It was a stuffy evening at Labour Party Headquarters, but the air conditioning in the briefing room kept the weather outside. A slight, red-headed woman was standing beside a screen, talking animatedly. At last, she fell silent. “Any questions”, asked Deborah Mattinson, stepping away from the screen.
David Milliband spoke first. “Deborah, thanks for that, but …”
“David”. Mandelson interrupted. “I think we should let Gordon have a word first. He is, after all, our Leader”.
“Thank you, Peter,” said Brown. Not even pausing for a glare at Milliband – that’s actually a surprise – he’s completely focussed on this. Numbers, I suppose. Right in his comfort zone, mused Mandelson – Brown pressed on. Standing up, the bulky Scot turned to face the rest of the room.
“Whatever we decide, we decide tonight - and we stick to it”. He swept the room with a glare. "And we release it – united – into any and all tame journalists. I’m a bit … twitchy … about setting hares running to row back later”
Some embarrassed chuckles greeted this. Brown gave a half smile. “On the face of it, these numbers are encouraging. Very encouraging. My instincts are saying ‘go for it’. Does anyone have a good reason why not?”
“Might be our best shot”, agreed Ed Milliband. His brother, his expression bland, agreed. “I can’t see a better opportunity coming our way for years”.
The murmurs of agreement swelled, until Mandelson spoke up. “Why?”
Faces turned to look at him, expressions quizzical. “What?” asked Brown, looking annoyed.
“Why?”, repeated Mandelson. “It’s been barely three months since the last election. Without unity of Opposition, we could have nearly five years ahead of us. Difficult years, I’ll grant you, but more difficult for the impotent Cameron, Huhne and Congdon than for us.”
He focussed on Mattinson. “Deborah, dear. Please tell us the best and worst cases. Practical cases, that is – anything requiring extremes of fortune, please omit”.
Mattinson glanced at Brown, who nodded, with his irritated expression giving way to a thoughtful one.
“Well, the variables are huge, especially due to the UKIP surge. To be honest, I’d prefer it if we could model every constituency individually, especially because the ‘safe-seat’ category is now under threat. In addition, small shifts can have huge outcomes when we start from so well-balanced a position”
“Yes, my dear, we take it for read that the predictability has become very fraught”, interjected Mandelson. “Please skip over the mechanics and give us ballpark figures”
Mattinson drew herself up decisively. “Right, we have a number of scenarios. Scenario One: Labour sustain their position; the Conservatives lose votes most of all to UKIP; the Lib Dems fail to make ground. Labour majority of 20”
David Milliband broke in. “That sounds good. Probability?”
“I’ll cover probabilities at the end. Scenario Two: We drift back down, Conservatives hold off the worst of the UKIP challenge, the Lib Dems make ground preferentially against us, especially in student constituencies. Conservative minority, possibly even a thin majority”
“A depressing outcome”, said Mandelson. “I take it there are other scenarios?”
“Oh yes. ‘UKIP Dream’ has us drifting down, but the Tories failing to hold them off; the ‘Lib Dem Dream’ has them in kingmaker position – which happens more often than I think we’d like when we run projections; it can happen even with them losing seats – there’s about a dozen possible outcomes. Those two, however, are very marginally the most likely. Call it 15% for Scenario One and 10% for Scenario Two”
“And what assumptions on public interest changes did you make,my dear?”, asked Mandelson.
“Oh, we just used a randomised stochastic one. Basically, the probability of your position improving was about equal to no change and to your position falling”, replied Mattinson.
“In which case, I fear that I must strongly advise caution”, said Mandelson. “In my opinion, the public – fickle beast that it is – has a stronger chance of swinging behind Cameron”.
He turned towards Brown. “Consider, Gordon: if we call an election now for the start of October, what will be the first news item of the campaign? Samantha Cameron is due to give birth any time over the next month. This shouldn’t be a political issue – but it will further serve to underline human qualities of the Leader of the Opposition”
He took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. “One strength we have is that the Tories remain distrusted and toxic. A cute baby automatically triggers certain areas of the human brain – the family cannot be so bad, can they? If we lose too many Mumsnet-style voters, we get disproportionate losses.”
“We also have the question of who will stand in Oldham East and Saddleworth? You acted decisively and promptly in suspending Phil Woollas from the front bench and proclaiming your distaste for the alleged actions – but promising to suspend final judgement until a proper process had been complete. This won’t happen before winter comes. So who stands there?”.
Mandelson shrugged. “A single constituency may seem a petty focus, but you can guarantee that the Tories and especially the Lib Dems will blow this up as much as they can to paint us all as racists and hypocrites”
“And we have the unknown and unknowable. We will have revisions to GDP growth for the last quarter. That was a very welcome number – however, an increase or no change would not change anything. Good news replacing good news is no news. If it were to decrease on revision by even a fraction, the news changes. That’s what – a fifty-fifty chance?”
“Add to that the fact that we’re broke, the Lib Dems have no money, and UKIP have only really Stuart Wheeler to draw upon, and he can’t fund too much more than a few directed campaigns. The Tories are the only ones with money to spend on a campaign. I have tried to take steps to ensure that their focus on spending is not against us, however, but this won’t remove their entire advantage”, continued Mandelson.
“But not going for it last time was what screwed us!”, protested Douglas Alexander.
“No, dear boy, not squashing the rumours was what screwed you last time. Consider – what would we put in the manifesto? Reheat the last one that got effectively rejected? What policies do we want to see? Come on, let’s hear them”
There was a prolonged, uncomfortable silence.
“Um – smaller class sizes?”, ventured Yvette Cooper.
“We could ban plastic carrier bags in supermarkets …”, Ed Milliband trailed off, discouraged.
The silence resumed.
“Okay, we get your point”, growled Brown.
“Indeed. We have little left to say apart from ‘let us go on as before’. Which the electorate don’t want – it’s simply that they fear the Tories right now. However, we also have to look at the downside of not going – we’ll be locked into a minority Government for the next four and a half years. We’ll lose seats to by-election defeats and backbenchers may get more and more disruptive. Piloting legislation through will be difficult – but then again, we’ve established that there’s not much we really want to put through, other than to keep the Tories out through the recovery. We may need to go cap in hand to the Yellow Peril before the end of the Parliament”, said Mandelson.
Unhappy glances were traded across the table.
“Gentlemen – we are not in a happy position whichever way we go, but then again – no-one else is, either, and we have the luxury of being able to actually do things and control the agenda. To some extent. To summarise: If we go for it, we have nothing to say to the electorate other than ‘hey, we’ve had some nice polls recently and we’d like to take advantage of them'. With nothing unanticipated blowing up, we start the campaign with the focus on the happy family of David Cameron, ourselves vulnerable over toxic charges, and a fifty-fifty call on bad news or no news on our strongest line. All this is in order to buy an outside chance at a majority – less than one in six at the very best assumptions; a lot lower than that when these forecastable events are factored in. All other scenarios have us no better than now at best, a lot worse than now at worst. And with the status quo - unless the Tories, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid and the Irish all line up against us, we can govern until 2015, albeit with restricted room to manouevre. This outside chance at a majority buys us six more months if it pays off – admittedly more comfortably. If it doesn’t, we lose our control of events and hand over credit for the recovery to Cameron and Osborne”
Mandelson shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Gordon – I don’t think it’s worth the gamble. Oh, and further to that – I have information that the Tories are running scared of UKIP”
“Ha! Not a surprise, but welcome”, growled Brown.
“Indeed. Four and a half more years gives them more time to focus excessively on their own little problem to the detriment of their focus on us. The longer they are distracted, the better”
Brown tilted his head, considering. “Okay – you’re very persuasive. Can anyone shoot down these points?”
Mandelson shrugged. “It’s possible that there are no right answers – with the status quo, events could derail us – especially if the Parliamentary Party becomes too fractious. Rebellions could put us down and out – but to be fair, that could be the case even with us in a fractionally better state”.
“You leave the Party to me”, growled Brown. “Any more for any more?”. His eyes swept the room. One by one, they shrugged or shook their heads. “Ed? David? Douglas? Alan? Andy? Jack? Harriet? Jim? Yvette? Shaun? Ed? Hilary? Anyone?”
“Right. Decided. Make no mistake, everyone – we’re now in it for the long haul. I don’t see another opportunity coming for years now, if at all, but Peter is absolutely right. We’d be going all in on a bad bet, with far less to win than we’d have to lose – and even if we won, we’d still be in it for the long haul”, said Brown.
BBC NEWS, 13 August 2010
“The Prime Minister today made a statement that despite some pressure being placed on him to call a short-notice General Election to try to resolve the Hung parliament that resulted from May’s Elections, he would not ‘selfishly put Party advantage ahead of that of the country’.
He further said :’Despite opinion polls now showing that we would improve our position and possibly secure an outright majority, it would be irresponsible to jeopardise the hard won economic stability that we have carved out since May. Despite the foolish downgrading of our debt by the rating agencies that missed all of the lead-up to the economic turmoils of a few years ago, the money markets have continually reaffirmed their confidence in our deficit and growth plans, with record low borrowing costs. Any major political uncertainties could damage this fragile recovery and I for one won’t gamble the well-being of hard-working Britons just to try to snatch some political advantage. There will not be a “cut-and-run” election – the next election will not be until it is due. By which point, the country will have recovered under our stewardship”.
In other news …