The General Election of 2015 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the last of six lectures on significant post-war general elections basa in the autumn for those who want more punishment I would begin another series of six lectures on post-war political crises but the first of which will analyze the crisis in the National Health Service in 1951 which divided the Labour Party and which has I believe many echoes today but this lecture is on the recent general election the outcome was of course unexpected unexpected perhaps even by the victorious conservatives themselves it is said that the bookmakers did be badly from it losing money to those who've made large bets on the Conservatives at favorable odds it said the only people from whom they made money with the pollsters and the political scientists now I I was often asked before the election who I thought would win and I answered I haven't the faintest idea and nor really is anyone else and perhaps some commentators now wish that they had said the same now in the election the Conservatives gained 25 seats net from 2010 and around 0.9 percent of the vote so the Conservatives increased their share of the vote and also their number of seats and that's the first time in modern history that a prime minister has ever achieved both after a full term in office no prime minister in modern times has ever done that before it's a remarkable achievement on the part of David Cameron and his nearest competitor is Lord Falls Bray who in 1900 secured a higher share of a vote than in 1895 but nine fewer seats now despite that the government has a majority or just twelve in practice sixteen since for shin Fane nationalists from northern ireland do not take their seats and this is the lowest majority of any government since october 1974 when labor had a majority of just three the coalition government of 2010 to 15 had a majority of 78 and to the extent that stability depends on the size of the majority the overall majority of 2015 could be less stable than the hang of Parliament of 2010 because of course with the majority of 16 any nine rebellious backbenchers could undermine the government and that experience happen to the last conservative Prime Minister John Major who in 1992 had a majority of 21 which caused him great difficulty in ratifying the Maastricht Treaty and John Major used to say that of those 21 at least 13 were quite mad and these conflicts could occur again especially of course upon the issue of the European Union which is going to be very important in the first half of this Parliament and which will be very divisive now as you can see the Conservatives are 6.5 percent ahead of labour and in the past that would have given the Conservatives a much larger majority but part of the reason why the conservative majority is not large and not the whole reason that part of the reason is that the boundaries are out of date and favor the Labour Party and equalizing the boundaries which be conserved as intend to do would give them around 20 extra seats but the Margaret Thatcher who in 1979 got only a slightly greater Lee the camera had a comfortable majority of 43 Edward Heath who had half Cameron's lead had a comfortable majority of 30 and Harold Macmillan who had a smaller lead than Cameron had a majority of a hundred and Anthony Eden who had around half Cameron's lead had a majority of 15 eight now the Conservatives have a majority of seats only in England the first time ever in British history there are different majorities in each component part of the United Kingdom in Wales labour is the majority party and the Conservatives their gain just over a quarter of the vote very far from a majority in Scotland the SNP are the majority party and the Conservatives have around fifteen percent of the vote 1/7 of the vote and just one NP and these are the lowest percentages of the vote in Wales and Scotland of any government since the war in Northern Ireland none of the three parties have been able to win the seats indeed labour and the Liberal Democrats do not contest seats there since the conflict is not between different visions of Britain's economic and social future but between different and competing national identities British and Irish and voters who feel that their identity as primary British both the unionist party's primary the Democratic Unionist Party voters who feel that their identity is primarily Irish vote for nationalist parties champagne and the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the majority party in Northern Ireland is the Democratic and humanist party now these different majorities in different parts of the United Kingdom show very clearly that Britain has become a multinational state and what had previously been seen as one nation representing different kinds of people is now seen as a union of different nations each with its own identity and institutions and in this multinational and quasi federal state Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own party systems quite distinct from those in England so this multinational state has a multi-party system and is unlikely to return in the foreseeable future to the standard pattern of two-party conservative and labour competition now the Labour Party won 232 seats 26 fewer than in 2010 and 99 fewer seats than the Conservatives and that's the furthest it has been behind the Conservatives since 1987 the party made a net gain of 15 seats in England mainly in London but lost 40 seats in Scotland all but one of its Scottish seats to the SNP and also not one in Wales to the Conservatives and there was a miniscule net swing to labour of around point two percent labour gained around 1.4 percent of the vote from its historic historic low of 2010 its second worst result ever the Conservatives gained point 8 percent of their 2010 vote it's a paradox that the small increase of the conservative vote led to a game of 2014 while the larger increase in the labor vote led to the loss of 26 seats and the reason for this is that contrary to expectation what is one of the reasons that contrary to expectations more labour votes seem to have been wasted than conservative most of Labour's votes in Scotland were wasted since they came second almost everywhere and many of Labour's votes in conservative labour marginal seats in England were also wasted labour had hoped that much of the 2010 Liberal Democrat vote would come to it some of it did but the consequence in some seats was paradoxically to help the Conservatives and increase the number of wasted votes for example in the typical liberal Democrat seat in the West Country labour was a bad third and in the past some labour voters had supported the Liberal Democrats on tactical grounds to keep out the Conservatives in 2000 fifteen many such voters decided they could no longer support the Liberal Democrats since that party had entered into coalition with the Conservatives so they returned to labor the result was that labour came a better third but the Conservatives won the seat so the higher labor vote was wasted now although Labour's vote was slightly higher in 2015 and 2010 it seems to me nevertheless that this defeat was in many respects worse for labour because in 2010 labour had the excuses if you like that it had been in power for 13 years that it was perhaps exhausted and it had to cope with the economic crash of 2008 for which many voters blamed it in 2015 there were no such excuses now some have compared the outcome with that in 1992 which was another unexpected victory for the Conservatives but 2015 seems to me worse because although the Conservatives won the 1992 election against expectations they will then honor withdrawing tide after four election victories they in fact lost 40 seats admittedly insufficient to destroy their overall majority but sufficient to reduce it from 102 to 21 but in 2015 it seems that the Conservatives were on a rising tide and that they are gaining seats after just one term in office there are only two post-war elections at which labour won fewer seats than in 2015 and they were the elections of 1983 in 1987 both fought against Margaret Thatcher at the height of her power but at least in that period labour had the security of safe seats in Scotland and the north of England and that is no longer so the supposedly safe seats in Scotland have been won by the snps while the safe seats in the north of England are now under threat from you Kip which came second in 48 labour seats 19 of them in and all and that is dangerous the labor since you Kip is a more acceptable for many traditional labor voters than the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats and it seems in contrast to many predictions that you keep damaged labor more than it did the Conservatives that conservative defectors seem to have returned to their party in larger numbers than labour defectors did now in the last 40 years just one man has won an election for labour Tony Blair though he's become a pariah in some labour circles who've seen he never forgiven him for this in 2006 in his farewell address to the main party conference Tony Blair said there was just one Labour tradition he didn't like and that was losing elections in January he told The Economist newspaper that if the election was going to be fought between a traditional left-wing party and a traditional right-wing party it would have the traditional result a Conservative government and so it has proved to be and Blair's diagnosis has in a sense been vindicated by the outcome of the election the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed the party lost over 15% of its 2010 vote and 49 of it's 57 seats this was a catastrophe and takes the party back to its position in the 1970 election when it gains 7.5 percent of the vote and just six seats at that time there was a joke there all of Liberal MPs could comfortably fit into a taxi since then leaders such as David Steele Paddy Ashdown sought to rebuild the party as a credible party of the center-left in a sense the Liberal Democrat position now may be worse than in 1970 since under the coalition it seemed to have lost that identity as a party of the center-left now Nick Clegg strategy was to join the coalition with conservatives to prove the Liberal Democrats could be a responsible party of government and not just a protest party for the discontented but joining the coalition meant breaking the party's pledge on student fees the party promised in into 2010 manifesto to abolish student fees and in supplemented his manifesto promise with a personal pledge by every one of its 57 MPs but the coalition government in which the Liberal Democrats participated instead of abolishing tuition fees tripled them and this sort of stroke destroyed the party's credibility even amongst those who disagreed with the pledge and many voters refused to take any notice of what the party said after that nor did the Liberal Democrats achieve their aim of constitutional reform there was a referendum in 2011 on electoral reform not the Liberal Democrat favourite proportional representation but different system the alternative vote and before the 2010 election Nick Clegg had called that a miserable little compromise but he nevertheless advised voters to support it it was however defeated in 2011 on a low turnout of around 43% by two-to-one majority and the Liberal Democrats also failed to achieve reform of the House of Lords more fundamentally the Liberal Democrats had a basic difficulty as a party of the center-left in joining a coalition with the Conservatives and this dilemma was again well summed up by Tony Blair who said if you have opposed a Labour government from the left for 13 years and then you joined a conservative led coalition you have some questions to answer and perhaps the Liberal Democrats might have left the coalition earlier saying that with the economic crisis over the party is now needed to re-establish its identity perhaps smaller parties always suffer in coalition but what is clear in the past liberal coalition's with conservatives have been disastrous for the party the lloyd-george coalition in 1918 ended the role of liberals as a party of government the national government of nineteen 31 and the role of liberals as a party of opposition this election seemed to me to the end of the role of the Liberals as a third party indeed there must now be a real question mark as to whether Liberal Democrats can continue as a party and you may say that nick clegg strategy has been as it were tested to destruction now David Cameron was widely criticised in the Conservative Party for forming the Coalition in 2010 rather than a single party minority government which could then call a second general election and in that election his critics hoped he would win a majority but Cameron said that was too risky of strategy he said the Conservatives was first show they can govern responsibly and secure economic stability then they could win and undermine the Liberal Democrats and this he has achieved remarkable in appeerd of austerity those who came to my last lecture may remember Mervyn King's comment in 2010 that the governor of the Bank of England that the 2010 election would be a good one to lose because the new government who had to impose such severe measures of economic restraint that it would be condemned to opposition for a long time and that has proved to be yet another failed prediction and Cameron perhaps is an underestimated politician indeed the political cemeteries are littered with those who have underestimated him he has now destroyed a whole critical generation Ed Miliband and Ed Balls of the Labour Party which may well seek its next leader from a generation untainted by the Blair Brown years he has destroyed amongst his coalition partners Nick Clegg Vince Cable David Laws Eddie Davey and Danny Alexander almost the whole front bench of the liberal down to earth let us now look at the other parties these Scottish Nationals the SNP 156 of Scotland's 59 seats where the three major parties conservative Labor and Liberal Democrats have one seat each you can has just one seat although nearly 4 million Motors one-eighth of the voters voted for them and the greaves also won just one seat for nearly four percent of the vote the one minor party which most people be glad to see has disappeared the British national party which got nearly two percent of the vote in 2010 broke up shortly after the election and received a total vote in the country of 1667 votes less than half of that secured by the monster raving loony party which won three thousand eight hundred and ninety eight now the election is bound to raise questions about the Justice of the electoral system the Conservatives won their majority a small overall majority on 37 percent of the vote and that's a smaller percentage than Winston Churchill's Conservatives gained in 1945 when they lost the election in 2005 Tony Blair won an overall majority of 62 on just 35 percent of the vote so in each case over three fifths of the voters did not support the government and were presumably opposed to it the last government to secure even 40 percent of the vote let alone the 50 percent was Tony Blair's in 2001 and Matt gave him a landslide majority of a - 76 previous landslides in 1997 1987 and 1983 with governments enjoying majorities of at least a hundred were secured on 42% of the vote the government which nearly three pimps and the voters rejected so if the first aim of an electoral system is to produce the majority rule the bridge electoral system is now spectacularly failing because it's producing not majority government but government by the largest minority of a quite a small minority now the second aim of an electoral system should be that all minorities were all significant minorities are reasonably fairly represented and again I think the electoral system fail spectacularly that that because minorities other than the largest minority our representing have hazard fashion according to no clear principle now four point five percent of the United four point seven percent of United Kingdom voter yielded fifty six seats for the SNP but twelve point six percent of the United Kingdom vote yielded one seat for you kit nearly four million voters gain no representation and so the voice of those who want Britain to leave the European Union would not be effectively heard in Parliament perhaps it is not surprising that you Kipp and the Greens favor proportional representation but also to be fair so does the SNP and Nigel Farage the lead rebuke it robber ironically perhaps once Britain to adopt the German system of proportional representation now to parties in the election secured in seats the Liberal Democrats with nearly eight percent of the vote in the United Kingdom and the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland which competes over in Northern Ireland and secured North point six percent of the United Kingdom's voting and under proportional representation the outcome would have been as follows now in England itself 525 of the 533 seats are held by the conservative or Labour Party's the conservative and labor parties are dominant in England with almost all the seats but around a quarter of English voters voted for other parties they are represented by 8 MPs six Liberal Democrats one you keep MP and one green MP in Scotland the disproportion is even more acute as we have seen the SNP swept the board within 56 of the 59 seats and that would lead the incautious observe to conclude that nearly every Scottish voters supported separatism but in fact the SNP vote was 50% just 5 percent higher than the yes vote in the referendum last September and 5 percent higher than the SNP vote in Scottish Parliament elections of September of 2011 the 50 percent of the voters who supported separatism secure 56 seats the 50 percent of the voters who supported the Union secured 3 seats now David Cameron declared after the election that he will respect the wishes of the Scots in their choice of representatives but it to be hope you'll also respect the wishes of the 50 percent who voted for unionist parties and who are scandalously in my opinion under representative again under a proportional electoral system the allocation of seats would have been like that now the House of Commons has now come to resemble a distorting mirror of the kind that people see at the fair where some people's profiles are magnified and distorted while others are diminished to the point of invisibility and of course the reason for this is that under the first-past-the-post system the number of seats which our party wins depends not only upon how many votes it wins but also upon the geographical structure it's both a party whose vote is fairly evenly spread like you Kidd may gain a large number of second places but we'll win hardly any seats a party who's voted in geographically concentrated such as the SNP those voters of course concentrated Scotland will be over-represented now these distortions are now in my opinion of more than theoretical interest because they could threaten the very unity of the country by making Britain appear more divided than it actually is there are of course great differences in voting behavior between England and Scotland but these are exaggerated by the electoral system which therefore exacerbates the West Lothian problem divides inland from Scotland and increases the likelihood of separation and one argument for changing the electoral system in my opinion is it would alter the dynamics of the conflict between England and Scotland and make it more manageable I now want to talk about the significance of the election and I earlier mentioned that David Cameron's nearest competitor through electoral success was launched Thornbury who was Prime Minister at the beginning of the 20th century and Lord Salisbury defined the essential role of the Conservative Party as followed he said I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals and it's fear of the left that has made the Conservatives Britain's national party of government social psychologists have told us that fear of losing what one has is a stronger motivation than hope of future gains voters turn to the Conservatives when they are fearful in the early 19th century they were frightened of contagion from the French Revolution in Britain in the late 19th century they were frightened of Irish Home Rule in the 1920s they were frightened of socialism and communism in the 1930s people were frightened the financial collapse and in the 1980s people were frightened of the trade unions now 2015 was I think no exception voters seemed fearful that Labour might not be economically competent and there will be a repetition of the economic problems that face Gordon Brown's government and they also feared that with a Labour government the SNP would exercise a stranglehold over Westminster labour wins elections when it can convince voters that it combines policies of fairness with basic economic competence and that it will preserve rather than undermine that was the case in 1945 when it seemed that labour would be a better guarantor proposals in the beverage report and the Conservatives in 1966 when Harold Wilson's slogan was reassuring you know labour government works in 1997 when Tony Blair promised to maintain much of the new settlement carved out by Margaret Thatcher and John Major in 2015 labor was not able to convince the voters that it would be competent at running the economy there Ford's message of social justice have less resonance than it would otherwise have done Tony Blair had argued in 1997 that one did not have to choose between economic competence and fairness but labour could provide both that message now seemed to have been lost and labour has now lost three different constituencies which it needs to regain its lost Scotland where the threat is from the SNP it's lost many voters in the hitherto safe north of England which is threatened by you Kidd and it has lost middle England where it is threatened by the Conservatives labour is now almost wholly unrepresented south of a line from the wash to the seven outside London of a hundred and ninety seven seats south of that line excluding London labour holds just eleven and this is obviously a very complex problem for the Labour Party and not to be resolved simply by saying it should move left or it should move right because in England possibly it was seen as two left-wing in Scotland some people said it wasn't left-wing enough that the SNP was more opposed to austerity than the Labour Party and the SNP was against the independent Trident nuclear deterrent nor is to be resolved simply by saying that labour must have peeled the aspirational voters because it's not clear that many of those in the north and Midlands who deserted the Labour Party were necessarily aspirational voters at all so the problem for labour is to meet needs of a very diverse series of constituencies which it has lost and it's much easier to state the problems to offer a solution and I'm certainly not going to do that now the general election of 2010 had revealed the lowest combined vote for the two major parties since the 1920s one-third of the voters supported parties other than labor or the Conservatives in 2015 there was a slightly higher percentage supporting the two major parties but not much but the crucial difference is this that the composition of the remaining third was quite different in 2010 as you can see the most of the voters who did not vote labor or conservative voted for the Liberal Democrats in 2015 they did not now in both elections the Liberal Democrats called upon moderate voters to support them to moderate the two extremes in 2010 the voters listened in 2015 they did not and the bulk of the remaining third of the vote which did not go to labor or the Conservatives went to parties which Liberal Democrats and Pratt others too would certainly label as extreme namely UK and the Scottish National Party and they were the only parties which radically increased their votes very dramatically now in 2010 youcan't got 3% of the vote and that itself was by far the largest vote ever secured by a minor minor party nationally in a British election but 12.5 percent vote in 2015 for a minor party outside the big three it's quite unprecedented and indicates like the vote for the SNP that there has been a genuine grassroots insurgency and rebellion British politics these the high boats for these two parties are a quite new phenomenon in British politics they mark a discontinuity and show that the 2015 election is quite different from anything that's happened in Britain in the past and UK and the SNP have one important feature in common but they seek to replace the politics of ideology with the politics of identity they are not easy to place on the left-right spectrum of politics you can be a left-wing supporter a British exit from the European Union or a right-wing supporter of exit and indeed you Kipp is saying not that David Cameron's not right-wing enough but that he's not British enough in Scotland you can be a left-wing nationalist or a right-wing nationalist and the Scottish nationalists aren't saying that the other parties are too left-wing or to right-wing but they're not Scottish enough and these parties are concerned not primarily with a distribution of income and resources for the economic matters which constitute the main elements on the political agenda for the other parties they're concerned about questions on where we belong are we really European is being European compatible with being British his being Scottish compatible with being British and these questions whether Britain should remain in the European Union whether Scotland should remain in the United Kingdom and if so on what terms would likely to dominate this part now David Cameron warned that a vote the UK could give ed Miliband the key to Downing Street by splitting the right-wing vote and Ed Miliband said a vote for the SNP could allow Cameron to remain in Downing Street by splitting the left wing though but the people who voted for these parties said that Cameron and Miliband were all too similar and the voters for these parties came from those who felt the two major parties far from being extreme were all too similar in their moderation which they rejected you can pointed out that the major parties together with the Liberal Democrats agreed that Britain should remain in the European Union they broadly welcomed immigration or at least were unable to curb it radically they favored gay marriage and they favored HS to the SNP reminded the Scots of the major parties agreed on the need for austerity and for retaining the trident independent nuclear deterrent so it made little difference which of them won the election both represented a discredited political class so these voters said unable to speak a language which these voters could understand they felt and represented by these parties who were they to vote for if they didn't agree with these elements of the consensus you can vote as said if only we were out of the European Union we would not have a problem with immigration SNP voters argued if only we were out of the United Kingdom we would not have a problem with austerity and these views were most strongly held so it seems by those left behind by social and economic change in the heirs of the first Industrial Revolution the heirs of a heavy industry which in decline but one of the left-behind areas in the Midlands stole one of its labor MP said it has never really recovered from industrial decline in the past he went on to say people in stoke didn't mean qualifications they left school went straight into a job and thought they would never be out of work and in the 3-stone constituencies you could gain between 20 and 25 percent of the vote the strength of you Kip and the SNP lies in these areas in the west-central belt of Scotland in parts of the Midlands and decaying seaside towns on the East Coast in the west central belt of Scotland Glasgow had voted yes in the referendum last September but middle-class SNP air is in Perth sir and Aberdeen sure voted no the East Coast decaying seaside towns on the East Coast such as platon where the one you keep MP was returned and there's developing a sharp cleavage in Britain between those who have the skills to benefit from globalization and those who have not this is a new cleavage in British politics while my called a meritocratic cleavage distinguishing broadly between those who have been through the process of higher education and those who have not and those who have not are much more likely to vote for UK than those who have now this of course represents a long-term threat to the Labour Party as well as the Conservatives indeed probably more to the Labour Party because its historic task has been to represent the disadvantaged those left behind by industrial change and because the disadvantaged to tend to live in safe labour seats perhaps the party developed a sense of entitlement to their votes the Labour argued there was no alternative you have to vote Labour but there are now alternatives in England you get and in Scotland the SNP and among such voters there was a strong sense of disfranchisement and powerlessness so fear was not the only motive animating electors you Kipp and the SNP the first popular grassroots insurgent movements in British politics since the war oh they're successful quite different emotion a feeling of powerlessness their belief by many English voters that the political class makes decisions on matters such as Europe and immigration without consulting the voters or considering their interests and are believed by many Scottish voters that Westminster regards them as Colonials needing to be implicated now these views were much less felt in London which was where the seat of Labour's greatest success the Labour vote in London increased by 5.5 percent new that have happened in the country as a whole David Cameron will probably not be in Downing Street in the south outside London by contrast it fell by 0.4 percent and in conservative labour marginals it was down by 1.3 percent and in outside London the Conservatives won more seats from labor and labour one from the Conservatives now in London there is broadly strong support for the European Union a welcome for immigration and support broadly for gay marriage and perhaps is another factors not wholly a frivolous point differentiating London from the rest of the country namely attitudes to Russell Brand because in the fashionable parts of London many people rather liked him and regarded as entertaining with a message that ought to be heard in middle England by contrast he is thought of as very weird now the fact that London is so different from the rest of the country may be one of the reasons why media and metropolitan commentators based in London misses the significance of what was happening in the rest of England London is the headquarters of what one might call liberal internationalism the doctrine which went down to defeat in the general direction and officially the Labour Party has been based on an alliance between the metropolitan intelligentsia and the working-class what might be called a Hampstead Humberside alliance but that alliance has now been undermined Hampstead remained loyal indeed the labor vote there increased despite the mansion tax which probably affected more than any constituency outside London Hampton remained loyal to labour Humberside is now under great threat not only or primarily from the Conservatives but from you Kip now ed Miliband hoped that the financial crash of 2008 had led to a fundamental change in attitudes to the private enterprise system he hoped that attitude to the free market have altered there was now a strong electoral constituency for greater regulation of markets and the banks and for redistributed taxation he hoped that 2008 had been a social democratic moment this turned out not to be the case indeed on the contrary in Britain as on a continent Social Democrat parties find themselves defensive and under threat the case served in Greece and in Spain and perhaps coming to be the case in France and Germany UK and the SNP are constitutional and British versions of other new parties on the continent some of them very unpleasant on the right to the throne Nacional in France Jobbik in Hungary and the Sweden Democrats in Sweden and on the Left cereza in coalition with the independent Greece party the party which has been accused of racism and homophobia party of the right and is admired by the throne national leader marine lepen in Spain there is podemos whose leader Pablo Iglesias in speech in January 2015 paid tribute to Spain's and patria and spoke of pride in his country and the need to recover Spanish sovereignty and that speech struck a new note on the Spanish left and what all these parties have in common whether on the right or on the left his nationalism and 2008 has led not to a certain Democrat moment but to a nationalist moment in Europe as a whole nationalist feeling has been strengthened while glass ceiling and social solidarity seem to have been weakened the alienation and sense of disfranchisement which has arisen has on the whole benefited the right except in the poorer Mediterraneans member states of the European Union where zama whole benefit to the left but even where it has benefit to the left it has not benefited traditional conservative and Christian Democrat parties as as much as nationalist parties on the right who are not conservative with a small see but very radical and there was a new political conflict in the whole of Europe which is now reflected in Britain reflecting a new social cleavage between those who have benefited from globalization and those who have not and this is coming to overshadow traditional left-right policy differences between mainstream parties and these policy differences revolve largely around an internationalist nationalist axis which may become as important in Britain and on the continent and traditional net-like politics now the managing director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde has drawn attention to the contrast between an increasingly integrated global economic system and a political system which is becoming more fragmented as a reaction against globalization and the 2015 election in Britain represented a serious defeat for the ideologies of social democracy and liberalism for believers in liberal internationalism those who believe in an international and open society now believe within these ideologies labour and the Liberal Democrats now have a majority only in the unelected house of laws not in the elected House of Commons the left ironically has a majority in the unelected chamber but not in the elected chamber and perhaps the main cleavage in British politics is now that between those who believe in an open society and those who in you cube and the SNP who do not and perhaps that cleavage is also there within the main parties and particularly within the Conservative Party David Cameron and George Osborne are liberal internationalists who believe in an open society and want to keep Britain in the European Union but there are of course other conservatives who do not share that view and the line will be clearly drawn in the battle over whether Britain does or does not remain in the European Union paradoxically UK has made the British party system more like the multi party systems on the continent it's no longer a two-party system but a multi-party system and that is why the pretty electoral system has produced such strange results it doesn't work too badly when you have just two parties when you have a multi-party system it's results can be somewhat haphazard and all this is very ironic because those who want Britain to remain in the European Union have continually insisted that Britain has become more European perhaps they have succeeded all too well the general election of 2015 let's some fundamental questions still to be decided it answered fairly conclusively come through to the predictions and most commentators the question of who is to govern Britain for the next five years it left open the question of whether they will still be a Britain to be governed it also let open the question of whether Britain will remain in the European Union and it also raised the question of whether we have the right electoral system for a multi-party and multinational state and these questions are perhaps interlinked and are likely to be at the center of the political argument in the 2015 Parliament now I began in this series of lectures by discussing the general election of 1945 when none of these issues were even on the horizon two major parties gained 86 percent of the vote between them and the Liberals got another 9 percent of the vote Labour 147 point 8 percent of the vote very near to 50% and the defeating conservatives 39 point 8 percent of the vote nearly 3 percent more than David Cameron's victorious conservatives this year there was a sense of confidence and trust in political leaders Churchill that obviously had giant while the ante government followed its manifesto almost to the letter pursuing a program of radical social reform that set the parameters of the modern welfare state and established structures which no later government has been able to undermine nationalist parties had no representation in Parliament they seemed irrelevant and aptly said in the 1950s they were out of date the politics of northern arms was dominated by the unionists but they were then in a lance would be conservatives and voted with them in the House of Commons so there were two unified parties which had almost all of vote and Britain seemed a unified society despite the rigors of war and the economic hardships of the period and it was also a very competent Society one commentator in 1944 said that a radical friend of his and said we've shown in this war that we British don't always muddle through we've shown we can organize superbly look at these invasions of the continent which have gone like clockwork look at the harbors we built on these beaches no excuse anymore for unemployment and sums and underfeeding using even half the vision and energy and invention and pulling together as we've done in this war and what is there we cannot do we virtually exploded the arguments of old fogies and better Natas who said we can't afford this and we mustn't do that but disillusion was not long in setting in in 1915 a Labour back-bencher who was to become a minister in Harold Wilson's governed in the 60s said sadly in a Fabian lecture all the obvious things have been done which were fought for and argued about and yet mysteriously enough the ideal the pattern of values has not been achieved we have done them we have created the means to the good life which they all laid down and said if you do all these things after that there'll be a classless society well there isn't and at the same time at WH Auden the poet wrote of Britain calling it in a backward and dilapidated province connected to the big busy world by a tunnel with a certain CD appeal is that all it is now the Labour Party has tried desperately to recover the spirit of 1945 in the post-war years and I said in my first lecture that 1945 was a victory from which labour never recovered in 1945 Britain also seen the great world power and imperial power its prestige in Europe was enormous now it is not even at the centre of European politics let alone world politics and is fighting to secure influence in Europe in the renegotiation over its place in the European Union and the various constitutional experiments of the last two decades in particular devolution seemed to leave the very unity of the country in doubt so that from Britain being a certainty it's now a question mark and indeed these constitutional reforms may themselves be a sign of uncertainty bad at once said that a happy man is not continually repairing his house and a happy country is not continually reformed its institutions or supporting newfangled political parties or questioning its identity and role in the world now elections and I think this one in particular hold a mirror to society revealing the relationship the people and the parties that seek to represent them and it seems to me at this general election reveals one particularly disquieting feature with post-war British politics that the self-confidence which mark the British people at the end of the war and for the first few years after it and which was reflected in the early post-war elections has now gone and the key question that we all have to ask is will it return unfortunately that is not a question I am called upon to answer because it's difficult enough the historian to find out what happened let alone predict the future and I think what happened to the pollsters and commentators in 2015 shows how very dangerous it is to try to protect the future

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Length: 51min 49sec (3109 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2015