Hard reign in Britain

How unpopular is Gordon Brown? According to one Conservative member of Parliament, even “a monkey on a stick” could defeat the British prime minister in the forthcoming general election.

Just one in four voters believes Brown has the “necessary character” to be prime minister, and his approval ratings remain so staggeringly low that even normally unflappable pollsters confess themselves astonished by the public’s level of disdain for him.

Nevertheless, come the May election, many Brits will hold their noses and vote for him anyway.

The polling trend is clear: Two months ago, David Cameron’s new-look Conservatives enjoyed a double-digit lead and seemed set to return to government with a show of strength after 13 years in the wilderness. Now the latest tracking polls put the Tories just six points ahead of Labor -- a lead that, thanks to the quirks of the current district boundaries, might not be enough to give Cameron an overall majority in the House of Commons. Dreams of a Tory landslide have been consigned to the Department of Wishful Thinking.

So where has it gone wrong for Cameron’s Conservatives? An unpopular government led by a charmless and dour Brown -- hated by much of his own party, who has presided over the most spectacular economic bust in half a century -- could still end up holding the most seats in a “hung Parliament” in which neither party wins a majority. Whichever party wins, though, the question will be whether victory is an advantage.

The one certainty in this election is that it will deliver few spoils. Whereas Tony Blair inherited a growing economy in 1997, this year’s prime minister will be charged with tackling a grave fiscal crisis at a time when the British public has little more faith in the political process than the average Californian.

Britain’s deficit will reach 13% of GDP this year, and economic growth in the last quarter of 2009 was an anemic 0.3%. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the difference between Britain and Greece is that Britain at least has possession of the Elgin Marbles.

Even if the Conservatives do win a narrow majority, a Prime Minister Cameron will be beholden to both the bond markets and his own rebellious back-benchers, many of whom are suspicious of the modernizing makeover Cameron has launched. The latter will press for much tighter immigration controls and a tougher line with the European Union; the former will insist on public spending cuts to prove that the new government has the toughness and the courage to tackle the deficit.

Consequently, the differences between the parties are smaller than might be expected, centering instead on the timing and the extent of spending cuts, not their necessity. Labor argues that immediate reductions will imperil economic recovery; the Conservatives counter with the argument that failing to get a grip on spending endangers Britain’s Triple-A credit rating.

So far, both campaigns have been oddly defensive. Brown asks voters to take “a second look at Labor” and “a long, hard look” at the Tories. That “better the devil you know” message is not an especially positive one, and it concedes, implicitly, Labor’s own unpopularity. But exhausted by 13 years in government, Labor has few cards to play and even fewer messages to sell.

Not that the Tories’ electioneering has been especially inspiring either. The party kicked off the campaign with Cameron promising that “we can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.” Neither pundits nor voters were reassured by this. The deficit remains an abstract problem as far as the electorate is concerned, while commentators were not convinced by the seriousness of a party pledging to cut spending, except those elements of public spending, such as the National Health Service, that are popular.

Worse still, this argument risked endorsing Labor’s own argument that cuts should be made judiciously and should spare popular programs. It was, in other words, the worst of all worlds: pledging too much while simultaneously offering little reassurance to a nervous electorate.

Like Barack Obama, Cameron asks voters to embrace “A Year of Change,” but few voters show signs of believing that the Conservatives can deliver change the people want. The lack of enthusiasm for five more years of Brown is all but matched by the lack of enthusiasm for the opposition.

Cameron’s modernization of the Tory agenda -- revamping the party’s approach to the environment and poverty and other areas of traditional Tory weakness -- remains incomplete. The party promises a “post-bureaucratic age” in which power will be diffused and devolved to local communities, but, however worthy this may be, it’s a phrase that only a policy wonk can love and remains too abstract a message for the ordinary voter.

At the same time, Cameron’s promises to mend Britain’s “broken politics” and “broken society” run into the iron buffers of public cynicism. That agenda was forged in happier economic times; it seems ill-equipped for an age of austerity. Once upon a time, Cameron promised to transform society just as Margaret Thatcher transformed Britain’s economic fortunes. That pledge seems out of date now that “hard” economic issues have returned to dominate the political agenda.

Crafting a message and a strategy that assuages the bond markets and the electorate in equal measure is difficult and perhaps even impossible. Yet that’s what Cameron and his economic team must do. The odds remain that the Conservatives will end up with a modest win. But that could be, in the end, just the beginning of Cameron’s troubles.

Alex Massie, former Washington correspondent for the Scotsman, now lives in Scotland and writes for the Spectator.