British Election Study conference - Summary
Here are some of the main points from the British Election Study conference. Events like this don’t always generate big headlines but, to anyone interesting in voting, it was fascinating.
- Provisional research suggests that Ukip could cost the Conservatives up to 24 seat at the election, and Labour up to 12 seats, the conference heard. Professor Geoff Evans produced the figures during a Q&A. An alternative estimate was that Labour would lose six seats, and the Conservatives 20. But he stressed that these figures were based on research that was not complete, and he said he would not trust them yet.
- The SNP could beat Labour even in seats where Labour has a lead of up to 20 points, the conference heard. Dr Stephen Fisher said this was what the British Election Study data suggested. But Greg Cook, Labour’s head of strategy, questioned this, saying he thought there would be a shift back to “normality” in Scotland before the election.
- Fewer than a quarter of the people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 say they will vote for them again, the conference heard. Professor Andrew Russell produced the figure. Professor Philip Cowley said the Lib Dems would not fight anything like a national campaign and that their plight reminded him of the British forces in the epic massacre film, Zulu. Separate research suggests the Lib Dems could be left with fewer than 20 seats after the election.
- The Greens are better than Ukip at attracting support from people who did not use to vote, the conference heard. Professor Jane Green also said the Ukip vote would be easier to squeeze than the Green vote because people who have gone to Ukip from other parties might consider going back to them in 2015.
- Andrew Cooper, David Cameron’s former director of political strategy, said a hung parliament after 2015 would suggest the political system was no longer fit for purpose. He said, regardless of what the Fixed-term Parliaments Act said, a hung parliament could result in a second election being held. But even that might not produce a majority government, he said.
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Europe does not matter to Conservative supporters as an election issue, the conference heard. Professor Hermann Schmitt said, when you study what factors influence voting, for Conservatives Europe is almost irrelevant.
And’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
John Curtice wraps up with a short speech making the point that the BES will help to explain after May next year what was motivating people when they voted.
Q: Why can a grand coalition work in Germany but not here.
Cooper says he finds it inconceivable that the leaders of the main parties could find a programme that they agree on.
Cook agrees.
Q: What are the chances of a grant coalition?
Ghose says the Lib Dems and the Tories are distinguishing themselves from one.
But we may be a long way from such an outcome.
Tyler says the media may be more willing to accept that idea. Remember the scaremongering about a hung parliament. That won’t apply now.
Cooper says a grand coalition does not make sense because Labour and the Lib Dems have different views on the economy.
Cook agrees.
Cook says there might a shift back to normality in Scotland (ie, Labour support rising.)
Cooper agrees, particularly if Labour elects Jim Murphy as its leader.
Q: [From my Guardian colleague, Tom Clark] Do you think the Fixed-term Parliaments Act could be repealed?
Cook says he thought, under the Act, the prime minister could trigger an election.
Alastair Stewart refers to John Curtice, who is in the audience, for a ruling. Curtice says that, if there is a vote of no confidence, there would be a 14-day period during which the opposition could try to form a government. The Queen’s prerogative to call an election has been removed.
The BBC’s Allegra Stratton says this could lead to zombie parliaments.
Curtice says that reminds him of the 1974-79 parliament.
Cooper says putting together a budget would be hard. Putting together a popular budget would be impossible. It might be impossible for either side to pass a budget. But there would be no guarantee that a second election would produce a different result.
Q: Can minority governments work?
Cooper says we might be about to find out.
In 2010 there was a sense of economic crisis, which militated in favour of coalition.
Cook says a minority government would not persist for long. That would create pressure for another election soon.
But if you are talking about a minority government in terms of a government having less than 50% of the votes, that would be sustainable.
Tyler says the 1974 minority government was a disaster. Important decisions were postponed.
But he cannot see the Fixed-term Parliaments Act being repealed. That would lead to MPs voting for their own extinction, he says.
The members of the panel are now taking questions.
Q: Should we have a constitutional convention?
Ghose says we should.
Cook says he does not have a view. (Which is odd - because Ed Miliband has proposed just that.)
Cooper says he is not sure where such a convention would end up.
Tyler says you cannot sort all the problems out at once. It would be best to focus on devolution first.
Lord Tyler says the other people on the panel are experts. He is a mere practitioner of politics, he says.
In 1964, when he first got involved in politics, people could predict what would happen. Now we don’t, he says.
But he thinks we will see 150 to 200 parliamentary byelection-style contests.
This means tactical voting will return with a vengeance.
Imagine if, after the election, the party with most votes does not get most seats. And a party with 15% of the vote gets 2% of the seats. And the SNP get many seats on the basis of what they think should happen in England. And pensioners vote in far fewer numbers than young people. The new prime minister might have the support of just 25% of voters.
Will the system be fit for purpose? You must be joking.
That’s not just a demographic deficit, he says. It’s demographic insolvency.
He concludes saying there will be no national picture. Geography, and what happens locally, will matter most, he says.
Updated
Neil Serougi is speaking now. He is interested in how politics interacts with civil society, he says.
He says the system has promoted leadership styles that put a premium on being strong and harsh. This generates the wrong approach to issues like asylum, he says. We need a different model of civil leadership.
It’s Katie Ghose’s turn.
She says she also thinks the current system is not fit for purpose. Voters have not turned away from the main parties overnight. But this is a very stark trend now.
The “winner takes all” electoral model does not work in system where people do not have a lifelong attachment to a party, she says.
The case for proportional representation will strengthen if MPs are elected with a very slender share of the vote, she says.
Many voters do not see their support translated into even a single council seat.
Ghose says people say they want politicians to be more consensual. But they also want them to be distinctive. This is one issue the BES could usefully unpick.
Andrew Cooper is speaking now.
He agrees with Greg Cook that the electoral system was fit for purpose in the past.
But it is too early to tell whether that still applies, he says. If the polls are correct, then that would suggest it is not.
Support for the two main parties, or the three main parties, is dropping, he says.
People are abandoning the three main parties because they have a “deep-seated disaffection with the system” and they believe the mainstream no longer represents their interests, he says.
Perhaps that block of people who say they won’t vote for the three main parties will reduce.
People used to say Ukip would not get 15% of the vote. But, as the election gets closer, it looks increasingly likely that they could.
And people used to say the Lib Dems would move back towards 24%. That seems unlikely too.
Cooper says the Tory vote seems to be in the 32 to 35% range.
It is harder to know what will happen to the Labour vote. People used to say it could not fall below its 2010 level. But, given what is happening in Scotland, that now seems a possibility.
Many MPs could be elected with a very low share of the vote, he says.
If MPs are elected with only a quarter of the vote, that won’t increase satisfaction with politics.
The polls show people do not want another hung parliament, or a coalition. But that is what they might get. That will also increase dissatisfaction with the system, he says.
We’ve now got a panel discussion.
The members are: Greg Cook, Labour’s head of strategy; Andrew Cooper, a former director of strategy for David Cameron at Number 10; Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society; Neil Serougi, vice chair of Freedom from Torture; and Lord Tyler, a Lib Dem spokesman on constitutional reform.
Greg Cook goes first.
He says in the past the electoral system has broadly reflected the wishes of the electorate.
The next election will present various challenges, he says. He is particularly interested in the impact of individual electoral registration.
And, if turnout continues to fall, that will raise a question about the legitimacy of government.
This generation of politicians is more in touch than those that went before. But they get no credit for that, he says.
It is interesting that the new parties, like Ukip, are trying to ape the existing parties, he says.
Professor Jane Green from Manchester is now giving a presentation on the British Election Study’s new data playground.
It is an online resource that allows non-specialists to access, and use, the BES’s data.
What’s particularly good about it is that it allows you, very simply, to make your own election graphs.
(I’ve just had a quick look at it. It seems fantastic.)
Q; [From Lord Tyler, the Lib Dem peer and former MP] Why are Russell’s figures so different from Lord Ashcroft’s?
Russell says the Ashcroft research is valuable. He thinks the Lib Dems will hold some seats that BES data suggests they will not hold.
Ashcroft released some new polling covering 13 Lib Dem seats, and some others, last month. Here’s an extract.
Most of the Lib Dem MPs concerned seem quite well entrenched. Outside Portsmouth South, the biggest swing to the Conservatives was 4.5% in Hazel Grove, which still leaves the Lib Dems with a 6-point lead. At the other end of the scale, I found swings to the Lib Dems in both Carshalton & Wallington and Thornbury & Yate, where Tom Brake and Steve Webb each saw their vote share fall by just 5 points compared to 2010, while the Tory share was down by nearly three times as much.
In the Lib Dem-held Labour targets I found the challengers comfortably ahead in Burnley, with a 13-point lead and a 10% swing, but the Lib Dems holding on by three points in Birmingham Yardley. In Wyre Forest I found the Conservatives ahead and UKIP second with 27% of the vote, evidently benefiting from circumstances in which many local people have not voted for one of the main parties since 1997.
In the eleven Lib Dem-Conservative seats the powerful incumbency factor enjoyed by many Lib Dem MPs is clearly on display.
Russell says, if you look at Lib Dem spending patterns, surprising amounts are being spent in some seats, but not the next door ones.
Some of their choices are surprising.
Portsmouth South is one they are not hopeful of retaining. And they won’t fight Gordon very hard, he suggests.
But a seat like Hazel Grove will be interesting. Andrew Stunnell is standing down, he says. The Lib Dems are not spending much money there. But they are spending money in a next door seat, he says.
Q: Are the Lib Dems struggling more in seats they currently hold?
Russell says the Lib Dem vote seems to be holding up better in Conservative seats.
He says his figures can get the Lib Dems to a slightly less disastrous scenario. But they do not suggest they are going to win many seats.
Cowley says the Lib Dems can only really do badly in the places where they have got lots of votes. You cannot do badly in places where you do not have many votes.
The Lib Dems remind him of the film Zulu, he says. They are fighting a very defensive war; they are dug in. They are not going to fight anything like a national campaign, he says.
In 2015 @LibDems similar to film #Zulu, fighting a defensive war, they are dug in @philipjcowley #BESInsights pic.twitter.com/i9r6kxDObR
— Nottingham Politics (@NottsPolitics) December 9, 2014
Updated
Russell, Sobolewska and Cowley are now taking questions.
Q: [To Sobolewska] Labour has lost the support of some Indian supporters since 2010. But they don’t seem to have gone anywhere. Where have they gone?
Sobolewska says some of these voters go nowhere; they do not vote.
The Indian vote is not growing, he says. The African vote is growing.
Professor Philip Cowley from Nottingham is speaking now, on the subject of how satisfied people are with their MP.
At Westminster MPs say people do not like MPs in general, but they like their local MP, he says.
But he says the data does not back this up. In fact, there are just a few people who trust their local MP a little bit more than MPs in general, he says.
People are also more likely to recognise the name of their MP if he or she is a Lib Dem than if he or she is Tory or Labour, he says.
But the differences are not that large, he says.
Dr Maria Sobolewska from Manchester is now giving a presentation on whether the Tories can win the ethnic minority vote.
There were three main factors explaining why ethnic minority voters did not support the Tories in 2010, she says. They were: living in an ethnically concentrated area; lack of party campaigning; and awareness of racial prejudice.
Russell says the Lib Dems are fighting a defensive strategy.
If there were any reasons for optimism in Lib Dem HQ, it would be based on their gains from incumbency and their local record.
But in 2010 there were Labour and Tory MPs who thought they would be saved by incumbency. They weren’t.
It is not about vote share for them, he says. It is all about the geography of the vote.
(Russell did not actually answer he set himself in his title - see 2.54pm - but I think the answer he was suggesting was no.)
Now we’re on to another round of presentations.
Professor Andrew Russell from Manchester is addressing whether the Lib Dems can avoid disaster in 2015?
It falls to me to do the comedy slot, he jokes as he starts.
Fewer than a quarter of people who voted for them in 2010 say the will vote for them again, he says.
That presents a challenge for them, he says with admirable understatement.
Q: [From Andrew Rawnsley] The Tories and Labour will both argue that only they can “win” the election. Are supporters of other parties receptive to this message?
Green says this is really interesting. If you are a typical Tory who has flirted with Ukip, will you go back to them?
She says Labour and Tory Ukip voters will be most receptive to this argument.
But supporters of the minor parties have given up with the major parties for the most part. They do not think it makes any difference who runs the country.
Q: So Ukip is more squeezable than the Greens?
Yes, says Green.
Q: And the data shows Europe does not matter much to people?
Schmitt says that is right. Voting also includes normative, moral assessments. Factors like gay marriage matter. When you acknowledge this, it does not come as a suprise that Europe does not matter much.
Goodwin says voting, for Ukip supporters, is not a tranactional matter. They have already acquired quite a lot of policy concessions from the main parties.
He says he does not understand why Labour are trying to drag Ukip onto the NHS, because the NHS is not a key issue for them.
Q: [To Goodwin] Your data suggests more Labour supporters are now switching to Ukip. But Geoff Evans argued otherwise. What is happening?
Goodwin says Evans was talking about Ukip support before 2010. In Revolt on the Right, Goodwin says he showed that Ukip support before 2010 was fluid. Some of those leaving Labour stopped off at the Conservatives in 2010 on the way.
(So, if they now go to Ukip, are they defectors from the Tories, or from Labour - where they were originally?)
Goodwin says the key point is that it is a mistake to think that Ukip support is just coming from the Tories.
In other European countries they have had radical right parties for many years. It is a more recent phenomenon here. That may be why we are struggling to make sense of it.
Green, Schmitt and Goodwin are now taking questions.
Q: [To Goodwin] Are immigration and economy that different? Isn’t immigration a proxy for economic concerns?
Goodwin says this is the way the questions are phrased. And immigration concerns involve identity, not just economic matters.
Q: [To Goodwin] What impact will the two recent byelections have had?
Goodwin says they were significant in organisational terms. They gave Ukip a model of how to run parliamentary byelection campaigns. And the people running those campaigns are now running the party’s target seats strategy.
Goodwin says those Ukip supporters who intend to stay loyal to the party in 2015 are more motivated by immigration. Those who says they are likely to back another party are more motivated by the economy.
Matthew Goodwin from Nottingham is now speaking. And it’s another Ukip one. Goodwin is one of the co-authors of Revolt on the Right, an acclaimed study of Ukip.
Ivor Crewe’s book about the SDP said new parties go up like rocket and fall like a stick, he says. But the election data suggests this will not happen in the case of Ukip, he says.
Professor Hermann Schmitt from Manchester is speaking now. He is addressing the importance of Europe.
Using figures showing the “predictive power” of Europe as an issue that decides how people vote, he says Europe actually matters less for Conservative supporters than for supporters for Labour, the Lib Dems, Ukip or the Greens.
If you factor in left/right factors too, Europe becomes almost irrelevant, he says.
(Crickey! Don’t tell Bill Cash.)
Professor Jane Green from Manchester is speaking now. She is also addressing the Ukip effect.
She says the Greens are doing better at picking up non-voters than Ukip.
She has also posted a blog at the British Election Study website setting out her case. Here’s an excerpt.
Ukip is not picking up significantly more support from the politically disengaged. But UKIP is picking up support from the politically disillusioned ...
Ukip is picking up support from those who distrust politicians, but crucially, this support is significantly higher among those distrusting of MPs and who tend to vote in general elections. The lesson we can take away from the BES internet panel is therefore that UKIP’s support is coming from those people who are politically engaged but disillusioned, much more than from those people who are politically disengaged and disillusioned. There is also some evidence that UKIP is making small inroads among the disillusioned and engaged, but not the disillusioned and disengaged.
Here are some tweets from the conference worth flagging up (sometimes because they flag up points I’ve missed.)
UKIP still suffering from a social desirability bias. People less likely to talk to friends about UKIP #BESinsights
— Caitlin Milazzo (@CaitlinMilazzo) December 9, 2014
Great presentation by @CvdEijk: British voters some of the least content with the parties on offer than in most Euro countries.
— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) December 9, 2014
Now this is good: if you are willing to name 3 party-identifying friends you are at an 80%+ likelihood to support that party #BESinsights
— Marcus A. Roberts (@marcusaroberts) December 9, 2014
Q: [To Evans, from the Fabian Society’s Marcus Roberts] Although more Tory votes are going to Labour, we did some research saying this could impact disproportionally on Labour. Do you accept this?
Evans says he did not report on seat consequences because he and his colleague are still working on them.
He thinks Labour could lose six seats because of the Ukip effect, and the Conservatives 20. But it could be as high as Labour losing 12 seats, and the Conservatives 24. But he says these figures are provisional. He does not trust them yet.
Q: [To Fisher] Some of your research suggested Labour was losing more votes to Ukip. Evans said otherwise. Who is right?
Fisher says there was a move towards more support for Ukip coming from Labour in 2012.
Fisher says his figures suggest the SNP could be the third largest party in the UK in terms of seats.
Q: So some Scottish Labour seats where Labour has a lead of 15 to 20% could fall to the SNP?
Yes, says Fisher.
Q: [To Fieldhouse] Your figures show people do not think they have friends who support Ukip. But the polls suggest they must have friends who back Ukip. Is voting Ukip seemed as unacceptable?
Fieldhouse accepts that there is a point here. Perhaps Ukip supporters are not being recognise.
ITV’s Alastair Stewart, who is hosting the session, asks if the “spiral of silence” factor that used to apply to Tories could apply to Ukip.
Fieldhouse says that could be a factor.
Q: [To Fisher] Your findings are at odds with Lord Ashcroft’s research, which suggests there is a Lib Dem incumbency effect. Can you explain that?
Fisher says it might be partly explained by the way Ashcroft’s polling questions are phrased.
He says the BES findings are backed up partly by the YouGov data he has looked at. But he cannot fully explain the discrepancy.
Q: [To Eijk] Is there an age difference in the people becoming disillusioned with politics.
Not much, says Eijk. Older people had a stronger party identification. But they are becoming more disillusioned too.
Evans, Eijk, Fisher and Fieldhouse are now taking questions.
Q: [To Evans] Do you think there is little difference between the parties? Or is it just a matter of perception?
Evans says you can look at the parties’ policies, and code their policies. We know they have got more similar, he says.
Q: [To Fisher] Why do you think the Lib Dems are doing worse than people expect?
Fisher says his figures are based on what the current data shows. Whether that persists from now until the general election is a different matter.
If the Lib Dems are down 16 points on average, and there are over 100 seats where they did not get 16% of the vote in 2010, they must be doing worse in the others. But they are doing worse in seats where they came second or first too, he says.
He says he is not sure why.
Professor Ed Fieldhouse from Manchester is now speaking. His presentation is about whether it matters how your friends vote.
He says that Tory and Labour supporters are most likely to have friends supporting the parties they support.
Labour supporters are very unlikely to contemplate voting Tory, whatever their friends do, he says.
Having a friend that supports the party you support makes it much less likely that you will stop supporting that party, he says.
(Fieldhouse, like all the speakers, is using a powerpoint to present his data. It is not always particularly easy to interpret.)
Dr Stephen Fisher from Oxford is speaking now. He is summarising the argument he set out in a British Election Study blog that I covered earlier. (See 9.20am.)
The next presentation came from Professor Cees van der Eijk from Nottingham. He argued that the election would see “strongly depressed rates of attention, involvement and participation” because voters feel there is not enough difference between the parties.
Here’s a quote from his final powerpoint.
A sizeable segment of the British public sees none of the political parties as electorally attractive, and is thus not well represented
One of the most important drivers of this lack of representation is perceived lack of differentiation between the parties, particularly between the Conservatives and Labour.
British Election Study conference
I’m at the British Election Study conference. We’re in a basement at the Westminster conference centre, which, in reality, is an annex of the Department for Business.
We’ve just had the first presentation, from Professor Geoff Evans. In a nutshell, he argued that the rise of Ukip would damage the Tories more than Labour in 2015, because Labour lost support to Ukip some time ago.
He sets out this argument here, in a post on the British Election Study website.
Lunchtime summary
- A Ukip candidate has quit the race to contest a key seat at next year’s UK general election after making sexual harassment allegations against the populist party’s general secretary. Natasha Bolter, a former Labour supporter and rising star in Ukip who addressed the party’s autumn conference, has pulled out of the hustings to run for the seat of South Basildon, in Essex. Roger Bird, who has been Ukip general secretary since July, told the Guardian there were no criminal allegations involved. He has told Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick that he and Bolter had a relationship.
Roger Bird tells me he has emails and texts which show he and Natasha Bolter had a relationship between 18 September and 2 November
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 9, 2014
Roger Bird 1: "Natasha Bolter and I were in a consensual relationship between 18 September and 2 November ...."
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 9, 2014
Roger Bird 2: "... well after her admission to the list of approved candidates, with interest on both sides ....
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 9, 2014
Roger Bird 3: "She was keen on me and I was keen on her. I have got emails and texts to show we had a relationship ...."
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 9, 2014
Roger Bird 4: ".... and I will be presenting these to the inquiry. In any relationship there are some texts of an intimate nature."
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 9, 2014
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Labour has said that it would make cancer awareness sessions available to all schools in England. As the Press Association reports, the Teenage Cancer Trust, which runs the awareness programme, said shadow health secretary Andy Burnham had pledged his support after meeting the charity and Jane Sutton, mother of fundraiser Stephen Sutton. Stephen, 19, raised more than 5 million for charity, including the Teenage Cancer Trust, while fighting bowel cancer. He died in May. Burnham said:
Too many young people are leaving education without knowing some of the basics about cancer and how to look out for the warning signs. Every young person should, as part of their education, have the opportunity to learn more and know where to go if they are worried.
The Teenage Cancer Trust is doing brilliant work in this area and with a bit more support from government we can make their sessions available to every school in the country.
- Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has announced that New Scotland Yard is being sold for £370m, freeing up funds for police investment, including in technology like tablets, smartphones and body cameras.
I’m now off to the British Election Study conference. It’s at the Westminster conference centre, and I will post from there after 1.30pm.
Here’s a Guardian video of Ed Miliband saying last night Labour would lower the voting age to 16 by May 2016.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here’s the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads, and here’s the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories.
And here are six articles I found particularly interesting.
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Francis Elliott in the Times (paywall) describes the way the general election is now increasingly dominating the thinking in Number 10. The 4pm meeting is now devoted to party politics, he says.
Mr Cameron brings discussions [at these meetings] to a close by delivering his opinion. Occasionally, however, hints of indecision and division hang in the air. His flirtation with a demand to repatriate control over EU migrant numbers appalled Mr Osborne and Mr Hague. Mr Oliver and Mr Crosby both dispute that they were pushing for a tougher line. Instead, it seems it was Mr Cameron who insisted on leaving the option open until the last moment.
“It was really only Ed Miliband’s troubles that convinced him that perhaps he didn’t really need to do it after all,” said one observer. Another remarked that it was a “classic example of the ‘essay crisis’ prime minister”.
The wobbles showed a rare divergence of interest between Mr Cameron — who knows he would not survive election defeat — and Mr Osborne, whose best chance of the top job probably comes midway through a Cameron second term if his friend and ally chooses to retire after a referendum victory to stay in a reformed European Union.
Mr Cameron believes that his crucial mistake in the run-up to the 2010 election was not “nailing down” his strategy early enough. Determined not to make the same mistake he has committed to running on a simple campaign of promoting his economic record and exploiting doubts over Mr Miliband, reduced in strategists’ shorthand to “chaos v competence”.
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Daniel Martin in the Daily Mail says Anna Soubry, the defence minister, has said that Cameron’s comments about migrants claiming benefits could inflame people’s prejudices. She told BBC Radio 4:
I want to know and understand why my Prime Minister who I have huge amounts of respect for, I genuinely do, I think has done an outstanding job, I want to know why he’s come to that conclusion. Is that the real problem, that people might be able to claim benefits? There’s a danger that you create false fear and sometimes you play to people’s prejudices.
It’s really important that we make it clear that the majority of people who come to our country come here to work these are good people.
Just because some people have a particular view, doesn’t mean to say that you should pander to it.
- The Sun (paywall) says Theresa May has extended her lead over Boris Johnson as the favourite amongst Conservative party members to be the next party leader. The full figures are available here, at ConservativeHome.
- Simon Johnson in the Daily Telegraph says Alex Salmond is refusing to give back the resettlement grant he got when he left Westminster in 2010 - even though he has now said he wants to return. (It is a bizarre story because I don’t think there is any precedent for a “retread” MP, one who returns to the Commons after an absence, giving back a resettlement grant.)
What is emerging, though, is a growing split within the Tory party that will only deepen between now and the election. In the Commons yesterday Mr Duncan Smith announced that he was issuing new guidance for Jobcentre Plus staff to ensure that benefit claimants who are at risk of going hungry know about emergency payments. His allies said that the work and pensions secretary supported a rise in the minimum wage and spoke enthusiastically about the report. “This is looking at the deeper underlying causes of food poverty — social breakdown, addiction, problem debt — that Iain has been highlighting for years,” said one.
The Treasury, by contrast, insists that the need for food banks will be dealt with by the government’s “long-term economic plan”. “There is a tension,” admits a DWP source. “For us these are people who are outside that; they are vulnerable and may not be raised up by an overall rise in living standards because there are deeper social issues.”
The Tory election manifesto has become the latest focus for the long-running row between the party’s economic liberals and social conservatives over poverty.
Achieving Mr Osborne’s cuts will be excruciating, but so is every reimagining of the state. They might be politically incendiary too, but that is his problem. What they are not is impossible. His failure has been the generation of revenue, not the execution of cuts.
The moral case against the remaining austerity is even shoddier than the practical one. The left cites the share of national income taken by public spending as a measure of a country’s goodness. That this even needs a rebuttal might explain why Britain is in a fiscal crisis, but here goes: there is no inherent morality to government, just as there is none to markets. They are judged by their consequences. People who believe a smaller state will bring baleful consequences could be right. But they should make their case, instead of assuming it as a premise of conversation.
They might also tell us their preferred path to fiscal sanity. There is an honourable case for a net increase in taxation. But if Mr Osborne’s spending cuts are hard to pull off in a country where almost all voters use services, imagine taking the money directly. While public expenditure has oscillated wildly in recent decades, tax receipts as a share of national income have hovered between 31 per cent to 37 per cent since the 1960s. This suggests many things. One is that politicians sense voters have a breaking point when it comes to tax and shy away from testing it. Mr Osborne hopes his political enemies will try.
I’ve got to disappear now for a meeting. I won’t be posting again until around lunchtime, when I will post a round-up.
Stephen Fisher, an Oxford academic, is presenting a paper at the British Election Study conference this afternoon. As my colleague Rowena Mason reports, he will argue that the Lib Dems may lose even more seats at the general election than people expect.
But his research, which looks at how national voting trends will impact on a constitutency by constituency basis and which he has written up here, on the British Election Study website, also suggests Ukip could have less impact than some people expect.
The impact of the Ukip rise on seat outcomes may be more muted than some suppose. Neither regressions models capturing the patterns above nor classic uniform change models predict Ukip to win any seats. But there are a number of constituencies where Ukip are the largest party among BES [British Election Study] respondents, which certainly signals the potential for the party to win a handful of seats. At the same time, however, nowhere does Ukip achieve the kind of large constituency vote shares in the BES that the two main parties manage where they do well. Local campaigns can change things but at the moment, the BES data suggest Ukip would struggle to get more than a dozen seats.
The other sense in which the impact of Ukip will be more muted than some suppose regards the contest between Labour and the Conservatives. Focusing on the seats where the Conservatives and Labour finished first and second (in either order) in England and Wales, there is little association between Ukip performance and the difference between the Conservative and Labour share in 2010. Despite taking more votes from the Tories than Labour overall, there is little sign that Ukip are damaging Tory chances more in the key Con-Lab or Lab-Con marginals than elsewhere.
Fisher also says that the first-past-the-post is likely to have some striking consequences at the general election.
It seems likely that Ukip will become the third largest party in votes, followed by the Liberal Democrats and then perhaps the Greens before the SNP. But of these four parties the SNP might be both smallest on votes and the largest on seats. Moreover, both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are set to win more seats despite fewer votes than Ukip. Although Labour losses in Scotland are likely to undo some of the pro-Labour bias in the electoral system and so reduce the chances that the party will emerge largest on seats but not votes, that scenario is still possible. Finally, despite a hung parliament being the most likely outcome and a fairer reflection of the fragmented distribution of votes, the two main parties are still on course to win 90% of British seats from a combined share of just two-thirds of the vote.
For the record, here are today’s YouGov GB polling figures.
Conservatives: 34% (up 2)
Labour: 33% (up 1)
Ukip: 15% (down 2)
Lib Dems: 6% (no change)
Greens: 6% (down 1)
Conservative lead: 1 point
Government approval: -22 (up 2)
According to Electoral Calculus, this would leave Labour the biggest party, but 10 seats short of a majority.
Today will be a bit different. I will be blogging until about 10am, but then I’ve got a meeting in HQ and so the blog will go into “readers’ edition” mode until about lunchtime, when I’ll post a summary of what’s been going on in the morning.
And this afternnoon, unless any big story breaks at Westminster, I will be blogging from the British Election Study conference in Westminster. My colleague Rowena Mason has already written about some of the research that will be unveiled, including a paper saying that the Lib Dems may be facing a greater wipeout at the general election than previously predicted.
Here’s the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Jon Day, head of the joint intelligence committee, gives evidence to the Commons public adminstration committee about Whitehall’s capacity to meet future challenges.
10.30am: Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, speaks at a Britain against cancer conference. At 12.30pm Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, speaks. Burnham will says Labour would set up new fund to pay for innovative cancer drugs, surgery and radiotherapy, to replace the coalition’s cancer drugs fund.
11am: Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, launches an initiative to increase black and ethnic minority applicants to the police.
1.20pm: The British Election Study conference starts.
2.30pm: Jeremy Hunt gives evidence to the Commons health committee on health spending.
3.35pm: Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, gives evidence to a Lords committee about HS2.
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