Elections: Mandate and Manifesto

Gordon Brown has finally called the date of the General Election, and unusually its not clear who the winner will be because there is a significant possibility that neither of the big parties will have enough seats in Westminster to win an overall majority. I'm not going to be doing a blow-by-blow account of the political arguments as this is not that sort of blog, and besides to use Jon Pienaar's description in a recent podcast, the news-cycle is not 24-hour marathon but a 30-minute sprint; interested parties rebutt each-others' claims rapidly during the day, so that a story changes very rapidly as the hours go by.

This election is useful for G&P students in many ways (obviously), and highlights the important power that the Prime Minister has in deciding when to call the election. Generally, PMs choose the time which they believe would be most likely to produce a favourable result. In Brown's case he was on the verge of calling an election in October 2007 because it was felt he would benefit from being a fresh face. The fact he didn't because of unfavourable polling data has been, and will continue to be, debated at some length (for example here in the Right-leaning Spectator and here in the left-leaning Guardian. Ultimately he decided not go for an election in 2007 (2 1/2 years before he needed to) because he was worried about the result, with a hope that the future would improve the situation for him and his party.

A big story in this election has been the state of the government finances and the arguments about what each party would do (the BBC's Stephanie Flanders has a very interesting piece here); there has to be a mandate from the people based on a manifesto commitment empowering the winning party to cut government spending (amongst other things) in order to reduce the massive budget deficit which exists. In an interview in October 2009 with the Today Programme, George Osborne mentioned just this very point (click the button below to hear a short audio clip):

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Useful in any question about elections, the manifesto, or mandate. Each party is trying to say that they would have a mandate from the people to govern and improve the public finances, but the other parties wouldn't because they are not being honest.