[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

Britain
Regime change
Nov 13th 2009
The Tories take over
Reuters
The big question of British politics in 2007 was whether Gordon Brown, then the new prime minister, would
call a snap general election. He didn’t. In 2008 and, after an interlude dominated by the financial crisis, again
in 2009, the question was whether Mr Brown would hang on to his job. He did. In 2010 there will at last be a
general election—and Mr Brown will be evicted from Number 10, by the electorate rather than his own restive
party.
The last date by which Mr Brown must go to the country is June 3rd, but the likeliest
is May 6th. The Conservatives will win, with a majority of between 40 and 70 seats;
David Cameron, the plausible Tory leader, will be the new prime minister. After
taking the Labour Party to a devastating defeat, Mr Brown will stand down as its
leader. The Liberal Democrats will perform respectably, losing some seats to the
Tories in southern England while taking a few from Labour in the north.
The Tories will
quickly pass an
emergency
budget
Before the vote, and despite the poll lead over Labour of around 15 points that the Tories will take into the
formal campaign (the informal one having begun already), there will be a lot of expert chatter about the vast
psephological challenge they and Mr Cameron face. It will be pointed out that, before the election, the Tories
still have fewer MPs than Labour did at its mid-1980s nadir; that the distribution of Tory votes makes it harder
for them to cobble together a majority; and that, to secure one, Mr Cameron needs an electoral swing from
Labour bigger than any since the second world war, other than in Tony Blair’s landslide win of 1997.
But the Tories will overcome these high hurdles to return to government after a gap of 13 years. They will be
aided by a low turnout among traditional Labour supporters, by the waning of old party allegiances and by the
fading of grudges against the last Conservative government. Labour will tell voters that the Tories opposed the
fiscal stimulus which, it will claim, has helped lift the British economy out of recession—while also stressing
that the recovery is too fragile to be entrusted to callous Tory stewardship. It won’t wash. Disenchantment
with Labour, the lure of change and residual anger over the parliamentary-expenses furore of 2009 (which will
hurt the incumbent party most) will weigh more heavily than debatable economic claims. The Tories’ relative
honesty over the coming fiscal squeeze will help and hinder them in roughly equal measure.
Nor will Labour benefit from the juxtaposition of grizzled Mr Brown and sprightly Mr Cameron that the election
will involve. Labour’s hope that it will at least “win” the campaign, if not the actual vote, as Tory policies are
subjected to greater scrutiny, will not be realised. The first live television debates between the leaders of the
main parties will be broadcast. They will be disappointingly dull. Because of the number of seats taken by the
Tories, plus the retirements on all sides (some of them enforced by the expenses scandal), the composition of
the Commons will change dramatically.
The Tories will quickly pass an emergency budget, which will go a small way towards fulfilling their vow to
right Britain’s public finances. Calculating that they ought to inflict the worst pain immediately, so that the
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