Events | 2009.06.08
A decimated left may make Ashdown's alliance a reality | Jackie Ashley
Labour\'s will to live has gone. The policies of a Cameron government will only be resisted by a new centre-left coalition
Even before this week\'s elections, there is no shortage of Labour people declaring the party\'s last rites. Two key figures in Tony Blair\'s administration see it like this: New Labour will be destroyed at the next general election and whatever is left will be swept up into a new centre-left coalition, in which the Liberal Democrats will be key players. It\'s happened, apparently, because of "Tony\'s catastrophic misjudgment over Iraq and Gordon\'s failures since."
The prime minister\'s attempts yesterday to seize the initiative over the expenses furore don\'t seem to have helped. "Gordon just doesn\'t get it" and "it\'s too little too late" were typical comments from some.
Actually, Brown\'s performance was by no means his worst and he has interesting things to say about political reform. It\'s just that he found it impossible to move quickly enough as the tempest broke, and is struggling to play catch-up. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have sounded more decisive and worked harder to respond to public anger.
But Brown\'s talk of commissions, reports, debates just appears too far off. As a leader he is in a weak position because he seems to be a dead man walking. His own future is dependent on too many Labour MPs, including ministers, for him to sound decisive.
Take the House of Lords . Brown is a genuine reformer on the issue. He\'s pro-election. He is not moved by the baubles of power. But I\'m told that he has already agreed a great swath of peerages for former Blairite apparatchiks, part of the deal done when Tony Blair left No 10 and wanted to "look after" his people. Promises have been made, and to some of his own former advisers and supporters too. So he can\'t vow not to expand the undemocratic, unreformed Lords and then stuff it with more ex-politicians and hacks. They know too much for him to renege on his deals.
In furiously cynical mood, do you think the public will be more interested in the possible details of sometime-in-the-future reform of the second chamber, or in the list of new peers, as people jump from the sinking parliamentary Labour party? People want specifics, clear changes, and they want them now.
With just four days to go before the European and council elections , it was not sensible of Brown to tell us to "wait and see" just how radical his new constitutional reform plans are going to be. For now, it sounds like some kind of minister-dominated body that will come up with a reform package, that will eventually see the light of day in Labour\'s next (presumably irrelevant) election manifesto. It\'s simply not enough. He needs to be able to give sharp and timely answers to the reform agenda. Commissions, the great and the good, hearings, minutes, green papers … all that feels like the old politics.
The prime minister could, even now, surprise us by throwing open the process of reform to the public, promising that he won\'t move without the agreement of the other major party leaders and committing himself to accepting all proposed changes this outside body suggests. That would be a good start.
He is clearly waiting until after this week\'s likely massacre of Labour candidates to relaunch, yet again, with his new national plan. There will be a "radical" cabinet reshuffle and the country will take not the blindest notice. Promoting one of his closest colleagues, Ed Balls, to be chancellor, or recalling David Blunkett, is hardly going to turn round his fortunes. None of it will drown out the inevitable calls for Brown to step down and make way for Alan Johnson .
That, however is unlikely to happen. Ministers don\'t have the willpower, unity or morale to confront Brown in the disciplined and ruthless way they\'d need for an effective coup. Most of them have given up already. They are thinking about their own futures outside politics, or about who will lead what remains of Labour in opposition. The desperation to cling on has gone.
What will happen now, and what hope is there for the centre left?
A few weeks ago, the former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown declared that the big event waiting to happen is the realignment of the forces of the left around a broadly liberal, centre-left agenda. His comments weren\'t much noticed – after all, hadn\'t he once spent too much time convincing himself that Blair was about to fuse Labour and the Lib Dems?
But this time round, it looks as though Lord Ashdown could be right. Though we\'re always told not to read too much into the polls, it would be ludicrous not to assume that today they are telling a consistent message: people expect, and will vote for, a big Tory majority in the next parliament. Cameron will probably arrive in power with a freedom to undertake change unmatched since Blair was first elected in 1997.
Well, democracy brings its revenges. Cameron will have to clean up the Commons and will find that tough. But he won\'t be an all-conquering hero, and it is around his inevitable problems that the centre left will now need to regroup.
On Europe, he will find himself in an unholy mess, with his promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty likely to plunge us into a prolonged crisis with the rest of the EU, and a debate about leaving. At roughly the same time, the EU may agree on a more powerful presidential figure. And the way negotiations are going, that figure could be Blair. Cameron will be caught between anti-European MPs and reality.
As he deals with the economic mess caused by the crash, Cameron will also find himself cutting spending drastically. Despite his promises on public services, it\'s hard to see how he will avoid deep reductions in spending on welfare and much else. Britain will need a clear, untainted opposition that stands up for public sector values, as too often New Labour failed to do.
Finally, when it comes to the reform agenda, Cameron will stop well short of any changes to the voting system that would damage Tory interests. He will end up proposing a blatantly self-interested set of changes.
So this new left-of-centre coalition could be pro-welfare, mildly pro-European and support constitutional reform, including PR – exactly the kind that would be melded by an alliance between Lib Dems and the better angels of Labour. It\'s not what many in the Labour party would want, but it may be that electoral necessity finally makes a reality of Paddy Ashdown\'s dream.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/31/politics-elections-brown
