1 Scottish referendum
Scotland is on the brink. The rest of the UK watches nervously, its future in the balance. This November, the independence question goes to a vote, as Alex Salmond does battle with Alistairs Darling and Carmichael and, from across the border, David Cameron. This feud has already got nasty, and it will get nastier still. And that’s before the votes are even counted…
Disunited Kingdom
In his St Andrew’s Day message last year, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said 2014 would be a “year like no other”. The veteran SNP leader (he was first elected back in 1990) has always had a nice line in hyperbole, but on this occasion he had a point.
It’s a cliché, but nothing will be the same again. If, as polls indicate, there’s a victorious ‘no’ vote, then the issue will surely return – Nicola Sturgeon recently suggested 15 years would be a suitable time lapse – and if it’s a ‘yes’, then the Scottish and UK governments will have to negotiate the terms.
Unionists have promised more powers for the Scottish Parliament if a majority of the electorate rejects Independence, while Nationalists have qualified their goal with pledges to retain popular bits of the UK, such as its monarchy and currency.
Most Scots, meanwhile, desire neither Independence nor the status quo. Ironically, that’s precisely what they might end up getting, whatever the outcome.
David Torrance is the author of The Battle for Britain: Scotland and the Independence Referendum (Biteback, 2013)
2 Coalition differentiation
There will be no box marked ‘coalition’ to choose at the next election. Instead its component parts, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, will present themselves as two very distinct options. The process of differentiation has already begun, and increasingly the coalition will look, and sound, distinctly uncomfortable.
The long goodbye
There will be no box marked ‘coalition’ to choose at the next election. Coalitions may be rare at Westminster but they’re commonplace elsewhere in Europe. So, there are ample lessons to guide the coalition parties through the difficult waters of the 16 or so months before the general election. No one denies it’s not going to be tough and fractious as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats combine the double-task of working together in government until May 2015 with staking out their positions as electoral rivals.
The Institute for Government recently held an event, provocatively entitled ‘50 ways to leave a coalition – and how to govern in the final phase’, to hear lessons from the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. The most clear-cut message was, do not prematurely end a coalition. In the Netherlands and Ireland, voters have always punished parties who break up such unions.
The final year is marked, as former Irish minister Noel Dempsey noted, by electoral nerves and paranoia among politicians. So there will be no new policy ideas, apart from short-term offerings intended to win votes. There will be pressure on the coalition from its parties’ members to highlight wins and to attack the other party. That sounds very familiar to British ears, but the rivalry needs to be tightly managed by party leaders. In short, David Cameron and Nick Clegg need to keep talking.
Parties must also prepare to govern in order not to jeopardise future trust. And, finally, even if a coalition continues after an election, it will not be the same because of shifting electoral support.
One certainty is that 2015 will not be like 2010, even if there is another hung parliament. Media and party scrutiny will be far more intense and it will be harder to reach an agreement.
Peter Riddell is director of the Institute for Government
3 Last party conferences pre-election
Can Ed Miliband pull off the trick of an agenda-setting conference speech three years’ running? Will Nick Clegg attack his coalition partners with reckless abandon? And what does David Cameron promise beyond ‘steady as we go’? The final conference season will set the stage for the 2015 general election.
Conference calls
The conference season in 2014 will be one of the most important to be held in recent years. This is the last major chance the parties will have to present their agendas in the run-up to the general election.
For the coalition these are largely unchartered waters. For the first time since WWII they have to work out how to defend the government’s record while at the same time being distinctive and able to launch separate appeals to the electorate.
Their strongest argument is that without the coalition an economic crisis would have turned into a political crisis, but voters are notoriously ungrateful. If the economy is doing well, the coalition parties may be tempted to use the old slogan, ‘Don’t Let Labour Ruin It’, but this will be more difficult for the Lib Dems, who will want to keep the door open to a future coalition with Labour.
UKIP 2013 success will prey upon the minds of senior politicians, particularly if it has done well in the European elections. For Labour, the main problem is defining a set of policies that will strengthen the idea that it is an attractive government-in-waiting. Its tone in opposition has sometimes seemed petulant and strident. ‘More in sorrow than in anger’ should be the dominant mood at the Labour conference.
General elections are fought on a mixture of hope and fear. For all parties, getting the balance right will be the ultimate test.
John Sergeant was the BBC’s chief political correspondent from 1992 to 2000 and the political editor of ITN from 2000 to 2002
4 Other elections
Before the 2015 general election comes two significant warm up acts: the European and local elections. The results of both will be well worth paying attention to, whatever the losers end up telling you about insignificant bloody noses…
X marks the spot
Put it in your diary: Thursday 22 May 2014. To save money the local elections have been moved to coincide with the European elections, making this ‘Super Thursday’ the final national and local electoral test before the 2015 general election.
The Euros are Labour’s to lose. They did appallingly badly in 2009 (third place behind UKIP) yet all but one poll over the past 12 months has put Labour in front, and its 16% vote share can reasonably be expected to double.
UKIP should also do well: success would mean beating the Tories into third place, which seems entirely likely, and to persuade people that it is a serious contender for votes in 2015. Which is less likely. Either way, having both sets of elections on the same day should boost UKIP’s European election prospects – the Conservatives should brace themselves for a pasting.
The local elections will be significant, too. Of special interest are the London borough elections, the results of which Boris Johnson will doubtless pore over to assess whether he goes for a parliamentary seat in 2015 – and possibly the Conservative leadership – or seeks another mayoral term in 2016. Also up for election are a third of seats in all 36 metropolitan boroughs, plus a smattering of district and unitary councils. Labour fared reasonably well the last time these were contested in 2010, but the inevitable popularity of being in opposition should give them plenty to crow about.
Next May will help answer some big political questions. Can UKIP live up to the hype? Is Labour once again a credible national alternative? And are the Liberal Democrats a spent electoral force? The answers will help us to tell whether victory a year later is completely beyond the Tories’ reach.
Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes
5 Leaving Afghanistan
“Never invade Afghanistan”. As the new year begins, Harold Macmillan’s first rule of politics looks to be more prescient than ever. British troops have spent longer in Afghanistan than they had hoped, but what do they leave behind?
A dignified retreat?
This would be the UK’s fourth Afghan War. According to legend, we lost the previous three wars – badly. The fact is, we did not. In the first Afghan War (1839) a private company was defeated. A British Army quickly avenged them. The second Afghan War (1881) was so successful that it established a stability that was in place until the third Afghan War (1919). The Tsarist threat had been swept away by revolution, and the Afghans were left isolated but stable up until the overthrow of the king in 1973. In some ways this latest foray is a continuum of the previous adventures. And it will positively be the last. The degradation of the enemy that the UK forces have achieved in Helmand and elsewhere has presented the Afghans with a huge opportunity. As the UK withdraws, and unlike Iraq, it will do so with its head held high: it is up to the Afghans as to how they use this opportunity.
But the difference from the previous three British campaigns and the Soviet intervention has been that rather than contain and dictate the peace as before, the coalition, including the UK, has reached an agreement with another Pashtun Dynasty. Where the British installed the Duranis with clear boundaries and under strict control, the Karzai dynasty has been treated as an equal and has now moved to a position of imperious control, dictating to the Afghans and the coalition regardless of the voice of the Loya Jirga (grand council).
Where the British brought stability through control, boundaries and staged pension, the coalition handed the keys of the sweet shop to Karzai and now it is plundered. There is hope. Hope for a peace. But what sort of peace?
The deal has been done behind the scenes, I believe. The various factions that make up the chaotic mosaic of Afghanistan have no interest in 33 million odd hungry bellies and complex issues. They want a dip of the loot. The Hazara will get nothing. The Haqqani Network will have the East. Mullar Omar’s Quetta Sura will have the South East, including Kandahar. Gulbadin Hetmatyar’s Hiz B’Islami will get the South West, including Helmand, and the Northern alliance will have the Panshir and the North. Herat in the North West will fall under Iranian influenced factions and stability will reign in an odd way with the Karzai faction controlling Kabul alone but whacking up the foreign aid to maintain peace. Some barely respectable sliver of the aid will be tossed towards the actual projects, schools, hospitals – whatever, in order to show willing. Some peace!
I may be wrong. We shall see. The key indicator will be whether the Status of Forces Agreement with the US is signed in January. If so then I am wrong, and a plucky little nascent democratic state will fight for its life with US backing at hand in the country and the support of allies on the borders especially Pakistan. If it is not, then I have already explained how it will be. Expect more refugees flooding towards the UK and hundreds risking their lives on the seas to escape – for it is their best chance by far.
Colonel Tim Collins is a former British Army officer. His famous eve-of-battle speech during the 2003 Iraq war is said to hang in the Oval Office
6 The economy
The next election was predicted to be a battle for economic credibility, as George Osborne’s austerity collided with Ed Balls’ austerity plus. But growth is returning. Austerity, it seems, is working. Some Conservatives, and commentators, would have you believe that the war is over, save for an undignified retreat for the shadow chancellor. Don’t believe it. Balls won’t go down without a fight. New fronts are opening all the time.
Money talks
Official growth expectations for 2014 have been upgraded to around 2.4% after 1.4% in 2013, though this will still only just bring us back to where we were before the recession. This cyclical recovery does not vindicate ‘Plan A’, as deficits and debt levels in 2014 and 2015 will still be much higher than originally forecast when the coalition came to power in 2010.
Despite some better showing recently, the meeting of fiscal targets has generally been pushed into later years. Rising rather than contracting government current expenditure has been the norm, and attempts to cap the ballooning welfare bill may well split the coalition. I suspect, though, that the Lib Dems will go along with it, as an early election will not be to their benefit, while Labour may find it hard to argue against it.
In the meantime, as unemployment falls confidence will improve but the recovery will remain unbalanced. The main contributor to growth in 2014 will be the consumer, who, despite subdued wages and higher living costs, will continue to borrow more and cut savings as interest rates stay at record low levels. Investment and exports, however, will lag behind.
At least some growth is better than none, but issues such as the living wage and the impact of immigration will shape the economic and political debate as European elections loom.
Whoever comes to power in 2015 will be left with a real headache.
Vicky Pryce is a former joint head of the Government Economic Service
7 Immigration
Theresa May, it is said, is now Theresa Will. As in, will become leader. But the home secretary has to handle the near-impossible challenge of the lifting of restrictions for Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants. Expect political bust-ups, shrieking headlines, and maybe worse. How she muddles through the challenge could determine whether Theresa Does.
A moving story
Back at the beginning of December, the Daily Telegraph ran an extraordinary story of – for me, at least – a hitherto unknown organisation. The ‘Democracy Institute’ was claiming, as Migration Watch, UKIP and other far-right groups have done, that there would be hundreds of thousands of new migrants from Romania and Bulgaria coming into the UK.
The figures quoted for Bulgaria were quite astounding, at more than 44,000 per year.
There has, of course, inadvertently or otherwise, been a very major misunderstanding about the situation. Romanian and Bulgarian citizens have had the right to be in Britain since 2007, when their countries joined the European Union. It is therefore not free movement but the Right To Work legally that is at stake.
As there have been transitional restrictions, you might have thought that the quotas which were laid down for applicants wishing to come to this country would have been exceeded over the last six years. They have not.
My experience in 2004 was – no one wants to hear this – that 40% of those who registered to work were already in the country. In other words, giving people the right to work (the exact opposite of giving them the right to benefits) avoids illegal working in the sub-economy, with all the concomitant dangers that brings both to those involved and to the indigenous population.
When, at my own expense, I visited Bulgaria in the summer, and with the considerable help of the British Ambassador, visited a number of areas in relation to the Roma community, I found little enthusiasm for entry into the UK. It is true that Romanians have, on the whole, been more inclined to travel across Europe, but mainly to countries like Spain.
Which other country has a large number of its expats in Spain? Yes, you guessed it…
So a bit of rational debate wouldn’t come amiss. There are going to be people who want to come to the UK to work from January, and there will be those out of the 130,000 or so who have already come from Romania and Bulgaria to work here who will wish to return.
That, if the right in politics haven’t noticed, is called a ‘labour market’. Now, there’s a thing…
David Blunkett is Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. He was home secretary from 2001 to 2004
8 Sporting events
Next year sees two major sporting events taking place: the football World Cup in Brazil, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Nothing to concern our politicians, surely? Wrong. Failure leads to inquisitions, success will see the ever opportunistic Messers Cameron and Salmond tweeting frantically and looking forward to a polling bounce.
Sporting chances
After England won the World Cup in 1966, Harold Wilson, the prime minister, joked: “Have you noticed how we only ever win the World Cup under a Labour government?” Yet even if England win next year’s World Cup, it probably won’t help David Cameron. In over twenty years of writing about the football-politics nexus, I’ve never found a case of a country’s football success helping to keep a government in power.
First of all, people can think. They know that the prime minister doesn’t win them the World Cup. Secondly, victory doesn’t seem to have a sustained impact on the ‘feelgood factor’. When the economists Georgios Kavetsos and Stefan Szymanski took the European Commission’s surveys on life satisfaction for twelve European countries from 1974 to 2004, and checked whether people became happier when their national team did well, there was no noticeable correlation.
Only once in British history did a team’s defeat arguably help change a government. On June 14, 1970, England were knocked out of the World Cup by West Germany. Four days later, the Conservatives surprisingly defeated the incumbent Wilson in the general election.
Crucially, the football defeat had echoed a political narrative. In 1970, the common story about English football was: “In 1966 a modernised England triumphed, but we have since declined.” This happened to be a feasible take on the political situation: Wilson was reelected in March 1966 preaching modernity, but then came four years of national decline compared with rising continental Europe. The 1970 election followed soon enough after England’s defeat that the football narrative was probably still influencing minds in the polling booth. Labour’s Tony Crosland plausibly blamed the election result on “the disgruntled Match-of-the-Day millions”.
But no election is expected next year. At best for Cameron, an England triumph would provide brief distraction and a few days to get some bad news out quietly.
Simon Kuper is a sports columnist at the Financial Times. He is the author of Football Against the Enemy
9 Health
Labour attacking Tory reforms. Tories picking apart Labour’s record in office. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt tweeting about his shadow Andy Burnham’s “attempts to cover up failing hospitals.” Burnham responding by threatening legal action. The battle for the NHS has already turned nasty…
Health problems
Fact: 2014 might prove to be the year of the NHS. Much will depend on this winter and next. If they go well, fine, but if they produce anything between bad and horrendous headlines, it will prove a problem, possibly a big one, for the coalition.
The reason? Lansley’s mighty reform of the NHS is not working as intended. His increased emphasis on competition is now clearly stopping things that are needed (the reshaping of services) rather than just providing the ginger required to get them in place. Furthermore, his reforms were meant to take the health secretary out of the day-to-day management of the NHS, when Jeremy Hunt has dived right into it. So has No. 10, taking responsibility for winter.
Hunt has set himself up as the champion of the patient, highlighting Mid Staffs failures, GP inadequacies and much else, blaming the deliverers while threatening to fire and/ or criminalise them. Centralisation of intervention, however, also centralises responsibility for the results, and thus centralisation of blame. If NHS performance falls off seriously, the public may decide that, despite Hunt’s careful positioning, it is those who have been in charge politically for the past five years who are to blame rather than under-performing doctors, nurses and managers. Not good for 2015.
As for Labour, it has a long way to go to convince people that it has a vote-gaining alternative in its twin promise to repeal Lansley’s Act (precisely which bits, how, and with what effect – and surely not all of it?) and to deliver more integrated care. The latter sounds nice, but it needs much more definition, and more explanation of the practicalities and impact.
Nicholas Timmins is a senior fellow (health policy) at the King’s Fund. Between 1996 and 2011 he was public policy editor at the Financial Times
10 The unknown
Whatever the Downing Street grid comes up with, whatever Labour’s plan of attack may be, events will at some stage knock everything off course. Scandals, by-elections, international disputes, the weather and the ever unpredictable Boris Johnson (could this be the year he finally returns to Parliament?) – all will play a part in dragging politicians in directions they didn’t intend to go in 2014.
Events, dear boy
Years ago I introduced Peter Lilley to the answer Harold Macmillan gave when asked what kept him awake at night. “ Events, dear boy, events.” Clever man that he is, Lilley did not know an expression which has since gone viral, as we didn’t then say.
Donald Rumsfeld was on the same track, unfairly mocked for it too, when as US defence secretary, he contrasted the things we know and the things we know we don’t know with the “unknown unknowns” of life. I guess the Sunni revolt against Rumsfeld’s complacent plans for the military occupation of Iraq must count in that category.
So what unknown unknowns face Britain’s political elite in 2014? The known unknowns are bad enough to cost David Cameron sleep. Dare he assume he will win the Scottish independence referendum on September 18? No, but defeat by wily Alex Salmond would finish him off.
The chancellor assumes the eurozone, still Britain’s largest export market, is through the worst. We must all hope Osborne is right, but he may not be.
Angela Merkel is also weakened politically and economically by her new grand coalition with the German centre-left. She may not be able to help her young friend, Dave, with his strategy for renegotiating the UK’s relationship with Brussels.
These are known unknowns, just like the risky Japanese reflation experiment now underway, the stalling of emerging market economies, the dangerous stalemate between White House and Congress in the US. All might knock our recovery and Cameron’s election planning off course.
So might domestic unrest. Apart from the 2011 riots (what riots, they said during balmy Olympic August in 2012?) and unreported skirmishing in Belfast, Britain has been remarkably well behaved during the recession.
But social solidarity is weakened by inequality not seen for decades. It could easily fracture in response to a crisis, domestic or foreign. The police and the press are among the disaffected.
The biggest Macmillan-esque “event” on my radar is rising nationalist tension between Japan and China over gas and oil that may lay beneath the South China Sea. A Sino-Japanese War in 2014 may sound remote, politically as well as geographically. That’s just what they thought in 1914 too.
Michael White is assistant editor of the Guardian