Twelve years ago, on Black Wednesday, Britain crashed out of the ERM and the normal rules of politics were suspended. Labour’s miniscule opinion poll lead soared into double digits, where it remained (with the brief exception of the fuel crisis in 2000) until last year. Labour even appeared to escape catching a severe bout of ‘mid-term blues’, when the voters punish them in opinion polls, by-elections and local elections.
It is this historical context which should be foremost in our minds next week, as the results – whatever they are – of the ‘Super Thursday’ local and European elections begin to pour in.
For those whose political consciousness does not stretch back to the Thatcher-Major years, let alone the political turbulence experienced by the Wilson and Heath governments, perhaps a little history lesson is called for. Seven years into the Blair government, MORI shows Labour with a nine percent lead over the Tories (admittedly somewhat larger than that shown by some of the other polling companies). In May 1986, seven years after she came to power, MORI put Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government eight points behind Labour.
MORI’s polling for this point in the parliament (three years after the last general election) for the Thatcher-Major administrations is also revealing. In the spring of 1982, before the outbreak of the Falklands war, the Tories lagged three percent behind Labour and four percent behind the recently formed SDP-Liberal Alliance. Three years after the Tories’ third election victory in 1987, Labour led the government by up to 23 percent, while in spring 1995, John Major’s government was a stunning 36 percent behind New Labour.
Throughout the post-war period, by-elections have frequently provided perhaps the most graphic illustration of mid-term blues. These are, after all, not throw-away replies to pollsters’ questions, but actual votes cast. And voters have frequently used them to send the strongest message to governments about their unhappiness. Remember the humiliations the Tories suffered under John Major in seats such as Newbury, Christchurch and Eastleigh? Or the revenge voters took on Margaret Thatcher in Crosby, Mid Staffordshire, Ryedale or Ribble Valley? Those with longer memories may recall the humiliations suffered by Labour in seats such as Wallsall, Redbridge and Workington in the late 1970s, or the pounding Ted Heath’s government took in Ripon, Sutton and the Isle of Ely. Harold Wilson’s governments also suffered some famous by-election defeats – in Oldham, Dudley, Glasgow and Walthamstow – in the 1960s. By contrast, it took until last September’s by-election in Brent for Labour in government to lose a parliamentary by-election, the 1997-2001 parliament being the first since that of 1951-55 when the governing party did not lose such a contest.
It’s also a well-known fact that local authority elections are too often not decided by the performance of councils and the decisions councillors make, but are quasi-referenda on the performance of the national government. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the Tories frequently suffered drubbings in these polls: beaten, for instance, by eleven percent by Labour in 1990, and twelve percent in 1995 (in estimated national equivalent figures provided by the Local Government Elections Centre). Since 1997, however, the Tories have rarely – with the exception of 2000 – managed to gain much of an edge over Labour in these elections. Moreover, whereas Labour’s victory in the 1997 general election was foreshadowed by strong local election performances from 1993 onwards, the Tories – again, with the exception of 2000 – have never managed to edge their vote up much beyond their pitiful general election performances of 1997 and 2001.
With the opinion polls becoming more volatile, the first Labour by-election loss in Brent and difficult elections this summer, it may well be that politics is returning to its more normal rhythms. However, if this is the case, then surely the Tories should be doing much better. Why have they not opened up a substantial poll lead over Labour? Why are the Lib Dems, not the Tories, being talked of as the challenges to Labour in the Leicester East by-election, despite the Tories being in second place? And why, for the most part, are their frontbench team not simply largely anonymous, but also ignored by the media, rather than scrutinised by the media as a government in waiting?
Next week’s elections may indeed prove that the era of Labour’s total supremacy is indeed over. Given their present performance, however, it is the Tories, not Labour, that should be most concerned at that prospect.