How the Tories Could Win the Next Election. Oh, and Labour*.

As things stand, we’re probably heading towards another hung parliament. Cameron is not repelling people as much as many thought he would, despite his apparent lack of anything approaching a spine. Ed Miliband is a total disaster for his party, and is largely responsible for that party failing to make headway even as the coalition becomes less popular than dysentery. But both of those leaders could win the next election – but only if they are willing to take a gamble and do something bold. But both could do it.

How? Cameron could offer an referendum on the EU. Or, even more radically, he could redress our membership of the EU perhaps even to the point of pulling us out of that whole fucking mess. In doing so, he would become the hero of his party (including those on the right who remain very suspicious of young Hug A Husky). People across the country would also love this; it would be met with rapt applause from The Sun and The Daily Hate. Sure, many wouldn’t like this, but they would be the sort of people who wouldn’t vote for Cameron anyway. The ex-marketing man would be the hero to millions of people across the country, and he’d be able to spin himself as the courageous and visionary leader who dragged his country out of an expensive, bureaucratic mess.

What about Miliband Minor? Well, he could try being the socialist he sometimes hints at wanting to be. He could ramp up the rhetoric against the banks, and present himself as a genuine man of the people fighting on their behalf against reckless and dangerous financial institutions. He could get himself photographed with those members of Middle England struggling to make ends meet, and talk about how he is going to help them. Hell, he could even stand with those at the Occupy protests and claim that he, too, represents the 99%. Of course, it would be a blatant attempt at naked populism. But talking at the anti-war demos never hurt Charles Kennedy, for example. In fact, the opposite is probably true. And yeah, some people would find this sort of approach utterly repellent – myself, for example. But guess what? Those people, including me, would never vote for Miliband Minor anyway.

Which is part of the problem our party leaders have; they are so determined to try to please everyone all the time they lose sight of the fact that to do so is impossible and in trying they run the risk of really pissing off their core supporters. They fight so hard for the centre ground that they become myopic about the whole, broad range of the political spectrum. And then they wonder why fewer people vote, and they get approval ratings that, at best, are flat-lining, and at worst in free-fall. There is a real need for bold leadership in this day and age; unfortunately our leaders do not seem willing or able to provide it. So instead, we end up with cowardly, centrist jellyfish who actually please no-one; not even the core supporters of their own parties.

*And the Lib Dems? How could they win the next election? Well, they can’t. Hell, I don’t even know how they can maintain the disappointing result they got in 2010. Unless something pretty bloody spectacular happens, then the next election is not going to be very pleasant for the Liberal Democrats. 

The Liberal Democrat's Perpetual Crisis

So Labour's won a by-election. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. It's only a seat that they've had since 1997 - which is also the year when this particular constituency was created. Honestly, you crazy labour types - you're going to have to do better than this at the next General Election if you want to win back Number 10.

But what amuses me is the Lib Dem response to this by-election defeat (man alive, Elwyn Watkins must be massively tired and hacked off by now). We have had Nick Clegg attempting to achieve great new things in the realm of platitudes by noting that "it's a challenging time for Liberal Democrats". Well yes, yes it is. For the first time ever, you have political power. And it hasn't been as easy as it looked to be when you were carping from the sidelines, eh?

But then again, when haven't the Lib Dems been facing challenging times? The drop in support owing to their coalition with the Tories is only the latest in a long line of crises. In fact, since the Ginger Drunk resigned, they've had nothing but crisis after crisis. There was the post-Kennedy leadership debacle contest that ended with the election of the least charismatic man in history as Lib Dem leader. The fall of Ming the Merciful so soon after his election allowed the party to choose Nick Clegg as their new leader. And, lest we forget, Clegg said and did nothing as Lib Dem leader until he was allowed to debate with the big boys (well, both Brown and Cameron are a little portly) on TV. And as a result, his party was lucky not to lose a large proportion of their seats at the last election; any chance of a breakthrough was simply hype.

Pretty much since the Ginger Drunk jumped on a populist bandwagon by (quite rightly, in retrospect) opposing the Iraq War, the Lib Dems have been in crisis. So these may be challenging times for Britain's perennial third party, but that is nothing new for that party. They've lurched from crisis to crisis for the past few years like a political version of Gordon Brittas; this election result is nothing more than business as usual for the ever amateurish Lib Dems.

The Ongoing Failure of Nick Clegg

This coming General Election is pretty important for all the parties involved – that is so obvious it is barely worth mentioning. But we shouldn’t underestimate just how important this election will be for the Liberal Democrats. They are fighting a General Election under a new leader and, unlike in 2001 and (to some extent) 2005, there is actually a functioning Tory party to oppose Labour. No longer can the Liberal Democrats claim that they are on the cusp of becoming the real party of the opposition. In fact, they’d be lucky if the manage to make a net gain in terms of seats. Put simply, they are in a position where they are fighting for the gains they made under the most effective Liberal Democrat leader to date.

It isn’t just the resurgent Tory party that is causing the problems for the Liberal Democrats. One of their biggest problems is the current leader of their party. Put simply, Nick Clegg is out of his depth. He cannot grab attention or the limelight like the ginger drunk, and the Liberal Democrats need the oxygen of publicity in order to survive. Clegg cannot provide that. You want proof? Well, how about his record thus far?

Compare Clegg with Nigel Farage. Farage was the leader of a much smaller party than Clegg, and with much fewer resources. Yet Farage manages to get into the news – even now, when he is an ex-leader. Whereas Nick Clegg struggles to get into the headlines even though he has his own spot in Prime Minister’s Questions each week. Farage is fighting Bercow for a safe seat in Buckingham, and I think he has a chance of winning. If it was Clegg against Bercow, would anyone really notice that Clegg was in the running?

Maybe the issue is charisma, maybe the issue is an ability to whore oneself out to the media (or be a media darling, to use less pejorative language). Either way, Farage is getting it right while Clegg is getting it wrong. Farage gets the headlines; Clegg is marching his party towards obscurity.

So what should the erstwhile sandal wearing geography teachers within the Liberal Democrats do? They need to change leaders after the next General Election. They have to accept that Clegg was yet another wrong choice as party leader. And if they want someone who can get their party into the headlines, then they should make the ever-hideous Chris Huhne their leader.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d never vote for a party that had Huhne as its leader. But at this rate, no-one will end up voting Lib Dem – if only because their current leader is a shrinking violet who seems incapable of making his own falsetto voice audible against the background noise of real party leaders preparing for a General Election.

Primary Labour

David Miliband, acting curiously:

He adds: "We say we want to listen to our voters, why not a system of registered voters as in the US to create the basis for primaries?"

Now, I'm all for a primary to choose Labour (and Tory) candidates. I think it would be deeply funny to try to foist completely unsuitable candidates on the main parties. I also think that it would help to broaden the candidates who go up for election to Parliament. At the moment, the main way to become a candidate for Parliament, especially in a safe seat, is to spend ages toadying up to your local party machine. This creates generic candidates who are party animals through and through. The election of individuals or radicals is neutered in many constituencies by the need to cover the backside of the local party with kisses. 

However, I do think that this idea is going to be an interesting choice for all parties, and in particular Labour. After all, the US primaries - even when they are open only to party members - are often deeply divisive affairs that tear political parties apart just before they have to fight in an election. Just look at Obama and Clinton spending millions to tear strips off each other in 2008. And that was one of the nicer primary battles. Look at the Democratic primary process in 1972 - a primary season that allowed for all the most capable candidates to be picked off one by one and meaning that Nixon was going up against perhaps the easiest candidate to trounce. Or the Democrat primaries in 1980, when Ted Kennedy - showing all of the loyalty of a randy praying mantis - hobbled the re-election chances of Jimmy Carter. And in doing so handed the White House to Ronald Reagan. 

Primaries can be fun for the media, and fun for the voters. However, I predict that a lot of them - if implemented in this country - are going to be deeply corrosive toward party loyalty and are also going to be very embarrassing. The current system - whatever flaws it may have - at least allows the Labour party et al to choose their candidates in relative privacy. A primary will not allow for that...

TV Debates... Yes, Please

The televised debates in the US Presidential elections are great. Seriously. At their best, they give you some classic TV. Like Gerald Ford in 1976 claiming that Eastern Europe wasn't under Soviet Domination. Or Ronald Reagan neatly turning age into an advantage in his debate with Walter Mondale in '84. And how about that classic - Nixon sweating like a paedophile in a playground moment back in 1960? Even Vice-Presidential debates throw up some classics - like Sarah Palin winking like a used car salesman in 2008, or Lloyd Bentsen pointing out to Dan Quayle that he really wasn't like JFK back in 1988. Magic stuff, for a political geek like me. 

And now there is a flurry of excitement around the idea of a debate between Cameron and Brown. It won't happen, because basically Brown isn't that dumb. Whilst Iain Dale sounds a note of caution, I think Cameron would whup Brown's sorry, fat arse. This isn't the Cameron of 2005, when he lost a debate to David Davis; this is a Cameron used to debating in PMQ's, and used to selling the Conservative brand. He can debate, he is energetic and he is open to the idea that he might have to persuade others to win them over to his viewpoint. Compare him with Brown - a man pathologically unable to answer a question. A man who believes he is right, and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and a little bit evil. Cameron would destroy Brown, and we'd see Brown glowering in impotent rage during any televised debate. It would be the final nail in Labour's coffin at the next General Election. That's why Cameron would want to debate, and why Brown is trying to bury it deeper than a barrel of nuclear waste. 

Now, I'm for the idea of a debate between party leaders at the next General Election. But not just at the next election, but at every General Election. I'd like to see the parties give control for the debates over to an independent committee - one that can organise debates between the party leaders at each election and make sure they are fair. And that they actually happen. 

Because that's the problem. The Tories are now happy to have a debate, because they are pretty sure their fella will win. But rewind to 1997. There was no way in Hades that the Tories would have signed up to a debate, because their boy would have been bitch-slapped pretty well by Tony Blair. Now the tables have turned... just as surely as they will in the future. In ten years, in fifteen years... it will be the Tories running from a debate with the party of opposition. 

Debates are great. Partly because they favour one party over the other, and partly because they are a test of the party leaders' ability to communicate their messages. Let's have them in this country, but let's do it in such a way that those party leaders can't hide from them when they are simply too scared to take part...

Ted Kennedy And US Nepotism

So, Ted Kennedy has a brain tumour. Bad news for him, bad news for his family. For what it is worth, I hope he gets better.

But I really can’t understand all the attention that this news has got. Seriously, when I was (half) watching Channel Four news last week there were crowds outside the hospital, cheering as he walked out. I know he is fat, old and ill, but walking can’t be much of a problem for him, surely?

Which got me wondering exactly why so many people care about Ted Kennedy. Because on paper, he isn’t the most likeable or capable of politicians. In fact, he’s pretty crap. I mean, his career has hardly been scintillating. His main claim to fame is that he has been in power for a long time. Well, whoopee-do – but by that logic we should also be celebrating Fidel Castro, because he spent ages in power. Aside from that, his career is mainly misjudgement and scandal. Take his run for President in 1980 – a glaring example of disloyalty to (the admittedly dreadful) man who was then President of his party, he managed to assist Reagan into the White House and helped to bring in 12 years of Republican rule. And no criticism of Kennedy would be complete without the obligatory mention of Chappaquiddick. Any other Senator with this record would be rapidly consigned to life outside of the public domain. Ted Kennedy is treated as a hero, despite his many flaws.

And it shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone that the reason why those glaring flaws are overlooked is because of his family name. Lacking the charisma of one brother and the political acumen of another, he is pretty much the shallow end of the Kennedy clan gene pool. He only found the limelight because of the tragedies that befell his older siblings. People care about Ted Kennedy because of his surname and because of his brothers. It is not a personal thing, it is simply the natural extension of the unpleasant nepotism that tars so much of modern American Politics.

Look at the current election. Obama’s fight against Clinton has at least stopped (unless something goes badly wrong) the US from having Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton in the White House. So what do people do? Start talking about the ridiculously named Chelsea Clinton making a run for the White House in eight years. The Bush dynasty seems to have been (temporarily) stopped from achieving further power – but as soon as Dubya is out of the White House, memories of his misrule will fade and the talk of Jeb – or some other moron with Bush for a surname – in the White House will start. This website, presumably intended as satire, has more than a ring of truth to it.

Nepotism is a signpost of the death of democracy – that the talent pool of politicians has become so woefully shallow that people with a surname that harks back to better times is the way to go. It may be difficult for people in the UK to understand just how bad this is for democracy. But look at it this way: imagine if people were seriously talking about Euan Blair as a future Prime Minister. How pissed off would everyone be, given it took us ten years to be rid of his twat of a father? Even worse, imagine if the off spring of Gordon Brown were credible future leaders in this country. The thought sends shivers down my spine.

So America should stop thinking in terms of Kennedys, or Bushes, or Clintons. They should look for people whose main claim to power is more than simply being the spawn of or spouse to someone who was once in power. Kennedy’s illness should be the starting point of this – he should be allowed to heal in private, away from the glaring gaze of the media that focuses on him purely because of his name.