The Arransian General Election of 2006The 2006 general election in Arransia was scheduled to take place in May, with the first round of voting on Friday 19th, and the second round on Friday 26th. For the first time the traditional two-week gap, which had applied since the introduction of two-round voting in 1953, was reduced to one week. It was felt that in the modern era the two-week gap left an uncomfortably long period of limbo that in past elections had sometimes unsettled the financial markets. Another factor was that in the past the two voting days had sometimes straddled the Ugglesby Head Day holiday, which was not felt to be appropriate. The incorporation of South Holburn in February 2006 had happened too late for a full review of constituency boundaries, so the number of seats in Parliament was temporarily increased from 296 to 301 to include five new seats in South Holburn. The two main parties went into the campaign neck-and-neck in the opinion polls. The Liberals undoubtedly had a strong economic record, with growth averaging over 3% in 2003-05, and the figure of 300,000 new car sales being passed for the first time in 2005. The successful transfer of South Holburn from Brunswick in early 2006, even though a bipartisan policy, was also a feather in Lorna Bradshaw’s cap. On the other hand, there was widespread concern that trade liberalisation was opening the door for Brunswickian domination of many Arransian business sectors, which was exemplified by the takeover of the Bowdens supermarket chain in 2003. Labour also condemned the Liberals’ education policy, proposing a massive expansion of independent “Charter Schools”, as divisive and elitist, and attacked their heavy-handed treatment of anti-road protesters at the “Battle of Burrows Dip” in 2004. Since seizing the Labour leadership in 2003, Edward Douglas had made much progress in portraying Labour as a party that, while still committed to social justice, was not in any sense anti-business or anti-defence. He was a fluent and witty public speaker who was good at varying his tone to suit his audience, although occasionally accused of lacking substance. Lorna Bradshaw, the incumbent Liberal Chancellor, was a rather more pedestrian performer widely seen as lacking charisma, although she was seldom known to put a foot wrong and had shown a tough streak in keeping a firm hand on her party and out-staring Simon D’Arcy, the President of Brunswick, over the South Holburn issue. While there are many fierce local rivalries, Arransian electoral campaigns are generally fairly well-mannered and decorous affairs with few personal attacks being made on opponents. An interesting diversion arose when the Liberal MP Andrew Muirhead made a perhaps ill-judged comment that more action was needed to prevent other nations regarding Arransia as a “craphole”. He was widely, albeit unfairly, accused of describing the country as such himself, and this prompted an extensively reprinted editorial in the Hop Bine, the Ellerdine daily newspaper, which spoke of Arransia as being somewhere not far short of an earthly paradise. This was obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but by no means entirely so, and prompted much debate about Arransian national identity, which overall probably worked slightly in Labour’s favour. Several newspapers invited their readers to submit photographs showing distinctive images of Arransia that people could be proud of, and by common consensus the most striking was an aerial view of the northern side of the Laithby Marishes covered in a thick blanket of winter fog, with the cooling towers and chimneys of the “Three Sisters” – the three giant power stations – together with the chimneys of the Kersall smokeless fuel plant, poking out above it. This seemed to combine an unusual, haunting beauty with a clear statement that Arransia was a dynamic industrial country and not just somewhere that belonged on the front of a chocolate box. For the first time, a short series of set-piece televised debates was staged between spokespeople for the two parties. Undoubtedly the most enlightening of these was that between the two Transport spokesmen, Peter Hough for the Liberals and William Galt for Labour. Most observers felt Galt had won this, with promises to electrify the railway network between Holborough and Howick which Hough was not prepared to match, but it was a good example of a spirited but polite debate between two people who knew what they were talking about. In contrast, the Finance debate between Matthew Thomson and David Aitcheson was so dry and technical it had people reaching for their remotes in droves. The flagship debate between Lorna Bradshaw and Edward Douglas was also very much a damp squib, with one commentator describing it as “a polite dinner-party argument”, and the only topic producing any real passion being the Battle of Burrows Dip. Probably the one memorable soundbite of the campaign was when Edward Douglas said in a speech that his objective was “a first-class version of Arransia, not a second-rate copy of another country” – with the clear implication that he did not want it to become a clone of Brunswick. This duly made its was on to election posters: “Vote Labour for a first-class Arransia!” The South Holburn issue had stimulated a lot of Brunswickian interest in Arransian politics, and the election campaign was followed more closely than any since 1986. However, Arransian politics, with its strong sectional interests, could be hard to fathom for the outsider, and it was certainly a mistake to simply equate the Liberals with the National Democrats and Labour with the SRP. In fact, both the previous Brunswickian SRP Congressional representatives for the South Holburn area were elected to the Arransian Parliament in 2006, but one for the Liberals and one for Labour. Both Edward Douglas and Lorna Bradshaw gave extended interviews on the Brunswickian equivalent of “Newsnight” which left most viewers unable to really tell the difference between what they were saying. Defence policy was not in general a divisive issue, but on Tuesday 9th May, the elderly aircraft carrier HMS Queen Margaret, on exercises off the north coast of Brunswick, suffered a major engine breakdown which meant she had to be ignominiously towed into port for repairs, which were forecast to take three months. To some people this was all too convenient, although the Navy were utterly adamant that such a thing could not be stage-managed, and nobody ever produced any convincing argument otherwise that went beyond gut feeling ¹. Following this, the two surviving retired Admirals of the Fleet, Aristide Vauclain and Colin Smillie, wrote a joint letter to the leading newspapers stating that not to order a new carrier would in effect be a betrayal of their patriotic duty from the incoming government, and this in effect forced the issue. Since Aristide Vauclain had been the first Arransian pilot to land a jet aircraft on the Queen Margaret in the 1950s, and Colin Smillie had been captain of the carrier for four years in the 1980s, nobody could say they did not know what they were talking about. This gave both Edward Douglas and Lorna Bradshaw no alternative but to make a specific commitment that they would order a new aircraft carrier from an Arransian shipyard during their term of office, whereas their respective manifestoes only promised to “pursue plans for an affordable and effective replacement for the Queen Margaret”. There were one or two voices on the left of Labour that expressed opposition to this, but in general there was a broad political consensus. It could be argued that the admirals had in effect bounced the politicians into this decision, but realistically such an outcome was inevitable anyway. In view of the breakdown of the Queen Margaret, it was fortunate that the plans to mark Ugglesby Head Day in 2006, on Friday 12th May, did not involve the seagoing fleet, and instead saw the Marine Corps engaged in a major demonstration exercise in a military training ground that had been set aside in a neglected area of South Holburn. This involved mass parachute drops and saw an impressive congregation of transport planes and bombers at Scaggleby Airport. In a sense it was the demonstration of military force that Arransia had agreed not to stage when South Holburn was handed over in February. Although many were not of the most recent design, the Marine Corps had no shortage of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles ², and sent a mammoth convoy through the town centre of Northcotes which was enthusiastically cheered by the local population. Highlights were shown in the evening on national television and drew a rousing response in pubs the length and breadth of the country. The final two political broadcasts in the following week provided a marked contrast. Labour’s concentrated on real-life Arransian people saying what they actually wanted a new government to deliver, whereas the Liberals put more emphasis on symbols of Arransian economic success which some thought was an attempt to make the country look like Brunswick. This was felt to be a narrow victory for Labour, but even so the final opinion polls published in the newspapers on Tuesday 16th May showed the two parties too close to call. In the event, this was reflected in the results. The overall turnout was 81.5%, and there were a mere 45,000 first preference votes between the two major parties, with Labour gaining 46.9% and the Liberals 46.3%. Labour won 128 seats and the Liberals 122, with 2 Independents being elected. This left 49 seats to be decided on the second round. It looked unlikely that the Liberals could win an outright majority, but a hung Parliament situation appeared a distinct possibility. It was the convention that there was no national campaigning, and no opinion polls, during the second round, but a lot of effort was put in by the parties on the ground in the 49 widely-spread seats. It proved to be a cliff-hanger, with the last seat to be declared, Teversal & West Holburn, being won by Labour over the Liberals by a mere 17 votes after several recounts. This gave Labour an overall majority of one, with 151 seats against 141 for the Liberals and 9 Independents. Four of the five seats in South Holburn had gone to Labour, and without this there certainly would have been a hung Parliament. In practice, Labour could have formed a government if one or two seats short of a majority, as most of the Independents would have supported them in preference to the Liberals, but it would have put them in an awkward situation. Most of the Independents were of a broadly left-wing standpoint, with the exception of Oliver Massey, who was elected for the Rookby division of Hanwold on what was essentially a Conservative platform, although he had capitalised on local grievances over sheep-farming subsidies. A much-reported result was the election of Patrick Scullion’s attractive and formidably intelligent 28-year-old granddaughter Tara for his old constituency of Lawrenny. Edward Douglas was duly sworn in by King Malcolm VII as the new Chancellor of Arransia, promising to advance the country’s prosperity while preserving its distinctive identity. Given the closeness of the outcome, Lorna Bradshaw could not be too disappointed with her party’s showing. She said that Labour had a lot to live up to in terms of economic performance, and that they had some difficult decisions to confront on defence procurement which the Liberals would ensure they did not shirk. The following Tuesday, Douglas flew to Aubourg with his new foreign minister Athol Barr – Arransia’s first black cabinet minister – for talks with the Brunswickian President Simon D’Arcy. Obviously the two had met before, but they seemed to hit it off very well and were all smiles at their joint press conference. One journalist did suggest that Douglas had run a mildly anti-Brunswickian election campaign, but he replid that this was nonsense, and he looked forward to even closer co-operation with Brunswick in the future, which was in no way incompatible with the two countries retaining their distinctive identities, something that he was sure Brunswick wanted just as much as Arransia. Douglas also announced that Jenny Porter, although a former Liberal cabinet minister, would be continuing in the role of Ambassador to Brunswick in which she had been conspicuously successful.
¹ As one crew member was badly scalded by a burst steam pipe, the allegation that the incident was in some way stage-managed verged on the offensive.
² In fact, although much of their equipment was distinctly elderly, especially the fleet of transport lorries, the Marine Corps did have 60 examples of the latest Brunswickian main battle tanks in fully “desertised” form.
|