In the land of the blind

AFTER a five-year slumber, millions of Britons are reawakening, grouchily, to politics. For the leaders of the mainstream parties—David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg—this heightened exposure, which more presidential government and the TV debates inaugurated in 2010 have reinforced, must be painful. It is hard to think of another election in which the candidates to rule Britain were so unpopular.

The proportion of people who approve of Mr Cameron’s leadership is 16 points lower than the share who disapprove of it, according to Ipsos MORI, a pollster. In recent times only Tony Blair, politically ruined by the Iraq War, has made it back to 10 Downing Street with worse ratings. Yet Mr Cameron’s rivals are loathed by comparison. Mr Clegg, who went into the previous election as his party’s great strength, has a rating of minus 36. Mr Miliband’s number, minus 31, makes him easily the most derided politician to have a solid chance of becoming prime minister. The only Labour challenger to have worse ratings in the approach to a general election was Michael Foot, in 1983.

This is the context in which the Tories are running a “presidential-style” campaign around Mr Cameron, whose ruddy features are prominent in their campaign literature. The Tory leader, whose ratings have been fairly steady over the tough course of his premiership, is his party’s great asset. Even in Scotland, where Tories are about as welcome as cholera, Mr Cameron is preferred to Mr Miliband. This is clearly an advantage for the Tories, but, given Mr Cameron’s own sub-stellar ratings, not necessarily a winning one.

Why does he not do better? An easy manner of command and an ability to project empathy, quick wits, vast self-confidence, moderate instincts and other equipage for high office radiate from the Tory leader. Whether at the dispatch box or G7, he looks and sounds the part. Asked why he wanted to be prime minister, he once said he thought he’d “be good at it”. It was a dreadful thing to say, but superficially true. So why is his fan club not bigger, and its members so muted in their praise?

Mainly because it is not clear what Mr Cameron stands for—which is not to say his views are a mystery. He is a pragmatic, modern conservative: fond of tradition, allergic to dogma, with a dash of the social liberalism he showed in legalising gay marriage. He is neither a stick-in-the-mud shire Tory nor a metropolitan liberal but a bit of both, as one would expect of a man formed by county privilege and London life. Yet this is merely the political canvas on which Mr Cameron paints, and his colour scheme is confusing.

After taking over, in 2005, a party made unelectable by feuding over Europe, he sought to sanitise it, by embracing environmentalism and other softer-hued causes. But, as waves of disaffection with immigration, bankers and politicians have broken over his cash-strapped government, Mr Cameron’s modernising has largely gone missing. To placate the Tory right, he has dabbled in Euroscepticism, promising a referendum on Britain’s EU membership—along with curbs on immigration that seem incompatible with that membership.

Had he stamped his imprimatur more boldly on his few modernising achievements—including a fairly green energy policy—such tactical shifts might seem less important. But stamping is not Mr Cameron’s style. Even when trumpeting the coalition government’s successes, in education reform for example, he can sound more congratulatory of his ministers than possessive. Mr Cameron is more chairman than CEO—a communicator, a facilitator, not an agenda setter. “Cameronism” is more an attitude, a confident yet phlegmatic approach to the world, than a creed.

This frustrating lack of clarity has probably made Mr Cameron’s battle to keep his job harder than it should be. But if he succeeds, what would he do? Roughly the same again, probably: some steep (though less than promised) cuts to defence, local government and other unprotected budgets; some decent reform—perhaps to the police, who the Tories are itching to squabble with—and stasis elsewhere, including in difficult departments, such as justice, or wherever Mr Cameron lets an underperforming minister settle. Meanwhile the Euroscepticism that the prime minister’s pandering has not satisfied will maraud like a clumsy drunk. Polls suggest Mr Cameron could secure the EU “In” vote he wants, but the experience would divide his party and distract the government more than Britain can afford.

Mr Cameron might quit soon after that, leaving it to one of his three likeliest successors—George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, Theresa May, the home secretary, or Boris Johnson, the mayor of London—to reunite his party. He insists he wants a full second term. But by 2018 he would have been Tory leader for 13 years and prime minister for eight, the sort of vintage at which Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher turned to political vinegar.

More than their leader’s strength, the Tories’ main hope lies in Mr Miliband’s weakness. The Labour leader is a liability for his party. When Mr Cameron, playing the bully in Parliament, asked how many Labour MPs were putting his rival’s picture on their campaign leaflets, only three raised their hands.

Mr Miliband’s problem is partly presentational, which these days matters. He is gawky, has an adenoidal voice and—as he has rather sweetly acknowledged—looks a bit like Wallace, an Oscar-winning animated character fond of knitted pullovers, cheese and tea, and regularly outsmarted by his dog, Gromit.

It should not matter, of course. Mr Miliband is clever, amiable, genuinely motivated to improve Britain and, in his parliamentary jousts with Mr Cameron, anything but hapless. His big idea, that Britain’s surpassing problem is rising inequality, exacerbated by too many unproductive jobs, also has considerable merit. So do some of his suggested fixes, including an increase in apprenticeships and perks for small- and medium-sized firms.

Also laudably—and against the advice of some of his advisers—Mr Miliband has refused to match Mr Cameron’s EU referendum pledge, and not only because he believes there would be few votes in it for Labour. In outlook a European-style social democrat, he has no appetite for an exercise that promises to foment more Euroscepticism than it allays. Yet given that this is the view of most big companies, it is striking how few support him. Asked to name a single businessman backing Labour, the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, muttered: “Erm, err, Bill”.

Neither Ed Miliband nor Nick Clegg appear on many of their parties’ election leaflets

The problem is not only that Mr Miliband appears more interested in reapportioning wealth than making it. It is that he seems to disapprove of those who do—thus his attacks on energy companies, banks and football clubs and, in Labour’s tax proposals, on high earners generally. Again, his criticisms are often justified. But the effect of these serial assaults, unassuaged by praise for enterprise, is to suggest a naive left-winger, careless of business and out-of-touch with the aspiring middle class on whose support British governments are generally founded.

Though justified, this impression has led to exaggerated fears about Mr Miliband, whipped up by the right-wing press. The Labour leader may disapprove of British capitalism, but as prime minister he would be able to change it less than he would like. The exigencies of austerity, which Labour has committed to extending, albeit less onerously than the Tories would, mean that public services would consume much more of his attention than energy markets. Not least, because Mr Miliband has done little to prepare his party for exacerbating the Tory cuts it has spent five years denouncing. That is a promise of dissent within a Labour government—which would be much rowdier if, as looks likely, it were forced to rely on the populist Scottish National Party for support. The SNP has sworn to end austerity. Its putative leader in Westminster, Alex Salmond, a former Scottish first minister, could make mincemeat of Mr Miliband.

The Labour leader might be happier in a partnership with the Liberal Democrats, whose leader Nick Clegg has been a constructive deputy to Mr Cameron. Much good has that done him: being a bit-part player in an unpopular government has been disastrous for the Lib Dems—and for their leader especially. It has made Mr Clegg, a decent and, unlike most in his party, truly liberal man, perhaps the most reviled public figure in Britain.

Given the party’s gift for local campaigning, the Lib Dems may retain enough of their 56 seats to be kingmaker again. But that would be no thanks to Mr Clegg, who is also well-hidden in his party’s campaign bumf and under pressure from Labour even in his Sheffield constituency. If he wins there, the Tories win the election without a majority and the Lib Dems hold enough seats to put them back in government, he may yet survive as leader and deputy prime minister. In any other scenario, he would likely take the hint and go.

In this litany of put-upon politicians there is a big exception. Nigel Farage has been indispensable to UKIP’s surge from the irrelevant fringe of British politics. Without his acumen and blokey charm, it could not now be contemplating winning half a dozen seats—including for Mr Farage in South Thanet—and costing both the Tories and Labour as many again.

But that is as much a verdict on UKIP’s meagre talents as Mr Farage; and it looks unlikely to play a formal part in Britain’s next government. UKIP would be compelled to ask Mr Cameron, its only plausible coalition partner, for more populist concessions than its weight in seats could command. And he, already under fire from the Tory right, would rather take help from almost any other hand. But the irrepressible Mr Farage is going to carry on enlivening British politics regardless, unless the ciggies get him, or the booze.