[A-List] UK state: political realignment

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

Here's New Labour insider and SDP-founder member Hugo Young trying to act as
a midwife to the political realignment once actively sought by Blair and
Paddy Ashdown as regards the complete exclusion of the Conservative Party.
That doesn't look like such a high priority for Blair now, something that
obviously exercises those with more strategic priorities like Young, who
represents those who wish to focus on Britain's EU orientation in preference
to the transatlantic "special relationship".


The Lib Dems must leave small-time politics behind

Charles Kennedy has never said anything memorable. He has to start now

Hugo Young
Thursday November 28, 2002
The Guardian

Yesterday we learned more about this government's deep fallibility. The
messages were both particular and general, and they were devastating. It
turns out that after five years of sweated effort and triple-decked priority
for education, 200,000 seven-year-olds still cannot read. So much for the
flagship of the Blairite project. More gravely, Chancellor Brown puts us on
notice that he misjudged the tide on which the fleet is sailing. His
economic forecast, as many experts warned at the time of the Budget, was
false. So he came to the Commons yesterday to make the direst statement of
his time at the Treasury, a catalogue of disclaimers and blame dispersal
that finally takes the shine off a reputation for prudence, truth and higher
wisdom.

Now there is nothing unique about this record. All chancellors are found at
some time to fail, and Gordon Brown fended off that verdict longer than
most. Turning round the public services is a colossal task, destined never
to be completed.

What is unique is the political environment in which this failure is now
happening. It is one of virtual impunity. Maybe the pre-Budget statement
will at last exact a price among voters, half of whom, according to this
week's YouGov poll, call themselves depressed about the state of the country
and pessimistic about it ever getting better. But so far, as the gloom has b
uilt, a steady 42% still say they would vote Labour. There could hardly be
more telling evidence of political void and anomie than a popular opinion
which says that things are terrible but nothing can be done about it. It
shrieks a challenge to other parties that they are simply failing to rise
to.

The Conservatives, in this respect, are not worth considering. One can say
solemnly and without hyperbole that their most likely fate is continuing,
going-on-terminal decline as a national party. Which puts focus and pressure
on the Liberal Democrats, of a kind they seem reluctant to accept. Alongside
the question of whether the Blair government can yet construct a record to
be proud of, I venture that the biggest question in politics is whether the
Lib Dems are capable of rising to a task that pleads to be done: the
building of a political force imbued with the principles Blairism lacks, the
critical mass to make opposition count, and the credibility to speak for the
country.

The challenge is made more acute by the fact that they are doing well. Their
poll ratings, around 20%-22%, are higher and steadier than they have ever
been at this early stage in a parliament. They win local government
byelections. They'll gain more local power at the mid-term elections next
year. They have 53 MPs, and can probably look forward to accumulating quite
a few more in 2005, mainly at the expense of Conservatives. A careful,
rather precious, studiously unprominent party will continue its advance from
the sidelines towards... towards what?

At their conference, they took what they saw as a bold decision, declaring
an aim to overtake the Tories, in votes if not seats. The structure of our
politics made this a prudent ambition: it will be some time before they can
hope to wipe out the 3-1 advantage in seats the voting system gives the
Tories. The important question, though, is not electoral but political. How
can the Lib Dems raise their game to become a national force? Just as
important, do they really want to?

Charles Kennedy, their leader, sounds ambivalent. Minimalism has carried him
a long way. The seats keep slowly rolling in, on the back of campaigns that
are often not centrally political. In particular Kennedy values his image as
a non-political, even anti-political, politician. He thinks this speaks to
the spirit of times that mistrusts all politics and rejects the routine
slagging off of opponents, which passes for the default style of Labour and
Conservatives. One cannot say that he's absolutely mistaken. Nice,
unthreatening guys may give comfort to an era when allegiance is low,
politicians are mistrusted, and convictions drown in a sea of incredulous
agnosticism.

But that's a goal for what are essentially small-time politics, which is
where the Lib Dems have hitherto been at. Now, it has the makings of a very
large missed opportunity. For if the Lib Dems don't start thinking and
talking big, who will rescue us from a one-party orthodoxy that pushes the
country towards boredom and despair in equal measure? We may be cynical
about individual leaders. Blair is losing trust and confidence. As for IDS,
Kennedy rates well ahead of him. But leadership still matters, and the
thirst for it is hardly satisfied by a Lib Dem leader who has managed to
spend 20 years in the Commons and three years in his present job without
saying a single thing that anyone could remember.

Actually, Lib Dems unite around some clear positions, which the unscrambling
of the ideological divide makes harder to cage within left-right
definitions. The tired old issue of whether they're more Tory than Labour is
liquidated by the conservatism of Labour and the pragmatism that is now the
defining force in political decisions across the spectrum. One commitment
that becomes especially relevant, for example, is the Lib Dem interest in
serious regional devolution which, as Labour's health and education projects
falter, could get real purchase on the public mind as the only way to go.

On other issues also Kennedy could touch a contemporary nerve, if he was
brave enough to make more noise. There is a lot of discontent with the
overweening state, whether of the police or nanny variety. The Lib Dem
interest in civil liberties, a philosophy that unites them more tightly than
any other, addresses that popular sentiment. The perception that they have
important convictions about the biggest problems affecting Britain, from
Europe to university tuition fees, will not make them universally popular.
But it's the stuff of credibility for a force no longer content to lurk at
the edges of a state that stands in profound need of political revival.

Charles Kennedy, in short, needs to find a way of speaking for Britain. The
issue on which he gets closest is Iraq, where he and Menzies Campbell have
articulated more thoughtfully than any other politicians an intense national
anxiety about American unilateralism. If Blair gets dragged into a war
without the UN's blessing, perhaps Kennedy will find his moment. It is not
incredible, with Blair and IDS equally in balk to George Bush, to foresee a
misjudged Iraq war as the making of the Lib Dems.

But first they need to want that to happen. They have to measure their
responsibility on a large scale. The system badly needs them. Their leader
should have things to say about current issues that are memorable, edgy,
clear and sometimes big. He needs to make enemies as well as friends,
because that is what important leaders do. Colleagues think he's beginning
to understand this better. His problem is not an absence of philosophy, but
a reluctance to rise to the huge opportunity before him. The chancellor's
dismal statement is only the latest proof that the hour is at hand.