Lessons from Denmark

Denmark's vote in a referendum not to join the European Single Currency should be a reminder to Tony Blair and his colleagues, if one were needed, of the scale of the task facing them in winning a future referendum to secure British participation in the Euro. When Prime Minister Rasmussen called the referendum he was well ahead in the opinion polls, and, anyway, all the major Danish political parties were in favour. Much of the Danish media was broadly sympathetic. Danish businesses almost unanimously thought it was a good idea. The polls indicated that on occasions over the past few months the "Yes" campaign was well ahead in public support, though the public also swung in the other direction on occasions as well. Yet Denmark said "Nej".

Contrast this with the current situation in Britain. Even though the government's petrol-driven plunge in the polls seems to have halted, with our most recent poll (taken over last weekend, for The Times) giving Labour a reassuring if barely visible two-point lead, the detail behind the headline figures makes it clear that (as have argued in this column before) the only thing that is holding Labour's support together is what he public thinks of the alternative, William Hague and the Conservatives.

The details of our poll for the Mail on Sunday - a week after the fuel crisis had eased, when public tempers had had a chance to cool, is an indication of the political damage that has been done in the last month to ministers' reputations. Most significantly, the majority off the public now have doubts about the trustworthiness of the government and its leading ministers: 56% say they do not find Tony Blair trustworthy, 62% say the same of Gordon Brown, and only 27% now think that the government is more trustworthy than was John Major's - a damning indictment when the electorate's lack of trust of the Major government was one reason for its landslide defeat. Trust can be lost precipitately, but it can be regained only glacially; the government has forfeited a very important aspect of its image.

Fortunately for Mr Blair, William Hague's trust ratings are not significantly better. Nor, although 49% think the government is "divided" rather than "united", another key voting indicator, do the Tories score over Labour here either. So the power to bounce back for an election victory next year is probably still in the government's hands. Another factor working in their favour is the present bias in the electoral system: because Labour has performed better in the marginal constituencies than in the country as a whole at each of the last few elections, the relationship between seats and votes is now strongly tilted in the party's favour. Assuming uniform swing, Labour would still have an overall majority if the votes were to be level; for the Tories to gain an overall majority, they need to lead by more than 10% of the vote, which means securing a swing of 11.5%. Even if the swing is not uniform, if the Tories somehow do a little better than average in the marginals and correct some of that pro-Labour tilt, it is unlikely that they can eclipse the whole of the bias in the system at a single stroke. Even an eight-point Tory lead, the high tide mark of the polls in the last fortnight (in NOP's poll for Channel 4 - [voting intentions (Westminster), all companies] could easily leave Tony Blair in Downing Street with Charles Kennedy's help. (In any case, as we always say, you should watch the shares, not the gap. Labour votes leaking to the Lib Dems, as many have in the polls over the past weeks, are no good to William Hague. A former Labour supporter who can't bear to call himself a Tory even now, at the height of his anger and disillusionment, is hardly likely to vote Tory come the election if he realises the Lib Dems have no chance in his constituency - the chances are that the defectors to the Lib Dems will come back to Labour, if only as a tactical vote, in the Con-Lab marginals, whereas of course in the Con-Lib Dem marginals their threat to the Tories is much more obvious. Electorally, the bottom line is that the Tories touched 40% of the vote in only two of the eight polls since the fuel crisis, and have not passed it once. 40% is simply not enough.)

But in the longer term, the loss of the public's trust has another serious consequence for Mr Blair, for his ability to win a referendum on joining the euro will depend on his ability to convince a basically hostile electorate that he knows what is best for the country. The more detailed leader image data in our poll for The Times underlines how far he has fallen. On every one of the 14 measures his score is worse than it was six months ago; the number thinking he is "out of touch" has doubled. His average score on the five negative image attributes is now 30.6% while on the positive aspects he averages only 17.9%, giving him a net rating of -12.7%. This is the first time Mr Blair's net rating has been negative, and combined with William Hague's -15.4% (which is round about where it has been ever since he became leader) we have by far the worst combined score for the major party leaders since MORI first began asking this series of questions in November 1983. (See table below)

Clearly, the stage is not set for political leaders to influence the views of the country. Yet if they do not, the country shows no sign of opting for the Euro of its own accord. The most recent MORI Financial Services/Schroder Salomon Smith Barney poll shows the general sentiment back to two-to-one against, and the fall in the government's poll ratings has been mirrored by a fall in the influence they have in the follow-up "If the government strongly urged ..." question. British business, too, is increasingly turning against the Euro as our poll for Burson-Marsteller showed.

If Mr Rasmussen couldn't win in Denmark, with all the favourable conditions that were at his disposal, can Tony Blair really do it here? If the voters don't trust him more than they trust the Euro-sceptic leaders, he might still win the general election but he won't win the referendum. The effect of the petrol crisis on voters' perceptions of the government may turn out to be of far more long-term political significance than anybody supposes at the moment.

Source: MORI