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A Transatlantic Lesson for Conservatives -- By: The Editors

Thursday?s election in Britain delivered the political equivalent of a Rubik?s Cube: However you twist the result, you can?t get the colors to align neatly into a government. Neither the Conservatives, nor the Labour party, nor the Liberal Democrats can deliver a majority government on their own. Nor can an alliance of the Labour and Lib-Dem parties form a secure majority government, since the parliamentary seats of both added together come to eleven less than the 326 required. And though the Tories and the Lib-Dems could in theory form a government, it would be a coalition of opposites, at best providing a caretaker government with an anodyne reform program, at worse constantly engaged in acrimonious squabbling.

This result reflects the failure of all three parties. Labour lost in the most unambiguous way -- its share of the national vote declined by 7 percent, to 29 percent, and it lost 91 parliamentary seats. The Liberal Democrats lost five seats and gained a disappointing 1 percent in the popular vote after a campaign which at times promised a breakthrough to major-party status. But the Conservatives under David Cameron -- whom some American conservatives propose as a model for GOP reformers -- were the most powerfully instructive failure. Cameron put his party through a wrenching cultural makeover to make it acceptable to London?s metropolitan liberal intelligentsia, then gained a wretched 3 percent increase in the popular vote against a failing and unpopular government in the middle of both a recession and a financial crisis. The Tories should have strolled to a large overall majority; instead they gained 97 seats to fall short of that majority by fully twenty seats. No one has a mandate for anything. Any agreement will produce a coalition of losers.

Yet as all three political leaders -- Labour?s Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg of the Lib-Dems, and Cameron -- have agreed in the last 24 hours, they have a responsibility to provide Britain with stable government in the face of a financial and economic crisis. Some new government will therefore be formed. As the man in the middle, Clegg is being wooed by both parties, overnight by the Cameron Tories, and, if those talks fail, by a Gordon Brown still alive and well and living in Downing Street. Clegg has one absolutely firm condition for an alliance: some commitment that the next government will introduce reform of the electoral system. The two other parties are prepared to concede this point. So which way will Clegg jump?

A Con-Lib-Dem coalition (or some such lesser arrangement between them) would have a large overall majority and the ability to survive for a full five-year term. Superficially it makes the most sense. Also, it probably represents Clegg?s own preference. But most Tories are strongly opposed to an electoral system based on proportional representation -- pointing out that every election would then produce the kind of instability and haggling in a hung Parliament that currently bedevils them. They might restrict Cameron?s ability to offer an electoral deal good enough to win over Clegg. Even if Cameron got his way, moreover, Clegg would then have to convince his own party, a heterogeneous bunch of radical oddballs, to cohabit with Tories whom they typically think of as Satan with better tailoring. It is quite possible that they would send Clegg back with a ?No? and instructions to negotiate instead with Gordon over a coalition built upon the ?progressive consensus.?

Intensive haggling over the spoils might continue over the weekend, when the markets are closed. Both Brown and Cameron are desperate for the premiership: Brown because it would replace his loser reputation with a ?survivor? one, Cameron because it would erase his electoral disaster this week. Both Brown and Cameron have shown a readiness to jettison the baggage of principle if it impedes their progress. Against two such card-players, Clegg and the Lib-Dems might walk away from the table with half a government in their hip pockets.

But are Brown and Cameron (and Clegg too) right to grab desperately at power in this way? Politicians always think so. But they are not always right. Some elections are a poisoned chalice. Britain?s central banker said ten days ago that the cuts in public spending required to re-balance Britain?s swelling deficit are so large -- and destined to be so unpopular -- that the party imposing them would be out of power for 30 years. Why the determination, then, to be that party? Would it not be more prudent for Cameron, say, to allow himself to be out-negotiated by Brown and to go into opposition while a shaky Lib-Lab coalition brought the wrath of the electorate down on its head by massive spending cuts? Common sense suggests so.

The political history of the 20th century adds a supporting argument: The weakness of a coalition means that it often faces an election when it is most vulnerable and disliked. In 1923 Stanley Baldwin (though he led the largest party) took the Tories into opposition and allowed a minority Labour government to take office with Liberal support. Less than a year later, he defeated the minority government in Parliament and won a massive victory in the subsequent election. Something similar happened in 1931. And in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher refused to entice the Liberals out of their alliance with the Wilson-Callaghan Labour government, saying that she would let both of her opponents ?wither on the vine.? In all three cases -- 1923, 1931, and 1979 -- a solid Tory majority replaced a quarrelsome alliance.

David Cameron should temper his enthusiasm for office in the light of this experience. And if he does not, his party should restrain a leader who has shown scant regard for its traditions and interests.

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Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on May 08, 2010 (boomark / email).