Is the British electorate always right?

From my column this morning:

He [a friend] couldn't think of a single election since universal suffrage in 1928 where the voters had got the election wrong. And you know what? I think my friend has got a point.

The proposition is that in every contest in these last 80 years the party that was more fit to govern has been victorious. Sometimes both of the main offerings were weak and unappealing, often the winner wasn't much good, but always the winner was better able to conduct the business of government than was the loser.

Do you agree?

Comments

[paul adnum]

Yes. I have always thought that the electorate get not just the correct party and leader for the circumstances but also calibrate the majority pretty well. For example at the last election the country was not ready for the Tories (and the Tories not ready to govern) but they clipped Labour's wings successfully. In '97 and 01 they were still prepared to accept a strong change message and support it with large majorities.

[James]

Mmmmm... I'd like to turn that question around : Have the British electorate EVER got it right?

Important (not all elections)
1945 : Labour - squandered victory.
1955 : Conservative - Suez fiasco.
1974 : Labour - made UK the sick man of europe
1979 : Conservative : taken a while but the free-market economics and lack of public investment have left a country exposed to boom and bust policies and a country that does not make anything and does not export anything.
1997 : Labour - things can only get worse with a foriegn policy in tatters an economy that taxes individuals to the hilt and then wastes billions with inefficient public spending.

Nope - I think it a rare event indeed for the British electorate to get it right...

[Richard Young]

1992? I think the country expected Major to lose, and Kinnock had got close enough to being New Labour to make his team a viable government. Couldn't have been much worse in PR terms than Major; and although I have a soft spot for Ken Clarke, wouldn't John Smith have been a decent Chancellor?

Perhaps '92 falls into the "both of the main offerings were weak and unappealing, often the winner wasn't much good" category...

[Dave B]

Yes. I think the British people have wanted to get rid of Labour since 2001, but because the Conservatives have been such a shambles they've been forced to vote Labour or abstain.

How little the prospect of a Labour gov't appealed is demonstrated by the turnout at the 2001 and 2005 elections being the lowest since WW2 by some margin.

http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/turnout.htm

I think the next general election will have turnout back around 75%.

[Adam]

I think this is a poor attempt to legitimise an ineffectual polital system. The choice between two equally incompetent or unfit parties/leaders is no choice at all - look at this the current Presidential election in the USA.

Did the German voters get it right in the 1930's by electing Adlof Hitler with a majority of the votes cast? As this proposition would seem to suggest that they did

[Simon Stephenson]

I think the problem with this is that the post hoc justification is hugely loaded in favour of supporting what actually happened, and the reasoning behind why it happened.

So even if Attlee's 1945 government had legalised cannibalism and incest, the perception would still be that on balance it was better than re-electing Churchill's Tories, because the country had decided that their responsibility for 1930s unemployment and leading us into war made them unsuitable to be elected at the end of the war. It's just not possible to construct an argument that would cause the majority to believe a wrong decision was made in 1945. The reality of the matter is immaterial.

A similar state of affairs exists with the elections of 1964, 1979 and 1997. The mythology is that the existing governments were so poor that they had to be replaced, and it's beyond anyone's power to convince anyone that the reality was out of the frying pan into the fire - even if that IS the reality.

As for 1992, I'd have to say that if Kinnock's defeat is the only reason for Blair and the (temporary, I hope) elimination of principle from politics, then it was a calamitous failure on the part of the electorate. But perhaps the make-believe folly of triangulation is just something humanity had to go through in order, finally, to conclude that it's a crock of crap.

[JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO]

Electorates anywhere are not necessarily right (whatever "right" is interpreted to mean).

But they are sovereign. That's the fundamental principle of democracy.

[Snorri Godhi]

I feel unable to judge the elections before 1979, but since then, I agree that the British electorate always chose the lesser evil, which is what a 2-party system allows voters to do. (In multi-party systems, voters can't even do that.)

Losing the 1992 election, in particular, was the best thing that ever happened to Labour, and the main (but not only) reason is that, for once, they did not get the blame for a devaluation caused by Tory policies.

[James Kennett]

It was recently pointed out (on this blog?) that no bald party leader since Winston Churchill has won a General Election.

Unless the follically challenged are intrinsically less fit to govern, these two interpretations of electoral decision-making cannot both be correct.

The baldness theory suggests that Neil Kinnock, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith were simply wasting their time.

[Nimrod]

Interesting comments here...looking back, the Labour election wins of 1945 and 1964, and the Tory win in 1979 led to the country being governed in the manner which the situation at the time required. Also, the Labour wins in 1974 1997 2001 and 2005,and the Tory wins in 1983 and 1987 were at times when the opposition was in no position to govern effectively. The June 1992 election is one which, looking back, Labour are proobably glad they lost, as they did not then have to contend with Black Wednesday in the September.

In terms of other issues raised by your correspondents, the recent low turnout in General Elections is at least partly a result of the efforts of the major parties being concentrated on the 100 or so crucial marginal seats, with voters in the other seats coming to the (not unreasonable) conclusion that their individual votes will make no difference to the overall local or national outcome. The introduction of a Single Transferable Vote system would transform the situation overnight, although having said that, any Labour seat seems up for grabs at the moment.

Also a minor point, but Hitler never did win a "majority" of the votes cast in any democratic election - the Nazis' biggest share of the vote was 43.9%. They were however the party with the largest share of the vote on more than one occasion - contrast with the 37% which Labour won in 2005! (and that is just 37% of the 60% or so who actually bothered to vote - in a year where the number of non-voters actually exceeded the numbers who voted for any of the parties).

[Abdul Majeed]

I have always been led to believe that it is impossible - by virtue of the great-and-wonderful "democracy" - for the electorate to ever "get it wrong": apparently, by definition, they always get it 'right'.

[Andy C]

1992. There is no way in a million years Major deserved to win that election. He even campaigned like he was destined to lose.

Oh the perversity of the electorate.

[karin]

I disagree with your comment because the majority of people in scotland did not always at every election elect the same party to government as england so therefore they got the wrong (or right)goverment whichever way you look at it just wasnt the one they voted for.

[Gus Swan]

How is it possible to know? The losing party never gets a chance to demonstrate its capability. However, seeing what the Foot government after 1983 would have been done would have been, ahem, interesting.

[Paul Freeman]

'Whoever you vote for the Government always gets in!'

[tomran]

Thank you so much for believing in democracy!

[JT]

The electorate certainly got it right about Kinnock, and will get it right about the Labour Party next time, and several more times after that.

[Steve Buckel]

I wonder: does your friend know the difference between judgement and sentiment? If so does he have some standard set of criteria for arriving at his judgement?

You can ask these questions again in respect of the electorate.

And you can ask the question "wrong" or "right" for whom?

We really deserve to know what exactly your friend is trying to deny.

In my case, you may correctly interpret my emigration to Austria last year as a vote with my feet. Since then, property prices have nosedived, the pound has lost some 20% of its value, inflation has shot up (and that based upon figures that assume cameras equate with bread in importance), recession would be already be underway had not other figures been similarly massaged, the Sustainable Investment Rule is about to be manipulated to allow an excess of 40% in public sector net debt of GDP and the opinion polls have recorded a hitherto unseen low for the incumbents. Forget about education, strikes, invasion of privacy and the other non-economic issues, which I am sure many can agree show a backward step. A raft of incompetence issues exist such as loss of personal data of the majority of the adult population and the first run on a UK bank since The City of Glasgow Bank in 1878.

Is your friend seriously suggesting that the opposition would necessarily have conducted the business of government even more dismally than this? If so, then I would suggest that should be impossible as it would require some real talent, way beyond their abilities from what I have seen. You have apply yourself hard to be this bad.

Opposition parties don't win elections, governments loose them. Yes, it may be hackneyed but it is true based on my personal recollections since Churchill (just). That alone should give you your answer.

Support for one's friend is always commendable but, at least from where I sit, it appears in this instance to be based upon sentiment rather than judgement.

[Mike]

Of course the electorate usually get things pretty well spot on, especially when the systems media ram the need for change down our throats.
At the next election when Gordon Brown and his cabal of useless die hard New Labour sychophants get the bullet (If Only).Then we Scots will take control of our own Nation and will leave you lot as the toothless tiger you are. We have come to your rescue to many times in the past, and perhaps you lot should reap the future you have sown with your stacked Westmonster and rants on Engerland.

[cuffleyburgers]

Labour's win in 1945 was a disaster for the country setting off as it did nearly half a century of so-called progressive politics (ie socialism) which have emasculated the country. Not until Thatcher was able to inject some sense was there any likelihood of benefitting from the sacrifices made to win the war. The Marshall aid we received was squandered on ill conceived populistic current spending.

Even now the basic paradigm is essentially socialistic evidenced by the fact that well over 40% of GDP is spent by the government, mainly in trying to gerrymander its share of the vote.

And recent moves by labour, against the will of the electorate, to bind us further into the insidious institutional socialism of the EU super state effectively prevents any possibility of an escape to economic or political freedom.