Just back from a weekend in Paris. Where on Sunday evening we went to this great hidden little restaurant, Le Cafe du Mars, which came from this excellent list of recommendations by Shelby Chambers which itself came from this excellent list of recommendations from India Knight. Which is all very Substack. We reserved and got a nice table near the bar looking out at, well, cordon fencing. There was scaffolding all over the building and a group of lads who kept spitting in the street and a woman parked outside our open window with her engine running with a cigarette on the go. BUT the food was excellent, incredible plate of meats shared for starters, pork belly for main, rum-soaked fruit on meringue for pudding, great house wine, cracking Helena cocktail and a very short walk to the Eiffel Tower (which has been ruined by glass fencing around the base rendering the “inside” joyless). Anyway, I recommend it all. Thanks and .
Exactly two years ago I wrote a column about a goldfish. He was called Sparky, and was in the news for having reached the grand old age of 22, after owner Nicol Arathoon nursed him back to health using a straw to push peas into his mouth.
The column was about how most people commenting on politics have a shorter memory than Sparky, or any other goldfish. I have thought about Sparky a lot in the last few weeks. Breathless commentary about the “death of two party politics” has continued to dominate. It’s all very new and unprecedented. Except it isn’t.
Fifty years ago Harold Wilson was clinging to power by his finger-tips, after first a hung parliament and then a tiny Commons majority put him in perilous circumstances, the Liberals waiting in the wings for the prospect of a power-sharing deal. Meanwhile someone called Margaret Thatcher was working on ending a period during which nobody won a decent majority for the best part of a decade.
Over 40 years ago, in the early 1980s, the main parties were being outpolled by an upstart new party which was also winning by-elections. Thatcher went on to win a landslide. And the SDP didn’t.
Thirty years ago fears that the Tories would win forever prompted Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown to discuss power-sharing and pacts. Blair went on to win a landslide. Ashdown never got his cabinet seat.
Fifteen years ago the death of the two-party system was declared again, with David Cameron forced to make a big and open offer to Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. The formation of the coalition, this very month back in 2010, meant we would never see majority government again. Just to demonstrate how the red-blue pendulum had been permanently broken, in 2014 Ukip came first in the European Elections, and had two MPs in the Commons (thanks to defections). Cameron went on to win a majority.
Eight years ago Theresa May lost that majority – in an election in which the combined Labour and Conservative two-party vote was actually its highest since the 1970s – and then she was forced to rely on the on-off support of the DUP.
In February 2019 one in six voters were backing Change UK. In May that year Nigel Farage’s topped national elections (to the European Parliament, which weren’t supposed to happen) with the Tories fifth behind the Lib Dems, Labour and Greens. Seven months (and a change of Tory leader) later, Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.
None of this is to downplay what is happening with Reform UK. Its results this month in the Runcorn by-election and in county halls across England are real wins, both symbolic and practical. Momentum is important. So are foot soldiers. Farage now has both.
Nor should it downplay what the Lib Dems are doing, less noisily but only marginally less effectively. A record number of MPs, inching ahead of the Tories in the polls too.
But in order to understand what is happening now, and what might happen in the future, we should remember what has happened in the past. Pretending that this is the first time that anyone has uttered the words “the death of two-party politics” is daft. It overplays what it is that Farage has done, and underplays what he can learn from history. How can he be more Nick Clegg or Ramsay Macdonald and less David Owen, Paddy Ashdown, Heidi Allen or, well Nigel Farage?
How many times has Farage declared he was on the verge of a breakthrough and been thwarted? More than a decade ago he boasted that big local election gains meant that the “Ukip fox is in the Westminster hen house". It was 10 years before he entered the hen house himself.
Farage though is a history buff. He and his chairman Zia Yusuf are more aware of the past than many of the pundits pontificating on their achievements. They are conscious of the challenge ahead, hoping to ensure that the history they rewrite is more Labour in 1924 than SDP in 1983. Farage spelling out more announcements this week, including shifting left on the two-child benefit cap, is not without risk, when the appeal so far has been more vibes than detailed policy.
Likewise, Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats might have feigned public irritation with Nick Clegg’s recent suggestion that they should be ready for power again after the next election, but that’s only because they have been having those thoughts privately without anyone noticing.
For now at least it does seem that we have four-party politics split almost equally: establishment right party (Conservative), challenger right party (Reform), establishment left party (Labour) and challenger left party (Lib Dems and Green – if you add their polling together you get the other quarter vote share). Whether the Lib Dems and Greens ever come to an electoral arrangement could play a significant role in the next election. Which nobody is talking about.
One of the striking things about the dominant political debate now – whether Reform joins, absorbs or destroys the Tories – is it totally ignores what is at least a very real, if not in fact the most likely, outcome of the next election: a Labour-Lib Dem power-sharing deal. Polly Mackenzie, the policy guru who worked for the Lib Dems in No10 with the Tories, bears the scars of the 2010 coalition talks. She told me on my 5Live show recently that the Tories came armed with policy compromises but, perhaps more importantly, Oliver Letwin’s posh chocolate Viennese biscuits. Gordon Brown’s Labour did not provide snacks. The rest is history.
If we have learned anything in recent years (and plenty of people paid to comment on politics seemingly haven’t) it’s that predictions are foolhardy and anything can happen. “Politics is volatile” isn’t just an explanation for what just happened, it’s a warning about what might come next.
The unexpected, the unlikely and the unpredictable is not the same as declaring everything unprecedented. Unless you’re a goldfish.
*I just looked up what happened to Sparky. A month after he made national headlines for defying the odds, he died in June 2023. Let that be a warning to someone. I’m just not sure who.
Tell your friends…
One of great things about being on the BBC is I have a much bigger audience. The downside is I can’t endlessly plug what I’m doing outside. So if you know someone who might like a couple of hours of larks about politics and food, send them this email/link. Word of moth is worth multiples of whatever I’m currently spending on Insta ads. Thank you in advance…
For two decades I have feasted on politics, stalking the corridors, pubs and restaurants of Westminster. Now I have all the ingredients to cook up a brand new show looking at parliament's feuding food factions and how politicians really are what they eat. From Keir Starmer’s fish and cheese, to Kemi Badenoch’s hatred of sandwiches, from Nigel Farage’s proper milk to Ed Davey’s fig rolls, everything (and everyone) is on the menu.
WARNING: Politics may contain nuts.
As seen on Have I Got News For You (BBC1), Newsnight (BBC 2) and Lorraine (ITV1).
30th June Norwich Playhouse
1 July Farnham Maltings
2 July Bristol Redgrave Theatre
3 July Lyme Regis Marine Theatre
4 July Oxford North Wall
7 July Canterbury Gulbenkian
8 July Newcastle The Stand
9 July Edinburgh The Stand
10 July Birmingham Glee Club
12 July Salford Lowry
13 July Cheltenham Town Hall
8 November Taunton Brewhouse
10 November London Cambridge Theatre
Well that will do for now. Do hit the like button if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, just keep it to yourself, alright?
I would tell my friends but they all live in Yorkshire..........
I, however, am willing to travel to Newcastle.
The world of Westminster - and those who earn their corn endlessly speculating about Parliamentary fisticuffs - forget that politics is a multi-layered world. And for many people it's what goes on locally which is really important. That's the real significance of the Lib-Dems, for instance. They are brilliant at pot-hole politics and rule great chunks of local government as a result. But their national offering is too wishy-washy and contradictory to gain real traction nationally.