Six months ago, Britain’s left had an enthusiasm gap too.
Prior to the General Election of May 2010, a lot of progressives were disaffected with the Brown Premiership, jaded after 13 years of New Labour. However, despite the makeovers and compassionate conservatism, the Tory Party still wasn’t detoxified from the days of Thatcher and Major. David Cameron hadn’t sealed that deal. So many people I know decided to experiment with their votes.
Our first ever Prime Ministerial TV Election Debates had a huge impact too. For the first time the leader of the smaller third party, the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg, got equal billing with major party leaders Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He looked plausible, articulate, and could throw his hands up in Ronald Reagan fashion (“there you go again”) when the two big party leaders slugged it out.
For a while the papers were filled with Cleggmania. The media narrative was all about this new force in British politics. The polls spiked up and Mark Penn explained how consumer politics had changed the UK forever. Many ‘progressives’ (like my son and his mother) decided to vote tactically. They were bored and disappointed with New Labour not being radical enough. So why not go for a more radical alternative? The Lib Dems were different. They must be more progressive. (No less an authority than Jerome Armstrong on MYDD told me they were way to the left of Labour)
As it turned out, the swing to the Lib Dems wasn’t great. Come election night, thanks to anomalies of first past the post, there were actually fewer seats for them. But the Lib Dems had, in the seat where my son and his mother live, stolen enough votes from Labour to let the Tories in.
More importantly, for the first time in living memory there was a ‘hung parliament’ with no one party with an overall majority. And what happened next? Our first Coalition government since World War II.
Now you’d think, given the overwhelming overlap of policies, especially on welfare, Europe and Green issues, this would have been a Labour/Lib Dem Coalition. But thanks to the Parliamentary mathematics, the abrasive style of Brown and the subtle shift in Lib Dem thinking since Clegg had taken over, a Conservative Lib Dem Coalition was created.
Of course, we on the left immediately called it the ConDem Coalition, but the public liked to see Cameron and Clegg outside Number Ten together. They looked young. They looked different (even though they went to the two most elite private schools in the country). Meritocracy, pragmatism, youth and reasonableness had returned the the land. The cameras flashed. The media fawned.
But follow me below to find out how tactical protest voting ended in tears….