example there are elections in Berlin this year and the Greens are hopeful of winning the mayoralty. Thus they have deployed their parliamentary leader – Renate Kunast as their mayoral candidate. Labour needs to work out how it can get this kind of flexibility into its own Scottish wing, how it can spread its Scottish talent across both levels of government depending on need. Indeed, the SNP have already demonstrated this in their own organisation – Alex Salmond was not a MSP in 2007, but still lead his party to victory.

Iain Gray has announced he is resigning, considering he almost lost his seat (saving it by only 151 votes) this is the only reasonable choice, but Labour has also lost the most likely successor, Andy Kerr their finance spokesman who lost his East Kilbride seat on an almighty swing. Foolishly Labour also run separate candidates in constituencies from their lists meaning much of their members from the regional lists are inexperienced activists of low standing who never expected to get elected. This contrasts with the SNP who deploy the same set of candidates across both slates meaning most new constituency MSPs are former list MSPs. Labour’s issue with talent in Scotland has only got worse and it is not yet clear where it will find a new Scottish leader.

Conservatives

The SNP has also gone after the Conservatives. The party has definitely established a more pro-business stance of late, and the party also seems to have taken a small but notable number of votes from the Tories, presumably ones who decided they preferred an Alex Salmond government to an Iain Gray one. The SNP has increasingly shown a capability to take seats and votes from the Conservatives. The Conservatives once dominated Scotland, they remain the only party to have won an absolute majority of the vote in Scotland (in 1955). There is an idea that goes around that Scotland is an instrinsically left-wing place, working class and socialist, but there are many affluent, middle class areas who still demonstrate political views that are best described as centre-right. The SNP’s North East Scotland stronghold is one of them. The Scottish Conservative’s problem is they are perceived as anti-Scottish. Their success in a previous life was a function of the ‘Unionist Party’ the affliated Scotland-only party which was Conservative and Unionist but also strongly Scottish in identity. While the party’s Scottish wing and Annabel Goldie seem to understand this, the party’s Southern base and Westminster wing occasionally demonstrate horrendously misjudged viewpoints. When English right-wing newspapers write editorials blaming Scotland for things they don’t like it is noticed up North. The Scots also do not respond well to Conservative policy regarding the Barnett formula or English votes for English laws. I understand why these policies are in place but the Conservatives should think about a different, softer, more inclusive approach towards Scotland, they should also listen more to the Scottish party. That said, it must be difficult for David Cameron to hear the voice of Scottish Conservatives when there is only Scottish Conservative MP.

Nonetheless the Scottish Tories have acquitted themselves well in the campaign. While they did lose votes and seats they maintained remarkable stability when compared to Labour or the Lib Dems. Annabel Goldie has proven to be a popular, effective, leader and she probably remains the party’s best asset North of the border, demonstrating a canny ability to both deal with and attack Salmond and the SNP. Now the party is in a more traditional opposition role she will be well placed, especially if Scottish Labour continue to demonstrate poor leadership. Do not get me wrong here, I do not believe that the Conservatives can pass Labour, at least not anytime soon, but I believe there are centre-right voters to be won in Scotland and Annabel can win them, her first priority, however, needs to be to make the Westminster party listen because the Tories will get nowhere in Scotland if the Westminster party is still seen as ‘anti-Scottish’. It should be noted, as well, that winning Scottish seats remains one of the easiest ways for the Tories to get an absolute majority in 2015.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

The Scottish Lib Dems did badly. There is no hiding it. A devastating result they lost every single one of their mainland constituency seats and were compensated with only 3 regional seats. The first thing to say is that clearly the coalition has not been good for the Lib Dems in Scotland. In fact, clearly it has been devastating, but I think it would be untrue to blame the coalition and would, in many ways, excuse the Lib Dems own mistakes. The party’s Scottish campaign was terrible. One former MSP endorsed Alex Salmond, another publicly split with his party and one candidate failed to file his papers. The Scottish party gave off a continual look of chaos. Added into that they demonstrated several problems in common with Labour: uninspiring leader, a certain dearth of talent, and policy issues. In some ways, in policy terms, the party was a victim of its own success. All the Lib Dems most notable policies were either implemented in the 1999-2007 coalition with Labour, or don’t apply to Scotland. Tavish Scott was left talking interminably about the one policy area where they differed significantly from the SNP, Labour and Tories – opposition to a single Scottish police force. This partially struck me as a core vote strategy, aimed at shoring up the party’s rural decentralist base in the Highlands. If that is the case, it didn’t particularly work.

Tavish Scott, like Iain Gray, has taken his share of the blame and resigned. He was also run uncomfortably close in his Shetland constituency by anti-wind farm independent Billy Fox. Now left with 5 MSPs it will be a hard job looking for a new leader. Of those five Scott is obviously ruled out,the party’s new Orkney MSP, Liam McArthur is untested, and Jim Hume, elected on the South Scotland regional list has only been a MSP since 2007 and strikes me as being rather low-profile. That leaves Alison McInnes on the North East Scotland regional list and Willie Rennie on the Mid Scotland and Fife list. McInnes was the party’s spokesperson on Transport, Local Government and Climate Change she might be a goer, but Willie Rennie strikes me as the superior candidate. Rennie is newly elected to the Scottish Parliament but was a MP from 2006 until 2010 after he won the Dumfermline and West Fife by-election taking the seat Gordon Brown lived in. The seat had a massive Labour majority at the time and Rennie’s victory was considered to be very impressive, especially given internal party troubles at the time. Since the election Rennie has been a special advisor in the Scotland office. He strikes me as having the best mix of name recognition, experience and capability, though I’m sure the Lib Dems will make a good fight of it.

For what it’s worth I don’t think the party is heading towards an electoral wipeout in mainland Scotland for several reasons. Firstly they have some really solid incumbent MPs in some areas – people like Charles Kennedy, and Ming Campbell. These MPs have a high personal vote and can probably hold because of that. Secondly the SNP won’t be such a threat at Westminster. The party is not embraced as enthusiastically in Westminster elections as it cannot be in government, this can be seen by comparing this result and the 2007 result to the SNP’s performance in 2010 – the party gained votes at Westminster but did not gain a single MP. Thirdly I think there may be something of a mid-term ‘screw the Lib Dems’ effect. Finally I think that many disillusioned Lib Dems may have voted SNP because they figured it was Salmond or Gray.

That said, there are many Lib Dem seats in Scotland which must be in serious danger. The Conservatives wouldn’t need much to take Alan Reid’s Argyll and Bute seat. The Tories could also take Scottish Secretary Michael Moore’s Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk seat. Malcolm Bruce’s Gordon seat must be in danger from the SNP, Edinburgh West could fall to Labour, and so on. Danny Alexander has a solid majority in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, but I think he could be in danger too because perhaps no Lib Dem besides Nick Clegg has come to symbolise the coalition more. Honestly, however, the 2012 local elections in Scotland will probably give us a better guide to who’s in danger than these results.

The Scottish Greens

In some ways the Greens pulled off a decent result. They actually gained votes, the only party to do so besides the SNP and notionally they gained a seat, but the party must be disappointed not to have received gone above 2. In many ways this was an awesome opportunity for the Greens to make a real breakthrough by taking votes from disillusioned Lib Dems, but they failed to make any massive impact. It may be time for the party to re-consider its strategy of only running on the regional lists. They have avoided running in constituencies for several reasons; a lack of decent candidates, not being able to afford deposits and poor ground infrastructure chief amongst them. It may be worth considering running constituency candidates in seats with high votes for the party on the regional list however. Running constituency candidates in such seats would give it a focal point of popular attention, give it entry into local Hustings and allow it to be more visible. For now, however, the party’s chief concern should be gaining as many councillors as possible in next year’s local elections, this will vastly improve the state of its national infrastructure.

Others

Margo MacDonald was re-elected, George Galloway failed. Overall there was a large reduction in the vote for ‘Others’ as there had been in 2007 too. When given a new electoral system to play with voters often attempt to use it to its full capability, voting for a range of candidates and parties before their votes start to homogenise as a stricter party system begins to establish itself. I do not think there is much hope of seeing a new party breakthrough anytime soon.

The SNP begins majority government

So far the most striking thing about Salmond’s victory is that it does not just seem to represent the victory of Salmond and the SNP over the other parties but also of Salmond and his gradualist wing’s victory over the fundamentalist wing of MSPs like Alex Neil. The latter want an independence referendum as soon as possible and view devolution with distrust, as a way to keep Scottish nationalism bottled up. The former see Scottish devolution as a route towards independence, slowly chipping away more and more powers from Westminster until Scotland is de facto independent, a state within a state. There is remarkably little talk of an independence referendum amongst the SNP for good reason – they know they’d lose. The Scotland Bill is still working its way through parliament. This bill drawn up by the Calman Commission – launched by Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems, seeks to give the Scottish Parliament more powers but has been rejected by the SNP for being too little and for giving some powers back to Westminster. Salmond is clearly hoping to use as a chance to renegotiate the terms of the bill.

That said, a referendum will have to be held to appease the fundamentalists. The SNP has said it will legislate for one in the second half of the parliament’s term. Clearly they are hoping on holding it as late as possible in order to have time to work on subtlety moving the independence referendum opinion poll numbers more in their direction. My view is that a referendum will probably fail, much in the same way the AV referendum has, but nothing can ever be taken for granted.

The party will have a tough few years in government. Holding a majority will mean they can pass their entire manifesto, but it also means getting all the blame. The SNP will have to participate in massive cuts due to cuts to the Scottish block grant from Westminster. New Scottish tax-raising powers will likely come from the Scotland Bill but it is hard to see tax rises going down well. Labour will also no doubt attempt to argue that the SNP are responsible for the cuts or in cahoots with the Tories for participating in them. Government is never easy, but government during an economic recovery is incredibly difficult. That said Salmond has a keen mind for economics (he is an economist by profession), for political strategy (take another look at that election result if you disagree) and for the pulse of the Scottish people. He is a figure who should not be underestimated.