Carr The Politicos Guide to the New House of Commons 2015

Profiles of the New MPs and Analysis of the 2015 General Election Results
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84954-924-0
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

In the wake of the most unprecedented election result in recent memory, the question on everyone's lips is: what just happened to the UK's political landscape - and why? And who are the 182 new faces on the House of Commons benches? In The Politicos Guide to the New House of Commons 2015, public affairs consultant Tim Carr teams up with editors of the bestselling Politicos Guide to the 2015 General Election Iain Dale and Robert Waller to present an all-inclusive and essential postelection document for academics, journalists, students and political enthusiasts alike in the wake of the poll-defying 2015 general election. Wide-ranging and accessible, this essential guide provides, amongst much else: • Biographies of the class of 2015, alongside details of their majorities and constituencies; • Demographic analysis by age, gender, ethnic origin, education and background; • Lists of new marginal constituencies, possible targets seats, defeated MPs, and more; • Expert commentary from political journalists and pollsters, exploring the role of the media, the historic result in Scotland and the future impact of fixed-term parliaments. Ranging from the disastrous pre-election polls to the failure of UKIP to make a breakthrough - and the massacre of Scottish Labour - The Politicos Guide to the New House of Commons 2015 is a must-read for anyone eager to know the details of the election result that has so dramatically re-shaped the country's political landscape.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carr, Tim

Leseproben

Scotland

David Torrance

Since 2007, when the SNP formed a minority government in Edinburgh, Scotland has got used to thinking constitutionally. This geekiness, a fascination with process and the machinery of government (often at the expense of policy) reached its peak during the 2012–14 independence referendum campaign and, for a few months in the run-up to the general election on 7 May, it afflicted the rest of the United Kingdom too.

Rarely have the territorial aspects of the famously un-codified British constitution appeared so evident, and almost everything about the election served as a reminder that, in Scotland, politics is increasingly subject to a completely different dynamic. In England, for example, the Labour Party was perceived as too left-wing, while north of the border it wasn’t left-wing enough; south of the border the Tories went into the election a credible party of government, while in Scotland they campaigned like a small fringe party (largely because they were).

2014’s independence referendum cast a long shadow, having created a peculiar dynamic of its own. As the journalist Iain Macwhirter observed in his book Disunited Kingdom, ‘The Unionists didn’t quite win, and the Yes campaign didn’t quite lose.’ And although the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon maintained the election wasn’t about independence (‘Even if we won every seat in Scotland,’ she said, ‘that would not be a mandate for a referendum’), both the SNP (of which she’ d assumed leadership in November 2014) and its raison d’être loomed large: would there be a Nationalist ‘tsunami’ in Scotland? Would that mean a second independence referendum?

And, more to the point, would the SNP do a deal with Labour in another ‘hung’ parliament? That question, more than any other, came to dominate the election debate not only in Scotland but across the UK. Indeed, the 2015 general election was about Scotland in the same way that electoral contests in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had hinged on the question of Irish Home Rule. ‘Not quite’ losing the referendum had provided a paradoxical boost to the SNP, whose membership and poll ratings swelled following Alex Salmond’s resignation on 19 September 2014.

‘Not quite’ winning, meanwhile, had left the three Unionist parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats – trying to find a role. The Tories and Lib Dems, of course, fought the general election as incumbents, while Labour lost one leader (Johann Lamont) and gained another (Jim Murphy). But, as the former Labour strategist Paul Sinclair later put it, while the SNP ‘had prepared for defeat’ in September 2014, Scottish Labour ‘didn’t prepare for victory’. So even before the campaign officially began in late March, it was obvious Scotland was going to be a major headache for Ed Miliband.

Ironically, Nicola Sturgeon had warned towards the end of the referendum campaign that if Scotland voted ‘No’ then it would be ‘put back in its box’ and forgotten about by Westminster. Scotland’s fifty-nine MPs, she had also said, rarely made any difference to the outcome of a UK election. The 2015 general election proved her wrong on every count; although it’s unlikely she lost any sleep over it.

Scottish National Party

Most elections produce a ‘change agent’, someone who appears to promise an alternative agenda: in 2010 it was Nick Clegg, and in 2015 it proved to be Nicola Sturgeon. Paradoxically, she wasn’t even contesting a Westminster constituency (although her predecessor, Alex Salmond, was), but won a UK audience largely as a result of two network-televised leaders’ debates (the same medium that had given rise to ‘Cleggmania’ five years before).

In the first, on 2 April, the SNP leader stood out because to most viewers she was fresh and new; and if they’d been expecting a female version of Alex Salmond – aggressive and prone to dancing on the head of a pin – they instead witnessed an articulate (not to mention stylish) politician saying lots of things they couldn’t really disagree with. Afterwards, even senior Tories like Michael Gove and George Osborne talked up Sturgeon’s performance, for her and the SNP doing well dovetailed perfectly with broader Conservative strategy.

Since early March, billboards across England (not Scotland, for obvious reasons) had featured a benign-looking Alex Salmond peering down at Ed Miliband in his top pocket (later, Salmond would be replaced by Sturgeon). As David Cameron put it on Facebook, ‘everyone’ knew that Labour would end up in the former First Minister’s ‘pocket’. ‘On every vote, every budget, every decision, the SNP would exact a high price for his support,’ added the Prime Minister. ‘Everyone in Britain will pay with higher taxes, more spending, more debt and weaker defences in dangerous times.’

This was the ‘competence versus chaos’ message (copyright Lynton Crosby) that dominated the 2015 election campaign. Contrived to win back UKIP defectees and wavering Liberal Democrats, in Scotland it would bolster the SNP’s core message – that for the first time in decades its MPs could hold the balance of power at Westminster – and thus reduce the number of Labour MPs. And while the SNP attacked the Tory campaign as cynical and ‘anti-Scottish’, pointing out that it contradicted the love bombing during the referendum campaign, privately it realised the electoral benefits it could bring.

Following the debate in Manchester, Nicola Sturgeon returned to a hero(ine)’s welcome in Edinburgh, mobbed by hundreds of supporters as if she were a rock star rather than leader of a devolved government. Her popularity in Scotland was longstanding, but the response in the rest of the UK was striking. Some polls suggested she had ‘won’ the first televised joust, while others in England asked Google if they could vote SNP. Tweeters dubbed her the ‘Sturgeonator’, while the Daily Mail opted for ‘the most dangerous woman in Britain’.

In the second (opposition) leaders’ debate two weeks later, Sturgeon appeared even more dangerous. When she challenged Ed Miliband to help ‘lock’ David Cameron out of Downing Street, he declined (‘It’s a no, I’m afraid’). ‘Don’t turn your back on that,’ the First Minister later told him. ‘People will never forgive you.’ Again, several polls showed how well Sturgeon had fared across the UK while, after the debate, one snapper caught a memorable image: the Greens’ Natalie Bennett, Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood and the SNP leader hugging each other while Miliband looked on from the sidelines, cut adrift from the ‘progressive alliance’ repeatedly talked up by the First Minister.

To an extent, however, it was easy for Nicola Sturgeon to shine in a UK context, where her record (and, to a degree, her arguments) was not going to be rigorously scrutinised. In several Scottish leaders’ debates, the SNP leader got a much rougher ride from her three Unionist opponents, Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, the Scottish Conservatives’ Ruth Davidson and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie. Challenged on her government’s record on health and education (not as good as the rhetoric implied), her plans for ‘full fiscal autonomy’ (devolution of everything except defence and foreign affairs, from which she subtly backtracked as the campaign wore on) and the possibility of another independence referendum (all talk of ‘once in a generation’ having been dropped), Sturgeon appeared much less sure-footed, not that it did her any harm. Nevertheless, having been heckled in one debate for appearing to prevaricate about another plebiscite, she wielded a ‘triple lock’: not only would another referendum have to feature in the SNP’s manifesto for the 2016 Holyrood election, but there would need to be ‘material change’ in public opinion, and then another yes/no vote.

The SNP’s strategy regarding its ‘influence’ in a hung parliament was also unconvincing. Having ruled out any ‘deal’ with the Conservatives, which necessarily limited rather than maximised its potential leeway, the discourse shifted from talk of coalition (there were jokes about Alex Salmond becoming Foreign Secretary or Deputy Prime Minister) to confidence and supply, in which the SNP would support Labour as the Liberals had supported James Callaghan’s government in the late 1970s, and finally to a vote-by-vote arrangement in which the Nationalists would back a Labour Queen’s Speech and then seek to exert ‘influence’ over its spending plans, the renewal of Trident and so on. Sturgeon said this meant the SNP could ‘change the direction of a government without bringing a government down’, something she claimed was made easier by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act.

With this in mind, the SNP’s manifesto, launched at a visually impressive climbing centre outside Edinburgh, ostentatiously echoed Labour’s commitments to restore the 50p tax rate, abolish ‘non-dom’ status, introduce a ‘mansion tax’ and tax bankers’ bonuses, on which Nationalists had hitherto not taken a firm stance. Cleverly, Nicola Sturgeon spoke to the whole of the UK rather than just Scotland (repeating a neat trick from the TV debates), offering to extend the ‘hand of friendship’ to Labour and other ‘progressive’ politicians. Referencing the 1983 Labour manifesto, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon called it ‘the most expensive ransom note in history’.

Central to the SNP’s ‘progressive’ agenda, meanwhile, was a pledge to ‘end austerity’ by increasing public spending by 0.5 per cent a year. But, as the...