Danger! Election ahead - United Kingdom politics

National Review, Dec 23, 1996 by Anthony Lejeune

A STRIKING phenomenon of recent years has been the convergence of British and American politics. There is very little today (except the abortion issue, which has been raised by the Catholic hierarchy in Britain and has had, so far at least, no political effect) to distinguish a thoughtful young British Conservative from a conservative Republican. On the Left, "New Labour" is very much in the guise of American "New Democrats."

As Britain starts a five- or six-month runup, or crawlup, to a general election, Tony Blair, the Labour Party leader, is a keen student of Mr. Clinton's electoral tactics -- although the spin-doctors are anxious that Mrs. Blair, a high-flying lawyer, not be identified with Hillary. It is being seriously suggested that George Stephanopoulos might come to Britain and mastermind Labour's campaign. This prospect is not universally welcomed by Labourites. Stephanopoulos once complained that, when he was at Oxford, haughty British members of his own college deliberately looked up at the trees to avoid greeting him when they passed in the quad; this sounds paranoid.

Blair's tactical objective is to make New Labour non-frightening. Centrist voters, who have given the Conservatives 16 years in power but are now vociferously disgruntled, have not been converted to socialism. "Time for a change," they say, but the change they would really like is to what they would conceive as a more user-friendly Conservative government under another name. With them in mind, Blair talks of a "stakeholder" society, in which everybody's interests would be equally considered. He smiles a lot.

His opponent, Prime Minister John Major, is, like Bob Dole, not good at "the vision thing." His appeal is supposed to be that of a decent ordinary man who has risen to the top; absurdly, though with an element of biographical truth, he has even tried playing the class card against the better educated Blair ("New Labour, Old School Tie").

Major's need is to open clear blue water between his policies and the attitudes of New Labour. For the instincts of the Conservative Party and the instincts of the Labour Party remain very different. Labour's itch, however concealed, is for taxation, redistribution, and regulation: the Conservatives still believe, vaguely, in lower taxes and privatization. The trouble is that neither Major nor Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke seems to understand why so many grassroots Conservatives feel betrayed.

This misunderstanding goes back to the last election. The party managers persist in attributing that victory to John Major's common touch. They were too vain to admit the tabloid press won that election by hammering away at Labour's intention of raising taxes considerably.

Since then, the Conservative government has perpetrated 22 separate tax rises. Mr. Clarke talks now as if tax-cutting were an optional extra. "Only when we can afford it," he says, as if it were not among a Conservative chancellor's prime duties to make tax cuts affordable. In last month's budget he announced a few small tax cuts, balanced by a few small tax increases. The only relevant pledge from John Major is that the government will spend more on the National Health Service, in real terms, "year after year after year." Overall, this Conservative government is consuming no smaller a proportion of the national economy than the last Labour Government nearly two decades ago. Similarly, despite some talk of deregulation, the government has been creating new crimes at the rate of one a week and new regulations -- many simply passed on, without scrutiny, from the European Union -- at a rate of three thousand a year.

The whole question of Britain's relations with a Europe moving relentlessly toward federalism hangs over both main parties and is hardly discussed by either of them. Both Major and Blair have now reluctantly agreed to hold a referendum on the highly technical question of a single European currency, if and when the government of the day thinks monetary union desirable -- or unavoidable. Two small parties, the Referendum Party and the UK Independence Party, offer the electorate a theoretical alternative. The question which Sir James Goldsmith, founder and financial backer of the Referendum Party, says should be put to the British people is an ostensibly simple one: "Do you want the United Kingdom to be part of a Federal Europe? Or do you want the UK to return to an association of sovereign nations that are part of a common trading market?" The catch, as was immediately pointed out, is that the latter option, which would certainly command a huge majority, is not on offer; Europe has gone far beyond that point.

Within the Conservative Party, Euroskepticism is strongest among the younger members of Parliament. In the aftermath of a defeat Major and his brand of woolly conservatism could probably not survive; which is why some hard-nosed Conservatives view the prospect of defeat as not without its compensations.