Tories face being kicked out as one of the top two parliament parties | Nigel Fletcher

all of the evidence that's showing uh at the moment uh is that this is going to be on these numbers and on these polls which could change but haven't done so far uh not just a disastrous result for the conservatives uh of coming out with 150 seats or so which would be their worst result since sort of the great Reform Act um but actually a result that just puts them sort of on on 5060 uh seats um and in that cap in that scenario um they will potentially be overtaken um in Parliament for second place they will not be the official opposition anymore and that is a transformative thing to happen not just to our current politics but to our party system and it hasn't happened uh for over a hundred years really um since the you know about 100 years ago when the liberal party was displaced by the labor party uh right so let's just hear exactly what it was that Grant shaps was talking about this morning we will hear it in full and then we will talk to a political hisor Nigel Fletcher who can put it into context for us but here is Grant shaps if you ended up with a party with a massive majority unchecked power able to do anything that they wanted um and with the instincts of we would argue with uh G ARA's party on all sorts of things from Raising people's tax to uh their lack of support for increased defense spending uh we think that would be a dangerous place to put this country no one's cast a vote no one has as I'm aware of so far even postal votes haven't gone out uh there is everything to fight for and we are fighting for every single seat in this country the polls had been wrong before but I think it's perfectly legitimate to say uh the country doesn't function well when you get majorities the size of Blair or even bigger uh and uh and and we would say there are a lot of very good hardworking MPS who can hold the government of the day to account okay and we'd say those are conservative MPS well let's talk now to Nigel Fletcher political historian let's just tackle that exact allegation Nigel that a country doesn't function well with a huge majority and the example used there by Mr shaps was about Tony Blair's majority in 1997 uh through the annals of History where else might you be able to see that a majority is very bad news for democracy well it's one of those things that um governments um often sort of say in a very worthy kind of uh way that they sort of say that democracy requires that good government um needs a good opposition um but in in the past we've had for example under Margaret Thatcher one of her ministers said in advance of I think the 1983 election that um he thought that it was a bad idea for uh the government to have a large majority and obviously that didn't make him very popular with Mr Stater um but I think we can see with the example particularly of Mrs thater um that having been in office for a long time was something that sort of did lead to her perhaps losing her political Instinct um towards the end and I think that's probably more the concern is longevity in power rather than the size of the majority um I've seen quite a few people in recent days um commenting on the fact that um really uh once you're into uh having a working majority in Parliament the size of it really doesn't actually matter in terms of your ability to govern as long as you can reliably get MPS to troop through the voting lobbies and get your legislation through the capacity of the government to uh be able to govern is unchanged whether you have a majority of 179 or whether you have a majority of of 30 um the only point to which it matters is if you have a large number of your backbenchers um who are potentially rebellious uh because if they then Ally with the opposition if your majority is smaller you are much more vulnerable to losing votes um in that context so it does matter in in in some scenarios um but really on the whole it's not something that really affects the government's capacity to uh to get its business where I think it it certainly does matter and perhaps will matter is if we are looking at the kind of result that some of the polls seem to be pointing towards and it's in a way it's quite refreshing to see today whether it's prompted by Grant shaps or or Frank luns I don't know but um but actually talking about the real realityy that this could very much happen um the the Canada scenario that's been talked about for the conservatives has been almost a kind of uh sort of parlor uh game that people have been playing of sort of saying oh you know imagine if that were to happen here without really quite believing it despite the fact that there have been several polls now on the MP model and others that have showed us that's exactly where things are pointing that the conservatives may be reduced to much less than 100 seats particularly given the the challenge um from reform and when you get into that kind of territory of opposition parties being very much smaller then I think it does start to matter for the functioning of parliament uh if nothing else yeah uh would it also be fair to say Nigel that people might not feel a huge seismic change in their daily lives given what is being promised by both the main parties uh in this election we are fighting in the center ground here so when the governing party says don't let them in don't let them in with a huge majority perhaps quite a lot of the electorate are thinking well hang on a minute sometimes I can't really tell the difference between either of you anyway yes and I think that one of the things that this this tactic risks doing um is that people will think well it is just a tactic and sort of say you're trying to scare us into voting for you this is some cunning Ploy that you you know that actually you're in with a much better chance or you're not in this sort of sort of existential uh danger um I think actually people are are usually quite canny at working out the the situation a large part of the the reason for Jeremy Corbin's surprising success in the 2017 election was that people did conclude for themselves that Teresa may was heading for a very large majority um and concluded it was therefore safe to vote for their their nice local labor candidate who they thought wasn't as scary as Jeremy Corbin and they weren't going to win anyway so they work that out for themselves without having to be uh told that by the parties so I think the risk of this is people will say oh well the Tories would say that they want to trick us into voting for them um actually I think as I've said you know all of the evidence that's showing uh at the moment uh is that this is going to be on these numbers and on these polls which could change but haven't done so far uh not just a disastrous result for the conservatives uh of coming out with 150 seats or so which would be their worst result since sort of the great reform act um but actually a result that just puts them sort of on on 50 60 uh seats um and in that cap in that scenario um they will potentially be overtaken um in Parliament for second place they will not be the official opposition anymore and that is a transformative thing to happen not just to our current politics but to our party system and it hasn't happened uh for over a 100 years really um since the you know about 100 years ago when the liberal party was displayed placed by the labor party um so these things can happen historically parties can rise and fall the fact that it hasn't happened in recent times kind of makes us feel that it's not going to happen this time yeah but looking at these numbers it very much could final thought uh what do you think that Grant Chap's comments now mean for the level of debate within this election campaign which if we were to be hopeful and optimistic would be one about policies it would be one about the detail of those policies do you think that that just Falls away now because this has been said I think um in a way what he might be hoping uh that it will do is to focus people's attention more on uh Labor's policy um I think once you're starting to almost concede the election then really what you're saying about your policy is almost irrelevant um and I think a lot of people might conclude that that you know looking at the conservative Manifesto launch yesterday there wasn't a huge amount of debate about it because people fundamentally don't believe that it's they're going to be in a position to implement it so I think um it has many advantages for the conservative party if people do start uh directing their attention towards the labor party and their policy um it's something that does happen to oppositions that they um if they're seen as the favorite in an election they do get that bit more scrutiny in in this scenario I think um we're getting scrutiny not just on their proposals and and what's in their their Manifesto which I think we'll we'll see tomorrow um but also on the the fact that there will be no meaningful opposition to them either within the labor party because of the way they've managed candidate selection and the fact that a large majority um kind of protects them from from rebellions um but also um the opposition parties um on on these numbers are going to be fragmented and divided and essentially scrapping amongst themselves for second place and that's the real story out this which I still don't think that many of the in the public have really taken on board is that the real contest in this election now as of today on these numbers seems to be for second place um and and that's something we have not seen in this country for as I say about a century in terms of parliamentary seats the closest we got was in the early 80s when the sdp were running labor close in votare but they weren't coming anywhere close in numbers of seats what we're seeing in this election is something I hesitate to say unprecedented because it has happened to other parties uh to the labor party in 1931 for example uh crashing down to 50 seats then but this is something that we have not seen for at least a century of a potential crossing over of our second party really interesting thank you very much indeed that's the political historian Nigel Fletcher and quite a few of you are wanting to point out uh hypocrisy uh that you have heard from Grant shaps I'll just pick one of them from Vonnie I didn't notice the Tories objecting to a large majority in 2019 it really seemed to be okay then yeah but just listening to Nigel there what his last his last statement about what might happen what we could be on the cusp of that's why I don't get why other people aren't super interested yeah I mean I don't want to stay up all night discussing politics but at the moment you could almost make the case that it was worth doing for so I no I completely agree with you um because you know any any picture is only as interesting as the background of the picture and if the background of our political picture is going to change like in our lifetimes we've never seen it change before then that is super interesting yeah it really is

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 90,250

Keywords: general election, uk general election, general election 2024, election, tories, uk election, general election news, 2024 general election, election 2024, rishi sunak general election, local election results, election uk, uk elections, general election uk, local election, general election 2019, july 4 general election, conservatives, rishi sunak, polls, polling results, uk politics

Id: BId9PeP1N3k

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2024