Cameron has toxic Ed to thank for this triumph
It was always going to be a titanic struggle for Labour with the fake geek as captain. If they’d only tossed him overboard ages ago
ONE of the more embarrassing things about being a political pundit is that occasionally – very occasionally – your predictions turn out to be 100 per cent accurate, and when this happens, it is difficult not to sound like a gloater. No one ever thanks you for calling the right result. And if, afterwards, you have the temerity to mention that you DID call the right result, you’re dismissed as a shouty braggart.
However… since there has been so much hot air spouted by the pollsters in the last month, I think I may be allowed a little credit.
Because the fact is that for the last six weeks, we have had to listen to poll after ridiculous poll saying that the UK general election was ‘neck and neck’.
For well over a year now, Lord Ashcroft and the media outlets have frittered millions and millions of pounds on polls across the UK – and all of these polls have said the same thing: just too close to call. Nothing in it. Could be Labour, could be the Tories, it’s anyone’s guess.
Well a week ago, I blithely put my neck on the block, and I said that all these hugely expensive polls were utter, utter poppycock. (I actually used a rather stronger word than that.)
I said that the Tories were going to win and win handsomely.
Because – unfortunately for the multi-million pound pollsters – there was one decisive factor which they were quite unable to incorporate into all of their rinkydink questionnaires.
This one factor – which, even yesterday, was still going largely unmentioned in the media – was the entire pivot point for the general election. It explains why the Tories did so well. It explains the catastrophic showing of the Labour Party. And it also explains – I think – why the Scottish Nationalists completely cleaned up in Scotland.
FOR despite all their high-tech gadgetry, I’m afraid that the pollsters were entirely unable to see what – to me – was staring them clean in the face: the Labour Party had contrived to saddle themselves with the most utterly, utterly toxic leader in living memory.
Now, I know that this might not seem like a nice thing to be saying when Ed Miliband is down and out for the count.
But I said it last week, when I predicted for the Huffington Post that the Tories would thrash Labour – and I’m saying it again now. Because in order to understand the depth of the disaster that has engulfed the Labour Party, it is necessary to state one very harsh fact: Labour’s calamitous showing in the election was nothing to do with Labour’s policies; it was nothing to do with their pledges; and it was everything to do with the Labour leader Ed Miliband.
The fact is that even diehard Labour voters loathed him.
For a while now, I’ve been asking Labour voters what it was that they didn’t like about Mili- band. Of course turning over his brother David didn’t help, but over and over again, people were saying they thought that Miliband was fake.
They couldn’t quite put their finger on why they didn’t like Miliband, but they said that he was inauthentic. I would have to agree. When I see Ed Miliband, I see a shy geek who, for weeks, months, years, has been coached and hothoused up to his ruddy eyeballs. And all that the spin-doctors and the PR goons have created is an absolute monster. I hear from friends that in private, Miliband is warm, considerate, compassionate; that is as may be – but in public, his appearances have been so repellent that he’s made even Gordon Brown look polished.
Shy and geeky can be quite charming so long as its authentic; unfortunately, Ed Miliband was anything but charming. He has turned out to be the biggest voter turn-off in decades. (And doubtless I will be hazed for saying that by Labour’s benumbed supporters. Well: the truth hurts.)
The pollsters were confounded by two things. Firstly the ‘shy Tories’ who’d never admit to voting Conservative, and secondly, by all the staunch Labour voters who said they’d be voting just how they’d always voted.
But when it came to it, when they were alone in the polling booth with their ballot paper, a lot of these Labour diehards couldn’t actually bring themselves to vote for Ed Miliband to be the leader of the country.
In Scotland, the result has been just devastating.
Notwithstanding that Nicola Sturgeon played an absolute blinder throughout the general election, was head and shoulders above all the other party leaders.
The truth is that in Scotland, the voters didn’t have anywhere else to turn but the Scottish Nationalists.
They were never going to vote Tory, have hated the Conservat i ves ever s i nce Margaret Thatcher.
And – as it turned out – they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Ed Miliband to be prime minister either.
SINCE I made my general election predictions a week ago, a lot of people have taken me to task over my methodology. They’ve said that people should vote for policies and principles rather than a party l eader. I’ve also been accused of being a rabid rightwinger, a Murdoch hireling, and also an odious creep who just happens to hate Miliband.
But I’m none of that. I’ve got no axe to grind with Miliband. I’m just a pundit who tells it like it is – and if the Labour Party is to learn anything at all from this ruinous election, it is that their
choice of party leader is absolutely critical.
And boy do they have form in picking duds. Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown – they, all of them, were huge voter turnoffs, but none of these Labour leaders were quite so terrible as Miliband.
And here’s the truth of things: for over two years now, Labour’s high command have been fully and completely aware that Miliband was a disaster and that they were heading for the rocks. (This will all become clear in the next three years, when the usual stock of political memoirs/ hatchet jobs start hitting the bookshelves.)
The Labour Party has been like the captain of the Titanic, steering at full steam for the iceberg – the only difference being that for the last two years now, they’ve been f ully, f ully aware that they’ve been heading for the iceberg.
And that iceberg was Ed Miliband and it’s him and him alone who sank the Labour Party.
The good news for the Labour Party is that their problems are completely solvable: get themselves a new leader, and next time, for once, get themselves a good one. (Too late for David Miliband, unfortunately; now he would have given the Tories a run for their money.)
And so it is that the Conservatives have been left with a mandate to run the country as they see fit, their hands no longer tied by the Liberal Democrats. And that means, inevitably, that we come to what to my mind will have far greater consequences than a mere general election: the EU referendum.
Is Britain going to be in the EU or out of it?
DAVID Cameron must be pretty sure that the British electorate will be voting to stay in – otherwise he wouldn’t have created this huge hostage to fortune. Though speak it softly, but I have this shimmering sense that Brits will be sticking two fingers up to the EU.
Meanwhile: The poor old Lib Dems, annihilated in the election, paying the price for putting the Tories into power. I hope Nick Clegg enjoyed his five years in the sun, because unless he can bag some cushy job with the EU, he’s heading for political oblivion.
The Lib Dems had an interesting narrative going on yesterday. They said that when they joined the coalition, they’d done the best thing for Britain, if not for themselves. Such laudable lack of self-interest.
And all those big beasts that have gone – Ed Balls and Danny Alexander and Nigel Farage; and Douglas Alexander losing out to a 20-year-old student. The ignominy of it!
Ed Balls may have been a big turn- off for voters, but he did add greatly to the national merriment.
I hope that, like Michael Portillo, he finds some convivial TV career f or himself – though there’s a slight chance that he might yet become the personal bag- carrier of the next Labour leader, his wife Yvette Cooper. (Poor choice of leader in my opinion; Yvette is not Ed Miliband, but she’s not exactly winning.)
And so we come to what will soon turn out to be the big, big thorn-bush in the Tory rose-garden: the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of the Scottish Nationalists. For Alex Salmond, this stonking election result will more than make up for losing the Scottish independence referendum last September. Truth be told, Salmond never really much enjoyed being in power in Scotland. Being in power means being held to account, and being asked awkward questions – when as it is, Salmond would much rather be the one who’s hurling the (verbal) hand-grenades.
Salmond much, much prefers the bigger stage of Westminster, where he’ll now have 55 cheerleaders at his back, and where it will be his life’s mission to twist David Cameron’s tail.
Salmond’s going to be centrestage again – and the Tories are going to be in his sights; I’ll bet he’s just licking his lips at the prospect of the first prime minister’s question time.
Lastly, and of slight interest: what on earth is going to happen to Ed Miliband’s vast tombstone of pledges? Miliband said that when he became PM, he wanted to erect the ‘Edstone’ in the garden at 10 Downing Street, the better to gaze out on it every day from his office. A little previous.
It might work quite well as crazy-paving for his patio, or perhaps as a kitchen table-top, just so long as he turned it upside down.