POLITICS
Dr Owen falls half in love with easeful Death
NOEL MALCOLM
Exactly ten years ago, during the run- up to the creation of the SDP, Roy Jenkins came up with the following metaphor:
It is inadequate to see British politics as two and a half bottles, one labelled Conservative, the next Labour, the third Liberal, and then to think in the fixed quantities of exactly how much you could pour out of each of the first two bottles and put alongside the third. We must think much more in terms of untapped and unlabelled quantities . . .
The judgment of such a connoisseur was not to be disregarded. When first tasted en primeur, the 1981 Château SDP seemed to hold out an extraordinary promise. A magnum, nay, a jeroboam would not do it justice. But the promise was not fulfilled. Seven years later, Lord Jenkins agreed to cut his own losses by engaging in a little judicious blending and re-labelling. Those who kept what was left of the original vintage issued a series of encouraging tasting-notes to the public: Château SDP was becoming ever richer, stronger and more mature. Then, last week, someone took the cork out at Bootle, and disco- vered that there was barely half a teas- poonful left.
The immediate explanation offered by senior figures in the SDP was that they should never have contested Bootle in the first place: a rock-solid Labour seat, it was not their kind of constituency at all. Yet that had not stopped them from getting 12,068 votes there in 1983, and 6,820 in 1987. A drop from nearly 7,000 to precisely 155 requires a more compelling explana- tion than the general unworthiness of Bootle. Is it simply that the 'continuing SDP' lost its credibility when the rest of the party emerged with the Liberals? But the Richmond by-election, in which the go-it- alone SDP won more than 16,000 votes, took place after the merger. Privately, Dr Owen likes to blame the decline of his party's fortunes on that Richmond result — which, he feels, made the public lose its patience with the feuding centre parties. However, it seems that much more pati- ence has been lost with the SDP than with its rival. To blame Dr Owen's recent failure on his near-success at Richmond looks like a peculiarly unconvincing case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
The obvious explanation cannot be avoided. Roy Jenkins was wrong. His Advanced Theory of Non-Finite Decanting was an illusion. The SDP may have changed little since Richmond, but the Labour Party has changed a lot; and as support flowed from the latter to the former in the early 1980s, so it flowed back again during the past couple of years. As Mr Eric Heffer warned prophetically four years ago, Labour is looking more and more like an 'SDP Mark II'. This develop- ment may draw off support from each and every centre party; but it is particularly damaging to the SDP, which often pre- sented itself, in its early years, as a sort of `Labour Party Mark I' — a survival of the old spirit of social democracy which used to flourish in the Labour Party before the `extremists' drove it out.
Looked at in terms of policies, the gap between Labour and the SDP is smaller now than it has ever been. Three crucial reasons for Dr Owen's departure from the Labour Party — unilateralism, anti- Europeanism and hostility to the market economy — have been virtually wiped off the slate, and a partial erasure of the trade union block vote is also promised.
But who looks at these things purely in terms of policies? Dr Owen may have tried to appear to do so, in his interview in the Times last week, when he dished out some rather condescending approval for the Labour policy review. However, if he were prepared to navigate by policies alone, he would have to admit that he can sail just as close to the Conservatives as he can to Labour. He accepts much of what the Thatcher governments have done to the economy, to nationalised industries and trade unions — more, certainly, than the Labour Party does. And his biggest differ- ence with the Tories, over proportional representation and a Bill of Rights, is matched by an, equally large gap between SDP and Labour on the very same issues.
But in the end it is pyschology, not policy, which is calling the shots. Psycholo- gically, Dr Owen has decided that he could never be a Conservative. Being on the Right of the Labour Party was a sign of toughness; being on the Left of the Tory Party would signify wetness, and (as he told the Times), 'I don't find the wets the slightest bit appealing.' Psychologically, he has never been deeply committed to prop- ortional representation. He showed little interest in the matter until he found himself in a 'fourth party', and even then his political credo, Face the Future, buried the subject between pages 178 and 182. If Labour had turned Kinnockite after 1979, Dr Owen would never have left it just for the sake of constitutional reform.
And the greatest problem now facing the SDP is the most purely psychological of all. Dr Owen is bored. He is enormously bored. Setting up your own private politic- al party is rather like one of those danger- ous drugs which give you an enormous buzz to begin with, and then leave you feeling horribly small and let down. Behind the public display of iron determination Dr Owen's political character has always had a tendency towards vacillation, jumpiness and indecision. Now, arguably, he faces the biggest indecision of his life.
In theory, he could just step down from politics (as he has now threatened to do several times), and leave the SDP to carry on without him. But in practice that would mean the end of the party: the SDP, c'est lui. The most dramatic way to close the party down would be to issue a public endorsement of the new-look Labour Par- ty; but this would be the political equiva- lent of what Mr Kinnock calls 'something for nothing' disarmament. (In fact it would be worse, since Dr Owen could not give all his party away: it would be disarmament marred by mutiny, with a rebellious Rosie Barnes battling on without him.) The most logical course, if he is to keep up his pretence of caring deeply about prop- ortional representation, would be to form an alliance with the Liberal Democrats; this, however, is psychologically impossi- ble..Joining with the Democrats would feel like defeat, whereas union with Labour would feel, curiously enough, like an achievement. But the tactic of offering an alliance to Labour has no logical credibil- ity, unless it becomes clear at the last moment before the next election that Labour is heading for a mere plurality in a hung parliament.
The first law of alliance-making is that you should only propose such a thing from a position of relative strength — which means, at the very least, that you should have something the other side wants. Dr Owen is not so stupid that he does not know that; and yet, by toying publicly at this stage with the idea of a return to Labour, he has ensured that his party's already weak position will become even weaker. Doctor Death, as he is affec- tionately known, is now displaying all the alarming symptoms of a death-wish.
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