Unbridgeable divide?

After Ming, where now for the progressive consensus, ask Alasdair Murray and Julian Astle

The Liberal Democrats and the Labour party – partners in the anti-Conservative alliance of the mid 1990s – have been driven apart by events over the last decade. While they still share a desire to build a fairer, more equal society, they have divided sharply over the ‘war on terror’ and the associated curtailment of civil liberties.

But the possibility that the next election will lead to a hung parliament has placed the issue of Lib-Lab cooperation firmly back on the agenda. Until his sudden departure, Menzies Campbell’s personal rapport with Gordon Brown also hinted at a much closer relationship between the two parties. Campbell hesitated before vetoing Brown’s attempt in the summer of 2007 to bring a number of Liberal Democrat peers into his government, and did not stop two Lib Dem peers acting as advisers in Brown’s ‘government of all the talents’.

Campbell claimed after Brown’s approach that the ‘chasm’ between the parties on issues such as nuclear energy, Trident, ID cards, public services, council tax and the war in Iraq made Lib-Lab cooperation impossible. But is the fissure in progressive politics as wide as he suggested? And will Campbell’s successor be any more likely to seek closer ties with the Labour party?

When Brown became Labour leader in June, he talked of his conviction ‘that each of us has a responsibility to each other…that when the strong help the weak, it makes us all stronger’. He promised to harness ‘the driving power of social conscience’ and ‘the better angels of our nature’ in pursuit of his overarching goal: the creation of a ‘progressive consensus’ in British politics.

Few Liberal Democrats would take issue with this statement of intent. The traditional liberal concern for the underdog places the party unequivocally on the progressive side of British politics. The Liberal Democrats have repeatedly talked of the need to make Britain ‘fairer’ – a word used sparingly by Tony Blair, but more regularly and with apparently greater conviction by his successor. Both parties appear, on a traditional left-right perspective, to be working towards similar goals. Both are deeply committed to tackling poverty, reducing inequality and expanding the ‘life chances’ of the disadvantaged.

However, in pursuing this progressive agenda, the two parties take a very different approach. Gordon Brown’s political philosophy and his record in office reveal a strong and enduring faith in the ability of central government to deliver profound societal change.

Liberals have always been more sceptical. Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat acting leader and shadow chancellor, believes that alongside Brown’s undoubted political strengths lies ‘a major intellectual and practical failure: to grasp the limits of the capacity of government bureaucracies to function efficiently, let alone achieve social and economic transformation’. Brown has appeared to accept some of these criticisms in recent months, but it remains unclear whether he is willing to seriously pursue the dispersion of power that Liberal Democrats seek.

Further, specific policy issues of the last five years have driven the two parties further apart. The invasion of Iraq provides the clearest example, although its political salience is waning as British troops begin to withdraw from Iraq. However, the government’s introduction of what the Liberal Democrats view as draconian anti-terror legislation remains a live and divisive issue between the two parties that will have profound significance for relationships between them for the foreseeable future.

Above all, however, wide-ranging constitutional reform remains key to any meaningful cooperation between the two parties. Brown has made some tentative moves in a direction that will appeal to Liberal Democrats but is unlikely to go as far as most would want. The introduction of some form of proportional representation for Westminster almost certainly remains the essential condition for any formal coalition.

Even then, however, the road towards a formal governing coalition could remain blocked by parliamentary arithmetic. As the failure of the Blair-Ashdown coalition plan in 1997 demonstrated, bringing parties together when there is no pressing need to do so is extremely difficult. The likely replacement of Menzies Campbell by a leader who lacks his personal ties to Gordon Brown will make a formal relationship even less likely.

Alasdair Murray and Julian Astle are the directors of CentreForum, the liberal thinktank. A full version of this article is available at www.centreforum.org

01 Nov 2007 00:00

 

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