First a confession: with the political landscape covered in volcano ash and where nothing was clear, I was almost seduced by the chimera of tactical voting. This was before Nick Clegg made things clearer last weekend when he reverted to type.
The co-author of the Liberal Democrats’ Orange Book in 2004, which advocated a greater role for private firms in the public sector, Clegg stated that he would refuse to prop up, as he put it, an “irrelevant” Gordon Brown. In essence, he would prefer to be a bit-part player in a David Cameron government.
Whatever the composition of a hung parliament, there would be horse-trading. Who would get how many and what seats in the government? What changes, if any, would be proposed to Britain’s electoral system? But the truth is that Clegg is much closer economically to the Tories than he is to Labour.
How could I have forgotten the Lib Dem leader’s promise to implement deep and savage cuts in public spending in order to bring down the national deficit? He even spelt out what that would mean: a long-term freeze in public sector pay and the scaling back of public sector pensions.
Admittedly, Clegg and Vince Cable have been better in their denunciation of greedy bankers and they appear ready to take on the casino economy. And while David Miliband, with perhaps a hint of guilt, pleads that Labour has been punished enough for the Iraq war, it is a fact that the Lib Dems were against the invasion from the start.
However, on public sector pensions they display a callous disregard. We are talking of the average pension in local government at just £4,000 a year and less than £2,000 for women. Attacking public service jobs and pay is misguided and would make the recession worse.
Clegg is treating the electorate to a dance of the seven veils where the outcome is predictable. But sweet nothings on the dance floor amount to no more than that. And people hear want they want to hear. Initially, I wanted to hear that the Lib Dems would at least deprive the Conservatives of victory. Now Clegg and the arithmetic indicate otherwise. Peter Mandelson chose to interpret the Lib Dems’ advance and a deal with them as the logical outcome of “new” Labour. Those behind the failed coups against Gordon Brown see the tantalising prospect of a David Miliband premiership. That is no more than a Blairite fantasy. What is the point of the prime ministerial debates, if we then have someone foisted us who did not have to face their opponents with the British people watching.
While others in his party may feel differently, Nick Clegg has said he would find it “difficult” to work with Gordon Brown, a man he has described as “a desperate politician”. His instinct is to side with David Cameron and the Tories.
While the result of this general election remains unpredictable, that puts the whole tactical voting controversy into a new context and it is why my earlier enthusiasm for tactical voting has waned considerably.
We may wish that a vote for the Lib Dems constituted an anti-Tory vote that, if aggregated, would shut the door on the possibility of a Conservative government. However, as some people are fond of saying, let’s get real. That is the least likely of the possible outcomes to the vote on May 6.
Whatever Labour offers the Lib Dems, the latter would not reciprocate. Tactical voting could help to hand Cameron the keys to Number 10 while pushing Labour into a catastrophic third place in terms of the popular vote.
So how have we come to this pass? The general election has been played out in a television studio and in the grammar of TV news.
A four-week campaign has been compressed into four-and-a-half hours of a TV event. It has been reduced to opinion polls before the leaders’ debates and instant polls afterwards. We’ve had political commentators looking forward to the debate, covering the debate and even the absurd spectacle of reporting on the spin-doctors spinning the debate.
If it was not all so serious, it would be a delicious irony that Rupert Murdoch’s Sky, which pushed hardest to stage the TV debates, has helped to promote Clegg and throw everything into flux. As former Sun editor David Yelland has pointed out, if, as a result of being given equal billing alongside Cameron and Brown, Clegg assumes a position of power, it will be the first time that Murdoch is not on close terms with a key political player in this country.
Presumably Murdoch and his acolytes thought the election was going to be a walk in the park for Cameron and that’s why The Sun switched its support to the Tories. Their man would be helped to power and their reward would be the abolition of broadcasting regulator Ofcom, a diminished BBC and the paving of the way to the British equivalent of Fox News.
Yet because of the widespread anger about MPs’ expenses and the bankers getting away with taking us to financial catastrophe, Clegg looks a plausible alternative.
The thought that they might not get their own way has thrown the Murdoch empire and the rest of the right-wing print media into a panic. Perhaps the result on May 6 will at least mean the fear of Murdoch is at an end. Well, perhaps…
