General Election 2010: A race for power that left every runner gasping

Published on Friday 7 May 2010 23:14

The rivals each had a game plan – but so did the public, writes John McTernan

• Prime Minister Gordon Brown outside 10 Downing Street yesterday. He said he would be 'willing to see any of the party leaders' to discuss how to proceed in a hung parliament

IN THE end, the turning point in the election was polling day itself. Of course, there was the drama and novelty of the presidential-style debates. The energy of the campaign tours, which got more and more vigorous as the campaign came to its close. A sort of macho Recordbreakers to see which leader could go without sleep for the longest. The ferocious fights on tax policy. And the gaffes.

But on the day, the voters took charge. Seat by seat. Region by region. Nation by nation. The electorate decided with precision what they wanted. They deprived Labour of its majority, but denied one to the Tories. They gave the Lib Dems the biggest opinion poll boost in their history, but then cut them back to size.

With extraordinary accuracy, voters rejected the extremism of the BNP and the populism of George Galloway while, in a historic breakthrough, welcoming Britain's first Green MP to the Commons. In a first-past-the-post system designed to magnify the support of the leading party and deliver strong government, the final result has forced all three parties to accept none of them can govern alone – and that the public wants a "broken" political system to be addressed. The key poll finding of the campaign was that consistently three-quarters of voters told pollsters it was "time for a change". But only just over a third agreed it was "time for a change to the Tories".

How did it come to this? What just happened? Well, for the first time in decades the money men of politics will be mightily disappointed. The Ashcroft fortune, with its carefully crafted and targeted campaigning, did not deliver the differential swing in the constituencies that was promised. Voters proved stubbornly independent.

The ones who left Labour – in coastal towns, rural and suburban areas – were the classic New Labour voters who left because New Labour had left them, not because of years and years of glossy direct mail. The three clear messages about Labour were: that where an MP with an expenses issue dared to attempt re-election they were swept out – as Shahid Malik found out; that where an excellent constituency MP stood – like Karen Buck in Westminster North – they could win a swing towards them; and that Scotland decided – wholesale – to come back to Labour.

So, were the millions spent by parties on this campaign wasted? In a real sense, yes. The votes at the end stood broadly where they had been at the beginning. That's as true for the share of the vote received by the parties in Scotland which on Thursday reflected polls a month ago, as it is of UK shares of the vote. What, then, were the key moments in the campaign, and what did they mean?

Labour's strategy at the outset was simple. Use the opening weeks to throw the kitchen sink at the Tories to prevent them getting momentum, then pivot into a promise on protecting front-line services and finish on the choice. A crude strategy necessitated by entering the election behind the Tories, and having substantially less money.

LABOUR sought to equalise the imbalance by using the free publicity available from launching internet ads. Going further, they "crowd-sourced" them – seeking to surf the creative waves being generated online by bloggers on all sides who were mocking their opponents' policies and messages. This led directly to the "Fire up the Quattro" ad, in which Cameron was depicted as Gene Hunt from BBC series Ashes to Ashes. Now, the first law of the internet is that irony rules. The second law is, don't approve an ad if you've never watched the TV series involved. Politicians are notorious for believing that the BBC's output revolves around Newsnight and Question Time. To depict David Cameron as the charismatic anti-hero who rips up the rule book to deliver justice with a heart of gold required an irony bypass on an epic scale. It didn't hurt Labour's campaign but was embarrassing, like a trendy vicar using outdated teenage slang to get down with the kids.

The real meat of the first ten days of the campaign was the epic slug-fest that was the argument about the "jobs tax". At its heart was the nauseating spectacle of wealthy chief executives telling the rest of us that while their remuneration package was a bargain for the company at 15 million, an extra 10m on National Insurance would lead directly to the hunger marches. An ideal topic for the subversive, insurgent humour of the internet? Almost certainly.

But as one campaign insider confessed, Labour instead spent nearly a fortnight "talking to Stephanie Flanders" (the BBC's economics editor). But as ever, in this extraordinary election, the public got the underlying point – not the detail or the business endorsements, but the "values". Voters believe Labour cares more about jobs than the Tories. Then there were the debates. These were truly disruptive events. Looking back, it is clear they were giant news sponges, sucking up all the energy of the campaign. Labour and the Tories were warned by US advisers that voters stopped listening to messages before debates and that ordinary conversations, when they touched on politics, would be dominated by the topics of the debate for days after.

BUT no-one could have prepared Britain for the Pop Idol-style impact. What hadn't been thought through was the impact of a presidential-style head-to-head on a three-party fight. The instant attractiveness of Clegg and the opinion poll bubble led to recriminations among the Tories, with an inquest into whose idea it had been to put David Cameron, the frontrunner, into a context where he could only lose.

The Tory campaign will be studied for some years as a model of how to turn a 14-point lead into a hung parliament. But central to their main errors was making the mistake of having so much contempt for Gordon Brown that they were blinded to the possibility he had any strengths at all.

The Tories' biggest error? To spend the months after Christmas asking "do you want five more years of Gordon Brown?" rather than repeating again and again "it's time for a change". The latter was unarguable. The former opened a conversation – "on the one hand no… but on the other hand he has been good on the economy/tax credits/etc…"

But the dark heart of this election was the issue that everyone was talking about – except the politicians – immigration. This burst into life through Bigotgate. The hard truth is this exchange wasn't simply about Labour, it was a symbol for the way the political class evade the truth of this issue.

By and large, the British middle classes – including politicians – see immigration as a race issue. British working people – white, black, Turkish, Asian – experience it as a fairness issue, because it hits them as a contest for resources, whether jobs, wages or public housing. Politicians think workers have racist views on immigration – so don't discuss it. Workers know their concerns are about fairness, but feel politicians brand them racist.

This emotional Mexican stand-off was exposed by Mrs Duffy in Rochdale. This is not going away. And one of the many ironies of this election is that the voters' desire to break up politics as usual is propelling into power a party whose softness on crime and immigration is anathema to the many ordinary voters in Britain who feel betrayed by an out-of-touch liberal elite.

Where does all this leave us? First, there's a genuine crisis in our politics. There's been a long-term decline in support for the two main parties – you have to go back nearly a decade to 2001 to find either of them polling more than 40 per cent of the vote. First past the post is unsustainable in these circumstances.

Second, we look likely to have a government that will introduce stringent reductions in public spending without the public feeling they have had an honest or open conversation about what the choices are and why they have to be made. This will only deepen the crisis.

And thirdly, while it is wise to bet that the race goes to the strong and the swift, no-one should be writing off Gordon Brown as we enter this weekend. If the Lib Dems are serious about electoral reform then they may find a Lib-Lab pact is necessary. As one ex-minister said: "Gordon's had more revivals than Lazarus."

&#149 John McTernan is a political strategist, and until the election was special adviser to Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy. He is a former political secretary to Tony Blair.

• Scottish results by constituency

General Election 2010: More news and analysis

• Tories offer a deal to Lib Dems

• If you are selling your soul, do it properly

• Scottish Labour hails divided Britain

• Conservatives blame Labour scare tactics – and Annabel Goldie

• Nationalists chide 'chippy, nippy' strategy

• Why did they rain on our parade, Lib Dems ask

• 'Victorian' voting system to be overhauled

• No Portillo Moment but big names ditched

• Legal challenges predicted amid reports of polling station chaos

• Axe could fall first on Osborne with Clarke tipped as Chancellor

• Nail-biting victory in capital typifies Labour's hold over Scotland

Analysis

• Eddie Barnes: Chances of victory thrown away

• Bill Jamieson: Scots No 1 conservatives (small c) in Britain

• John Curtice: Mould of the two-party system isn't broken yet, but a very large crack has appeared

• Gerry Hassan: Scotland is a different political beast with the Holyrood elections looming

• Brian Monteith: Tories must 'die' to rebuild

• Joyce McMillan: Forget the Doomsday scenario, here's the Caledonian Paradox

Economy

• Call for swift action on debt mountain as pound suffers

• Bank chief Stephen Hester seeks 'strong stewardship' of economy after election

• Borrowers and investors will pay for further unsettling delay

• Result no shock for mortgage lenders

In brief

• Pamela Nash, 25, becomes the Baby of the House

• BBC's election triumph as 17m viewers tune in

• Green makes history as party's first MP

• Blur drummer fails to be elected - again

• Tory Speaker's wife fails in bid to win seat for Labour

• Bitten but not bitter MP celebrates

• Cameron odds-on to be PM by June

• 14-year-old voter prompts inquiry

• Man arrested over ballot paper protest