Standing in front of the black door that says “prime minister” to the world, David Cameron gave up on the statesman pose on Monday, and assumed the role of partisan. That’s no bad thing. While much of the country will be turned off by the negative slogans slung at Ed Miliband from the Downing Street steps – warnings of chaos, runaway taxes and mounting debts – it’s surely better that politicians should disagree fiercely for the next few weeks than pretend that they are all on the same page. For the choices confronting the country in campaign 2015 are stark – much starker than in the average general election.
Spool back five years, and two of the three party leaders presented themselves as something other than politicians. Mr Cameron’s demeanour was that of the progressive young exec, with a manifesto to match. The Invitation to Join the Government of Britain had the look, and the rhetoric, of a corporate social responsibility brochure. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, was the fresh-faced NGO chief, exasperated at a sclerotic system and the “trail of broken promises” in its wake. Such non-political politics sustained both opposition parties through a campaign against a visibly clapped-out Labour government. But it didn’t take long after polling day before sharp-edged decisions – benefit cuts, NHS “reforms”, tuition fees – began being made. Politics was back.
It is as well to have the disagreements upfront and out in the open this time. The scale of cuts foreshadowed in George Osborne’s budget would recast the British state, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies judges that the effective difference between the parties – on how much cutting is needed, and how much debt is too much – is bigger than since the 1980s. Whereas the sound and fury of the 2001 and 2005 campaigns centred on rival expenditure plans where the differences totted up to less than 1% of GDP, the difference this time is nearly double that. So the decisions affecting schools, care homes and tax rates are weightier than usual.
But the real rub with election 2015 concerns questions of a qualitatively different sort: questions about what sort of country Britain wants to be. The Conservative party is, as Mr Miliband reminded business leaders on Monday, committed to reducing the next two years to one almighty argument about whether or not Britain should leave the EU, through a referendum in 2017. Mr Cameron is committed, too, to ending “instruction ... from judges in Strasbourg” on human rights, which suggests he may walk away from a European convention which predates and extends well beyond the EU. Britons would then join Belarussians as the only citizens from Reykjavik to Rostov without any right to petition the European court. Drifting away from the continent is a grave enough prospect, but election 2015 could also determine whether or not the UK itself can hold together. As the months go by, with the Scottish National party poll lead stubborn, it increasingly feels like the history books will record last year’s referendum as the beginning, rather than the end, of a debate about the union. The size of the SNP contingent at Westminster will obviously bear on this, as will the question of how far – or not – Scotland awakes on 8 May and feels as if it is the subject of alien rule.
It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the choice in 2015 is profound, but it’s no exaggeration, either, to say that there is still an overpowering feeling that “they’re all the same”. Media inquisitors harangue politicians for spuriously precise financial plans for four years hence, which drives all the players into the same defensive pose, making all sound equally evasive. Politicians should muster the confidence to swat away demands for every last decimal place, with the obvious truth that in this parliament – as in every parliament before – the detailed forecasts have not to come to pass. They should concentrate instead on their real responsibility: spelling out the criteria that they will use in making the big judgment calls. But the media have responsibilities too, starting with an obligation to provide an honest assessment of both the past record and the choice ahead. We will be doing our best to do that in this space over the coming weeks. For make no mistake: this is an election where the stakes are high indeed.
