Eastleigh was a remarkable by-election. It reminded us that, for Labour to win the General Election, all the Conservatives need to do is lose.
It cannot be considered fatal to ‘One Nation’ that Ed Miliband failed to win a seat which was 285th on his list of targets. What is remarkable is that the voters of Eastleigh did not give a “bloody nose” to the sitting incumbents, who include the Liberal Democrats. Despite a maelstrom of accusations and counter-accusations regarding Chris Huhne and Chris Rennard, local voters, albeit in fewer numbers, decided to give their vote to the Liberal Democrats. Even more strikingly, they did not “blame” the Liberal Democrats for policy failures for their senior partners. The Conservatives failed to win this seat, not simply because they failed to produce an ‘attractive offer’ to the British electorate, but also some voters are beginning to blame them for noteworthy policy mistakes. There is a huge repertoire of policy mistakes to choose from, but it is remarkable that former Conservatives who have voted for UKIP appear to have done so for two particular reasons. Firstly, they don’t give a damn about David Cameron’s “caste iron” guarantees about Europe. Secondly, they do BLAME George Osborne for snatching a triple-dip recession from the jaws of a fragile recovery bequeathed to them in May 2010.
“If at first you don’t succeed, blame Labour” has become an all-too familiar mantra, but people are increasingly unconvinced by the mouthpieces who have told them this. The BBC, plagued by an obsession over horsemeat and Jimmy Savile, have failed to report the massive outsourcing and privatisation implications of recent legislation over the NHS. Many in the public are sick-to-death of the tribal partisan line on the economy, which refuses to concede that there was an emergency bailout by the previous administration of the banking sector which led the deficit to explode. They are cognisant, through the social media, that the deficit has not gone down by a quarter, and, as anyone who has been lied to, they feel cheated.
Above all, it is tragic given that the Conservatives have many junior MPs within them that their party currently lacks direction and identity. The economy is a mess, many through Twitter knows the NHS is being auctioned-off to the highest corporate bidder, and disabled citizens are hopeful that they will see their benefits re-awarded on appeal. The fact that people would rather vote UKIP than Conservatives means that the Liberal Democrats votes could stay solid, particularly if Tory-LibDem marginal seat voters don’t blame them for having been forced into a corner on policy decisions. And yet, if the Liberal Democrats win similar seats in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives could be deprived of a working majority.
Contrary to what the BBC would have you believe, the Conservatives failed to win a majority last time. And support for LibDems in traditional LibDem areas is strong, because local activism of LibDem councillors and MPs is impressive. However, Labour find themselves in dangerous territory. They cannot afford to ‘take it easy’, thinking that their economic reputation will be restored if the economy screws up. There is a remote chance that, despite a prolonged experience of austerity-lite, the economy will slowly begin to recover. The truth, whether Labour likes it or not, is that the general public does not trust them with economic prowess; some people even still blame Ed Balls for making somewhat anti-immigration noises at the last election. So why doesn’t Labour campaign on a much stronger card of the NHS? There has become an increasing perception that Labour does not need to shore up their reputation in this regard, as they are ‘the party of the NHS’. This may be hard to sustain as their policy of NHS Foundation Trusts, and insidious marketisation of the NHS with a growing number of Trusts and departments going into an insolvency regime, is shredded to pieces. As a party supposedly representing social justice issues, Sadiq Khan MP, the Shadow Lord Chancellor, has all but resigned himself to the sweeping cuts in legal aid enshrined in the Legal Aid and Sentencing and Punishing of Offenders Act (2012), and parliament has generally been useless due to the arithmetic compared to moves afoot elsewhere, for example Lord Willy Bach’s “fatal motion”. The official Opposition part of HM Parliament seems powerless to stop unelected legislation at the moment, as another “fatal motion”, this time in the Lords from fellow Labour peer Lord Hunt, is one of the only mechanisms possible to stop the new statutory instrument on NHS procurement (SI 2012/057).
As outgoing Bank of England Governor, Sir Mervyn King, previously declared, this parliament was a ‘poisoned challice’. In a way, it is quite good for Labour that they have been given a few years to regroup their forces, and have had the Conservatives do some of their ‘dirty work’, in coping with a moribund economy, inflicting legal aid cuts, and accelerating the marketisation of the NHS. However, Labour has now a fighting chance of producing the arithmetic for a working majority in June 2015, but there is as yet no sense that Ed Miliband will be elected on a landslide. However, one very good thing to have emerged from Eastleigh is that the Conservatives seem to have retained their rather infamous ‘self-destruct’ characteristic, and all that needs to happen, for Labour to succeed in June 2015, is for the Conservatives to lose.
