There are times when you wonder what game your media rivals are playing – for whom, and why. You expect a jolly sound trashing from the lumpen-Tory Daily Express, but when the result of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was announced, mainstream correspondents and commentators – particularly the BBC – vied with one another to diminish the scale of Labour’s stunning success. At best, it was billed a Pyrrhic victory, saving Ed Miliband from the disaster of defeat. At worst, it was a mild embarrassment for Nick Clegg, whose share of the vote increased fractionally. One senior Beeb correspondent, who ought to know better, even suggested it might be described as a “coalition gain”. This tosh was brought breathlessly live to camera from Pennine hill villages and Downing Street.
And, as Charlie Whelan might have remarked (indeed, probably did), it was a complete parcel of bollocks. Diminutive Debbie Abrahams trounced a sneaky coalition bid to take the seat with a Conservative non-campaign designed to bolster the Liberal Democrat vote and save Clegg’s face. Labour’s performance was a remarkable achievement: a majority 30 times greater than the 2010 general election result, bigger even than the 1997 landslide under Tony Blair. In the middle of a freezing January, in a poll called early by the scheming Lib Dems against parliamentary convention so as to give voters less time to digest the horrendous reality of the Con-Dem cuts, Labour triumphed. If that’s an unsatisfactory result, bring on more like it.
So what’s happening? I don’t think the write-down of Labour’s accomplishment is a deep-seated political plot, except in the wilder reaches of the right-wing press. It’s a symptom of the Westminster lobby herd instinct that took most of them into gushing enchantment with the coalition project, just as a decade or so earlier it took them into the thrall of the Blair project. It’s not a right-wing story or a left-wing story. It’s simply a new story, something fresh they can spout about, especially (but not exclusively) the younger and more naive members. To use the current, silly vogue expression, they “get passionate about” the David Cameron enterprise. It’s fun. It’s about people like us, good schools, Oxbridge, politely-spoken. It beats Clause IV – whatever that was.
The fad will pass, like all fashions. The lobby will get just as tired of smartass Dave as they did of Blair. The only question is when. How long before they catch up with the public? The Tories crashed to a poor third in Oldham. The Lib Dems, down to single figures in most opinion polls, only made a decent show by garnering “coalition” votes. In less than eight months, the Government has made itself more unpopular than Ed Miliband. That’s why I reported, but don’t believe, the Westminster rumours that Cameron might smash up the coalition in a fake row and then cut and run to an early election before his constituency gerrymandering legislation closes that window until May 2015.
In truth, the coalition has to hang together now or it will undoubtedly hang separately. By-elections may well see January’s informal poll alliance gel into something more defined. You can see the mindset emerging. In a letter to The Times, Sir Tim Rice spoke of the coalition getting more votes than Labour in Oldham, overlooking the fact that there was no coalition candidate. So, what price the temptation to go the whole hog and formalise the single-candidate option?
The forthcoming poll in Barnsley Central, caused by Eric Illsley’s resignation, is a perfect test-bed. Arthur Scargill’s old stamping ground is stony ground for both coalition parties and meltdown could be avoided by admitting the obvious in a brazen get-together.
And what does all this do for long-term political partnership? A full merger might be the only viable electoral strategy for the Con-Dems. That makes Ed Miliband’s tactic, of detaching as many Lib Dems from an emerging Con-Lib party as he can, look like a wise step. Labour’s leader has to swallow his earlier hard words about Nick Clegg, odious little toff that he is (Clegg, that is), for the sake of political magnanimity. Young Nick is in the departure lounge, anyway. I would put money on him losing his Sheffield Hillsborough seat whenever the next general election is called.
Long before then, I shall have the five-star entertainment of watching the lobby try to make sense of Barnsley, a place that most of them would be hard-put to find on a map. Who, I wonder, will be first to dig up the old cliché that local planners described it as “like an Italian hill village”? Tory Tuscany it certainly ain’t.
Postscript: My hopes of seeing Skipton and Ripon’s new Tory MP, Julian Smith, get a bloody nose from Justice Secretary Ken Clarke have been dashed. Suede-booted, beer-swilling Ken has reprieved Skipton Magistrates’ Court from the list of proposed closures, allowing Mr Smith-who-went-to-Westminster to claim a famous victory. In fact, it is (and this is my excuse) a victory for common sense, because offenders would have had to travel up to 40 miles to Harrogate to face justice – a difficult journey by car and impossible by public transport. Especially when the North Yorkshire County Council transport subsidy cuts bite.
Cheroot-chomping Brother Clarke must be the only old Labour minister still in government. He let his admirers down. That’s all I can say in my defence, m’lud.
