The Creaking Duopoly

As the get the vote out operations are finishing off knocking up their promises and stuffing letter boxes with voting reminders, it's worth thinking about the character of the general election campaign and what it says about politics in Britain.

Considering how seismic the result will be, the putative scale of Labour's victory and the promise of annihilating the Tories for at least a generation, if you're outside the hurly burly of campaigning and following politics on social media this has been the lowest key election for some time. Probably since 2001. Those around back then will remember that the result was also a foregone conclusion, and it was a low effort affair where the main parties were concerned. Even so, window posters and sign post placards were a common feature of election season. These days, local authorities are precious about their "street furniture" and far fewer people advertise their voting intentions. Just from my experience living in Derby, around where I live and on the route to work I've seen one Labour sign (tucked away down a back road) and one Vote Green board plonked on an arterial route in and out of the city centre. Not even the local Tory councillor or prominent Tory activists have signs on their properties. Similarly, unlike previous elections where the doormat has been buried under small mountains of party literature, it's been conspicuous by its absence this time. We've received every Tory leaflet, two direct mails from Labour, and that's it.

The hack obsession with "cut through" doesn't extend to why the election hasn't cut through. There are, of course, long-term reasons that trouble most liberal democracies. And it's also true that the main parties almost collaborate over what the salient issues are going to be. This election is no different. The pollsters show that the cost of living crisis and the NHS are right at the top of people's concerns, with immigration coming a distant third. But you wouldn't know that from the dreary debates and the press coverage. Except this time, a certain weariness has set in. People worried about how to pay their bills, or fed up with the 8am rush for emergency GP appointments are not hearing any solutions to the problems that make everyday life difficult, if not an ordeal. Renters are hearing nothing about housing. Disabled people nothing about making life easier. Parents worried about cuts at their kids' schools, people of all ages despairing at the dearth of mental health support, the hope of action on climate change, the collapsing transport infrastructure, climate change, and the outright indifference/support of Israel's massacre of the Palestinians. The conspiracy of silence about these issues have turned millions of people off.

As such, both the mainstream parties have run awful campaigns. The Conservative campaign has proven far worse than Theresa May's ever did in 2017. Not even John Major's doomed effort in 1997 plumbed the depths of Rishi Sunak's incompetence. What the Tories needed was something that could have changed the course of the campaign and ceded them the initiative. They thought they had this with their stupid conscription scheme, but in a campaign where even the base of mass conservatism is feeling the pinch, attacks on young people were not going to convince. Especially when Nigel Farage's posh bloke authenticity is a more convincing repository for punters who are motivated by spite and fear. But there was almost a master stroke at the beginning of their campaign. The Sun excitedly announced that under the Tories, pensioners could look forward to an extra £2,000/year. This was how they chose to announce Sunak's promise to raise the tax threshold so the state pension didn't fall into it, which led to some weak attacks against Labour's plans to impose a "pensions' tax". And this £2k was cumulative up to 2030. If instead they'd gone for an uncomplicated £2k uplift, politically it would have been a big hit. Probably stemming the bleed in Reform's direction and forcing Labour onto the back foot, maybe even inducing Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to attack it from the right. No, it wouldn't have fit the fiscal framework both main parties are abiding by, but Sunak wouldn't have to implement it anyway. An opportunity to salvage a few dozen more seats, lost.

Labour's has been a weird twin track campaign. The leadership have tried dampening expectations and have pushed messages about not being complacent. And to be fair to teams on the ground, in the main candidates haven't been. Fewer bodies than 2019 has meant longer sessions and harder work. Again, locally here in Derby North, given the hard yards she's put in for a couple of years no one could accuse Labour's Catherine Atkinson for treating the election as a foregone conclusion. Judging by the spread of social media reports, the same has been true nearly everywhere. That, however, cannot be said for Starmer and co. Despite their warnings, this has been the most complacent campaign run by Labour since 2005. Not just because of its thin manifesto, assuming anti-Tory voters will back Labour come what may, but because of its faux pas. No one forced the Labour right to chance their arm at purging candidates in full public view. Or openly admitting to lying for factional reasons. Or singling out Bangladeshis as the sorts of refugees they should be deported. These were th actions of a party unconcerned about their electoral consequences, and were took place under zero pressure from the media, are contributing toward the decomposition of Labour's base which will be increasingly felt over the course of their first term, and also suggest they will come to grief when the media does turn the heat up on their government.

This election then has almost entirely been defined by the duopoly domination of British politics. Reform were covered because its campaign plays direct into their use of immigration as displacement activity. The daft stunts by Ed Davey to try and get the Liberal Democrats noticed, particularly their emphasis around fixing social care, and the strong challenge of the Greens and the stress on climate change has bounced off the shielding Labour and the Tories have built to shelter themselves. How long this will last after the election with a severely weakened Tory party and leading Labour figures taking to their ministerial motors, no one yet knows. But also with a press in long-term decline and their ability to set the agenda going with it, the narrowness that typically defines British politics might be about to get wrenched open.