Up the hill backwards

The Labour Party has 232 MPs. To form a majority in the House of Commons, a party needs to have 326 MPs. So if Labour is to win the next election outright, it needs to take an additional ninety-four seats.

Of the ninety-four marginal constituencies where Labour missed out most narrowly this year, eight are currently held by the SNP, three by the Liberal Democrats, two by Plaid Cymru and one by the Greens. The other eighty are all Conservative.

It would be simplistic to say that the party needs to win these ninety-four seats to form a majority government, because it assumes that there will no boundary changes (which there will be), and that Labour should target its efforts purely on existing numbers (which isn't necessarily the case). But still, it's a rough guide to the task ahead.

So the question is: How is Labour going to take a seat like Gravesham in Kent (no. 91 on the list), where the Tories currently have a majority of over 8,000? The Lib Dems and the Greens are irrelevant here - there are no votes to be squeezed out of them. So Labour would need to take votes either directly from the Conservatives or from Ukip, who are in a strong third place with a 19 per cent share.

The same pattern is found right across the country. Not just the obvious southern constituencies of Crawley (no. 71), Milton Keynes South (83) and Thurrock (8). But also seats in the Midlands, such as Dudley South (55), Erewash (30) and Telford (11). And in the North as well: Morley & Outwood (6), Pendle (65) and Stockton South (47).

All of these and many others - most of those on the list - are held by the Conservatives, with Labour second, Ukip third, and no one else in sight. Winning these seats is Labour's only path to power.

By comparison, the general election this year was so much easier. Some four-and-a-half million Lib Dem votes went missing from the party's 2010 total. Which makes it all the more shocking that Labour's popular vote only increased by around three-quarters-of-a-million. Next time it'll be far harder.

Some things will change before 2020, of course. Ukip support may well fall away in the next couple of years, depending on how the referendum goes, which would make their votes more easily available for someone. But this is far from certain. It may be that Ukip actually increases its strength. Or it may split. Their vote is the great unknown in electoral arithmetic, but my assumption is that there's a stubborn protest vote in there that's not going to end up with either of the major parties.

Somewhat clearer than the fate of Ukip is the fact that surely the Lib Dems will do better in the next election than they did this year. In a very marginal seat, this might help Labour, since it could reduce the Tory share. But more generally, the Lib Dems will be on the rise and will be competing with Labour for new votes.

Maybe majority government is too ambitious a target for Labour right now. Maybe a minority administration, with support from other parties, is as good as it could get. But the challenge is still the same: How does the Labour Party take votes from the Conservatives and from Ukip?

A tale of some minor parties

A week or so back, I predicted that one consequence of the election would be the resignations of Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg as the leaders of, respectively, Ukip and the Liberal Democrats. I also predicted that Natalie Bennett would not resign as leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.

These things having now come to pass, it's time to evaluate them.

Starting with the last first, Bennett should have the decency to go immediately. She has proved herself to be completely useless as a leader. The Greens had a dreadful election, and much of the blame for that rests with her.

The party achieved less than 4 per cent of the vote. Under most sensible forms of proportional representation, the bar for securing seats is set at 5 per cent. Frankly they're fortunate that first-past-the-post came to their rescue and gave them an MP.

Yet the opportunity was unquestionably there for the Greens: lots of airtime and visibility, a weak Labour leadership, a widespread dissatisfaction with mainstream politics. A breakthrough of sorts was possible. Obviously not in terms of winning large numbers of seats, but even without representation, a minor party can still have an influence, can help to shape the political agenda.

You only need look to Ukip. At a time when they had no MPs at all, they were still capable of scaring the British prime minister into promising a referendum when he didn't want one, and panicking the Labour Party into saying they'd 'get tough' on immigration, when we knew they wouldn't.

So what did Bennett do? She joined in the chorus of 'the Tories are mean and nasty'. Well, if you believed that, then you should have done the sensible thing and voted for a party capable of removing the Conservatives from office. Which is, indeed, what the vast majority of those opposed to the Tories actually did.

At a constituency level, things may have been different, but on the national stage Bennett offered nothing at all that was distinctive. One brief mention in a leaders' debate of climate change and vanishing species, and that was it. At a time when fracking offers a perfect way of linking the local with the global, there was only silence.

It is, of course, more difficult to get attention for environmental issues at a time of economic hardship, but this is far from a new problem. I wrote about it in Crisis? What Crisis?, my book on the 1970s. There's been plenty of time to work out a strategy for such a situation.

The Greens are one of the few parties who actually have a USP. Yet they didn't exploit it. Instead there was a manifesto and a platform full of policies on an absurd range of issues that were entirely irrelevant, including the stupidity over copyright, to which I drew attention a while back. (And which subsequently annoyed the hell out of a lot of creative people who were sympathetic to the party.)

Why? Where's the benefit in burying your brand? Why allow your core message to be lost amidst a welter of questions about a tax policy you will never have a chance to implement?

One other point, which most people are (quite rightly) too polite and decent to say out loud: the voice was wrong. The British public didn't warm to being waffled at in an Australian accent. Obviously it shouldn't matter, but it does.

In short, Bennett should go.

So too should Farage. He's left open the possibility of coming back from his holidays and standing again for the Ukip leadership, but he should resist the temptation. The party is better off without him now.

He has been an extraordinary figure who has over-achieved on a spectacular scale. In many ways, he was the story of the Coalition years, conducting a brilliant guerrilla campaign against Westminster. (Do I need to point out that I'm talking about technique not policies? I do hope not.) I went to one of his EU debates with Nick Clegg and he was a superb performer - committed Europhiles were coming out of the hall saying how good he was.

But he still has to go.

When Ukip won the elections for the European Parliament a year ago, I wrote that they'd reached their high-water mark. If they were ever to go any further, I suggested, they needed to thank Farage for all his work and ask him to step down. He'd taken them as far as he possibly could. My comparison was with Ian Holloway, a colourful, charming and competent manager who got Blackpool Football Club to the Premier League, but couldn't keep them there.

My argument was that if Ukip wanted to secure - let alone go beyond - the 4.4 million votes they achieved last year, they had to make serious inroads into Labour heartlands, and Farage was probably not the man for that. He did pretty well this week, but the party fell to 3.9 million votes on a far higher turnout. It could have been better if he'd gone last year. Now it's probably too late, and decline is (I think) inevitable.

Ukip are, as normal with third parties, an odd coalition of the disgruntled and the idealistic from all points of the political compass.

There are two broad bases of support: the Eurosceptic deserters from the Conservative Party and the disillusioned white working-class who feel abandoned by Labour. These are represented by Douglas Carswell and Paul Nuttall respectively, and I assume that they will be the two candidates in a leadership election. I also assume that Carswell will win, to the detriment of the party's electoral interests.

The alternative is Suzanne Evans, currently the acting leader, who would be their best choice of all. And since I think that, I don't expect her to get the job on a permanent basis.

Their moment has passed, but they leave behind an example of how to make a difference. Why is there no Left party that can do this?

And so, finally, to Nick Clegg.

What can one say? Well, firstly, that he made exactly the right decision in 2010. The Lib Dems, and before them the Liberals, had always banged on about coalition government being a good thing. They were offered it, and they accepted. To do otherwise would have been foolish.

Some people complained that Clegg would have sold his own mother to get power, but that judgement seemed a little harsh. After all, he did join the Lib Dems, which isn't traditionally the way to achieve high office. Given the state of modern politics, he could have fitted perfectly comfortably into the modern Conservative or Labour Parties, but he chose the road less travelled.

As the junior partner in the Coalition, the Lib Dems proved surprisingly effective at government. They got through key policies like the pupil premium and raising the threshold for income tax; even the tuition fees increase - damaging though it was - had a logic, if they'd only had the sense to call it a time-limited graduate tax.

Most of their members and (probably) their supporters would have preferred a coalition with Labour, but that wasn't available in 2010. In the circumstances, I thought they played a difficult hand rather well and could justifiably be proud of their record.

But over recent months, and particularly during the campaign itself, they decided to distance themselves from their Coalition partners and, in so doing, they thoroughly ruined the good story they had to tell.

The final straw came when Danny Alexander decided to reveal the contents of private government papers in an attack on the Tories. The effect was to make the party look incompetent and untrustworthy. Who would want to work with people who go telling tales out of school? The first rule of Coalition Club is you don't talk about what goes on behind the scenes at Coalition Club.

Before the election, it was widely assumed that Tim Farron would become the next leader. Now that looks like such a nailed-on certainty that the party's going to have to twist someone's arm to stand against him, so that it least has the formal structure of a contest. Norman Lamb, possibly; or that bloke up in Scotland, whose constituency is so remote that not even SNP canvassers could find it.

Farron is the obvious and correct choice. He's as close as they've got to an old-fashioned Liberal, and since the parliamentary party is down to the numbers last seen under Jeremy Thorpe, they might as well adopt an old-fashioned approach.

But it's an absurdly uphill struggle now. The thing is this: if the Lib Dems didn't exist, who would bother to invent them?

Who gets my vote: part 4

As I explore the outer reaches of the ballot paper that has been assembled for the Holborn & St Pancras constituency in which I live, I'm terribly excited to find that Natalie Bennett is not the only party leader standing. 

Because look, here's Vanessa Hudson of the Animal Welfare Party. She may not get invited onto the leaders' debates on television, but she's the big boss of the AWP. And she can call on the endorsement of 1960s model Celia Hammond. Unfortunately most of the policies that the party are putting forward relate to animals - apart from calling on the government to promote 'plant-based diets', there doesn't seem to be anything aimed at us humans.

The AWP is fielding candidates in a total of four constituencies, which is twice as many as the Socialist Equality Party. I'm not fully up to speed with developments in the world of Trotskyism, and the SEP is a new name to me. but - having checked - they turn out to be a rebranded version of the International Communist Party, who split from the Workers Revolutionary Party back in the 1980s.

They are also - as their leaflet boasts - the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Not the actual Fourth International, of course (in which we are represented by Socialist Resistance), nor the Fourth International (ICR) nor the Fourth International Posadist. And certainly not the International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Renegeneration of the Fourth International, the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International or the Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International. And, just while I'm clearing up these confusions, there is another rival International Committee of the Fourth International as well, but that's not the one that the SEP are part of. Don't be fooled by the name.

Despite all of which, their election leaflet insists: 'Only the SEP speaks for the working class.' But only in two constituencies, apparently. And one of them, happily, is mine, with a candidate named David O'Sullivan.

These are minor parties, though. Just six candidates between the two of them across the whole nation. Much more substantial is the list of 32 constituencies being contested by Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol. That's a statement of intent. Somewhat peculiarly, however, the central demand of CISTA is not the immediate legalisation of cannabis, but merely the setting up of a Royal Commission to look into drug laws. They want government drug policy to be 'evidence-based, cross-party, humane and non-partisan'.

I think they're underselling themselves. They're not even competing properly with the Green Party of England and Wales, whose manifesto promises 'Radical reform of our drug laws'. No mention there of a Royal Commission. And as Peter Lilley pointed out back in 2001: 'Royal Commissions are just a way of playing issues into the long grass.' He added: 'Perhaps appropriate for cannabis.'

Still, good luck to Shane O'Donnell of CISTA. If all the potheads in Camden could get themselves together to vote for him, he'd do alright.

And that's it. The English Democrats and the British National Party - both of whom fielded candidates last time - have abandoned us. And there are no independents like we had in 2010. Still, no doubt we'll survive somehow.

Green Party? No thanks

Further to my consideration of whether to vote for the Green Party of England and Wales, I've been reading a report of a hustings 'for the writing community' organised by the ALCS and the Society of Authors.

During the course of this meeting, Hugh Small, spokesperson for the Green Party, 'argued that e-books were less environmentally harmful than print ones, and would therefore be subject to lower VAT under a Green Party administration'.

This was apparently intended as a serious comment. He genuinely believes that manufacturing a Kindle with a life-span of no more than a handful of years, and then running it on electricity before disposing of the non-biodegradable object, is more harmful than making a book. Despite the fact that I have books dating back to the seventeenth century that still seem to work fine.

He went on to say 'that the Green Party would look to reduce the term of copyright to fourteen years'. So rather than earning money from my work for the rest of my life, and then bequeathing it for a further seventy years to someone else, I'd get just fourteen years. Anything written last century would already be out of copyright.

Who is this idiot? And why does he want to assault what little income authors manage to squeeze out of publishers and booksellers (who make a far better living than mere writers)?

I don't know the answer to that second question, But Small himself is the Greens' parliamentary candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster. He has a website and he looks like this:

He's made my mind up for me. The Green Party really, really can't count on my vote.

Who gets my vote: part 1

I live in a very safe constituency. At the last election the Labour majority stood at nearly 10,000 votes; they were around eighteen percentage points clear of the Lib Dems. But that was a bad year for Labour (in 1997 they were forty-seven points clear) and a good one for the Lib Dems. The latter phenomenon is unlikely to happen again: last year Nick Clegg's party took a hammering in the council elections.

There may be some fall-off in support for Labour now that Frank Dobson's retiring - after all, he's represented the people of Holborn & St Pancras since the constituency was first created by the 1832 Reform Act, and presumably there are some people who liked him. But despite that, the party will certainly hold the seat.

Since it therefore matters not a jot who I vote for, I shall give the matter undue thought and consideration, candidate by candidate.

First up is the celebrity star of television debates and radio interviews, Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (but not Scotland or Northern Ireland).

Bennett stood for the constituency last time round, when she came fourth with 1,480 votes (2.7 per cent). To put that in context, the previous Green candidate got twice that number of votes and saved his deposit with 8.1 per cent of the turnout. Bennett has also stood for the local council twice and once for the Greater London Authority, failing to be elected on any occasion.

Of course she wasn't leader of the party back in those days. But her performance in becoming leader doesn't give any reason to think she's much of a winner. In the Green Party leadership election, she got 1,300 first-preference votes. That's fewer people than voted for her in the general election, and that's in her own party. Even with the celebrity recognition factor, she'll do well to get above fourth this time.

The point of voting Green, though, is presumably not in the expectation of seeing them get more than one MP. It's to boost the national numbers in the hope that a sizeable vote for a party to the left of Labour might scare Labour into taking a stance that's a bit more radical (or progressive, as we now say).

That assumes, however, that we agree on what the word 'left' means anymore. Or indeed 'radical' or 'progressive'.

So I thought I ought to look at what the Green Party is proposing this time round, now that it's doing well enough to be patronised by the big parties.

And I have to start by admitting that I haven't yet read all eighty-four pages of the manifesto. I was going to do so last night, and instead found myself reading a history of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, in the belief that it would bring me more pleasure. But I have read the education section of the manifesto, and thus far I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced.

The Greens say they want to get rid of league tables and Ofsted. On the following page, however, they boast about the GCSE and A-level results achieved in Brighton & Hove under a Green council; it's good to have this information and to know that grades are improving - which is surely the point of league tables. Furthermore '80 per cent of sixth forms and colleges are good or outstanding as judged by Ofsted'. Again it's nice to know that Ofsted does have its uses after all, but why no mention of how well the schools are performing for pupils in the years before sixth-form?

The manifesto calls for the abolition of grammar schools, academies, free schools, faith schools and private schools. Instead all schools will be comprehensives 'offering mixed-ability teaching'. There would be 'democratic accountability', with 'a key role for local authorities in planning, admissions policy and equality of access for children with special needs'.

Am I being picky in thinking that a genuine democracy might also allow for diversity? And that the Green Party - of all parties the one you might hope would be in favour of diversity - should recognise this.

Similarly there would be modifications of the curriculum, but no indication that that curriculum would be anything but national.

There is some scope for those who stray from the true path, however. Having abolished faith schools, there is a gracious concession that: 'Schools may teach about religions'. Which is nice. And there is promise of protection from 'sectarian attacks' for 'schools that serve particular [sic] vulnerable communities, for example, the Jewish, Muslim or Sikh communities'. My guess is that some members of those communities might see the abolition of faith schools by the Greens as a 'sectarian attack' in itself.

I'm not overly impressed by any of this. I distrust those with the arrogance to claim they have the one true answer, and I distrust those who believe that a single solution is applicable to all situations. I like plurality and a marketplace of ideas and options.

One more thing. The Green Party shares Tristram Hunt's obsession with 'qualified teachers'. The single best teacher I ever had wasn't qualified, but boy, could he teach maths. I, on the other hand, have a PGCE and very clearly I would be completely incapable of teaching in a school classroom, particularly one that required mixed-ability teaching. Because that's really difficult.

These 'qualified teachers', it should be noted, will have received 'comprehensive training ... on all diversity and inclusion issues'. There is, on must conclude, a diversity of opinions about what 'diversity' means.

I guess that what I want from the Greens is a big vision, an alternative to existing practice - some sense of, I don't know, environmentalism, for example. And the only element of such a thing in the education policy is a promise that school dinners won't be contaminated by the evil of GM. Oh, and some of the lessons should be held outdoors.

Apart from that it's just old-fashioned, centralised control by a big state. The man or woman in Whitehall still knows best.

The Green Party promises that in their world: 'We'd all be healthier, happier and more confident'. I'm not convinced that I shall feel healthier, happier or more confident as a result of voting for Natalie Bennett. So I don't think I shall.