08.05.2002

Tories still in the cold

For two out of three of the mainstream political parties, last week's local elections provided grounds for reasonable satisfaction. The Labour Party must privately be mightily relieved that there was no evidence of a national backlash against its glaring failure thus far to deliver much vaunted promises in such key areas as public services and crime. Using local elections to bash the government is normal, but mid-term blues seem once again to have been postponed. Why? Some say that the 'BNP effect' brought out more Labour voters than might otherwise have been the case, though a national turnout of around 35% is still a pitiful commentary on the perceived significance of council elections; others, with opinion poll evidence to support their contention, maintain that Gordon Brown's national health service budget, because, not in spite of, its tax increases, gave Labour a new sense of purpose and with it a renewed credibility. A net loss of 325 seats and eight councils will cause Blair no sleepless nights. The Liberal Democrats can content themselves with the fact that, on a night of swings and roundabouts, they emerged with some significant gains (for example, Worthing, Cheltenham and Eastbourne from the Tories and Norwich from Labour) to counterbalance the disappointment of losing prized councils like Sheffield and Harrogate. For the Conservative Party, however, there was no cause for celebration. After five years of New Labour, two landslide defeats, a new leader and its latest somewhat implausible relaunch as an inclusive, tolerant party of 'compassionate conservatism', the party desperately needed to make a high-profile blow against the government. Let us not forget that in the 2000 local elections, campaigning on a 'tough against everything' agenda, including playing the race card against asylum-seekers, William Hague garnered more than 600 gains, with 38% of the vote, as against 29% for Labour on a turnout of under 30%. In what should be a warning to all pundits and tea leaf readers, central office took this to be the harbinger of great things to come. Thus, a year later, came the mad irrelevance of a general election campaign focused on little more than petty English nationalism and saving the pound. We all know what happened. Having learned the lessons from that debacle, Iain Duncan Smith has done his best to drag the Conservative Party's geriatric, viscerally xenophobic membership into the 21st century, but with what outcome so far? With around 34% of the vote last week - neck and neck with Labour - the Tories got less than two percent more of the vote than they did in the general election of 2001. Worse, much worse, than Hague at a comparable time. As everyone knows, a swing of some 10% is the absolute minimum required even to unseat Blair. At this stage, to lose Worthing, Cheltenham and Eastbourne, and to fail to gain Croydon (Tory from 1965-1994) and Basildon (a general election bellwether) spells dark news, against which the party's successes in Enfield and Havering (still under no overall control) and its capture of four London boroughs count for very little. Charged with the unenviable task of making the Conservative Party's excuses in advance, Theresa May, shadow secretary of state for transport, local government and the regions, told us that "we did not expect this to be a great landslide. We said we would make modest gains. That is what has happened" (The Times May 3). "Modest" is putting it politely. Why has the Conservative Party failed to deliver? This writer would suggest that there are two basic reasons. First, the economy. By a combination of luck and judgement, chancellor Brown continues to preside over a low-inflation, low-interest-rate economy. The threatened global recession has yet to materialise. Those who are in decently paid employment (including millions of working class people) are doing comparatively well in terms of normal expectations. 'Middle England', that nebulous category of folk on whom the fortunes of the two main parties supposedly depends, is prospering under a Blair regime that is virtually indistinguishable from that of Thatcher at her apogee. The comparison is particularly striking when it comes to the housing market - now, as then, a key indicator. House price inflation has reached levels of irrationality last seen in the late 1980s. On the back of this unrealised and unrealisable increase in perceived 'wealth', personal indebtedness (credit card borrowing and the like) has broken all records. Whiz kid traders in the city, now, as then, tell us that 'this time it will be different', but sooner or later this speculative bubble is bound to burst and, when it does, the political as well as the economic consequences will be far-reaching. The question, for the Conservative Party, is when? Only a fundamental collapse of faith in the economic competence of the Labour government seems at present a likely reason for Middle England to re-defect to the Tories. Secondly, given the fact that Blair has effectively occupied all the ground that might formerly have been claimed by the Tories as their own (indeed, he has actually gone much further in many areas than Thatcher herself would have dared), what the Conservative Party needs and singularly lacks is a single big idea capable of capturing the imagination of the electorate. Privatisation, public-private partnerships, sucking up to big and small capitals with nice tax breaks and incentives, further emasculating the already atomised working class by vindictive anti-trade union laws, creating a police state in the name of 'law and order', treating everybody from asylum-seekers to school truants and their families as anti-social criminals, giving unquestioning political and military support to US imperialism? Forget it. What Thatcher did not get round to, Tony is in the process of finishing off on behalf of the ruling class. So why should they vote Tory? Even a few small ideas might come in handy, but there is actually nothing. When it comes to the central issues of popular concern - the state of the health service, education, transport and so forth - central office has yet to come up with a single coherent policy short of dark mutterings about radical alternatives. Historically, it would be very foolish to write off the Conservative Party. The party can come back, but in quite what form is anyone's guess. It is important to recognise that the problem confronting the Tories is the same we ourselves face: ie, how do we respond both theoretically and practically to the realignment of British politics that we have seen since the advent of Blair? For the Tories, at least in terms of theory, it is actually much more difficult. Go to the hard right? Hague tried that and it was a disaster, though serious social dislocation in the wake of an economic trauma could make it an option. Go to the soft, multicultural, 'inclusive' left ? Who could take it seriously? Ask Ann Winterton. For us, in terms of class politics, the matter is much more straightforward. Repeatedly in our debates, comrades point to the fact that our approach to Labourism is the key strategic question of the day: specifically, how do we break the organised working class in the trade unions, and the class as a whole, from its umbilical ties to a Labour Party that is more imperialist, more anti-working class than ever before? Unlike the Tories, we have a programme based on a coherent socialist alternative on which to base our campaign. Despite its admittedly embryonic nature and its disparate forces, the Socialist Alliance produced some encouraging results last week. Time and again on the knocker in working class estates, what I heard was the same question: 'Why doesn't the left wing get together, stop fighting each other and start fighting Blair? When you do that, we'll vote for you.' Agreed, things are not that simple, but the message is clear. What working class people need and want is a united party to fight for their interests and the interests of humanity as a whole. That is our job, comrades, so let us get on with it. Maurice Bernal