Even the Tories know they have already lost

By Alex Perkins, Liberal Democrat Canterbury City Council Leader

 

With the general election looming, and all of the parties gearing themselves up for yet another round of door-knocking, the news that the Tory campaign chief, Lynton Crosby, who previously masterminded four election victories for Australian Prime Minister John Howard, has concluded from private polling data, that the Conservatives have already lost, has not come as a surprise to most political commentators.

Whatever channel you tune to on the telly, or whichever paper you choose to peruse, the message is basically the same. Senior Tories acknowledging that there is a growing sense of gloom amongst their ranks, and a quite frankly unsurprising realization that under Michael Howard their fortunes have improved not one jot. The search is on we are told, for the next bright new hope - the one that will lead them back from the wilderness. But therein lies the problem. From Major to Hague - from Hague to Duncan-Smith - and onward and downward to Howard - it has been a publicly humiliating and ever more desperate slide down the slippery slope. If there was a saviour to be had surely they would have found him by know!

Meanwhile the nation appears to be gently waking from years of politically inactive sleep to find itself embroiled in wars and facing infrastructural collapse. Our roads are congested. Our hospitals are buckling under the impact of years of underinvestment while our schools creak through overcrowding and our trains have become the laughing stock of the Western world. Surely we deserve more than the knowledge that we are currently better off than the average Iraqi.

Our national priorities seem so confused that you do not have to cut through too many miles of spin to find out some truly horrendous facts about Britain in the 21st century. Only last month much of the Indian Ocean basin was devastated by a crippling tsunami. The response from individuals and groups in this country has been superb. Yet the government, the same government that has spent over £3 billion bombing and beating the Iraqi people into submission, has pledged just £200 million in aid to help the millions of "survivors" throughout the Tsunami-hit countries who face disease, poverty and death in a natural disaster which today was confirmed as having killed over a quarter of a million.

And don't start me on global warming. We have just discovered that after originally "championing" the Kyoto accord, our government then sought to increase the amounts of carbon emissions allowed under the treaty when negotiating behind closed doors in Europe.

So in the face of all this, what is the most likely result of the forthcoming election?

Well, with up to four senior members of the Shadow Cabinet at risk of losing their seats to the Liberal Democrats at the general election, and the Conservatives already searching for a new leader, we can assume this won't be a good election for them.

Labour seem a bit tired, and with Tony apparently determined to stand in the way of his obvious successor and the architect of their current successes, Gordon Brown, we have to assume that they will hang on - but not in a landslide as before.

With 37% of students apparently intending to vote Liberal Democrat, and the party higher in the polls than at the same stage before previous elections, we have to assume it will be a good election for them. But will the Liberal Democrats, already in many ways the effective opposition to government in this parliament, swapping place with the conservatives and becoming the second largest party in the commons be enough to reinvigorate our tired political landscape? We have to hope so - because it really doesn't look there are any other likely outcomes on May 5th!