POLITICAL COMMENTARY,

The Politics of Consensus

By ALAN WATKINS

Robin Day: This questioner from Crowburn writes, 'Do you consider that the present economic situation is sufficiently serious to war- rant the formation of a national government?' Harold Wilson: You know, I think we have got a national government.

Election Forum, BBC Television, March 10, 1966.

You know,' said Mr. Harold Wilson to one of his ministers the other day (it is remark- able how easily one slips into referring to ministers as Mr. Wilson's, and not the Crown's), 'you know, that one-book-at-the-Post-Office bit always goes down like a bomb.' The Prime Minister was here referring to that section of his election speech—he has only one speech, which he varies as the occasion demands—dealing with the welfare state. The section begins with an attack on the 'Tory means test state,' it goes on to paint a horrifying picture of the Conservatives' proposed welfare officers, ritual tribute (at least in Scotland and the North) is then paid to gal- lant little Miss Herbison, and finally Mr. Wilson looks forward to that happy day when National Assistance is abolished and 'everybody has one book at the Post Office.' Whereupon there follows loud applause. Mr. Wilson, it seems to the aud- ience, is speaking the language of the people. Mr. Wilson seems to think so himself—for he does not use his 'one book' line on television or when addressing more middle-class gatherings.

I begin with this example not because it is typical of Mr. Wilson's approach in this elec- tion but because it is untypical. It is, of course, characteristic of his political skill : but that is all. For this example apart—and it is an example of phrasing, not of content—Mr. Wilson has carefully refrained from making any specific appeal to the Labour party traditional working- class support. The corollary, one might think, is that he is going after the floating voters—all those legions of thrustful young executives who have been making regular appearances in our political literature ever since Orpington, but who are so very difficult to come across in real life. And yet to think that Mr. Wilson is directing his appeal to the middle-class floating voters would, in my view, be equally mistaken. What Mr. Wil- son is about is very different. He is trying to appeal to everybody.

But, it may be asked, is this not what every political leader tries to do at election time? We have the answer readily available for inspection in the person of Mr. Edward Heath. Mr. Heath is certainly not appealing to everybody, nor, to be fair (and I always try to be fair where Mr. Heath is concerned), is he attempting to do so. Many of his proposals are distasteful to large numbers of electors—to trade unionists and anti- marketeers and council house occupiers, among others. Mr. Wilson's proposals, on the other hand, are much more elusive, and hence it is much more difficult to become angry about them. It is only possible to become angry about Mr. Wilson himself. And as Mr. Heath is painfully discovering, anger about Mr. Wilson is a difficult emotion to arouse in the country at large. It is not only difficult, but dangerous, in that the anger may easily rebound on Mr. Heath.

The difference in the relations which Mr. Wil- son and Mr. Heath have with the electorate is generally admitted. The explanation put forward is that Mr. Wilson is an established Prime Minister, whereas Mr. Heath is a largely un- known leader of the Opposition. As far as it goes, this explanation is quite satisfactory. But does it go far enough? After all, other Prime Ministers have fought elections; yet none of them seems to have possessed the advantages which Mr. Wil- son now enjoys. What is the reason for the change?

For some years now the 'presidential' theory of elections has been in favour. According to this theory, voters do not think of themselves as voting for a Member or a party or even a government but for a Prime Minister who will in reality be a president. The theory is vulnerable on several grounds. For one thing, Prime Ministers do not in fact behave like presidents, and this is particularly the case with Mr. Wilson : contrary to popular myth, there has been no Premier of recent times who has been more prepared to see ministers go their own way. And, for another thing, if the presidential theory is true, Mr. Heath is equally with Mr. .Wilson a presidential candi- date, and should enjoy corresponding presidential advantages. Yet, as we all know, he is enjoying nothing of the kind : to the voters, it appears, he is just another Conservative politician who once had something to do with Europe and annoyed the small shopkeepers.

Therefore we ought to dig a little deeper. Mr. Wilson seems to have stumbled upon what is, for this country, an entirely new approach to politics: to describe it, 'the politics of consensus' seems as good a phrase as any. Quite apart from the advantages bestowed on him by his office, Mr. Wilson is fighting this election in a new way; while Mr. Heath is fighting it in an old way.

To explain : in his recent book, Modern British Politics, Professor Samuel Beer claimed that our political system was distinguished from others in being highly ideological and, at the same time, highly sensitive to interest groups. He declared that these characteristics applied to both main parties, whether they were in or out of office. Professor Beer's examples were princi- pally taken from the inter-war and immediately

post-war years; and since he completed his stimu- lating work a great deal has occurred.

As far as the Conservative party is concerned, Mr. Harold Macmillan did much to detach it from its traditional supporting interests; at the same time he gave the party a new ideology, at the centre of which were Europe, 'efficiency' and 'modernisation.' On the Labour side, Hugh Gaitskell tried to separate his party from its in- terests, but he remained a highly ideological, indeed doctrinaire, politician. Mr. Wilson com- pleted the separation of the party from the in- terests and simultaneously deprived it of its ideology. And the Labour party under Mr. Wil- son shed both its interests and its ideology faster than did the Conservatives under Mr. Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mr. Heath. It became instead a party of consensus, a seeker after the maximum amount of agreement in the country as a whole.

What has happened can be put in a slightly dif- ferent way. There is little doubt that, ever since universal suffrage came, the Labour party was on the face of it the natural majority party in this country. Why then was it so seldom in power? The habit of deference had something to do with it. So did the snobbery of white collar and manual worker, which led to the white collar workers vot- ing Conservative. More important, the Labour leaders were, or appeared to be, different from the people they claimed to represent. They were cranks, they were ideologists, they had strange and sometimes uncomfortable ideas; and this was as true of Gaitskell as of George Lansbury and Ramsay MacDonald. But above all—and despite its own interests and ideology—the Conservative party seemed to be the party of the nation.

Mr. Wilson has changed all this. Indeed he has done more : he has reversed the position of the parties. It is now the Labour party which is the party of the nation, and Mr. Heath and his young friends who have the strange and uncomfortable ideas. Why, the Prime Minister even goes to the lengths (I am being perfectly serious about this) of making speeches from platforms adorned by a large Union Jack. Of course, I am not here sug- gesting that Wilsonism is a throwback to inter- or post-war Conservatism. He has independently arrived at the same kind of conclusions. He has not copied the Conservatives; he has discovered, whether by chance or not is immaterial, a novel attitude towards British policies.

Subject to certain exceptions (such as capital punishment, though not immigration), the ap- proach consists in finding out what the public want, and then giving it to them. Or, if this is im- possible, people must be persuaded, chiefly through the use of television, to agree with, at least to acquiesce in, decisions that would other- wise have been unpopular. For the purposes of my argument here, the important factors to notice are, first, that the decisions of the past eighteen months have not been ideological and, secondly, that an attempt has been made to persuade the country as a whole of their correctness. The object always has been to obtain the agreement of the maximum number.

Is this approach wrong? Mr. Heath would probably say it was. Gaitskell would probably have agreed with him. (The foregoing, incident- ally, should demonstrate to those who are puzzled what the difference is between Wilsonism and Labour revisionism.) Certainly the politics of consensus does not lead to anything very exciting or inspiring. It does, however, lead to office; which is what Mr. Wilson is interested in at the moment. If he is re-elected with a substantial majority he may yet drop the criterion of con- sensus. But somehow I suspect not.