Sunny Hundal is a London, UK-based political journalist and writer. He is on Twitter at @sunny_hundal.
Right until the day of the election the ominous signs were there. "I've voted Labour all my life, you know, but I'm not sure this time. That Ed Miliband doesn't convince me," one mother said to me Thurday morning, holding a child with one hand as she prepared to vote. "Nicola Sturgeon [the Scottish National Party leader] will have him over a barrel," she added without prompting. This was not going to be easy for Labour, I surmised, but at least public opinion was holding up. Nearly every polling company found a dead heat between Labour and the Conservatives on the eve of the election, and it seemed certain in Westminster that neither was going to win outright.
And yet the most turbulent five-year term in Britain in over a generation was not going to end without more surprises. When the polling stations closed at 10 p.m., all hell broke loose. Westminster is now shell-shocked after the resignation, the next morning, of all three opposition party leaders: Ed Miliband (Labour), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats) and Nigel Farage (UK Independence Party). David Cameron surpassed expectations by being the first Prime Minister in a century to increase his party's vote share in a second election.
This wasn't meant to be the script. Five years ago, Mr. Cameron had fierce support from most of the deeply partisan press. He faced a highly unpopular prime minister in Gordon Brown, who had watched the British economy crash on his watch and was ridiculed mercilessly as he stumbled from gaffe to gaffe. And yet Mr. Cameron failed to even win a majority in the House of Commons, forcing him into a coalition with the Lib Dems. There was little expectation he would do better this time.
The last five years have been unexpectedly turbulent. First came the rapid rise of the Lib Dems just before the 2010 election – Nick Clegg was more popular than Winston Churchill at one point – and then their abrupt collapse after going into coalition and reneging on key promises. Then came the meteoric rise of Nigel Farage's UKIP in mid-2012, after a disastrous government budget that dented its reputation for economic management. Mr. Farage focused on immigration and leaving Europe as key issues, and drew away significant conservative support.
Then came the unexpected rise of Scottish nationalism. The Scottish National Party played into long-held feelings that Labour had become too centrist and taken its Scottish heartland for granted for too long. It won the mandate for a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, and ran a superb campaign that nearly brought an end to the United Kingdom. The SNP lost the vote but rather than melting away, ended up consolidating its support – which was proved lethal under first-past-the-post voting last night. Nicola Sturgeon's party won 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland it contested.
For Mr. Miliband, Scotland provided the fatal double blow. Labour lost 32 seats there, wiping out gains elsewhere. Worse, the Conservatives also ran an aggressive campaign saying Labour would have to rely on the SNP for support and thus be in hock to this "radical" party. It was a plausible scenario. Suddenly, Labour activists across England started reporting back that voters feared their party would end up in a messy coalition with a partner they didn't know or trust. Ms. Sturgeon ended up taking the scalp of the very leader she said she wanted a coalition with.
The SNP controversy dovetailed into Mr. Miliband's biggest weaknesses: a lack of clarity of message and the perception he was a weak leader. By the election he had improved on both counts immeasurably but it proved too late. It takes time to shift voter sentiment and many felt that voting Labour would prove too much of a risk.
Had Labour simply picked the wrong brother? Would David Miliband have avoided the carnage? It seems unlikely since the broader trends that have split the Labour party – Scottish nationalism, rising concerns from immigration and globalization, the threat from UKIP and the Greens – have no easy answers. Even a long period of reflection and debate is unlikely to solve the dilemma of a Labour party pulled simultaneously in different directions.
The biggest loser of the last five years have undoubtedly been the Lib Dems, losing 48 out of 56 seats across Britain. But the rise of UKIP, the SNP and (to a lesser extent) the Greens has made the British establishment not only unpredictable, but unstable, since it's neither proportionate nor welcoming of coalitions. Britons even had a chance to opt for a different voting system in 2011, but rejected it, making reform harder to bring back.
The first rule of politics is that voting is not a rational but a gut decision. Britons could not bring themselves to forgive the Liberal Democrats. They could not bring themselves to forgive Labour for the overseeing the financial crash. But more notably, Mr. Cameron was seen as the strong and decisive leader. When it came to finally making a decision, too many Britons just could not bring themselves to support Mr. Miliband at the voting booth, even if they were sympathetic to his messages.