Alex Rantwell
On the one hand it seems unthinkable that the two parties often seen as the opposing poles of British politics could form a coalition government. On the other hand it seems to make perfect sense. There is precious little difference in terms of policy, ideology or integrity. Both parties seem to govern with the notion that everything would be fine if not for the public. Both have hemorrhaged membership in recent decades as they have ceased to be organs of democratic governance and become essentially vote brokers offering a veneer of legitimacy to a sort of disorganised corporatism.
The very idea of it seems the stuff of nightmares – the two parties who have presided over a century of often farcical decline teaming up to accelerate their programme of ruin. From the Tories’ misadventure in Suez to Labour’s humiliating panhandling to the IMF, by way of botched nationlisations, botched privatisations, a mountain of debt and and an ill judged foray into continental politics which has been an expensive disaster, to the near break up of the United Kingdom. The two main parties have little to recommend them besides keeping the other lot out. And indeed when you speak to people intending to vote for either of the two main parties, that’s the reason that seems to come up most often.
And you can see their point – a Labour government, spending and borrowing it’s way to bankruptcy, would be a disaster. Even as a more natural conservative voter I have no interest in seeing Cameron win an outright majority either, which he would use to fudge and fiddle a referendum, setting the cause back decades.
Why then, would I be quietly hoping that these two parties, unable to form a government alone, form a grand coalition and share government for the next parliament?
Firstly they wouldn’t be able to get anything done. Unless they were going to engage in a radical programme of spending cuts and rolling back of the state, and neither is even talking about it, then this is a very good thing. The constant infighting, squabbling and maneuvering would ensure that they couldn’t do anything at all, allowing the rest of us to get on with things without further tax rises, stupid new laws or damaging vanity projects.
Secondly, it would dispel the popular myth that there is any worthwhile difference between the Conservative and Labour parties. In fact there are probably starker differences of opinion within the parties than there are between their respective leaderships, and actual important differences. The Labour party might be a bit more inclined to spend public money, and the Tories a bit more inclined towards privatisation, but both are thoroughly committed to the European Union, both have bought fully into the faith of climate change and are determined to keep pandering to the demands of this new deity. Both parties continue to stir up an irrational fear of Russia, Islamic terrorism and any other convenient bogey man to undermine civil liberties and the justice system and over play their own diminishing importance in international relations.
Thirdly though, and most importantly, they would both ruin their credibility at the same time. The bigger picture of British politics in the modern era is one where the two main parties take turns at mucking things up, while the other party capitalises on this to court the disaffected and convince the public that things would be so much better under them. After a few years this works and the other party gets it’s turn at mucking stuff up while the party that was in government takes it’s go at courting the disgruntled and making wild promises.
The net result has been a huge expansion of the state, economic stagnation and general national decline as the parties have sought to out bid each other during elections campaigns, by borrowing from the future. Now the future has arrived and it turns out that neither party can concoct an attractive enough package of benefits, tax breaks and spending boosts to make voting for them worthwhile to significant numbers of people. Meanwhile, in Scotland and Wales, nationalist parties have been able to offer this by blaming everything on England, and in England itself UKIP have started to call them out on this fraud. The Liberal Democrats, in their sorry desperation to get their hands on power have thoroughly shot themselves in the foot and are facing a meltdown in the forthcoming election.
So it seems to me that the best possible outcome is for a ‘grand coalition’ to take power, to prove once and for all that they are both as incompetent as each other, and that ultimately their supposed differences are not worth the paper they are written on. 5 years of doubly bad government, bickering and impotence might seem like a high price to pay, but if it opens the door to an election in 2020 with actual alternatives, and disabuses the public of the ridiculous notion that the fact that they have previously governed means they are fit to govern now, then it is a price that is certainly worth paying.
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I do not think there is much chance of a coalition between the Conservative and Labour parties. It is true that David Cameron is on the left of the Conservative Party (although that is not how he presented himself in the leadership election – full disclosure, I was a strong supporter of the rival candidate David Davis), but he has very little in common with “Red Ed” Miliband.
I do not know if Mr Cameron is “fully committed” to the European Union (he does not strike me as someone about which the words “fully committed” can be used) – but most members of the Conservative Party, and most Conservative Party Members of the House of Commons, are actually rather hostile to the European Union – although many are wary of openly coming out for exist, whilst the present leader is in place. Demands for the return of powers from the E.U. are really, of course, demands for exit – as the E.U. will never give up substantial powers (as everyone knows – the point of the E.U. is to take, not give back, even more powers).
As for the “misadventure at Suez” – I do not believe in letting lines like that pass any more than I let Americans who do not know anything about Joe McCarthy use the word “McCarthyism” – without explaining to them that the people Senator McCarthy opposed really were Communists and really did what to murder tens of millions of Americans and enslave the rest (see “Blacklisted By History” by M. Stanton Evans – a great man who recently died).
There was nothing wrong in principle with the Suez operation – indeed the mistake of Eden was to leave the Canal Zone in 1954 (as Foreign Secretary he demanded that Churchill accept the worthless treaty with Nasser – and Churchill, old and ill, eventually gave way). The 1956 operation was undermined, not so much by the Americans (although they were no help), but by the Chancellor of the Exchequer – Harold M.
“Super Mac” talked up economic problems into a full blown crises – and refused to free the exchange rate (which would have made the “run on the Pound” irrelevant ).
Harold wanted to become Prime Minister – and he did not care about messing up things in order to achieve this.
The failure to successfully stand up to Nasser led to a collapse in British influence in the Middle East – with, for example, the Revolution in Iraq occurring in 1958 and that in Yemen occurring in 1962, and Syria in 1963.
The mess the Middle East is now, is not the result of the decision to go into Suez (had Britain just accepted Nasser breaking the 1954 treaty and occupying the Canal Zone, we would have been just as much humiliated – possibly more so), it is a result of not pushing the Suez operation to a successful conclusion.
As for taxes and spending.
The Labour Party is in favour of higher taxes, the Conservative Party is in favour of cutting taxes.
On government spending.
Mr Cameron has suggested a 1% reduction in government spending (“one Pound in every hundred Pounds” is how he puts it) – I do not think that this is sufficient and I do not think he has clearly explained how he would achieve even this modest objective, but…….
Mr Miliband has suggested a massive increase in government spending – which means there is again a clear choice.
Would I have preferred that Mr Cameron clearly set out specific ways to reduce government spending?
Of course I would – but we are from opposite wings of the party.
My only complaint (and, I admit, it is an old one now) is that Mr Cameron was not fully open about what wing of the party he really represented – at the time of the leadership election.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is a personal view by Mr Rantwell. The Libertarian Alliance does not advocate voting for or against any particular candidate in the present general election. Our status aside, this is an easy position to take, as all the main parties have worked hard to make themselves equally if differently repulsive, and none of the others is exactly embracing libertarianism.
Paul,
The point about Suez wasn’t the rights or wrongs of the operation itself but the eventual outcome, which was national humiliation and a cementing of our position as a second rate, declining power who lacked the political will or military might to defend our interests against American opposition. You obviously know the subject a lot better than I do, and it sounds as though I would agree with your verdict if I read further. The point is that we didn’t, and it was the Conservative party of the day who presided over this debacle.
As for Cameron and his 1% cut, it’s hardly earth shattering is it? It’s fiddling at the margins with what is, in my opinion a hugely bloated state. And that 1% could be quite easily wiped out by any crisis, “investment” or whatever. If he was talking 20% then it might be more meaningful.
A pox on all their houses.
Suez was a moment of education from which the wrong lesson was drawn.
Conservative Governments since 1951 had believed that, while we no longer had all the freedom of action we’d had before 1939, the Americans could be relied on to underwrite our continuing pretensions. The Americans, for entirely valid reasons of their own, took the Suez adventure as an opportunity to tell their allies who was boss.
Had I been in charge in 1956, I’d have told the Americans to get stuffed, and gone on to smack the Egyptians hard. I’d have threatened the Americans with floating the pound, thereby breaking up their currency management scheme. With their anti-Communist crusade at risk, they’d probably have backed down.
This done, I’d have dumped the remaining Empire from a position of strength, and then radically sliced at the post-War state. I’d also have made it clear to the Americans that we were a semi-detached ally, willing to cooperate only so far as it was worth our interest in each case. Still being rational players rather than neo-con loons, they’d have scowled but gone along with this. And I’d have had a go at an economic accommodation with the French and Germans.
The result would have been a country with ambitions in keeping with its actual resources. We could have kept the pound stable, and a continuing great power status within a contracted area that might have included the Middle East, so long as we could use the Israelis as a proxy. We still had, at least in potential, a first rate industrial base. As in the reign of Charles II, we could have trimmed between the two stronger powers, keeping both from dominating us while something turned up.
I’d have done something like this even after the event of Suez as it actually proceeded. De Gaul did something similar after worse humiliations. His mistake was to be too corporatist in his economic policies.
In the event, the lesson we learned was that we should grovel in all things to the Americans, who would, in return, prop us up in the semblance of great power status. We still lost the Empire, but we also did nothing about an over-extended domestic state; and the loss of national pride meant that the social liberation of the 1960s went in often malign directions.
Suez could have been one of those moments when a drunk wakes up with a splitting head and resolves to turn himself round. All we did was reach for the bottle again.
On second thoughts, the above comment has been promoted to the front page.
Well I have dealt with Sean’s Suez comment as an actual post – although (as so often) Sean does not actually mean a lot of what he writes (it is a complex game he plays – for reasons of his own). But Hayek was wrong (as he eventually admitted) not to reply to Keynes – simply because he, Hayek, believed that Keynes was just playing games and did not mean a lot of what he was writing (and would quite likely present the opposite opinion on another day).
What actually matters is what someone says or writes – and its ability to mislead people. Not whether they “really believe it” or not.
Mr Rantwell.
I apologise for misunderstanding you.
Yes the wrong lessons were “learned” from Suez (as Sean rightly says also – but then he ruins his correct statement with a lot of other stuff).
For example defence cuts start under “Supermac” – justified by the, totally false, argument that the United Kingdom could no longer act independently anyway.
A “run on the Pound” only matters if there is a government “fixed” (rigged) exchange rate.
If the government does not try and rig the exchange rate – a “run on the Pound” is irrelevant. And, for example, Mr George Soros would not have made a fortune in the late 1980s (a fortune he has used to back evil, not too strong a word, around the world). A “James Bond villain” such as Mr Soros only exists because stupid British government policy created him.
Of course blaming “the Americans” for British government pretensions that the Pound was worth X when it WAS NOT worth X, is absurd.
It was absurd in the 1960s, it was absurd in the 1950s (Suez), and it was absurd in the 1920s.
Indeed British pleas that a totally false and artificial exchange rate be maintained in the late 1920s, led to the expansion of the American supply (Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve was acting on the request of M. Norman the Governor of the Bank of England), which was the cause of the terrible boom-bust that led to the disaster that was the 1930s.