Why I won’t serve with the Tories
Charles Kennedy tells Leo McKinstry that he would not join a coalition government with Michael Howard What is the policy of the Liberal Democrats on acute back pain? I ask myself as I sit outside Charles Kennedy’s office at the House of Commons, twisting in agony from my sciatica. It is not a wholly frivolous question, since the Liberal Democrats have a reputation as the ultimate political faddists, addicted to formulating new plans on every conceivable issue, no matter how trivial. Typical of this approach was the proposal floated last year that the consumption of cod liver oil should be made compulsory for young children.
But it is precisely this over-prescriptive outlook that Charles Kennedy wants to shed in his eagerness to show that the Liberal Democrats are now a mature party, not just a bunch of obsessive theoretical interventionists. ‘I have gone back through our manifestos over the last few general elections and for a party that is Liberal Democrat, my goodness me, the amount of interference and quangos we were proposing was huge,’ he tells me once I have limped into his office. This demand for a new realism has led to some friction on his front bench, he admits, as he and his economic spokesman Vince Cable have forced the abandonment of longcherished commitments. ‘The process has not been without its fraughtness in this room, I can tell you. But the discipline we have put down has largely worked. We are going to come out with a general election manifesto which will be about half the length of the one we produced last time. Because I think that the longer the manifesto, the further you are away from power.’ Kennedy is now nearer power than any Liberal leader since Lloyd George in the 1920s. His party is riding quickly up the polls and has proved in a trio of recent by-elections that it is a genuine threat in Labour’s heartlands, while the public’s regard for Kennedy is far higher than it is for the other two leaders. This represents a serious transformation in his fortunes. Less that a year ago, his leadership appeared to be in crisis, dogged by rumours about his lack of selfconfidence and his excessive drinking. These whispers were fuelled by his non-attendance at a number of high-profile parliamentary debates and an embarrassing, sweat-soaked performance in a major platform speech. At the time, Kennedy explained that he was suffering from ‘a quite dreadful stomach bug’, but that failed to quell the doubts about whether he was up to the job.
There are no such doubts today. Largely as a result of the canny political judgment he has displayed in recent months, he has emerged as a figure of principle and authority. On so many delicate political issues, from the current Anti-Terrorism Bill to the introduction of ID cards, he has been much more sure-footed than Michael Howard. His opposition to the Iraq war, which once led to sneers in the Commons of ‘Charlie Chamberlain’, has turned out to be in tune with the instincts of the British public. And his refusal to participate in the Butler inquiry into British military intelligence, which looked a risky move at the time, was subsequently vindicated by the feebleness of Butler’s report.
This ability to take a longer-term view is attributed by Kennedy to the influence of the late Roy Jenkins, with whom he shared an office when he was first elected to Parliament for the SDP in 1983 at the age of just 23. ‘Roy was an inspiration, a mentor and personal friend. I was very close to him and miss him a huge amount. What he taught me, above all, was the need for a historical perspective. I am constantly asked in this job what I think will happen tomorrow or next week or next month. From Roy, I learned that the history book will usually be a far better guide than the crystal ball.’ In a light blue shirt and looking trim, with out the gauntness that plagued him last year, Kennedy exudes confidence and affability. ‘In a Kennedy administration, a place would have to be found for the editor of The Spectator. I think we’d have Boris as Minister without Portfolio,’ he jokes. Part of this confidence stems from the belief that Tony Blair is in deep political trouble as the general election approaches. ‘We are heading for a much more unpredictable contest than the polls might suggest. And Tony Blair’s conduct since the New Year shows that he thinks it will be an unpredictable picture. If he were just looking at the headline opinion polls, do you think he would be sitting on the sofa with Richard and Judy or devoting a whole day to Channel 5 or running round the country in a helicopter making different pledges? He knows he has a real fight on his hands. He realises that there is a big issue at this election about him personally and, because his style of government is so presidential, that infuses his whole approach.’ But Kennedy refuses to overplay his own prospects. Despite being a Scottish Roman Catholic, he says he has ‘a rather Presbyterian view of party leadership, and I don’t think you should ever be too pleased with yourself’. Making predictions is ‘a mug’s game’, though he will admit that he is hoping for ‘a substantial increase’ in the number of Liberal Democrat seats, especially in target areas like the south-west. If there is such an increase, the result could be a hung parliament. Initially, Kennedy is reluctant to spell out the approach he will adopt if no party has an overall majority in the next Commons. ‘We won’t get diverted now, during or after the election by becoming bogged down in endless discussions as to whether there will be a coalition with this lot or that lot.’ So is he really saying that he might be willing to work with the Conservatives to keep Labour out? ‘The present platform of the Conservatives is oceans away from the Liberal Democrats, there is no doubt about that,’ he responds. ‘The only area where there is a degree of overlap is on individual liberty — as shown by the way we are cooperating on the Terrorism Bill — but even that is curious. I don’t know, for instance, where the Conservatives stand on ID cards; it seems to change week by week. There is a strand of Conservatism which is individualistic, but, as far as I can see, there is another strand which is just nihilistic.’ Again I ask whether there are any conceivable circumstances in which the Liberal Democrats could serve with the Conservatives. ‘The answer is no. How on earth could that circle be squared? How could Michael Howard and I agree about European policy? We just genuinely and sincerely disagree. I like Michael and we get on well, but we just do not see eye-to-eye on Europe. We never have done since we were both elected in 1983 and we never will.’ The refusal to countenance any co-operation with the Tories goes to the heart of the problem facing the Liberal Democrats. They might like to be considered as a centrist party — Kennedy talks of ‘a hard core of liberalism emerging in British politics’ — but in truth they are firmly on the progressive Left; indeed, in many areas, especially on the economy, taxation and the welfare state, they are well to the left of Blairite New Labour. Current Liberal Democrat policies show a near-socialist belief in the efficacy of state action. So, amongst a deluge of schemes, the party wants to scrap all tuition fees and topup fees in higher education, abolish all fees for residential care, create ‘a world free of poverty’, ‘eliminate the gross disadvantage suffered by gypsies and other travellers’, protect school buses, promote congestion-charging, provide free local transport for all pensioners, recruit 10,000 more police officers and reduce school class sizes.
When I put it to him that the Liberal Democrats have ‘quite a wish list’, he comes over all Thatcherite, boasting of his determination to tackle the flabbiness of the public sector and thereby save the taxpayer £5 billion a year. ‘There is clearly wastage in the system and you could save money. And I accept that there would be redundancies in the workforce. In the package that we have put together, there are an awful lot of things that are going to be slashed and burned and quite rightly so’ — the kind of language we would expect more from Alan Sugar than from a Liberal leader. And he maintains his refusal to appease the public sector unions by warning that the age of retirement will have to go up, because of greater longevity and strains on pension funds.
‘I am all in favour of entrepreneurial Britain,’ he says, describing the tax system before Mrs Thatcher’s reforms as ‘punitive and crazy. We don’t want to go back to that.’ Yet, in a glaring indicator of his party’s contradictions, that is precisely the direction in which the Liberal Democrats are going. In true left-wing, ‘soak-the-rich’ style, they are proposing to push up the top rate of income tax to 50 per cent for all those earning over £100,000 a year to pay for their plans to abolish student and residential fees. I ask him to explain the purpose of imposing more taxes on the one hand, then on the other doling out more state subsidies for the well-off. ‘My priority is fair taxation. Isn’t the quality of society measurably better if everyone feels that they have a stake in good overall standards but that stake doesn’t prohibit people from enjoying affluence or going private if they want? In any case, you are only talking about 1 per cent of all taxpayers in this country,’ he declares.
But many more will be hit by the Liberal Democrats’ proposal to replace the council tax with a new system of local income tax. Currently, there is only one municipal bill for each household. If the Liberal Democrats get their way, there will be one for every taxpayer, which means that two-income couples could pay substantially more. ‘Our most honest estimate is that, overall, seven out of ten will certainly be no worse off. But yes, absolutely, three out of ten will pay more, especially in double-income households. We just have to go out there and argue our case.’ For all Kennedy’s candour, it seems reckless for a party trying to win over middle England to admit that at least a third of voters will face higher tax bills to subsidise local government, which is itself hardly the most popular of causes.
Other elements of Liberal policy undermine Kennedy’s claim that ‘in all policies, the presumption must be the maximisation of the individual’s rights of expression’. This hardly sits easily with his support for outlawing ‘incitement to religious hatred’. When I mention that the writer Salman Rushdie has warned that such legislation would undermine freedom of thought, Kennedy prefers to equivocate rather than make a robust defence of free speech. ‘I should not be able to go out into the street and incite people to religious hatred. That is wrong. But I should be able to argue openly why one aspect of one religion is perhaps preferable to another aspect of another one. We have to leave it to the courts to judge these things.’ Nor can his earlier attack on state over-regulation be squared with the Liberal Democrats’ current populist campaign against ticket touts; amongst the measures proposed are ‘limits to the numbers of tickets sold in any single transaction’ and a requirement that traders ‘give details of their mark-up’. It may seem a minor issue, but for me this reveals the true statist, anti-free-market mindset of the modern Liberal Democrat, who cannot see a problem without demanding that ‘the government must do something’. Once more, Kennedy lapses into unconvincing generalities. ‘The difference between me and untrammelled free-marketers is that I want to see as much liberty for the individual as you can get, but I’ve got to recognise that there is a certain line in the sand where the state has got to intervene and regulate, but not to over-intervene and over-regulate.’ But where is this line to be drawn? The detail of Liberal Democrat policy exposes the talk about liberty to be so much empty rhetoric. Kennedy concludes the interview by arguing that individual rights must be seen ‘in a responsible context that takes account of the wider society’, which could be seen as progressive code for more influence by the state. Kennedy started his career in the SDP. It now seems, in his enthusiasm for tax rises and welfarism, that he has donned the mantle of Old Labour.
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