Mid-term Blues or Long-term Denial?

It's the night after the day of the morning after the night before.

The 2012 local elections are done and dusted, and it's time to take stock. The basic story is this: Labour have regained pretty much all of the ground lost in the disastrous local elections during Gordon Brown's premiership, and are now back where they were during Tony Blair's tenure. The Conservatives have had their artificially-high water-mark of Brown's time brought back down to earth with a thump. And the LibDems just keep on reaching new lows of despair.

That's the broader picture, but there are many sub-plots. The turnout was low (as is often the case), but the local elections are a barometer of where Cameron's government, his party and his personality stand with the public after two years.
Baroness Warsi, the Tory chairperson, said (rashly, as it turned out) that Labour would be doing well if they won more than 700 council seats. In fact, they gained more than 800. It's true that Labour were starting from a low base, but what's also noticeable and significant is the breadth of their success: stealing councils from the LibDems in the north and midlands, and the same from the Tories in the midlands and south. These are exactly the places they need win councillors in to be in a good position for a national election.

In terms of the popular vote, Labour scored about seven percent higher than the Tories, 38% to the Conservatives 31%. Political experts point out that this not a significant advantage for an opposition be in mid-term: during Blair's tenure as PM, the Tories were often as far ahead, but failed to win the national election later, and the same was said of Kinnock against Thatcher in the eighties. That may be true, but they're also forgetting something important: the Conservatives are not in a majority government. Also, Blair and Thatcher presided over a boom; the Coalition is in a sustained period of economic stagnation.
In other words, this local election is taking place in a situation that hasn't existed in living memory. If the Conservatives are in government now, and their high watermark is as sharing government as a minority party, then Conservatism as a political force in the UK is effectively moribund.

This is not just "mid-term blues" for the Conservatives; it would be a long-term denial to think of themselves any more as the "natural party of government".

No-one in the UK seriously expects the economy to fully recover by 2015, except those fantasising in George Osborne's Treasury. As the vast majority of the cuts have yet to take place, the only way that the economy could possibly have a chance to recover in time for the next national election would be if the Coalition made a complete about-turn on its policy of cuts and adopted Labour's own economic strategy - investing in jobs and growth and having a more long-term deficit reduction plan. But that would be a political humiliation for the Cameron, and give even more ammunition to Labour, to add the the growing amount of political open goals from the government already.

So the local election results effectively give Labour a large advantage over the government for the future national election.
The Conservatives' position in government is complicated, first of all, because the local elections saw a rise in the vote of UKIP. In some cases, Labour gained councils from the Conservatives because disaffected Tory voters chose UKIP instead, therefore reducing the Conservative vote by a margin high enough to swing council seats the other way to Labour. This is a small-scale version of what is likely to happen in the French elections this weekend - far-right supporters abstaining instead of supporting Sarkozy in the run-off, giving the Socialist, Hollande, the presidency. In the aftermath of the local elections, Tory politicians are arguing that Cameron must be more supportive of traditional Conservative values and causes in order to re-capture the trust of those migrating ultra-Conservative voters.
But then there is a second problem: the personality of Boris Johnson, who narrowly retained the Conservative hold on the London mayoralty, while Conservatives around the country were being punished hard by Labour. Some Tories are saying that Cameron has to be more like Boris in style and thinking in order to win over the affections of the people. With Boris being effectively the second most powerful Tory in the country, and certainly with more popular support with his eligible voters than Cameron, it puts the Prime Minister in a further fix. Because Boris is something of a maverick (whose ideology seems as incoherent as some of his sentences), "learning lessons" from Boris is something Cameron would likely be reluctant to do. Nevertheless, some Tories would be calling more something to change from Cameron's way of doing business. But what?
Cameron's last (and potentially biggest) headache is his Coalition partners, the LibDems. Having lost, in two years of successive local elections, a vast number of council seats, the LibDem leadership in government would be pressed to make significant changes in their approach to Coalition - more independent of the Conservatives, and more obviously left-wing and progressive. This means that, like after last year's local elections, Cameron may feel obliged to cut the LibDems some slack over policy. But when looking at the two points already mentioned, we see the obvious problem.

With both the Conservatives and LibDems under pressure from their party base and MPs for respective "red meat" policies, there is now the serious danger of the Coalition being put under intense pressure in the coming weeks, months and years till the next election.
Nick Clegg seems the most likely of the two Coalition's party leaders to compromise, and support the government come what may. Clegg has now trapped himself in what looks like a self-defeating vicious circle: in spite of whatever damage is done to his party at the grass-roots, he feels obliged to see the Coalition through to the end, in the belief that voters will eventually give them the benefit of the doubt once the economy improves. But for the last eighteen months, that belief has looked more and more like a daydream. So he manages to stay as leader till 2015, his party will be hammered. If he pulls out of the Coalition early and forces an early election, his party is still likely to be hammered. If his party de-select him as their leader and their new leader pulls out of the Coalition early, the party may still be hammered. The LibDems are trapped in a burning building with no safe exits: they know it, and Cameron knows it.
If, however, Cameron repeats his compromises of last year for the benefit of the LibDems (though it seems politically more difficult now he's been punished at the polls), the murmurings within the Tories will increase. Already with a question over Cameron's judgement, more appeasement to the LibDems may well lead to a rebellion and a leadership challenge from a more right-wing candidate. The consequences of that on the Coalition are obvious.

So from now on, things are going to get even stickier within the Coalition, while Labour look on and reap the rewards. Politics is a funny old game. Two years ago, the Two Eds, Milliband and Balls were tarred with the brush of Brown, and were all punished at the polls. Their message on growth versus cuts was seen as discredited.
But now, with the experience of the Eurozone in the news every week, the arguments that the Conservatives made for cuts in 2010 look old hat. Brown and his disciples are vindicated. Their message hasn't changed; they are largely repeating Brown's response to the financial crisis - an Obama-style stimulus, inspired by FDR's strategy to tackle the Depression. In 2012, the man who "saved the world" in 2008 isn't looking quite so out-of-touch. Not compared to "arrogant posh boy" Dave Cameron.

Come back Gordon - all is forgiven!

Cameron is leading possibly the worst UK government...ever!

Governments in Britain have been responsible for a lot of cock-ups. But in less than two years the current government seems to have managed the impossible - to appear simultaneously nasty, corrupt, uncaring, arrogant, irresponsible and incompetent all at the same time.

It was meant to have been so different. 2010 was meant to have been the year that "Dave" Cameron (of aristocratic lineage and distant relative to the royals) had demonstrated his de-toxicification of the Conservative party. It was famously said by Theresa May (seems ironic now...) that the Tories were seen as the "Nasty Party".
The Conservatives in 2010 failed to win an outright majority (to Cameron's private astonishment); evidently, the British people were not yet fully convinced that the Conservatives had purged the "nasty" element from their blood. And so the last two years have evidently proven.
Not that many Conservatives seemed to have noticed, or cared. Once they have managed to convince (connive) the LibDems into making a grand bargain (which the Tories could use to their own ends when convenient), the Conservatives tended to act as though they had won the 2010 election outright. The likes of Cameron and his semi-aristocratic chums saw their place in government as a "natural right". Never to be spoken publicly, of course, but it was always privately thought that it was "their turn" to govern; even though they had never been in a position of real authority, they naturally assumed that they had the "in-built" ability to govern.

This confidence trick worked, for a while. The public bought into to argument that "there is no alternative" to cuts as the way to repair the economy; yet the government failed to admit that their package of public service "reforms" were not in any way related to the state of the deficit, but simply a change they wanted to make for its own sake. Even though no-one had voted for it, and that much of it was not even in their pre-election manifesto. In other words, much of the public sector reforms were imposed undemocratically. They were ripping the heart out of the nation's institutions simply for the sake of it.

"Same Old Tories?"

But all the while, charming, gregarious Cameron would be genuinely hurt and surprised to find that people thought he and his could be doing anything undemocratic or dishonest. His motives were purer than pure, surely.

But by the spring of 2012, the aftermath of the government's budget, and a series of other blunders and scandals showed the Conservative government's true face. The economy was not getting better due to the government's programme; it was getting worse. The government denied it; blamed it on other factors, anything but their fault. And even when the government could deny the truth no longer, they still claimed "there is no alternative".
Meanwhile, "honest" Dave's ministers continued to make cock-ups, then blame them on someone else. The government was making it a habit of desperately wanting to give the impression of being in total control, except when they had to accept responsibility. Like the Home Secretary, Theresa May (she of the "nasty party" epithet), who refused to accept responsibility for two high-profile cock-ups; and like the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who was clearly in breach of the rules when dealing carelessly with a corporate merger. And these ministers remained in their posts as they were close allies of the Prime Minister. "Honest" Dave Cameron (baronet) seems to charmingly think that it's honourable and better to protect your friends to the hilt. Charming perhaps, but an attitude that belongs in the 18th century rather than the hard-headed 21st, and adds even more to the impression that he and his chums are out-of-touch.

So the impression of the Prime Minister and Chancellor, as "two arrogant posh boys" seemed to sum the whole thing up - even better when said by an MP from the Tories' own side. So, I'm sure that Dave Cameron is a really lovely guy - expect that the country doesn't need a lovely guy as Prime Minister. It needs someone who takes things a little more seriously. And I'm sure "honest" Dave would be hurt to hear that.

Vince Cable, now the Business Secretary, once said of former PM Gordon Brown that he had "gone from Stalin to Mr Bean".
Cameron's transformation is even worse - from a charming, self-confident managerial statesman to presiding over an omni-shambolic, heartless government. Cameron's "soft-touch" approach to government was meant to give ministers the freedom to reform and improve their ministries; to give the likes of the Education and Health minister, as well as the Work and Pensions minster, the freedom to reform. The result, not surprisingly, has been virtual chaos, as well as causing fury at the grass-roots.

Cameron, for all his supposed charm and self-confidence, does not govern; he presides. The Chancellor has no plan for the economy; he has a financial suicide note. The Health and Education ministers do not have a plan for public sector "reform", they have a plan for demolition. What makes it worse is that the government are too obdurate and close-minded to admit it. They would rather attack their critics, deny reality and blame it on someone else.

This is why this government is possibly the worst ever. Gordon Brown, for his mistakes, was at least never obviously heartless towards the fate of the country; he may have contributed to getting the UK into a financial mess, but he also had the brains and leadership to find a way out of it. Tony Blair may have been wrong on Iraq and his gusto over the War On Terror, but he still did many great things to improve the UK as a whole during his decade in power. John Major, although he presided over a failing and discredited government, (like President Gerald Ford) was not a fundamentally bad person. Margaret Thatcher, as a grocer's daughter, in spite of huge the polarisation and inequality she caused, was in some ways at least aware of the limits to what changes she could make to the UK, made those changes gradually, and seemed essentially down-to-earth. Jim Callaghan, her Labour predecessor, did his honourable best with a broken economy. Ted Heath, Thatcher's Conservative predecessor, although broken by the unions, tried to do what was practicable in the economy at the time, and was single-handedly responsible for the UK joining the EU. The likes of Wilson and Macmillan, Eden (undone by the Suez crisis), Churchill and Atlee (responsible for the welfare state we take for granted today), all gave something to improve the UK somehow.

What has this government done? Brought about a long-term slump in the British economy through sheer inflexibility; encouraged a generation of over-educated young people without long-term career prospects; set about dismantling the state sector that many people rely on; done nothing to give confidence to the private sector; and given just cause to make people think that the government is essentially corrupt, incompetent and dishonest.

A record to be proud of, no doubt.