In 2010 the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats agreed to change UK law to ensure that parliaments lasted five years – a concession to the smaller coalition partner to ensure that David Cameron could not cut and run.
One of the legislation’s consequences is now evident: real business has effectively ended. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are simply marking time between now and the official election campaign, in April or May.
In truth the campaign has already begun. Cameron now meets daily with senior colleagues in No 10 Downing Street to discuss political strategy.
The 4.30pm gathering nearly always includes the chancellor, George Osborne; Osborne's closest adviser, Rupert Harrison; Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn; and Llewellyn's deputy, Kate Fall; along with the Conservatives' chief whip, Michael Gove.
Gove talks a lot, and is not always heeded. The former foreign secretary William Hague does not always attend, but he is listened to when he does. Most importantly, the words of Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s Australian adviser, are carefully weighed.
Crosby has form. In 2005 he advised Cameron’s predecessor Michael Howard, who sanctioned posters declaring, “It’s not racist to talk about immigration”. Ten years ago most Britons did not agree, or believed they couldn’t dare to agree.
That situation has changed. Talk about immigration now seems ceaseless. Most of it is negative, convinced that there are far more immigrants than is in fact the case and that those immigrants take out from society more than they put in.
In early December, Cameron finally laid out his agenda for action; it included tougher action to curb welfare abuses and an £8,000-a-year cut to the tax-credit benefits that an EU immigrant earning the minimum wage, with two children, can receive.
In reality Cameron is not trying to win back voters who have already defected from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party; he is out to stop a further haemorrhage in the new year, when most voters slowly turn their minds to making their choices.
His pitch is economic, seeking to exploit the Conservatives’ lead over Labour on the issue – even among voters who are unhappy about some of the spending cutbacks, particularly in welfare.
But the Conservatives’ election strategy took a wobble after Osborne’s autumn statement, when the public debate shifted quickly, and with surprising clarity, on to the cuts that are still to come.
Just 40 per cent of the work that Osborne says is necessary has been done. Because education, health and international aid are protected, some government departments could see their budgets for 2020 being only a third of what they were for 2010.
The British Labour Party has struggled to win back voters’ trust on the economy. But the scale of the cuts to come offered Ed Balls, Ed Miliband’s shadow chancellor, the chance to argue that the way the UK will be left after Osborne’s work is done is not a UK anyone would want to live in. Such arguments may strike a chord with voters in key battleground constituencies, although Labour greatly fears the Conservatives’ efforts to make the coming campaign as presidential as possible.
Here, Ed Miliband will lose. Cameron, in the eyes of most British voters, looks like a leader, even if most have never warmed to him. People who watch Downing Street closely despair of the often hurried decision-making that marks his premiership.
Changed politics
But Cameron and Miliband are both being judged harshly, as British politics is very different now from the days when their predecessors could fight over which of them occupied No 10 but could be sure that together they would share 80 or 90 per cent of the vote.
Given current opinion polls, neither can win a majority. Indeed, it is far from clear that either could do so even with the help of the Liberal Democrats: Nick Clegg’s party could come back with little more than 10 seats on a really bad day.
The Democratic Unionist Party has ruled out full coalition membership; the Scottish National Party has talked about propping up Labour, but at a price. The Greens could make gains. I
t is a recipe most likely to produce a short-lived administration.
Even though MPs' thoughts have already turned to self-protection, they cannot entirely abandon Westminster – particularly in late January, when legislation offering extra devolution to Scotland will come before them.
For now, Cameron, who worried in the last weeks of the referendum campaign that the union might be lost, must now also cope with often unclear demands from English Conservative MPs for extra powers for England.
Equally, he has to ensure that Scots do not accuse him of bad faith by reneging on pre-referendum promises. Here, Cameron is on a hiding to nothing, as the Scottish National Party has run a deliberate campaign making clear that Scots have been had.
The legislation has no chance of passing into law by the time parliament ends, but it nevertheless poses serious questions for all parties, particularly Labour.
Talk about the legislation has often inaccurately argued that it poses an immediate threat to Miliband’s hopes of having a majority in the House of Commons after May, on the grounds that Scottish MPs will have fewer voting rights. It does not.
But a legislative offer deemed inadequate by middle-ground Scottish voters will do for his chance of holding on to a majority of Labour’s 41 Commons seats in Scotland in May’s election. Some predictions suggest a wipeout; others believe half could go.
The SNP's confidence that it can mortally wound Labour are best illustrated by the caution of its former leader Alex Salmond. Bombast is unnecessary when a politician is certain that he can spill blood.
