The Liberal-Conservative Coalition is really not so unusual. The only difference from preceding Governments is that coalition politics now covers two parties instead of being held just within the boundaries of one.

Centres of Gravity

If pre-Blair Labour Governments had to accommodate the Labour Left and the Social Democrats, Tory Governments have had to accomodate their own social liberals alongside nationalists and imperialists.

Cameron seems determined to make this new Coalition as strong and as permanent as possible because it is all about 'centre of gravity'. A liberal-minded Tory in a purely Tory Government is not at the centre of gravity and threatens at every moment to be ousted from the Right.

The addition of other liberal conservatives from the right of the Liberal Democrat Party and a smattering of social democrats counter-balances the atlanticist hard-liners, the radical economic liberals and libertarians and the nationalists in one fell swoop.

The seduction of radical centrists like Will Hutton and Frank Field from the disillusioned social democratic wing of New Labour is unlikely to be the prelude to any further attempt to detach Blairites and pull them to the Right for two reasons.

First, Hutton and Field always were semi-detached, famously frustrated that their ideas, which were heavily courted as New Labour moved towards office, were abandoned as inconvenient within a few years. Their social democratic radicalism sat ill with the special interests who really ran the Party.

Second, the Left are not going to capture the New Labour Party regardless of defeat. This is because the 1996 internal party settlement just won't let that happen, because the Left has been systematically excluded from power for fourteen years and because it is tired and has nothing to say to the public.

The Future Labour Party And The Left

If the Left are not going to capture the Party and a moderate Labour Movement right winger or Blairite (both represented by the two Milibands) is going to lead it for the next four or five years, then there is no incentive for loyalist 'social democrats' to shift lanes - they have probably left it too late in any case.

The best that the Left will get is a raised profile, increased influence and some defensive policy changes from the circle around Jon Cruddas, the rising star of left-wing progressivism.

But this is not the Left as we once knew it - Cruddas is an establishment figure who is sometimes embarrassed by the naive enthusiasm of his activists and whose conversion to Leftism is relatively late (much like Tony Benn's before him).

Cruddas is a very intelligent man - in some ways streets ahead of his right-wing rivals - but he is bound by his own caution and his almost instinctive tribal solidarity, honed in the buggins turn and zen-like patience of union political bureaucracies. He is no populist radical.

In short, there is no Leftist coup in the offing. 'Real' Leftists have few places to go - the rising but marginal socialist alliances outside the party, impotent grandstanding or moderation as the conscience of Cruddas' unstable quasi-movement. Even the street is now the territory of the anarchists.

The New 'One Nation' Ideology

This is why we think that the Lib-Con coalition will last so long as Cameron remains skilled at building up right wing liberal engagement with market economics in return for a commitment to improving the lot of the indigenous poor.

Frank Field is right to imply that New Labour, in its drive for full employment, abandoned the poor of the inner cities - it created jobs which became filled by immigrants. The very poorest of the indigenes not only remained on benefit (at huge national expense) but became increasingly unemployable and 'lost'.

Will Hutton, on the other hand, represents another frustration from the Radical Centre - the fact that the public sector (another huge current and future contributor to the deficit) was allowed to expand inefficiently to create 'full employment' for middle class graduates and white collar workers.

There is a merger here of the conservative fear of serious economic dislocation from excessive expenditures on benefits and of a public sector detached from frontline service provision with the 'moral centre' concern that the country is being stifled by its underclass and the deadweight of bureaucracy.

This is a revolution in the making. It will be painful for those asked to change their ways but it is becoming necessary both because the economics of state-subsidised full employment no longer work if ever they did and because the misery of the underclass is on the edge of becoming a social threat.

The fear of liberals in society had been that Tory 'compassion' was nothing but a cover for draconian and authoritarian measures against the poor, for creating a faith-based communitarian project that would make Blair's look left-wing and an excuse for class war-driven cuts. Such fears are now being allayed.

The Political Conditions For 'One Nation'

The vagueness of the plans for dealing with the deficit amongst all parties in the run-up to the election would have done nothing to allay these fears without the centre of political gravity being shifted.

A Tory Government in which the centre of gravity had been to the Right of its current Leader would have raised the ghost of Thatcher under conditions (given that at least a third of the country is electorally bound to New Labour) where many would have been suspicious and alienated from the start.

The prospect of a tax revolt from the Right and anarcho-environmentalist street riots from the Left under New Labour would merely have been replaced by a new radical militancy on the Left and growing pressure to break up the Union.

The social order problems implicit in the New Labour project would then merely have been transmuted across the political spectrum and the State's instinct for authoritarian solutions when it is under pressure would have further alienated liberals and libertarians alike.

Cameron has now shifted the centre of gravity of Government to just where he sits. In doing so, without ceasing in any way to be, fundamentally, a Conservative, he has added something to the usual mix of social order concerns, economic advantage and special interest power plays - 'morality' of sorts.

Not the fixed essentialist morality of the Christian or Socialist fundamentalist but a sense that public sector and benefits reform is not just something to be imposed but is to be a national project in which public sector workers and the poorest are to be engaged as integral parts of the nation.

Rights, Duties & Compassion

Whether this quite works out in this way is another matter but 'compassionate' conservatism is aligned with liberal democracy in wanting power to be decentralised to the community and with the radical centre in having benefits linked to some sense of responsibility that gives people self-respect.

This is not quite the same as the rights-duties rhetoric of authoritarian Blairism and the authoritarian Right. In these cases, a person got a benefit by the grace of the people's Government or the State and therefore had a consequent duty that arose from the grant - it was almost feudal in conception.

Under the new dispensation, there are no rights as such. Self reliance is preferred to dependency and those who are dependent are to be encouraged forcefully into independence while those who serve the public are to be expected to perform their tasks competently and according to contract.

Some left wing Liberal Democrats are clearly discomfited by this restoration of rights to its original political meaning (which is fine for mainstream LibDems) and will, no doubt, drift back into a mildly reformed New Labour Party where social and economic rights are central to its progressive ideology.

Even within the new coalition those like Hutton and Cable with a social democratic mentality will continue to argue in social and economic rights terms and will, no doubt, win a few points to match the concessions made to right wing individualism in other areas.

The point is where the balance lies, that centre of gravity. It now lies firmly in one nation traditional liberal-conservatism, a decisive shift away from the Thatcher legacy of state nationalism and radical neo-liberal economics under which there was famously 'no such thing as society'.

Pressures On The Coalition

The Tory traditionalists may be weakened as are the 'British' nationalists but the Tory economic and Atlantic 'Right' are as strong as ever. They will continue to exert a pull that may eventually tear apart the Coalition under various economic and sovereignty pressures.

It will be hard to hold the line on the Coalition's Left if the scale of the cuts necessary to please the market really do disproportionately hurt the poorest or if unemployment rates start to rise significantly. US demands for extreme action to meet its own needs would also create severe strains.

Differences over Trident have been papered over as a problem made academic by the bipartisan Tory-New Labour support for our native brand of WMD (although New Labour policy may change as the price of Cruddas' influence within the Party and of potential SNP and Liberal Democrat support in the future).

Europe, too, despite noises from the Right, seems to be in abeyance both because it is not core to anyone's interest while the deficit has to be managed and because the matter is truly academic at a time when the 'Greek Crisis' looks as if it might make the Euro and eventually the EU irrelevant.

The political killing ground lies in the area of political reform. Liberal Democrat activists have expectations far in excess of what is possible while the Tory mainstream has drawn its own line in the sand.

The reform issue is unlikely to break the Coalition in the near future but, eventually, especially if New Labour can organise itself out of its instinctive authoritarian habits and offer a credible democratic alternative, the Tories will have to concede or go it alone and ditch their partners.

Our Assessment - the Coalition will survive and even prosper for two years and less certainly for three but it will come under increasing strain on fundamentals as the deficit comes under control, any recovery starts and we get closer to the 2015 Election.

Within six months, the United Kingdom will have a new Government. It might be a Tory Government or a Government of the centre-right or centre-left precariously juggling nationalists or Liberal Democrats before being forced to return to the country - or we might see the return of New Labour ...

How New Labour Might Return From The Dead

New Labour's return to power under Gordon Brown looks unlikely but it is far from impossible. Its coalition might yet remain solid while the opposition, although a majority in the country and almost certainly in Southern England, splits into its Tory, liberal and radical nationalist components.

The New Labour coalition has some pretty good reasons for holding together and getting its core vote out. The trades unions fear political evisceration under a vengeful Tory Government and the public sector always suffers more in terms of cuts under the centre-right.

The Celtic nations and decaying Northern urban communities have lived off the fat of the South. They know that the machine for taking Southerners cash and re-laundering it back to them via the EU, and more directly, will come to a sharp halt as the Tories look for quick and easy cuts.

Finally, there is a large middle class quangocracy and a fair body of liberal progressives who like the redistribution of English cash to the emerging world. Neither trust claims of compassionate conservatism despite Cameron's attempts to win classical social liberals over to the Tory cause.

For all these reasons and others, New Labour could squeak back in with a majority but if and only if its traditional voters walk out of their front door on the day, forget their rage and frustration - with wars overseas, failures to deal with poverty and 'political correctness gone mad' - and vote.

Compass

And this is where Compass comes in - a sort of ersatz Leftist movement, led by Jon Cruddas, MP, a key figure in the liaison between the trades union political officers and New Labour in the early days of the party's 'modernisation' but now reinvented as the main Left challenger to the consensus.

Its latest mailshot (admittedly to the faithful) is red in hue, its main symbol the internationalist one of a man holding a globe and weighed down by the responsibility, with much talk of 'change' through action (an obvious nod to the Obama phenomenon).

It claims 30,000 members and supporters which, if true, is significant in recent political terms. It is probably 10 times the size of the real membership of the last grassroots revolt within the Party in the mid-1990s.

If Compass succeeds in mobilising its growing number of discouraged activists, students and fringe intellectuals into a machinery for winning Labour a victory in 2010, Jon Cruddas and those associated with him can justifiably demand preferment. Cruddas is Cabinet material under such circumstances.

Ersatz?

I used the harsh word 'ersatz' to describe Compass but I write objectively not to denigrate what Cruddas and his supporters believe themselves to be. They believe themselves to be of the Left because they have taken radical positions within an essentially conservative movement.

Naturally they continue to avoid the 'S' word. Socialism frightens the English horses and is now unacceptable to a progressive mentality that hated Sovietism more than 'American imperialism'. If they are attempting anything, it is to take over the contested word 'progressive' and own it.

Instead Compass speaks of 'greater radicalism' (as if New Labour has been radical at all). This term radical refers back to a late nineteenth century pre-Labour Representation Committee culture of dissent before the socialists and Fabians muddied the waters and confused trades unionists with theory.

To back this up, in their fund-raising and recruitment campaigns, Compass makes seven claims that define what they are and how they want to capture the Labour Party and, through the Labour Party, the Government:

1. Their support for Jon Cruddas as Deputy Leader is positioned as instrumental in getting housing and inequality up the Party agenda.
2. Compass MPs campaigned to add 'ethical', social and environmental obligations (or 'burdens' as the centre-right might put it) on businesses through amendments to the Companies Bill.
3. They have 'led calls' for a High Pay Commission.
4. They campaigned for greater 'tax justice' just before the 2009 Budget and claim that three of their demands were included in Darling's Speech.
5. They campaigned for a windfall tax on the energy and oil firms which, they claim, was instrumental in the Government's subsequent £1bn energy package.
6. They were part of a 'broad coalition' in opposing the part-privatisation of Royal Mail (and claim substantial credit for postponing, though not 'shelving' as they further claim, these plans in July 2009).
7. They collaborated with CND, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to delay the renewal of the Trident nuclear WMD system.

Assessment

This is not a bad record over eighteen months or so - certainly so when compared to the complete failure of any Left challenge to the prevailing order within the Party since the middle years of Kinnock's leadership.

But it is not quite as impressive as they claim. The determination in their literature to tell us that 63% supported a High Pay Commission and 67% supported the windfall tax on energy tells us that the campaigns are still not built on principle but on populism.

Compass is not a coherent ideological challenge to New Labour. It is pitching for a place in New Labour's sun, adopting its assumption that power derives from political mobilisation. Compass will claim its place on mobilising votes for New Labour rather than by mounting a cogent critique of its failures.

Nor has it achieved a great deal of a practical nature. The changes to the Companies Bill may be irritating to business but they are insignificant. The windfall tax and the postponement of Royal Mail part-privatisation and Trident owe far more to straightened economic circumstances than Compass.

Compass' power resides entirely on its ability to mobilise disillusioned activists to vote for a Party that has (by any standards) been involved in illegal war, been a mere adjunct to a foreign power and reduced basic civil liberties (albeit in return for increased 'human rights').

It has also been administratively incompetent, done little about inequality and presided over a disastrous economic meltdown built on an unsustainable use of credit to promote growth. So, the critique of particular policies rather than the system is telling - loyalty and solidarity trump analysis.

The Limits of Compass

Closer analysis of Compass' claims show that its power is extremely limited. The big wins are merely postponements of controversial policies. The use by the State of their street pressure to mount windfall raids on the prosperous are not signs of a shift to the Left but of economic weakness.

The particular failure to position housing (a sector which cheap credit was designed to deal with) as ring-fenced, alongside the educational and healthcare expenditures that most concern the swing middle classes, shows that Compass is still mostly noise and fury.

In fact, the Government has done very little to claw back bonuses or deal with high pay as a structural issue. It bought into 'international competitiveness' arguments about the City, on which welfare spending now largely depends. Compass has no consistent alternative critique of this strategy.

Compass is being used by New Labour to give itself the opportunity of stabilising and even advancing its vote in the street. Compass offers the Party the chance to mobilise activists to knock on doors and show enthusiasm on the day without having to make any promises it has to keep!

Hope Again!

What New Labour needs is students and activists on the doorstep able to counter negative arguments with a message of hope and hope is best spread by believers and not by bureaucrats.

We have covered hope before in our postings - it is a very powerful political tool but also one that raises expectations. Growing disillusion with Obama in the US is the price paid for using hope as a campaign weapon. But New Labour is now desperate - later disillusion it can live with, loss of office it cannot.

Any New Labour Government that emerges on a bit of populist Left legerdemain will not be radically different from the one that it replaced. It will still have a PLP dominated by the centre-right of the Party and figures like Mandelson and Miliband, even Purnell, will be of more significance than Cruddas.

If Brown remains in office (it would be hard to dispose of an election winner for perhaps another two years), the Brownites will be manouevring to protect their future. Cruddas and the Compassites are likely to be seen as merely the mobiliser of the OMOV vote in a Leadership contest.

But this is where Compass pays off for its PLP and union promoters. It builds bridges across the Party to non-Party progressives. Its real power will lie either in its value as a chip in a leadership contest if existing factions are prepared to bid for its vote or in the immediate aftermath of a defeat.

Compass' populist stance has thus nothing to do with the country and everything to do with the Party. If it can 'own' the grassroots activists and then pull disillusioned outsiders into the party for the first time or as returnees, it could, with trades union support, transform the balance of power within the Party.

What Compass Means

This is what Compass is about - the recapture of the main centre-left Party by the Labour Movement so that it can resist, in coalition with progressives and the regions, a vicious class attack from the Southern middle classes.

What the Labour Movement fears is the ending of the New Labour commitment to full employment, deregulation of the labour market and cuts in public spending affecting their members. Civil liberties, issues of war and peace and national sovereignty are trivial next to these concerns.

A beaten New Labour Party with a disillusioned and divided activist base might open the door to decisive action by the Conservatives to break the link between the trades unions and politics, decentralise public services (removing union bargaining power) and turn the labour market into a free-for-all.

For trades unions, the best and only option is to ensure the return of a Labour Government against the odds so that the Tories collapse back into a futile English nationalism. But if that option fails, the second line of defence is a united 'resistance movement' that has forgotten the failures of New Labour.

So, Compass is not unimportant. It is of no direct political consequence currently in terms of policy but, as a tool of Labour/trades union recovery, as a potential influencer in the next Leadership contest and as a centre of labour resistance to Tory 'reform' on defeat, it needs to be watched.

But, at the end of the day, it is still an 'ersatz' Left. It has no coherent ideology other than a general and vague progressivism and labourism where labourism represents a decreasing number of people. 

Labourism just wants more 'working class representation' within an existing Blairite politics. Compass, in this context, replaces coherent thought with populism. It suffers from the same disease as New Labour - a preference for power over principle.

This is not its fault. The structures of New Labour offer no alternative to challengers - and there are signs that Cruddas may be sympathetic to reform of those structures. But what Compass offers to anyone outside the special interests operating within Labour coalition remains unclear.