WI: Snap UK General Election in November 2007

[V-J]

The most widely-anticipated date for an election was early October, with Brown firing the first shots at the Labour conference. There wasn't really any chance of a November election, after the Tory conference the polls began turning and the bottler narrative had taken hold.

Potentially it could have been quite bad for the Tories if there'd been an election declared for October. Labour was polling around early forties and Tories on the Howard level IIRC. If those sorts of figures had played out at a general election Labour would have increased its majority.

But as we know things can change in a campaign. It's an obvious point but one which people seem to be ignoring: Cameron's fate will depend upon the type of outcome. If Cameron had reduced the Labour majority, that would undoubtedly be overperforming expectations and he would I'm sure be fine. OTOH if Brown did increase his majority then he would surely be in trouble. There's nothing hard and fast, it depends on the bottom line. Both are plausible outcomes.

 

[Thoresby]

I think Brown increasing his majority is pretty difficult to imagine, Cameron would have to have an absolute disaster of an election for the Tories to go backwards. I think if Cameron picks up less than 20 seats he's gone, 20-30 he's in trouble but might be able to cling on and 30+ he's safe as 31 Tory gains from Labour would take away Brown's majority.

 

[Wimble Toot]

I think Brown increasing his majority is pretty difficult to imagine

I think it's pretty easy to imagine. The Tories had flatlined at between 30%-32% at the previous three General Elections, and couldn't win a parliamentary majority even with 36.1% of the vote in 2010.

The LibDems were a handbrake on their electoral growth.

 

[V-J]

I think Brown increasing his majority is pretty difficult to imagine, Cameron would have to have an absolute disaster of an election for the Tories to go backwards.

I completely disagree. The Tories weren't prepared for an early election and were doing stuff on the fly, Labour was in a better organisational position. It was only really Brown bottling the election, and then the Tory conference, which turned the situation and the polling around. If Brown had gone ahead with an election from the Labour conference then the Tories would have had to do something special and worked damn hard to get even a status quo ante result, the idea that Brown lowering his majority is the 'default' outcome is wishful thinking. It's certainly possible that the Tories win the campaign and go forward in seats, but it's not guaranteed to my mind.

 

[Thoresby]

Maybe I'm back projecting from 2010 but I just can't see Brown coming out on top in an election campaign against Cameron who was a much more articulate, charismatic politician. Also if the Tories are led by Cameron as a opposed to Howard while the Lib Dems are led by Ming it's quite easy to imagine a squeeze of the Lib Dem vote.

 

[Ingsoc]

Maybe I'm back projecting from 2010 but I just can't see Brown coming out on top in an election campaign against Cameron who was a much more articulate, charismatic politician. Also if the Tories are led by Cameron as a opposed to Howard while the Lib Dems are led by Ming it's quite easy to imagine a squeeze of the Lib Dem vote.

The 'Brown Bounce' was a thing, but Cameron was a better media performer and I do very much remember the media narrative switching when he came in. IDS and even Howard were treated as "yeah but obviously Blair's going to crush them". With Cameron, and with Labour's majority slashed in 2005, the narrative was always "OK, this guy actually has a reasonable chance of being the next PM - let's hear what he says".

In my mind, the best Brown result would have been a majority of 30ish, and Cameron would have stayed on.

 

[V-J]

Maybe I'm back projecting from 2010 but I just can't see Brown coming out on top in an election campaign against Cameron who was a much more articulate, charismatic politician. Also if the Tories are led by Cameron as a opposed to Howard while the Lib Dems are led by Ming it's quite easy to imagine a squeeze of the Lib Dem vote.

Surely the 2010 election showed that Cameron could utterly bugger a campaign up? That was not a good campaign, pretty much the entire party agreed on as much subsequently. And it was taking place after Labour and Brown had been imploding more or less every week of the year for three years, post-financial crisis, post-recession, Brown slagging off Labour voters, the Tories being prepared for the campaign and awash with money etc. Wipe all that from the slate and wind things back to 2007, and I don't sense this forward electoral inevitability with Cameron if Brown's honeymoon is retained and he goes into the election very much in the upper hand. It'd be a difficult election for the Tories. I'm not sure what the exact outcome would be, but I'm not feeling this 'Brown's majority would be a tasty snack' thing.

 

[Thoresby]

30ish Labour majority suggests the Labour have only lost 15 seats and unless Cameron has picked up a decent (10+) number of Lib Dem seats I think he would be in trouble.

 

[Politibrit]

Such a result would also put the Lib Dems in an easy position to ally with the Tories on the grounds that they were robbed by the electoral system - is there any chance this gets the Tories to budge on electoral reform (other than a boundary review)?

If you mean in 2007, I can't see a Tory-Lib Dem arrangement working out, partly because it's less likely to be viable in a situation where the Tories have taken a large number of their seats, increasing their own total but making no difference to the overall tally between the two of them. Then there is also the fact that the arithmetic with Labour would work pretty handily in comparison to 2010, when the Lib Dems weren't confronted with a genuine choice. Plus Campbell had a good relationship with Brown, and electoral reform would be a lot easier to achieve. I could them offering them AV without a referendum, or a vote on PR.

I can't see the Tories be willing to make an offer that generous. The result would be disproportionately good for Labour, but so was the 2005 result and 2010 too, and that didn't change their consensus on electoral reform much. Maybe them winning the popular vote but losing in the seat total would change some people's minds, but not enough to even come close to altering the consensus.

It would probably change a few minds amongst the public, though, but with the only people advocating for PR being the same people who are propping up a government that didn't get a plurality of the vote, I'm not sure it would be enough to avoid what happened in 2011 with the AV referendum.

Has he?

According to whom?

According to those polls that had his party down by double digits before Tory conference.

Remember Howard was given plenty of time before he left, and he was able to plan for his own succession. That was for a gain of about half what Cameron would be getting, and in more favourable circumstances what with it being Blair's third election and his reputation hurt badly by Iraq.

 

[Politibrit]

I think it's pretty easy to imagine. The Tories had flatlined at between 30%-32% at the previous three General Elections, and couldn't win a parliamentary majority even with 36.1% of the vote in 2010.

The LibDems were a handbrake on their electoral growth.

But the Lib Dems would have been weaker than in 2010 under the leadership of Campbell rather than Clegg, and without the debates to help them out. They would lose more than the five that they lost then, so the Lib Dem presence doesn't make a significant Tory advance impossible.

 

[V-J]

I 'get' that a lot of Lib Dems seats, as opposed to voters, were Tory-Lib Dem fights, but a clear majority of 2005 Lib Dem voters had Labour as their second preference. So I don't know why people are taking it as a given that a shit LD result only benefits the Tories. Honeymoon Brown should be capable of drawing a lot of the Kennedy anti-Blair/Iraq vote.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/sp...ative_vote/alternative_vote_june_09_notes.pdf

Also, as I've said, there isn't going to be a November election. The bottled election would have been an early October one, Brown failing to call one around the time of the Labour conference after it had been telegraphed continuously for weeks is what started the poll slide, and it was capped off by Cam's barnstormer at the Tory conference and Osborne dropping his inheritance tax proposal. If Brown OTL didn't call one when he was stomping the Tories in the polls, he's not going to call one when he's already clearly behind. He was indecisive, not mad.

 

[Wimble Toot]

If Brown OTL didn't call one when he was stomping the Tories in the polls, he's not going to call one when he's already clearly behind. He was indecisive, not mad.

Too true, not really worth the risk curtailing your political career just for two additional years as PM. You might end up handing the 'too big to fail' banking meltdown to some other poor sod, but you can't see into the future.

 

[Charles James Fox]

Related anecdote from a former Brown adviser on Twitter today

 

[Politibrit]

I 'get' that a lot of Lib Dems seats, as opposed to voters, were Tory-Lib Dem fights, but a clear majority of 2005 Lib Dem voters had Labour as their second preference. So I don't know why people are taking it as a given that a shit LD result only benefits the Tories. Honeymoon Brown should be capable of drawing a lot of the Kennedy anti-Blair/Iraq vote.

A bad result Lib Dem doesn't only benefit the Tories, but the fact is that most of their marginals were with them, not Labour, and realistically, Labour isn't going to win in rural constituencies in the south west, for instance. Of course, there were a larger number of Lib Dem held marginals with Labour after 2005, and if Labour perform well, then they could take a lot of them back, but if they put in a poor result, they will only take a handful, that won't make too much of a difference to the overall totals.

 

[James G]

So, no Cleggmania in 2010. Do we get Mingmania in 2007? TV debates were a new thing in 2010 but could they have been held in 2007?

 

[Charles James Fox]

So, no Cleggmania in 2010. Do we get Mingmania in 2007? TV debates were a new thing in 2010 but could they have been held in 2007?

It's a different dynamic, it made sense for Brown to participate in 2010 because he was unpopular and needed a game changer. As the new and liked incumbent in 2007 I don't think he'd take the risk against Cameron.

 

[V-J]

So, no Cleggmania in 2010. Do we get Mingmania in 2007? TV debates were a new thing in 2010 but could they have been held in 2007?

Nah, with no prior history they took a good period of media pressure on everyone to agree to them and then a while to thrash out the details over 2009-10. There's not the time for any of that with a snap election.

 

[Thoresby]

Yeah debates aren't happening thanks to the combination of Brown's natural caution and the lack of time for the pressure to build. However I think people are underselling Cameron, while 2010 was a fairly awful campaign in large part that was from over thinking things (Big Society) in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. In 2007 as the inheritance tax proposal showed it Cameron would probably have run a lower taxes but with social liberalism rather than dog whistling about immigration with a side of personal attacks on a fairly odd Labour leader aka the 2015 Tory campaign and while I don't think it would have been enough to deliver him to Number 10 I'm convinced it would have closed the polls and that combined with the Lib Dem's being a squeezed in a tighter election should deliver enough Tory gains to keep Cameron in post and give Brown a bloody nose.