Mr Hague faces the strange death of Tory England

THIS THURSDAY millions of us will be going out to vote in what will (with the subsequent Euro-elections) be seen as the first real national test of the popularity of the Blair Government as it reaches its mid-point between the 1997 landslide and Tony's preferred general election date of May or June 2001. The problem is that the vast bulk of coverage will focus on Scotland and Wales, even though unique circumstances make it difficult to extrapolate their results into a UK-wide picture.

The results of the local elections, which are also taking place on Thursday in most of the country, will be a more reliable guide to the relative standing of the political parties. Even these, however, are not perfect. Five years ago, for example, the local election results showed marked variations depending on the popularity of individual councils and it was only six weeks later that the European elections gave us an accurate snapshot of the parties' fortunes. This turned out to be remarkably close to the subsequent general election result.

Lurking round the House of Commons tea room yesterday, I found as many different views of what's happening as there were politicians to talk to. I have never known a time when MPs found it more difficult to predict things. We like to think that we have evolved special antennae which allow us to read a political situation, but we rely on the fact that no one remembers our predictions after the event. We're mostly a pessimistic bunch.

In the run-up to the last general election, colleagues would roll their eyes in disbelief when I said that we might just possibly get a majority of 120 seats. Most MPs, including the leadership, assumed we'd get a majority of 35 at best. No one expected the final result - 178.

A year ago, when I was still on Labour's National Executive Committee, the SNP had overtaken Labour in some polls and there was a real fear that they might even win an outright majority. Our internal assessment of the local council elections was that we should brace ourselves to lose up to 2000 seats this Thursday. That scale of loss would still leave us well placed to recover and win a majority at the next general election.

But the change over the last six months has been stunning. Alex Salmond's misreading of the public outrage over Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" set back the SNP campaign so dramatically that even Sean Connery can't put them back ahead. And Peter Lilley's decision to hold a public autopsy on Thatcherism in the midst of the elections must rank with Napoleon's march on Moscow in terms of strategic stupidity.

Let's at least be clear about the arithmetic. The Tories were doing exceptionally badly when these seats were last up for grabs, in 1995. But they recovered a bit from that in the general election of 1997. So, in terms of benchmarks, the Tories cannot simply stand still; they have at least to try to get back to where they were when John Major lost the general election so badly in 1997. That means they have to gain at least 700 seats.

Now, when we examined it last year, those of us on Labour's NEC expected Labour to lose up to 2000 seats. We assumed that the Liberals would make gains in those traditional Labour areas where the Tory party has followed Monty Python's parrot to extinction, and that many of the Tory gains would be at the expense of the Liberals.

However, the problem William Hague now faces is that we could very well wake up on Friday morning to find that it's the Lib Dems who have been making the most gains, by eating into our old industrial heartlands while holding on to more of their marginal seats in traditional Tory areas.

Such a result would be bound to call into question the prospects of closer co-operation between the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. How can we co-operate if, in most of Labour's heartlands, the Lib Dems become our main opposition? Given the likely election of a Lib Dem leader who is more sceptical of merger than Paddy Ashdown this could prove problematic for the Lib-Lab "project".

If the Liberals are seen as the victors on Friday morning, then such a result will undoubtedly reopen the question of William Hague's leadership. Up until this spring most Labour MPs expected we would hit a mid-term trough of unpopularity this year, and that we would be watching as the Tories gained substantial numbers of councils and ran us close in the Euro-elections. The economic circumstances are certainly favourable for the Tories to make big gains. Over the last six months growth in GDP has been less than 0.5 per cent, with those areas dependent on manufacturing experiencing real recessionary conditions. For an opposition to fail to make progress in such circumstances is unprecedented.

Shortly after Mrs Thatcher's 1983 election triumph, when most political commentators were speculating about whether the Tories could ever be beaten, Pluto Press published a very interesting analysis of the election results - Thatcher and Friends by John Ross. This sought to prove that it was the Tory party, rather than the left, that was locked into irreversible decline.

The author argued that the modern Tory party had gained in strength throughout the latter half of the 19th century, successfully incorporating both the new manufacturing industrialists and the old landed aristocracy. It expanded from its base in the Home Counties and the London suburbs, finally building strong bases in the provinces. It reached its high point in the 1935 general election, when it gained over 50 per cent of the vote (while masquerading as a National Government).

The modern Tory Party was based on the rise of Britain as a world power. At each election when it returned to power it did so with a higher vote than it had at the previous election. But, since 1935, each time it has returned to power it has done so with a lower vote than on the previous occasion. Each time it has lost power it has done so with a worse vote than at its previous loss of office.

Unless the Tories make an Lazarus-like recovery tomorrow, we may be about to enter a period of transition, as in the Twenties when Labour replaced the Liberals as one of the two major parties. But this time it is the Liberals who have their chance to displace the Tories, who seem destined to split into two. William Hague may yet prove to be the last leader of the Tory party as we know it.