The British election

The road to Downing Street

A closely-fought election campaign will be short on big ideas but long on excitement and ferocity

THIS morning, after chairing a cabinet meeting, Gordon Brown, the prime minister, paid a visit to Buckingham Palace, where he asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament. His trip up the Mall officially kicked off an election campaign that will end with the general election on May 6th. But the campaign has in effect been running for months: regardless of the official fripperies, Britain’s political parties have been in election mode since Christmas at least.

In his first official pitch to the voters, when he returned to Downing Street for a news conference alongside his cabinet, Mr Brown declared that “the future is ours to win”. For his part, David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, has pledged to fight for the “great ignored”. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, promises “change that works for you”. As the vagueness of such phrases suggests, this will likely be a campaign more about mood than specific policies. Britain’s battered economy will dominate (with health, education and immigration as subsidiary worries, according to polls). But the parties have been cagey about their plans, and, in any case, the parlous state of the public finances restricts their freedom of action.

All the same, the contest itself will be exciting. For the first time in nearly twenty years, the outcome is not at all certain. The detonation of the parliamentary expenses scandal still reverberates. Politicians are disliked and distrusted, and a record number of MPs will be standing down. The economy is tentatively recovering after a long recession. And, as British politics becomes ever less parliamentary and ever more presidential, the party leaders will clash for the first time in American-style televised debates, with unpredictable consequences.

Before Christmas, Mr Cameron’s party enjoyed double-digit poll leads. But since the start of 2010, the numbers have been much more volatile. Recent polls still put the Tories ahead of Labour, but often by smaller margins. In most countries their lead would be regarded as a healthy one, but Britain’s strange electoral arithmetic tilts the playing field against the Conservatives, and a victory that once looked certain now merely looks possible. Speculation about the narrowing lead abounds: perhaps voters, eyeing Britain’s fragile economic recovery, are fearful of rocking the boat. Perhaps rows over party funding have damaged the party. Or perhaps Mr Cameron’s “decontamination” project-designed to overcome the visceral hatred still felt in some quarters for the party of Margaret Thatcher-has not been as successful as it once seemed. Meanwhile, some erstwhile Labour voters, who have until recently been disillusioned with the government, have been returning to the fold.

Regardless of the reason, it is now possible that Mr Cameron will not, after all, be prime minister on May 7th. Were he to lose the election, the symmetries with an earlier age will be hard for historians to resist. Mr Cameron will be cast as the Tory version of Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader in 1992, who did much to make his party electable again after years in opposition, but ultimately lost the election to John Major, an unloved incumbent leading a tired government, in the teeth of a nasty recession.

A Labour win would transform Mr Brown’s reputation: the grumpy, obsessive electoral liability might become the far-sighted conquering hero, who secured an unprecedented fourth term in office for Labour. Even an honourable draw, with Labour as the biggest party in parliament but lacking an overall majority, would be seen as a powerful performance by a party that has been in office for 13 years and presided over the worst slump since the second world war.

A Labour defeat, on the other hand, could prove catastrophic for the party. Old internal wounds would probably re-open, particularly over the Iraq war and the legacy of Tony Blair, who has become an even more divisive figure since he stepped down in 2007. There would be a noisy debate about the party’s future, with many arguing that the recent near-death experience of global capitalism justifies a sharp turn to the left. The worse the party does, the more influence the trades unions (restored to their traditional position as the party’s paymasters, and dominated by public-sector workers) will have. All that could leave Labour facing a long spell in the wilderness.

If neither party secures an outright majority (quite a likely outcome) then the future becomes even tougher to predict. The party with the largest number of MPs may try to govern as a minority, seeking ah hoc parliamentary allies for each piece of legislation it want to pass; alternatively, it may try to enter a formal coalition with one of the smaller parties. The Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third party, are the obvious candidates for coalition-making. But they could exact a high price: they are long-standing advocates of a proportional voting system, which would boost them but could damage the two big parties. And Vince Cable, the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor, could plausibly push to be given the real job in any joint administration. But although the Lib Dems are the most likely coalition partners, they are not the only ones: if the parties finish only a couple of seats shy of an absolute majority, attention may turn instead to the minnows, such as the Scottish Nationalists or Wales’ Plaid Cymru.

On the most exalted level, politics can be about romance and grand ideas. But its day-to-day practice is often dirtier: oppositions must be denigrated, promises and compromises made, voters persuaded to trust you with decisions that will affect every aspect of their lives. This election may not produce any new political philosophies or –isms, but with the polls so close and the stakes so high, it will likely be the most ferocious for years.