And you thought it was Guardian articles that get forwarded to PEN-L?! Previous posts under this heading have speculated on precisely the subject of yesterday's lengthy disquisition by Hugo Young, who is the Guardian's chief political analyst and board member of the Scott Trust, the independent body that governs Guardian Media Group. Mark Jones' comments re the Guardian's historical role in British politics and its rendering of services to the UK's permanent government (e.g. dishing Old Labour from the left during the late 70s/early 80s, shopping Sarah Tisdall when she leaked news of NATO's/US's decision to site Cruise missiles at Greenham Common, largely uncritical support of New Labour, together with a very interesting forerunner of Mr Tony's project from the pen of former editor Alistair Hetherington, to be forwarded later), very much apply here. In other words, we are seeing the nurturance of the Liberal Democrats as the official opposition-to-be, and the continued sidelining of the punk Thatcherite Conservatives, while New Labour becomes/already is the natural party of the permanent government. Yesterday's newspapers reported how, at the current LibDem conference, one of its leading lights, Mark Oaten, had opened up a split within the party over the private finance initiative, suggesting that it was in fact a necessary financing mechanism that should not be opposed so dogmatically. This is a sure sign that the party is smelling the scent of power and influence, just as the Scottish National Party's timely querying of its anti-NATO stance is a sure sign that it is trying to neutralise powerful obstacles to its path to power (leading to questions of: did Salmond fall, or was he pushed?). While the LibDems remain officially very critical of PFI/PPP, watch out for more "reasoned" accommodations to the new orthodoxy.
Lib Dems can be the opposition Labour conservatism and Tory irrelevance has opened up a gap Hugo Young Tuesday September 25, 2001 The Guardian On the world crisis, Liberal Democrats speak for just about everyone. They're at the perfect centre of British opinion. They're appalled by what happened, yield to no one over terrorism, want it rooted out, support a British military response. They worry about the causes of terrorist rage, refuse to demonise Islam, demand a focused response, want it to be proportionate (whatever that means), support British values, want civil liberties protected, favour international law, insist risk must be minimised, and hope that terrorists (whoever they might be) are eliminated while not a glove is laid on a single innocent Afghan. They occupied the heights of sober responsibility yesterday. It will be the same, for the most part, at other party conferences that decide to face down the charge of bathetic irrelevance by meeting in the next three weeks. What the Lib Dems say, most of us say; but the same goes for what they do not want to say or think about. We'd all like the crisis to be over without a mess. We may not be so sure where we'll stand when the action shatters these neat ambitions. The Lib Dems certainly aren't. There was a certain unctuous banality about what they said. What happens when the first misdirected missile lands on a Kabul market, or the Pentagon hawks get to attack Iraq, or ID cards are hustled through parliament in an emergency hour, were questions not covered by the motion. Nor are many of us, I guess, sure what we would think. There've been years when this party might have made different noises. A fringe of pacifist rejection would have been heard in the hall. But they're very aware of their new status as a plausible leader of the opposition to Labour, which is not a ludicrous perception. They may not yet have enough seats to claim sole possession of the dispatch box, but the prospects are good whichever way they look. After a wasted summer, when they idly failed to build on the profile and progress they showed in June, they have an opportunity to change the shape of politics in, say, the election after next. The other parties are doing quite a bit to help. The Tories did them a favour by electing Iain Duncan Smith. Duncan Smith has done them another by choosing a shadow cabinet that nobody to the left of him has any time for. This is the lamest, most talentless, most politically unappealing alternative government since records began. But the personnel, rebarbative though they are, are not the point. W hat Conservatism is losing is any unique raison d' tre, any credibility in the world beyond the ever-narrowing party. When Gavyn Davies became chairman of the BBC, the feeble cry went up that here was another Labour man in a top job. More revealing was the absence from the short list of anyone known to be a Conservative. The Nolan process was duly gone through, and no Tory banker appeared to challenge the Labour banker. The possibility gapes before us that hardly anyone of stature outside politics is these days a confessional Conservative. The only prominent Tory party funders are single-issue Europhobes. Most businessmen who appear above the Tory parapet are driven by the same obsession. As a distinctive philosophy needing its own party, in other words, Conservatism may almost have ceased to be. As a distinctive party, entitled to its customary recognition as Britain's alternative government, the Tories must be perilously close to the end. A Labour catastrophe might save them. But only proportional representation, which they oppose with suicidal passion, gives them a solid chance of a permanent role. More than one Conservative professional has recently offered me the judgment that, if they suffer a third heavy electoral defeat, the party will break up. A gap is therefore appearing for an opposition party. But it seems to lie on the centre right. Can the Lib Dems locate themselves there? I don't think that needs to be the question. Bits of Lib Dem policy-groping could be said to be leading that way. The party's review of public services is being encouraged to flirt with user payments for health and education. In the larger frame it doesn't mean much. Whatever opportunism they use in local areas to get elected, the Lib Dems are at core a party of the centre left, and always will be. That needn't disqualify them from becoming the major party of opposition. Along with Labour's sweeping-in of the business vote, now forced to see the Tories as a cranky sect, go obvious signals of a party that will defend its own decade-deep version of conservatism. Labour stands for a capacious orthodoxy, the new normality. It has become, among other things, the party of business. It may have done some leftish things the Tories would never have contemplated: the minimum wage, Scottish devolution, welfare-to-work, the Human Rights Act. But these are over and done. Labour's radical years seem to be behind it. It's hard to think of any future Labour programme we've heard about that would offend mainstream conservative, as distinct from euro-driven sectarian Conservative, opinion. Political categories have become very fluid. Especially on the Labour and Liberal left, the familiar labels are dismissed as old hat. For the convenience of the great grey greasy centre, the grammar that made politics intelligible is being rewritten. There is no right and there is no left, say Charles Kennedy and Tony Blair. If this is so, it makes the centre-right v centre-left dilemma of rival Lib Dem strategists more academic than real. And to an extent, it really is so. Modern political leadership is less about weight of argument than lightness of feel, of which Mr Kennedy's own success is the persuasive recent example. At the June election, political allegiance had less to do with social class than it ever has before. The exit polls showed this clearly. The classic ingredient of the left-right divide is fading fast. But the categories haven't vanished, and current trends make it possible to believe in an official opposition of the centre-left. Labour takes a conservative position on most of the central questions. It presides over a public sector it has not been able radically to improve. It is anti-liberal on civil liberties. Its leadership clutches every fragment of power to itself, downgrading the normal institutions of democracy such as the cabinet and parliament. Whatever one thinks about these priorities, no one can deny they're the traits of a government that needs opposition from a party that disagrees with them, on behalf of an electorate that will become increasingly disenchanted. The Lib Dems have the credentials to make this analysis work. For the first time, their conference is not whingeing on the sidelines. They move, as Jo Grimond told them, towards the sound of gunfire. But first we must see what kind of war they have. Full article at: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/libdemconference2001/comment/0,1226,55766 8,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
