28.01.1999
Blair runs aground
It has become a commonplace to say that “all political careers end in failure”. Whatever we think of the dictum, it certainly applies to Paddy Ashdown. In deciding to abandon ship, the ‘captain’ has not only plunged his own party into a damaging six months of fratricidal turmoil; he has also dealt a significant, perhaps even a decisive, blow to Tony Blair’s project of creating a single, ‘centre-left’ for British politics in the 21st century.
Neither the vain boast in Ashdown’s valedictory letter to Liberal Democrat MPs that the tasks he had set himself to achieve were now nearing completion; nor the prospect of a big job and a fat salary in some European post; nor the predictable plaudits of a liberal press mysteriously caught unawares by events; nor even Ashdown’s solid achievement in sorting out the “bloody mess” that was the SLD in 1988 and transforming it into a party with 46 seats - a bench of Liberals greater than at any time since 1929; none of these can disguise the fact that in the one thing that really mattered to himself and his party - delivering a PR system in Westminster elections - Ashdown was a failure.
The defining moment in this respect came early last November with the publication of the Jenkins report on electoral reform: as co-conspirators in an attempt to bounce their respective parties into a formal coalition, both Blair and Ashdown were exposed. The myth of Blair’s invincibility was shattered; Ashdown’s credibility was damaged beyond repair. As we observed at the time,
“It is Ashdown for whom the Jenkins report represents ... an acute embarrassment. What is a lifeline for his party may turn into a noose for his own political fortunes ... his principal argument for persuading his party to get into bed with Labour in an informal coalition was that he could induce Labour to honour its unambiguous manifesto commitment to conduct a referendum on electoral reform before the next election. It is pretty clear now that this is not going to happen. The Liberal Democrats must wonder whether the sacrifice of their virtue was worth it after all ... Adept as he is at making the best of a losing position, even Ashdown cannot disguise the poverty and powerlessness of his party’s position” (Weekly Worker November 5).
Within a matter of days, in an effort to bolster his friend’s authority over a party that was displaying unmistakable signs of fractiousness, Blair put his signature to a joint statement heralding an extension of the cooperation between the two parties. In the event, what was meant as a sop to Ashdown’s wounded vanity merely did him further damage:
“By a sublime irony, a document that set out to foster a spirit of unity has succeeded only in actualising the latent tensions between and within the two parties ... The joint statement reflects not so much the interests of two parties, as the will and ambition of two leaders” (Weekly Worker November 19).
Sensing that their moment of opportunity had arrived, Ashdown’s rivals began to position themselves for the inevitable challenge by overtly distancing themselves from a policy in which they had hitherto acquiesced. The most outspoken was Simon Hughes who established his credentials by voting against the joint statement in a meeting of the parliamentary party. Posing as the voice of conscience, he questioned
“whether the strategy of increasing national agreement is either appropriate or acceptable without both parties, by democratic decision, being signed up to deliver it. My concern is that the party was forced into making a decision that may not have been taken if there had been a proper democratic process” (The Independent November 14).
Leaving aside his motives, Hughes correctly pinpointed the central flaw not only in the process of rapprochement between New Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but in the entire Blair project: it rests not upon a genuine democratic consensus, but on a pact between two leaders, neither of whom, as it turns out, can deliver the support that they arrogantly presumed was already in their pockets.
By removing the project’s prime advocate and ‘theorist’, the Mandelson debacle sounded the probable death knell of the whole enterprise and, by unifying the forces within the Labour Party opposed to Blair’s vision for the two parties, made Ashdown’s position untenable and his resignation inevitable.
What of the future for the Blair project? Its fate and the direction of the Liberal Democrats are inextricably connected. Ashdown’s appeal for a moratorium on the leadership campaign until after his departure in June this year demonstrated a pitiful lack of political realism. The campaign is already underway, with all of the seven likely runners vying with each other to express their scepticism about the wisdom of accepting a situation in which, as they rightly observe, their party is expected to take responsibility for Labour’s policies without having any real power to influence their formulation. All the candidates must take into account the discontent among the party’s 100,000 members and its 4,600 councillors about what many of them see as Ashdown’s betrayal of the party’s fundamental interests and identity. Pressure groups like the Campaign for Liberal Democracy, representing a significant cross-section of peers, MPs and councillors, will ensure that the issue of Labour-Liberal Democrat cooperation becomes a litmus test in the leadership struggle. To speak, as some commentators have done, about the possibility of a formal split in the Liberal Democrat party is probably wide of the mark, but open warfare among the contenders for Ashdown’s mantle already exists and will be damagingly divisive.
Blair’s own situation is not without some long-term danger. Since the announcement of Ashdown’s impending resignation, he and the Millbank machine have constantly reiterated their determination to continue with the project. The message - patently hollow - is that nothing has really changed. Blair’s strategy of absorbing the Liberal Democrats by Anschluss, may still be in place, but the tactical means available for its implementation look seriously threatened, and failure to make the project a reality would surely exact a political price in terms of the prime minister’s own credibility.
In the meantime, we see fresh evidence of New Labour’s continued movement to the right: the appointment of Lord Wakeham, a Tory, to head the commission into reform of the Lords, together with speculation that Blair is cultivating Lord Hurd as a possible fellow traveller, suggest the continued possibility of significant realignment. At the same time, as The Daily Telegraph informed us on January 26, the Tory leadership looks set to discard some of its most prominent rightwing shadow cabinet members like John Redwood and Michael Howard in an effort to boost their own project of creating a “compassionate conservatism” modelled on that of the rising George Bush jnr in the USA. Interesting times lie ahead.
Whatever the fate of the Blair project, it seems certain that the yawning chasm on the left of Labour will continue to expand. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum and sooner or later the chasm will be filled by a fundamental realignment.
Maurice Bernal