The Liberal Democrats and the Blair project
Ending the role of the Labour Party as the political voice
of the trade unions was one strand of the ‘Blair project’ to re-shape
British politics. But of what the related aim, to end the ‘old class-based
divisions’ between the Liberals and the Labour Party? ALISTAIR TICE looks at
the state of the Liberal Democrats.
CHARLES KENNEDY WAS elected leader of the Liberal Democrats,
replacing Paddy Ashdown, in August 1999. With an image as a popular and jovial
lightweight, keen on the good life and appearing on TV quiz shows but not taking
politics too seriously, he was dubbed ‘Inaction Man’. For most of the last
three years he’s done little to dispel that taunt, being hardly visible except
as Blair’s poodle in parliament.
Is this all about to change? Kennedy was a guest speaker at
the TUC conference, the first time a non-Labour party political leader has
addressed it. And at their own party conference, the Lib-Dems decided on a new
policy shift to woo Tory voters. Does this signal the end of the Lib/Lab
project? Can the Lib-Dems replace the Conservatives as the second party and main
opposition to New Labour?
The rise of the working-class based Labour Party in the
early 1900s led to the decline of the Liberals and their demise as one of the
original two main capitalist parties. In the post second world war period, the
Liberals have remained the ‘third party’, occasionally scoring spectacular
parliamentary by-election victories or making sweeping council election gains,
acting as a safe repository of protest votes against incumbent Tory and Labour
governments. Because they have not been in office, the Liberals have enjoyed the
luxury of opposition and so appeared untarnished by the sleaze and corruption
associated with the other two main parties. Their claims not to be in the
pockets of big business or the trade unions also adds to the perception of ‘independence’
from vested interests.
Since Labour’s 1990s conversion into an openly capitalist
party, the Lib-Dems have been seen by many as more radical or even left-wing. In
a Guardian/ICM opinion poll in January, 22% saw the Lib-Dems as a left-wing
party, compared with only 30% who still saw Labour as left of centre. Even
George Monbiot, one of the leading spokespersons of the anti-capitalist
movement, has reflected these illusions. Arguing correctly that the trade unions
should stop funding New Labour, he wrote, "it doesn’t really matter which
of Britain’s small progressive parties – the Greens, the Socialist Alliance,
the SNP, Plaid Cymru, even the Liberal Democrats – they [the trade unions]
choose to support instead. What counts is that there is an effective radical
opposition". (The Guardian, 19 February)
To socialists it really does matter. Instead of giving
credence to the idea that the Lib-Dems are progressive or radical (let alone
giving them workers’ money!), we have to be clear that they are another
capitalist party that are opposed to the interests of the working-class.
The Lib-Dems in power
THIS ARGUMENT HAS become easier to prove in recent years as
the Lib-Dems have taken control of more local councils, especially in the big
northern cities of Liverpool and Sheffield.
In Liverpool from 1980-83, the Liberal-dominated coalition
with the Tories was one of the first in the country to plan privatisation of
local services. Strikes and the victory of the Militant-led district Labour
Party in 1983 stopped the privatisation and redundancies, and began a four-year
struggle of Liverpool city council to create jobs and build homes against the
opposition of the Thatcher government (Militant was the forerunner of the
Socialist Party). The hated Tories were wiped out in Liverpool so the Liberals
became the right-wing anti-Militant party. But the city council had mass support
for its policies and could not be defeated electorally. It took a combination of
back-stabbing by Neil Kinnock, the then Labour Party leader, and the Tory
courts, to remove ‘the 47’ socialist councillors.
Whilst a second team of Labour councillors were re-elected,
Kinnock’s purge ensured the council was increasingly right-wing Labour.
Disillusionment with the policies pursued by Labour’s right-wing led to the
Liberals becoming the largest party in the 1990s and taking overall control in
1998. In power again the Lib-Dems have carried out mass privatisation of council
housing and services. In a £300 million deal with Jarvis (of Potters Bar rail
disaster infamy) to build and manage schools and ancillary services, the Lib-Dem
council boasts the biggest public private partnership in the country. In fact
they claim to have run out of local services to privatise so are offering their
‘expertise’ to other local authorities!
In Sheffield, after 75 years of Labour rule, the Lib-Dems
took over the council in 1999. Beginning in the early 1990s with Focus pavement
politics in the middle-class areas, the Lib-Dems moved on to consciously exploit
working-class disillusionment with years of Labour council cuts and
redundancies. They voted against Labour cuts and the privatisation of housing
benefit services, and portrayed themselves as a ‘radical working-class
alternative’ (in the words of Peter Moore, former Sheffield Lib-Dem leader).
But once in power they went ‘privatisation mad’. Sports,
leisure, elderly peoples homes, refuse and incineration were all sold off and
over 60,000 council houses were to be privatised. Consequently, they were kicked
out after only three years in office. It is quite ironic that Sheffield Labour
had to run a ‘Sheffield Not For sale’ campaign in the 2000 elections to
oppose the Lib-Dems who were energetically carrying out Labour government
policies!
This brief Liberal experience in Sheffield shows that
without any ideological alternative, even when the Lib-Dems pose to the left of
New Labour, they end up carrying out the same policies. It also shows how
opportunist their councillors and MPs are as well when it comes to getting their
noses near the trough.
Whilst nationally the Lib-Dems can still largely avoid that
stigma, it is significant that in this year’s local elections in May, overall
the Lib-Dems got their highest share of the poll for nine years but their vote
fell by 5.5% in the councils they control.
‘The Full Monty’
CHARLES KENNEDY WAS elected Lib-Dem leader committed to
continuing Paddy Ashdown’s policy of co-operating with Labour (‘constructive
opposition’ they liked to call it). Ashdown had abandoned his previous policy
of ‘equidistance’ between the two main parties in May 1995 by ruling out any
post-election deal or support for the Tories. This was due to the collapse in
support for the crisis- and sleaze-ridden John Major government, and the
election of Tony Blair as Labour Party leader in July 1994, after the death of
John Smith.
There had already been Lib/Lab co-operation in a number of
shire county councils after the 1993 elections. But it was Blair’s election as
Labour leader and the acceleration of the process of transforming New Labour
into an openly capitalist party under the guise of the so-called Third Way, that
persuaded Ashdown. Not only did Ashdown feel ideologically close to the
Blairites but he could also see the prospect of proportional representation (a
long-held Liberal policy that would electorally favour them) and a way of
getting into power.
The central idea of Blair’s Third Way is to re-establish
the Liberal/Labour coalition which preceded the formation of the Labour Party.
Having long since rejected socialism and the working-class base of the Labour
Party, Blair declared, "the ideological differences between me and many of
the Liberal Democrats are pretty small". As Philip Gould, his favourite
advisor and pollster, wrote in his book, The Unfinished Revolution, "the
better course would be for liberalism and labourism to unite".
Whilst Ashdown faced opposition from Lib-Dems in northern
cities who were attacking Labour-run town halls, he was urged on to closer links
by the ‘Gang of Four’ (Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, Bill Rogers and David
Owen), the original leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a right-wing
split off from the Labour Party in 1981 which later merged with the Liberals to
form the Liberal-Democrats in 1988.
The first formal arrangement came in October 1996 when joint
talks on constitutional reform were agreed. But more secret talks were held,
some of which were later revealed by Ashdown in his Diaries published after he
resigned as party leader. According to him, even after Labour won a landslide
election victory in June 1997, Blair offered to replace two of his cabinet
ministers with Lib-Dems to form a coalition. Ashdown kept records of this
Downing Street meeting in a code which apparently referred to Blair as OMF (Our
Mutual Friend) and the coalition plan as TFM (The Full Monty).
Blair, who had kept his own cabinet in the dark about his
plans, eventually backed away from the deal because of his fears of a cabinet
split. In any case a coalition was unnecessary from Blair’s point of view. He
had a huge majority – much better to keep the Lib-Dems as a reserve weapon for
later: "to overcome short-run unpopularity and to govern in the national
interest" to ensure a further term of office, as argued by Peter Mandelson
and Roger Liddle in their book, The Blair Revolution.
Instead, Ashdown and other senior Lib-Dems were invited to
join a cabinet committee on constitutional affairs, dubbed ‘Paddy’s Pact’,
whose remit was later extended to cover welfare reform, education, health and
the single European currency. Also the Jenkins Commission on Electoral Reform
was established which in October 1998 proposed the alternative vote top-up
system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections – a method
particularly recommended by the Gang of Four member, Roy Jenkins, because it ‘strengthened
the centre ground’. Blair and Ashdown declared their intention of ending the
‘destructive tribalism’ of British politics.
But in December 1998 Peter Mandelson, the chief architect of
the Third Way project, was forced to resign from the cabinet as details leaked
out of his ‘unorthodox’ financial dealings with the businessman and former
cabinet colleague, Geoffrey Robinson. This effectively put on hold further moves
towards coalition as critics in both parties increased their opposition.
In turn this led to Ashdown’s resignation as party leader,
announced in January 1999, to take effect after elections in the summer. Ashdown
had grown frustrated by the increasing opposition in his own party to his pro-Labour
policy, and at the same time the slow progress towards implementing proportional
representation which Blair wouldn’t commit to for the next general election.
In addition, he had not been rewarded with the cabinet post he had been promised
by Blair in their secret dealings.
Ironically, as Ashdown resigned, the Lib-Dems signed up for
a coalition with Labour in Scotland after the Scottish parliament elections of
May 1999 gave Labour most seats but not overall control. The idea of such a
coalition had apparently been discussed as far back as 1995 at a meeting held in
West Hampstead, "lubricated by some of Lord Irvine’s excellent
claret" according to Peter Mandelson’s biographer. Later a similar
coalition was arranged in the Welsh assembly. In both cases, the Lib-Dems’
policies went out of the window to get into power.
Policy shifts
CHARLES KENNEDY NARROWLY defeated Simon Hughes, MP for
Bermondsey, for the party leadership in August 1999 by 28,425 votes to 21,833.
Hughes opposed closer co-operation with Labour and his 45% of the vote showed
how much opposition to Ashdown’s policy had built up amongst Lib-Dem members.
Many had come to regard New Labour as too right-wing and ‘illiberal’,
especially on traditional Liberal issues such as civil liberties, human rights,
the environment and education.
Kennedy rejected demands to move to the left of Labour with
more redistributionist policies, claiming that such ‘tax and spend’ had made
Labour un-electable in the 1980s. He continued ‘constructive opposition’ but
without any new initiatives. In fact, as a political commentator wrote in The
Independent newspaper, Kennedy was an opposition leader campaigning for the
re-election of the government!
The June 2001 general election produced a re-run of the 1997
result with the Lib-Dems netting six more MPs with 18.3% share of the vote.
Their 52 MPs (53 since last December’s defection of the Labour MP Paul Marsden
in opposition to Blair’s war on Afghanistan) is the highest number since 1929.
Most of them, however, are in traditional Tory areas. Seventeen of their 19 most
vulnerable seats would be lost on a 5% swing to the Tories and 30 of their
target seats are held by Tory MPs.
This electoral arithmetic has led to another shift in
Lib-Dem positioning and policies. Having already rejected any move to the left
of Labour, Kennedy and his supporters, led by the ‘Liberal Future’
organisation, are pushing a strategy of wooing Tory voters in marginal
constituencies, with the aim of overtaking the Conservatives as the second
party. A year ago, Kennedy suspended the joint cabinet committee after four
years of co-operation with Labour and declared his intention of making the Lib-Dems
the ‘effective opposition’.
Since then, there has been an internal debate around a
policy review which was to culminate at this autumn’s conference. The thrust
of this is away from higher taxes, and towards more acceptance of the market and
private sector involvement in public services, under the guise of consumer
choice and de-centralisation. So the ‘penny on tax for education’ is to be
dropped. In fact Treasury spokesman Matthew Taylor has suggested "education
could be funded locally to give greater powers to local communities. Why not
link education authorities to their funding directly, replacing part of national
income tax with a local income tax? This would set free local communities to
prioritise local education". Superficially this sounds attractive but he
then adds, "Money is not a solution in itself. Rather it is necessary to
pay for the changes we want to make. High quality public services require
investment, but they also require innovation – the right amount of money used
in the smartest possible way". Very New Labour!
Similarly attacking the ‘Stalinist NHS’ as "one of
the few remaining experiments in centralised socialist planning", one
consultation document proposes devolvement of power to NHS regional executives,
welcomes Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) for "bringing more private
sector management know-how into public service provision", and emphasises
"consumer choice and variety for provision competition in standards".
It says there is huge potential for ‘not-for-profit providers’ to take over
schools and hospitals, suggesting housing associations as a model. These trusts
could break up national pay structures and have more commercial freedom. Again
this is going down a road New Labour is already travelling. Labour’s health
secretary Alan Milburn has already planned ‘Third Way’ foundation hospitals
which will have freedom to borrow, sell assets and increase private patients.
The Lib-Dem’s decentralisation policies would also lead to the break-up and
privatisation of public services.
This shift to the right has been opposed by some, notably
Evan Harris MP, the Lib-Dem health spokesman who wrote a Guardian article (11
March) titled ‘Let’s be left wing and proud of it’. He asks, "is it
really sensible to position ourselves between a rightward moving Labour Party
and a Conservative Party on the extreme?" To try to woo Tory voters, that
is exactly what the Lib-Dems will do.
Will this new strategy be successful? Can the Lib-Dems
replace the Tories as the second party? The Tories have still not recovered from
their 1997 election defeat, have another ineffective leader, and support the
very policies of privatisation and war that are making New Labour so unpopular.
Yet they retain a core vote, still polling over eight million votes in the 2001
general election, nearly twice as many as the Lib-Dems. Despite themselves,
there could still be a Tory revival on the back of a deep economic crisis,
accompanied by racist anti-asylum seeker and nationalist anti-euro policies.
Whilst for now formally breaking their Labour links, the
Lib-Dems are in practice about to embrace New Labour policies even more, which
has already lost them support in traditional Labour strongholds such as
Sheffield. Consequently their rightward shift offers little to attract
disillusioned Labour supporters, whilst their superficial radicalism on ‘liberal’
issues is still enough to repel most of the core Tory voters. That’s not to
say that the Lib-Dems won’t have any spectacular by-election victories,
especially as a protest against the Blair government, but overtaking the Tories
still seems unlikely in the next period, unless the Tories themselves split.
So could the Liberal/Labour rapprochement strand of the ‘Blair
project’ be resurrected? In the course of the last eight years the Lib-Dems
have gone from ‘equidistance’ to Lib/Lab links and now to the right to woo
Tory voters. These policy shifts have nothing to do with ideology or principles,
but everything to do with trying to get into power in town halls and parliament.
Ideologically there’s little difference between the Lib-Dems
and New Labour. Increasingly the Lib-Dems are adopting New Labour policies. Last
year Paddy Ashdown said of co-operation with Labour, "the chapter is closed
but the book isn’t". Significantly, he acknowledged that a coalition will
happen only "when Labour needs it". He foresaw the Lib-Dems being
called on either when Labour was about to lose office, or in a hung parliament.
Ashdown is right. New Labour, with their huge parliamentary majorities, haven’t
needed the Lib-Dems, yet.
The growing disillusionment with New Labour could, however,
turn into plummeting poll ratings against a backdrop of recession and war. Some
‘left’ MPs could split away. The Tories could begin to revive. Then the Lib-Dems
could be called on. Not without opposition in their own ranks, but probably not
enough to stop the allure of power. Paddy may still see his pact. Who knows, he
may even get his cabinet seat!
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