As David Cameron lined up beside Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband at the Cenotaph on the day after the general election, he said that he had thought he would be the one writing a resignation statement that day. He may also have imagined how history would have judged him: as a so-so Tory leader who didn’t quite manage to win an election against the reviled Gordon Brown and was booted out after one term. A leader who was good at balancing a coalition but who didn’t stand for (or achieve) very much himself. It would have been a miserable legacy. Luckily he now has the chance to reshape it.
The political landscape he surveys has changed utterly. Of all the political parties, only the Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists are intact. The Labour party is settling down for a long civil war. The brains of the party know that it needs to move to the right and learn to like the English — and to come up with an agenda that will be well received in the market towns. The Liberal Democrats, reduced to eight MPs, are discussing starting afresh under a new name.
Ukip did rather well in the general election, with 14 per cent of the vote in England (almost twice that mustered by Nick Clegg). But the party now faces an awkward question: is it a one-man band? Its attempt to deny that — with the resignation of Nigel Farage — lasted only three days. His absurdly quick return did not give Suzanne Evans, the party’s estimable deputy chairman, a chance to show it was anything other than a political comedy routine. Douglas Carswell, Ukip’s sole MP, is now at war with what passes for the party’s leadership over its degree of state subsidy.
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