New team, old faces

New Labour wins the election, but not without a warning, writes Gavin Bowd from London
Despite being described by many as the dullest British general election in living memory, the results of 7 June make strangely fascinating reading. Elected to a full second term for the first time in its history and with the largest majority ever seen -- higher even than the high watermark of Thatcherism -- New Labour's landslide victory has aroused apprehension rather than euphoria. Far from appearing gloriously vindicated, Tony Blair himself acknowledges a warning from the electorate.
The division of votes and seats is almost identical to that of May 1997. However, one of the most striking statistics is the brutal fall in turnout to a derisory 60 per cent. This figure is the lowest since 1918, but in the last year of World War I, millions of British men were still caked in the mud of Flanders, and women had not yet been enfranchised. The 2001 turnout is thus uniquely low in our modern, democratic era. Although this reflects an ongoing trend in British elections and in Western societies as a whole, British voter apathy, nevertheless, contrasts considerably with the recent mobilisation of the Italian people.
The general election has awarded a landslide to a Labour Party which obtained only 42 per cent of the votes cast -- a performance which would have sunk an opposition party only a generation ago -- and, more spectacularly, less than a quarter of registered voters. For Labour apologists, this is a sign of contentment and discernment on the part of a mature and sophisticated electorate. But this wave of civic passivity is very different from the situation in the late 1980s, when a booming economy did not deter people from voting for or against the Thatcher project. And a long, hard winter of transport chaos and foot and mouth disease hardly left Britons purring contentedly.
This has worrying implications for Tony Blair and his New Labour. Turnout fell sharpest in the party's traditional strongholds. In addition, the Liberal Democrats obtained a good score and a Socialist opposition to "Tory" Blair emerged, notably in Scotland and the North of England. Having successfully positioned Labour on the centre-left and pushed the Tories self-destructively towards the right, the prime minister can see the spectre of a motivated electorate favourable to higher public spending and redistributive taxation.
This is little comfort to a now leaderless Conservative Party. If their electoral campaign grid seemed to function successfully, their emphasis on asylum and Europe restricted them to the periphery of voters' concerns. In contrast with the successful George W Bush campaign, which William Hague was expected to emulate, the Tories surrendered to New Labour the key battlegrounds of public services and management of the economy.
Instead of promoting a "compassionate conservatism," the Tories appeared to key swing voters as shrill and extreme: as every target seat was missed by Hague's candidates, it became obvious that voter antipathy had barely receded, and even increased. The electoral map of 8 June showed a Conservative Party which, though much closer to Labour in the share of the vote than polls predicted, remains confined to non-urban England. That the Tories managed to win a seat in Scotland, in the area worst affected by the foot and mouth epidemic, only confirms this picture. The Tories are an ageing party, out of touch with demographics and new social mores -- just as Labour was in 1983 and 1987.
But did "extremism" necessarily punish the parties? The Tories hammered Labour in Romford, Essex, with a candidate who paraded around the constituency with a bull terrier tastefully dressed in the Union Jack. Most spectacularly of all, in Oldham, the scene of race riots, the British National Party received 15 per cent in reward for its crusade to defend white civilisation; significantly, turnout held up much better there than elsewhere. If this is added to the strong votes for Socialist candidates, a picture emerges of a volatile electorate ready for alternatives to the ruling centre.
This volatility was illustrated in a different -- but more telling -- manner in Kidderminster, where a local doctor dealt a crushing defeat to an incumbent junior minister. The candidate's sole issue was the state of the National Health Service (NHS) and of the local hospital, in particular. Here again, there was no collapse in turnout. The electorate have shown that they will mobilise once candidates "connect" with them on key issues.
The Kidderminster result is the biggest warning to Blair. It was on the issue of public services that Labour trounced the Tories, but lost ground to the Liberal Democrats. The second Blair government must now satisfy the expectations of a demanding and sceptical public, and the cabinet reshuffle will show the prime minister taking full responsibility for radical reform. Already, the prospect of an increased role for the private sector in health, education and other domains is causing discontent among unions and other professional bodies.
An expected downturn in the economy will also affect spending on services in the second half of this parliament. And Labour have set themselves the daunting task of turning around public services which have suffered from decades of neglect and rampant individualism. If reforms fail and the rhetoric wears thin, New Labour, far from imposing itself as the "natural party of government," may find its supporters abandoning it in its hour of need.
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Punch and prejudice 31 May - 6 June 2001
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