The Campaign – Day 2

So it’s day 2 of the campaign. Already I can sense one big winner – sheer exhaustion. I think the fact that this campaign has dragged on for months and years, past all reason and intensity, has sucked a lot of the life out of it. This was the BBC news screen, at 5.50 this evening:

Two stories about politics – and that’s only because I sentimentally subscribe to the Welsh news. Not a very auspicious sign for an election that has the potential to shape politics, economics and society for a generation.

David Cameron did at least get the headlines – in an impressive stealing of a march, driving Labour’s manifesto of all bar one of the front pages this morning as well (the exception, the Guardian, displayed both). But there has, as yet, been no defining moment in this campaign, to really nail it home and make it clear what it is all about. The TV debates may provide such a game-changing moment – if not, it’s shaping up to be a preternaturally dull campaign. That’s good for the Tories – the less chatter about potential wins and losses, the better for them, because they are so far ahead. If nothing happens in the campaign, it will see them amble comfortably into power. It may be very bad indeed for turnout – and we need an election with a good turnout if the result is to have any credibility at all.

There was one surprise moment this afternoon when UKIP, who launched their manifesto under the radar, announced they would be pulling out of the contest in Stroud and backing the incumbent Labour MP, David Drew. Although it’s gone right under the radar – I can’t find it on either the BBC news website or the Citizen’s web page – this seems a very odd way to go about helping him. Drew is a popular local MP on a wafer-thin majority. He is sufficiently well-known and well-liked to be in with a genuine chance if he ran as an independent. But, tied to Labour, and with the difficulties of local industry – particularly Renishaw’s – getting ever worse, his only hope of winning this time was really if someone siphoned off votes from the Conservatives. UKIP were his best chance of that. Now it’s gone, I really can’t see him surviving. With Parmjit Dhanda likely to lose Gloucester as well – it is generally thought in the city that he ran for the Speakership because he did not relish the thought of an electoral contest – Gloucestershire could become a Labour free zone.

The YouGov aggregated data from their weekly polls suggests this may not be an isolated phenomenon in the south, the Midlands, Wales, and, more surprisingly, the North West. Once again, the regional variations seem set to make a nonsense of the national swing. The only snag I can see is that if turnout hits record lows it may make a complete nonsense of all polling anyway.

So – today’s winners, the Conservatives. But unless something changes radically, it will be politics that is the loser from this campaign – right when we need it to be at its best.

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