POLITICS
You can't have a 'revolutionary new policy agenda' from the middle of the road
BORIS JOHNSON
You can't exactly blame Philip Gould for his ludicrous plan for a Labour victory. The 44-year-old adviser to Tony Blair and the Nicaraguan Sandanistas only intended to offer an outline. It was up to the others, the policy wonks, to join the dots, to squirt the passion, the substance, the actual poli- cies into the gaps suggested by Gould's pre- posterous Dewey decimal paragraphs: '2.0 Project, Policy, Message . . . 2.2 Revolu- tionary New Policy Agenda in place by October conference 1996'.
Some people even believe that the leak of the document, written seven months ago, has helped the Labour Party leader. On one analysis, it is useful to issue warnings like, 'Labour is not ready for government', since the Labour leader is engaged in a struggle against complacency about a Labour victory, and his allies see advantage in dramatising that struggle.
And yet it is still immensely suggestive that Gould should call (paragraph 2.1) for a `definitive statement of the Blair/New Labour project (Labour's Right Approach)'. One only has to think back to the original document to which Gould refers to perceive something about the pre- sent state of the two main parties, namely that the difference between them is no more pronounced at the beginning of this political season, than it was at the last one.
Almost 20 years ago, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Sir Keith Joseph, David Howell and James Prior wrote a document edited by Angus Maude, called The Right Approach to the Economy. To read it now is to have a plea- surable and unexpected sense of the scale of the Tories' achievement. It is long, and breathily written, though perhaps all the more effective for the bovine, or ovine, way in which Geoffrey Howe refuses to indulge in cheap polemic against Labour. The Right Approach seems in many ways dated, for instance in its obsession with free collective bargaining. It does not make much of pri- vatisation, except to say that state indus- tries must be made more competitive. It bangs on about the primacy of parliament in a way that sits oddly with subsequent sell-outs to the EC. But the Right Approach is a sustained, intellectually coherent attempt to set out what was wrong with the country, and to offer specific remedies.
It has a monetary policy which coheres with its social and employment strategy, which coheres with its budgetary strategy, which coheres with its taxation policy. The paper foreshadows pretty exactly the trades union reform and most of the other great Thatcherite achievements; and on re-read- ing it, one's estimation of Howe rises a good deal.
Now, let us suppose that Labour fol- lowed Mr Gould's advice, and launched its own version of the Right Approach to the Economy next spring. In what, exactly, would the revolution consist? Labour peo- ple talk vaguely of 'social renewal, econom- ic renewal, political renewal', by which they seem to mean nothing more than getting the Tories out, and no more Tory sleaze. David Blunkett babbles about 'the 21st cen- tury modernisation of Britain which is the key project, creating the learning society in the new millennium'. When one tries to pin Labour people down on the content of all this, they finally admit that it amounts to encouraging people to use the Internet.
This, as some of us have predicted for some time, and as the British Association for the Advancement of Science has just confirmed, is an opportunity for interna- tional onanism on an epic scale, since it turns out that 50 per cent of all 'searches' are for pornography. The 'information superhighway' may be a fascinating social and cultural development. It may be eco- nomically important. But it hardly needs Government encouragement, and seems unlikely to be a good basis for economic strategy.
Apart from Jack Straw's attack on squeegee merchants, what does that leave? The Labour 'project', as Gould's paper hints, remains essentially negative; the pro- ject is to kill Old Labour. This week Tony Blair has again been trying to shake off the `Not much here.' suspicion that his party will be in fee to the Unions and special interest groups. He has been quite successful. He has certainly suc- ceeded in centralising power about himself, Peter Mandelson and others, in the way Gould recommends, and which causes such resentment among the Labour rank and file.
Yet the Blair revolution, so far, is strictly internal. We know what he does not want from his own party. We still have only vague ideas what his plans might be for the country at large. You might fairly retort that the Tories have no particular policy plans either. That would be true. No one has very high hopes, for instance, of this week's special meeting of the Cabinet at Chequers. But if you suggested that after 16 years in office, in which the Tories have had so long to try the nostrums of the Right Approach, there is no need for a revolution you would, I think, be wrong.
I suppose it remains conceivable that the Tories could themselves go back to the Right Approach. They could re-read its pledge to cut public spending as a share of GDP, which then stood at 44 per cent. It now stands at 41.75 per cent. It is conceiv- able, though unlikely, that a radical agenda to cut taxes, spending and welfare, of the kind set out by Mr Redwood, could yet become the Tories' positive programme, to set against the negative programme of Mr Blair.
Mr Blair might then learn the lesson of the SDP, who also stood at more than 50 per cent in the polls in December 1981. You can have a revolutionary left-wing agenda: though Blair has apparently foresworn this. You can have a revolution- ary right-wing agenda: which is surely beyond even Blair. But you can't have a `revolutionary new policy agenda' from the middle of the road.
As things stand, alas, it seems unlikely that any such gap will open up between the two main parties. Nor, in consequence, will Blair be penalised for failing to adopt dis- cernible policies. Blair will probably survive the inanities of his admen, for the slightly unjust reason that, ceteris paribus, the elec- torate will not be able to face waking up the morning after the next election, and finding that the Tories are still in power.
Boris Johnson is assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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