Why I want a hung Parliament

Why don't I want anyone to win the general election that will happen sometime in the first half of this year? Because its high time our two main parties were forced to put their tribalism to one side and work together for the good of the country. Here's today's Journal column.

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Last week, in my political preview of 2010, I put my head on the block and predicted that this year’s general election will result in a slim Tory majority of the order of that achieved by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

The chances of such an outcome have doubtless been strengthened by the past week’s events, and yet another botched coup attempt against Gordon Brown which has left the Prime Minister badly wounded, but not quite dead.

But if a narrow Tory victory is what I think will happen come May 6 – if indeed that proves to be the election date – what do I think should happen when the country finally goes to the polls?

Well, at the risk of infuriating the supporters of both main parties – and it wouldn’t be the first time, after all – I have no hesitation in saying that I very much hope the electorate will deliver us a hung Parliament.

At this point, I can practically hear the collective ranks of the North-East’s Conservative and Labour stalwarts sighing to themselves: “We always knew he was a Liberal Democrat.”

But actually, the reason I want to see a hung Parliament is not because I want to see a Lib-Lab coalition, or even a Lib-Con one, but because I think the country now badly needs a government of national unity.

It may seem an odd time to say this, given the increasingly bitter nature of the two parties’ attacks on eachother over the past few days as the pre-election skirmishing got under way in earnest.

But in my view, the peculiar circumstances of this time in politics demand a degree of cross-party co-operation that can only happen if the two main parties are working together in government.

Why do I say this? Well, because the country is facing three big challenges at the moment which, in my view, would be best handled by a bipartisan approach.

They are, firstly, the economy, and specifically the question of how to tackle the budget deficit. Secondly, how to restore trust in politics after the twin scandals of the Iraq War and MPs’ expenses. And thirdly, how to bring our involvement in Afghanistan to a successful, or at the very least an honourable, conclusion.

On all of these key questions, whichever party wins the election will have to make some hard and potentially unpopular choices.

It would, in my view, be better if they were in a position to build a national cross-party consensus for those difficult choices rather than having to make them in the knowledge that they will be opposed for opposition’s sake.

This is particularly true of the economy. Everyone now knows that the next government will have to carry out the most vicious public spending cuts since the early 80s – so why indulge in the pretence that there is actually an alternative?

On political reform, too, it would be better if the parties could as far as possible reach agreement on the way forward, rather than for one side to face the inevitable accusations of fixing the system to suit their own ends.

The last Lab-Con coalition was, of course, the wartime one formed by Sir Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1940 which successfully saw the country through to victory over Hitler in 1945.

I do not claim the peril facing us now is anything like of the order of that dark hour, but the sense of national emergency that has gripped the UK for the past year or so perhaps comes closer to it than anything since.

Political preview of 2010

Sometimes, the political year is hard to predict. Back in January 2007, we could all be reasonably sure that Gordon Brown was going to become Prime Minister later that year – but what no-one foresaw was what a balls-up he would make on the question of whether to then hold a snap election.

Likewise 12 months ago, few pundits or politicians saw the MPs expenses scandal coming, although as I have pointed out in this column before, it should have been spotted down the tracks from a fair way off.

The year 2010, though, should be easier. There will be a general election, and barring a most extraordinary reversal of political fortune, the long period of New Labour hegemony will come to an end.

Indeed, the main debate among political crystal-ball-gazers has not been so much over whether Labour will lose, as over whether the Tories will win by enough to be able to form a government in their own right.

Several factors are running in their favour. Mr Brown has never managed to ‘connect’ with the British public, and has had to shoulder at least part of the blame for a recession that has revived all those old question marks against Labour’s economic competence.

Tory leader David Cameron, who has never been behind in the opinion polls since he took on the job, will be able to argue fairly persuasively that the only way to get rid of the Prime Minister is to vote Conservative.

Against that, there is the considerable obstacle of Britain’s skewed electoral system which means that the Tories will have to be 10-11 percentage points ahead of Labour in the national share of the vote to be sure of an absolute Commons majority.

And - perhaps the biggest hurdle of all for Mr Cameron – the fact that Labour’s unpopularity has still not been matched by any great surge of public enthusiasm for the Tories.

So, cards on the table time, what is my election prediction? Well, as ever, the historical precedents provide what I would see as the most meaningful clues.

Labour is hoping that this election might turn out to be a bit like 1992 – the year John Major won in the teeth of a recession because he was ultimately more trusted to deal with the economy than his opponent.

For my part, I think the mood in the country feels much more like 1979 – an election in which the public’s primary concern was to get rid of Labour rather than to elect the relatively untried and untested Margaret Thatcher.

What that points to is not a Conservative landslide, but a Commons majority of the kind of order of that achieved by the Iron Lady against Jim Callaghan – 43 seats.

Is there anything the Prime Minister can do to change the game? Well, I suppose the obvious thing would be to resign, and there is a small window of opportunity over the next few weeks in which it could yet happen.

I have always been among those who believed that, if Mr Brown felt he was damaging the party’s chances by staying, he would call it a day – but it has to be said that he has thus far shown no evidence of any desire to quit.

Nevertheless, I am still keeping perhaps 10pc of my mind open to the possibility that he will stand down, in a bid to give a younger successor a fighting chance of winning that elusive Labour fourth term.

And if that were to happen, then clearly all the many predictions that have been made about the political year 2010 would need to be very swiftly revised.

Review of the Year 2009

With the possible exception of 2001 and 9/11, seldom has any political year in recent history been dominated by a single story to the extent that the MPs expenses scandal dominated this one.

Most people have a fairly cynical view of politicians, casually and sometimes wrongly assuming them to be in it for what they can get.

Few taxpayers however imagined that they might be footing the bill for the cost of cleaning MPs’ moats, mowing their paddocks, and doing up their second homes to enable them to make a killing on the property market.

The scandal that broke over the summer will, quite literally, change Parliament – and the nature of the relationship between the public and their elected representatives – for ever.

The sad thing is, it could all have been averted, with a little foresight and some courageous leadership on the part of the Prime Minister and his fellow party leaders.

If Gordon Brown really was the strategic political genius his admirers have always claimed him to be, he would have seen it coming a mile off and pre-empted it by introducing measures to clean up the place.

Okay, so MPs would probably have voted him down – but that would have left him in an even stronger position when the storm finally broke.

As it was, Gordon’s inability to regain the political initiative was another of the themes of a political year that seems likely to be Labour’s last full 12 months in office for some time.

At one point, it looked as though Mr Brown’s handling of the continuing economic crisis, and in particular his role in brokering the global recovery plan, was winning over the public.

But his difficulty is that when it comes to the economy, too many voters see him as part of the problem rather than part of the solution – thanks largely to his hubristic claims to have “abolished boom and bust.”

It all threatened to come to a head in May when the sequential resignations of Hazel Blears and James Purnell seemed to herald the start of a Blairite counter-revolution against his leadership.

Had South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband followed them out of the door, it would have been – but Lord Mandelson saved the day for Gordon by talking him out of it.

Mr Brown’s troubles were by no means over though. Another long-running story that caused big problems for the government over the summer was its alleged failure properly to equip British troops in Afghanistan.

It coincided with a terrible spate of British casualties as soldiers embarked on a perilous mission to drive back the Taliban in order to allow elections to take place.

And the year ended with startling revelations about another war – the 2003 Iraq conflict which is now the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry under Sir John Chilcot.

The disclosure that former Prime Minister Tony Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ten days before the invasion seems likely to further sully his already tarnished reputation.

But to return to MPs’ expenses…one consequence of the saga is that it adds an extra element of unpredictability to the election which must now be held this spring.

More fringe party candidates are certain to be elected. The incumbency factor which traditionally favours sitting MPs may go into reverse. And the turnout may well be lower, leading to more volatility in outcomes.

Some believe that the scandal will ultimately lead to a better, more diverse House of Commons, a political culture in which MPs genuinely see themselves as the servants of the people rather than their masters.

Others, and I have to say I am one of them, take a more jaundiced view: that it’s an ill wind that blows no good.