However, when David Cameron tried to repeat Blair's trick in 2010 something went badly wrong. It is not just that the Conservative leader turned out to be an ineffective salesman, compared to Blair. There were clearly deeper structural problems with the Conservative vote. Even with the discredited Gordon Brown leading Labour, and his "end of boom and bust" turning out to have been an illusion, the Conservatives could only get 36.1 per cent of the vote. The party last won an overall majority in 1992.
The erosion of old tribal loyalties based on class and identity, along with falling turnout, has hit Labour hard too. The expansion of consumer choice, accelerated by new technology, seems to have made voters much less liable to back a major party. Uncontrolled immigration has had an impact too, as David Goodhart notes in his recent book The British Dream. It is difficult to build a notion of common endeavour when millions of new arrivals seem even less interested in our institutions than the disaffected natives. Even if some new immigrants are interested potentially, the depleted parties have done almost nothing to reach them (on living standards, patriotism and opportunity) beyond mouthing relativistic multicultural platitudes.
Devolution has also played a part. When the Conservatives used to get overall majorities they won significant numbers of seats in Scotland. Now they are almost extinct there, with just one Westminster seat and little prospect of more. Equally Labour, shifting leftwards, finds it increasingly difficult to penetrate in the south.
As a result the UK could be in for a period in which its institutions and system of government undergo further significant transformation, and probably not in a good way. After another hung parliament it is likely that the Lib Dems will demand proportional representation as the price of a coalition deal with Labour, and it is likely that Ed Miliband, an advocate of voting reform, will accede. If no party can command the levels of support that used to be the basis of strong single-party government capable of major reforms on the Attlee or Thatcher model, and PR happens, there would ultimately be little reason for the Tories or Labour to remain as currently constituted. Rather than the parties being broad umbrella organisations they could splinter.
