The Tory insurgency

IT WAS expected to be a desperately close-run thing: a race to the bottom between the Conservatives and the Labour Party, long since deadlocked in the polls, which would leave both parties far short of a majority. The consequences for Britain’s hoary political system, if unable to bring about the stable government the country craves, were predicted to be grave; and they may yet be. But as The Economist went to press in the early hours of May 8th, it seemed that David Cameron’s party had won an extraordinary vindication for a rather lifeless campaign and the stolid economic record it was based upon. The Conservatives looked certain to be easily the biggest party in the next parliament. With a fair wind, they might even creep across the threshold of 323 seats, which would give them an absolute working majority.

Even if Mr Cameron falls short, he may attempt a minority government; many of his MPs, who over the past five years have developed a pigheaded antipathy to their junior coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, would prefer that. The moderate Mr Cameron, who secretly agrees with Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems’ leader, on a great deal, might well prefer another coalition. Yet in any event, the electoral massacre suffered by Mr Clegg’s party, which lost well over half its 57 seats and may yet trigger its leader’s resignation, makes that less important. To shore up his numbers, the Tory leader could alternatively make a less formal deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose eight seats are available to him.

It is a sign of how turbulent British politics has become that this result appeared, given some of the possible alternatives, to promise relative stability. The pound surged against the dollar as exit polls, released after polling stations closed at 10pm, showed the Tories in front. Yet it takes little reflection to question that response.

In the best case, Mr Cameron will have a much reduced majority to support a divisive governing programme, including public-spending cuts his leftist rivals united in opposing, and the “in-out” referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union he has promised to hold by the end of 2017. The results in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) executed a near annihilation of unionist MPs, by taking almost all the country’s 59 seats, raises an even greater concern.

In tandem with Mr Cameron’s victory, it sharpens one of the nationalists’ main arguments for separation—that Scotland, with but one Tory MP, should no longer be subjected to Conservative rule from Westminster. This might persuade the SNP to promise Scottish voters a rerun of last year’s independence referendum, in the event that they win a majority in the Scottish Parliament election due next year, as they surely will. “There’s a lion roaring in Scotland tonight—a Scottish lion,” chuntered Alex Salmond, the “Nats’” talismanic former leader and now MP for Gordon. A party dedicated to making Scotland an independent country now holds untrammelled power there. Without doubt that fact was the great event of this election.

These worries notwithstanding, the Tories and their campaign chief, Lynton Crosby, a hired Australian hand, can congratulate themselves on a remarkable victory. At its core was a conviction that the party’s twin strengths, its reputation for efficient management of the economy and, in Mr Cameron, the most admired leader of any mainstream party, would trump Labour’s cosier allure. Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader—for now, but perhaps not for much longer—had promised radical reform to British capitalism, to make it more productive and equitable. Yet his hopes of taking the 40-odd Tory seats in England and Wales he needed, given Labour’s wipeout in Scotland, to have a hope of governing, rested on altogether more hackneyed pledges: chiefly, to protect the NHS from imagined Tory predations.

There were reasons, supported by the opinion polls, to suggest he might succeed with that low blow. Mr Cameron’s advantages on leadership are strictly relative—the well-heeled Tory leader, a patrician figure in a time of anti-establishment sentiment, is respected, but not loved, as the unexcited reception he received while campaigning seemed to confirm. Moreover, too few Britons have enjoyed much benefit from the economic recovery his government has overseen; over 2m private-sector jobs have been created, yet on the back of painfully slow wage growth. And if the coalition’s austerity policies, including almost a million jobs axed from the public sector, have caused less pain than Labour claimed, they are hardly endearing. These were all reasons for the Tories to fear. But on results night, they were swept away.

Most of the early-bird returns, including Swindon South, Nuneaton, Battersea, all Tory-Labour marginals aggressively targeted by Labour, saw unpredicted swings to the Tories. And so it went on: seats that Labour expected to win, the Tories held; seats the Lib Dems had hoped to defend, such as Kingston, Twickenham and Brecon and Radnorshire, the Tories took. Late polling by Lord Ashcroft suggested the Tories’ strengths had had their traditional effect—71% of people who admitted to voting Tory cited the fact that its leader “would make the best prime minister”.

For those who worry about the ability of European politicians to enact painful reforms to their indebted economies, without succumbing to populists, this was encouraging. Though it has pandered to some portions of the electorate, especially pensioners, Mr Cameron’s government can hardly be accused of shirking its fiscal responsibilities; it campaigned on a promise to take an additional £12 billion ($19 billion) from the welfare budget.

For Labour, the result was calamitous. Mr Miliband ran a pretty strong campaign, exuding great self-belief and a new presentational polish, acquired from expensive image consultants. Yet having never convinced many Britons even within his own party of his fitness to rule, he now looks like a wasted opportunity for Labour at a vulnerable time. Its losses to populists, on the left, in the form of the SNP, and the right, in the shape of the UK Independence Party, were crippling.

Labour’s wipeout in Scotland was predicted—yet that was little consolation for the loss of so much top talent. The defeat of Douglas Alexander, the campaign chief and putative foreign secretary, to a 20-year-old student, Mhairi Black, was the most shocking of this poll. Less widely expected was a seepage of Labour votes to UKIP, especially in northern fiefs such as Houghton and Sunderland South, where the right-wing populists came second. This dulled the disappointment for UKIP of a failure to capture many seats—perhaps including Thanet South, which its charismatic leader Nigel Farage was contesting. The danger for Labour is that the nationalist assault it has faced in this election could be to some degree repeated in the next one—south of Carlisle.

Both insurgencies should worry Mr Cameron, too. UKIP’s advance should stand for how perilous his promised EU referendum could turn out to be. Not least, because perhaps half his own MPs are, at the least, ready to be convinced by the insurgent party’s virulent Europhobia. The Scottish case brings an even more dreadful prospect. It raises a serious possibility that Mr Cameron, now deservedly flush with success, could be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom. Even before the coalition and cabinet haggling begins, that is a fate the lucky Tory leader must start trying to head off.