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?

Charles Kennedy and Tony Blair

Much of the coverage of Charles Kennedy's death has focussed on his drinking and the end of his tenure as leader of the Liberal Democrats. By way of balance, this is an extract from my book A Classless Society, about the fine start he made to his leadership, immediately distancing himself from Tony Blair:

In 1999, after eleven years in office, Paddy Ashdown announced that he was stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. From the messy wreckage left behind by the 1988 merger of the Liberals and the SDP, he had managed to salvage a workable third party, and to build its representation substantially in the Commons. His association with Blair had yielded some fruit – legislation on human rights and freedom of information were partly due to Lib Dem campaigning – but the ultimate goal remained as elusive as ever.

The party, in its various guises, had been waiting to achieve a share of power longer than Britain had been waiting for a men’s singles champion at Wimbledon, and still it hadn’t materialised.

Perhaps his successor, the much younger Charles Kennedy, might be the one to make the breakthrough, though Ashdown didn’t seem very convinced. Kennedy was ‘a very attractive personality but he could be lazy and foolhardy’, was the verdict he delivered to Blair, who was later to come to the same conclusion: ‘All that talent. Why is he so idle?’

On the day he was elected leader, Kennedy received a phone call from Blair with an invitation to a private dinner that evening. His casually unimpressed response set the tone of his new style: ‘Terribly sorry; I’m already fixed up.’

When he did finally meet Blair in Downing Street, his first question was, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’, deliberately breaking the ban on cigarettes imposed by Cherie. He subsequently began to pull away from Labour, opening the possibility that the Lib Dems might now return to being a party of opposition...

The Emperor's New Troosers

I've mentioned before (here and here) that the level of hyperbole in this general election campaign is getting a little silly on all sides. Sometimes this has become a story in its own right. Such was the case with Theresa May's claim in an interview with the Mail on Sunday that a post-election deal between the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party would provoke 'the biggest constitutional crisis since the abdication of Edward VIII'.

Now this is obviously over-the-top, and I'm disappointed that a politician of May's standing has clearly forgotten all about Gough Whitlam. (She must once have known about him; she was at Oxford University at the time of the Dismissal and surely even geography students were vaguely aware of what was happening in Australia.)

Nonetheless, there is a clear problem in the position adopted by the SNP. The party's manifesto is a mix (less charitably, a mess) of policies, some of which relate simply to Scotland, others to the whole of the United Kingdom.

So, for example, the SNP will 'seek an explicit exemption ... from the terms of the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership' for Scottish Water. But not for Thames Water or any of the other suppliers. On the other hand, the very first page of the policy proposals (after the usual fatuous photographs of the leader) says that the party will 'vote for an increase in NHS spending across the UK of £24 billion by 2020-21'.

This seems to me to be at best impolite. Health is a devolved matter already, even without the additional shift of power to Holyrood that would presumably accompany the SNP having any say in the Westminster government. One doesn't have to accept the Conservative proposal of English votes for English laws to feel that a party with no candidates in England should not be announcing how much money they want to make England spend on its health service.

Nor, even if - as a voter in England - one believes in increased funding for the NHS, should one look to the SNP to deliver this.

Because it's not actually their business.

The manifesto of the Democratic Unionist Party, by contrast, has not a single word to say on the subject of the NHS, though it does mention the devolved health service. Instead the document is rooted entirely in the hope of a hung parliament, allowing 'an opportunity for Northern Ireland's voice to be heard in London like never before'.

The same bifocal approach runs through the whole of the SNP manifesto. The idea that the Scottish Parliament should be given the right to decide which sporting events are reserved for free-to-view television - that seems pleasingly parochial. Telling the rest of the UK how many houses we have to build is rude and wrong.

There is a constitutional issue here. Something to do with representation and taxation, since spending relies on taxes, whether now or in the future to pay today's borrowing.

And the problem is exacerbated by the voting system (which, incidentally, the SNP are proposing to scrap in favour of the Single Transferable Vote). The latest opinion poll, published yesterday, shows the SNP on 54 per cent in Scotland, which is predicted to translate into 96.5 per cent of Scottish seats.

Or, to put it another way, 1.3 million votes (assuming a similar turnout to last time) would yield 57 MPs. Meanwhile, as I've said before, Ukip - effectively the English equivalent of the SNP - will register over two-and-a-half times that vote for a total of maybe three MPs.

I don't think that, despite May's argument, the emergence of a minority Labour administration propped up by SNP votes will spark a constitutional crisis as such, since the rules of Parliament are perfectly clear about how governments are chosen by MPs. But it will provoke a crisis of confidence in the system of government. I don't know how that will manifest itself, but it cannot simply be wished away. Not in a country where there is already deep dissatisfaction with our version of representative democracy.

The answer, in the short term, can surely only be the introduction of proportional representation. The Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru, like the SNP, favour the Single Transferable Vote, while Ukip also support reform.

But whatever the outcome of this election - even if the Tories do get a majority in the Commons (a prediction to which I cling, despite all the evidence) - a reform of the voting system is an urgent necessity. It would be absurd to have another election fought like this.

Postscript: Since posting this three hours ago, a new poll has been published showing the SNP still on 54 per cent, but with Labour sliding still further - projections now suggest the SNP would win every seat in Scotland.

Who gets my vote: part 2

Continuing my ruminations about who to vote for in the coming election, the Liberal Democrats in my constituency of Holborn & St Pancras are fielding Jill Fraser.

This is a good choice - Fraser (she's the one in the middle) is a popular figure. In 2003 she won a shock by-election to be elected to Camden Council (this was against the backdrop of the invasion of Iraq), and went on to become mayor of the borough in 2006. She stood for parliament in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency in 2005, achieving an 11 per cent swing from Labour to Lib Dem, and she's very active and visible in local campaigning.

Her son is a university lecturer (which is surely a good thing), but most famously she works in a local chip-shop and has done for over two decades. This is not necessarily the image conjured up by the words 'North London Liberal'.

She didn't stand in 2010, but the Lib Dem candidate came in second again, for the third election running. The candidate then, Jo Shaw, got a shade under 28 per cent of the vote. Even with the personal standing of Fraser, it's unlikely to get much better this time. Last year the Lib Dems were all but wiped out in the local elections, and Fraser lost her council seat (as did all but one of their candidates).

The reality, of course, is that it doesn't really matter who the candidate is. This is nobody's idea of a target seat (even assuming that the Lib Dems enjoyed the luxury of having target seats) and the party isn't exactly pouring resources into the constituency campaign. Fraser could promise free chips to every voter without it making any real difference.

I've long thought that the Lib Dems would do better in this election than was being predicted. And my reasoning was that they had quite a decent story to tell. Nick Clegg made the right decision in 2010 to enter a coalition government. Coalitions are what the party had been talking about for my entire adult life, and it would have been absurd to turn down the opportunity when it arose. Further, I have no doubt that the presence of the Lib Dems made the government a better one than it would have been had the Tories governed alone. Those were the two options that existed after the nation had voted, and we got the better of the two.

Now, though, I'm not so sure about the Lib Dem prospects. I think that as the choice between David Cameron and Ed Miliband becomes starker, there is a very real possibility that the Lib Dems will get squeezed. Clegg seems to me to be playing a limited hand pretty well, but for most of this campaign it's been as though the party hardly exists. No one appears to care in the slightest what they have to say.

And that's a bit of a shame, because I think the country benefits from having a moderately strong Lib Dem presence. It provides an alternative where none would otherwise exist, and it can sometimes spring a surprise. Eastbourne, for example, where the Labour Party stands no chance, was Tory for eighty years solid until the IRA murdered Ian Gow in 1990; now it's a Lib Dem constituency and likely to remain so.

I mean, obviously we have no idea what they stand for or what they believe. Lord knows they haven't actually been liberal for a long time, save for the occasional outbreak of concern over civil liberties. But believing in stuff isn't really their thing. Their job is to represent the don't knows. Which isn't intended as a criticism: there are an awful lot of don't knows, and they're entitled to have their uncertain voice heard, just as much as those who think they know everything.

And maybe I'm wrong about them being squeezed. Their best post-war performance came in 1983, in their incarnation as the SDP-Liberal Alliance. The country was then offered the choice of Margaret Thatcher or Michael Foot, and a very large number of people decided that they're rather have neither. The same could hold true for the party this time. Except that I don't think it will.

More than the state of the party at a national level, however, the problem for Jill Fraser is that she's rather wasted on Holborn & St Pancras. She'd make someone a good MP. But not us.