[A-List] UK state: political realignment

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The British president ... and the laughing stock I

Labour: Blair's latest conference triumph has left him the most powerful
Labour Prime Minister ever, says Westminster Editor James Cusick
The Sunday Herald, 6 October 2002

Seven years ago, two years before he would become Prime Minister, Tony Blair
convinced the Labour Party, against their intuitive wishes, to dump the
long-standing commitment to public ownership. Still reeling with unease at
what they had just done to Clause Four, Blair shocked his audience into an
almost stunned silence when he said: 'And I want to say something about the
party's name.' As heads were held in hands, as hushed expletives were
uttered, Blair's tease was revealed. 'It's staying as it is.' The laughter
that followed was an explosion of relief.

Had the Labour leader threatened to change it last week in Blackpool -- and
meant it this time -- the party would not have stopped him. Tony Blair is
the Labour Party and his absolute power is now absolutely unchallenged.

Blair's leadership of his party is a contradiction: the Labour machine
professes collectivism and democratic inter-connectivity, but in reality now
exists under a presidential dictatorship with Blair the most omnipotent
leader in the party's post-war history.

'I don't particularly like it, but yes, this is a pretty fair account of
what the situation is at the moment,' said Mark Seddon, a member of the
party's National Executive Committee (NEC). It is supposed to be the
governing body of the party, guardian of their constitution, upholding the
values of members. Instead (according to one of its members) NEC currently
stands for Nothing Exactly Crucial.

In 1999, when the House of Commons was supposed to be debating how it would
reform the Lords, the focus of the discussion drifted to the office of the
Prime Minister. At that time when matters constitutional were in the air, so
too was the opinion of Tony Benn. Benn claimed he was currently drafting
some legislation of his own, calling it The Modernisation of the Premiership
Bill.

Benn wanted parliament to note his opinions on previous Labour prime
ministers and how the current occupant of Downing Street was enjoying a
greater level of power than his predecessors. 'Clem [Attlee] was very
collective in character ... he was the chairman of a committee but also very
decisive ... [Harold] Wilson was very much a committee man ... Jim
[Callaghan] was an old trade unionist who believed you ought to discuss ...
and now we have the president.'

If Blair has turned Downing Street into a UK equivalent of the White House
(complete with its own appointed and non-elected administration) he has also
been able to do the same redesign within his own party. As Anthony Seldon
points out in his analysis for the Institute of Contemporary History: 'Since
1997 the Labour leadership has certainly not neglected the party; the Blair
Effect has revo lutionised the party's structures, ideology and methods ...
there has been permanent revolution.'

But it's not as though Tony Blair has been sneaky about it. The Prime
Minister isn't a quiet revolutionary: he has told his party time and time
again that reform and revolution is what he wants, and what they will get if
they back him. He told them again last week in Blackpool. And got an
unexpected standing ovation (just before Bill Clinton was introduced) that
was louder and as unquestioning as anything heard by any Labour leader .

In 1997, just after Blair ended 18 continuous years of Tory rule, he
promised to deliver one of the great radical reforming governments of
history. Last week, two years into his second term in Downing Street, he
told his party that the job, the revolution, was far from complete. 'We are
at a crossroads: party, government, country.' Although the speech was
couched in the grammar and syntax of questions, Blair wasn't looking for
answers. He has already made up his mind what the answers are. That is the
function of a leader-dictator.

In his Blackpool speech, he asked: 'Do we take modest though important steps
of improvement?' This translates as: 'I have no intention of doing anything
involving modest steps.' A further was: 'Do we make the great push forward
for transformation?' This translates as: 'I'm about to change gear . '

One former NEC member at the conference, who found himself cheering Blair
'when even a week ago I thought I'd find myself trying to shout him down if
the opportunity arose', said Blair's growing omniscience meant his own
future and the party's seemed inextricably bound. 'He believes that, and now
so do the party. Look at the way he appeals to us, stating 'I believe we're
at our best when at our boldest'. He means he believes he is at his best
when at his boldest. And the Labour Party in 2002 have no reason to question
that. We are in the great hall of the Winter Gardens as the party of
government, with no opposition in sight, and not looking over our shoulder.'

For those still inside the Labour Party's ranks who can remember Blair
commenting in 1994 that 'it was time we gave the party some electric-shock
treatment,' the New Labour project will be regarded as only the first-stage
framework of Blair's revolution. And if there is now some unease after the
conference love-in that Blair's speech engendered, it is not surprising. His
speech was littered with logical fallacies, that on wide-awake analysis
would seem unworthy of mass adulation. 'Caution,' said Blair 'was often born
of common sense, a great British trait. But there are times when caution is
retreat and retreat is dangerous.' Was this Blair as Lord Kitchener urging
his troops to go 'over the top' in a glorious (though senseless) advance?

It doesn't matter. Blair's unquestioning omnipotence as leader of his party
means he will continue to ask questions without the need of waiting for an
answer. It also means that no tenet of faith of the Labour movement is
off-limits in the second stage of the revolution.

In 1995 in a speech to the Fabian Society for its 50th anniversary, Blair
said he was 'in this for the long haul ... and the time has come to fulfil
that destiny [as the party of the majority] in government'. Still in
opposition, Blair was merely a trainee messiah, a saviour-in-waiting. But
the religious analogies were beginning to mount.

Two general elections, two landslide victories and seven party conferences
later, Tony Blair felt confident enough to (as one delegate put it) not only
think the unthinkable, but to demand it.

Alongside the logical nonsense of phrases such as 'partnership is
statesmanship for the 21st century'; 'the radical decision is usually the
right one'; 'the right decision is usually the hardest one', Blair dismissed
the critical vote the day before his speech that was supposed to give the
leadership the message that the rank and file were unhappy over the growth
of PFI (privately financed projects inside the public sector). In place of
reassurance and understanding, was certainty of vision. Blair had the map,
and the blind would need to trust him on the next stage of their journey. He
told conference: 'Let me spell it out.' And he did.

Comprehensive education needed to become history, in its place 'new and
different ways of education built round the needs of the individual child'.
So was this spelling out the re-introduction of selection? No, said Alastair
Campbell in a post-speech briefing, it was just key content in another New
Labour speech.

Similarly the National Health Service, while retaining care on the basis of
need and not on ability to pay would, said Blair, nevertheless 'be
personalised and built around the individual patient'. Had this been an old
Tory leader's speech, the beaches of Blackpool, Brighton or Bournemouth
would have been invaded by Labour activists angry at the use of words of
mass destruction, and all intent on recapturing the occupied territory of
Aneurin Bevan.

Blair said: 'We need to change the system.' The translation, given Blair's
omnipotence, was: 'I am going to change the system.' In the wings of the
conference floors one delegate applauded so loudly that his hands must have
bled. Those by his side edged slightly out of range in case their eardrums
sustained clinical damage.

Dennis Healey, the former Labour chancellor, said he couldn't remember any
leader so popular since Attlee. Healey said: 'This kind of power is
different. Attlee was powerful, but he had no charisma. He was admired for
what he did.' For those jumping to rank Labour's post-war leaders, Healey
offered a warning. 'Ah, but Attlee's Labour Party was a different sort of
party. In fact it was a different sort of Britain. What links the two is
that the ideals, the values of the party, what it believes in, its
fundamentalism, that is the same. Creating opportunity, ending poverty that
hasn't changed. But of course the techniques have changed.'

Mark Seddon, one of the NEC's marginalised, nevertheless agreed with Healey
that not since 'Attlee in his pomp' had the party experienced anything like
Blair at the peak of his power.

And New Labour's new techniques? Seddon lined up with with Healey.
'Underneath it all it was a friendly conference. For once the leadership
relented, they let the brakes off, they let votes be counted, they were
defeated. And they let it be known that they won't change course. The
government will not be influenced in any way with what happened in
Blackpool.'

Another delegate, in a downbeat though pragmatic mood at the end of the
conference, said 'John Smith fought for OMOV, one member, one vote. We've
now ended up with OMIV: one member, ignored vote.'

'At our best when at our boldest' was the Blackpool message of Blair the
Omnipotent. But for Seddon and other worried activists , there will be some
association with the wisdom of an unlikely ally -- a former Conservative PM.
Asked what he feared most, Harold Macmillan recognised the potential of
unexpected trouble when he answered: 'Events dear boy, events.'

Tony Blair is still able to shelter under the umbrella of the United
Nations. But Seddon is convinced that Blair's 'unknown event' remains Iraq.
'Tony Blair cannot continue like this -- because underneath, it all still
bubbles away.'

Maybe. But techniques, as Healey pointed out, cover all. Techniques such as
'Conference, Clinton, Bill -- Arkansas CLP.'

The former US President is THE technique, and his appearance even made
shockwaves in the US, with the Bush adminstration lamenting the passing of
'the honourable tradition of only debating foreign policy issues at home'.

But Blair's Third Way is Clinton's way, as he reminded the Labour faithful.
And if Iraq is an 'event' waiting to happen, Blair's power will only have
been strengthened by the new improved endorsement from his friend. 'As a
citizen of the US and the world, I am glad that Tony Blair will be weighing
the risks and making the calls.' You just cannot buy that kind of armour in
politics.

-----

The British president ... and the laughing stock II

Conservative: Edwina Currie's attack on John Major has ruined any chance of
the Tory conference being taken seriously. Is this the end, asks Iain
Macwhirter
The Sunday Herald, 6 October 2002

Edwina Currie said she remained silent about her affair with John Major
until the Tory party had destroyed its existence. It's rather looking as if
her timing was just about right. This week's Conservative Party conference
looks like becoming a cross between a wake and a freak show.

There's already an air of morbidity about the Iain Duncan Smith leadership,
with the latest NOP poll in the Telegraph showing him trailing Charles
Kennedy in personal popularity. And the Currie revelations have brought a
legion of the Conservative undead from the 1990s back on to our screens.
David Mellor, Piers Merchant, Stephen Norris. What happened to them all? Now
we know.

This is, needless to say, a political disaster for the Tories. After 10
years of trailing Labour, there had been signs recently that times were
turning. The Tories have been crawling back to life in the opinion polls.
Labour's massive lead was being eroded by Tony Blair's apparently
unconditional support for George W Bush over Iraq. Spin, arrogance and, yes,
sleaze, were corroding Tony Blair's super-clean image and his command over
his party and the country. It looked as if the Tories had begun to turn the
corner. But now they are back to basics again. Back to those grim and grainy
images of the 1990s that the Conservatives had hoped they had left behind.

At the centre of it, the grey man himself, John Major, now with his pants
around his ankles rather than outside his shirt. Major was arguably the
worst Conservative Prime Minister in the party's history. He presided over
the 1990-91 recession, the ERM debacle, divisions over Europe, ministerial
sex scandals, and cash-for-questions sleaze. He clung desperately to office
until the bitter end in 1997 when Labour won a 179-seat landslide in the
worst Tory election defeat since 1906.

And now it turns out that, not only was Major a miserable party leader with
a charisma by-pass, he was also a liar and a hypocrite. He, or his aides,
preached a return to conventional morality while he was conducting a
clandestine affair with a junior minister.

Some have suggested that the Currie affair shows Major in a more human, even
manly light. Hardly. He is a huge liability to the party precisely because
he preached family values while committing adultery. A succession of
ministers were allowed to resign for extra-marital indiscretions while he
remained in office. That is the true scandal of the episode, not the affair
itself.

So, what do the Tories do now? Well it is difficult. They're already
attempting to switch the focus. Central Office has issued instructions to
front-bench speakers at Bourne mouth to stay away from such dangerous waters
as 'personal morality' and 'family values' and shadow chancellor Michael
Howard has been reported as saying that such topics are 'a matter for the
pulpit, not politicians'.

But their best bet this week might be to to line up for the conference some
of the great figures from the Conservative era -- Hurd, Heseltine, Rifkind,
Clarke and so on -- in order to try to remind people that the Tories haven't
always stood for sleaze, double- standards and bathos. Mind you, it's not
entirely clear that many would come to the party's aid in its present state.

Malcolm Rifkind, the former Tory foreign secretary, has been highly critical
of Duncan Smith's failure to ask the pertinent questions of Tony Blair
during the Iraq crisis. From the start, Rifkind has called for clear war
aims on Iraq, a casus belli, an exit strategy and commitment to
international law.

Kenneth Clarke has also been critical of Duncan Smith's performance,
claiming that support for Blair had left the Conservatives supporting a
foreign policy of being 'America's poodle', and attacking a party that
wasn't 'going badly, it's just not going'.

IDS has done little other than congratulate the PM for being tough. Of
course, he has raised issues at Question Time, but has done so in such an
ineffectual way that it makes little impact. You only needed to see how much
better the Tory benches responded to Tony Blair in the parliamentary debate
10 days ago than they did to their own leader.

Of course, gravitas is something that comes with experience, and Duncan
Smith hasn't been around long enough to acquire that essential but
indefinable quality 'bottom'. But he doesn't have much time left, either. We
are already entering the mid term of the second Labour administration and
there is no sign either that the Tories have come to terms with being an
opposition party, or that they have begun the essential task of developing a
credible alternative programme to new Labour.

Duncan Smith has junked some of the worst of old Conservatism. They are now
the party of public services rather than tax cuts -- though a number of
Conservative MPs don't seem to have noticed. IDS ditched opposition to the
minimum wage and dropped the daft commitment to cut taxes as a proportion of
GDP. The idea of giving parents and patients vouchers for private education
and healthcare has been abandoned (though who knows, Labour may pick it up).

On the personal morality front, the Tories no longer support unconditionally
the retention of the homophobic Clause 28 and openly gay MPs like Alan
Duncan can now sit on the Tory benches . There is now a woman party
chairman. The far right Monday club has been banned. The Tory leader now
insists there IS such a thing as society and he has penned a collection of
essays on social responsibility and the need for a 'one nation' approach. He
famously visited the Easterhouse council estate in February -- though he
seemed to be given what locals call 'the bum's rush'.

While adopting the emollient tones of compassionate Conservatism, IDS has
also toned down the virulent anti-Europeanism that so tainted the party's
image in the 1990s. The days of the Maastricht rebels are over -- though it
shouldn't be forgotten that IDS was one himself. The die hard euro-sceptic
MPs John Major described as 'bastards' -- Teresa Gorman, Teddy Taylor, Bill
Cash -- are mostly back in their box, though no doubt a few will be exhumed
this week as part of the 1990s revivalism.

As no doubt will the former Conservative director of strategy, Dominic
Cummings, who was sacked for remarking in June that 'the only thing less
popular than the euro is the Tory party.' The removal of the policy adviser
dubbed the 'spotty youth' by the former party chairman Norman Tebbit, was a
strike back by the fundamentalists against modernising leadership.

Since then, traditionalists like former Chancellor Norman Lamont and former
leadership challenger John Redwood have been arguing that the Tory Party has
to be the party of tax cuts or be the party of nothing. It isn't quite that
desperate. The Tories do still have one distinctive policy: they support the
unconditional sovereignty of Gibraltar. But there are precious few votes to
be gained from the Rock and domestically it only serves to revive the image
of the Tories as the faded party of Empire.

Of course, one important reason that the Tory policy cupboard is bare is
that Tony Blair has swiped most of the family silver. The Prime Minister's
public service reforms -- based on choice, diversity, consumer rather than
producer interest in the health service -- is pure Thatcherism from the
1980s. The idea of breaking up the one-size-fits-all education system is
also a Tory idea.

Conservatives feel understandably aggrieved that Tony Blair has adopted
their reforms without the Tories getting any of the credit. But the fact is
that the Tories had every opportunity to present themselves as the
modernising and reforming party when Labour got into difficulties over
waiting lists and beds -- but they missed the chance to articulate an
alternative . The Tories simply don't know where they stand , and it shows.

Will Iain Duncan Smith be dumped? Not immediately, but I suspect the subtext
to this week's conference will be the search for the successor. There's not
a lot to choose from. Michael Portillo, the former Tory hope, seems not to
have recovered from the disgraceful treatment he received from his
back-biting colleagues during the leadership contest two years ago. He seems
more interested now in the arts than politics. Clarke , who also stood last
time, can never be ruled out, but he is looking very much yesterday's man.
And that's about it. Oliver Letwin, David Willets, David Davis, Francis
Maude et al really aren't up to the challenge, and Michael Howard would be
unthinkable.

So, bereft of leadership, moral credibility and intellectual purpose, could
this be the end for the Tory party? For 150 years it was the most successful
democratic party in Europe. It dominated the 20th century, the epoch of
world wars and ideologies. Now, perhaps, people are looking for other
qualities in an opposition than nationalism, capitalism and traditional
morality. Could the Liberal Democrats replace the m as opposition?

Well, anything is possible. But it seems most unlikely that Charles Kennedy
will be able to achieve his dream in the short-to-medium term. The Tories
still represent a bedrock of around 25% of the population who read the Daily
Mail, hate modernity in education and manners and fear the power of
organised labour. The recent revival of trades union militancy may make some
turn to the Tories. The government's rediscovery of taxation and Tony
Blair's talk of redistribution, has scared sections of middle England.

Finally, there are the Liberal Democrats themselves. Will middle England
Tories really turn to the party that wants to decriminalise cannabis and
which debates pornography at its conference? While the LibDems have often
received protest votes in Tory constituencies, it is another thing entirely
supporting them as an alternative government.

So the Tory story isn't over yet. There is too much history around for the
party to disappear. However, there's no law that says the Conservatives, who
have been flatlining now for nearly a decade, will recover in time to win
the next election. Or the one after that. Or even the one after that. In
politics there is no guarantee of a happy ending.