David Cameron’s corporate champions fear progressive Britain. But voters don’t
|
Version 0 of 1. For weeks, David Cameron and George Osborne have been pressing traditional Tory buttons. Pre-election tax cuts have been announced, the economy declared a Conservative triumph, well-heeled pensioners bribed, Islamophobes dog-whistled to, and Ed Miliband portrayed as the puppet of a sinister Scottish plot to hijack Britain. But so far none of it seems to be working. With only five weeks left till polling day, the usual boost enjoyed by the governing party in the run-up to an election has yet to happen. The Tories are still stubbornly polling in the low 30s, barely level pegging with a Labour leader dismissed as unelectable. So on Wednesday, the next trick in the playbook was deployed. A letter from 100 “business chiefs”, warning that Labour would “put the recovery at risk”, was emblazoned across the Daily Telegraph’s front page as if it were a major global event. It can hardly be a huge surprise to anyone that some of the wealthiest corporate executives in Britain are opposed to a party that wants to increase the top rate of tax, reverse the latest Tory cut in corporation tax and scrap 90% of the zero-hours contracts their companies dine off. Related: More than 100 business leaders sign letter backing Tories Nor is it odd that Cameron’s Conservatives have failed to reap the trumpeted recovery’s rewards. Far from delivering the rapid growth the business titans claim, crippling austerity produced stagnation and falling living standards, while spectacularly failing to meet the deficit and debt targets at the heart of Osborne’s “long-term economic plan”. As a survey of economists by the Centre for Macroeconomics found, most believe the coalition’s policies have damaged the British economy. Cameron boasted this week that his government had created 1.8m jobs, half of them for migrants. Those have overwhelmingly been low-paid, insecure, phoney self-employed or enforced part-time jobs. Living standards have plummeted or stagnated for the majority. Most ridiculous is the claim in yesterday’s letter that Conservative policies have “supported investment”. Not only did investment slump during the past five years, it was again falling in the final quarter of last year. In fact, corporate underinvestment has been a central factor in Britain’s grim economic performance. It’s the main explanation for a dismal productivity record, now 17% below the average for the advanced economies. Cameron’s “business chiefs” are to blame for the failure to generate secure jobs and rising living standards as much as the government itself. Now that average real wages are finally picking up, courtesy of falling oil prices, you might have expected the government to benefit. Instead, the question for many voters seems to be whether to blame this government, now planning yet more savage austerity, or the previous one, for years of economic pain. If last week's broadcast grilling is anything to go by, Cameron will come off worse than his Labour opponent That is only part of the reason Labour has failed to build a clear lead. Miliband’s break with discredited New Labour politics has been lost on many voters and clouded by the party’s ambiguity about austerity – even though it has left itself enough fiscal room for manoeuvre to avoid most cuts entirely. That has helped open the way to the electoral fragmentation that will be played out in tonight’s seven-party TV debate. The Tories may yet pull ahead. But if last week’s broadcast grilling is anything to go by, Cameron will come off worse than his Labour opponent. If so, the current seat projections for May’s election – 277 for the Tories, 269 for Labour, both far below the 326-odd needed for a majority – are going to look increasingly like the framework for a very different kind of political future, including multi-party governments not seen in Britain for close to a century. That could include the Conservatives relying on an Orange Book Liberal Democrat rump, the Democratic Unionist party and its nationalist nemesis Ukip. But on current polling, that would still put them well short of a governing bloc. The real game-changer is Scotland, where an insurgent Scottish National party is currently projected to wipe Labour out north of the border and become the third largest party in Britain with 53 seats. Even if the SNP’s lead narrows in the next month, it’s hard to see the party – which has captured a mood of rejection of the status quo that goes far beyond nationalism – losing its commanding position. Which means any likely Labour administration will only be able to govern with SNP support. Cameron has already tried to use that to stoke anti-Scottish feeling. And mutual hatred between Labour and the SNP in Scotland runs deep. But two key changes should make the prospect less alarming to voters who want to see a change of direction across Britain. The first is that the SNP has now positioned itself clearly to the left of Labour. Under Nicola Sturgeon, the party is campaigning to dump austerity and oppose the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons – and has signed up to a 50% top rate of tax, while dropping its support for a 3% cut in corporation tax. Labour activists complain that the SNP’s left credentials are “skin deep”, but led by recovering Blairite Jim Murphy that’s a tricky case to make. The second key change is the SNP’s commitment to vote against a Tory-led government in any circumstances. Until that pledge was made, a vote for the SNP could have potentially returned Cameron to Downing Street. Now, it could deny Miliband a majority or prevent Labour being the largest party. But SNP seats are committed to an anti-Conservative bloc. No government has been formed by the party with the second largest number of seats since 1924. But the possibility of a Labour-led administration backed by the SNP is now being denounced by FTSE 100 corporate executives as an “unreconstructed 1970s socialist nightmare”. That is absurd. But even if many don’t like coalitions, the prospect of a Labour-led parliamentary alliance – including, say, Lib Dems, the SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and Respect – taking Britain in a more progressive direction wouldn’t be so scary for most voters, to judge by opinion polls. It would risk being unstable and be bitterly opposed by some Labour leaders. Anything of the kind would depend on the numbers, of course, and may well be overtaken by the campaign in the weeks ahead. But it could also offer the kind of government that a large part of the population would actually want. |