Still searching for a fumble

The fun's some way off
Which party will be the first to have a leadership election in the new parliament? It's necessary to ask this question because there's no obvious way the result's going to be anything other than another handsome Labour majority. And because, for once, the interests of the press (i.e. the majority of national newspapers formally editorially favourable to Labour, and the institutionally progressive BBC), and the interests of the Tory party combined, in that the newspapers needed competitive excitement to justify their coverage and the BBC need, well, hope, the result is going to be viciously bad for the Conservatives. The solid hype that claimed Labour's majority was under threat means that even an in truth decent result for the official opposition (eg Labour being restricted to a majority of 'just' a hundred, or the Conservatives swelling to, say, 200 seats, at the Liberal's expense) is going to be dismissed. As yet, none of the issues that might have transformed into a pivotal moment have risen above being merely the daily grind of campaign news. Superbugs, Rover, ricin-brewing terrorists, all of them have come and will go soon enough seemingly without denting Labour's opinion poll lead. The truth is, there isn't yet that crucial sentiment in being that this government has to be voted out of office.

So who will get replaced first, Tony Blair, Michael Howard or Charles Kennedy? The Prime Minister has said he will definitely go this parliament, as Labour leader at any rate (and there's been entertainingly empty speculation that maybe the premiership and the party leadership will be split). He faces at some point a Euro constitution referendum, but even if this is dodged — and I'd argue it won't be, as this will be one cocky enterprise after 5th May — the clock is running out on the present Prime Minister. No other Labour figure has come close to the Chancellor in terms of being able to plausibly demand the succession. The best the non-Brownites had was David Blunkett, and even he would hardly have been fertile territory for the whingeing old left. Milburn, Charles Clarke, Jack Straw — all of them fall impossibly far short of what it'll take to emerge victorious from Labour's electoral college.

None of this disputes the sad fact that Gordon Brown's regime will be not so much Macbeth, as the final scene at Elsinore dragged out for several years. But there's nothing to stop Gordon Brown from being Labour leader, save his being sacked, or, had he already resigned in a fit of pique. Gordon Brown on the backbenches would lose vast amounts of his power, would become discredited by justifiable bitterness, and would have to wreck the government in order to succeed: yet that's the closest fight Blairite anti-Brownites could engineer. Zero guarantee of success for them, but more or less total assurance that the temple would have to be pulled down round them. Hence, his late father's Presbyterian God willing, Gordon Brown will be Prime Minister before this Parliament is over, and the odds are, the Blairite majority he'll inherit means he'll be hard pressed to lose the election after this. If it's true — and your humble correspondent remains a sceptic — that Mr Blair is a permanently tarnished brand, toxic to voters (instead of being the unique factor that pulls in people Labour have always had difficulty attracting in the past), then his eventual replacement by Mr Brown will struggle to be immediate good news for the Tory party. However, between 6th May and the day Gordon gives us a shy grin as Labour leader, no matter how short a time it is in our world, it's going to be an eternity for the Chancellor and his lackeys. All now that stands between him and the business of slowly but bloodily taking Labour back into opposition is his own patience.

The also rans
Tony Blair has led the Labour party since 1994, and at a guess, we can pencil him in until 2006 at the very least. Leaving Michael Howard to one side, Charles Kennedy, in office but some historic distance from power since 1999, ought to be the victim of rising Liberal expectations. As, though, there aren't any, and since, in fact, the party remains euphoric that the derisory days of meeting in telephone boxes are long gone, anything over 50 seats, let alone the 70 seats which are entirely possible, means that Mr Kennedy chooses his future himself. Whatever Menzies Campbell might have done as party leader (and more than anything else, it would have been to eat into soft-headed Tory support 2001-2003), even a party as personally squishy as the Liberals won't be having him as leader. Again, and notch it up to pubescent inklings after seriousness and power if you want, for today's Lib Dems Simon Hughes remains far too much of a flake to be entrusted with the leadership. Beyond that there are grey, competent, 'safe pairs of hands' in some quantity. To which statement, the honest response of anyone ought to be, 'yes, gosh, haven't the Liberals come on remarkably in recent years?' It doesn't really matter that even political obsessives struggle to name the Lib Dem shadow Chancellor, or identify what job David Laws, for instance, does. The point is, they exist, and are still overwhelmingly likely to once Charles Kennedy, as likely a contender for burn-out as British politics has produced since Rosebery, stops being their leader.

This, then, the intractable nature of the yellow Liberal stain in England, will be the largest problem the Tory party wakes up to on 6th May. With them still in the frame, not only is the possibility of Conservative recovery more or less automatically vitiated, the real danger that, come any divisiveness in the new Parliament, the fragile and unhappy Tory party will see MPs decamp to the Liberals becomes, for the first time since the Boer war, a racing cert. Yards of analysis will wash over you in a month's time, but they'll miss this central fact, because inside and outside the Tory party people still refuse to take the Liberals seriously. In this, perhaps, Charles Kennedy does his party the greatest service of all. For so many different reasons, I've neglected the Tory leadership stakes, but principally because its significance lies not in it taking place (Tory leadership contests after all are more regular than one of Ken's Soviet peoplecarriers), but in what the outcome will mean for the left wing of the Tory party. Will the ambitious, modishly progressive people who are likely to be on the losing side of that contest have the courage to break out to the Liberals? Probably not, but such is the rancid state of the Conservative party, it's equally certain leadership contest needs a column all of its own. My prediction is new leaders for all 3 parties this parliament, with just the faintest chance that the next leader of the Liberal party will be someone who was originally elected in as a Conservative MP.

For the duration of the campaign, the Social Affairs Unit will be publishing regular commentaries on the progress of the UK election. These commentaries represent the views of the anonymous commentator, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisors or Director.