Graham Brady Elected Chairman Of 1922

The 1922 Committee has been in the news a lot this week, particularly amongst the conservative press, after Cameron’s attempted putsch and subsequent retreat on the matter was followed by outrage from the party.

The problem occurred when the committee, which gives a voice to Conservative backbenchers, was forced to hold a snap vote on whether frontbenchers would be allowed to vote and attend meetings, although crucially the frontbenchers could vote on the matter. Unsurprisingly they won the ballot but the numbers who voted against the change suggested that most backbenchers voted against it. The speed of this vote indicated that Cameron wanted to give his ministers the vote before a crucial election for Committee chairman today, though after mounting fury within the party he realised that he was only helping to widen the rift within the party and backed down.

The result was that Graham Brady was elected Chairman today, who was the more right wing of the two candidates and not Cameron’s choice. This will deliver a blow to Cameron. However it is not the major upset that many people think. Brady, while not afraid to question and challenge Cameron when necessary, will not launch a war against him in which the whole Conservative Party will lose.

I would suggest that the biggest damage has already been caused by Cameron himself, in the way he has treated the party for the last four years and in particular the recent abandonment of core conservative principles in exchange for power in Westminster. The attempted coup is just the latest in a series of battles that Cameron has picked with his own backbench MPs.

If this government does split then it will not be as a result of the coalition falling apart. Indeed the Liberal Democrat and Conservative ministers, after years of squabbling and fighting, have suddenly realised that they’re actually remarkably similar and the speed in which they have joined together is both remarkable and frightening. It will be the split within his own party that Cameron needs to be watchful of. But his bully-boy tactics of trying to silence all discontent within the party (perhaps he is trying to emulate Blair again) will be the thing that could break apart the coalition.

The Surrender Of Power

I really don’t understand politicians. After four years of fighting to become Prime Minister, and destroying his own party in the process, some of Cameron’s first decisions are to devolve more powers to Holyrood and offer a referendum on devolving more powers to the Welsh Assembly. Of course he has no intentions on giving the country his promised referendum on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty.

I would expect a Conservative Prime Minister to support the Union (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland I mean) and therefore oppose any further devolution of power from Westminster. If anything I’d expect a Conservative PM to claw some powers back with the long term aim of dismantling the two assemblies. By giving up more powers we will now have a situation whereby Scottish and Welsh MPs are not voting on UK matters but on English matters, which is unacceptable. England is the largest nation in the Union and for it to be disallowed a say in the smaller nations governance but for those same countries to be allowed a say in the governance of England is preposterous.

Inevitably the English will become angered and demand only English MPs sit in Westminster and Scottish and Welsh MPs sit in their respective parliaments. This is one short step from the two countries deciding to go it alone and leave the Union. At the moment there is no major appetite for that to happen but it seems David Cameron is doing all that he can to fuel that, just like his Labour predecessors.

For once it would be nice to have a Prime Minister who actually cared about the country, as opposed to pursuing his own party-political agendas.

Exit Brown, Enter ...

At last after months of pushing, prodding and failed assassinations, Gordon Brown has announced he will resign as leader of the Labour Party.

The timing of this seems significant to me as any possible deal with the Liberal Democrats is said to require the resignation of Brown to attempt to stifle criticism of allying themselves with a failed government. Labour will argue that Brown’s resignation will be proof for the Lib Dems that they are serious with their promises.

Of course many pundits still think that Clegg is close to an agreement with Cameron. I would be very much surprised if this is true as Clegg will require the support of his party who generally despise the Tories. With Brown out of the way they will look to Labour to see if they can get a better deal.

So who is likely to succeed Brown as leader of the Labour Party, and possibly Prime Minister? Well David Miliband is a name that has always been thrown about when talking about Brown’s successor. He’s one of the more popular members of the party (which admittedly isn’t saying much) and is a lot more photogenic than Brown was.

Mandelson has also been suggested before, but I get the feeling that he prefers pulling the strings behind the scenes. Besides if Brown’s successor did succeed him as PM that would cause enough of a stink, but for him to be followed by someone who has not even been elected as an MP let alone PM would cause huge problems for the legitimacy of the government and precede a drubbing at the next General Election.

There are other names like Alan Johnson or Ed Miliband floating around but David Miliband seems like the most likely successor. Whoever takes charge will have to deal with a lot of public anger if the Lib Dems decide to form a coalition with Labour, thereby bringing in another unelected Prime Minister after an election for change. It took Brown just over a year to reach the spectacular lows of popularity with Michael Foot, but his successor may have to start with the setback of even lower popularity.

Clegg The Kingmaker

As was predicted this has been a tight election and no party has gained an overall majority. The Conservatives secured the most votes but will be disappointed nonetheless, despite their talks of success, given the party’s high approval rating even a few months back.

However there have been some surprising results. Labour has been criticised for performing badly but personally I think this is a huge success story for Labour, bearing in mind that last year the Conservatives were miles ahead in the polls and some pundits were claiming that we could see Labour lose power for a generation. Instead, although 48 seats behind the Conservatives, they have a chance of clinging on to power if they can make a deal with the Liberal Democrats, which has already been dubbed a “Coalition of Losers”.

The other big surprise was a loss in votes for the Liberal Democrats despite a recent surge in the polls. Nevertheless because of the Conservatives failure to win an outright majority they have turned out to be the kingmakers in this election. Nick Clegg now has a difficult choice of who to support to form a government.

David Cameron has been trying to woo Nick Clegg much to the dismay of many members of the Conservative Party. A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition seems to be the option the media thinks most likely. However I’d be amazed if an agreement was reached. The key issue the Lib Dems would want in a coalition is a referendum on the voting system, but  the Conservatives would never allow that given that it favours both Labour and the Lib Dems. On other key issues like Europe there are vast differences between the parties and it would show how desperate Cameron is for power if he sacrifices some of his party’s key issues to the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg for his part would alienate many of his own voters who are anti-Conservative.

Clegg would have problems if he supported the Labour Party as well. After all his talk of change he will not want to be seen to be propping up a failed and unpopular government. However the party is much more in tune with the Lib Dems and have already spent the best part of a day promising the Lib Dems a referendum on the Proportional Representation system they so desperately want.

So I believe the most likely result is that talks fail between Cameron and Clegg and they turn instead to the Labour party for a coalition. This would most likely come with a demand for Brown’s resignation so that they can justify it as “change”. But this would leave us with a second consecutive unelected Labour Prime Minister.

We are going to see an interesting couple of days, with the media speculating on what’s going on in the Leaders’ private talks. Voters will have to wait at least a few days if not weeks before they know whether it will be a Labour or Conservative coalition running the country. Either way, any deal will likely prove unstable and we could see another election before the end of the year.

The First Televised Debate

Much has been made of Britain’s first televised leader’s debate. It has been labelled a game changer by most of the media with the Lib Dems now enjoying a 2 point lead over Labour with 30% according to the latest YouGov poll.

Personally I’m not quite sure why the Lib Dems have risen by so much in the polls. I should first off say that I only managed to watch 30 minutes of the debate before switching off in complete boredom – and this is coming from someone who actually finds politics interesting. Of course the debate could have livened up after that but I doubt it.

Mr Brown was his usual dull self, trying to defend Labour’s record and seeking re-election on that – a bad policy considering their appalling record. Mr Cameron seemed to be giving the most sensible answers but failed to get his message across effectively. I’m not sure whether it was an attempt to act serious and Prime Ministerial or whether it was a touch of the nerves but again he seemed incredibly dull. Mr Clegg was in fact the only person who seemed energetic, enthusiastic and interesting, which can be the only reason I can think of for his rise in support because what he was actually saying was complete rubbish. His policies were vague and incredibly idealistic – Mr Cameron and Mr Brown should have been able to pick holes in his arguments easily and exposed the Lib Dems for the idealistic party they are – none of their policies would work in practice. Instead Mr Brown and Mr Cameron chose to argue with each other and ignore Mr Clegg.

Of course the easy way to have made this debate enjoyable to watch would have been to cut the constraints that all the parties signed up to – in particular the ban on applause. If this debate had been more along the lines of Prime Minister’s Questions (which I generally enjoy watching) with jeering and applause from different members of the audience then this would have livened the debate up substantially.

Instead I rather suspect that no-one will be able to remember Britain’s ‘First Great Televised Debate’ for the boredom and monotony it produced. However I shall not say that the debate was insignificant – clearly it has had an effect on the polls and certainly if it stays the way it is then this election will have turned into a 3 legged race. However if the Conservatives and Labour have any sense they will concentrate their efforts in the next two debates to taking apart Mr Clegg’s policies and showing how they are unworkable in practice.

So I shall not follow in the footsteps of most other commentators in proclaiming the rise of the Liberal Democrats, not until the dust has settled and we have seen the next two debates. After all there are still two and a half weeks of the election campaign left to run, and as we all know even one week is a long time in politics.