42 Days: The Government Survives A Challenge - Or Does It?
Friday 13 June 2008 at 11:07 The Government’s knife edge win on the 42 days’ vote is not the end of the story. 37 left-wing MPs opposed the Government, combining with all the opposition parties, bar one, and the eccentric Ms. Widdecombe from the Tory Party.
The Government was only saved by (allegedly) cutting some unsavoury-looking deals to win over the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party in Ulster and the trades union-backed Left.
One consequence is bitter recrimination between the ‘real’ Left and the ‘workerist’ (trades union) Left which has effectively scuppered a co-ordinated left-wing popular front against ‘New Labour’ - of which more later. But was the matter settled with a Parliamentary vote?
Everything was thrown back into the air by the decision of senior Tory MP, David Davis, to resign his seat in order to force through a mini-referendum on the issue.
This exceptional act of existentialist commitment to the national interest (as perceived by Mr. Davis, a former Shadow Home Secretary) has completely confused the establishment.
The political class, especially the media, combined to attack him for an apparently quixotic and destructive act and we believe we know why. Davis is challenging the basis of their cosy ways of doing business in an uncomfortably revolutionary response to Brown's political fixing.
This initiative may be the last challenge of the activist class and of traditional politics against brute populism or it may reassert 'real' politics at the expense of the professional political class and a parasitical media and lobby community.
Davis’ seat is not completely secure. Opinion polls also tend to show that the relatively less educated and perhaps anxious C1/C2 population are inclined to support the Government on robust security measures.
This ‘mass’ is not stupid but it has been grossly manipulated by the media and the government. Davis’ challenge is a remarkable experiment in whether a more sophisticated view of the world can be conveyed to the wider public and win office. It is brave but not necessarily foolhardy.
We understand that the Liberal Democrats will not stand against Davis and that many Tory activists feel passionately engaged in the underlying libertarian issues raised by Davis.
The by-election may even remind the public of the days when politicians were still strong minded men and women of integrity, regardless of party, instead of puppets of the PR machines and the media.
The passions excited by 42 Days in the Labour grassroots are also intense. It is possible that some Labour activists may not merely withdraw from campaigning but may actually vote for or support this individual Tory candidate on this one challenge.
The 42 Days issue has been particularly disruptive on the Left of the Party. Compass (the centre-left grassroots campaigning network which has put immense effort into its attack on neo-liberal dominance inside New Labour) has its major Equality Conference tomorrow.
Nine of the 37 MPs who voted against the Government were Compass members but its assumed PLP leaders, Jon Cruddas and Jon Trickett, did not. The Compass leadership have been successively and deeply embarrassed by their initial support for Brown and now by Cruddas.
John McDonnell, the leader of the Labour Representation Committee, which has a harder, more edgy, socialist programme, walked off the speakers’ list and Compass HQ suffered from a wave of protests (we must declare our interest in that our concerns were also strongly voiced).
Private sources indicate that younger elements in the new movement were particularly angered and, though Compass justifiably says that it is firm on its anti-42 Days policy, it has been humiliated in public only days before its most important event yet.
This chaos on the Left may be temporary and it may seem relatively unimportant in the big national picture but it shows that the clash between the Party establishment, the traditional Labour agenda and a new libertarian democratic socialist agenda is a three-way one.
Compass has still failed to square the competing demands of the egalitarians and the left-libertarians within the centre-left of the Party.
This 'internal contradiction' is destined to tear it apart if it does not draw a clear boundary to its Right (which would exclude Cruddas and certainly many authoritarian 'workerists') for liberty or to its Left (which would alienate both liberals and Far Left) for equality without conditions.
The hard Left now has more in common on some national interest issues with the activists of the two main opposition parties than it does with its own political establishment.
But, whether taken from a Tory or a Labour perspective, the importance of Davis’ act should not be under-estimated.
Since the 1980s, the country’s political establishment has increasingly become disconnected from the community's activist class and has depended on direct but highly manipulative communications with the population at large.
Davis is attempting a cultural ‘coup’ but it is impossible to say whether it is the swan song of the old order or the beginning of an effective reaction that will transform national politics as we move into serious economic recession.
In favour of the latter (we have an open mind on this) is not so much growing disenchantment with spin and manipulation but an understanding of its mechanics, thanks to insiders like Nick Davies [author of Flat Earth News] and recent autobiographies from the Blair era.
Similarly, Cameron has, admittedly somewhat weakly, re-introduced ideas of decentralisation and community. He has espoused a form of ‘social capital’ theory that is notoriously more socialist than anything coming from an ideologically bankrupt New Labour.
The zeitgeist is one of change, not only because of the much exaggerated rhetoric surrounding Obama in the US but through a recognition that the current economic recession is not just a classic cyclical down turn but is a major global economic correction.
Privately, more gloomy bankers are telling us that this correction may be good for the globe, and the US will survive and eventually prosper again, but that the UK is in more serious shape. Its decline to a second rate (though still relatively prosperous) status now seems inevitable.
This potentially changes what it means to be British in a very fundamental way and brings us to the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan. British attempts to play the international field have failed.
To be British is no longer credibly to be a world leader compared with a German-led European Union, India, China and Russia, let alone the US. France and the UK are now also-rans.
Strutting the world stage is an indulgence for politicians, given the economic state of the country. Davis has now introduced a new element to the equation – that British national culture is essentially about liberty and community and not just about order and economics.
This is a very radical turn for conservatism from its concern with the wholly economic, a model constructed by the Thatcher generation.
His is a potentially very radical attack on a system that is already weakening under technological pressures. Print newspapers continue to fall in circulation and influence in favour of blog and other internet use and this is rapidly changing the terms of political trade.
Back on the centre-left, it forces the Left component to consider how it can square equality with liberty. If Davis wins easily, the maintenance of the first without the other might doom traditional Labour to minority status for the next two or three decades.
There are other similar marker debates coming up. The Irish vote in the European Referendum, if it is a ‘yes, may trigger another round of demands for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Another libertarian line of attack uniting Tories and the Left is the attempt to impose European-style identity cards. Of less concern to the Left is Davis' opposition to CCTV surveillance.
Behind these in turn, there lies local community resistance to the imposition of major economic infrastructural projects to be pushed through under proposed new legislation and, of course, taxation. Davis’ campaign may pull all these issues into the same general libertarian attack.
New Labour is considering trying to spike his guns by not fielding a candidate but, of course, this would merely result in the accusation that it was frightened of the challenge. In the end, if it fields a candidate - and how can it not? - New Labour has only two strategies.
It can call for solidarity and yet it has so upset its base that many will not heed that call (and some may ‘split’ or switch sides). It can play the populist card yet each surge of populist rhetoric (as in the recent Crewe & Nantwich case) cuts deeper into the ‘solidarity vote’.
Yes, New Labour may pull this off but the conditions under which it may do so may detach the libertarian Left permanently from its project and a small step be taken towards the creation of a new and stronger rival on the centre-left. This is the project we have referred to as Plan B.
So, the Government survives but is weakened and increasingly lame - and the national political battleground may be slowly shifting from one between parties to one between structures and systems.