The Death of Liberalism.

It is very easy to imagine the relief amongst the leadership of all the major parties on seeing the self-implosion of UKIP’s leadership. Of course, it would be hard not to afford a wry smile at the sight of a party based primarily on ‘anti-politics’ so quickly descending into the type of internal warfare that the Westminster parties it purports to despise have suffered from. I suspect, though, that little if anything has been learnt by Labour and the Tories from UKIP’s sudden, dramatic emergence and complacency will soon reign supreme once again.

Labour in particular, along with its natural supporters who would usually consider themselves liberals or socialists, seem to remain oblivious to the reason for the success of UKIP (and to a lesser extent the BNP). The truth is that, outside of Westminster and elite metropolitan society, the fundamental tenets of liberalism and socialism are dying fast. UKIP, armed with the extra publicity having recruited a popular TV celebrity in Robert Kilroy-Silk, were firing at an open goal in appealing to vast swathes of the electorate who have become completely disenchanted with mainstream politics.

The disenchantment spreads far further than just the centre-Right, as electoral gains for the Greens, Scottish Socialists and to a lesser extent the Lib Dems has shown. However, the greatest political vacuum without doubt exists among the millions who empathise with the populist agenda promoted daily in The Sun and Daily Mail, hourly on talk-radio and that was personified most clearly in the fuel strike of 2000. In short their complaints can broadly be described as follows; Britain has been brought to its knees by a metropolitan liberal elite intent on destroying our national culture, hiking up taxes, imposing ineffective politically correct solutions and selling off our rights to the bureaucrats in Brussels. Furthermore this elite, personified in the BBC, New Labour, Guardian readers and the EU, are tightening their grip by closing down free speech, branding anyone who criticises them as being racist. UKIP capitalised on this vacuum, with their anti-EU, anti-establishment rhetoric but the truth is that this section of the population are fertile territory for any aspiring politician spouting right-wing populism.

I would dare anyone who doubts the popularity of this rhetoric to listen to Talksport for an hour or read any of the popular right-wing tabloids or mid-market papers (The Mirror is now the only exception and its circulation is in freefall.) Better still, engage people in political debate, either in person or even on the internet. I have and frankly, it is the most infuriating process trying to have a reasonable discussion with people who have swallowed so many urban myths over the last 2 decades. Just as in the US, to define oneself as a liberal (or even worse a socialist) leaves one open to all manner of ill-informed abuse.

The problem is that there is apparently nobody willing to take on these wildly inaccurate arguments. The Labour Party under Blair, is terrified of the tabloid agenda and has spent the last decade pandering to their prejudices. In any case, Blair is anything but a liberal – which is what makes these charges so absurd. Amongst other things, this government has introduced internment without trial, ASBOs, child-curfews, detention centres for asylum-seekers and the draconian Mental Health Act. It seeks to ban trial by jury and confiscate the children of failed asylum-seekers. It has extended the powers of the police via the Criminal Justice Bill, has given the security services access to our e-mails and promises to go much, much further. The prison population is increasing at a fast rate of knots and the failed policy of drug prohibition remains firmly in place. In 7 years, it hasn’t offered a referendum on the Euro and has broadly adopted the mildly Eurosceptical position of the Major government on further European reform. What kind of ‘liberal’ government would be proud of a record like that?

Equally, the charge of Orwellian restraints on freedom of speech are laughable. Firstly, if such restraints were in place then 90% of our press wouldn’t feel free to make such allegations. Moreover, those who make the charges of censorship are often the first to use such tactics. How many times in the course of the past 4 years have we seen critics of President Bush accused of ‘anti-Americanism’ or opponents of the war in Iraq labelled ‘Saddam-apologists’? An editorial in The Sun accused Labour backbenchers critical of Bush’s War On Terror as ‘traitors’ - destroying the self-perpetuated myth that the Murdoch press were in favour of British independence and sovereignty. Only on last week’s Question Time, Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, referring to the furore over the alleged homophobia, racism and misogyny of Italian EU Commissioner Rocco Buttiglione, railed against the zealous, politically correct culture of censorship that stems from the EU. Could this be the same woman who I’ve seen and heard accusing critics of Israel of ‘anti-semitism’?

As for the institutions of this ‘liberal elite’, much of their power is grossly exaggerated. I’m quite sure that most of the BBC’s management would be happy to describe themselves as liberal. But I also recall the fuss made by the right-wing press over the appointments of Labour supporting Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies – a fuss never made over past appointments of Tory supporters. As we have seen, the pair lost their jobs for backing reports deeply critical of the Labour government – reports that have turned out to be true. And if the BBC was interested in left-wing propaganda and censorship, would it really give a platform to people like Melanie Phillips?

For all the BBC’s undeniable cultural influence, it remains only one player in a diverse media – of which almost the entire ‘opposition’ is fundamentally Conservative. Unlike its commercial rivals, as a licence fee recipient, the BBC can’t waste its own airtime attacking rival media or boasting about other arms of its empire. When was the last time you heard anybody mention the fact that the BBC has produced more popular comedies than any other TV company on the planet? Let alone remind us of the Beeb’s astonishing global reach and unrivalled reputation for impartiality in news and current affairs? If we were being patriotic, as the Right urge, we might actually praise an institution that is arguably more successful in this global age than anything the British private sector can muster.

Somebody needs to remind the public that, in fact, power and policy in Britain has been largely Conservative for the past 25 years. Nobody would dare call Margaret Thatcher a liberal. Yet in the Tories’ 18 years in power, crime, drug abuse and immigration rose inexorably, as did the tax burden on everyone bar those paying the higher rate of income tax and corporations. Surely all of this didn’t happen because of liberal policies? I’m not suggesting by any means that Liberals have all the answers, or even that the Conservative policies of Thatcher, Major and New Labour are all wrong. But I would argue that disenchanted Rightists should stop living in denial and accept that they too share some responsibility – if not the lion’s share – for the problems we face today.

Some might dismiss this article as irrelevant – fodder for the tiny minority of ‘lefties’ that care about such things. But this is how the descent into fascism begins. When nobody is prepared to take on the urban myths and propaganda they become accepted wisdom. Look at the US. Decades of propaganda from the vested interest, Conservative media groups and right-wing shock-jocks paved the way for G W Bush. Now, despite a distinctly un-Conservative budget deficit, a disastrous record on unemployment and a foreign policy that looks more catastrophic by the minute, Dubya looks set to be re-elected. He’s getting away with it because he has a compliant media that has and will repeat unfounded attacks on the ‘liberal’ Kerry while steadfastly refusing to criticise when Conservatism goes wrong. Liberalism has become so unpopular there that a Democrat can only win by going out of their way to deny any such credentials. Be warned – it can and will happen here unless somebody fights back against this tosh.

Blair Is Destroying Labour

The title of this article might seem a bit odd at first glance. The idea that the Labour Party’s most successful leader ever could be ‘destroying’ the party just doesn’t add up. Unless that is, we ignore the short-term vagrancies of electoral politics and fast forward a decade or so. We are endlessly hearing from Westminster based journalists that the Prime Minister is obsessed with his place in the history books. Now I’ve never met the guy so I’ll leave the amateur psychology to them but I doubt that he would wish the history books to show Tony Blair as the Labour leader whose leadership drove the party into electoral oblivion.

Yet, in the long term, this is not as implausible as it sounds. Unlike the days when Labour and the Conservatives could be certain of 35% of the vote irrespective of their wider popularity, the electorate is now thoroughly de-aligned and highly likely to shift their allegiance at a stroke. Just as Black Wednesday and other assorted catastrophes turned the Tories from the most successful political party in Europe to an irrelevant minority overnight, New Labour’s time will come. As it stands, despite the massive majorities, there is ample evidence that this government is deeply unpopular even during these prosperous times. Just imagine what the voters would do to Blair if there was a real economic crisis.

If, or should I say when, the moment of Labour’s electoral demise comes, they will need to fall back on their membership and core support. During the party’s darkest hours of the 1980s, they could still count on the rock solid support of at least 30% of the electorate – made up primarily of trade unionists, the poor, liberals, pacifists, socialists and those who just couldn’t stand Margaret Thatcher. Likewise, even as the Tories in opposition lurch from one embarrassing leadership contest to the next, their bottom line of 30% looks rock solid. However, unlike Thatcher and Major, Blair has jeopardised the party’s future by ignoring, provoking and finally completely alienating his party’s support base.

Under our undemocratic first past the post system, it has become the conventional wisdom that, in order to win an election, all you need to do is win over the tiny minority of ‘swing’ voters in marginal seats. Blair and the New Labour hierarchy have swallowed this hook, line and sinker and duly targeted their entire spin offensive at winning over these non-partisan voters. Yet it is pure nonsense. Even in marginal seats, the Labour vote is still primarily made up of people who fit one of the aforementioned categories and can be broadly described as ‘left-wing’. If these people desert Labour, then it won’t make a jot of difference where the swing voters go. And all the evidence suggests this is happening already. Discontent over various issues like privatisation, war, tuition fees or rising inequality is driving millions of lifelong Labour voters into the arms of the Liberal Democrats or in some cases, UKIP.

Perhaps more important is the fact that party membership is in freefall. Every successful left-wing party in history has been based on a large membership made up of people from everyday life. Trade unionists, other workers, the poor or disenfranchised – in other words people with little power on their own who unite in order to have their interests represented in Parliament. Yet trade union membership is also in decline and the average worker feels little empathy with the modern Labour Party who speak a language that rarely communicates with anyone outside the Westminster village. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest cynic to believe that New Labour are more interested in courting millionaire doners than encouraging citizens to join the party.

It all seems so perverse. The hard reality is that this government has actually done more for the poor or the workers than any government since that of Labour legend Clement Attlee. The minimum wage, tax credits targeted at the poor, the Sure Start scheme offering free nursery education for poor children are just some of the impressive anti-poverty measures this government can boast. Much of the extra investment in schools and hospitals has been disproportionately targeted at the communities that need it most. Areas that sunk into mass unemployment during the Thatcher era are slowly but surely on the way up.

But we never hear anything about any of this. Its too easy to simply blame the media for deliberately accentuating the negative, as Alastair Campbell believes. For sure, the Tory press have no interest in talking about Labour successes and most mainstream journalists live in a world where nobody is poor enough to benefit from such policies and therefore tend to overlook them. But the truth is that Blair and his ministers have been too scared to admit the left-wing aspects of their actions. Years of trying to emulate the style of the Tories in order to poach their support and convince those swing voters that they have nothing in common with the desperately unpopular parties of Callaghan, Foot and Kinnock has meant that any hint of socialism has disappeared from the party’s image.

The result is bad for Labour in two ways. Firstly it has meant that the Right totally dominate British political discourse, delegitimising any left-wing activity even further. This can only benefit Labour’s opponents. Secondly, it leaves the government with no cheerleaders whatsoever. The Right can, without any evidence whatsoever, brand the government as a bunch of ultra-liberal (I know - I laughed too at the thought), politically correct, tax and spenders obsessed with extending the tentacles of the nanny state. And where the Left could normally rebut such ludicrous claims, they turn the other way – ashamed of a leader who makes friends with George W Bush and who appears to believe Thatcherism was a good idea.

Equally, the personality cult that surrounds Tony Blair and New Labour is extremely counter-productive. While the effects of politics are largely the result of collective human behaviour, events, historical trends and detailed policy, it is one of the great misconceptions of our time that politics is increasingly portrayed and regarded as the actions of a few powerful individuals. For the Left, whose raison d’etre is the belief that we are stronger as individuals when acting in unity, this is a disaster. Yet Blair has done more to entrench this nonsensical culture than anybody. When the government received a bad press over immigration, No 10’s response was that to state that Tony will be taking personal charge of this issue, as he has in the past over crime and anti-social behaviour. The idea that drunken yobs or highly organised people smuggling gangs will think again just because Blair is chairing a weekly meeting in Downing Street concerning their activities is too laughable for words.

The result of this is that everything the government does, good or bad, becomes personally associated with Tony Blair. So now, as the PM’s reputation takes a nosedive as his deception over the Iraq war unravels, nobody seems to be talking about anything else the government does. In another world, when the pub conversation turns to politics, people might be discussing the pros and cons of the substantial differences between the Labour and Tory parties on tax, wealth distribution, health, education, infrastructure and policing. Instead they are more likely to be discussing the Blair family’s much publicised holiday in the luxurious surroundings of Europe’s first post-WW2 fascist leader, Silvio Berlusconi.

There is one way out for the Labour Party. In Gordon Brown, they have the most successful Chancellor of modern times. Brown has been instrumental in designing the redistributive aspects of New Labour policy. He is a political figure of considerable authority, a serious man who cannot be portrayed as being either vain or a Tory. Opinion polls consistently show him to be a more popular figure than Blair and, in stark contrast, his party loves him. This government desperately needs a new beginning. Personally associated with providing economic stability and attacking poverty and its causes, Brown could easily relaunch the government arguing that the foundations had been laid for a truly radical 3rd term. In that scenario, Labour would be stone-cold certainties to win the next election. He might even develop a narrative that gives those of us on the Left a reason to believe in politics again. And Blair, rather than going down in history as the man who destroyed the party, can secure a place as the man who wrestled power away from the Conservatives and shifted the centre of British politics in a progressive direction.

Will The Tories Ever Learn?

Howard’s restatement of Thatcherism shows nothing has been learnt since 1997.

The honeymoon is well and truly over. If the Tories’ continued poor performance in the polls were not enough to give Michael Howard a headache, then their disastrous recent by-election results certainly will. The leader’s poor show in the debate concerning the Butler Report led to some personal criticism, but surely the roots of this are much deeper than one bad afternoon in the Commons. Up against a PM whose trust ratings are in freefall, is widely hated by both Left and Right and is regularly portrayed as a liar, it seems remarkable that the Tories are in no better shape than in 1997.

In the early days of the Blair government, Tory MPs, supporters and commentators could regularly be heard making optimistic noises about the party’s ability to bounce back. After 18 years, people had simply come to the conclusion that it was ‘time for a change’. Initially, it seemed there was a complacency that people would ‘see through’ Tony Blair and that people would return to the Tories in 2001 after their flirtation away from the natural party of government. I doubt many commentators on May 2nd 1997 would have predicted an almost identical result in 2001, let alone the present situation.

It seems as if Conservatives have been obsessed with the leadership question for an eternity, while rarely asking themselves the deeper questions concerning their malaise. Perhaps it is to be expected from a party that emphasises the action of individuals and seems adamant that ‘there is no such thing as society”. As New Labour strolled effortlessly towards their second victory, it was William Hague’s personality – in particular his alleged inability to communicate on television - that was blamed in Tory circles for the party’s inability to recover.

Following Hague’s resignation after the 2001 defeat, the party completely failed to show any improvement in the polls despite the government’s obvious unpopularity and again MPs decided all that was needed was another change at the top. The hapless IDS, another one supposedly plagued by a lack of charisma, was duly knifed in the back. Cue Michael Howard, everything Tories could want in a leader. Brilliant at the despatch box, media savvy and with impeccable Thatcherite credentials earned in his many years serving at the highest levels of government, here was an individual of sufficient authority to restore the party to its rightful place. From the early euphoria that greeted his anointment, parliamentary observers could be forgiven for thinking a return to government was imminent.

Yet as Howard approaches the end of his first year, the Conservatives have made no headway whatsoever. As New Labour and Blair in particular flounder in a sea of controversy over the war in Iraq and tuition fees, the Tories are in no better state in the polls than a year ago and have finished a very embarrassing third place in 2 recent by-elections, both notable for the collapse in the Labour vote. The question is will the party now finally move beyond the largely superficial issues of personality and concentrate on the real reason behind its collapse, Thatcherism.

Without question, personality matters. Without a leader who retains public credibility it is impossible for a party to transmit its message, its ideas and policy. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Thatcherism was the strength and extraordinary ability of that particular leader to force through radical and controversial policies that lesser individuals would have been unable to. But voting behaviour and political affiliation are far more complex than mere popularity contests. If popularity was everything, then why did Winston Churchill receive such a battering in 1945? The reality is that policy and its effects play a huge role, along with events and leadership qualities, in defining both government and opposition. Though the minute details may be of interest to only a small minority, policy can serve to give the party a ‘brand’ that the wider public can relate to.

In their despair and confusion, the one thing the current generation of Tories never seemed to have doubted, is the strength of their Thatcherite policies and rhetoric. Most of them cut their political teeth in the 1980s when Thatcher was winning landslides and seem to have developed an arrogant certainty about their views as a result. The reality is that the 1997 election result was primarily a case of the voters wanting to kick out a government that they saw as nasty, incompetent and corrupt. 18 years of Thatcherism had completely rebranded the Conservative Party from its traditional, one-nation predecessor and, by 1997, the brand had gone badly out of fashion.

Of course Blair and his rebranding of the Labour Party helped the cause but it is a very one-sided view of recent political history that overestimates its effect. The Blair thesis falls down on the fact that Labour’s dominance in the polls pre-dates his becoming leader. Few people doubt that John Smith would have become PM had he lived. Opinion polls show clearly that the Tories fell to earth on Black Wednesday and became entrenched during the rail privatisation and sleaze years. Their opponents successfully rebranded them as a corrupt, self-serving bunch keen on lecturing the public on moral standards that they were completely incapable of living up to. Hated policies like the poll tax had come to define the party in many Britons’ eyes. Whats more, years of party conference jibes against the poor (single mothers in particular) , gays and their lack of concern about the rise in homelessness, unemployment and poverty under Thatcher all now combined to rebrand the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ as even Theresa May later admitted.

More importantly the tried and trusted attacks on Labour no longer seemed relevant. How could a party that had presided over Black Wednesday, two recessions and over 3m unemployed lay a claim to economic competence? Equally, where Blair and his ‘New’ Labour allies were important to the Tory demise was in gradually removing the obstacles to voting Labour.

Its very tempting to read too much into election results. When a party wins, it doesn’t necessarily imply that the public agree with everything or even most of what it says and does.- as we see at present with a deeply unpopular government and leader continuing to dominate the polls. Likewise, because a party is thumped, it doesn’t necessarily mean the electorate would disagree with all of their ideas. Its more that certain deeply unpopular issues contrive to dominate that party’s image. To an extent, many people are voting for a party they feel ‘safe’ with, or even for the lesser of two evils.

During Labour’s long period of opposition, 3 factors in particular sent millions of voters into the arms of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Firstly, the record of the previous Callaghan Labour government, especially with its relationship to the trade unions and the Winter Of Discontent. This last event ingrained such a sense of gross incompetence into the party’s image that the Tories were still exploiting it in the 1992 campaign and even tried in vain in 1997 to resurrect the sceptre of the dead being left unburied. Secondly, there was Labour’s relationship with CND and the hard-Left. In the middle of the Cold War, with many sensing a genuine threat of nuclear war, Labour’s pacifism was a disastrous electoral strategy. And finally of course, there was the widespread unpopularity of its leaders, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

Yet even despite these massive electoral handicaps and the suicidal split in the anti-Tory vote between Labour and the Alliance, somehow Labour managed to build massive leads in between 1980s elections before eventually losing, such was the controversy surrounding many of Thatcher’s policies. In fact in-depth polls show Labour was perceived better on a range of issues throughout the 1980s. According to MORI, at no point since 1980 have the Tories been perceived to have better policies on employment. Indeed since the early 1990s, Labour have maintained a lead of at least 20% and up to 40%. On health the polls tell a similar story with Labour’s lead hardly ever dipping below double-digits and topping 50% on occasion. Though education was split more or less 50/50 in the 1980s, throughout the 1990s Labour have built up a similar massive lead. Reading the polls it is quite clear that the phenomenal success of Thatcher and Major owed much to their party’s favourable reputation for defence, economic competence and maintaining law and order. Even here the experience of 2 recessions and a doubling in crime led to the Tories’ ratings declining badly.

So when Labour approached the 1997 election with their usual big lead, they were determined to learn from past mistakes and subsequently New Labour was as far removed as possible from the Labour Party of 1983 that the CND-supporting Tony Blair had once been a member of. In the first instance it worked as voters gambled that Labour could be trusted on the economy and defence but it was in government that Labour managed to truly redraw voting lines. The way New Labour has governed has assured that nobody confuses it with its predecessor. Gordon Brown’s ‘prudent’ economic stewardship means Labour now has roughly a 20% lead over the Tories on economic competence (where it once trailed by 20) while surely there is no living soul that thinks Blair is a pacifist!

Yet, incredibly, the Tories seem to have learned nothing. Barring some half-baked gestures to show a more tolerant approach towards gays and ethnic minorities, the present policy agenda could have been written in 1979! Despite all the evidence pointing to the popularity of the NHS (or at least the concept), Howard is threatening to take money out of the NHS to give to consumers for use in the private sector. Just as Blair is in serious trouble with his own party for imposing quasi-Thatcherite health reforms, Howard comes up with an even more right-wing idea! Ditto schools where the same logic is used to give schools ‘freedom’, just as William Hague offered them in 2001. So far it has been easy for Labour and the Lib Dems to portray these measures as designed to favour the rich and run down public services for the poor. Whether fair or not, it serves to reinforce the Tories’‘nasty’ image.

The truth is most people are not particularly interested in who owns public services rather than the quality and consistency of service. When 94% of children are sent to state-owned schools, who exactly is the semi-privatisation of education aimed at? What seems certain is that these messages will make no headway whatsoever for the party in Scotland, Wales, the north of England and the major urban areas. 18 years of what Thatcher’s former minister Lord Gilmour has called “One-Nation in the South-East Conservatism” has reduced the party’s support to middle-class suburbia and the shires.

There’s also a huge lesson in all of this for New Labour. Their obsession with distancing itself from ‘Old’ Labour has dominated so much of its rhetoric and policy that it has alienated its own supporters and many of the moderates that brought it to power. As the 2 main parties flounder whilst revisiting the politics of the 1980s, the Lib Dems are consistently picking up support, almost by default. The British electorate has traditionally backed parties characterised for their competence and moderation. It is the main reason the 20th Century was dominated by One-Nation Conservatism and also why Blair chose to ape it. If the Conservative Party has any intention on repairing its public standing then it is time for the Tories to put Thatcherism to bed and finally begin to develop a coherent alternative to this deeply unpopular government.