Election Diary
Old Tory

R D Kernohan
My emotional swingometer

Monday 12 April
Like much of Scotland's male population, I breakfasted with the sports section and not front-page promises of Labour's imminent manifesto. I explain to my wife that Ross County is a team, not a constituency. Whatever happened to press embargoes? I growl at stories telling me what is going to be in some dreary unpublished document or drab speech yet undelivered. The aim is to get coverage twice over but it devalues the publication or occasion. It's one of the bad habits even David Cameron picked up from the Blair-Brown years. When it comes, the manifesto (like the Tory one in 1997) bears the marks of a tired government, wondering what to do if unexpectedly returned and vulnerable to questions about why anything in it worth doing wasn't done sooner.
     Paid a rare visit to the TV Parliamentary Channel to see how it marked the dissolution, but they were singing Te Deums for the suffragettes. If there was anything about the Tories having the first woman MP and the first woman prime minister, it was in the part I missed. But this withered parliament is duly dissolved. It will be remembered for its awful expense accounts but was handicapped from the start by Blair's contempt for the Commons and cabinet system and then by Brown's retreat from the risks of seeking a fresh, quick mandate.
     Checked the calendar on whether this is the night to put waste-paper out. Alas, no. Many communications, mainly from the Liberals, will have to wait. Not only has my Liberal candidate funds for vast printing bills but a surprising fund of goodwill for Tories. While Brown and Adonis are sweet-talking the Liberals and Clegg is playing hard to get, my chap assures me that voting for him will get Labour out in North Edinburgh and Leith. I shall preserve my virtue but wonder how complex temptations and outcomes of tactical voting may be.
     And so to bed – but not before internet checks on tomorrow's polls, with signs of a narrowing trend. I'm an addict, and react both with head and heart. Sense and experience tell me to look at averages and sustained trends. But my emotional swingometer oscillates from lively hope to anxious dread, even depression.
    The most interesting poll I've found was a poll-of-pollsters expecting a tiny but outright Tory majority. I risk seeming foolish after the event but at this stage expect a hung Parliament – a much-abused expression covering a multitude of possibilities. Liberal tenacity, weakness on the Celtic fringe, and Labour constituency-boundary advantages make Cameron's task far more difficult than Margaret Thatcher's. I hope for enough of a lead to make skilful minority government a practical proposition.
 
Tuesday 13 April
Three more scraps of Liberal paper this morning, along with an idiot's guide to postal voting from the Edinburgh returning officer, much of it information which could have accompanied the ballot-paper. There's more official waste from the Glasgow returning officer in the Herald: he says an election is due and that 'if it is contested' a poll will be held on 6 May. Sadly, this sort of advertising has become the life-blood of newspapers.
     I'm sceptical of manifestos, even Tory ones. The long launch I watched on TV was pretty dull till Cameron himself came on. I wish we could just say that we'll assess the problems facing us and act as seems most expedient. But even back in the times of Disraeli's Taper and Tadpole it was agreed: 'We must have a cry'. Now we need a shopping list as well. The modern difficulty is to sustain the 'cry' over several weeks of media saturation, as poor Ted Heath discovered in 1974 when he took on the miners and asked 'Who rules Britain?'.
     As cries go, 'broken Britain' and 'power to the people' aren't bad. But what a wee cowering, timorous beastie the Tories have made of their commitment to support and encourage marriage. Their nervousness  (and poll evidence that it's not overwhelmingly popular) point to an awkward truth. To win the election they have to appeal to people indifferent or even hostile to many traditional values and whose lifestyles and assumptions contribute to the breaking of Britain.
     But only two 'cries' really count in elections where a long-established  government is under challenge. One is 'Time for a Change', the other 'You surely don't want them!'. The first cry is going well in England. The second still seems to carry weight in Scotland, even if the BBC's Douglas Fraser  reassures me on a website that it's no longer 'a stigma' to vote Tory in Scotland. I note that even Kenneth Roy today calls the publishers D C Thomson 'notoriously conservative'. I would say famously so. What adds to the Scottish Tory difficulty is that the public services which David Cameron wants to improve and emphasise in his campaign are largely under Holyrood's control. The SNP will emphasise that.
     I need a break from the election. I have lunch with a cousin of Margaret Thatcher's who has lived a blameless life in Edinburgh and served its institutions well. But the conversation is mainly about Bach and Handel. For the rest of the day I try to avoid being swirled about in the torrents of pretty meaningless news and argument. It's vital for political enthusiasts to realise that most voters aren't like them. I see one pollster has found most people way off the mark in guessing which party's detailed policies are which.
     But I still need to see the polls. Not too good.  
 
Wednesday 14 April
Thinking over last night's polls I recall that, when YouGov were doing preliminary unpublished  runs for their 'Sun' poll, one day's trial cut the lead to one point. You need to keep your head and your nerve, or else shut your eyes to the polls altogether.
     To get away from it all (mainly the computer) I go to my native Glasgow, whose politics of long ago left me with honourable wounds and lasting scars. My wife wants to see the Transport Museum before it closes and the Kelvingrove 'Glasgow Boys' exhibition. The prime minister will enjoy the pictures if he has time to drop in, for some caption-writer uses the expression 'middle class' as vaguely as he does.
     Back home, I see I haven't missed much apart from the Liberal manifesto, brimming more with ideas than real expectation. Duty calls me to summon up on my screen a summary of its main points. As listed by the BBC the majority are marked 'England only'. If a general election were mainly a debate on manifesto policies it would be stifled in Scotland by the Dewar-Blair decision to devolve so much on Holyrood. Labour devised an electoral system to curb the SNP but a legislative one which helps them and weakens the Union.
     In fact the election is more a choice of teams and traditions, but it's becoming harder in Scotland for Tories and Liberals to back that emotional cry of 'Time for a Change' with evidence from health, education, or social policies that change will really be worthwhile. Maybe we should agree with Brown's belated conversion to fixed-term parliaments and have Westminster and Holyrood elections at the same time.
     Poll-time again. You've got to curb your hopes on fair nights as well as fears on foul ones. We'll see what the debates bring.