The world's oldest surviving democracy cranks into action again this year, with the upcoming General Election.
It was thought the election may take place in May, but there's speculation that the Prime Minister may decide to hold in in April, which would make it the earliest General Election held in Britain since the 1992 one.
Gordon Brown may be the current serving Prime Minister, but he has never won an election (people do not elect the Prime Minister. Instead, each person votes for the MP who they want to represent their constituency in the Commons. Each winning MP gets a seat in the Commons and the party with the most seats win the Election. The Prime Minister just happens to be whoever is the leader of the party in Government).
Despite this, many people think that Gordon Brown, who took over as leader of the Labour Party, and therefore as PM, in 2007, has about as much right to lead this country as Lady Jane Grey had in 1553.
Until now, it looked as though David Cameron's Conservative Party would stroll to victory in the election. But now, polls show that the gap between the Tories and Labour is closing, leading to speculation that Britain could get its first hung parliament since 1974.
But, also in 1974, Muhammad Ali staged a remarkable fightback against George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle."
Is it conceivable that in 2010 Mr Brown might bounce off the ropes to deny David Cameron his victory—or even, amazing as it sounds, win himself?
Rope-a-dope
The Tories’ unexpected weakness may yet haunt Labour: what if the party had ditched Gordon Brown?
Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
BOTH were ageing bruisers facing impossible odds. Both were pitted against younger men widely expected to obliterate them. Both were pulverised in the early stages of the contest, before their adversaries’ stamina seemed to wane…
All right, on the face of it leaden Gordon Brown may not have much in common with fleet Muhammad Ali. But it has begun to seem possible that Mr Brown might just stage a recovery as unlikely as Mr Ali’s in the famous “rumble in the jungle” in Kinshasa. In 1974 Mr Ali was pounded by the fearsome George Foreman, but rallied to knock him out. Is it conceivable that in 2010 Mr Brown might bounce off the ropes to deny David Cameron his victory—or even, amazing as it sounds, win himself?
Until very recently, that would have sounded preposterous; the question for the impending general election was how badly Labour would lose, not whether. Yet now the polls imply that the Tory lead, for a long time resplendent in double figures, has shrunk, in one survey to as little as two points. Polls come and go, as politicians like to say, but the two big parties seem to be trading fairly consistently at around six points apart. Because of the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, if replicated at the election those numbers could well result in a hung parliament, ie, one in which no party has an absolute majority. If Labour were to pick up another point or two, it might even emerge with the most seats in the House of Commons.
David Cameron has been thinking this year's election was in the bag. He may be in for a surprise.
Just as worryingly for the Tories, like Mr Foreman they sometimes seem to be all punched out. Biff! Society is broken! Wham! So is the economy. Wallop! The deficit threatens Britain’s credit rating and even (some Tories add) a full-blown Greek-style fiscal crisis. Kerpow! We will fix it, they say, by inaugurating a new age of austerity in taxes and spending. Crunch! Mr Brown is a useless and irresponsible prime minister.
There is nothing much left to add to this brutal armoury of arguments.
Worse, this slugfest has bloodied the slugger. All the talk of spending cuts, for example, seems to have reawakened atavistic fears about Tory heartlessness. It anyway sits uncomfortably with some of Mr Cameron’s other pledges, such as protecting the NHS. He is trying both to float like Tony Blair in 1997 and sting like Margaret Thatcher in 1979. In the circumstances, that dual approach may be necessary. But it looks clumsy and unfocused.
Meanwhile, there is a risk that the onslaught on Mr Brown inspires a kind of sympathy with the prime minister. Just as the crowd in Kinshasa urged the slighter man on with the cry “Ali, kill him!” (well, maybe not exactly like that), some British voters may now be rallying to the underdog. The bullying allegations levelled against Mr Brown by Andrew Rawnsley (see article), seem to have helped more than hindered him, rather like the intemperate criticism made by the Sun last year of Mr Brown’s mis-spelled letter to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Still more riskily, the Tories have exposed themselves to counter-attacks (needlessly, some shadow ministers now say). Since January they have published various chunks of a draft manifesto. This process might have been a good idea—helping to rebut the charge that the party had few policies—if it hadn’t been for the backtracking and arithmetical embarrassments it has entailed. As one Labour figure puts it, the Cameroons may have read the New Labour book on winning elections, but they didn’t finish it; if they had, they wouldn’t have left themselves so vulnerable.
And Labour has indeed climbed off the canvas to land some punches of its own. This is precisely the fight it was hoping for—in which it runs more as an opposition than an incumbent, lambasting the Tories rather than defending the government’s somewhat awkward record. In peacetime senior Labour politicians’ addiction to Tory-bashing comes across as boring and irrelevant; not so in a campaign. In Lord Mandelson, Ed Balls, Mr Brown and others, Labour has some of the toughest campaigners in the business. Their team has conjured up a couple of decent slogans; the Tories are still groping for theirs. They have pulled back in some Labour voters who were flirting with smaller parties.
“When we get knocked down,” Mr Cameron said of Britain on February 28th, “we don’t roll over and die, we get up and fight.” Perhaps surprisingly, that seems to be true of Labour, too.
What might have been
There is of course, a big difference between Mr Ali’s strategy—he called it “rope-a-dope”—and Mr Brown’s pastiche. Mr Ali let himself be hit. Mr Brown didn’t mean to be struck by repeated bids to oust him, open warfare in the cabinet and the sort of economic bust he claimed to have abolished. Not to mention the lesser cock-ups that have blighted his premiership, from bottled elections to YouTube fiascos to the Lockerbie bomber’s release.
That history of haymakers, many self-inflicted, still makes it hard to believe the Tories won’t at least emerge from the election as the biggest party, probably with a majority. Conservative optimists hint that the national polls conceal better Tory numbers in key marginal constituencies. They point out that, so far as most voters are concerned, the fight has scarcely started. And they observe that, while Mr Brown’s own ratings have risen a bit, he remains deeply unpopular, and a drag on his party’s prospects.
So, in a way, the most painful thing about the narrowing polls could be their implication for what might have been—painful for Labour that is, rather than the Tories. One big reason Mr Brown has survived in his job is that some Labour MPs thought their cause was lost whoever was in charge. The dangerous ones were the brawlers who thought they could still make a fist of it. Now the weaknesses of the Tories’ campaign, and the softness of their lead, suggest the brawlers were right. This one’s gotta hurt: imagine if Labour had sent someone else into the ring.
In the red corner
Name: Gordon "Clunking Fist" Brown
Born: 20th February 1951 in Giffnock, Renfrewshire.
Job: Prime Minister, since 27th June 2007. Previously, he had been the Chancellor, between 2nd May 1997 and 27th June 2007, and the Shadow Chancellor, between 18th July 1992 and 2nd May 2007.
Life: Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Renfrewshire. His father, John Ebenezer Brown, who died in 1998, was a minister of the Church of Scotland. His mother, Jessie Elizabeth Souter, also known as Bunty, was the daughter of a timber merchant. She died in 2004. After leaving school, Brown enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school he received a kick to the head and suffered a retinal detachment. This has left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. He assumed office on 9th June 1983, when he became MP for Dunfermline East during the 1983 General Election which was won by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories. In 1997, Brown became Chancellor of the Exchequer when Tony Blair's Labour Party won the General Election. He served in that role for ten years and two months, making him Britain's longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in History. In 2007, Brown became only the 12th person to become British PM without an election being held. Early that year, Blair admitted he would step down as Pm on June 27th. As a result, several Labour MPs put their names forward to be the new leader of the party, including Gordon Brown. Brown won the televised contest easily, and therefore became leader of the Labour Party, and PM, on 27th June that year.
In the blue corner
Name: David "Call Me Dave "Cameron
Born: 9th October 1966, in London.
Job: Leader of the Opposition since the 6th December 2005. Since May of that year until 6th December, Cameron was Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills.
Life: Cameron was born in London but brought up in Peasemore, Berkshire. His father, Ian Donald Cameron, was a stockbroker, and his mother, Mary Fleur Mount, was the second daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet. David Cameron is the great-great-great-great-grandson of King William IV (his successor Queen Victoria's uncle) and his mistress, Dorothea Jordan. He is the fifth cousin, twice removed, of Queen Elizabeth II. As a child, Cameron attended Heatherdown Preparatory School in Berkshire, which was also attended by Prince Edward and Prince Andrew. He then went to Eton, often described as the most famous independent school in the world and traditionally referred to as "the chief nurse of England's statesmen." Cameron became an MP on 7th June 2001, when he was elected Member of Parliament for Witney, during that year's General Election which was won by Tony Blair's Labour.
economist.org
It was thought the election may take place in May, but there's speculation that the Prime Minister may decide to hold in in April, which would make it the earliest General Election held in Britain since the 1992 one.
Gordon Brown may be the current serving Prime Minister, but he has never won an election (people do not elect the Prime Minister. Instead, each person votes for the MP who they want to represent their constituency in the Commons. Each winning MP gets a seat in the Commons and the party with the most seats win the Election. The Prime Minister just happens to be whoever is the leader of the party in Government).
Despite this, many people think that Gordon Brown, who took over as leader of the Labour Party, and therefore as PM, in 2007, has about as much right to lead this country as Lady Jane Grey had in 1553.
Until now, it looked as though David Cameron's Conservative Party would stroll to victory in the election. But now, polls show that the gap between the Tories and Labour is closing, leading to speculation that Britain could get its first hung parliament since 1974.
But, also in 1974, Muhammad Ali staged a remarkable fightback against George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle."
Is it conceivable that in 2010 Mr Brown might bounce off the ropes to deny David Cameron his victory—or even, amazing as it sounds, win himself?
Rope-a-dope
The Tories’ unexpected weakness may yet haunt Labour: what if the party had ditched Gordon Brown?
Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
BOTH were ageing bruisers facing impossible odds. Both were pitted against younger men widely expected to obliterate them. Both were pulverised in the early stages of the contest, before their adversaries’ stamina seemed to wane…
All right, on the face of it leaden Gordon Brown may not have much in common with fleet Muhammad Ali. But it has begun to seem possible that Mr Brown might just stage a recovery as unlikely as Mr Ali’s in the famous “rumble in the jungle” in Kinshasa. In 1974 Mr Ali was pounded by the fearsome George Foreman, but rallied to knock him out. Is it conceivable that in 2010 Mr Brown might bounce off the ropes to deny David Cameron his victory—or even, amazing as it sounds, win himself?
Until very recently, that would have sounded preposterous; the question for the impending general election was how badly Labour would lose, not whether. Yet now the polls imply that the Tory lead, for a long time resplendent in double figures, has shrunk, in one survey to as little as two points. Polls come and go, as politicians like to say, but the two big parties seem to be trading fairly consistently at around six points apart. Because of the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, if replicated at the election those numbers could well result in a hung parliament, ie, one in which no party has an absolute majority. If Labour were to pick up another point or two, it might even emerge with the most seats in the House of Commons.
David Cameron has been thinking this year's election was in the bag. He may be in for a surprise.
Just as worryingly for the Tories, like Mr Foreman they sometimes seem to be all punched out. Biff! Society is broken! Wham! So is the economy. Wallop! The deficit threatens Britain’s credit rating and even (some Tories add) a full-blown Greek-style fiscal crisis. Kerpow! We will fix it, they say, by inaugurating a new age of austerity in taxes and spending. Crunch! Mr Brown is a useless and irresponsible prime minister.
There is nothing much left to add to this brutal armoury of arguments.
Worse, this slugfest has bloodied the slugger. All the talk of spending cuts, for example, seems to have reawakened atavistic fears about Tory heartlessness. It anyway sits uncomfortably with some of Mr Cameron’s other pledges, such as protecting the NHS. He is trying both to float like Tony Blair in 1997 and sting like Margaret Thatcher in 1979. In the circumstances, that dual approach may be necessary. But it looks clumsy and unfocused.
Meanwhile, there is a risk that the onslaught on Mr Brown inspires a kind of sympathy with the prime minister. Just as the crowd in Kinshasa urged the slighter man on with the cry “Ali, kill him!” (well, maybe not exactly like that), some British voters may now be rallying to the underdog. The bullying allegations levelled against Mr Brown by Andrew Rawnsley (see article), seem to have helped more than hindered him, rather like the intemperate criticism made by the Sun last year of Mr Brown’s mis-spelled letter to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Still more riskily, the Tories have exposed themselves to counter-attacks (needlessly, some shadow ministers now say). Since January they have published various chunks of a draft manifesto. This process might have been a good idea—helping to rebut the charge that the party had few policies—if it hadn’t been for the backtracking and arithmetical embarrassments it has entailed. As one Labour figure puts it, the Cameroons may have read the New Labour book on winning elections, but they didn’t finish it; if they had, they wouldn’t have left themselves so vulnerable.
And Labour has indeed climbed off the canvas to land some punches of its own. This is precisely the fight it was hoping for—in which it runs more as an opposition than an incumbent, lambasting the Tories rather than defending the government’s somewhat awkward record. In peacetime senior Labour politicians’ addiction to Tory-bashing comes across as boring and irrelevant; not so in a campaign. In Lord Mandelson, Ed Balls, Mr Brown and others, Labour has some of the toughest campaigners in the business. Their team has conjured up a couple of decent slogans; the Tories are still groping for theirs. They have pulled back in some Labour voters who were flirting with smaller parties.
“When we get knocked down,” Mr Cameron said of Britain on February 28th, “we don’t roll over and die, we get up and fight.” Perhaps surprisingly, that seems to be true of Labour, too.
What might have been
There is of course, a big difference between Mr Ali’s strategy—he called it “rope-a-dope”—and Mr Brown’s pastiche. Mr Ali let himself be hit. Mr Brown didn’t mean to be struck by repeated bids to oust him, open warfare in the cabinet and the sort of economic bust he claimed to have abolished. Not to mention the lesser cock-ups that have blighted his premiership, from bottled elections to YouTube fiascos to the Lockerbie bomber’s release.
That history of haymakers, many self-inflicted, still makes it hard to believe the Tories won’t at least emerge from the election as the biggest party, probably with a majority. Conservative optimists hint that the national polls conceal better Tory numbers in key marginal constituencies. They point out that, so far as most voters are concerned, the fight has scarcely started. And they observe that, while Mr Brown’s own ratings have risen a bit, he remains deeply unpopular, and a drag on his party’s prospects.
So, in a way, the most painful thing about the narrowing polls could be their implication for what might have been—painful for Labour that is, rather than the Tories. One big reason Mr Brown has survived in his job is that some Labour MPs thought their cause was lost whoever was in charge. The dangerous ones were the brawlers who thought they could still make a fist of it. Now the weaknesses of the Tories’ campaign, and the softness of their lead, suggest the brawlers were right. This one’s gotta hurt: imagine if Labour had sent someone else into the ring.
In the red corner
Name: Gordon "Clunking Fist" Brown
Born: 20th February 1951 in Giffnock, Renfrewshire.
Job: Prime Minister, since 27th June 2007. Previously, he had been the Chancellor, between 2nd May 1997 and 27th June 2007, and the Shadow Chancellor, between 18th July 1992 and 2nd May 2007.
Life: Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Renfrewshire. His father, John Ebenezer Brown, who died in 1998, was a minister of the Church of Scotland. His mother, Jessie Elizabeth Souter, also known as Bunty, was the daughter of a timber merchant. She died in 2004. After leaving school, Brown enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school he received a kick to the head and suffered a retinal detachment. This has left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. He assumed office on 9th June 1983, when he became MP for Dunfermline East during the 1983 General Election which was won by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories. In 1997, Brown became Chancellor of the Exchequer when Tony Blair's Labour Party won the General Election. He served in that role for ten years and two months, making him Britain's longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in History. In 2007, Brown became only the 12th person to become British PM without an election being held. Early that year, Blair admitted he would step down as Pm on June 27th. As a result, several Labour MPs put their names forward to be the new leader of the party, including Gordon Brown. Brown won the televised contest easily, and therefore became leader of the Labour Party, and PM, on 27th June that year.
In the blue corner
Name: David "Call Me Dave "Cameron
Born: 9th October 1966, in London.
Job: Leader of the Opposition since the 6th December 2005. Since May of that year until 6th December, Cameron was Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills.
Life: Cameron was born in London but brought up in Peasemore, Berkshire. His father, Ian Donald Cameron, was a stockbroker, and his mother, Mary Fleur Mount, was the second daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet. David Cameron is the great-great-great-great-grandson of King William IV (his successor Queen Victoria's uncle) and his mistress, Dorothea Jordan. He is the fifth cousin, twice removed, of Queen Elizabeth II. As a child, Cameron attended Heatherdown Preparatory School in Berkshire, which was also attended by Prince Edward and Prince Andrew. He then went to Eton, often described as the most famous independent school in the world and traditionally referred to as "the chief nurse of England's statesmen." Cameron became an MP on 7th June 2001, when he was elected Member of Parliament for Witney, during that year's General Election which was won by Tony Blair's Labour.
economist.org
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