The Sinister Soft Corporatism of the Lobbyists

For one definition of chaos, take a look at the state of relations between business and government in the United Kingdom. The last Government left behind a very strange state of affairs and the Coalition Government seems constantly on the hop as it tries to catch up.

What The Coalition Inherited

In essence, New Labour adopted a soft corporatist strategy where it encouraged 'creative' solutions to policy problems from business but under conditions where lobbyists could often run rings around civil servants and politicians with minimal experience of business and finance.

Some of what happened during those years was downright outrageous - interventions in society took place that were palpably linked to the special interests of technocrats floating between favoured parts of the business world and the State.

Philip Snape of PSA Communications, in PR Week, neatly let the cat out of the bag. Moaning that the Government 'has no money to fund new and interesting policy ideas', he then added:

This was not a problem before 2010 when Labour seemingly put money into every idea it was presented with ... Lobbyists now have to be far more creative - proposing policy solutions that do not have price tags attached to them.

Ahem! The role of the lobbyist is self-evidently to divert cash or regulation in their favour. But who, at any time, is able to assess the effects on ordinary people or the costs to the interests of those who are not represented? We hope Government does this for us but it seems to have been merely collusive.

The State of the Nation

One of the most sinister cases under New Labour involved the quadrupling of innocent children on an official DNA database as a result of a change in the law which resulted ultimately from collusion between the State and special interests.

The mess inside the Ministery of Defence could be replicated across Government with big IT projects inside the NHS only the tip of an iceberg but this particular case encapsulated the dangers of opaque 'sofa' dealings between lobbyists, the State and rather dim politicians.

Nor were these issues just a cost to the taxpayer (an obsession of the petit-bourgeois Right), they were systematic distortions of the market and they allowed special interests to promote the worst sort of social engineering on the population at the expense of the most innocent and vulnerable.

The case of Liam Fox expresses neatly the tragedy of modern politics in this area. The man was undoubtedly clearing up the mess left behind by the previous Government but he simply forgot that the latter had put in 'rules' (the Ministerial Code) designed to restrain their own instincts.

Now the lobbying industry is in near panic. They present its very highly priced services as in the public interest (and sometimes they are) but they are also a distortion of the market in many cases, ones where a player with cash and contacts can drive a policy at the expense of competitors and public.

It should, in terms of common justice, be outrageous that people have to pay to bring any idea that is in the public interest to the attention of decision-makers and it is remarkable but very predictable that neither State nor political class have not reformed public access in that direction.

The Geoffrey Norris Problem

Back in September, the Government announced that it would be setting up a 'partnerships unit' to co-ordinate relations between Whitehall and some of the nation's 'big brands' in order to promote 'new marketing and PR tie-ups' (PR week).

The head of that unit is close to Steve Hilton who, of course, has his links to the new economy stable via Google. This interest in the new economy is a serious commitment within Cameron's modernising Tory circle.

At the time of the Government's announcement of the 'partnership unit', Google confirmed that a close Cameron aide, Tim Chatwin, who worked closely with Hilton whose wife is VP of Google's Global Communications would be taking a top strategic communications role in the US.

The claimed long term objective (though perhaps rather that of the top end of the lobby industry) was to find a 'fixer' for State-business relations equivalent to the remarkable Geoffrey Norris. It is not conspiratorial to think that the 'old economy' might be getting a tad nervous about its own access.

Peter Bingle of Bell Pottinger revealed a great deal of the nexus between State and Big Business when he complained: "If you are the Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company, there is nobody at Number 10 you can pick up the phone and talk to."

The Lobbyists Get Nervous

The gut left-wing reaction to this is horror but this is half-baked. The FTSE-100 and the 'big brands' are absolutely essential to the well-being of our late-capitalist economy in troubled times. Their contribution to the tax base and employment requires that they be understood by the State.

Understood, yes. Listened to in order to be understood, yes. Kow-towed too and given special treatment under cloak of privilege, almost certainly not. We will have more to say on direct relations between State and Big Business below.

The big lobbyists were getting antsy because Cameron's new boys looked like amateurs at fixing things for the 'boyos'. They were looking back at Blair's approach to private-public partnership with undoubted nostalgia. Mr. Fox's amateurism might be rather useful in the case for an Ancien Regime Restoration.

Feeling against lobbyists only hit the headlines because of Fox (just as the expenses scandal focused a more general distrust of politicians and the hacking scandal on an underlying suspicion of journalists). What insiders always knew was now entering the thick skulls of the middle classes.

The consequent mood for 'reform' is inchoate. It is not that someone is blocking it deliberately but that all those who could reform have too much to lose from it. They have no easy alternative plan to mollify the cynical public. It is tough enough trying to be credible about reforming bankers.

Whether big business lobbyists, Parliamentarians, print journalists or bankers, the entire system has been set up on the assumption of the value of intermediaries. Any reform almost inevitably threatens to break apart the very system on which a whole political and economic culture depends.

This is not just a British problem. Many Americans remain aghast at the fact that Wall Street has scarcely been touched by reform as they would understand it. In the European Parliament, the vote against reducing very high expenses at a time of serious crisis was derisory.

It is as if an entire system of beneficiaries of the three decades before the 2008 Crash are simply burying their heads in the sand and hoping that all the protest and anger will just simply evaporate if they can only hang on for the next two or three years. They may be right. They may not.

On Revolt

The Occupy Movement is probably not as significant as it likes to think it is but draconian and often unjust magisterial sentencing and PR campaigns in the Evening Standard about rioters and students may not deter Greek-style revolt in the coming years.

At least two investigative operations that were highly marginal or did not exist before the current crisis have played a major role in getting the lobbyist issue up there alongside the other scandals. Spinwatch and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have diligently provided what data there is to be had.

It has to be said that a) what they expose is often rather small-scale stuff compared to the massive machinery to be found in Washington and increasingly in Brussels and b) they are still not exposing the precise methodologies of influence and their actual effects on policies that affect the population.

These rather conventional activists and journalists still tend to prefer to be outraged and then assume that we will be outraged in turn by the 'facts' but what we really lack, in the long term, is a cogent explanation of how our lives are changed by the actions of this curious industry.

Revolts against the elite are usually crushed on the State's reasonable assumption that the middle classes would rather have a bad Government than the mob but there is reason to believe that the closed 'meritocratic' elite that has emerged in the last three decades is seriously trying public patience.

The danger here is that the transition from an old economy to a new economy might mean that the old ruling elite (those being marked out by degrees in successive scandals) will be regarded as eminently sacrificeable by those in the middle class with a stake in the future.

The Problem of New Labour

The lobbyists' attempt to restore pre-2008 Blairite corporatism has to be seen in this context - as part of a more general attempt by those who made their pile before 2008 and who are still doing rather well to hold on to the commanding heights of the State.

New Labour, still rather lack-lustre under its decent but uncharismatic makeweight Leader, made great political capital out of the Fox case but it still does not have a viable 'reform' agenda that would take it out of this establishment nexus that increasingly troubles the voter. Cameron has everything to play for.

While the lobbyists moaned about the lack of a Geoffrey Norris and as the latest stage in the soft-shoe shuffle between Google and Number 10 was taking place, Milliband (E.) was 'encouraging' Parliamentary candidates to divulge details of their meetings with lobbyists.

At that time (September 2011), New Labour candidates were being 'asked' to provide details of meetings with lobbyists, expenses and voting records on their web sites. This was faintly ridiculous - asking and encouraging looked weak. Demanding would have looked stronger.

But, as PR Week pointed out in its report of September 9th, many New Labour MPs come from a lobbying background. The worst kept secret in British politics is just how few MPs under a certain age have had any life outside the political class and the political caste in business, the NGOs and the trades unions.

And Now ...

Fast forward to this month and the wake of the Fox scandal. The lobby industry goes into over drive to distance itself from Mr. Werritty, probably correctly. Its criticism, however, increasingly looks like a trades union sending a scab to Coventry.

A promised Statutory Register of Lobbyists might rather suit the industry because only a community with the resources to comply will be able to get access to its protections yet, until now, they have been fighting it because the costs will have outweighed the closed shop benefits.

That position has changed with the recent scandal. The Register had looked, before then, as if, it might not so much be kicked into the long grass as be quietly manipulated into an exclusive closed shop arrangement by the professionals.

This is why the Fox scandal is particularly unwelcome. The Register is now not only back on the agenda but it has woken up liberal activists, small businesses and NGOs (and smaller and perfectly respectable lobby shops) that a Register fixed between the State and the Industry might weaken their position.

Instead of the Register creating formal protocols and transparency, it is, without a challenge, in danger of privileging the well capitalised, distancing the political class even further from political struggle and ensuring statutory backing for rules of confidentiality that undermine freedom of information.

What The Lobbyists Say

Here is Iain Anderson of the Cicero Group on October 20th:

... why was Adam Werritty allowed anywhere near the Secretary of State? Werritty was not part of the APCC or CIPR Public Affairs or any other group ... a recognised lobbyist he was not.

And here's Gavin Devine, COO of MHP Communications in the same spread:

A new structure will set us even further apart from the 'amateurs' who are almost always the cause of lobbying scandals ... Allowing some organisations, individuals and even professions to lobby unfettered while subjecting others to regulation would not simply be unjust. It would also be ineffective.

Anderson makes some reasonable points and he does call for the inclusion of unions and charities but the implication here is obvious - that regulation requires a soft corporatist compact where the lobbyists are recognised by a closed shop of institutions that coincidentally (?) can keep prices high.

Devine is more explicit that access to our political class should be entirely in the hands of professionals. The dangers of this to the functioning of liberal democracy where the professionals and the politicians are effectively the same people appears not to cross his mind.

The closed nature of this policy-making is not entirely down to the 'discretion' of the lobbyist. Government loathes communicating with its electorate as we shall see.

The Small Business Position

An editorial in the November Edition of South East Business (a magazine for small regional business) lambasts the conduct of Francis Maude in telling Mark Taylor, a Surrey businessman, advising in his own valuable time, that he cannot talk about meetings organised by the Cabinet Office.

Taylor is angry because he is being gagged about something of great importance to him and others - the exclusion of SMEs from government contracts (the sort of contracts where well paid lobbyists can have an influence). All he can say is:

I have heard enough stories to convince me that far from government procurement becoming more open to SMEs, it is going the other way.

Whether he is right or wrong (he has his own angle), his narrative tells us that the cosy world of the elite will still try to silence critics by bringing them into its consultative fold. It is an old trick and it often works but Mr. Taylor is clearly not 'sophisticated' enough to comply. He is not 'clubbable'.

I like small businessmen. They are feisty and operate outside the cosy world of the 'professionals' who thrive on secrecy. They are not 'politically correct'. Taylor says this conduct is undemocratic and South East Business goes into rhetorical editorial overdrive suggesting Maude reads Solzhenitsyn.

This may seem over the top to the sophisticated elite but it is telling us something about the weakening tolerance of Middle English businessmen under pressure from late paying big customers, regulations skewing the market against them (and adding costs) and a State that does nothing useful for them.

Coalition Responses

Nevertheless, the Coalition appears to be keeping its nerve. We are awaiting a consultation paper with a view to legislation next year. New Labour is mouthing platitudes and playing politics, rather pleased to have anything (in the Fox business) that will get it back on the front pages and appear 'outraged'.

There has also been recent talk about allowing the CEOs of the top 50 companies direct access to Government (perhaps to dish the lobbyists). Six Ministers from three Departments will be key points of contact for a select group of exporters and inward investors.

The TBIJ (which analysed this) was negative but I am not so sure. All the TBIJ criticisms are valid but we may be looking at the 'lesser evil' while the State considers how to unravel the dodgy half-baked corporatism of the last Government.

Perhaps direct access, in our current state of economic war, with the serious national commercial players without the intermediation of lobbyists is precisely what is needed. There is no criticism by TBIJ that could not be covered by subsequent legislation.

Tougher rules on transfers of political and state administrative personnel into the private sector, rules on engaging with competitive (especially small business) interests, clearer confidentiality and conflict of interest guidelines, and rules on party donations in a conflict of interest context are all feasible.

Prospects For Real Reform

The point is that direct access between various institutions and the representatives of the electorate, one that cuts out the intermediaries except in clearly defined circumstances, could be beneficial. It could certainly start to unravel the soft corporatism and embedded group think of the last Administration.

Do we trust the Coalition to manage this well? Well, that is another matter. But there is no reason to believe that Cameron is not aware of the issues. Back in February 2010, this is what he said:

We don't know who is meeting whom. We don't know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don't know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence ... I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandals, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics ... I believe it's time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country.

Was this just a bit of electioneering at a vulnerable opponent? Was he lying? I don't think so. I think it does concern him but he is not finding it easy to turn round what amounts to a system of self interest and special interest. The speech is worth reading in full.

The Balance of Interests

There is a fine balance here. All interests in society, without exception, including private individuals, should be able to put their case on the effects of legislation and regulation and offer ideas for the betterment of the commonweal to their elected representatives.

All commercial approaches to the State and the State's responses, subject to national economic security, should be conducted openly without spurious appeals to confidentiality that generally provide the edge that one special interest thinks they are paying for by hiring a 'professional'.

There is also a space for informed specialists between State and public who can act as barristers in presenting the case of special interests to the State. And there are people who genuinely (rightly or wrongly) feel that that what they have to say is in the national interest.

But what there should not be is a professional closed shop that is designed to create a mystique around political access, raise prices and stop elected representatives from talking to anyone who is not like themselves.

A wider closed shop of collusive sub-elites is treading on thin ice if it thinks that it can busk its way through the current crisis towards a cosy European-style regulatory state where costs are shunted down the line or on to future generations. These people are under scrutiny from both Left and Right.

Tory Progressivism Part 2

An interesting footnote to the debate over whether the Tories are or are not progressive appears with Tony Travers' analysis in the Guardian today of the Tory record in our local councils.

Our argument earlier was strategic. 'Progressivism' is not easily defined. It is both a simulacrum of the Left and an American liberal challenge to traditional conservatism - but it is also a general attitude of mind, a sense of being adaptable to the path that history seems to be taking.

We argued that progressivism in the first sense had peaked and would be a victim of the failures of its proponents at the end of this last economic cycle but that, in the second sense, it was being picked up as an 'attitude of mind' by the centre-right as a response to those same failures.

What Travers is drawing our attention to is that the tax and spending ideology of the Tory Right is being implemented by many Councils that the Tories control (they now control over half of them in the UK) regardless of the 'compassionate' rhetoric of the Party's Leader.

How do we square the radical agenda of contracting out and increased charging for services with the idea that the Tories are progressive in the sense that they are driving forward a programme of reform and modernisation that is 'of its time'?

Perhaps the key lies in the fact that Hammersmith & Fulham (where the new Tory radicalism is in full flow) is getting an improved public satisfaction measure against the trend almost everywhere else.

We might have noted that the Borough got a top performance rating from the Audit Commission but, bluntly, this is little more than a bureaucrats' seal of approval for the conduct of bureaucrats with no necessary relation to the quality of life in any locality.

It is public satisfaction that matters. Old style Tory approaches that emphasise efficiency within your means but are otherwise business as usual are challenged by this new thinking, a thinking that may quickly be translated into national policy if the radically led Councils prove to be politically sustainable.

There is a misinterpretation amongst many observers. The assumption is that Cameron has merely switched back towards the paternalism of Heath, Hume and Macmillan in reaction to the public's clear rejection of the ideological fervour of the Thatcherites.

The assumption is that we are seeing an implicit return to the 'one nation' traditions of the past and that this conservative vision might see the nation healing itself and becoming a unified culture with a working welfare state and laissez-faire attitudes to enterprise and private life.

The vision is probably an accurate one in terms of intention but the Tory Party, a coalition (as Travers points out) of centrists and radicals, has been more ruthless in dealing with its squirearchs than its radicals during the recent expenses scandal and there is a reason for this.

If the vision is conservative, the means of getting to the implementation of the vision involve the sort of radical action to build a constituency for Tory rule that would not have been alien to Peel or Disraeli.

Both were progressive in policy to conserve the nation (in their view) against economic weakness and political collapse. They brought new classes into the Tory coalition and adopted radical policies (from free trade to working class voting rights) in order to do so.

At certain points in history, the Tory Party has been more progressive than its official rivals even if the purpose of that progressivism has been to entrench privilege more firmly and fight off any truly radical challenge that might redistribute social and economic wealth or promote radical democracy.

At certain points in history, the Liberal and Labour Parties have been the conservative elements in society, either avoiding challenging policies in case they alienate elements in their unstable coalitions or because they are genuinely conserving some earlier radical settlement.

We are now at one of those paradoxical points where New Labour is trying to conserve its admittedly minimal radical settlement created by the Blair-Brown alliance and where the Tories see a radical opportunity to move forward ('progress') into a new stability that can restore their historic dominance.

This begs the question how we can call the Tory radicals in (say) Hammersmith & Fulham at all progressive ... well, of course, they are not by the narrow ideological definition we outlined in our last posting.

However, they are moving in the direction of the general will because these Tory radicals are responding dynamically to widespread despair and cynicism at the effectiveness and, bluntly, the lack of disinterestedness of a politicised State.

For a long time, the centre-left could position the State as a selfless and disinterested (if not always effective) servant of the people.

Statism took a hit with the humiliatingly self-evident sclerosis of the Soviet Union but the Blairite State has not merely proved to be less than competent at its tasks but it has been arrogant in its attitude to popular resentments and anger.

We have noted elsewhere the irritation with public interference in private lives and with cultural politics. The recession has brought private sector anger at the feather-bedding (as they see it) of a burgeoning public sector. The public would mind interference less if the State was well run and cost-effective.

The State, in short, instead of being the guarantor of a cradle-to-grave protected existence to which one has one's duty of care in times of crisis, has degenerated into an institution whose closest analogy might be to the Church at the time that Henry VIII started to direct his beady eye towards its properties.

A 'progressive' tipping point has been reached. The State cannot and has not guaranteed security nor any meaningful (merely rhetorical) equality. It appears to contribute nothing to solidarity. This leaves us with the desire for liberty to which it appears to be an active enemy.

If you are outside of the State, it looks as dodgy to the voter who is not part of the system as the late medieval Church looked to the layman. The same aspiration for what it should be is faced by increasing evidence of what it is - and yet the system can only get overturned if the turning starts from the top.

The decline of New Labour is unlikely to go further because the vested interests associated with state spending will have seen the writing on the wall and will start to cohere but these are now conservative forces, fighting against a radical desire for 'freedom' fuelled by new technologies and communications.

Local Councils are, in this sense, small test beds of just how far the rising libertarian political class can unravel the functions of the State without damaging solidarity or creating intolerable inequalities - or, indeed, creating new social order problems.

Our own view is ambivalent. The State system has failed but it need not have done and it should have been the guarantor of security, liberty and equality within a framework of solidarity. It failed and only weakly guarantees security. It works against liberty and equality. Solidarity is not even on the agenda.

When things fail and there is no sign of a reform mentality with the imagination and competence to match that, say, of Lord Turner on the City, then it becomes 'progressive' to stop trying to conserve something and to try something else instead.

Let there be no mistake here. The Tory Party is still the party of property and privilege. It is not the party of redistribution or radical community democracy. It will continue to privilege market economics and cultural tradition - but it is moving with the tide of public frustration.

The 'progressive' aspect is merely that, in the big historical context, the Tory Party, in its determination to attain and hold power and preserve traditional power and economic relations, is determined on the economic and social empowerment of individuals just when individual freedom is at a premium.

Politics is a rum game. Events may drive up New Labour's and drive down the Tory Party's ratings but a coalition of traditional paternalism and libertarian radicalism is likely to be setting the agenda for the next decade - and it will be moving with the tide of history in doing so.

Are The Tories Progressive?

New Labour is still hurting. The latest Guardian/ICM published on Monday showed the Tories remaining solid at 41% of the vote. The centre-left (such as it is) is now split between the incumbents (25%) and the Liberal Democrats (19%).

The Unlikelihood of Labour Recovery

New Labour has now been in steady though not precipitate decline since the beginning of the year while the Liberal Democrats appear to be incapable of moving very far forward under the somewhat lacklustre leadership of Nick Clegg.

What is striking is that the vote for 'others' (a range of Left, Green, nationalist and far Right parties) has maintained (after a dip) its slow rise since the June European & Local Elections.

Although not yet a serious alternative to the three main parties (except regionally), it indicates that protest is still growing at the conduct of the political class. On current trend, this vote could become greater than that of the Liberal Democrats somewhere between the end of 2009 and next late Spring.

The point is not that there is any serious challenger to any mainstream party (although we still consider UKIP to be a serious counterpart to the Scottish National Party in Southern Britain) but that the Conservative Party has managed its 'shift to the left' in a way that is now seen as credible.

This raises the issue of what that 'shift to the left' really means. Cameron's strategy was undertaken at enormous internal risk. The core Middle Britain vote of the Tories (equivalent on the Right to the solid Labour core of New Labour) is far from moderate and centrist and yet the bulk of it has stayed loyal.

But is the Tory Party Progressive?

Hardline tax cutters and privatisers may be migrating to UKIP or even hoping that Mandelson might revive a Blairite New Labour but the vigorous defence by Cameron and his team of the NHS is clearly winning or holding more votes than it is losing them.

Just as the term conservative is becoming redefined, or rather to be returning to the 'one nation' inclusive ideology of the era before Thatcher, so the term 'progressive' (a late import from the US to replace the uncomfortable word 'socialist') is up for grabs.

Actually, 'progressive' might easily be redefined as 'interfering liberal' by many Brits - as state interference without the redistributive and investment strategies of socialism - if they thought about such things very much. What Osborne and Mandelson each means by progressive is very different.

A lot of the unpopularity of the Government must be put down to its petty authoritarianism, its managerialism, its target-setting, its implicit political correctness and, amongst males and some females, the phenomenon that is Harriet Harman. This is 'progressivism' as it should be technically understood.

Exploring the Progressive Mentality

Politics Home published a poll on which party might be called most progressive earlier this month. This begged the question of what respondents thought progressive meant - we suspect many just meant 'forward-looking' but Politics Home did try to define the term.

The definition of progressive here is, regardless of party orientation, one of reform and modernisation with a dash of enterprise and enlightenment. The difficulty for New Labour is that its ideological progressives may not be very modern nor effective reformers from the perspective of most voters.

If the poll is to be believed, although most respondents did not think that any of the mainstream parties were progressive by this definition, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats could both claim 22% of the respondents - and Labour, the ostensible leading party of the Left, only 12%.

Anyone who spends any time amongst Labour activists knows full well that all but the most loyal are in despair and not just at the coming loss of power. The 25% overall vote for New Labour hides a very large minority who plan to vote for the Party only for fear of something worse.

Some cling to the 'very real achievements' (a stock phrase) of twelve years of rule but the list is scarcely impressive when set against the knowledge that massive public spending cuts are inevitable. Many of these cuts must reverse many of the gains for Labour's constituency even if Labour is returned.

The majority will now be looking back over the last dozen years and ask what exactly was progressive (except in the most restricted and ideological sense of the word) about New Labour's tenure.

Labour Progressivism

From the point of view of the activists of the 1970s who now dominate the Party great things were done - liberal interventionism overseas, the first steps towards positive discrimination, the equality and human rights agenda, extension of union rights, the greater if often covert engagement with Europe.

Unfortunately (for the bedrock of the Party), fundamental issues of permanent redistribution have only been rediscovered in the last few months and they are still seen as cultural and social issues rather than economic policy matters. Social mobility is not the same as economic security or equality.

The New Labour agenda remains the re-building of the existing economic system so that the cream can be skimmed off and redistributed as grants from the centre.

Since so much of that grant money goes on a social and cultural agenda, many workers and managers remain extremely vulnerable to the realities of the next year - the paradox of a technical recovery with huge cuts in public spending, higher taxes and increasing fear if not always actuality of unemployment.

This helps to explain why the Tories are successfully managing to sell themselves, as a 'one nation party' that will have to raise taxes, to a population that wants an economy that is more sustainable than the credit-fuelled mania and then crash of the last half of New Labour's rule.

It also gets us back to the debate between Mandelson and Osborne over who is the most 'progressive'.

Progressive Varieties

If by 'progressive', we mean a US-style liberal agenda, then the small educated minority that cares about these things will fluctuate to its taste between New Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This is the much-maligned Guardian readership.

If, however, you mean (as most British respondents will have understood the term) that a party must have an idea of where the country must go in the interests of all its people, then most people may have little faith in politicians but are increasingly prepared to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt.

What they will no longer accept is that New Labour is anything more than a failed tribal coalition that got it wrong once and is likely to get it wrong again (and do so across many policy fronts).

Meanwhile, from the Marxist wing of the Left comes the most acute criticism yet of the wider failure of the centre-left to adjust to the increased prosperity but also the increased anomie of the world of the last great economic cycle (from the 1970s to the 2000s).

David Edgar (in yet another Guardian contribution to this posting) makes a sustained attack on ideological progressives from the Left that is very hard to answer.

Since '68, a generation of middle class activists has ditched redistributive values and its hundred year alliance alliance with the poor and disadvantaged and it has adopted a strategy of seizing the State to impose its liberal values on a population that has grown resentful of its presumption.

The International Dimension

Edgar has the courage to point out that the young 'heroes' of Tehran are not quite so heroic when seen in this light. We add that the drive to spread a centralised liberal progressivism across the globe is, in essence, an export of American urban liberal values that substitutes freedom for equality at every point.

The core of the global progressive revolution started in the universities of the Atlantic system forty years ago and its activists achieved power in the West during the 1990s. This was the golden era of international progressivism and its evil twin neo-conservatism.

But the model for progressive politics is surprisingly reactionary - it is an organised seizure of the State machine by vanguard groups with an agenda of cultural change. Using mass marketing techniques, they achieved their ends but the agenda alienated the populations over which they now rule.

Given the hedonism of '68 and the use of liberal economics to finance the 'revolution', it is no accident that this generation has now foundered on economic collapse and cultural resentment - nor that resistance to the liberal capitalist system is centred on traditionalism and the populist Right.

For the 'damnes de la terre', the liberal agenda offers very little other than patronising aid, trickle-down economics, migration to the factories, weakening social provision and cultural rule by foreign educated and undemocratic or manipulative business school elites.

It is no wonder that the economically vulnerable have a trust issue with America (globally), the centre-left (within the democratic allies of America) and liberals (in the non-democratic pro-Western world). A progressive world looks less attractive the further that you travel from the US Presidential Suite.

The Core of the Matter

So let's get back to the core of the matter. The progressive agenda is now devalued currency. If it means a general commitment to the public good in the interests of all (essentially the position of Obama), then it now becomes the property of any democratic 'one nation' political movement.

From this perspective, Osborne is right and Mandelson is wrong - the Tories are now more progressive than New Labour.

But if it means the uptight socially manipulative agenda of small elites deeply frightened by democracy and its effects on their control of the levers of power, then new media technologies and the decline into political dotage of the current generation are slowly consigning it to the scrap heap of history.

From this perspective, Mandelson is right and Osborne is wrong - New Labour is still far more progressive than the modern Conservative Party.