General election 2010: did it really happen?

The Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley looks back on the 2010 general election campaign

When dawn broke on Friday, the Conservatives could not hide their disappointment and the Lib Dems their deflation while Labour was weirdly relieved if only because a poor second resembled a disaster compared with the feared catastrophe of coming third.

Many Tories are recriminatory about their failure to secure a parliamentary majority. They are blaming David Cameron and his strategists. His animating big idea was the “Big Society” (BS, for short). Candidates muttered that it was impossible to sell on the doorstep. The leader himself often seemed to forget it, only remembering to mention BS with just 11 minutes to go before the final whistle of the third televised debate.

The Conservatives were over-dependent on traditional campaign techniques rendered risible or irrelevant in the digital age. Online spoofs of their billboard campaigns by instant satirists were always funnier and sharper than the expensive originals.

Cameron’s big strategic error was agreeing to the leaders’ debates. Many senior Tories believe that giving Nick Clegg the opportunity to shine is what cost them a clear victory. In an interview with the Observer, the Tory leader insisted that he had always expected the debates to give “a leg up” to the Lib Dems. But no one foresaw that the first clash would have such an electric effect.

Clegg was catapulted from anonymity to celebrity, transformed from an also-ran less famous than his number two into the leader of an insurgent revolt against what he called the Labservatives. More fluent and comfortable in the format than an unusually constipated Cameron and a stolid Gordon Brown, Clegg grabbed “change” from the Tory and snatched “fairness” from Labour.

Stunned by its own success, the LibDems struggled to capitalise on new support by translating it into crosses in boxes. It also probably suffered when voters took a closer look at some of the Lib Dems’ policies.

Labour had agreed to the TV debates on the basis that it had nothing to lose. It was wrong. The debates sharpened the presidentialism of the contest, a disadvantage for the party with the least popular leader. By the second clash, Brown was saying “like me or not” in his opening statement, an explicit acknowledgement that many voters couldn’t stand the thought of putting him back in No 10. The polling awarded him the wooden spoon in all three debates. That was probably less a commentary on his performances than the fact that he was never liked in the first place. He had lost the support of every national newspaper except the doggedly loyal Mirror. Good news for the government late in the campaign – an upward revision of growth figures and a positive forecast about Britain’s prospects from the European Commission – received very little coverage.

So was the campaign a wasted month? Not entirely. The TV debates have changed politics for ever. No leader will feel easy about refusing them in future for fear of looking cowardly. No sensible party will elect a leader without reference to whether he or she will perform well in this form of televised combat. The debates, allied with the excitement of this being a very competitive contest, boosted turnout.

Labour averted implosion. There was a basic resilience about both the party and its leader which brought out enough votes to avoid the absolute catastrophe of coming third. Cleggmania petered out, but enough of the surge lasted to boost his reputation and secure Lib Dem seats that originally looked lost. The most important outcome of the campaign was that the Conservatives, who had this election for the taking, fell well short of a parliamentary majority. And that, as we are now seeing, is of very great consequence indeed.

The Observer, May 8, 2010

Task 29. Answers the following questions.

1. What are the two reasons the Tories election results were not as good as they had been expected?

2. For what party were the TV debates a kingmaker?

3. Did Labour lose the electoral battle due to the issue of Iraq?

4. What is the meaning of the expression to be awarded with the wooden spoon? What subcategory of lexical units does it belong to?

Task 30. What is the meaning of the italicised words in the article above? What group of lexical units do they relate to?

Task 31. Watch Video 43. What is its major idea?

Watch the video again to fill in the grid below.

Person (the party he belongs to)	The post he holds in the government
1.
2.
3.
4.
13.

Task 32. Read the newspaper article below.