I became very suspicious in the run-up to the last general election. Gordon Brown was tanking badly. He had very publicly failed to call an election under political and media pressure, and could not hope to fight an effective subsequent campaign on the back foot. The expenses scandal had driven a coach and horses through the credibility of elected representatives. The Labour Party goose was well and truly cooked.
Terms of office are not just a safeguard against tyranny, as originally envisaged. Parties can only hold out in government for so long. You get tired, the policies get tired. You run out of ideas. You become trapped in the sticky web of your own crowdpleasing rhetoric. You build up a critical mass of negative press. However, the best thing that the executive could have done, to stay in the game, was to replace the party figurehead. From the outside, this was painfully obvious. Brown just did not work out as a charismatic leader. And any number of opportunities presented themselves to usurp him. Milliband D could have done it. Nonetheless attempts to force Brown out were ruthlessly ignored. James Parnell, Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt all failed to budge him. Why don’t they replace Brown, I thought. Then the penny dropped.
The moment of recognition (and I fully accept that this is all supposition on my part) came during a conversation I had with a Top Civil Servant. A committed man of the left, he wisely stated that the best thing for the Labour movement was to give up political dominance in Parliament, head back to the hills and regroup. Rotten old cabinet ministers could be sent off to their corporate middleman positions, a new leader could be elected in a triumphant fashion, new faces and new policies could be summoned. We all need to retreat, lick our wounds and restrategise sometimes. And there was serious icing on this cake. Old New Labour knew full well that the country was facing a massive debt problem. Cuts to the state budget would hit Labour on home turf, inevitably leading to serious fracture in the already tense relationship with public sector unions. Pipe smoking home countries Tories would be chortling in their sherry, saying ‘I told you so’. And they would have been right. Every country in the West was beginning to suffer the Keynesian hangover of cheap debt, and the consequences of the financial meltdown. Might it not be a bad idea to nip behind the curtain as the s**t hits the fan?
Not that the Tories would care. It was clear from the outset that Dave wanted the power at all costs, describing himself as the ‘heir of Blair’ (choke). Somehow above party politics. The austerity measures would dovetail with the the ‘small state, big society’ gobbledigook. So the Tories could ride the bucking bronco of public spending cuts, and we could learn to love Labour again. Only it nearly all went wrong. Dave disassociated his campaign from the grass roots too convincingly, and the old schism over Europe was still there, of course. Parachute-enabled shortlisters lost out like nobodies’ buisness.
Fortunately help was at hand. As the media got behind the establishment’s changing of the guard, they became increasingly vitriolic towards poor old GB (who did himself no favour at all – who can forget the ‘typically bigoted woman’). As if by magic, Nick Clegg (remember him?) became a rising star. The Guardian gritted its teeth and urged readers to support the Liberals. The Political Wheel groaned and suddered as the power of the ballot was brought to bear. And annoyingly they failed to lose well enough. GB hunkered down in the bunker. When push came to shove, however, Labour were (surprise!) uninterested in the ‘progressive coalition’. Not on your nelly. However the Tories most certainly were interested. All they had to do was start agreeing with their new mates like crazy. We all do that. So I take a dim view of the Hate the Coalition campaign. You’ve been had.
Englemannsworld 