John Humphrys – 2010: Year of Decision

This post is taken from my colleague John Humphrys’ YouGov blog.

It’s the time of year when pundits like to make predictions about what’s going to happen in the year ahead. Few of them get it right and economists, more than any, tend to get it wrong. No one really knows what state the British economy will be in a year from now. But of one thing we can be certain: 2010 is a year in which there will be a general election, whose result is likely to affect what happens in the economy. What electoral outcome do we want?

That question is not simply about which party we would prefer to form the next government, although that is what the parties themselves will be banging on about between now and polling day, expected in May though possibly coming as early as late March. It’s also about whether or not we want to give one party exclusive control of our government or whether we’d actually prefer parties to share power. The polls suggest we might be heading for the first hung parliament since February 1974.

Some commentators think a hung parliament is the best thing Gordon Brown can hope for. Labour, they argue, is too far behind in the polls realistically to expect to be able to form a majority government, especially as the party will have been in power for thirteen years and the ‘time-for-a change’ argument will have more traction with voters.

Nonetheless, the Prime Minister is clearly campaigning to secure a fourth outright victory for Labour. In his New Year message he said that only his party could promise a ‘decade of shared prosperity’ and the Tories risked destroying a recovery that is still fragile.

Oddly enough, David Cameron, the Tory leader, did seem to show more interest in the consequences of a hung parliament in his message. Indeed, that message was widely interpreted as an attempt to cosy up to the Liberal Democrats, with whom, he said, the Tories now had few differences. What is perhaps strange about this is that the polls still suggest that the Conservatives have a good chance of winning a majority on their own. It may be that Mr Cameron was just flying a kite and that from now on we shall hear from him the more traditional line of a party leader: that his party alone should be trusted with running the country.

As for the Liberal Democrats themselves, Nick Clegg, the party leader, accused both the other parties of merely “parroting the language of change” and made clear that he was going to fight the election on his party’s convictions rather than with any thought of which other party he’d prefer to end up in bed with.

But if a hung parliament is looking more likely than it has for years, would it be a good idea? Some people argue that it would be about as bad an outcome as can be imagined. Indeed Ken Clarke, the Tories’ shadow business secretary and who has been an MP since 1970, went so far as to say that an election result that produced a majority Labour government would be better than one that gave no single party outright power. His leader quickly disagreed with him but it may be that Mr Clarke’s memory of the February 1974 parliament (when Mr Cameron was eight years old) led him to this view.

The reason many people are so alarmed by the prospect of no party ending up with a workable majority is that they believe that, without one, the ensuing government will fail to govern. That is particularly dangerous, they say, because of our economic predicament. Although there are disagreements between the parties about when the government’s huge financial deficit should be cut down to size, everyone agrees that it will need to be done sometime. But that’s bound to involve substantial cuts in government spending. And they are very difficult to bring about, as this week’s publication of hitherto secret government documents about Mrs Thatcher’s battles on the subject back in 1979 make clear.

The problem with hung parliaments in Britain is that even if two parties make a deal to sustain a government in power, either through coalition or through less formal agreements, there is no guarantee that such a deal will last. That’s because Britain’s constitution does not impose fixed-term parliaments. It’s always up to a prime minister to call an election pretty much when he or she wants. That means that during hung parliaments all parties are likely to act more with their own impending electoral interests in mind rather than according to the national interest. That’s what happened after February 1974 when Harold Wilson ran things in a way he hoped would maximise his party’s chances in the election he subsequently called in October.

In our current predicament the danger is that the financial markets would respond to an election result that produced a minority government that they expected to carry on electioneering rather than governing by selling government bonds and taking flight from sterling.

On the other hand, advocates of coalition governments point out that in other countries they have produced stable government and the basis for economic prosperity. Lord McNally, the leader of the LibDems in the Lords, cites Germany as an example. But Germany has fixed-term parliaments, so perhaps coalitions would work here only if the parties involved found some copper-bottomed way to guarantee that their government would stay in power for several years, possibly by legislating for fixed-term parliaments.

Between now and the election it’s likely that this sort of talk will be heard only from commentators. The politicians themselves will be intent on harvesting as many votes as possible for their own parties and no doubt claiming that they alone have the policies the country needs.

What’s your view? Have you already made up your mind how you’ll vote in the 2010 election or are you still open to persuasion? What attracts you and what repels you in the cases put by the three main parties? Do you think Gordon Brown is right to say that Labour alone can promise a decade of shared prosperity? Is David Cameron correct when he says that there is no longer much separating the Tories from the Liberal Democrats? Is Nick Clegg justified in arguing that his party alone offers change? In principle, and aside from the issue of which parties might be involved, do you think a hung parliament would be a good thing or do you share Ken Clarke’s view that even a majority government formed by the party you don’t support would be better than a hung parliament? Do you think we should have fixed-term parliaments or not? And what do you think the outcome of the 2010 election will be?

Happy New Year!