Labouring the point home

The electoral campaign was dull. The differences between the parties over the domestic agenda are miniscule and the result widely predicted. Still, Thursday night was exciting with electoral constituencies swinging wildly in different directions, obeying the pull of new, and sometimes unpredictable, magnetic poles in British politics.

One major factor was widespread anger at the Iraq war, which dogged Blair throughout the three-week election campaign. There was a significant swing from Labour to Lib Dem — the only party opposed to the Iraq war — in each of the 40 seats with a large Muslim population, and in one case — Bethnal Green in London — the Labour incumbent was ousted in favour of the rabble-rousing George Galloway, notorious in Britain for his relations with the Saddam Hussein government.

But it was not enough to unseat the Government — partly because of the oddities of the electoral system, which favours the leading parties. (Each of the nation’s 646 electoral districts sends one MP to the House of Commons. Whoever wins the most votes in each district gets the seat, and the party that gains the most Commons seats forms the government). Because most regard Lib-Dems as unlikely ever to form a government, many voters turned to the Conservatives to punish Blair over the war. But the Tories were at a disadvantage because a large portion of Conservative supporters are in rural districts where the Tories always win by a heavy margin, thus ‘‘wasting’’ votes.

Labour’s support, on the other hand, is more efficiently distributed across far more constituencies. These oddities explain why Labour was returned to power with only 36 per cent of the vote on a 61 per cent turnout — a comfortable margin of victory, but less than half what it was in the Labour landslides of 1997 and 2001, and the lowest share of the vote for a ruling party in modern times. The reasons for Labour’s continued success are not hard to find. Britain’s economic growth has been virtually uninterrupted since 1997. Taxes and mortgage rates are low. Spending on public services is at an all-time high. And while Tony Blair is no longer the magician he was, and as result of the war is widely mistrusted, he remains the towering figure in British politics.

Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, has restored his party’s credibility, but there is ‘‘something of the night’’ about him, as a former Tory colleague once famously said. Unable to depart much from Labour’s domestic agenda — the difference between tax and spend levels between the two parties adds up to 0.5 per cent of GDP — he sought instead to portray Blair as mendacious, and to suggest Britain had enough immigrants. This was enough to stop erosion of Conservative support from Right-wing nationalist parties, but it left a nasty taste in the mouths of mainstream voters.

The ghost at the feast was Europe, the one issue on which — in a country suspicious of Brussels — the Conservatives could have trumped. But Blair long ago batted the question off the pitch by promising a referendum on the European Constitution and by making clear he has no intention of taking the country into the euro anytime soon.

Even the disillusionment with Blair has been neutralised by the government. Voters knew that by voting back Labour they will at some point — possibly at mid-term — get Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, as prime minister. The most famous couple in British politics, whose stormy relationship is closely watched by the British media, have put on a strong show of unity during the campaign, offering a ‘‘two-prime-ministers-for-one’’ ticket. Brown is widely respected, if dour, but known to be more passionate than his neighbour in No. 10 Downing Street about core Labour values such as justice and poverty.

Look out in this next term for real efforts to get other countries to move towards the Millenium Development Goal of halving world poverty by 2015, an issue on which Brown’s ‘‘eyes light up’’, according to the veteran poverty campaigner Sir Bob Geldof. But if the economy begins to crash, as some are predicting, that too may be shelved. And Britain will be in for a turbulent period: a handover of power, a choice between spending and tax rises, a decision finally on Europe, and the gradual diminution of Blair’s authority as it leaks to his neighbour. One thing, after Thursday, is clear. With its drastically reduced majority, this government will need to listen and negotiate more. And that can only be good for British democracy.

The author was former deputy editor of the Tablet