Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

In reality the attack strategy was born of increasing awareness that his party was behind.  Cameron and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats had played on voter dissatisfaction in urging leadership change.  Brown was compelled to defend the Labour record and attacked both rivals in a bid to alter popular sentiment.

The incumbent prime minister ultimately toppled under negative Tony Blair baggage.  Not only had the economy gone sour, leaving voters seeking change, but the negative impact of the Downing Street Memo redounded not only against Blair but his party.

In that Labour dropped 91 seats from the last election and polled a miserable 29 percent, this result clearly revealed that voters sought change.

The question was what kind of change voters sought.  Cameron had his own albatross that he sought to shed after being named party leader, that of the Margaret Thatcher brand of Toryism.  The prime minister known as the "Iron Lady" was to Cameron what Blair constituted to Brown.

With Thatcher in polling freefall, Michael Heseltine and others engineered her departure as prime minister.  Former Thatcher protégé John Major was chosen to replace her in a move comparable to that of Labour installing Gordon Brown, hoping to build him up for the forthcoming election and keep the party in power.

Major's party won the 1992 election by the narrowest of margins.  After a long period of dominance the Tories were in decline.  The 1997 election resulted in a massive landslide for Labour.

Labour had been out of power for so long that prior to the Blair technocratic revolution, and moving the party away from its former socialist roots, it was debated whether it had any future.

Cameron reworked the Conservative Party image in the manner that Blair had earlier with Labour.  He sought to demolish the Tory stereotype depicting stodgy, well dressed older men sitting in West End clubs sipping brandy.  

Cameron shook hands with voters on London's subway trains, known by locals as "the Tube."  He openly sought to establish a grassroots image.  

Thatcher was considered by many to be cold, autocratic, and uncaring.  The youthful Tory leader presented himself and his party as vital instruments for change who at the same time would scrupulously safeguard the nation's purse strings from profligate spending.

After the first debate of the recently concluded campaign Cameron and his party colleagues received a scare.  The candidate who impressed voters and was said to have won the debate was Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, who urged that voters consider a new alternative after years of being governed by Labour and the Conservatives.

The upward spike proved temporary.  Voters agreed with much of Clegg's thrust but it ultimately came down to the vital center that decides elections opting for change and banking on Cameron to supply the kind sought as the Lib Dem total slipped in the campaign's final stages.  

The irony is that after losing 5 seats compared to the 2005 election and garnering a 23 percent popular vote that was below expectations based on earlier campaign calculations, Nick Clegg's party sat in the catbird seat with the ability to determine the election's outcome.

After negotiations commenced between the Tories and Lib Dems, Gordon Brown announced he would step down so a new Labour leader could be installed.  

Some in Labour's ranks asserted that if a new leader could be quickly installed that what they termed the nation's progressive voting majority, meaning their party combined with the Lib Dems, could form a coalition.

Another view surfaced within Labour.  It was seen as suicidal to seek leadership continuity from an electoral voting base of 29 percent.  Accordingly, it would be more prudent to operate from a vigilant opposition posture, gaining acceptance under a new leader.

Under the new coalition arrangement Cameron operates as prime minister with Clegg as his deputy.  During World War Two, at a time when there was a mutual understanding between the Conservatives and Labour, Winston Churchill served as prime minister.  Labour's leader, Clement Attlee,  the man who would ultimately unseat Churchill in 1945, served as deputy prime minister.

The earlier instance was a wartime contingency with the nation under continuing aerial bombardment from Hitler's Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.  The latter case was the result of negotiation and the need to put a government in place.

With Cameron securing power with a 36.1 electoral voting base, and allied with a party and spokesperson who had argued that he and his party represented the old politics, some political analysts believe that another election could loom on the near horizon.

One of the issues that the new coalition has discussed is to set fixed five year election cycles.  An election could be held during an intervening period, however, by a vote of 55 percent or more members of Parliament.

Another issue near and dear to the hearts of the Liberal Democrats will also receive attention, that of proportional representation, which would enable Britain's third leading party in terms of representation a much better chance in elections.