How I’ve backed the winner in every election for the last 56 years

A few years ago I suddenly realised that I had voted for the winning side in every general election since I was old enough to take part. In the same way, during my early years as a journalist, I was as happy working for the Daily Telegraph as I was for the Guardian. I am the authentic floating voter.

The general election of 1959 was my first opportunity. I was up at Oxford University, financed by a full grant from my local authority, so I had no money worries. The Conservatives had been in power since 1951 and their leader, Harold Macmillan, had given an election speech that became famous for a single phrase. “Indeed let us be frank about it,” he told his audience. “Most of our people have never had it so good.” Certainly I had never had it so good.

I backed the Conservatives – who duly won with a 49 per cent share of the vote and 365 seats to Labour’s 258. In looking through the results the next day, I didn’t notice two key developments. For the first time, the Tories failed to win the most seats in Scotland, with the result that Labour took over as the dominant party north of the border. Until this very day. And somebody called Margaret Thatcher was the new member for Finchley.

But then the country stopped having it so good. The economy performed less well. Britain’s application to join the Common Market was rejected. A minister was forced to resign after he admitted lying to Parliament over his involvement with a call girl. Macmillan stepped down and was succeeded by Alec Douglas-Home, who had had to renounce his title as Earl of Home. Harold Wilson led a resurgent Labour Party.

The election was delayed until the last possible moment, October 1964. Again it was a single phrase that summed up the choice. Wilson had told his last party conference before the election that “we are redefining and we are restating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution ... The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or outdated methods on either side of industry.” Terrific stuff. It was that vision that persuaded me to vote Labour for the first time. Labour narrowly won, securing a majority of just four seats. By-election losses reduced that margin to one seat. So in March 1966 Wilson called a second election – with me still on board – and obtained a majority of 96 seats over the Tories.

It is from that date that the decline of trust in the political process began. For Wilson was unable to keep his election promises. The pound was devalued and the trades unions thwarted reforms to labour laws. Consequently, the Conservatives came back in 1970 under the leadership of Edward Heath, who in turn made a notorious “U-turn” in the economic policy he had announced in his election campaign, which in due course precipitated an unsustainable economic boom. Watching all this and drawing her own conclusions was Thatcher, by now a member of Heath’s Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science.

Back came Wilson in 1974, first leading a minority government and then once again calling a quick second election that provided a small majority. But the pattern repeated itself again. Wilson and his successor, James Callaghan, couldn’t deliver what they had promised. This gave the opening to Thatcher and her particular style of government. In 1979 she began a run of election victories, helped on the first occasion by an election poster that showed a long line of people queuing outside an unemployment office with the headline “Labour isn’t working”.

What could floating voters do in such circumstances when no third party had yet emerged that was worth considering? While I switched sides each time, no doubt others of my disposition gradually withdrew and stopped voting. Turnout at successive elections began to slip. Thereafter I stuck with Thatcher as Labour became unelectable. And my record of always voting for the winning party remained intact.

But it was tested almost to destruction at the 1992 election. Thatcher had resigned in November 1990 and was succeeded by John Major. Neil Kinnock had been leader of the Labour Party for nine years. When the campaign began, most polls showed a slight lead for Labour but not sufficient to avoid a hung parliament. I was definitely going to vote for Labour. But as I walked down to the polling station with my wife, I changed my mind. I found that I couldn’t vote for a party that would hit me in the pocket by raising taxes on higher incomes. A new top rate income tax of 50 per cent was going to apply to individuals with annual incomes of at least £40,000. Top rate taxpayers would be on average £150 a month worse off.

I wasn’t alone, for the Conservatives received the largest number of votes in British history and captured 336 seats compared with 271 for Labour. It must have been then that politicians learnt the rule that explicit plans to raise taxes can doom an election campaign. It was also, 23 years ago, the Tories’ last outright victory.

I didn’t have any difficulty in switching back to Labour in 1997, when Tony Blair won his first victory with an enormous majority of 197 seats. And Labour won again in 2001 and 2005. Throughout this period, the Tories remained seriously divided about Europe and regularly changed their leaders. William Hague succeeded John Major and Iain Duncan Smith in turn replaced him. After that came Michael Howard.

The idea of being a floating voter has become outdated. It belongs to the period when two main parties dominated British politics. We have all become floating voters. The 2015 campaign demonstrates that. For the politicians have become visibly terrified of the electorate, desperate to find ways of making us believe what they say.

I voted for the Lib Dems in 2010, so in a way I maintained my unbroken record of always voting for the winning side given that they were the junior partners in the Coalition Government. I cannot tell you how I shall vote today for, as I have recalled, I can change my mind at the last moment.