‘Sweet’ Cameron victory may turn sour

David Cameron is back as Prime Minister of Great Britain, beating all the opinion poll predictions in securing an overall majority in the Westminster Parliament – a narrow one but nevertheless a majority.

The result of the British general elections means the centre right Conservative Party can rule on its own. For the past five years, Cameron has been in a formal coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats. It’s the first time the Tories, as the Conservatives are popularly called, have won an election outright since 1992.

The London stock exchange increased in value at the news and big businesses celebrated. They overwhelmingly back the Conservatives along with the bulk of Britain’s newspapers.

The election results plunged the two main other established parties into chaos. Within one hour on the day after the election the leaders of the Labour, Liberal Democrat and United Kingdom Independence Parties resigned prompting leadership elections.

The big losers were the Liberal Democrats, who plunged from 57 to eight members of parliament (MPs). The bulk of those seats in England went to the Tories, their former coalition partners.  The party was punished for going back on its promise five years ago to abolish university fees, because many of its supporters were unhappy with them teaming up with the Tories while others drew the conclusion that if the two parties were co-operating so closely, they might as well back a more full-blooded free market party.

For the centre left Labour Party, the result was bitter. Not just did they fall nearly 100 seats short of a parliamentary majority but they failed to win few of the key battles where they might have been expected to take seats from the Tories. Their finance and foreign affairs spokesmen lost as did their leader in Scotland.

Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair was quick to demand Labour moves rightwards to win business support. Many discount him because he left his successors a giant albatross round their necks; the legacy of the Labour government’s decision to invade Iraq alongside the USA in 2003. Deeply unpopular and still haunting Labour. Despite that, Blair’s supporters are strong among Labour MPs, while they push for a rightwards move that will not be popular with the trade unions, who still provide the party with the majority of its funding. Expect a bruising leadership contest as the party decides who and what was to blame for their unexpected defeat.

For months, in the build-up to the elections, the media had overly focused on the chances of UKIP making a decisive breakthrough. It focused on opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU) and on demanding a clampdown on immigration. In the event, UKIP got 13 percent of the vote across Britain, but had just one MP elected. The British electoral system means the candidate who secures the greatest number of votes in a geographical system wins outright. So UKIP and the Greens, the environmentalists, took 5 million votes but got just one MP each.

So David Cameron declared his victory sweet. But it might leave a rather sour taste five years down the road when another election is scheduled.

First, faced with the rise of UKIP and the re-emergence of hostility to the EU among his own MPs, Cameron pledged to re-negotiate Britain’s membership terms and then hold a referendum on its membership. That referendum is now scheduled for 2017, meaning two years in which the issue will be at the front of British politics.

In that time, Cameron’s narrow majority could reduce as Tory MPs resign - usually this happens after some scandal - or die. The Conservative Party itself is deeply split on the issue with even colleagues in government office taking different positions. Despite its disappointment over the election result, UKIP will focus on the referendum with a vengeance and the Tory government will be under pressure from its right. When it comes to the actual referendum, Cameron looks like he may be forced to allow government ministers who oppose EU membership campaign accordingly.

All in all, that can make Cameron seem a weak prime minister, heading a divided government and party.

The referendum opens one massive trap. In England, voters vote to quit the EU, opposition to it is centered in England, Scottish voters are expected to vote to stay. Such a result will lead to demands for another referendum on Scottish independence in which it is expected Scotland would vote to quit the UK.

The reason for this lies with the biggest story of the 2015 general elections. For generations, Scotland has voted solidly Labour. Of the 59 MPs going into this election, just one was a Tory. Of the 59 Scottish MPs, 41 were Labour ones.

Today, the pro-independence Scottish National Party holds 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Labour and the Liberal Democrats hold one, just like the Tories. It is an unprecedented result, the SNP had just six MPs going into this election, with the party seeing swings in its support of 20 to 30 percent, mainly at the expense of Labour.

While last autumn’s independence referendum saw the SNP and other pro-independence parties lose, winning 45 percent of the vote, it mobilised a huge grass-roots campaign, which swelled the SNP’s ranks. The SNP’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon, was the star of a rather dull election campaign, and the party was able to win over significant numbers of those who’d voted no to independence.

Politicians and media pundits in London have dismissed this as a consequence of a rise in nationalism but in reaction to his own electoral defeat, Labour’s foreign affairs spokesman, Douglas Alexander, got it right when he admitted, “Scotland has chosen to oppose this Conservative government but not to place its trust in Labour.”

Labour paid a hard price for uniting with the deeply unpopular Tories to campaign together against independence in the referendum.

David Cameron reacted to the SNP’s white washing of its opponents by pledging, “I want my party, and I hope a government I would like to lead, to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost – the mantle of One Nation, one United Kingdom.”

But Cameron speaks for virtually no one in Scotland. The SNP’s message that it would provide a stronger voice for Scotland, one committed to opposing austerity economics and the replacement, at great expense, of Britain’s nuclear missiles, based as they are in Scotland.

Cameron has promised greater powers for the Scottish parliament, where the SNP has an overall majority. Faced with a Tory government, most Scots will want to shield themselves from its economic and social policies because they want a more pro-welfare programme and less free market measures.

However this plays out, it is gradually dawning in Westminster that Scotland is on the slide out of the United Kingdom. That leaves the British elite with a growing sense of doom because to lose Scotland can only diminish Britain as a world power still further.

The Conservatives won with just 37 percent of the vote across Britain. Their share of the vote has been falling, as has that of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and this result does not reverse that in any significant way.

Cameron is committed to reducing the state’s budget deficit (largely a product of the 2008 financial crisis when a Labour government bailed out the banks with state money). That will mean holding down public sector wages, reducing welfare benefits and cutting services. These austerity measures can provoke anger and bitterness in a country that has seen the biggest fall in living standards in over 100 years following the 2008 crash.

Meanwhile, on the world stage, Britain cuts a reduced figure. There is no taste for further military adventures like that in Iraq (or indeed Libya), Britain is sidelined in the EU while the referendum looms and the White House is pulling its hair out at the thought of Britain leaving – it’s always wanted a loyal Britain as its watchdog in Europe.

Cameron secured his “sweet” election victory against the odds but faces a rocky road ahead.

CB/HJL

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