WHY DAVID CAMERON WILL BE THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER

David Cameron

In May 2011, a year after the last general election, I wrote that David Cameron’s Pluto transits “come to an end about a couple of years after the start of the second term, and he will not win a 3rd term, if he is still leader by then, which looks problematic. (By the way, I was about 6 months out with Blair when I made this sort of prediction in 2003. In his case, it was Neptune transits coming to an end.)”

I’ll come back to the astrology in a minute, after the non-astrological observation that it always seems to be the person with the most popular appeal who wins an election. It seems to be as simple as that, and usually makes outcomes quite predictable. That was why in the US, Bill Clinton beat George Bush senior, and why George W Bush beat Al Gore, hanging chads notwithstanding. It was why David Cameron beat Gordon Brown at the last UK election, and why he will now beat Ed Miliband.

Ed Miliband

Until the election started to loom, there were always rumblings within the Labour Party about Ed Miliband’s leadership, and his not being able to connect with people. There have never been such rumblings about Cameron. Whatever the polls say, people don’t seem to elect someone where there is this sort of question over them, unless his opponent has even less appeal.

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This ability to appeal to people does not, unfortunately, imply any moral quality or ability to govern effectively, and it is one of the major drawbacks of democracy. And it is also why the backing of the Sun newspaper is so important, because it is that level of appeal that wins elections. The Sun hasn't yet revealed who it's backing this time, but in its heart of hearts it would probably like to see UKIP in power. I suspect it will back the Tories.

So David Cameron will be the next PM. I think we have had worse Prime Ministers. I’d argue that purely as a leader he is the best we have had for decades, in that he does not polarise the country in the way that ‘strong’ leaders like Blair and Thatcher did, and nor are there ongoing questions over his leadership, as we had with Gordon Brown and John Major.

That said, I think the country now needs a Labour government, so I am arguing against my own political views. I think we needed the Tories to start to sort out the economic mess that Labour left behind them. But now what is needed is the perception of compassion in the government, and you don’t really get that with the Tories. I say the perception of compassion, because I think Labour would be unlikely to reverse many of the welfare cuts imposed by the Tories. The 2 parties rarely undo what the other has done, however vociferously they may oppose the other’s policies at the time.

As for the astrology, I’ve observed that a leader usually gets elected under a major transit from either Neptune or Pluto, and stays in power until that and succeeding transits are complete. Thatcher was in power under a series of Pluto transits, Blair under Neptune, and their ‘reigns’ came to an end as the transits did. And their governing style was also characterised by the respective outer planet. Thatcher’s mission was to remove the dead wood, as she saw it, and bring about renewal and she was happy to destroy enemies in the process. Very Plutonian. Blair’s government was known for its popular touch (‘the people’s princess’), its ‘spin’ and ultimately for lies over Iraq. That is Neptune.

Cameron became leader of the Tory party as Pluto began to hard aspect his Angles in 2005, and he has led the country as Pluto has squared his Venus-Sun conjunction at 7-15 Libra. (Libra is a good sign, incidentally, for leading a coalition government.)

His time as PM has been necessarily Plutonic, with the economy in a mess, an unprecedented debt pile, and the need to make unpopular cuts to begin to balance the books. Pluto does not shy from unpopularity in the interest of what it deems to be necessary.

Pluto is the planet that put him in power, and the logic seems to be that he will remain in power as long as Pluto remains active in his chart. Pluto will make the last exact square to Cameron’s Sun in 2016, and will remain within range for a year or two after that. By 2018 he will be seriously losing the power that Pluto gives him. At this point Saturn will be crossing his Angles, bringing realism and resistance to the leader’s natural desire to stay in power.

All this fits with Cameron’s recent statement that he wouldn’t serve a 3^rd term. But I thought I’d better start with what I said in 2011, so that I wouldn’t be appearing wise after the event, which astrologers get accused of!

As for Ed Miliband, he too has had major Pluto transits in recent years – firstly to his Moon at 11 Cancer, and currently to his MC at 16 Capricorn, the sort of thing you’d expect to find in the leader of a party. Like Cameron, he is coming to the end of his transits, so like Cameron he is in the closing phase of his period ‘in power’. If he was about to become PM, I would expect to see some more major transits down the line, but they are not there.

Miliband may hang on as leader of Labour for a while after the election, because the transit to his MC is not yet over. But the MC is very time dependent, and his natal birth time has uncertainty around it. At exactly 2pm, it may well have been rounded up – if it was 5 or 10 mins earlier, then his time as leader of Labour is just about over.