29.09.2004

Two-faced pretenders

Anti-war protesters or Thatcherite party? The Liberal Democrats are all over the place, writes Patrick Presland

"We are being seen more and more as a party which does win elections, which does exercise responsible representation, which has become increasingly comfortable with the duties and disciplines of power. The Conservatives belong to the past. We are moving from a party of protest to a party of power. Three-party politics is here, and here to stay” (The Times September 24).

Thus it was that Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy at last week’s Bournemouth conference boldly claimed the right of his party to become the main “party of opposition” ahead of the Tories. Fine, and it could happen. At least he was not daft enough to come out with the ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’ crap of yesteryear. Rouse the troops by all means, but do not make an arse of yourself in the process.

His tone was measured, almost subdued, even a bit statesmanlike, which suited the leader of a party that is finally beginning to be taken seriously, even by the tabloids. There is a growing sense that, because New Labour is widely regarded as incompetent and not to be trusted and yet the Tories are viewed with equal contempt, British domestic politics is approaching some sort of crossroads, but nobody has much of a clue as to the direction it will take. Pundits and media soothsayers are starting to include the Liberal Democrats in their prognostications as something more than the joker in the pack. The Bournemouth conference left us with a sense of a party that, despite its recent notable successes in council and national elections, is wracked by ambiguity, perhaps even a touch of schizophrenia - full of ambition and energy, but uncertain and divided about where it wants to go.

As regards the Liberal Democrats’ immediate prospects, the truth is in the arithmetic. At present they are on between 22% and 26% of the polls - up from 18% in the 2001 election and the mid-teens at this stage of the last parliament. That is an achievement which reflects, among other things, the past and current level of anti-war sentiment and the general disillusionment with Labour in particular and mainstream (ie, two-party) politics in general. The Labour Party itself is now between six and 10 points down on its position in 2001, with the Tories little changed.

The Liberal Democrats have 55 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservatives 165. They see the Tories as the more vulnerable of the two main parties and are focusing their energies on Conservative seats in which the Lib Dems came a close second in 2001. High-profile likely victims include Oliver Letwin (shadow chancellor), David Davis (leader in waiting?) and Theresa May (known best for her shoes). But so what? Psephologists tell us that the chances of a hung parliament are somewhere around 10%-15% - Kennedy has already said he will not be a party to any “pact” which would negate the voters’ intentions. Let us wait and see. The chances of an outright Liberal Democrat victory are zero, as everyone knows. Privately, Kennedy would be well pleased if his party got another 20 seats. If they managed to double their current representation in the Commons, he would rightly be ecstatic.

By the time you read this page, the result of the Hartlepool by-election will be known. It will have been an interesting test. The Liberal Democrats have a mountain to climb. In 2001 Peter Mandelson got 59% of the vote for Labour; Gus Robinson (Conservative Party) 20.9 per cent; Nigel Boddy (Liberal Democrats) 15% - and let us not forget comrade Arthur Scargill (Socialist Labour Party), who got 2.4%. The Liberal Democrats’ candidate this time was a barrister called Jody Dunn, who had to go on Channel 4 News the other night to explain away her off-the-cuff remarks that the inhabitants of her constituency (ie, the people she wants to elect her) are “either drunk, flanked by an angry dog or undressed”.
Obviously and correctly the Liberal Democrats believe that the Conservative Party is on the brink of an abyss, but can we really believe Lord Razzall, their chief campaign strategist, when he said that “The significance of Brent East, of Newcastle upon Tyne, of Leicester South is that the Conservative Party is finished as a serious challenger for government in our adult lifetime”? He went on: “There will come a moment, and that moment may be sooner than we think, when the British public finally loses faith in this Labour government. And when that happens ... the next government of this country will not be a Conservative government; it will be a Liberal Democrat government and Charles Kennedy will be its prime minister.”

The obituary of the Tory Party has been written many times. They certainly stand with their backs to the wall. All the Tories I know personally laugh hysterically at the very idea of a Conservative Party victory in a general election next year, but they are councillors and remind me that in England and Wales the Conservative Party holds 152 councils, the Labour Party 92 and the Liberal Democratic Party a mere 30. True, they feel that despite the Howard hype (and many dislike him intensely anyway) the Tory ship is rudderless and could run aground, but the fact is that there is a core sentimental/tribal vote which will never desert them.

The reason for the Liberal Democrats’ cockiness is, of course, the Iraq war. Thanks to the Stop the War Coalition, Kennedy was given a platform on February 15 2003 to address the biggest demonstration in living memory, thereby acquiring an undeserved status as the mainstream voice of anti-war sentiment. At the same time, the Socialist Alliance was forbidden to say a word on the platform, because the Socialist Workers Party had already tired of their plaything and were busy cultivating (with varying degrees of success) George Galloway, the Greens and reactionary islamic forces like the Muslim Association of Britain.

As soon as the first shot was fired, Kennedy and his ‘anti-war’ party were right behind ‘our boys’ in Iraq. Why not have your cake and eat it? And what do they say now? “Never again should Britain be led to war on the basis of questionable intelligence, take unilateral action on a flawed prospectus without the authority of the United Nations or be so distanced from its political partners in Europe. Never again should such supreme prime ministerial power be allowed to progress without sufficient checks and balances and without the proper operation of collective cabinet government” (The Times September 24). Does this utterance of Kennedy sound like principled opposition to a brutal imperialist war? No. More like the puling complaint of a man who says to his fellow Westminster insiders: ‘The next time you invade a foreign country on a dubious pretext, at least get the UN’s agreement and get the paperwork right if you want my support.’

Of course Kennedy is right to point to the “totemic” significance of Blair’s lies about Iraq. Who on earth can trust the Blair government now? But the anti-war, anti-Blair vote is now safely gathered in. Maybe the Lib Dems do represent in many voters’ minds a preferable alternative to an unpopular government mired in lies, hated for its arrogance, and an opposition that looks to be on its way into intensive care. But what do the Liberal Democrats really stand for?

They have often been accused of being two-faced. This time round it is literally true, as we see reflected through the prism of the tabloids. For the Daily Mirror and cabinet ministers like Peter Hain (can you even imagine him now as a Young Liberal?) they are neo-Thatcherites; while to The Sun and the Tory front bench they are denounced as high-taxing wastrel lefties. But underneath the usual polemic there is a truth.

Believe it or not, there is a serious and influential faction within the Liberal Democrat’s shadow front bench team which seems to believe that having two Thatcherite parties is not enough. What Britain really needs now is a third, to compete with Labour’s ‘third way’ version of market-orientated neoliberalism and the shop-soiled, way-beyond-its-sell-by-date Tory script (though the two look remarkably similar).The bible of the new right within the Liberal Democratic Party is a book of essays entitled The orange book: reclaiming liberalism by some of the party’s reportedly brightest shadow frontbenchers like Vince Cable, Ed Davey, David Laws, Mark Oaten and Steve Webb, plus prospective parliamentary candidates Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and Susan Kramer.

What these people have in common is the vision of returning Liberalism to its roots. We are not talking Jeremy Thorpe or Joe Grimmond here, but Gladstone. Gladstonian liberalism, the very embodiment of the interests of the big and small industrial and mercantile bourgeoisie, which was focused on free competition, fiscal propriety and business incentives: in short, the market. Any crumbs left over could be scattered (prudently, of course) to the working class. If this sounds familiar, just think Gordon Brown.

So Cable (shadow chancellor) and Laws (shadow chief secretary) denounce “corporatism” and “nanny state liberalism” and promote “free trade” in terms rightwing enough to make a resurrected Keith Joseph sign up to the Liberal Democrats. We are back with the language of “there is no alternative” and “tough choices”. What Mr Laws means when he says that the Liberal Democrats must abandon any further attachment to “forms of soggy socialism” is not exactly clear, but you get his drift. His main idea, to abolish the NHS and replace it with a form of compulsory health insurance not unlike that which leaves millions of Americans to die not just in poverty but in pain gives you some notion.

No wonder the rightwing press is salivating. The Economist welcomes the intellectual rigour of the Lib Dem prospective Thatcherites; The Times trumpets that what the country needs is “plausible policies and not mushy platitudes”. These gentlemen are far-sighted. Barring some kind of seismic political events, they know that the Liberal Democrats are not going to form a government or even share in a coalition any time soon, but the ruling class could eventually rejoice in the fact that all three parties will be falling over each other to prove their capitalist, anti-working class credentials. Before we laugh at such idiocy, we should perhaps recollect the extent to which this reflects the victory of (for want of a better word) Thatcherite ideology in this strange period of reaction through which we are living.

The Orange book was due to be launched during the conference, but the leadership put a stop to that - surely a move to which the nasty rightwing, authoritarian shits who wrote it must have privately given some grudging approval? The fact is that, for the time being at least, they are too ‘off message’. The official version of the Liberal Democrats’ vision of the future is actually diametrically opposite. No room for “rigour” (intellectual or otherwise) when they set out their electoral stall with such goodies as scrapping university tuition fees; increasing the state pension by £25 a week (for the over-75s, let it be noted - the Lib Dems obviously know some good actuaries); replacing the poll tax with a local income tax; free care for the elderly; scrapping prescription charges; free eye and dental check-ups; and so on. The list is far bigger. The money is to come primarily from taxing those who earn £100,000 a year.
Does any of this sound familiar? In parts it sounds remarkably like the beginnings of a return to the welfare state inaugurated by the post-war Labour government, something so ‘leftwing’ that the Labour Party stopped talking about it nearly a generation ago. Imagine what Neil Kinnock would have thought about the idea of free prescription s. He was too busy trying to make himself electable by betraying the miners.

Of course, this side of the Liberal Democrat Janus came in for the predictable vitriol of the Daily Mail, whose resident carpet chewer, Ms Melanie Phillips, led her article with the strange headline “A vicious backlash. A political vacuum. Step forward the shameless, opportunistic Lib Dems” (September 20). It was an article worth reading because it primarily articulates not the obvious fact that the Liberal Democrats’ promises are undeliverable (which party in Britain ever actually delivered on its big promises?), but a more general sense of malaise about the whole political system. An interesting reflection, from the opposite side, of that feeling of betrayal and distrust which comes from the whole Iraq experience, and from a more profound recognition that the British body politic is in a cul de sac.
We should not be downhearted. Far from it. We are still living through the painful consequences of the collapse of Stalinism and the lessons that have to be learned from it. The left in general is disorientated and demoralised and the working class atomised more than in living memory. But all this is taking place against a background filled with contradictions in which globalised capitalism itself - economically and politically - has no strategy to deal with its impending crisis. That was why it was worth devoting a few minutes to the Liberal Democrats and their absurdities.

Revolutionary patience is a concept that many find difficult to grasp, but it is not an oxymoron. Our task at this time, like that of many who went before us, is to fight hard in the struggles which confront us but also to study day after day, and on that basis of theory and practice to begin the job of building a mass party of the working class.