The Fourth Lectern

  “But things started going wrong for that in the Seventies and Eighties, then?”

  “Yes. As soon as a third party comes along, it gets more complicated. Things were okay for a while on the predictability front until the third party started “clumping” its support in targeted seats – an ever-changing number of seats started to fail to follow the Uniform Swing. Add to that the fact that Labour and the Conservatives have their core votes react in different ways at different levels of support and we have a recipe for things to get more chaotic.”

  “More chaotic?” asked the interviewer.

  “Fundamentally unpredictable. By the last few elections predictions needed so many extra parameters – whether the seat was urban or rural, where in the country it was, what was the demographic composition of the electorate…”

  “Demographic composition.” I’m afraid you’ll have to explain”

  Professor Curtice frowned. “How many young people versus middle aged people and older people, white collar workers versus unemployed versus professionals, ethnic profiles – even the sexuality profile of the people living there.”

  The interviewer nodded. “And doing this makes it predictable?”

  “To a degree. Even incumbency – whether the sitting MP is standing again or not – and the marginality of a seat comes into it. From the published opinion polls, you’re still doing well to get an error of less than fifty seats or so. Within thirty is excellent.”

  The interviewer looked shocked. “Fifty seats!?”

  “Yes,” said Curtice. “Bear in mind that a majority is double the number of seats you have past the threshold of 325, a near landslide majority of ninety could be mispredicted as a hung Parliament. Or vice versa.”

  “That’s a big error margin.”

  “Yes – well, that’s assuming all of the errors go in one direction, which isn’t as improbable as it sounds. The exit polls that have been developed should be far, far more accurate, though, as they contain measurements and allowances for all of those factors. We aim to get within five seats. Except this year.”

  “A fourth party,” said the interviewer.

  “Exactly. Moreover, one where we have minimal background on whether or not the support is concentrated or spread out – the demographic breakdown of their support is less easy than we’d thought. There’s now even a sizeable student vote to the UKIP surge due to the proposed return to a student grant plus “Student Vouchers.” They’ve got considerable support from ex-Conservative and ex-Labour supporters and even in some regions, many ex-Lib Dems. This could cause considerable and unpredictable local clumping of support.”

  The interviewer leaned forward. “Can you tell us anything useful about what to expect?”

  Professor Curtice paused, reflecting for a moment. “At current levels of support, almost anything could happen. If UKIP’s support is fairly uniform, like the Alliance vote in the Eighties – and this is the most likely scenario – UKIP could get lots of second places but very few wins. If they’ve stolen “clumps” of votes in the right places, they could clean up. Either way, a key question would be how will they affect the support of the other parties? I’d hate to guess. There’s an argument to say that Labour should hold on best – but some analyses shows that a lot of the surge is coming from white working class voters, who are important in a lot of Labour’s strongholds. The Conservatives, of course, are losing considerable support to UKIP, but is it in their heartlands? And there is far more overlap between the Lib Dem vote and the UKIP vote than the Lib Dems would like to admit – the so-called “protest vote.” It’s almost impossible to say.”

  “Any chance of a UKIP win?”

  “Not unless they get a sizeable overall lead. There have been two polls showing UKIP in the lead with 25% of the vote - that wouldn’t be nearly enough for them. The most likely scenario is that they simply split the right-wing vote and let Labour through the middle. And a word of warning – I wouldn’t expect today’s polls to be very close to the final result.”

  “Thank you, Professor Curtice,” said the interviewer.

  The lights faded and they take off their microphones

  “How was that?” asked Curtice.

  “Not bad – a bit technical, maybe, but it should do,” said the interviewer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  30 Millbank, 28th April

  “Okay, Steve – I’ll admit that I sometimes have a tiny bit of scepticism over your ‘good ideas’, but this one may well have come in for us,” said Coulson.

  “Thanks. I think,” said Hilton.

  Coulson walked around to the other side of the large table and peered down at the poster mocked up on it. It was split in two by a zig-zag. The larger part of it showed Gordon Brown’s face; the smaller part a ballot paper with an ‘X’ against UKIP. The words superimposed on it trumpeted ‘Vote Purple, Get Brown’. He shook his head. It was close, but didn’t quite work. He scrawled a quick note to the graphics department, suggesting a change.

  “Um, Mr Coulson?” said a staffer.

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “I was just wondering – what exactly was Steve’s good idea?” The young man looked uncomfortable as he asked.

  Coulson turned towards Hilton. “Steve? Do you want to do some well-deserved boasting?”

  Hilton rolled his eyes for a moment before replying. “Carl, isn’t it?”

  The young man nodded.

  “It was simple enough. We wanted to release this line about if you vote for UKIP instead of us, you risk seeing Labour returned to Downing Street. But we needed to unleash it after the ground was prepared, and we had very little time. Even though it’s actually true, people tend to push back if you push a line too hard.” Hilton got up and walked around to Coulson’s side, looking down at the poster.

  “So my idea was that we could use the fact that it was true. You can’t rely on independent experts a lot of the time, because they’re jealous about their independence. Very few of them would ever countenance sacrificing their independence on our behalf. We were worrying about how the polling numbers would translate to seat numbers,” he said.

  Coulson broke in, almost absently. “And Steve realised before I did that if we were wondering about it, the broadcasters would be as well. So they’d be looking at getting the independent experts interviewed in order to tell them about it.”

  “But we couldn’t rely on them emphasising what we wanted to, could we?” asked Carl.

  “Exactly. So I phoned all of the experts we knew about, anyone who might be called up by a broadcaster – and simply asked them if they could explain to me exactly what the implications would be for us. Each of them, of course, explained that we’d be worst hit and it would be very feasible that votes for Congdon would let Labour through the middle,” said Hilton.

  “So when they went on, that element was prominent in their minds,” said Coulson. “It worked. Each and every one of them stressed independently that UKIP votes could help Labour. Exactly what we needed for tomorrow’s launch of the Vote Purple Get Brown campaign. And in the afternoon tomorrow, we have the final debate. I’ll be happy when these bloody things are over.”

 

  ***

  Rochdale, 29th April

  “That was a disaster. Sue should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?”

  “ I don’t know, I didn’t see her.”

  “Sue’s I think. Just ridiculous...”

  “What did she say?”

  “Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. Sue pushed her up towards me.”

  ***

  University of Birmingham, 29th April

  “Going a bit better for us tonight, I think. Congdon’s finally had a bad start and not recovered.” Osborne was looking smug.

  “Maybe,” said Mandelson, in a non-committal manner.

  “
I guess Gordon’s had a pretty bad day,” said Osborne. Mandelson didn’t answer.

  Osborne looked back at the stage. The final debate had proven to be surprisingly infertile ground for Tim Congdon. After he had started brightly in answering the first question on how each party would fund their proposals to tackle the deficit, an audience member called out a question as to how UKIP would pay for their manifesto if their EU exit referendum failed. Despite the question breaking the debate rules – unsolicited interjections were strictly off-limits – Congdon started answering before Dimbleby could cut off the interjection.

  His reply was unconvincing and it had overshadowed the rest of the debate, to Cameron’s benefit. Lasting for two hours instead of ninety minutes like the previous debates, it had been extended to cope with the extra time consumed by having four instead of three protagonists. There had been complaints that a number of important questions had not been covered in the earlier debates due to time running out; this was not to happen in the final debate.

  The remaining topics covered – taxation, banking, housing, industry, immigration and benefits abuse - should have been ideal territory for Congdon, but the earlier awkward question cast a long shadow. Nevertheless, Congdon seemed to have played his hand as well as he could under the circumstances – but it didn’t look to Osborne as though it had been nearly enough for the UKIP leader. Brown had looked tense, but had done better than Osborne had expected – albeit still well below Cameron’s standard. Huhne had been strong, but at last Cameron had truly shone. Finally he was clearly ahead of the others – surely?

  He glanced across at Mandelson, who was looking less stressed than he’d have thought, given how well the debate had been going for the Conservatives. He was slightly tense, but it looked more like anticipation than despair.

  Their candidates were now summing up. “What have you got up your sleeve?” asked Osborne at last. “You’re running out of time anyway.”

  A shadow of a smile played across Mandelson’s lips for a brief moment. “You’ll see,” he promised. As Brown started his own summing-up statement, Mandelson leaned forwards.

  Brown was just finishing. “We have made mistakes, and, sadly, these have often been illiberal ones. We urge progressive voters to give us a chance in tandem with the Liberals. Please ensure that the Conservative/UKIP alternative is kept out of office. Chris will, I’m sure, keep his options open, and rightly so, but we all know that it will come down to Labour and the Lib Dems against the Conservatives and the growing forces of UKIP. We know that right-leaning voters will give enough support to UKIP to get a strong hold over the potential right-wing Government and I truly feel that this would be bad for the country that I love. Vote for Labour, and you will get a Labour/Lib Dem Government. And even if Labour get a majority, I will reserve at least two seats in Cabinet for the Liberals – it will ensure we have a better representation of the views of the country.”

  Huhne looked stunned. Cameron’s mouth dropped open for an instant before he recovered himself. Up in the viewing room, Osborne whirled.

  “What the hell? You’re offering them a Coalition before the election’s even been held?” he demanded.

  Mandelson finally let himself smile. “Isn’t it the flip side of your very own campaign? We’re just saying: Vote Brown, get Red and Yellow.”

  “You’ve legitimised the Lib Dems,” Osborne pointed out. “You’re going to lose votes in constituencies where they’re strong.”

  “Which tend to be constituencies where we’re weak and you’re strong,” countered Mandelson, standing up to leave. “I think we can cope with that.”

  “It’s a hell of a gamble,” warned Osborne. “I’m surprised you got Brown to take that kind of a risk.”

  Mandelson paused. “It wasn’t easy,” he admitted. “And it is a serious gamble – but what choice did we have left? If it wasn’t for the events this morning, I don’t think that Gordon would ever have agreed, but…” He shrugged and left.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  30 Millbank, 30th April

  The leak about the next day’s poll for the Sun had finally arrived. It would be the first one where all the fieldwork had been done after the debate – so it would show whether or not Brown’s massive gamble had paid off. The young staffer silently passed his phone across to Coulson, the figures stark upon it.

  He read it out loud. “Thirty one percent. Up five points.”

  “That’s Labour, is it?” asked Hilton, looking resigned.

  “No,” said Coulson. A grin slowly spread across his face. “That’s us. Look at this.” He passed the phone across to Hilton.

  Conservatives: 31 (+5)

  Labour: 24 (-1)

  Lib Dems: 20 (-2)

  UKIP: 17 (-2)

  “Wow,” said Hilton, after a short, disbelieving moment. “It backfired.”

  Coulson jumped to his feet and started pacing up and down. “It must have done. If the electorate want to get rid of Brown, they have to vote for us now. If we can just get a bit more momentum – even with this, we could break 300 seats, but a bit more momentum and we’re there.”

  He sat down again, abruptly. “Right – we mustn’t let this slip now. I’ve got an open letter to check over – we’ve had a bunch of entrepreneurs sign off to a letter saying how bad a Lib/Lab government would be. Let’s get to work.”

  As he bent his head, the young staffer, Carl, politely cleared his throat. “Mr Coulson,” he said.

  “Yup?” Coulson looked up with a faint smile. He picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip.

  “We’ve had a rumour about Adam Boulton getting some sort of scoop in the next couple of minutes.”

  “Wait, what? What sort of scoop? How will it affect us?”

  Carl looked worried. “I don’t know; our source just said ‘you’ll really want to watch this’, and rang off.”

  Coulson began to get a sinking feeling. Surely it wasn’t going to fall apart now? He looked around for the closest screen – it was a busy room, with people calling to each other and multiple screens showing every news channel. The sound on each was off by default, with subtitles showing instead.

  “Get the big screen onto Sky News and kick in the sound,” he ordered. Carl scurried off. Within seconds, his orders had been carried out.

  On the big screen, Adam Boulton looked serious. “We’ve been fortunate enough tonight to speak to Baroness Thatcher, who can give us one minute of her time for a comment.”

  Coulson stared for a moment, and realised he was still clinging to his coffee. He silently put it down. What the hell? he thought. This wasn’t in the grid. She was supposed to be kept well and truly off-stage! The background noise of people talking to each other in the large room increased sharply.

  He held up his hand for silence. No-one seemed to notice – at least, not quickly enough for him – so he bellowed “Shut up and listen!”

  The hubbub died down swiftly. They’d missed the first few words of Boulton’s question, but that had just been preamble.

  “…with him in the late Seventies and influenced your thinking then. You were telling us earlier – before we were recording – about your opinion of him,” said Boulton.

  Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. They’re talking about Congdon. Don’t do what I think you’re going to do”

  “Well, Timothy always spoke a lot of sense back then…” began Baroness Thatcher.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit. It IS about UKIP. Just say something like ‘it’s a shame he’s changed for the worse. Please!

  “…so I’m not surprised that he still does,” concluded Baroness Thatcher.

  Oh God no! thought Coulson.

  There was an instant of total silence in CCHQ, followed by uproar. Hilton looked perplexed as he looked around amid the chaos.

  “What? Why all the concern? We didn’t want any toxicity on our campaign and now it’s on the UKIP campaign.”
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  Coulson sighed. “Steve, the voters never rejected Thatcher, and there’s still a lot of support for her. A lot of hatred, sure, but look at some polls of ‘which PM was best’. She still does really well in those. And a lot of people hated her for personal reasons – like they thought she took pride in causing pain, or ridiculous things like that - but many of those still admired her, and thought she talked sense. Even if her implementation was – in their opinion – a bit nasty.”

  Hilton wasn’t dumb. “So … fuck. Fuck! We’ve been fucked.”

  Coulson nodded wearily. “Exactly.”

  ***

  By two in the morning, Coulson and Hilton had still not worked out what to do next. They were holed up in a meeting room with two staffers that Coulson had picked – almost at random – to record details and off of whom to bounce ideas. One of them was the young Carl, the other was, he found out belatedly, called Jonathon.

  “Okay. It’s not a disaster, let’s not panic,” said Hilton

  “Not a disaster?” demanded Coulson. “What’s the weather like on your world, Steve? In the real world, it’s pissing down catastrophe, cockup and cataclysm. ”

  Hilton glared at him. “Not constructive, Andy.”

  Carl spoke up. “Can’t we run some kind of spoiler? Suggest Maggie’s gone loopy?”

  Coulson turned on him. “Sure! What a wonderful idea! Let’s bully an old lady who happens to be an idol to a lot of the people we’re chasing! What could possibly go wrong? Tell me, son: have you heard the word ‘omnishambles’ before? Let’s not make this worse, ‘kay?”

  Carl subsided, muttering.

  Hilton took a deep breath. “Right – what we’ve got to do is separate her statement from an endorsement for UKIP.”

  Coulson rolled his eyes. “Now this I’ve got to hear…”

  Hilton continued, patiently. “She didn’t say ‘vote UKIP’. She said ‘Congdon speaks sense’. Very important difference.”