With only 2 years to go before we have the national hustings for Westminster there are problems for all the political leaders:
Nick Clegg the LibDem leader must be the most worried of all the party leaders. His parties standing in the polls has be stuck at 10% or less since 2011. He will now have to hunker down and fight a battle in the seats they already hold, with few financial resources he will have to focus on seat that he won in 2010.
Ed Miliband the Labour leader looks like he will caught like David Cameron was in 2010, being the largest party but without an overall majority. He should expect the gap between Labour and Tory to narrow over the next few months and if there is any improvement in the economy and the weather he might be neck and neck with Cameron by 2015 comes around. Most worryingly he must be aware that new KIDs on the block (UKIP) represent a swing to the right amongst ordinary working class voters.
Nigel Farage the UKIP leader has should good judgement and some real political savvy but he has now jumped into the spotlight and my sense is that this might melt him and his party, As they come under closer and closer scrutiny the wheels may come off. To have any impact at the general election he needs to do a deal with Cameron, my bet is that he will targets the north of England where the Tory brand is well and truly broken.
David Cameron had the most to lose at this election and he was certainly the main loser. The Tory vote in the North of England is in terminal decline and of-course in Scotland Tories dare not show their face. The issues of Europe and immigration are now centre stage, and unless Cameron can find a way through these two minefields with his coalition partners he will be back in opposition in 2015.
Strangely and uniquely the UKs political response to long
term austerity has been a shift to the right, whereas in most of Europe the
shift has been the other way. Only 40% voted Tory or UKIP in the 2010 general
election compared to 46% of voters now declaring an intention to vote Tory or
UKIP. This shift to the right is
creating a more segmented and crowded space to the right of the LibDems,
creating opportunities for David Cameron as well as the obvious threat. The real question is whether the UK is morphing
into a state similar to the US situation where the agenda of the right is
driven by non -economic issues which make it hard to assemble a coherent
coalition - have gay marriage and Europe become our equivalent to gun control
and sequestration?
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