Could 2015 be a year of two elections - and three PMs?

My preview of the political year 2015, first published in yesterday's Journal.
 

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It is Thursday, December 31, 2015. The newly-elected Prime Minister sinks contentedly into an armchair at 10 Downing Street, pours himself a drink, and reflects on a tumultuous year in British politics.

Not since 1974 had there been two general elections in a single year. Not since 1852 had there been three Prime Ministers in one year.

Suddenly there is a knock on the door. “The Deputy Prime Minister is here to see you, Mr Johnson,” says the PM’s chief of staff.

“Ask her to wait in the drawing room,” the Prime Minister replies. “I’ll be along in just a moment.”

The Prime Minister had not, of course, expected to end the year in this exalted position. David Cameron and Ed Miliband had led their respective parties into the May general election and he himself had not even been on his own party’s front bench.

But the public had demonstrated its distinct lack of enthusiasm for both Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband by delivering a second successive hung Parliament. The Conservatives were, once again, the biggest single party.

But the parliamentary arithmetic was far more complex than the 2010 contest which had resulted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition.

While the Lib Dems’ representation dropped from 57 to 29, with Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam seat among the casualties, the Scottish Nationalists had won 22 MPs and Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party ten.

The result was stalemate. The SNP’s new leader at Westminster, Alex Salmond, was as good as his word and refused to make any accommodation with the Conservatives.

Meanwhile the Tory and Lib Dem parliamentary parties refused to make any accommodation with each other, such was their mutual loathing by this stage after five tense years of coalition.

Mr Farage’s ten seats, together with those of the Ulster Unionist parties, were enough to cobble together a bare parliamentary majority – but there were two conditions on which the Ukip leader absolutely refused to budge.

The first was that the referendum on British membership of the EU was to be brought forward to 2016. The second was the immediate resignation of David Cameron as Tory leader.

So it was that, after several days of high politics and low skulduggery, Theresa May was installed as Britain’s second female Prime Minister, in what was in part an attempt to forestall the inevitable leadership challenge by Boris Johnson, newly returned to the Commons.

But the government’s position was so precarious that everyone knew there would soon have to be a second election – with Labour also set to go into the contest under a new leader after Mr Miliband fell on his sword.

A summer of political turbulence followed, with Mrs May disappointing those admirers who had once seen her as Britain’s answer to Angela Merkel by appearing to be at the mercy of both Mr Farage and Mr Johnson.

The Tories seemed bent on self-destruction as party activists, angered at the apparent “coronation” of the new premier, demanded she submit to a leadership contest with the London Mayor.

By the time the election came, in the first week of November, it was clear that the public was fed up with multi-party government.

Mr Farage’s machinations over the summer months had brought accusations that the Ukip tail was well and truly wagging the Tory dog and the public mood appeared to have turned somewhat against the Ukip leader.

His cause was not helped by warnings from several major employers, including Nissan, that they would quit the UK if the 2016 referendum on EU membership resulted in a no-vote.

The election duly delivered the clear verdict which the previous two had failed to do, giving the new government a slim but comfortable working majority of 23.

All of which brings us back to 10 Downing Street and the arrival of the new Prime Minister’s deputy for a New Year’s Eve pow-wow with her boss.

“So, any regrets?” said Stella Creasy, herself newly-elected to the role occupied for the previous eight years by Harriet Harman, and now seen very much as Labour’s rising star.

“Well,” replied Alan Johnson, “I never wanted the job, of course, but when 150 of your MPs simultaneously post messages on Twitter saying you’re the only person who can save the party from another election defeat, what on earth can you do?”

“The best man won in the end, Prime Minister,” said his deputy reassuringly, and wished him a very Happy New Year.

Why weren't expat Scots given a vote?

Here's a front page from the Northants Telegraph that we featured this morning on HoldtheFrontPage as part of our latest round-up of how regional newspapers are covering the independence referendum.

It's not only a great regional newspaper front page, it makes an important point about the forthcoming referendum: namely, that hundreds of thousands of Scots who now happen to be living outside Scotland do not have a vote in it.

I'm not entirely sure how we ended up at this pretty pass, or why David Cameron agreed to a referendum which allows English people living in Scotland to vote on whether Scotland should be an independent country but not Scottish people living in England.

A much fairer solution, surely, would have been to allow anyone born in Scotland who meets the age criteria for the referendum to apply for a postal vote, so long as they were able to provide documentary evidence of their place of birth.  It would also, as Mr Cameron seems to have failed to realise, have made it much less likely that there would be a 'Yes' vote.

As Prime Minister, Mr Cameron could have insisted on this course of action. Had he done so, it would have been very hard for Alex Salmond, as a Scottish Nationalist, to argue that anyone of Scottish birth should be denied a vote.

It is tactical blunders such as this that have led some people to argue that Mr Cameron's position would be untenable if, God forbid, the Scots do vote to break away.  I am afraid I am one of them.

Scottish independence won't be the end of the devolution 'process'

Back in 1998, a now almost-forgotten former Labour cabinet minister coined the phrase: "Devolution is a process, not an event."

They were in fact the words of Ron Davies, the architect of the Welsh Assembly who is now primarily remembered for his 'moment of madness' on Clapham Common and subsequent 'badger-watching' escapades near the M4.

But as the repercussions of New Labour's devolution reforms of the late 1990s continue to reverberate around the body politic, it is clearer than ever that Mr Davies was spot-on in his analysis.

Just as the former Cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell predicted in his series of 'exit interviews' before retiring last month, the future of the Union has suddenly become one of the hottest of political hot potatoes.

The extent of the Prime Minister's gamble in seeking to strong-arm the Scottish government into holding a straight yes-no vote on independence within the next 18 months should not be underestimated.

A less risky strategy would surely have been for the Westminster government to carry on doing what it has been doing to the Scots for the past 30 years, namely try to buy them off.

The carrot on this occasion would not have been money in the form of the highly-advantageous Barnett Formula of public spending, but rather the promise of more powers – or “devo max” as it is termed.

By handing significant financial autonomy and accountability to the Scottish government while allowing it to remain in the UK, the government would surely have satisfied all but a minority of pro-independence diehards.

But Mr Cameron appears to have eschewed that option in what appears to be an all-out bid to destroy the Scottish Nationalist First Minister Alex Salmond and kill the idea of independence stone dead for a generation or more.

His attempt to set the timetable for the referendum as well as fixing the question is designed to pitchfork the Scots into an early vote in the hope that they will reject independence.

But will it actually have the opposite effect? Will the Scots simply see it as yet more unwanted meddling in their affairs by a distant English premier whose party enjoys so little support north of the border it nearly decided to change its name?

If so, then Mr Cameron is going to look remarkably stupid before this game of political chess is played out. So stupid, in fact, that it could be he, rather than Mr Salmond, who finds himself out of a job.

The future constitutional position of Scotland may seem like a rather arid subject to those of us south of the border, but for the North-East, it could have some rather interesting political repercussions to say the least.

For starters, an independent Scotland would be more likely to compete aggressively against the Northern English regions for inward investment – an issue that has reared its head from time to time even within the existing Union.

The wider implications, though, would be in the change in political balance within England and the impact that this would have on traditionally Labour-supporting areas.

The secession of the Scots would mortally Labour south of the border, ending any prospect of it holding power alone at Westminster again and permanently shifting the centre of political gravity to the right.

The Labour-supporting regions of the North - whose political cultures in fact have more in common with the Scots than with the Southern English – may well then find themselves even more marginalised by the Westminster Parliament.

This, in turn, might well lead to a revival of interest in the idea of devolution within England, perhaps within a pan-Northern context this time round rather than individual assemblies for the North-East, North-West and Yorkshire.

My guess is that if Mr Cameron’s gamble does backfire, and the Scots ultimately vote for independence, it won’t be too many years before we see calls for some sort of 'Council of the North' encompassing all three regions.

Fanciful? Well, maybe. But devolution is, after all, a process, not an event.