> Penners
>
> The article below is a case study in the confused politics of the
> present. His paper having joined the effort to discredit Portillo,
> Jonathan Freedland now bemoans the Conservative Party's apparently
> inevitable drift into civil war as two diametrically opposed
> candidates do battle over the summer, with only the promise of intense
> infighting to follow the final election. This, of course, is the hope
> of New Labour, behind which lies the natural party of government. This
> is more or less confirmed in today's Guardian by its "eminent"
> political commentator Hugo Young, who also happens to sit on the board
> of the Scott Trust, owners of the Guardian. Letting the cat out of the
> bag, Young states:
>
Within his big tent, Tony Blair would always like to include the
right sort of Conservative party. Shortly before the election, he
was reflecting on the consequences of another Labour landslide,
and counted among its benefits the effect on the Tories. They
would head for the centre ground, he thought, which meant
turning to Kenneth Clarke.
A true party warrior might have detested this prospect, because
it threatened Labour's hegemony; and given the state of the
Tories, it looked extremely improbable anyway. Mr Blair, by
contrast, looked forward to it, partly because he's an incorrigible
centrist, but mainly because the outcome would simplify his
ambition to suck the poison out of the Europe debate before a
euro referendum.
Some ministers still think that. They want a Clarke victory.
Whether their premise is correct rather depends on whether the
referendum is held. But the inference correctly goes to the heart
of this leadership contest. The biggest thing at stake in it is the
Europe question. This will determine the result. And the result is
entwined with the politics of the euro, yes or no.
("Don't be fooled: Europe is central to the Tory contest", The Guardian,
19 July 2001:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/comment/0,9236,523975,00.ht
ml)
> At the bottom of Freedland's "analysis" meanwhile is the conventional
> wisdom that, to be politically successful, politicians must fight for
> the centre. But what is the centre? Twenty years ago today's centre
> was in fact something well the right of the post-war consensus, which
> was then the centre. But that centre was in crisis, and required major
> surgery, which it got in what came to be known as Thatcherism. New
> Labour is now consolidating that "revolution", as did Clinton the
> Reagan-Bush revanchism in the US, and Chretien for Mulroney's legacy
> in Canada.
>
> The Conservatives were "the natural party of government", but, since
> the time of John Major's leadership, it has been remarked widely that
> the party has lost its innate raison d'etre: to win and keep power.
> This is because it has placed ideology above its former pursuit, as
> opposed to making the exercise of power its ideology. The vacuum has
> been filled by New Labour, which eschews the entire notion of
> ideology, if in a very ideological fashion (as with its determination
> to proceed with the rapid privatisation of pretty much all that
> remains of the state sector -- on Tuesday Ken Livingstone's London
> Transport chief, Bob Kiley, was unceremoniously, unaccountably sacked
> by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers for his implacable opposition to
> the government's ludicrous plans to re-enact the British Rail
> privatisation in London Underground).
>
> New Labour is the vehicle by which the natural party of government has
> retained control of the levers of state -- and whose grip has been
> firm since 1979, and especially since 1985. As the Thatcher ascendancy
> represented the culmination of intra-state and capital struggles that
> reached a peak during the early 1980s (remember the chief of the CBI
> Terence Beckett promising a "bare-knuckle fight" with the government?)
> only to result in the triumph of the unstable coalition of economic
> fundamentalists and Crown loyalists (with the defeat of Argentina, the
> NUM and the labour movement), so the Blair ascendancy represents the
> final passing of the punk Thatcherite coalition as capital and the
> secret state -- together the natural party of government -- find a new
> home in the house that they built, courtesy of the Labour right wing,
> ex-SDPers, ex-CPGB types, and influential news media
> (Pearson/Financial Times, News International, BBC, LWT). Without the
> ideological burdens afflicting the Conservatives, the natural party of
> government finds a comfortable home in New Labour for the time being.
> It is also more clearly aligned with a modified economic
> fundamentalism, in keeping with the Third Way's socially concerned
> gloss and appreciation of state power. The Crown loyalists are, for
> the time being, in exile.
>
> The tragedy of Portillo is that he realised this, as Freedland
> suggests, and that he was making a difficult but necessary journey
> towards the goal of remaking the Conservative Party in the image of
> the natural party of government. Unfortunately for him, however, his
> journey was made very difficult by his political origins within the
> Crown loyalist faction of the punk Thatcherite coalition. Portillo was
> one of several young Conservatives who, under the tutelage of
> Peterhouse, Cambridge historian Maurice Cowling rose quickly to
> achieve great prominence as a young bona fide Thatcherite. Cowling
> himself is reminiscent of the selectively libertarian Kenneth Minogue
> in his lofty pronouncements regarding culture and political theory
> (see http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/08/feb90/cowling.htm for his
> demolition of Raymond Williams, for example). Like Minogue, Cowling
> has remained faithful to Thatcher, if for rather different reasons.
> Cowling's contemporary political hero was Enoch Powell, who is often
> regarded as a precursor, even mentor, to Thatcher. A Powellite
> Peterhouse mafia around Cowling, George Gale and Patrick Cosgrave (who
> succeeded Gale as editor of the Spectator in 1973 and later became a
> special adviser to Thatcher) led the anti-Europe Conservatives against
> Edward Heath's leadership of the party from the pages of the Spectator
> magazine (now owned by Conrad Black) when Gale took over its
> editorship in 1970. Its politics did not extend to Powell's misty
> nostalgia for empire, however, instead valuing the "special
> relationship" with the United States. In this it was closer to the
> politics of Robert Conquest. Nevertheless there were tensions in this
> little group, united by opposition to Europe but divided as to reasons
> why. Cowling criticised Gale for being "a hard-minded liberal who
> supported the Conservatives", as opposed to someone truly conservative
> of British traditions, which were regarded as implacably under threat
> by an encroaching Europe even then. Cowling was associated with the
> rise of anti-immigration politics within the Conservative rightwing
> during the 1970s, bemoaning the loss of "spiritual glue" of "national
> sentiment" as a result of "the immigration of alien communities" (see
> http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/toryright.htm). Like
> another paleo-conservative, Samuel P. Huntington, Cowling has
> benefitted from the largesse of the John M. Olin Foundation in the
> funding of his research "on
> religion and public doctrine in modern England", among other projects
> (see http://www.mediatransparency.org/view_grant.asp?8477).
>
> This is Portillo's background. Indeed, Portillo was Cowling's star
> pupil, and he was groomed from very early on to achieve political
> greatness. At his 40th birthday party, Portillo was more or less
> anointed by Thatcher who proclaimed that the hopes of her clan rested
> on him -- so much had already been invested in him. It helps to
> explain why there are those who regard him as such a pariah that they
> would rather countenance the pro-European Kenneth Clarke. Another of
> Freedland's mistakes is the idea that Clarke could not make an
> accommodation with at least some Tory Europhobes. The amnesiac
> Freedland forgets that, in 1997, Clarke formed an unholy alliance with
> arch-Europhobe John Redwood in his unsuccessful bid for the
> Conservative leadership then. Redwood fell out with Portillo because
> Portillo failed to back him in his leadership bid against John Major
> in 1995.
>
> Cowling is still active in retirement. He sits on the advisory board
> of a think tank-cum-discussion forum, Politeia, where many other
> public Portillo supporters like Francis Maude and David Willetts also
> can be found (see http://www.politeia.co.uk/). The composition of that
> entity looks like it is in fact an unsuccessful effort to bridge the
> widening gap between punk Thatcherites and political "realists" like
> Portillo who realise that punk Thatcherism is, for the time being, a
> political death warrant. Unfortunately for Portillo, however, his
> background has sealed his fate regardless of whichever course of
> action he chooses. Meanwhile the natural party of government continues
> on its merry way.
>
>
> Stop this Tory circus
>
> Caught up in their party's fratricide, neither Clarke nor IDS can
> provide genuine opposition to New Labour
>
> Jonathan Freedland
> Wednesday July 18, 2001
> The Guardian
>
> So Tories hate gays more than they hate Europe. In the end, it seems,
> Conservative MPs could live with a Europhile like Ken
> Clarke more than a socially-inclusive, Section 28 abolishing,
> experiences-in-my-past half-foreign reformer like Michael Portillo.
> The
> shadow chancellor told his party truths they did not want to hear -
> and yesterday he paid the price.
>
> The margin was Florida-thin but devastating for Portillo and all those
> who understand the hole the Conservatives are in. For now the
> 330,000 party members will choose from two comfort candidates: Clarke,
> who says the only thing wrong with today's Conservative
> party is that he isn't leading it, and Iain Duncan Smith, who
> soothingly insists that the Tories were defeated in 1997 and 2001
> because they weren't rightwing enough. Only Dr Portillo was ready to
> administer strong medicine - warning Conservatives that they
> are on the brink of oblivion unless they change and change utterly -
> and now they have despatched him to the Siberia of Channel 4
> documentaries and, who knows, maybe seat on the Arts Council.
>
> He leaves behind a gripping summer contest, a duel between the lean
> Captain and the Midlands butterball. Clarke offers an instant
> jump in the polls: he is electable, a plausible prime minister. But he
> also guarantees a civil war to make John Major's battles with
> the bastards look like a round of boules.
>
> For the coming contest will be the great European row Conservatives
> have been itching to have for a decade: loud, hoarse and in
> the open. But if Clarke wins, it will not end there. He and his party
> will be on opposite sides on one of the pivotal issues of our
> time: they will scratch and fight until either leader or party
> surrender. It cannot work.
>
> Which leaves Duncan Smith, the candidate of total delusion. He will
> provide the Tory sect with the delicious purity of exile; for once
> the headbangers will not have to snipe at the leader - for the leader
> will be one of them. He wants the cane in schools, execution
> for criminals and a higher age of consent for homosexuals. He wants
> real privatisation in schools and hospitals, none of this
> namby-pamby, partial nonsense pursued by Tony Blair. He is a never man
> on the euro and was the lead rebel against the
> Maastricht treaty: read his jottings, or listen to his supporters, and
> you suspect his ultimate dream is British withdrawal from the
> European Union. For the Tories to replace William Hague with IDS is
> like the Labour party of 1983 replacing Michael Foot with
> Tony Benn: proof that the party's solution to being stuck down a hole
> is to dig even deeper.
>
> Why should any of us care - beyond the sheer entertainment value of
> watching the Tory train wreck unfold, as if in slow motion,
> before our very eyes? Surely this is private grief, and we ought not
> intrude upon it. Not so. The brute fact is, we need the
> Conservatives to make the right choice this summer - for the country's
> sake and, less expectedly, for Labour's.
>
> For rarely has a government been more desperately in need of
> opposition than this one. They were bad enough after one landslide,
> but two has gone to their heads. They are becoming drunk on power,
> convinced they are free to do what they like and pay no
> electoral price. All their missteps after 1997 - the dome, the fuel
> crisis, foot and mouth, the attempted purge of Ken and Rhodri -
> cost them, what, six seats? All the warnings the commentariat churned
> out for four years, what did they amount to? Labour's
> majority remained impregnable.
>
> No wonder Blair and his ministers breezed back into office, their old
> habits uncured and, if anything, inflamed. Hell, why don't we
> boot Gwyneth Dunwoody and Donald Anderson off their committee chairs?
> So what if there's a row, we'll get our way in the end.
> Nothing can stop us. We are Labour - hear us roar.
>
> It took Margaret Thatcher 10 years to become like this; New Labour
> have done it in four. Heedless of argument, dismissive of
> dissent, they've managed to turn candid friends into guerrillas of the
> resistance. Their stubbornness on private-sector involvement in
> the public services has alienated Labour's once most-reliable allies,
> the trade unions. Yesterday the GMB announced it was
> holding back £1m promised to Labour over the next four years -
> spending the money to campaign against the government's plans
> instead.
>
> On Monday, even the once robotic, pager-obeying ranks of the
> parliamentary Labour party rebelled, refusing to accept the
> Dunwoody and Anderson purge; 118 Labour MPs rejected the Downing
> Street fix. By inflicting Blair's first Commons defeat, they
> will earn the reinstatement of those two troublemakers - and perhaps a
> new sense of self-respect.
>
> But it will not be enough. This government has not learned its lesson
> nor put aside its control-freakish ways. Yesterday Stephen
> Byers removed Bob Kiley, the transport supremo hired by Ken
> Livingstone, from the board of London Regional Transport. Blithely
> waving aside the mayor's direct mandate from Londoners, the transport
> secretary imposed the imperial will of Whitehall. Less than
> 24 hours after the Commons worm turned, Labour flashed the
> steel-capped boot.
>
> In other words, the current coalition of trade unions, Labour
> dissidents and the media will not be enough. This war requires one
> more big battalion: the opposition needs The Opposition.
>
> After all, no executive can go unchecked; new laws have to be
> scrutinised. And, useful though Labour's awkward squad are, that
> job can best be done by the official opposition. Admittedly, their
> objections can always be over-ruled, but through forensic
> examination and sheer force of argument the opposition can change the
> climate in which government operates: think of Robin
> Cook's hounding of the Major administration after the Scott report on
> arms sales to Iraq.
>
> A Tory party led into irrelevance by Iain Duncan Smith, or spilling
> fratricidal blood under Kenneth Clarke, would pose no such
> threat. To be a potent scrutineer, an opposition has to speak with the
> weight of an alternative government. When Labour was
> locked in its own civil war in the 1980s, Thatcherism could proceed
> unchecked because it knew it faced no threat of defeat. For the
> Tories to be a check and balance on New Labour, they have to become
> credible. Yesterday's vote puts that day further across the
> horizon.
>
> But a Conservative return to seriousness is not only in the interest
> of citizens keen to keep an eye on our governors. It is also in
> Labour's self-interest, a point made that fateful Monday night by the
> sacked former minister, Frank Field. The Millbankers said his
> words were mere personal bitterness, but they contained a great truth.
>
>
> Back in the 80s, when Labour was unelectable, Field said, the
> Conservatives thought they could do anything. "The electorate had
> to put up with it, but [they] did not forget." Once Labour became
> credible "the revenge of the electorate was mighty" - and the
> Tories are living with the consequences still. That same fate could
> await Labour, unless they can be saved from themselves.
> Labour is like the boxer who fights best when fighting an equal.
> Labour needs a sparring partner of quality; it needs the
> Conservatives to get serious.
>
> Full article at:
> http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/comment/0,9236,523387,00.
> html
>
> ps: Frank Field, whose own constituency Labour Party tried to dump him
> during the 1980s -- without success, unfortunately -- is a participant
> at Politeia events along with other "heterodox economists" like Deepak
> Lal, Patrick Minford and Tim Congdon (see Conference Report,
> http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001III/msg00501.html). Such
> personalities are also found to be involved with the Institute of
> Economic Affairs.
>
> pps: Prior to taking up residence in Doughty Street in 1975, the
> offices of the Spectator were housed in the drab, unadorned buildings
> of Gower Street, where, until recently, one could also find, at No.
> 140, the offices of MI5. Under the editorship of Nigel Lawson, the
> Spectator's political commentator Alan Watkins was replaced, in 1967,
> by Auberon Waugh, prior to the latter's sojourn at Private Eye where
> he disseminated MI5-sponsored smears regarding Harold Wilson's
> supposed status as a KGB agent (see Michael Keaney,
> http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg04203.html).
>
> Michael Keaney
> Mercuria Business School
> Martinlaaksontie 36
> 01620 Vantaa
> Finland
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
