John Cole, the BBC’s eccentrically brilliant Political Editor throughout the 1980s, liked to quote former British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, on what politicians fear the most: “Events, dear boy, events.” Macmillan may or may not have actually spoken those words, but the man who became prime minister in 1957 following the fiasco of the Suez Crisis understood better than most that getting to the top of the “greasy pole” requires an ability to own a political emergency and turn it to your advantage.
The UK general election takes place on Thursday. The latest opinion polls say more or less what they’ve been saying for the last six months: Britain will have a hung parliament. The Conservatives and Labour look likely to be tied, with each side winning seats in or around the 275 range–well short of the 323 needed to form an effective majority. For all the speeches by politicians and the analysis of pundits (this one included), no-one really has a clue what will happen once it’s all over. Faced with a stalemate, Conservative leader, David Cameron, and his Labour counterpart, Ed Miliband, will need both skill and nerve to form a government. The history of previous elections might provide them with some clues.
The best case scenario for both Cameron and Miliband is that this is 1992 and the pollsters are fools. The weekend before that election, opinion polls had Labour running ahead of the Tories by around eight points; on election night the BBC’s exit poll predicted a hung parliament; a few hours later, John Major was leaning out of the window of Conservative Central Office waving to the cheering crowds below, celebrating a comfortable majority of twenty-one seats. The pollsters slunk away in shame.
Almost the entire Conservative strategy this year has been predicated on the notion that the current election will mirror that of 1992, when “shy Tory” voters decided at the last minute that the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock—for whom read the unpopular Ed Miliband—was too weak to be prime minister and that his “tax bombshell” policies would leave them less well off.
Miliband himself, meanwhile, seems to be looking back to Labour’s own history for electoral examples. Having ruled out a coalition or even a working arrangement with the Scottish National Party (“It’s not going to happen,” he says) the Labour leader is left with the possibility of forming a minority government. That’s what Ramsay MacDonald did after the 1923 election when Labour formed its first ever government. There were a few achievements, not least the Wheatley Housing Act, but the precedent is hardly a comforting one. The Labour government lasted only nine months before getting swept aside by a Conservative landslide at the next election in October 1924. MacDonald lived to fight another day, returning to power in 1929; the current Labour party are not likely to give their unloved leader a second bite at the electoral cherry.
Faced with the unappealing prospect of running a minority government, Miliband’s decision to rule out an arrangement with the Scottish Nationalists seems baffling. In fact, he may have no choice on the matter. Smaller political parties in these situations have traditionally exercised their authority by holding the larger party to ransom, saying, effectively, “Do as we say, or we’ll pull the trigger” (as the Scottish Nationalists did to Labour in 1979). But as Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP’s current leader, shrewdly pointed out on Friday, the new Fixed Term Parliaments Act gives her party an additional power: The ability to manipulate a minority Labour government for a full five year term by actively not forcing a general election through a vote of no confidence.
In fact the last time the UK found itself with similar numbers to the ones predicted by the pollsters for May 7, it ended with the largest “progressive” party reaching an accommodation with a nationalist party. In January 1910, the electorate returned a hung parliament, with the Liberals and Conservatives effectively tied on 274 and 272 seats respectively; another election in December then repeated the trick. The balance of power was held by the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond, which won over 70 seats in each election. In return for a guarantee on Home Rule for Ireland, Redmond allowed the Liberal leader Herbert Asquith to remain as prime minister. That gave the Asquith government the chance to continue its radical reforming agenda. In 1911 the government introduced the National Insurance Act, the foundation of the welfare state, and the Parliament Act, the foundation of the modern constitutional settlement in Britain—thereby demonstrating that a government can still enact sweeping legislation even without a single-party mandate in the House of Commons.
Early in the 2015 election campaign there was speculation, fiercely denied by the SNP leader, that Sturgeon wanted Cameron to “remain in 10 Downing Street.” More likely, she will offer Miliband the opportunity to play H.H. Asquith. Here the Labour leader’s own limited experience of political life counts against him. He has worked in government both as an adviser and a minister, but he did so from the comfort zone of three strong majorities secured by Tony Blair in 1997, 2001 and 2005.
Older Labour hands, however, still remember the nightmare of the late 1970s as the party attempted to govern without a majority. Such was the desperation of the times that a Labour backbencher, Sir Alfred Broughton, fought valiantly but unsuccessfully on the night of 28 March 1979 to leave his deathbed and attend the House of Commons to save the government on a confidence vote. The government fell and Broughton died a few days afterwards. Margaret Thatcher won the subsequent election in May 1979; Labour remained out of office for the next eighteen years. When Ed Miliband wakes up on Friday morning, he may look at the numbers and reflect that there are worse things in political life than working with Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Nationalists. As Asquith himself was fond of saying, “Wait and see.”