Tories will only experience a hollow victory

GORDON Brown is a deeply flawed figure lost in a Shakespearean tragedy of his own making.

As the hours tick down to his electoral demise, he finds himself leader of a country he is unable to communicate with and a country that has long since stopped listening to him.

It should never have come to this. The mantle of a glorious fourth term was his for the taking in 2007 after finally forcing Tony Blair from the helm of the Labour Party they had both fashioned in their own image.

But hubris destroyed Brown, the polls showed his majority would be comfortable, but smaller than that achieved by Blair. He could not bare the ignominy and decided he would soldier on and rewrite history himself. But instead history has now written him off as he faces into the real disaster of leading Labour to a humiliating – and perhaps terminal – third place in the popular vote tomorrow.

The gross inequalities of the British electoral system will make it seem less of a catastrophe in terms of the number of Commons seats won. But the damning reality is that his MPs will huddle like plague rats in the teeming inner sprawls of the great cities – the sunny suburban uplands of Blairland lost once again.

And yet despite the economic slump and a once impregnable 20 point poll lead, Conservative leader David Cameron is now set to experience the most hollow of victories. The Tories still lead, but barely two points above where they were in the 2005 election – Cameron’s vicious put down to Blair: “You were the future once” now thrown back at him.

The “Cam-sham” has been exposed on several fronts as the election has worn on. He thought he had the key 120 marginal swing seats that decide any election bought and paid for – literally – after the millions poured into them by the Conservative’s Belize-based banker Lord Ashcroft.

But the rise of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in the TV debates has stolen his thin mantra of change and exposed the total lack of enthusiasm towards a return to the Tories.

Cleggmania has not only destroyed Cameron’s hopes of a ram-raid of Lib Dem seats in the “cider belt” of south west England but has put many previously true blue Tory gains in the balance.

Cameron’s “Big Society” idea was still born on the doorstep and only Labour’s seemingly suicidal campaign strategy and the aggression of a reborn Tory press has kept the Conservatives narrowly out in front.

But Cameron was always a man pushing a fantasy. He needs nearly twice the swing Margaret Thatcher achieved in 1979 to get the barest majority. But whatever you thought of Thatcher, she was a leader of substance – Cameron is a master of the synthetic. The one real test of his leadership mettle came last March when he refused to try and persuade his UUP partners in the North to end their unilateral opposition to the return of justice powers to the Belfast Assembly. This was despite a personal plea from George W Bush, the creator of the empty “compassionate conservative” creed the Tory leader has so aped, and despite the fact the UUP stance put the very survival of the peace process at risk.

Cameron has tried to ally himself with any passing political wind – at one point even shamelessly drawing comparisons between himself and Barack Obama. This from a man who entered Tory politics in the late 1980s when Conservative Party conferences would often be festooned with revolting “Hang Nelson Mandela” banners. For the Audacity of Hope read the Audacity of Eton.

Obama was not fooled, telling aides he considered Cameron a lightweight after a face-to-face meeting. One of the gifts the Tory leader had presented the president with was a Lily Allen CD – hardly the mark of a man with gravitas.

Cameron is still on course for the biggest share of the votes and the largest number of Commons seats, but baring a surge in the final 36 hours he will fall tantalisingly short of a majority.

With this he must soldier on in the hope the Liberal Democrats will not vote down an emergency budget and he can scuttle to a second October election.

The irony is that Britain has always been a left-liberal society, though one ruled by the Conservatives for the best part of a century because the progressive forces were divided against themselves.

And so it is again as Brown finally finds a voice in the campaign – but tellingly it is the voice of desperation as his senior figures plea for voters to act tactically and “take out a Tory”.

Clegg – branded the “yellowperil” by the Tory press – has hit a glass ceiling and is now reduced to making tacit attacks on Cameron’s public school background, even though he is nearly as posh as the Tory leader. Clegg snipes that Cameron must earn power rather than “inherit” it.

Voters know a Lib Dem/Labour government would be more left-wing than a Labour one, and a deal on PR would see any hopes of a future Tory dominated government smashed into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds.

But the numbers appear to be moving against such an historic deal and Brown must fall on his sword in any conceivable arrangement.

His disastrous encounter with, and groveling apology to, Labour supporter Gillian Duffy whom he dubbed a “bigoted” woman was flashed around the world and moved his Premiership from Shakespearean tragedy to low farce.

Labour has achieved much through the slump, keeping unemployment lower than expected, strengthening spending and investing in the future by running a debt that is average by international comparisons, but which the Tories denounce as demonic.

Yet the despair at Brown and the fall-out from the MPs expenses scandal has left the electorate feeling as exhausted and lost as the PM looks.

The Lib Dem surge has peaked. Only Brown or Cameron can emerge prime minister.

Leaving British voters looking on as forlornly as the American public did during the titanic battle for Stalingrad between the Soviet Union and Germany – hoping both sides would lose.