SPECTATOR
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CENTRE FOR FUTURE TORYISM
It is already being said, in both hope and fear, that the new alliance between Blairite New Labour and Ashdownian Liberalism spells the eventual eclipse of the Tories.
Prime ministers, however, have been here before. Mr Blair's latest stratagem is an advanced variation on a familiar theme. Mr Blair is just trying to stay in office for as long as he likes — that's all. The traditional way in which politicians have sought to do this is to try to form a centrist group or coalition. It was tried unsuccessfully by Lloyd George before the first world war, successfully by him after it. Successfully for only a short while, though; he was soon overthrown by one of the parties which he had tried to neutralise and draw into his centrist web: the Tories.
Here is the danger for prime ministers who try to increase the number of parties supporting them: in the end it always upsets their awn party. People do not become active in local political parties in order to be part of some uncontroversial consensus of whatever are the safe opinions of the day. Professional career politicians do. The people who select them in the constituency associations do not. They are in politics for large causes and general principles. Nor is it true that we have long lived under adversarial politics. In thinking that we have, Mr Blair and Mr Ashdown place too much importance on the day-to-day insult and counter-insult of the party game. That has nothing much to do with the poli- cies believed in by the politicians doing the insulting. Mr Blair and Mr Major insulted one another during the general election, but so far Mr Blair has carried on with most of Mr Major's policies. That is because he either agreed with them, or thought that alternative ones would not get him elected. It so happens that most of those policies were good. We are living at a time when, at least on economics, the consensus has been proved right. But that has not always been so. For years before Lady Thatcher's victo- ry in 1979 there was agreement between the leaders of all three parties that Britain could only be governed by an incomes poli- cy, and by government, unions and large employers agreeing with one another. This consensus led to inflation and the abuse of union power against which 1979 was a vot- ers' revolt.
Consensus tends to maintain in power the existing vested interests. The present consensus is made up of Mr Blair, Mr Ash- down, the Tory Wets (more or less private- ly), the CBI, the biggest corporations, the City institutions which do not want to be associated with mere money-making, and the higher civil service. All now favour free markets and low direct taxation. It is still a consensus for the good instead of just of the good. But none of them is opposed in prin- ciple to, say, a single European currency or an ever closer European Union. Many peo- ple in political parties are. That is why con- sensus builders distrust political parties. Parties have inconvenient beliefs. Mr Blair distrusts his party more than any other party leader or prime minister has ever done. So far, his party has acquiesced because he alone could get it elected. But there will come a time when he and his gov- ernment will become unpopular. The econ- omy will turn downwards, or the govern- ment will become mixed up in something unpopular coming out of Europe, or some- thing else will happen. Mr Blair, like Lloyd George, will have no cushion of party good- will to fall back on. To Labour eyes, he will look like a Prime Minister who would rather his party were the Liberal Democrats, only bigger.
At the same time, the Liberal Democrats will be unable to detach themselves from the unpopularity of a government in whose inner, or at least outer, councils they sit. The disillusioned middle classes, who made Mr Blair Prime Minister, will not therefore turn to the Liberal Democrats. They will go back to the Tories. Mr Blair may then try to save himself with proportional representa- tion, but those Labour MPs thus threatened with defeat will have something to say about that.
This week's Blair-Ashdown alliance, then, will in the end be good for the Tories. From Mr Blair's point of view, it would be far better if he contented himself just with governing, rather than with trying to govern for ever.
We hope we are not alone in being depressed by the memorial in Milan Cathe- dral for the fallen Versace; depressed, that is, by more than the inherent sadness of the death itself. It was the first memorial ser- vice in history to be reported mainly by fashion writers. Also, it was further evi- dence that no prominent grief is safe from the presence of Diana, Princess of Wales. Above all, the occasion showed that the closer Europe's nations become politically, the less European they become culturally. What could be less specifically Italian, and more generally mid-Atlantic, than the Britons Mr Elton John and Sting, singing `The Lord's My Shepherd' — a feature of these Milanese obsequies? Have Italians forgotten that, historically, they have been rather better at music than us?
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