On the UK election night I had the following chat with a senior Tory:
A shock BBC exit poll has just come out says the ruling Conservatives we going to get a lot more seats in parliament than all the polls have predicted perhaps even 320 as opposed to 280. (They got more.)
When the exit polls hit the news, opposition party pundits offered to eat various items of clothing if the poll wer anything near correct.
This is how the conversation went:
Me: Crikey we are going to win
Reply: Exit poll slightly higher than what we have. All to play for.
Me: 304-309 seats say gambling market
Reply: Was thinking 310
Me: Looking like amazing result
Reply: Anything over 300 I will be ecstatic
The result was even more extreme, 331 and an out of the blue shock majority in parlianment.
You could have bought a spread bet at 20 only hours before. (To translate to no- spread betting folks. $1 at 20, turned into $100 on the positive result. On losing you would have lost $20, so you can think of the odds as 4/1 against)
The usual polls had been showing the right of centre Conservatives running neck and neck with the socialists and they were utterly wrong across the board. No one believed a majority could happen.
… but it did.
The Conservatives have another 5 years to set the British economy right.
This is good news for the UK from an economic stand point. The opposition leader Ed Milliband promptly resigned after the upset, so a new opposition party leader has yet to be selected and his future success is probably wedded to the conservative party’s success in regenerating the british economy over the next 5 years. The better the Tories do the more likely the next labour leader will win the election in 2020.
This seems perverse but once prosperity is back, the electorate will vote itself a party to spend the gains.
Its tragic, but this is the shape of British politics.
This was why Churchill, responsible for saving Britain from the Nazi menace was unceremoniously bumped out of power after the war. The Conservative reversed the fortunes of the UK in the 80s for a country overwhelm in the 1970’s by socialism and trade unions. Some remember the 98% income tax, but not enough. When the good times were back, the conservatives were bumped out.
When the good times roll, there is nothing like a socialist to spend other peoples money on bread and circuses until it runs out. A period of socialist largesse seems to be irresistible to the British electorate, so the cycle turns. Once the country is out of money and luck, the voters get the Conservatives back to sweep up the mess.
However the cycle turn is at least 5 years off and for now and the UK has a solid economic road ahead till at least 2020.
The next stop on the political road map will be the issue of Europe. A straight in or out vote is slated to come but it will be interesting to see, now that the election is over, whether the Europe loving political classes have any stomach for a potential upset of having to reverse out of Europe.
The British love Europe, they just don’t want to be part of it. Since the Norwegian tidal wave severed Britain from the continent 6000 years ago Britain hasn’t been part of Europe and general separatist tendency, learned history and island geography all naturally push the average Brit away from being part of a uniting Europe.
Would the British vote to leave?
It will take a bigger upset than this election result to make that happen.
Yet now the UK has fully resealed its borders from Europe and will not likely adopt the Euro, what would the day to day differences be in the UK if it left and became like Switzerland ?
Switzerland is not in the EU and was an “associated country” until it put up immigration quota rules to stop European’s flooding it. It is now less connected to the EU and classed as a “third country.”
No one would suggest Switzerland was doomed by such a status.
However the UK is unlikely to vote itself out of the EU and membership is not going to doom it either.
What the UK needs is a strategy for its global position in this fast changing world and if the Conservatives want to win in 2020 they need to start planning for one to replace austerity, because the good times will roll and their heads may follow.