Quality | 2009.02.11
Martin Kettle: Darling, Clarke and Cable in the cabinet? Don't rule it out
Not even his greatest admirer would claim that Sir Patrick Cormack is one of the big beasts of the political jungle. But the pompous and long-serving Conservative backbencher is neither a fool nor lobby fodder. On occasions he says something that speaks to the mood of the moment in a way that eludes more calculating and partisan politicians. This week at prime minister\'s questions was one of them.
On the face of it, Cormack gave Gordon Brown one of his easier moments: would Brown invite David Cameron and Nick Clegg to Downing Street to seek common ground and national leadership on the economic crisis? Brown\'s practised response was emphatic: that approach had been tried but had not worked; the fault lay with the Tory party, which last autumn had offered co-operation one week, only to withdraw it the next. If the Tories changed their mind again and supported government policies, co-operation could resume.
In a House of Commons context this exchange was no contest. It recalled Neville Cardus\'s remark about the cricketer Archie Maclaren and his ability as a batsman to dismiss the ball from his presence. And yet, as the economic news gets ever worse and as Labour\'s brief late-2008 poll recovery recedes into the memory, it seems to me that Brown\'s show of Maclaren-style hauteur will look less and less politically convincing, while the earnest, one-nation patriotism of Cormack and MPs like him may become increasingly attractive.
No one thinks that Labour\'s ratings or Brown\'s personal standing are likely to climb any time soon - if ever. At best, both are flatlining in current polling. At worst, they could slide back towards the depths of last spring. The 2009 political calendar offers a few openings for ministers to take charge of the agenda, such as the G20 London summit and, more significantly, the budget, out of which a popular political leader might hope to conjure fresh support. But these are overwhelmed by the overriding expectation of unremittingly destructive economic news until well into 2010, and by the looming disaster for Labour of the European elections on 4 June.
These elections will be the pivotal moment in domestic politics this year. From Labour\'s point of view the only question now is how bad the results will be: bad, very bad, extremely bad or catastrophic? In the two previous European elections during Labour\'s rule, in 1999 and 2004, the voters have used such contests to make a protest. Labour took only 27% of the vote in 1999 and 22% five years later. In that sense, Labour has little to lose this time. It holds only 19 of the UK\'s current 78 seats in the parliament - so is close to rock bottom.
Yet it really could get even worse for Labour. In the month before the 1999 elections, Labour was on 51% in ICM\'s national opinion poll for the Guardian and was then clobbered in the ballot box. In the month before the 2004 contest, Labour was on 37% and got clobbered again. In each case more than a third of Labour\'s supporters deserted the party in the European contest. If Labour slips under 30% in the polls by May 2009, and if the desertion rate is of the same order this time - both of which are realistic possibilities - we can expect the party\'s share of the vote in this year\'s European contest to fall into the teens for the first time ever in any nationwide electoral contest. With a general election no more than a year off, that result will immediately push the panic button.
But it won\'t just be the size of the defeat that will have that effect. It will also be the quality of it. In both 1999 and 2004 it was possible for Labour to brush off the scale of its reverses by citing its continuing strength in the polls and by pointing to the damage that Ukip and the Liberal Democrats were continuing to inflict on the Tories. This time, however, the Tories look set to make significant gains, while Labour also faces the prospect of a large electoral spike for the BNP - who may win several European seats - among some of its hitherto core support.
For all these reasons it seems highly probable to me that the political mood in the week following the European elections will be dominated by two questions. The first, grindingly familiar, will be whether Brown can continue as leader in a general election that may threaten Labour\'s survival as a national party. The second, a phenomenon not known in British politics since the days of Oswald Mosley, will be the lurching fear that a rightwing nationalist and protectionist upsurge, driven by economic hardship and anti-foreigner feeling, threatens the stability of the whole political system.
What happens after that? Experience says that Brown, his authority further undermined, will nevertheless hang on, because that\'s what happens and because there is no plausible challenger who could turn things round for his party in the available time. Experience also says that the political class, including the press, will draw its wagons together to ostracise the BNP, while at the same time the parties themselves, especially Labour, wrestle conscience and self-interest as they struggle to find protectionist strategies to reclaim the working-class nationalist vote.
Yet experience says a third thing as well. It says that, amid steepling economic decline and haemorrhaging governmental weakness, pressure for some kind of government of national unity can only grow. Right now, the only people who talk in such terms are backbench mavericks such as Cormack and Labour\'s Frank Field - and in Field\'s party Ramsay MacDonald still casts a long shadow. In six months\' time, though, advocates of a genuine government of all the talents - an economic national emergency cabinet including Alistair Darling, Ken Clarke and Vince Cable - may suddenly find themselves with an audience.
By then, the momentum of events - together with increasing calls for the Brown government to go, for the BNP to be resisted and for the economy to be saved - could have put a national government on the agenda. Only this week, a shadow cabinet minister told me, half jokingly, that the Tories could never serve under Brown but might, for the good of the country, be compelled to serve under some other Labour leader. After all, if a grand coalition can work for Germany, why is it so unimaginable here? No, I don\'t think it will really happen either, but these are new times and I no longer rule it out as I once did.
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