Get ready for a new ‘Portillo moment’

The excitement of General Election (GE) night – now just hours away – is hard to beat. Once the polls close at 10pm tomorrow, we are likely to be treated to a whole series of dramas, large and small, as the results come in.

If the pollsters are correct, a number of Conservative ‘big beasts’ are about to be humbled by the electorate. There will be tears, cheers and jeers.

For lovers of high-stakes drama, GE declarations are almost visceral in their appeal. However many polls have been published and however certain we think we are of the outcome of an election, there are always surprises.

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It’s safe to say Labour look highly likely to emerge the winners, with a substantial majority by the time all the votes are counted, but there are still unanswered questions.

How well will the Liberal Democrats do, particularly here in the South West, where they have eyes on a number of seats? What of Nigel Farage and his challenge to be considered the real opposition once Parliament returns? And what about the Greens – withering on the vine or bursting into flower?

As a reporter, I have always thought there are two news events that stand out for sheer breath-holding impact – the jury chair delivering his or her verdict at the end of a major trial, and the returning officer reading out the votes while trembling candidates stand on the stage and wait to hear their fate.

Politicians are held in pretty low esteem at the moment and this General Election campaign has been notable for the lack of enthusiasm with which all the parties have been viewed by voters, but candidates who put themselves up for election cannot be faulted for their willingness to at least be judged by the electorate and to face a very public rejection if they lose.

In an era when, outside professional sport, the concept of winning or losing, success or failure, is often muted and the harshest of judgements sometimes deliberately blunted to avoid hurt feelings, democratic politics is still a brutal business.

Some pollsters have suggested Labour’s victory in tomorrow’s election could match or even exceed Tony Blair’s in 1997. Many images stand out from that election night, but few surpass the moment, at 3.10am on May 2, when Labour hopeful Stephen Twigg was declared the winner in the Enfield Southgate constituency.

His opponent, Cabinet Minister, defence secretary and – at that time at least – pretty smug defending Tory MP Michael Portillo, went into the election with a majority of around 16,000. He lost it to Mr Twigg by a whisker, but the look on his face as the votes were read out – and the near 18% swing to Blair’s party the result represented – was seen as one of the defining moments of the night.

Will we get something similar tomorrow night or in the early hours of Friday? I think it’s almost a racing certainty, and will the big beast who loses his seat go on to become as appreciated by the public as Mr Portillo has, in his subsequent role as train-riding TV presenter sharing the secrets of the branch lines? Let’s hope so.

There are risks with any election where the result looks almost beyond doubt before a vote has even been cast. The most serious – and a major consideration for tomorrow’s poll – is that apathy has already set in, the turn-out will be low and the mandate for the winning party will be lessened as a result.

As a long-time leader writer for the Western Morning News – always scrupulously non-partisan when it comes to party politics, particularly at election time – I generally had one message on polling day: Please vote. It remains the key message now.

It is tempting to say a plague on all their houses or scrawl “none of the above” on the ballot paper, but, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government – apart from all the others that have been tried.

As voters, we are the custodians of democracy. If we stop voting, the system eventually falls and something far less palatable takes its place.

Politicians, for all their faults are, for the most part, in politics to do the right thing. Let’s cut them some slack and at least make the effort to vote tomorrow.

If nothing else, it means you will have played a part in one of the most dramatic political nights of the past five years – and maybe helped to create another ‘Portillo moment.

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