With the polls narrowing in the wake of the Budget (YouGov puts Labour’s lead at two points today), thoughts have turned to the possibility of a Conservative victory in 2015. But one man still predicting that Ed Miliband will make it to No. 10 is Rupert Murdoch. Earlier today, he tweeted:
UKIP,Farage still making progress. Without a deal Cameron will be dead meat after 2015 elections. Prepare for Radical Labour.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) March 27, 2014
The Conservative leadership has long rejected a national pact with UKIP (for the reasons I described here) but that leaves open the possibility of local deals between the two parties’ candidates. Nigel Farage said last year that “a couple of dozen” Conservative MPs would be open to an agreement, an estimate described by Tory Philip Hollobone (who was endorsed by UKIP in 2010) as “spot on”.
At a fringe meeting with Farage at last year’s Conservative conference, Bill Cash warned that UKIP could cost the Tories up to 60 seats and hand Miliband the keys to Downing Street. “Let us be realistic. Are we going to be allies or enemies? Lay off our marginals,” he said.
While UKIP is unlikely to inflict as much damage on the Tories as Cash fears, the split in the right-wing vote (UKIP draws nearly half of its support from 2010 Conservatives), will make it easier for Labour to dislodge the Tories in the marginals it needs to win to become the largest party. At the last election, with a UKIP share of just 3 per cent, there were 20 constituencies in which the party’s vote exceeded the Labour majority (one shouldn’t make the error of assuming that all those who supported the party would have backed the Tories, but many would have done). Should UKIP poll around 8 per cent, it could well indirectly propel Labour to victory. Unless the Tories manage to dramatically reduce support for Farage’s party between now and the general election campaign, talk of pacts will endure.
But in the absence of a full deal, it looks this is one “winner” that Murdoch won’t be backing.
P.S. One interesting question is the extent to which Murdoch’s prediction has been influenced by his recent conversations with Conservatives such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was during a recent meeting with the News Corp head that Gove reportedly said that George Osborne, not Boris, would be Cameron’s strongest successor (a discussion seemingly premised on Conservative defeat in 2015). Murdoch, who has never warmed to Cameron (asked by Charlie Rose in 2006 “What do you think of David Cameron?”, he replied: “Not much”), may well be indulging in some wishful thinking.
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