What on earth is going on? Gordon Brown is exposed as an office bully who screams at his staff and shoves his most trusted advisors around (including Magdalen politics tutor Stewart Wood), the “forces of Hell” have been unleashed on the Chancellor by Downing Street for telling the truth about the recession, and there are renewed signs that the economy may well dip again before the next quarter. The public response? Labour improves in the polls. More than improves in fact: the current polls are the best for Labour since Gordon Brown came to power, and on a “uniform swing” would produce a parliament where Labour would have the most seats. How has David Cameron managed to throw away an election that was his for the taking? Would the British public really prefer a Bully to a salesman?
I think that there are four issues that need to be untangled if we are to understand what’s happening in the polls, two statistical and two tactical.

First, while the Tory lead is indeed down to two percentage points it’s really not that simple. The poll referred to was conducted by YouGov on Friday and covered about 1000 voters. At first glance for the reported swing to have occurred the sample would’ve needed about 20 more people who said that they would vote Labour then the poll the day before. This is well within the margin of error (the allowance that pollsters make for mistakes). When we look a bit deeper we note that YouGov, like most of the pollsters, weights voters by the party that you voted for in the last election. Something that the political websites have been noting for a while is that it is becoming rather difficult to find enough Labour-leaning voters in each sample, and those who are “labour type voters” have to be heavily weighted. So we’re no longer talking about 20 people, but maybe 10 or 12. This may well be down to sample bias (that YouGov aren’t targeting the right people), but may also be because there is something odd going on with the polling. While the unweighted numbers are somewhat unreliable, the method that YouGov use (ie. Online sampling) means that what we might be seeing in the unweighted sample is a reflection of enthusiasm. Think about it, if you are a labour-type voter and are generally dissatisfied with the Labour party you’re probably not that likely to fill in an online survey. This might well prove to be a somewhat weak proxy for whether you intend to vote. What are the unweighted vote shares? The Conservatives are on around 42% (as they have been since July) and Labour has risen from 27% to 28% over the same time period.

Second, there is no such thing as a uniform swing. British politics is still constituency based, however much the media may focus on the party leaders, and the seats that matter are the marginals. The issues that matter in marginals are different from the rest of the country. For example, as I mentioned in an earlier article, people who live in the British marginals tend to be more likely to be married then the rest of the country so policies that benefit married couples may well be unpopular nationally whilst still helping the Conservatives towards victory. There hasn’t been a reliable set of figures for the marginals since the Angus Reid poll of 24 February, but that poll had the Conservatives on 42% in the marginals and 38 % overall.

So it’s not quite as low as the weekend papers might suggest. But it is still bad for them. Whilst the scale may well be wrong, there has been a slide in Conservative support. I think that there are two strategic issues at work here.

The first is that the Conservatives appear to have well and truly lost the plot. Their message is confused and difficult to relate to. Most people haven’t been particularly badly affected by the technicalities of the recession, have short memories and don’t really know what the deficit is. When David Cameron says that the country can’t just get a new credit card when its current credit card runs out of money they ask a simple question, why not? They care about jobs, schools and the NHS: the very things that the focus on deficit reduction makes them worry will be cut. And they don’t know what the Conservative party want to do about jobs, schools or the NHS. Frankly, I’m not sure that Tory MP’s know what their party want to do about jobs, schools or the NHS.

It gets worse. This weekend the Conservatives laid out the six key issues that they will fight the election under. Yes, you heard right, six. This is madness. The first rule of running an election is that too many messages confuse voters. Three is about as many as most people can remember. Six is insane, especially when no one really knows where you stand on anything. Whilst “ a future fair for all” might sound stupid, it’s easy to understand, and given that everyone knows that Labour are fighting the election on the economy, easily highlights the strengths of the party. “Vote for Change” on the other hand means nothing. David Cameron isn’t Barack Obama. He’s a Tory. Tories don’t like change. Everyone knows that. So change what? To what? Back to Thatcher? To Blair? Who knows.

Which leads me to my final point, Gordon Brown is clawing back what I think is the most important part of any modern campaign: the personal narrative. The interviews and bullying story have, in an odd way, made him seem more human and also stronger. When your choices in a crisis are between a big clunking first and a used car salesman, many of us would choose the former. People voted for George Bush over Kerry in part because he reminded them of themselves. He shared their distrust of the over educated, the elite, the rich kids in school (even though he was one himself). He made them feel like he understood where they were coming from. David Cameron all too often comes across as too slick, too confident, too cocky. He has the smile of someone who knows his place and lets you know that he knows yours too. Salesman Dave not only appears to have nothing to sell, but looks like he may well take you for a ride. Forget the six points if you want to become Prime Minister Mr Cameron: It’s all about crying on television and the televised debates.

I’m sure many of you have been missing our intrepid debating correspondent since his last appearance on this blog, so here’s Jacob Donovan’s report on last week’s Obama Debate.

‘Thursday’s debate was a slightly odd spectacle on two counts. First, the motion: This House believes that Obama has failed to live up to expectations. As one of the speakers noted in the opening speech, whose expectations? Democrats? Republicans? What Bonnie Greer called “Obama-maniacs”? Or the “average American voter” (If they in fact exist)? This question became increasingly problematic as neither side could agree with the other side, or even their own side, as to how to judge the Obama Presidency.

For the Proposition the fact that Obama hadn’t ended all warfare, brought peace to the Middle East, created a world of plenty for all, destroyed racial inequality and ended boom and bust (not everyone can be Gordon Brown) meant that he had fundamentally failed. This seemed a bit of an excessive burden for, as noted in a Point of Information from Ashvir Sangha (Ex-Treasurer-Elect), Obama isn’t the Messiah. Yes he hasn’t turned water into wine, but he’s done a pretty good job repairing the image of America abroad, helped transform the image of what it means to be black in America and managed to help mitigate the effects of a potentially devastating economic crisis.

Which meant that when the first Proposition speaker, the Chairman of Republicans abroad who looked and sounded a little too much like Fred Flintstone to take seriously, sat down it looked like the Opposition would need to do very little to sweep the floor. Unfortunately, just like David Cameron, they seemed intent on doing quite a lot to throw away certain victory. Bonnie Greer’s down to earth demeanour and charm which served her so well against Nick Griffin on Question Time was refreshing, but she dropped the ball. Instead of facing criticism of Obama head on, she told us that the way to assess his Presidency was to judge it on Obama’s potential. We should just give him a chance. Really Bonnie? Come on. As James Kingston (Librarian) noted in a floor speech, as unfair as it is to presume that he is the Messiah, it’s also unfair to treat him as some sort of Affirmative Action candidate with special needs who has to be judged differently to everyone else.

The Proposition as a whole didn’t take advantage of this however, and the second odd feature was just how insane they became. Nirj Deva, a Conservative MEP who no one I spoke to had heard of, and David Amess, a Conservative MP who I found out at drinks was only famous for a particularly idiotic appearance on Brasseye, were terrible. Truly awful speakers. Illogical, incredibly angry for no apparent reason and at times just plain rude, this was the old Tory party at its worst. Quite why they cared so much about Obama wasn’t clear but their anger seemed especially directed at anything to do with change. Whoever crafted the new Conservative election slogan clearly did not have these two in mind. On the other side, the two best speakers of the debate by far were two academics, Professor Michael Cox and Professor Phillipe Sands QC, who proved that the length of your Wikipedia page bears no relationship to your speaking prowess. Their speeches go some way to explaining the Opposition victory, though it did fall short of the margin that one would have expected, a symbol perhaps that the audience eventually left about as confused as the speakers.

Postscript

For all its flaws this wasn’t a bad debate, and it was a shame that it wasn’t better attended. If it hadn’t have been for Stuart Cullen’s rent-a-schoolkid delegation the chamber would’ve been almost empty by the end. Whether it’s been due to poor publicity and advertising, a lack of any big name speakers or maybe just too many debates this term, attendance has been worryingly low. Not a good sign for the future.’

Stood in my work clothes next to a pair of Czech junkies in what seemed to be an abandoned shopping centre, I guess I did feel slightly out of place. I was beginning to wonder whether I’d taken a wrong turn, and was about to risk being robbed of my budget phone to call a friend, when I noticed the name of the pub scrawled in tiny lettering next to a doorbell. Eager to leave the crackheads behind; I pressed the buzzer. “Ahoj!” came a voice from inside the machine. I panicked. Was there something I was meant to say? A password, perhaps? Some kind of codeword that pledged my allegiance to whatever was going on behind those doors? I apologized several times over, and after a baffled silence over at the other end, I regained my wits and stammered the name of the place; “Èítárna“, or “The Reading Room”.  

The door opened and I walked into an empty, dark hallway in what looked to be one of those apartment blocks with art decor banisters and winding staircases. There were no signs, but I presumed I was supposed to walk up the stairs until some other little clue presented itself. 5 flights up and I’d approached this massive rusty iron grill, like the ones you’d imagine they have in places Notorious BIG visits when he’s not busy writing poetry. I walked tentatively through and into the foyer of an apartment that also had a bar, and which looked like it hadn’t had a makeover since communism ended. And, aside from the handful of typically pierced and stoned students with Czasta’s –  (that’s Czech rastas, for those of you unacquainted with the Czun, or Czech pun) – the same could be said of its guests (the makeover, or Czakeover. not the Czun.) who seemed to be championing the fashion of the 70s. (By the way, If you’re finding this difficult to follow, that’s because I’m being deliberately Kafkaesque. Did you notice the door motif, the mysterious passageways and the disembodied voice? I was this close to describing my new exoskeleton, but thought that may have been a bit of a giveaway). 

“Èítárna“, as it turned out, is a coffeehouse/pub that holds small lectures and jazz music events. The establishment also collects magazines and books, and is home to a very large and lonely fish who spends his days watching the comings and goings of Prague’s self-proclaimed intellectual crowd. Some say, in his salad days, he’d chat to Rilke about life in a fish tank, and inspired the Prague born German poet to write “Der Panther”. I walked past a poster of “Plastic People of the Universe” (the Czech rock n’ roll band partly responsible for the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia) and one of Frank Zappa (a famous Czech dissident during, and political figure after the Velvet Revolution, who, incidently also sang the classic; “Don’t you eat that Yellow Snow”), and ordered a drink at the bar. That’s when I spotted a young Jarvis Cocker lookalike, who peaked timidly over the top of his book and tactically moved it closer to me so that I could notice he was reading Wittgenstein. Sure, that kid seemed a bit of a, well, what Salinger (RIP, brother) would refer to as a phoney. But the place in itself seemed pretty authentic. I have to admit, I was pretty czuffed with myself for finding what seemed to be a secret ex-dissident hangout. I wanted to find out more about its history. 

I got talking to a guy who looked like he’d been sitting on that mangy beige couch, pondering deep and meaningful things and blowing smoke rings since the Prague Spring. “Oh yes, this place is where all the Czech intellectuals (Czintellectuals?) have been coming to discuss politics, literature, and philosophy for decades. It had to be kept secret back then, of course, because the government were watching” he said proudly, stroking his ponytail and blinking behind his massive lenses. How exciting! “Really!” I exclaimed “Like who? Vaclav Havel?”, I peered eagerly around the room of chin-stroking fogies and detendu students brandishing gaulois cigarettes. “Oh, well, maybe not him, I don’t think. But others”. “Milan Kundera?” He shook his head. “Bohumil Hrabal? Vladimir Holan? Jan Beneš?” “Well. I don’t know. But this is where intellectuals have come to escape and discuss things for years!” Gesturing to his group of friends, he continued; “We’re here all the time, we don’t like to leave. Out there, people have got stupid.” His friends nodded. When asked why they thought that to be the case; each had his or her own opinion. One cried “globalization!”, the other “modern technology!”, another “Food!” (perhaps I misheard the last one. The Czech is still a bit ropey). My ponytailed friend finished; “Our society is stupid. But in this country, there is a revolution every 20 years. So we’ll just sit here and wait for the next one”.  

After a tram ride home that involved a drunk and disorderly skinhead football hooligan getting thrown out of the carriage by a driver who may as well apply for a role in the next Rocky, I had my own little ponder about deep and meaningful things. I then typed in the name of the pub into google. Not much came up; no star studded frequenters or any indication that it was once a hot spot for political dissent. In fact, it only opened a couple of years ago.