The Greens have a better chance of being in power than the Tories…
One thing has been clear over the past couple of weeks – the polls have shifted in Labour’s favour. Miliband’s ratings are going up after the leader’s debate and pledges on tax dodging, and the party are gaining in support, edging open a one or two point lead.
With this, the chances of the Greens getting into power as part of a deal have grown too.
So much so that Populus has given the party a 21% chance of being in government in some form after May 7th – ahead of the Tories’ 18%.
The finding is part of Populus’ ‘Predictor’, described as ‘a proprietary computer model which analyses polling and other data to assign probabilities to different scenarios after the forthcoming general election’, reported by the Financial Times as part of their election coverage (£). It’s more interesting than it sounds, because it looks at the likelihood of different coalition prospects.
The regular study finds that ‘Labour are now the largest party in 58% of the simulations and Ed Miliband becomes prime minister on more than four occasions in every five.’
Basically, Labour will definitely be in government. But most likely as part of a deal with other progressive parties, including the Greens.
What do you think? Do you think our MP/s in May (touch wood) could form part of a Labour government?
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I would love to see Caroline Lucas as Secretary of State for either Environment or Energy and Climate Change in a Labour/ Lib Dem/ SNP/ Green government. Having said that, I think the suggestion that the Greens are more likely to be in government than the Tories is dangerous fantasy. I am afraid that divisions within the progressive parties may well mean that, thanks to our ridiculous electoral system, we are sleep-walking to a majority Conservative Government that makes Margaret Thatcher’s look like a picnic.
In order to be in Government, the first hurdle that the Greens need to overcome is that they need at least 1 MP. That is by no means certain. Caroline Lucas’s majority in Brighton Pavilion was only a little bit over 1,000 in 2010, when Labour was down. People based in Brighton may have a better handle on this than I do, but there seems to have been a constant litany of criticism of the Green Party Council there and Caroline (who is an excellent MP) may suffer as a result.
Apart from Brighton Pavilion, there is no constituency where the Green Party did better than 4th place in 2010. In other words, in order to pick up any other seat, all three of the other parties need to do badly. That is a really difficult combination to achieve.
After Brighton Pavilion, probably the best chance the Green Party has of winning a seat is Norwich South. Adrian Ramsay got 7,095 votes there in 2010 – 15% of the vote and more than half of the number achieved by Simon Wright (Lib Dem MP). However, Labour were close to the Lib Dems and it is a reasonable assumption that for that reason, disaffected Lib Dems are more likely to vote Labour than Green. Put in simple terms, to win the seat, the Green candidate has to convince 7,000 more disaffected Lib Dems to vote for them than the Labour candidate is able to.
In Cambridge a really high profile candidate (Tony Juniper) secured 3,804 votes in 2010 (7.6%) compared to 19,621 for Julian Huppert (the Lib Dem MP). Again, disaffected Lib Dems who want a progressive MP would do better to vote Labour than Green. They may be less prepared to vote against Julian Huppert there though because the main challenger in 2010 was the Conservative. Obviously the Green Party in Cambridge will not have been helped there by the recent controversy about its candidate, Rupert Read. In Bristol West Ricky Knight got 2,090 votes (3.8%) compared to 26,583 for Stephen Williams (48%). As in Norwich South, Labour is the main challenger (although a Lib Dem majority of 11,366 – 20% – in 2010 makes this a remote challenge). I could go on, but I hope the main point is clear – the Green Party has a mountain to climb in any seat other than Brighton Pavilion.
That’s good news. Question is do we really want such a coalition? It might put the Greens in a situation similar to that of post-coalition Lib Dems.
I’d love this to be true but, like all computer predictions, they do rely on the presumptions of those setting up the model. “Garbage in, garbage out” remains the truest statement about all these predictions. What I do think has changed is that activists of all the progressive parties are feeling happier and, in consequence, are doing more campaigning.
That is interesting and nice to see the Tories don’t have much chance. Of course, the Greens prefer a confidence and supply arrangement instead of a coalition.