Britain needs a new settlement

Britain will soon celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. National myth has it that the constitutional bargain struck by King John and his mutinous barons was England's inestimable gift to the world. The rule of law enshrined in the charter laid the foundation stone for democracy. The British, self-deprecating in many ways, are jealous of their contribution to modern civilisation.

The anniversary will be marked with great fanfare. The British are not to be outdone when it comes to pomp and pageantry. Barack Obama has spoken of the charter as the inspiration for America's founding fathers. Rumour has it the US president will join the Queen - and her new prime minister - for the commemoration at Runnymede.

This Whiggish view of history sees everything that has happened since as a series of natural, linear steps. No matter the ruptures - a civil war, say, or the pacification of Ireland, England's union with Scotland, and the acquiring and loss of a global empire. Britain is the mother of parliaments. Whatever the odd bump along the way, contemporary politics stand in perfect alignment with the settlement sealed on June 15, 1215.

Perhaps it is unsurprising then that David Cameron's Conservatives and Ed Miliband's Labour are fighting the present general election as if nothing has changed. The union faces unprecedented strains; the two big parties, each struggling to garner the support of a third of voters, are pale imitations of their former selves. Old allegiances are fracturing and political discourse has been soured by the anti-foreigner populism of the UK Independence party. Messrs Cameron and Miliband pretend that it is business as usual.

Even against the low bar set at modern elections, the campaign has been a profoundly dispiriting affair. The Tories and Labour alike have seen it as an exercise in circling the wagons - an attempt to round up diminishing numbers of "core" supporters rather than to reach out to the uncommitted. Everything has been scripted and screened to avoid interaction with "real people".

Mr Cameron has bet his future on the scaremongering strategies peddled by the Australian pollster Lynton Crosby. Mr Miliband has done little more than tap into simmering popular resentments with economic austerity. In the thrall of the past, neither has produced a prospectus for the future. Labour looks set to be crushed in Scotland by the resurgent Scottish National party. The Tory answer to the SNP has been to fan the embers of English nationalism.

Voters are smarter than this. The polls say they have concluded that Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband have both failed to make a case to lead the nation. Perhaps the two leaders should thank them. Even as they prepare for the final push of the campaign, they should reflect that this is an election their parties might do well to lose.

Mr Cameron, who some time ago abandoned any ambitions to modernise the Tory party, has thus far made only the slightest imprint on history. If he does limp back into Downing Street for a second term, it could well be to preside over a European referendum that at once sees Britain expel itself from its own continent and shatters the Conservative party along the way.

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A minority Labour government reliant on the explicit support of Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats and the implicit consent of the SNP would be hobbled from day one. Britain will at some point have to learn that the two-party politics of turn-and-turnabout has gone. And English politicians will have to admit that they cannot be in favour of the union with Scotland and simultaneously deny the legitimacy of Scottish Nationalists elected to Westminster.

Such adjustments will take time. If the outcome on May 7 is as inconclusive as the polls suggest, it will probably be followed quite soon by another election. Mr Clegg has made plain his preference for a second deal with Mr Cameron, but many of his MPs would prefer Mr Miliband. Many will consider it unjust that the Liberal Democrats look set to be punished for governing with Mr Cameron. Mr Clegg, after all, has moderated the worst impulses of the Tory right and mitigated the Treasury's obsession with the fiscal deficit. But a third player in politics has to do more than lean against the instincts of the big two. The Liberal Democrats will have to find a much sharper view of their own identity.

Fractured though it is, Britain is not about to fall into an abyss. The economy has its problems - the real one is poor productivity rather than the deficit - but also its strengths. It is a rich nation of decent instincts with, by and large, an open view of the world. Most of its businesses are innovative, creative and socially responsible. London is the envy of every aspiring global city.

Britain needs leaders ready to let slip the exceptionalism - to step out of the trenches and imagine a different sort of political settlement. Winner-takes-all politics worked while it worked, but its time has passed. Scottish nationalism will imperil the union for as long as Westminster politicians cling to thesuffocating centralism of the old political order.

As for history, it is surely time for Britain to acknowledge the role of its old enemy France. Almost as soon as Magna Carta was sealed, the king reneged. He was brought to heel only with the aid of Prince Louis, son of the King of France, who marched his army into London at the behest of the English barons. Democracy, whisper it ever so quietly, was a Franco-British enterprise.

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