The Iron Lady

I was briefly super-psyched to see that there will be a major motion picture about Margaret Thatcher in January 2012:

Hmmmm, Meryl Streep as Maggie Thatcher? That's ominous. Then I looked more deeply. From the first reference:

What was it like to work for Margaret Thatcher? What sort of woman was she at the height of her powers? You might think that if you were setting out to make a so-called "biopic" about such a dominant figure on the political stage of the late 20th century, your researchers would have sought out those who were closest to her in those years and asked them.

I do not know whom the makers of the Meryl Streep film talked to. Perhaps Michael Heseltine or Geoffrey Howe, but certainly not me. To judge the film from its trailer, they confined their inquiries to the Daily Mirror and perhaps Tim Bell's public relations firm.

From the second:

"Sir Mark and Carol are appalled at what they have learnt about the film," says a friend of the family. "They think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy. They feel strongly about it, but will not speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity."

Oh, boy. At least the hard Left is also a bit upset:

That's all fine, but that narrative trajectory risks skewing the story. This was not just a time of one woman's assault on a male bastion, but an era of rage about what Thatcher, economy destroyer and warmonger, was doing to Britain.

Here's what Maggie had to say about being an "economy destroyer", by the way:

I guess I'm still psyched. But prepared for a hatchet job.

Liveblogging the UK Election

Just accidentally turned on CSPAN in time to catch live coverage of the UK election. Pretty interesting, and dignified in that British way.

Thus far, the Conservatives are getting about 37% of the vote, with the balance coming from the Lib-Dems. My prediction is that the Tories will come agonizingly close to a majority, but ultimately fall short. They are at 223 seats with 227 going to competing parties, and that just-under-50% ratio has held for quite a while. Stay tuned...

UK Election Update

In a previous post, I wrote that the UK was heading to a hung parliament and a coalition government. After two more debates and Gordon Brown's pathetic "bigotgate", they're still heading there. The latest polls have the Conservatives at 34%, Labour at 27-29%, and the Lib-Dems at 27-31%. At these levels, either the Tories or Labour will need to find around another 4% to eke out a majority, and nothing that's happened in the past two weeks have created that much movement.

The Path to a Hung Parliament

I've been playing with these interactive tools at BBC: poll tracker and election seat calculator.

If we leave the Other category fixed at 9%, and set the Lib-Dems to various fixed positions (I used 2% intervals between 18% and 30%), then we can use the calculator to determine the breakeven points at which Labour or the Conservatives can obtain an outright majority. The breakdown looks like this:

Conservatives	Labour	Lib Dem
37.6%	31.5%	30%
38.1%	32.0%	28%
38.5%	32.7%	26%
39.1%	33.6%	24%
39.8%	34.4%	22%
40.6%	35.2%	20%
41.1%	36.1%	18%

To read this table, assume the Lib-Dems get the percentage given in their column. Then the other two columns give the minimum fraction of total votes needed to secure a majority.

The latest polls have the Lib-Dems with 30-31% of the vote, the Conservatives with 33%, and Labour with 27-28%. That is, both Labour and the Conservatives are around 4% short of a majority. Even if the Liberal-Democrats slide in the polls, either of the major parties would need to capture nearly all of the defecting voters to get a majority. For example, suppose the Lib-Dems slide to 20% by election time. In this scenario, there are 10% up for grabs. To reach a majority at that level, the Conservatives need 40.6%, up 7.6% from their current polling. But Labour would need 35.2%, up 7.2-8.2%. So in either case, the defectors would have to split something like 3:1 for one of the major parties to avoid a hung parliament.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the poll of polls result before the debate shows Conservatives 39%, Labour 32%, Lib-Dems 18%, Other 9%... and the calculator shows that to be a hung parliament as well.

What Nick Clegg Means

I can't claim to have followed the British election campaigns very closely. But it seems clear that this weekend's televised debates changed everything. Going into the debate, the Tories had a big lead in the polls, translating (due to some peculiarities in the Parliamentary system that I don't pretend to understand) into a likely small majority in Parliament (and hence into the formation of a stable Tory government under David Cameron). Labour was next (under Gordon Brown), distantly followed by the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg.

But then Clegg pulled a Ross Perot in the debate, emerging as the clear winner, and now the Lib Dems appear to have pulled into a three-way tie (effectively). The polls are roughly split 30-30-30 with 10% undecided. Will the Clegg effect remain until the election? It's only two weeks away.

During the last Presidential campaign, some Canadian told me that the best and worst thing about the U.S. system was the interminable campaigning. It's certainly grueling, both for the participants and politics-minded observers. But by the time the election comes around, there are few surprises - the candidates have been put through such a wringer that we know them well, or should.

With the foreshortened Parliamentary schedule, can the same be said of Nick Clegg? The Perot bounce after the first debate in 1992 faded and he ended up a distant (but still meaningful) third by the time of the general election. What will happen to Clegg? It's a very important question, particularly in the UK, because if no party wins a majority of seats, it's possible that no government can be formed. Even before the debates, the best the Tories could have hoped was a small majority of seats. If they can't get even this, then an unstable coalition government may be the only possibility. This is bad news for the Tories, since the alliance would probably be between the Lib-Dems and Labour.

However the election comes out, though, the emergence of Clegg probably heralds a leftward swing in the next British government.