FURTHERMORE
What is really frightening about Mr Blair
PETRONELLA WYATT
Sometimes I think the Conservatives are barking up the wrong tree. It is all tax, tax, tax and splits, splits, splits. It is not actually the Tories who are doing the taxing and splitting but, rather, how they would por- tray Labour. Aside from Europe, these are the issues most publicised by Central Office and written up by newspapers.
Taxes and splits are tried and tested, you see. The Tory Party is a bit like a theatrical company which keeps on staging the same production even though it is attracting smaller and smaller audiences. But it is an easy performance to put on. Labour's tax plans are obscurantist enough to lend themselves to spin. The rows within the shadow Cabinet are a target which even the most ineffectual booby could not fail to hit.
But this is the point. The whole thing seems too cliched, too easy — to the voters, I mean. Most of my more politically aware acquaintances shrug and say, oh, those old chestnuts. Do they really think we are going to fall for them now? .
Whether Central Office likes it or not, Mr Blair has convinced most people that Labour economics will be moderate. It is well-nigh impossible to paint him as a clos- et socialist, who will bring in punitive taxa- tion. Clare Short may have appeared to suggest that those earning around £34,000 should be penalised. But who is Miss Short anyway? She is unlikely ever to get her hands on the Exchequer. It is true that Gordon Brown has declined to rule out the possibility of a 60 per cent top rate, but this is probably more from internal caution than a real desire to introduce it.
Then there is the spectre of the Left seiz- ing power once Labour is in office: the price Blair will have to pay, etc. But, again, do a majority of voters really believe that? I doubt it. Anyway, when the Tories talk of Labour tensions isn't it a case of the pot calling the kettle black?
Even if the worst of these things came to pass, at present they do not provide the Tories with what they need most: the F- word, the Fear factor. We are not afraid.
The Tory hoo-ha over taxes in particular, obscures something far more important — and much scarier. Mr Blair claims to be the heir of the great Gaitskell. But there is one issue, among others, on which Mr Blair is the very reverse of Gaitskell. There is one issue on which Mr Blair is more 'left-wing' than any other Labour leader, including Wilson. It is constitutional reform. Why doesn't Central Office make more of this, particularly with regard to Scottish devolution? There are, from time to time, newspaper articles about a Scottish parlia- ment, but they rarely lead the front page; there is more written about reform of the Lords. These proposals, too, are more extreme than anything a Labour govern- ment has suggested before. But a Scottish parliament would have far more serious consequences. It seems, however, almost to be treated as a side-show to the main the- atre of Labour's economic plans. Mr Blair's proposal falls little short of dismantling the United Kingdom. He has committed himself to introducing bills dur- ing the first parliamentary session. We should take him seriously, and not make the error of failing to read Mein Kampf and then complaining afterwards that we didn't know what was going to happen. In The Blair Revolution, Labour's unofficial mani- festo, Peter Mandelson makes repeated references to these 'pledges'. One of the most sinister features of Blairism, or Blairing as I prefer to call it, is all this 'new Labour, new Britain' stuff. For one thing, Blairing has nuances of fascism (when I was at the Labour conference last year, a party member commented: 'Social- ism? Sounds more like national socialism to me'). Why must we have a new Britain? What is wrong with the old one? Its institu- tions have been the envy of Europe for cen- turies before Mr Blair. But if something works, Mr Blair wants to fix it. Gaitskell, my foot. Gaitskell was instinctively a traditional- ist who was opposed to us even going into Europe — a view which is perhaps being vin- dicated. In a fabled speech in 1962, he attacked those in his party who wished to dis- pense with 'a thousand years of history'. Gaitskell would have been appalled by Mr 'It's made of tallow, gelatin and bull's semen.' Blair. The latter's plans for devolution, to be fair, are 'historical' all right — but they are historical in the wrong way. Mr Blair's pro- posals would take us back to the way we were before 1707, the year of the Act of Union between England and Scotland. No Labour politician has ever tried to go this far; to effectively end the incorporating union between our two nations.
Past Labour proposals were pathetically cautious compared to Mr Blair's. What of powers of taxation, for instance? Mr Blair has not yet abandoned his idea to allow a Scottish parliament to vary the rate of income tax. Labour's Scotland Bill of 1977 stopped far short of conceding any such fiscal powers. Overriding economic responsibility would continue to lie with the UK parliament.
Setting aside the price of a Scottish parlia- ment — estimated in 1976 at an annual run- ning cost of over £12 million — it must surely lead to disaster. As Matthew Parris has pointed out, nationalistic feeling on both sides of the border would be inflamed. That, one fears, would be the least of it. Such a body proved impossible before 1707 and it would be the same today. The Act of Union was passed because statesmen in both coun- tries realised that an incorporating union offered the only solution to dangerous insta- bility. As Charles I discovered to his cost, the existence of two sovereign legislatures under one crown made a regal union impossible.
For the last 17 years of its life (1690- 1707), the Scottish parliament acted vigor- ously in domestic affairs and tried also to control foreign policy. International ten- sions provoked bitter legislative warfare between the two parliaments. Scotland pro- vided a conveniently open back door for England's enemies, particularly France. Admittedly, Mr Blair's proposals do not extend to control over foreign affairs — but, once other privileges are conceded, who is to say that some autonomy in this area will not eventually follow?
It is a sobering thought. Far more sober- ing, certainly, than Labour taxation, and infinitely more so than the EU's ban on British beef. We do not need Brussels to destroy the nation state; Mr Blair is raring to do it for them. If that is New Labour 'moderation', then I am Hugh Gaitskell. The Tories should make the preservation of the Union their election battle cry (how well Mr Major did on this issue in 1992). It is a safer bet than beef and, moreover, it worked for Lincoln.
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