Why The Tories Won’t Win The 2010 Election

Any day now Gordon Brown will announce the 2010 election. Following the discussions and analysis in the media one might be forgiven to wonder why we’re even bothering with an election. The expectation is for a clear Tory victory. The bookies have certainly made their mind up offering odds of just 1/12 for a Conservative win and 6/1 for Labour. However this may be as much a reflection of perceived public opinion as the book makers expert opinion of probability.

Houses of Parliament, Chris Vernon 2008

I don’t buy it. Whilst the Labour and Conservative parties receive similar coverage on the media, giving the impression of equal standing, the electoral reality could be quite different. Due to the vagaries of our first past the post electoral system and constituency boundaries, approximately equal share of the public vote doesn’t come close to delving approximately equal numbers of seats.

There are 646 Members of Parliament today, rising to 650 in 2010. To form a government David Cameron would need a majority, 324 seats of the old parliament, 326 in the new. He currently has 193 so needs a minimum net gain of 131 seats (68% more than today) based on the current 646, 133 in the new. Labour currently have 352 seats. Quite why we need four more MPs, which I guess will cost around a million pounds a year between them escapes me.

In 1997 Tony Blair’s Labour party overturned an 18 year Conservative government with a landslide victory. Labour won with 418 seats the most they had ever held and the Tories were left with just 165, the least they had held since 1906. This dramatic result came about as Labour won 147 seats and the Tories lost 178. Percentage wise, Labour only increased their seat count by 54% though. Before the 1997 election, the Labour Party was a lot stronger than the Conservative Party is today.

Ignoring the additional four seats, in the 2010 election Labour will lose the majority if they lose 29 seats. Quite possible. For the Tories to win however, they need 131 more seats. Far trickier. Adding to the Tory challenge is that independent candidates are likely to win more seats than usual as celebrities and local heroes stand against members damaged by the expense claims fiasco. National parties (like SNP and Plaid Cymru) are also likely to do better than before as part of a broader backlash against Westminster.

Of today’s 646 seats, 30 are are held by national parties, small parties or independents. I expect this figure to rise, reducing the pool available to the big three parties from which to achieve their overall majority.

Since the 2nd world war, the party of government changed seven times:

1945 Conservative to Labour, Labour gaining 239 seats (+155%)
1951 Labour to Conservative, Conservative gaining 22 seats (+7%)
1964 Conservative to Labour, + 59 seats (+23%)
1970 Labour to Conservative, + 69 seats (+27%)
1974 Conservative to Labour, + 13 seats (+5%) Hung parliament, Labour short of majority.
1979 Labour to Conservative, + 62 seats (+22%)
1997 Conservative to Labour, + 141 seats (+54%)

The Tories have a mountain to climb. 131 additional seats, 68% more than today (just for unworkable majority of one), in an environment where the main parties are likely to suffer relative to smaller parties and independents. I think a Tory victory is unlikely. However, Labour maintaining their majority with only 28 seat buffer also seems unlikely.

In my opinion the most likely outcome of the 2010 election is a hung parliament with no party holding a clear majority. Whether Cameron or Brown will have the most seats is harder to say but I would guess Brown’s Labour might just hang on to form a coalition government. I also believe this to be a good thing. The challenges ahead of us are too large to get bogged down in party political squabbling. A coalition government might be able to see past the relatively minor differences between parties and better face the extreme, economic, environmental and energy problems we face.

My analysis above is certainly simplistic. The bookies (with millions of pounds riding on it) seem to come to a very different conclusion, no doubt after far more sophisticated analysis but I just have a hard time believing it.

Only time will tell.