10 May 2017

Goldilocks Politics: what size majority should Mrs May consider to be ‘just right’?

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The local election results last week further confirmed that the Conservative Party enter the general election campaign proper this week as extremely strong favourites to be returned to office. The projected national share of the vote implied that Theresa May had an 11-point advantage (38%-27%) over the Labour Party, somewhat less than the 18-20 point lead that the national polls have been indicating. For the reasons set out in BVCA Insight last week (differential turnout, the tendency of the Liberal Democrats and Independents to over-perform in local contests and the geography of the elections this year), that 11-point edge almost certainly understates the Conservative position. The victory of their candidates in the competitions to become the first Mayor of the West Midlands and the Mayor of Tees Valley implies that the Conservatives really are in the driving seat for 8 June.

Not that you would know this from listening to either the Prime Minister or the Conservative Party Chairman. They are on an almost daily crusade to emphasise how challenging the election might be and to lower expectations as to the ultimate outcome. The word ‘landslide’ is not one that they are articulating, with the emphasis instead being on taking nothing for granted and guarding against the slightest chance of complacency. Low turnout will be cited as the biggest threat to the Government.

All of which is understandable but unless the polls shift violently it is unlikely to work as a narrative. In the absence of ‘who will win?’ being considered an interesting question by the media, ‘how big will the win be?’ will inevitably take its place. That was true for the 1983 and 2001 elections when the party in power won by a very large margin after a campaign in which it was always obvious that they were destined to win by a very large margin and with turnout down sharply on the previous contest. As matters stand, therefore, any Conservative majority in the House of Commons that was less than 50 seats in total would be a surprise and quite a disappointment to party insiders. It is hard to see on the available evidence how a 50-seat majority could be anything other than the floor in terms of a plausible outcome. The issue is thus whether the Conservative majority will be in one of three credible ranges. These are a 50-100 seat majority, a 100-150 seat majority or 150 seats plus.

The 50-100 seat majority scenario

An increase in the Conservative majority from its current 12-seat edge to a number in this range would be consistent with a lead in the popular vote over Labour of 10-12 points. While this would be below the numbers that the national opinion polls are offering, it would still be a substantial win and it would constitute a sufficiently strong personal mandate for Mrs May to have justified the exercise of holding the election now rather than in 2020 as originally scheduled.

It would, though, probably mean that the vast majority of the additional Conservative seats won would be in England, rather than Scotland and Wales, which would enable the SNP to assert that the Prime Minister’s mandate did not run north of the border and was certainly not an argument against a second referendum.

In terms of her mainstream domestic agenda, a majority of this scale would almost certainly be large enough to contain revolts on issues such as grammar schools and the expansion of Heathrow Airport, where there will be some Conservative MPs prepared to rebel even if these are manifesto promises. What is less clear is whether a majority of this size would be enough to ensure that Mrs May could be confident of determining the terms of Brexit, if this were to include costly and controversial compromises, without the risk of rebellion by those in her parliamentary ranks who were the most committed to the Leave cause during the referendum and who favour a clean, quick and hard Brexit settlement. The best estimate is that 50-70 likely Tory MPs after the election will be in this camp.

The 100-150 seat majority scenario

In ‘Goldilocks’ terms, this is the outcome which is closest to the ‘just right’ outcome for the Prime Minister. Any three-figure majority puts her victory into the sort of territory that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair secured, triumphs which undoubtedly allowed them to dominate the political system. It would be perceived as a very firm endorsement of her stance on Brexit which, while this might not matter much to the likes of the European Commission and the European Parliament, would have an impact on those in national capitals such as Berlin and Paris. It would extinguish any remaining belief that the UK might execute a belated U-turn on Brexit when it appreciated the scale of the challenge.

It is also the sort of range that would offer more flexibility to the Prime Minister with regards to her parliamentary colleagues on the Brexit question. She would feel more confident that if she had to choose between accepting a large exit ‘bill’ in terms of a payment but coupled with a more benign free trade bill, or walking away from the entire process and reverting to WTO rules, that she would be able to take the political ‘hit’ involved in accepting the former option even if 50 Conservative MPs were outraged that she decided no deal was not better than what they would deem to be a bad deal. There might be a difficult internal argument on the matter but as long as the PM could count on the backing of key players with a history in the Leave camp, such as David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, then she would feel capable of carrying the day.

The Conservatives are also unlikely to reach this sort of majority (especially the top end of the range) without making 10 or so gains in Scotland at the expense of the SNP. While Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues would clearly still be the largest party there, in terms of seats and votes cast, the sense of momentum in their direction would be weakened, and while it would be more likely than not that a second independence referendum would occur in the course of the Parliament, the timing/terms of such a ballot would be much more under the control of the Prime Minister than the First Minister. The nightmare notion of a very difficult Brexit followed by a dissolution of the Union would weaken.

The 150 seat plus majority scenario

During the 1983 General Election campaign, Francis Pym, then the Foreign Secretary but a former Chief Whip, mused publicly that it might not be a good thing for his party if they prevailed with an absolutely massive majority. Mrs Thatcher did not agree, slapped him down the day after he spoke and then sacked him in the post-election Cabinet reshuffle. Yet what he had said had some validity.

Truly enormous majorities create their own difficulties. The first is the arrogance of absolute power. The second is that in the absence of any effective opposition, an alternative situation will evolve. The Conservative Party’s obsession with the EU started in the mid-1980s in part because it could afford the luxury of bitterness and division on the issue. In the 1997-2007 period, the usual two-party contest appeared to break down and it was replaced by the animosity between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown and their allies.

Smaller majorities would have been a stronger disincentive against fratricide. A parliamentary party is harder to manage when large numbers of MPs know that their election was a fluke, which is unlikely to be repeated next time, or that even if they have a decent hope of staying in the House of Commons, their chances of securing ministerial office are slight as there are so many more aspiring ministers than there are vacancies. Individual MPs can also convince themselves that it is harmless to take what might be a locally popular stance against a government initiative because there is no danger of the measure itself being defeated in the lobbies of the House of Commons. All of this is dangerous terrain and explains why seemingly omnipotent Prime Ministers and parties can come a cropper. If I were Mrs May, I would prefer a majority of 100-120 seats to 150-170 seats.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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