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, the natural party of government.
At the bottom of Freedland's "analysis" 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 -- yesterday 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).
Prompted originally by the observations of Mark Jones, I have come to the
conclusion that 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. 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. 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 the 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]
