Nicholas Goldberg: In the election struggle between ‘kitchen-table issues’ and the fate of democracy, which side won?
The first question that comes to mind in the wake of a recent election is how to explain the result. The Labour candidate had trailed the Conservatives by a large margin in the polls. According to the experts the race was ‘toss-up’. According to the polls, Ed Miliband was going to be the next Prime Minister, but the electorate had chosen to send the Conservative Party to the worst-ever election result.
So what is the explanation for the Conservative Party’s collapse? The reasons advanced for the result are manifold and varied: the collapse of the NHS, the collapse of the Lib Dems, the collapse of social democracy and the threat to the Union as we know it. But as we know such explanations require something more than the usual kind of analysis. What is needed is a more systematic and rigorous account which can explain the election result. Such an account provides not an explanation but an analysis. In other words, it is a ‘causal story’.
But which story? And what is the story of the election?
The first question that comes to mind in the wake of a recent election is how to explain the result. The Labour candidate had trailed the Conservatives by a large margin in the polls. According to the experts the race was ‘toss-up’. According to the polls, Ed Miliband was going to be the next Prime Minister, but the electorate had chosen to send the Conservative Party to the worst-ever election result.
So what is the explanation for the Conservative Party’s collapse? The reasons advanced for the result are manifold and varied: the collapse of the NHS, the collapse of the Lib Dems, the collapse of social democracy and the threat to the Union as we know it. But as we know such explanations require something more than the usual kind of analysis. What is needed is a more systematic and rigorous account which can explain the election result. Such an account provides not an explanation but an analysis. In other words, it is a ‘causal story’.
But which story? And what is the story of the election?
‘There is only one story about the election this time. It isn’t a story about the voters. It is a story that is being told