Why The Tories Will Almost Certainly Win A Second Term

Guido has recently had a post up questioning whether we are witnessing a one-term Tory government. While the points raised are relevant, I can’t help but feel that Guido is hedging his bets to some extent. If the Tories win outright, he has a whole host of posts highlighting the failure of Labour to get anywhere. If the Tories lose, he can point to this post and again be “proved” right. But that could just be my natural cynicism (which is generally rewarded where Mr Fawkes is concerned, though). The point of my post is that, as things stand, I think the Tories will go on to win a second term.

There are three reasons for this. Firstly, while things may get worse in terms of the economy, there is also the possibility that things will get distinctly better – especially if George Osborne clocks that economic recovery is aided by tax cuts as well as spending cuts. A recovering economy tends to reward the incumbent government; if Cameron & Co can pull it off, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t reap the rewards in the ballot box. And, after a year and a bit in office, there is still a lot of time to do it before the country has to go back to the polls in 2015.

The second reason is that the Tories aren’t really campaigning at the moment. They’ve got other stuff to do. Like govern. And, of course, muzzle their coalition partners as much as possible. However, come the next election (and they will effectively decide when that is – don’t rule out the possibility of a snap poll if a Tory victory looks likely in one), they will be coming out all guns blazing, using the healthy war chest to try to dominate the core messages of that campaign. And I think they will be emphasising the compromises they have made for the supposed good of the nation (for example, going into the coalition), the difficult choices they believe they have made (cuts etc) at the same time as hammering Labour for leaving them such a fucking mess to deal with in the first place. In the meantime, Labour have little else to do but campaign. And how well are they doing at that? Well, they are attracting back some of the supporters they lost during the long, messy years they spent in power, but those people are coming back for no real reason other than they don’t like the Tories and the reality of that party being ineffective control of the country narks them a bit. Labour, despite having all the time that no longer governing affords a party, are struggling to effectively vocalise any sort of popular message or image.

Which leads me to the third reason why a Tory victory still looks likely – Ed Miliband is just plain shit at the job of being Leader of the Opposition. And if you are shit at that job you have precisely no credibility when it comes to pitching for the promotion to the top job. Especially when the guy you are fighting for that job is already in it. Cameron may be compromised by, say, his association with Rebekah Brooks, but he still looks a lot more credible and Prime Ministerial than his Labour counterpart. Of course, Miliband Minor might be binned before the next election. But who would they replace him with? The reason he won the last Labour leadership election was because he appeared to be the least shit of those running in it. That situation hasn’t changed; there appears to be no-one in the upper echelons of the Labour party who could look credible against even that lightweight David Cameron.

Of course, lots could change, politics is constantly changing blah blah fucking blah. And yeah, something could happen that radically changes the political landscape. But as things stand, I think that enough of the British people will decide, in balance and when faced with the reality of voting in the ballot box on Election Day, that they prefer the devil they know rather to the one they don’t. The Tories will, most likely, benefit from a grudging refusal on the part of the British people to embrace change unless they absolutely have to or have grown utterly repelled by the incumbent government.

After all, that’s what allowed the odious Tony Blair to be re-elected. Twice.