This article is from the March issue of Total Politics

“In the arena of human life, the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action,” wrote Aristotle. He may have been clever, but I think even Aristotle would struggle to explain how, in just 10 years, average CEO “honours and rewards”– according to the High Pay Commission – went from a juicy £1m to an eye-watering £4m, while average pay rose from around £17,000 to around £25,000.  

This is just not a UK situation. In President Obama’s State of the Union address in January he referenced the rich avoiding their fair share of taxes, which was taken as a sideswipe at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s big salary and small tax bill.

The problem for that relatively small cohort of individuals committed to defending the right to be paid huge sums is quite simple: newspapers report “growing public anger” about the situation without having to justify whether the public really is angry and, if so, how angry.

One thing we know for sure is that the public realises the situation is getting worse and frets about it: in a ComRes/ITV News poll in November 2011 two-thirds of people said that pay inequalities had worsened over the previous 20 years, and even more – 71 per cent – said they feared that having big inequalities was bad for the country’s social stability.

But do people’s perceptions tally with reality? In 2010, ComRes conducted a poll for BBC Radio 4, asking people how much they thought individuals should be paid, in order to compare the mean answers for different professions with their actual remuneration.

The answers were revealing (see table below).

How do we apply this to the present debate? Firstly, the old defence that people would not complain about premiership footballers being paid a fortune, and should not therefore complain about ‘star’ CEOs’ pay, fails on two counts. One: people believe premiership footballers are hugely overpaid. Two: they think FTSE 100 CEOs are massively overpaid.

Secondly, overinflated executive pay is not confined to the private sector. According to the poll, the public also thinks secondary school heads and train drivers are overpaid. We don’t need to conduct a poll to realise that the same would be true of the top band of council CEOs who are paid over £250,000. The prize for creating the highest ever public-sector salary goes to Ken Livingstone, who paid transport commissioner Bob Kiley a whopping £1.146m salary in his final year in the job – plus a £2m settlement for standing down.

Surprisingly, the percentage gap between what people perceive to be a prime minister’s salary and his actual pay is relatively small – he is seen as being only 20 per cent overpaid compared with secondary heads, who are thought to be 70 per cent overpaid. But it begs the question as to whether a man regarded as overpaid should lecture business chiefs about their own salaries.

A wider consequence of the problem is that the corporate community risks getting a bad name. Happily, perceptions of business per se are holding up well, despite the ‘dark decade’ that included the Enron mop-up, Lehmans and Fred the Shred. The ‘Business is Good for Britain’ campaign recently launched by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) published a poll showing that the public overwhelmingly believes that businesses are good for Britain as long as they comply with the law, pay their taxes and make a profit.

Current plans for curbing pay revolve around linking executive remuneration to company performance, to be achieved by both substantial means – giving shareholders a binding vote on a company’s remuneration report – and those less obviously effective, such as “encouraging a wider range of people to join corporate boards”.

The ‘shareholder vote’ point is a good idea, but in practice may change little. GSK’s remuneration report was famously voted down, but that’s memorable for being an exception. We do not yet know whether, if such a report were more than advisory, shareholders would vote even more sparingly because of the seriousness of the consequences – akin to the argument that juries in murder trials wouldn’t deliver a guilty verdict if the death penalty were to return. Another worry is that 40 per cent of the FTSE 100 is foreign-owned, and so lines of accountability are not straightforward.

The key question is whether the public would accept that high pay could ever be justified. My hunch is that people will complain more about executive pay while the economic climate is difficult, but that their anger is directed at what they believe damages their own finances rather than at inequality. Whatever CEOs are paid, more people think bankers are overpaid, suggesting that the financial crash and the group who caused it remain more toxic than those whose rewards are insufficiently linked to a company’s performance.
In the current round of spleen-venting, however, attempts to justify the status quo have little resonance, as the table below shows:

If footballers and pop stars are paid millions, there is nothing wrong with high-performing business leaders receiving the same

Agree    33%
Disagree    55%
Don’t know    12%

It is immoral for people running large companies to be paid millions of pounds

Agree    64%
Disagree    25%
Don’t know    11%

Having pay inequalities is a good thing; it incentivises people to know they can earn a lot of money if they work hard

Agree    37%
Disagree    50%
Don’t know    13%

Around two-thirds of the public believe it is “immoral” that people running “large” companies should be paid millions of pounds. This is surely a dangerous figure, since it suggests that many companies act ‘immorally’ by paying their top people salaries of that scale.

Yet, I’m not convinced that the public mood is as critical as the bare poll figures suggest. Those most likely to describe executive pay as “immoral” are the most vigorous customers of the National Lottery. If being rewarded with millions for your work is immoral, what does it say about buying a Euromillions ticket? Who most deserves their millions?

Hedge fund managers will still make huge sums, CEOs will resist taking pay cuts and supine investors will nod through salary packages that to ordinary individuals will seem stratospheric. Perhaps we’ll be saved from revolution by the simple realisation that we’d all like to be paid that sort of money.

Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes

This article is from the March issue of Total Politics

The architects of New Labour are out of sight but they aren’t out of mind. Finding out what they’re up to these days is easier said than done, though.

First, there’s Tony Blair, gallivanting around the world chopping and changing between his Africa charity, his green stuff and his Middle East political role. And there’s his advisory firm, although it isn’t mentioned in his memoirs.

Before Christmas, I work out that the former PM has added Kazakhstan to his roster of oil-rich clients. Tony set up the multi-million-pound deal with former colleagues, including Jonathan Powell, Tim Allan and Alastair Campbell. We get the first whiff of the story when Campbell is seen flying back from Astana to London via Vienna – President Nursultan Nazarbayev forged a friendship with Blair back in 2001 when the PM cradled baby Leo in his arms, it transpires – but only after call after call over a fortnight does spokesman Matthew Doyle admit there has been a deal.

Then there’s Lord Mandelson, former deputy prime minister (if not in name) in the last government, who still sits in the House of Lords. It would be instructive to know whom he’s now advising through his company, Global Counsel.

Under Lords rules he had to declare this by 28 January. In a stroke of genius, however, Mandy’s staff merely shifted his entry in the Lords’ register from one category to another. Hey presto! No need to declare the clients.

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, managing partner of Global Counsel, says my report on this is terribly unfair. The FT shouldn’t be knocking “small businesses” or writing “Daily Mail” stories, he whines. There’s an obvious retort: why not just publish the clients?

And what about Gordon Brown? The Scotsman is apparently disinterested in money. I’m told that during one meeting between Gordo and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian recounted a jolly with Vladimir Putin on Roman Abramovich’s yacht. “Have you ever been on it?” he asked.

“No,” said Brown, his face curdling in disgust. “I… have… not been on Abramovitch’s yacht.”

During the quiet new year, I fish around the Commons register. It turns out the former PM’s earnings have crossed the £1m line, mainly through speeches to the likes of PIMCO, Visa and Credit Suisse.

Of course, he doesn’t keep a penny – that ‘s the formal position. It either goes to charity or “funds Sarah and Gordon Brown’s staff for continuing public service”.

All still very vague, though. The Browns’ website says their running costs are £550,000 a year on rent and staff, but their office doesn’t want to give any details.

•

It is -2°C, and I’m supposed to be swimming in the Serpentine with Tory hardman Desmond Swayne MP. In the dark. At 6am. For the FT Weekend Magazine. The idea was conceived during the sweltering days of October, when a dip in Hyde Park seemed a refreshing concept. Then I fell ill with an ear infection, and winter arrived.

Now we may have to wait until the spring. Not because of the freezing weather. Not at all. The light will be more photographer-friendly come April. That’s my excuse.

•

Mark Serwotka points to a tray bearing a teapot and three old-looking mince pies on a plate. I politely decline: Boxing Day was weeks ago. “They’re from Christmas 2011, or was it 2010?” he jokes. We are in the PCS’ ugly concrete offices around the corner from Clapham Junction station.

During last summer’s riots the nearby street was ablaze. “We had a close shave,” says Serwotka. He thinks the building was not “trashed” because the rioters saw anti-cuts banners hanging from the roof.

Serwotka is the bad boy who won’t play ball over public sector pension reform, to the fury of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, whose constituency train goes straight past the “bloody great banners” – as he told the union leader.

It’s not great news for Ed Miliband that the PCS and Unite are mulling a merger that could eventually see the non-compliant Welshman at the head of Labour’s biggest funder. The former supporter of the Socialist Alliance tells me he’s reading I Married a Communist by Philip Roth. Will he lend it to Len McCluskey?

•

Business cards with facial photographs: whatever next? It’s an incipient trend among MPs. Here they are on the FT’s desk; a grinning Stella Creasy, a happy Jo Swinson and a slightly menacing Ian Davidson. I’m all for moving with modern times, but let’s stop there. No speaking holograms. No scratch ‘n’ sniff. Please, no.

Jim Pickard is political correspondent for the Financial Times

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Cathy Jamieson says YES

The chancellor needs to cut VAT immediately. Families across the UK are really feeling the squeeze of the current economic climate. Their weekly food bills are up, home heating costs are rocketing, the cost of filling the family car to get to work has risen and rail fares have risen in excess of inflation. Meanwhile, pay is frozen, unemployment is at the highest level for 17 years, and there is no sign of the growth the chancellor promised.
As the weekly cost of living rises, so too does evidence that raising taxes and cutting spending too far and too fast has backfired. Our economy has now flatlined for over a year, well before the recent eurozone crisis, and the price of this slow growth and rising unemployment is a staggering £158bn more borrowing than planned.

We know that to get the deficit down we need tough decisions on tax and spending but it’s also vital that we get our economy moving and get Britain back to work. The argument is whether it is better to be borrowing billions more to keep people out of work on benefits or whether action now to get our economy moving will get more people into work paying tax and help to get the deficit down in a better, fairer way.

Labour’s five-point plan for jobs, which includes a temporary VAT cut and tax breaks for small businesses taking on extra workers, would boost our struggling high streets and help to kick-start our flatlining economy.

The question of whether we should cut VAT must therefore not be dismissed as a dry, academic debate. It is an issue which affects people’s lives every day as they go to work and run their homes.

When the last Labour government temporarily cut VAT to 15 per cent for 13 months, George Osborne dismissed it, saying people wouldn’t even notice.

Maybe he and his well-off colleagues didn’t notice, but in households across the country, millions of families did see extra money in their pockets, and thousands of businesses saw the difference in their bottom line.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said it proved an “effective stimulus” and the economy received a much-needed injection that helped it return to growth, led unemployment to fall and saw the deficit come in £21bn lower than expected. Last January’s VAT rise was quite simply the wrong tax at the wrong time, helping to choke off recovery.

Cutting VAT now would put more cash directly into people’s pockets. It would be a boost for those who are being hit hardest by the squeeze from rising prices and rising taxes, including pensioners and those on low or fixed incomes. The Treasury’s own figures say it would be worth an average of £450 per year for a family with children or £275 for a pensioner couple.

With the retail sector reporting difficulties, an increase in consumer confidence would help local shops and small businesses. If we let a year of flatlining become a decade of stagnation, what price will our country pay in the long term? That is why Labour believes it makes sense to act now with a temporary VAT cut and investment in jobs and growth to save ourselves from the future bills of failure.

Not acting now to support the economy will condemn hundreds of thousands of people to unemployment, risk thousands more businesses going under, and threaten our long term recovery. The trend growth rate of the economy is not fixed – so this isn’t just about growth postponed versus pain deferred. Months – or years – of slow growth aren’t something that will be quickly repaired.

As shadow chancellor Ed Balls has warned, the government’s failed plan risks leaving a permanent dent in our nation’s prosperity. The longer we spend with no or slow growth, the longer the road to recovery becomes, the greater the pain that will have to be endured and the further we fall behind.

The question is not how much it will cost George Osborne to pay for a temporary VAT cut, but how much it will cost our country if he carries on regardless, with an economic plan that is just not working.

Cathy Jamieson is the Labour MP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and a shadow Treasury minister

Steve Hughes says NO

A cut to the standard rate of VAT would require either a departure from the government’s deficit reduction programme or a shifting of priorities within the spending envelope that it has set itself. At the present time, neither makes sense. The former would make financial markets question how serious the government is about dealing with the large gap between what it spends and what it receives. The latter would be a misguided reprioritisation of funds, that would have a greater economic benefit if put to use in a different way.    

Taking the fiscal credibility point first, the cost to the Exchequer of changing the standard rate of VAT by one per cent is approximately £5bn a year (in other words, reducing the rate from 20 per cent to its previous 17.5 per cent would cost in the region of £12.5bn). The UK is currently benefiting from a very low cost of borrowing, which some attribute to a timely and credible roadmap for reducing our deficit. Others argue it is because of a ‘safe haven’ status, generated by comparing the strength of the UK economy to those operating with the euro, and the continued impact of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme (which is used to buy billions of pounds of government debt).

A combination of these factors most likely come into play, but it is certainly true that the UK does not suffer from the same nervousness that accompanies the bond auctions of some eurozone nations, and that is something we would want to avoid. To cut VAT as the centre piece of a new approach to deficit reduction would send the message that the UK has a lack of confidence in its own growth prospects and that a capacity to flip-flop on economic policy exists. Credibility is hard-earned and easily lost.  

Taking the next scenario – that the government will re-allocate resources within the limitations of its current spending envelope – cutting VAT would not be the best use of funds. If the wheels of the economy are to start turning faster, with more jobs being created and more investment being undertaken, policy changes that directly help the business community should be the focus. While it is quite true that some of the shackles on growth are outside of the control of domestic economic policy, such as the continuing eurozone crisis and imported inflation, government does have a role to create the best possible environment for businesses to thrive and grow. The previous government had planned to increase employer national insurance contributions by one per cent as part of its deficit reduction strategy (Alistair Darling, the then chancellor, has subsequently stated that he would have preferred to have increased VAT instead), and after taking office the coalition government only partially reversed this decision.

Let’s be quite clear about what this means – more tax to pay for a business that is an employer. It would be far better to reduce this tax than VAT. It would be nonsensical to recognise unemployment as a problem and then not target the direct cost of employment if there was the ability to do so. It is not only targeting this specific tax that would help businesses, but rather than spending money on reducing VAT, expanding the national insurance holiday for firms taking on new staff, and taking bolder action on the huge business rate rise due to hit in April, would be preferable.
The government has already announced other measures which will help business, such as infrastructure projects and credit easing. In a practical sense, cutting employer national insurance costs is a much more straightforward initiative.

Business is good for local communities and for people. Firms are facing a tough time at the moment, and government can support them through the tax system to help offset the negative effects of the economic rollercoaster that is the eurozone debt crisis. Unfortunately, every mooted tax change has to come with the caveats outlined here about fiscal credibility. Nevertheless, the government’s approach to dealing with the economic problems must be unequivocal in supporting business and employment, and public money would be far better served if this was the case.

Steve Hughes is an economic adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

David Cameron is masterminding a mission to ensure health remains a neutral issue between now and 2015. The PM knows the Conservatives must do all they can to stop Britain’s NHS become a concern on voters’ minds. Neutralising the public’s fears about the issue is part of the No 10 re-election strategy. Cameron can’t do this on his own.

He has placed huge trust and faith in health secretary Andrew Lansley to help him deliver on this objective. Those who have lined Lansley up for the axe in a 2012 reshuffle will be proven wrong, I understand. He stays put to deliver on a new plan to put patients first.

The personal chemistry is very good at close quarters, well-placed observers report. And crucially, the PM believes Lansley was not wholly to blame for the crisis that hit the delivery of his Health and Social Care Bill. It’s worth pointing out that Lansley was once the PM’s boss and their ties were forged in the heat of battle. A young Cameron was promoted to head the political section of Lansley’s Conservative Research Department in 1991. It was here they collaborated to draw up the successful 1992 general election manifesto – confounding all commentators and most Conservatives at the time.

So what does this plan look like?

Cameron has decided to focus on the real practicalities that patients and their families experience. He wants to concentrate on three deliverables between now and the May 2015 general election. There will be a commitment to do the basics better than before – ridding hospitals of infection and a relentless pursuit of cleanliness. Nurses will go on hourly rounds, matrons or ward sisters handed more authority so they once again rule the roost in a way crudely described as ‘Carry On Nursing’ by The Sun.

He even wants to improve the way patients are fed and watered while in hospital.

His team is now working with the Royal College of Nursing’s chief executive Peter Carter to deliver a better patient care experience. Officials will be ordered to drive up NHS results in treating the major illnesses like heart disease and cancer so they compare favourably with those in other countries.

The PM has often been heard telling colleagues that if it can be done overseas, it can and must be done here. And he wants a ‘big bang’ approach to public health aimed at easing the pressure on the NHS by getting us all to live better so we need it less. Minimum pricing for booze is on the agenda. Further pledges from the food and drink industries on calories are expected.

That’s not all, though.

The PM and Lansley are under pressure to deliver the ‘Nicholson challenge’ – the need to find efficiency savings across the entire health service laid down by Sir David Nicholson last year. They have already ring-fenced the health department’s budget so that £1 in every £7 taken in taxation goes straight into its veins. But that money is being stretched.

People are living far longer. Drugs are more expensive. Treatments and technology cost a fortune. And crucially, we all expect – no, we demand – more from our NHS.

The PM must constantly reassure voters that he believes in the NHS. His pollster Andrew Cooper knows only too well that Conservative leaders must work ceaselessly to convince a sceptical public. Floating voters are 90 per cent more likely to back the Conservatives in an election if they are reassured that Mr Cameron can be “trusted” with the NHS, studies show.

Women voters, too, are a part of this conundrum. They are more likely than men to be exposed to the NHS and are the first audience for health professionals complaining about budget cuts. So Cameron believes he must meet the practical needs of patients by listening to and working with doctors and nurses.

Last year’s difficulties over the Health and Social Care Bill took ministers by surprise. They were taken aback by the scale of opposition they faced.
Many of those organisations Lansley canvassed before the 2010 general election had seemed in favour of what was proposed. This communication failure might have cost another cabinet minister his job. But Lansley retains the PM’s confidence.

Insiders point out that trying to reform the NHS wholesale is virtually impossible.

You only have to look at Labour health secretary Alan Milburn’s doomed attempt to bring in foundation hospitals to realise how hard it was to change just one aspect.

Reshaping the entire service in a comprehensive bill has opened the government up to opposition on multiple fronts, with everyone demanding a say. So an operation is underway to reset the narrative post the bill.

The PM is passionate about the NHS from a patient’s point of view. He and wife Samantha know more than most parents should about the NHS, its strengths and its challenges.

George Pascoe-Watson is a partner at Portland Communications

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

The Labour Party is too elitist. Its leadership is drawn from a narrow clique of Oxbridge graduates and former special advisers. It has lost touch with its working-class base.

We know all this because a parade of party luminaries including Ed Balls, Chuka Umunna, Glenys Kinnock, Alan Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman have all signed up in support of the recently launched ‘Labour Diversity Fund’, and its attempt to open Labour’s candidate base to “talented individuals from under-represented groups”.

“One of the crucial problems we have as a party is that we have brought our leadership in from much too narrow a group,” Lord Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill warned last month. “Basically Oxbridge graduates, in particular economics graduates, politics graduates, social scientists and lawyers.”

Not enough spit and sawdust; too much silver spoon and old school tie.

These bouts of class-based introspection aren’t new. Former Till Death Us Do Part writer Johnny Speight used to recount one story of canvassing for Labour in the east end in the early 1980s. Knocking on the door of a ground floor council flat he was met with a cold stare and a curt instruction: “Get off my land.” His party has been struggling, and failing, to come to terms with Margaret Thatcher’s appropriation of large swathes of its blue-collar support ever since.

In truth, that estrangement has a slightly more complex history. In the 1980s, Thatcher grabbed hold of Labour’s working class vote – some would say by the throat. In the 1990s, Tony Blair walked away from it.

“Our base has nowhere to go,” one Downing Street adviser told me mid-way through Blair’s first term. Actually, they did, but it took them the best part of a decade to get there. And the Labour Party has still not reached a consensus on how to get them back.

Part of the problem is that Labour is trying to reconnect with a social demographic that only exists conceptually. The definition ‘working class’ is now meaningless in political terms. Society is simply too diverse. A black nurse from Toxteth and a white van man from Dagenham would both neatly fit the description. But their world views, and the voting patterns that arise from them, are likely to be markedly different. Age, gender and race are all factors of equal, or greater, significance than class. And that’s before you even get into the diversity prevalent within these social subcategories.

On one level Labour already knows this. The Mosaic demographic database used by the party for campaigning contains 155 ‘person types’ that are aggregated into 67 household types. The days of saying, ‘If we get the C2s the election’s in the bag’ are over. Britain’s political parties now have to find strategies for targeting ‘worn-out workers’, ‘brownfield pioneers’ and ‘stressed borrowers’.

This is not to say that there aren’t large swathes of the electorate that respond to common themes. There are. But this is where Labour runs into another problem. In many key areas, the party’s direction of political travel is taking it away from, not towards, its traditional base.

Partly this is as a result of Ed Miliband’s strategy of attempting to offer a ride to disaffected Liberal Democrats, while simultaneously tossing the baggage of Blairism out the back window. But it is also because, while Labour loves paying homage to the working class, it frequently runs scared when faced with the ‘small c’ conservatism prevalent within many working-class communities. On Europe, crime, welfare reform, the economy and immigration, Labour’s embrace of its working base has all too often turned into a curt nod and a fumbled attempt to change the conversation to cuts in manufacturing or the health service.

When Gillian Duffy finally brought the curtain down on Gordon Brown’s premiership it was attributed to Brown’s own impersonality and lack of empathy. It wasn’t.

It was the moment Labour and the working classes simultaneously removed the rose-tinted spectacles and saw one another for what they were, not what they once dreamed they could be. And in that instant both recognised the people’s party was no longer the party of the people.
The Labour Party understands that now. But knowledge of the problem does not, of itself, provide the solution.

Labour acknowledges the lack of diversity on its frontbench. But Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper will not be resigning just to demonstrate a commitment to working-class solidarity. It knows it needs to recapture its working base. But it also knows it cannot win with that base alone. And there are many in the party who would view a tough stance on immigration, welfare and crime as a betrayal, not reclamation, of Labour’s heritage.
Labour is desperate to again be the people’s party. But at the moment, it doesn’t really know how.

Dan Hodges is a Labour commentator 

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Whatever happens elsewhere in the world this year, the summer surely belongs to London. On 27 July, the greatest show on earth begins. To remind us: London 2012 involves more than 14,700 athletes, 21,000 media people and broadcasters, a workforce of 200,000, a £2bn budget, 10.8 million ticket-holders across 37 competition venues, and a whopping TV audience of some 4 billion worldwide. And all of this before we factor in the Queen’s diamond jubilee, which brings with it a four-day holiday, the largest Thames flotilla in 350 years and a weekend of partying focusing on the capital.

The Queen’s jubilee and the Olympics will take care of themselves, but the mayoral contest on 3 May – when Londoners go to the polls to deliver the first major test of political opinion in England, other than in local elections, since the coalition was formed – will be watched keenly as a mid-term test of electability, with major implications for all three parties. To be sure, the candidates are fighting their campaigns very much as individuals and not party hacks. It will be a major blow to Boris were he to lose, but a bad defeat would also reflect particularly badly on their respective party leaders if the Lib Dems or Labour candidates get walloped.

Boris’s campaign won’t like me saying it – it’s said they’re terrified of allowing complacency to creep in – but the omens are not good for Ken Livingstone.  

Last time around – with the same three candidates – of the 11 polls published in the month preceding the 2008 election, only two showed Ken with a lead over Boris after reallocating second-preference votes. Most first-preference polls had Ken’s vote share down in the thirties, well below the level needed to stand a chance of winning.

Thus far in the race, Boris has turned a deficit against Ken (of second-preference reallocated, turnout-weighted polls) of 51 per cent to 49 per cent in March 2011, into a lead in November 2011 on the same calculated basis of 54 per cent to 46 per cent.

In the post-mortem of the 2008 race, a number of factors were cited in Boris’s victory. Some of these were very specific, including allegations of cronyism and a strong campaign against Ken by the Evening Standard. Presumably that will largely be absent from this campaign.

But Ken faces other obstacles, some of which were also evident in 2008. His party leader then was Gordon Brown, but in 2012 it will be Ed Miliband, assuming he’s still in the post. Then there is the incumbency factor: in 2008, voters had had enough of Ken after two terms and wanted change. It’s much harder for Ken to use the same message, because the obvious retort is that a vote for Ken is a vote to return to the past.

But the most intractable obstacles for Ken are the demographics. Much was made in 2008 of the ‘doughnut’ of inner London that predominantly votes for Ken, and outer London, where Boris tends to be ahead. The outcome then rests on turnout, and in 2008 the Conservatives were highly effective in getting outer London to the ballot stations in sufficient numbers to tip the scales in Boris’ favour. This strategy was outstandingly effective, as the following table shows: turnout was higher in areas more likely to vote for Boris and lower in areas more likely to vote for Ken.

The latest polling underlines the difficulty Ken will again face.  After taking account of likely turnout and re-allocating second preferences, Boris leads Ken among men, who are significantly more likely than women to vote. The only age group among whom Ken has a commanding lead is 18 to 24-year-olds, but only one in four of those will vote. But the real killer for Ken’s electoral prospects is the resurrected doughnut: Ken leads Boris in inner London by 60 per cent to 40 per cent, but in more populous outer London Boris is ahead by 61 per cent to 39 per cent.

The one glimmer of hope for Ken is transport, which is the only issue on which he leads Boris in terms of trust. This is underlined by the fact that a large proportion of Londoners do not believe the tube has improved under Boris, and seven in ten say they are not prepared to pay more in fares to fund improvements. Indeed, this is a proper vote-winner for Ken, since 13 per cent of Boris voters say they’re more likely to vote for the former mayor if Boris increases fares by seven per cent as planned in 2012.

But, as is glaringly obvious from the graph below, Ken’s challenge is a monochrome one. Boris is trusted more on all of the other key issues. Moreover, London has a unique vulnerability, being at the mercy of Bob Crow, and Ken’s historical reluctance to go fully into battle with the RMT is not going to win over those outer London voters likely to vote for Boris. Ironically, though, as Dave Hill of The Guardian points out, there have been more tube strikes since Boris took over in 2008 than in all of Ken’s eight years in the job. Ken is, however, unlikely to take much credit from voters for bringing peace to London’s public transport network.

What of the other big events this year? Despite Ken’s having been mayor at the time of London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, more Londoners say Boris deserves credit for the Games, and more would prefer to see Boris as mayor during the Games themselves.
Perhaps this is in light of the former mayor’s admission that “I didn’t bid for the Olympics because I wanted three weeks of sport”, but to “ensnare the government to put money into an area it has neglected for 30 years”.

May’s mayoral election will surely be Ken’s last electoral hurrah; he’ll be over 70 by the time of the next one in 2016. On current form, in the absence of a major upset, it’s difficult to see how he can win.

The question is what the wider political implications will be. In particular, a heavy defeat for Labour may pile more pressure on Ed Miliband if he ends up taking a big part of the blame, notwithstanding Ken’s individualistic brand. A heavy defeat for Boris is easier to shrug off on the basis of mid-term blues.

Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes

North of the border
In reply to David Torrance’s article on the SNP’s success (TP, January), it would be churlish not to acknowledge the skill with which the SNP crafted their winning campaign last May. Their messaging and use of technology unpicked a voting system designed to create coalitions. It’s disappointing that they have since returned to negative campaigning, picking fights with judges and Westminster to undermine the union. Having ignored independence in the run up to the election, they now talk of little else. Anyone who questions their approach is accused of talking Scotland down.

They know they can’t guarantee that we would be better off outside the UK so avoid specifics. Voters will demand more than just a slick campaign. Conversely, the pro-UK parties will have to do more to add passion to their case, to connect with the voters. If both sides step up to those challenges, we’ll have the high quality campaign we deserve.

Caron Lindsay
Scottish Lib Dem activist and blogger

Opinion is extra
In his interview with Iain Dale (TP, January), Nick Robinson has raised a very important point about political journalism on television. At a moment when we are all obsessed by newspapers and online it is important to remember that most people get their political news via the telly. Increasingly, debates on programmes like The Andrew Marr Show, Sky News and Question Time are shaping the political arguments, too. But at the heart of it is the power of the great political TV editors like Nick or Adam Boulton who are increasingly expected to give analysis and comment along with the facts. As Nick said, this is not about UK political TV becoming like Fox News (although some of our radio from LBC to 5Live is heading that way). Perhaps it is time for us to have a debate about our regulated broadcast political news – more views with your viewing?

Charlie Beckett
Director of POLIS

Banned!
I should like to express my gratitude to Ann Treneman. Her diary ‘Verbification worries’ (TP, January) reminded me of a verbified noun to which I have taken offence in the past, but which I forgot to include in my book, The Banned List: A Manifesto Against Jargon and Cliché.
She quoted Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, accusing the Conservatives of “a tendency to empty-chair those meetings that seem to be on the periphery of our interest”. To empty-chair! Horrors! Ann said that she felt it should be illegal “for so many reasons”. Without waiting to find out what those reasons are, or even for an emergency committee meeting, I have added it to the Supplementary List that I have compiled since the book’s publication. It shall never be used again.

John Rentoul
Chief political commentator, The Independent on Sunday
     

The pick of online comments from TotalPolitics.com

Commenting on Martin Shapland’s blog about Diane Abbott’s “divide and rule” comment on Twitter, Lucy Taylor said: “I think it is easy to make the mistake she made. We live in a society that is largely populated and controlled by white people. To make disparaging remarks about the controlling elements of society strikes me as different to the majority controlling elements making disparaging comments about minorities. In any case, I don’t think her comment is racist – it is political.”

T French said of Oliver Wiseman’s report on David Willetts’ high tech vision: “This is Britain to a T. We know a lot, invent a lot, and do not capitalise on it. Willetts needs to address that problem otherwise being good at science is not worth a candle.” Hooke added: “Let’s hope we don’t have to wait until Charles III before we get a real Royal Society of London.”

In response to Amber Elliott’s post wondering who will lead the pro-unionist camp in the Scottish referendum campaign, Ralph Baldwin comments: “There is a way to outflank Salmond and take control of this whole mess. I watch with wry amusement as the Westminster tribe try and work out how to do so. In the meantime I applaud the PM and his team for trying where the Parliamentary Labour Party failed utterly, both in elections and in suggesting a credible solution.” Ben chipped in to wonder to what extent Scotland would build its own institutions, saying: “This should be the biggest issue in politics… UKIP must be familiar with the kind of issues though: it’s all the kind of stuff that would arise if the UK pulled out of the EU (only more of it and with the possibility that Scotland would adopt the Euro!?).”

Susan was sceptical about Nick Clegg’s attempt to seize the agenda for 2012 and prove his relevance with a press conference on Europe. She said: “His speech is now being widely reported and, suffice to say, he hasn’t managed to avoid the ‘spare part’ label. The man needs to go; he has never defended the interests of this country. He is a bought-and-sold Eurocrat.”

KR Lohse responded to Dan Hodges’ piece wondering where Ed Miliband stood on the issue of Europe and a new EU treaty by roundly condemning the means by which the Labour leader was elected: “Ed’s luck ran out the day the unions propelled him into a position that the majority of the party didn’t want him in. He is a ghastly mistake by Labour, and you won’t have the common-sense to change him.”

This article is from the February issue of Total Politics

Like cheap Greek Retsina, David Cameron doesn’t travel well. The prime minister is looking forward to welcoming the world to the 2012 Olympics if only because it will save him the time, trouble and inevitable embarrassment of venturing abroad. After witnessing Gordon Brown’s disastrous coverage on overseas trips, Team Cameron entered Downing Street dreading what might befall their hero on foreign shores.

They didn’t worry in vain. Dave has chalked up an impressive list of diplomatic rows, blunders and plain bad luck during 18 months of globe-trotting. His recent trip to Afghanistan, which offered a few of us lucky hacks the chance to spend two nights in the back of a military transporter plane, was the latest in a long line to go awry.

A dust storm meant that our gigantic C-17 Globemaster couldn’t land at Britain’s Camp Bastion HQ. The crew were all for heading to Muscat, home to some very pleasant hotels, until defence chief General Sir David Richards made it clear that failure to touch down in Afghanistan would mean new career opportunities at EasyJet. After diverting to the international Kandahar base the PM, surrounded by squaddies, insisted he isn’t “cursed”. Really? So far he has been forced to cut short trips to the Middle East, Africa and a Commonwealth summit, caused international upsets in India and Turkey and been publicly abused in Pakistan. The latest mishap cheered grumbling lobby colleagues who have started to compare his pit stop visits unfavourably to Brown’s gruelling schedules. It didn’t help that, while DC graced a private cabin above the flight deck and No 10 staff were treated to camp beds, we slept on the steel floor. Any doubts about the pecking order were removed by a sign on the ‘VVIP’ toilet, which declared it was reserved “for the use of prime ministers, generals and crew only”.

•

We are in for a tough year but with the government’s long awaited reshuffle finally on the horizon many MPs are thinking only of their own skins. Louise Mensch spoke for most backbenchers when she demanded, in a typically understated GQ photoshoot: “What do I have to do to get promoted over here?” Another jobless MP confided: “You do start to wonder what’s wrong with me? Why am I stuck with the freaks and weirdos?” Sadly many more face disappointment than promotion and those hoping to climb the greasy poll should realise that job applications are not best delivered in the pages of a glossy magazine.

•

The return of Europe as a major story has given excitable Tories fresh opportunities to shout ‘BBC bias!’ It suits their purposes to portray dear old Auntie as some red-under-the-bed, Brussels-fanatic hell-bent on signing Britain up to the single currency even as the eurozone burns. The truth is that most Beeb hacks are objective to a fault and running orders are more influenced by the Daily Mail than Das Kapital. Like any large organisation the BBC is sometimes guilty of bias. Anyone eager to catch them red-handed should tune in to the Today programme’s newspaper review, where listeners are invited to compare coverage from the (boo-hiss) ‘Labour supporting’ Daily Mirror with apparently impartial offerings from the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express. I often wonder whether Tony Blair listened from No 10 as the Mirror delivered another broadside over Iraq and asked what he had done to deserve such a slavish champion of his party.

•

It’s hardly news that morale is not universally high in Labour’s ranks and former leader Margaret Beckett (yes, she counts) has done her best to rally the troops. The caravan-loving MP recently rode out, circled the wagons and declared that Ed Miliband is “doing incredibly well”. The intervention didn’t have quite the impact that she might have hoped. One shadow cabinet chum texted to say: “Until I heard that I didn’t realise how bad things were.”

•

Just to make the start of the year even grimmer I’ve started a punishing new training regime. Those lovely people at Virgin have sorted me a place in the London Marathon and I now have to get in shape. On my last attempt I raised money for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, a charity doing vital work to combat a horrible disease that my family sadly knows far too much about. I’m not planning to rattle the collecting tin this time but if you have cash burning a hole in your pocket a better cause is hard to find. For those of us who are broke registering as a stem cell donor is free, usually painless and could save a life. You can sign up today at anthonynolan.org.

James Lyons is the deputy political editor of the Daily Mirror

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

Over recent years the phone-hacking scandal, financial collapse and expenses scandals have rocked the UK establishment. The public is tired of media corporations, politicians and bankers behaving without proper regard for the law or normal moral codes that bind us. A fundamental change is needed to reform a system that institutionalises unethical behaviour.

It is now universally accepted that companies have social and ethical responsibilities, but the UK’s short-termist business culture acts against this.
As chairwoman of a cross-party parliamentary group on international corporate responsibility, I frequently meet businesses whose ethos is ‘people before profit’, who treat their staff properly and mitigate against their social and environmental impact, particularly in the developing world. Frequently, however, they are undercut by companies that drive down standards in the pursuit of profit.

At a bare minimum our government should use its considerable leverage to persuade others to create a level playing field, but there are also unilateral measures it should take.

Government should speak with one voice. The Foreign Office cannot successfully promote human rights while the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills subsidises projects that undermine them, and the Ministry of Justice pushes through laws that prevent penalisation of companies that undermine human rights.

Simple measures, like requiring businesses to declare the social and environmental impact of their actions, and to meet conditions to list on the London Stock Exchange, would help create an accountable system and encourage long-term, strategic thinking.

The UK can and should lead the world in ethical business standards to ensure that British business does good – and ensure it is not rewarded for doing harm.

Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

In politics as in life, obfuscation is the vice of cowards. People who genuinely believe they command strong support for a given issue will demand a fair fight for a clear answer in the sincere belief that they can win.

So when one sees people angling for a multi-option referendum on a question they are publicly known to believe is an in/out issue, one can only suspect that they doubt the electorate.

This is true of the ‘Better Off Out’ Tory backbenchers who staged their European rebellion last month, and it is certainly true of the SNP.

The SNP want out of the union, and they are right to say that whether or not to leave the union is Scotland’s choice to make.

But devo-max is an entirely different proposition: it represents the de facto end of the United Kingdom as a concept and the British as a people, but with the retention of cosmetic touches like the flag and currency.

This half-way house serves two purposes. The first is to persuade doubting Scots who don’t want independence to vote for the next best thing. The second is to scare timid unionists, conditioned by more than a decade of defeat, into actually campaigning for this stay of execution as a damage-limitation exercise.

That won’t save the union. Scotland has the right to vote to leave, but if she wishes to remain within the UK she must negotiate her relationship with the rest of it. Unionists should make clear that regardless of what the SNP puts on the table, the options are independence or a continued measure of integration.

The UK is weakening because no unionists have had the guts to face down separatist salami tactics. On this issue, unionists must finally stand and fight or the Union is as good as over.

Henry Hill is a UK Conservative blogger who writes at dilettante11.blogspot.com

This article appeared in the January issue of Total Politics

Jacqui Smith says YES

I was selected to fight the Redditch parliamentary seat that I won in 1997 on an all-woman shortlist. I’m proud of that.

“But surely strong and successful female politicians like Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Castle or Mo Mowlam didn’t need this special leg-up?” is a cry I’ve often heard. Each of those women made an immense contribution to British political life, but most of political life isn’t about outstanding individuals; it’s a team game, where a full range of voices needs to be heard, issues need to be aired and competing interests need to be represented and reconciled. So the argument for all-women shortlists (AWS) doesn’t rest on the individuals who have benefitted from them or those who’ve made it without them. It’s about our Parliament being more representative and more effective at making the decisions that have an impact far beyond the niceties of parliamentary selection procedures.

Furthermore, there is a job to rebuild trust in Parliament – this is much harder when those who represent us there fail to reflect the balance of gender, age and race that we see on the streets. It is understandable for people to ask how a largely male, pale and stale group of people could understand the things that impact on their lives the most.  

Few people now contend this point, although I’m sure there are plenty of parliamentarians bristling at my description! However, there is near-unanimity on the ends to be achieved in this area of public policy, and intense, often bitter, debate on how to get there.

In Westminster’s current electoral system, AWS are the most – and arguably the only – effective way that women’s representation has been boosted in recent years. And progress has been pitifully slow. Labour has, historically, been the party with the best representation of women and the greatest internal pressure to ensure a better gender balance among candidates. Despite this, in 1945 and 1987, 21 Labour women were elected. In 1992, all constituencies were required to have a woman on the shortlist – 37 Labour women were elected. Between 1992 and 1997, a campaign led by Labour women ensured that there were AWS in half of all potentially winnable seats. In 1997, 101 Labour women were elected.

Some then felt that the job was done, but 2001 results demonstrated that, as yet, there is no momentum towards a more equal Parliament. After a successful industrial tribunal challenge to AWS in 1997, it was not used for the 2001 election. Only two new Labour women were elected (and over 30 new men), and by-election candidates replacing women were all men. Labour then legislated to allow positive action and re-introduced AWS for 2005.

All main parties have now conceded that they have a problem with gender balance in their parliamentary parties, but only AWS has begun to solve it. The Tories’ A-List system in 2010 produced results – the number of Conservative women MPs nearly tripled – but the Parliamentary Conservative Party does not contain the same percentage of women (31 per cent) as the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Lib Dems are still resisting positive action, although they have recognised they have a problem and have brought in a version of the A-List system to try and address it.

An argument frequently used against AWS is that people should be selected for and elected to Parliament on the basis of merit. I agree. My disagreement with those making this case is that I don’t think there are four meritorious men for every one woman – that’s the current gender balance in Parliament.

Others argue that the use of AWS means that unsuitable or ineffective women are getting elected. Flippantly, you could argue that a real test of equality would be when there are as many ineffective women in Parliament as there are men. We’re not there yet. Most independent observers would agree that the average quality of women MPs is higher than the average quality of male MPs.

Very few people would publicly argue for a House of Commons that is as unbalanced in terms of gender as it currently is. Frankly, however, unless you’re also willing to accept AWS or propose another equally effective method to achieve a better gender balance, you might as well be.

Jacqui Smith was the Labour MP for Redditch from 1997 to 2010

Charlotte Vere says NO

Imagine a candidate’s selection meeting: “Mr Craig, nice to see you. A committed local campaigner, you say, with a life outside politics working in mental health and a magistrate? Just what we’re looking for. Oh dear, I’m so sorry – it’s just that you’re a man.”  

Could you do that? Actively discriminate against 50 per cent of the population? How would you feel? Ashamed, embarrassed, uncomfortable?  

Somehow we have come to accept that it is okay to choose one person over another based on whether they sit, or stand. For generations, women’s rights’ campaigners have drummed into us that choosing by gender is wrong, wrong, wrong. And now it is right.

All-women shortlists, or AWS in common lingo, are the sticking plaster that has been applied to the gaping wound that is the lack of women in Parliament. It is supposed to fix the problem by running a race and banning half the competitors – actually, more than half, given than more men apply to become MPs than women.

The sole explicit aim of the strategy is to increase the number of women on the green benches and therefore make politicians ‘look’ better to the general public.

Does anyone else feel that this strategy might be a little shallow? That if the general public truly understood what was happening, they would be horrified and suspect more than a little manipulation, a stitch-up by the political elite. Here’s how it works: halve the number of applicants and offer ‘special treatment’ to the other lot; you have yourself a perfect group of yes-men… ahem, yes-women.

Is this what happens beneath the facade of AWS? Remember Blair’s Babes, a personal powerbase of shiny new female MPs selected on AWS? Or Dromey-gate, a seat rumoured to be an AWS, until mysteriously it wasn’t, to allow Mr Harman a safe seat. And finally we have Birmingham City Council, which has a grid system formalising positive discrimination to ensure the ‘correct’ number of women councillors, except for wards with large ethnic minority populations.

Does this sound like manipulation? For sure. AWS can be engineered by party hierarchies, which serves only to shoot more holes in the thin layer of trust and confidence remaining in the parliamentary system.

Furthermore, as the language of politics moves inexorably towards ‘fairness’, how are AWS fair? I met a former ‘No to AV’ colleague the other day and he bemoaned the number of women-only seats being pumped out of Labour Party headquarters. This highly talented and committed man has a playing field so skewed against him, he might as well give up.

And okay, let’s put the men aside for a while, for, let’s face it, the radical feminists constantly tell us that men need to be punished for running a patriarchy over recent millennia. Let’s assume we can live with being grossly unfair to men.

How does it look to our children? I have a boy and a girl, three years apart. What should I say to them? Sorry son, you see, your lot had it so good that a group of women of mummy’s age demanded that it must stop, and that women had to have more things than men for a while. Actually for quite a while… for your lifetime.  

The obsession with numbers and tying nooses around the necks of women, yanking them up from the top, has taken us way off beam and we have lost our focus. There is no doubt that there should be more women in Parliament, at the highest level of business, in academia and in the professions, and the paucity of women across all workplaces is disturbing.

We need to put our best minds to the problem. We need to understand why there isn’t a groundswell of highly accomplished and talented women smashing their way to the top; the causes are complex and tied up in a web that has taken generations to knit.

I want elected representatives that succeed or fail on their skills, experience and judgement. I don’t want anyone being able to say: ‘Well, she did a rubbish or indeed brilliant job as home secretary, but then again, she was a woman.’

The solutions are complex, and, strand by strand, we need to pull the web away. With focus and determination it can be done, and AWS should have no place at all in politics.

Charlotte Vere is the founder of Women On think tank and the former Conservative PPC for Brighton Pavilion

This article is from the January issue of Total Politice

David Cameron is rewriting much of his 2012 strategy after Europe’s economic catastrophe robbed him of his ‘turnaround year’.

The prime minister and the best brains in No 10 have cleared their desks to focus solely on how to make 2012 count. He has been cruelly robbed of what might have been – what some in Downing Street were describing as a “fun year”. 2012 was meant to be the turnaround year when the UK economy began to grow, Boris was re-elected as London mayor, the London Olympics and the Queen’s jubilee put Britain centre of the world stage. Now those bets are off.

And the PM is battling hard to ensure his premiership doesn’t get dragged down by the economic Armageddon wreaking havoc across Europe, our biggest export market. His people have a very clear list of ambitions. They aim to steer the nation safely through the storm, creating a nation fit and fair, concentrating hard on schools and welfare.

The NHS will remain a focus as they battle to neutralise health as a political issue. Dozens of new free schools will actually open in 2012 and the roads, rail and homes ordered in the autumn statement should start to be seen by an electorate desperate for action.

Differences of opinion exist at the top over the PM’s strategy between now and 2015. Cameron’s cheery optimism has always been a great electoral strength but some fear in these austere times it’s not appropriate. Figures close to him believe a new, harder-faced PM is what is required for the lean and tough years ahead.

But others insist it is that very optimism that will help bind a country together and help it get through the storm beginning to rage. Key figures like Steve Hilton, Craig Oliver, Andrew Cooper and Patrick Rock are keen to focus on the positives that can come out of 2012 under a focused team.

There are many opportunities. There’ll be a Budget in the spring and a Queen’s Speech at the back end of the year – two important parliamentary platforms to drive the agenda.

Of course, there’ll be a G8 in Chicago and a G20 in Mexico – opportunities to make the weather on the international stage. 2012 is the year when we will see the first elected police commissioners. The Conservatives and Labour are certain to field political candidates – making the 15 November polling day effectively another election in 41 regions. Tory strategists see it as a moment to remind voters up and down the country that they are tough on law and order.

Town hall elections in May will be another moment in the calendar. The Tories are certain to lose seats on 3 May, when 2,400 are up for grabs across 128 councils. They won extra seats this year thanks to polling coming on the same day as the AV referendum. On the night they’re bound to drop in number. The Lib Dems will lose seats but it’s unlikely to be the bloodbath Nick Clegg suffered in 2011.

Another opportunity to beat the Conservative drum nationwide will come with mayoral polls next year. Birmingham is almost certain to vote ‘yes’ and so trigger an election for the mayor there – prompting a surge of political activity. London is likely to return Boris Johnson for a second term although it’s not set in stone. Likely, but not guaranteed. Cameron and his team see a Boris second term as key to keeping the Tory flame burning brightly.

These are some of the known unknowns.

The eurozone crisis may muddle on for years to come – or could be settled with the break-up of the currency by the time this article is published. What’s not certain is the future of Iran and Syria – and the role Britain will play if there’s any international action.

It’s likely the UK won’t be involved in an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. But the PM’s posture in responding will be key. Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad is almost certainly going to be deposed in a popular uprising but it could prove to be a long and bloody attempt to unseat him in 2012.

Again, the PM will have to choose where he stands and what support Britain offers, publicly or covertly. And then there’s a reshuffle. Some believe the PM is toying with a March shake-up of his cabinet. Others expect him to act after the local elections in May. But the PM has precious little room to move. Liam Fox’s resignation triggered two significant moves, with Philip Hammond switching to the Ministry of Defence and Justine Greening landing a seat at transport. He wants William Hague, George Osborne, Theresa May to stay put. And the Lib Dems in cabinet aren’t likely to move either.

Jeremy Hunt must stay at culture as he prepares to run the Olympics and Andrew Lansley has dug himself in deep at health.

All this is enough to keep any good PM up all night – but much of it might seem small beer in a eurozone recession which sends us into a crash.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year, everyone.

George Pascoe-Watson is a partner at Portland Communications

This article is from the January issue of Total Politics

The prospect of Scottish independence is riddled with paradoxes and uncertainties. The great uncertainties include the timing of the Scottish vote, what people will be asked to vote for and how they will exercise that vote. The paradoxes are many, including the notion that victory for the SNP could be very good news for the Conservative Party, at least in the short to medium term, despite the fact that Tory grassroots supporters (according to ConservativeHome) keep the union intact. It would also be a paradox if the coalition government pre-empted the SNP government and called its own referendum on independence, as has been suggested is under active consideration. Until recently it would have been unthinkable for the Conservative and unionist parties to have entertained such an idea.

I am not concerned here with arguing the pros and cons of Scottish independence, but it is worth spending a few moments considering the impact of a ‘yes’ vote on the main Westminster political parties. These have long maintained support for the union while acknowledging Scotland’s right to self-determination.

Much of the debate at grassroots level has so far been driven more by emotional or sentimental attachment to the union, or Scottish national identity, than by political self-interest. That is entirely understandable, but, since the outcome of a referendum – especially one for the full-blown version – remains uncertain, the parties need to consider how wholeheartedly they should continue to assert their position of scepticism.

The results of polling to date show that a referendum on ‘independence-lite’ or ‘devo-max’ would be more likely to succeed than a vote that would overturn the last 300 years of constitutional unity in its entirety, and which would create a completely separate state akin to the Republic of Ireland.

Therein lies the problem with much of the polling evidence so far. Politicians seize on any poll outcome that tells them what they want to hear, yet most simply ask about ‘independence’ as an abstract concept devoid of detail. There are also concerns about forecasting other variables, such as turnout: for instance, the reported 53 per cent opposed to independence in November 2011 (for the Scottish Daily Mail) was predicated on the basis of all but two per cent saying they would cast a vote. Such a turnout level would be unprecedented: it is a near-certainty that a higher proportion of the sample was not even registered to vote.

Notwithstanding last May’s SNP election victory, most polls over the past two years have indicated that more people would vote against independence than would vote in favour of it. However, ‘devo-max’ would be a different kettle of fish. Most referenda turn either on making the case for change (such as this May’s AV referendum) or on assuaging people’s fears. That is also, for instance, why an in/out referendum on EU membership would likely fail: voters dislike Britain’s relationship with the EU, but they are more fearful about the consequences of total withdrawal.
It is harder to assess the real outcome of a referendum without exploring all three options. Helpfully, this was done in a recent BBC poll that was heavily spun by all the major players involved. As the following table shows, it is as true to claim that just over one in four supports full independence as it is to say (as Alex Salmond, indeed, did) that more than six in ten back “real economic power for Scotland”.

On either independence model, a ‘yes’ vote would represent a dramatic new dawn in British politics, especially if Scotland were to raise and spend its own finances, since it would make it unthinkable for Scottish MPs to remain in Westminster. In such a situation the immediate consequences would be devastating for Labour. Scotland returns 59 MPs to Westminster (reducing to 52 after the 2013 boundary changes), of whom 41 are Labour. Without Scotland’s MPs in the 2010 Parliament, David Cameron would have won an overall majority of 42. An independent Scotland could make a Labour government in Westminster nigh-on impossible.

For the Conservatives, without the glue of competitive electoral politics it would be even harder to maintain unity. The Conservative Party is, of course, itself a coalition of interests, spanning One Nation and Thatcherite, eurosceptic and europhile, libertarian and authoritarian. The obvious result, even if not immediate, would probably be a split between right and left, perhaps with some UKIP supporters rejoining a right-leaning party taking in eurosceptics and Thatcherites.

This will, doubtless, also have significant implications for the Liberal Democrats, spanning as they do ideals from Orange Book to verging-on-Socialist. Again, the obvious outcome would either be for the Lib Dems to provide a home for ‘wet’ Tories, or for the Conservative Party to provide a home for those of the Lib Dems who could not join a rebranded Conservative Party, unless and until that party’s right wing has peeled off into a separate entity.

Between now and any referendum date, these skirmishes will continue hugely to influence politics in both Holyrood and Westminster. Labour faces the danger of being seen to side with Scotland’s deeply unpopular Conservatives – especially if they oppose ‘devo-max’ – which is quite possible if it entails removing Scottish Labour MPs from Westminster. The Lib Dems are already tainted by association with the Tories, while the SNP government must define its mission beyond independence if it is to avoid becoming surplus to requirements after the referendum.

Alex Salmond is, though, a very canny, adept politician. The bigger picture requires him to be careful about timing vis-à-vis economic recovery and the Westminster political agenda. It also means that other political priorities will need to be sacrificed. For instance, some suggest that if his party legalises same-sex marriage, that would lose twice the number of votes for independence that it will gain. But, if Salmond succeeds in achieving his life-long ambition, his legacy will be to have had a profound impact on politics throughout the whole of the United Kingdom – for my lifetime, and probably my children’s, too.

Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes