Analysing The Cameron-Clegg Statement

The UK Coalition's Programme for Government is the first Manifesto in democratic British political history published after the voters have had their say. No one is too exercised by this. All understand that it is no mean feat to combine the programmes of two competing parties and then present it as a credible whole.

Yes, of course you can see the joins in places but Cameron and Clegg's two page Foreword to the Programme is an impressive political achievement. This is not the mere cobbling together of a bunch of kleptocrats in the standard European manner but the fusion of two ideologies into a greater whole.

How long it will stick is another matter but the contrast with New Labour's Stalinist imposition of its values on its internal Coalition in 1996 is stark.

We have elsewhere suggested that this very English 'soft' revolution should be seen not as a shift from the Right to the Left (though it has elements of this) but as a shift of power between two very different personality types - from the authoritarian to the libertarian.

This is expressed primarily in terms of radical anti-statism - against big government, centralisation and top-down control - but there is a libertarian wing on the Left, pushed aside by history, that would share this perspective while authoritarian Conservatives are clearly uncomfortable with it.

The code to the nature of the new Coalition lies in its rubric: free, fair and responsible:

• Free - the libertarian impulse that can combine economic libertarians of the Right, social libertarians of the centre and political libertarians of the left
• Fair - that very English sense of fair play that can be coded as both compassionate conservatism and the social liberal, perhaps social democrat, views of a Vince Cable
• Responsible - the implicit duties mantra of the still feudal Tory Right and of those renegades from a failed progressivism like Frank Field and Will Hutton

All these factions (if perhaps with far less enthusiasm on the Social Democrat Centre and Tory Right) can live with a radical model of decentralisation of power and increased individual freedom and responsibility (where you may put your emphasis to taste).

The cheeky use of 'progressive' to describe the Coalition was widely noted in the media and we look at this at the end of our posting but there are some dodgy elements in the Programme (we are looking at the big picture here and not the detail) that we cannot let pass.

The inability to unravel the country from its post-imperial destiny represents the inability of this coalition to detach itself both from the Atlantic project and from 'Ashdownism' i.e. using taxpayers' money to ride around the world quixotically righting wrongs. We have covered this weakness already.

The most interesting aspect of the Programme could easily be missed in the rhetoric. The Coalition has linked power to innovation in a way that we all once thought the prerogative of the intellectual Left, the sort of post-Fordist Marxist crew who gave thinking ballast to Blair before office.

Only, this time around, the politicians have got it more right than the intellectuals of yore but only because the evidence for radical shifts in power is there for all to see in the immensely rapid rise of the internet and of social networks and citizen choice on its back.

The quintessential New Labour use of new technology was the ID card system or the incompetently managed IT spine - major infrastructural projects based on state direction and designed for state purposes. The Coalition Programme is explicit on its stance:

" ... we are both committed to turning old thinking on its head and developing new approaches to government. For years, politicians could argue that because they held all the information, they needed more power. But today, technological innovation has - with astonishing speed - developed the opportunity to spread information and decentralise power in a way we have never seen before."

This is pure libertarian genius. Murdoch's boys will be grinding their teeth. Google kids will be grinning from ear to ear ... they continue:

" ... there has been the assumption that central government can only change people's behaviour through rules and regulations. Our Government will be a much smarter one, shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past and finding intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves."

Oh dear, probable collapse of stout party. Here we have a perfectly accurate analysis capped with a rather dodgy belief that the new nudge philosophy will achieve what post-socialist state direction could not. The State is dead, long live the State. Spin is dead, long live Spin.

The first page of the Foreward is dynamic but this shift from hard State to soft State then opens the door to two lengthy paragraphs on the background to the Coalition that can only be seen as defensive, even apologetic in tone, a direct appeal to the confused unwashed of the two coalescing parties.

Defensive and claiming to be smarter than their predecessors? I think the public needs to be just a little wary that the text yet represents the reality of consistent, stable Government with a clear understanding of what it is dealing with in terms of national sustainability and the deficit.

The last two sentences of all are an attempt to send so many signals that it is hard for the casual reader to keep up. This Government is apparently radical (the antithesis of the conservative) yet reforming (which is what Peelite Conservatives take pride in).

The two Leaders ditch for ever the notorious Thatcher claim that there is no such thing as society, made in one of her more sub-Stirnerite moments, but then detach the fact of society firmly from its association with the State. The shared continuity from the Thatcher Right is certainly a distaste for socialism.

References to change and progress are back-handed compliments to the dominant rhetoric of the Labour Movement from Wilson to Blair, from Benn to Mandelson. This document is an attempt at an ideological coup d'etat, a libertarian-populist seizure of power after thirty years of authoritarian rule.

To be fair, the balance of unaligned public opinion, certainly in England, is probably with the coup leaders. The latter have captured the State, apparently that it might, as Marx predicted, wither away.

The greatest irony of the soft English revolution of May 2010 is that it may have ushered in the most left-wing Government (as pre-twentieth century observers might see things) in Britain's history. In reality, the State will soon recapture these ideologues - but do enjoy the revolution while it lasts!

Assessing The Prospects For The Coalition

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.

Election 2010 - Foreign Policy And Coalitions

The markets seem to be surprisingly untroubled by current negotiations over who will lead the next Government of the United Kingdom. They know that whoever is in charge will have to follow a programme of cuts and tax rises.

The Timetable

Whatever the different constituencies for the two sides may hope, the two main competitive options are only going to differ on nuance rather than fundamentals when it comes to economics. The same applies to foreign policy. The differences lie on political reform and the type of cuts and tax rises.

There are many potential permutations in the medium term - including another election or a minority Tory government pottering along until its first major vote of confidence - but the most likely outcomes are either a Lib-Con pact or the so-called 'progressive alliance'.

The system has around another three or four days to get itself sorted out. If there are not signs of significant progress by (say) Thursday, the markets will get jittery. No deal at all by the time the markets open next Monday could cause a more serious crisis.

What has not been commented upon a great deal is the effect on foreign policy of the final outcome. There is only a hair's breadth difference between Conservatives and New Labour so any 'nuance' must come from the emergence of the pro-European Liberal Democrats and the Scots and Welsh Nationalists.

Perceptions of Sovereignty

It is common knowledge that David Cameron has relatively little interest in foreign policy. His concern with domestic issues means that he has virtually handed over this area to the Churchillian 'post-imperial' elements like Hague who revel in statecraft as once did Tony Blair.

Both New Labour and the Tories are Atlanticist to the core. Both are persuaded towards UN reform in favour of rising powers. Both have a 'thing' about Iran and Africa. Both support the two-state solution in the Middle East. Both are committed to overseas aid as a moral principle.

The difference lies over Europe and a particular perception of sovereignty. Mandelson's vision of power is subtle and relies on influence through a trans-national elite leadership as if the country was an important subsidiary of a major conglomerate. The Tories believe in UK plc as a separate entity.

Tory euroscepticism is not now driven by the fear of English votes moving to the Right but is embedded in the rising generation of libertarians. Surely this in itself might push the Liberal Democrats into the arms of New Labour?

The Tories & Europe

The failure of UKIP, various English nationalists and the BNP to make a mark is only partly a matter of taste - the intelligent English and British nationalists have become sophisticated and retaken the Tory Party from its base. The image of Europe has also changed on the centre-right with Lisbon.

Once there was a vision, closer to Mandelson's, where national economic interests were intimately bound up with the creation of a massive single market. This enabled mainstream Toryism to embrace Maastricht but Lisbon has been an integration too far.

Appreciation of the single market model has been replaced by a greater fear that economic federalism will end up killing the goose that lays the United Kingdom's 'golden egg' (the City of London) and that integration demands will severely damage British, or rather English, culture.

This is why it remains possible for the Liberal Democrats, despite the risk of alienating much of the rest of the English population, to shift from the Tories to New Labour if they do not get a major concession that gives them a prospect of electoral reform before the next election. But will they?

Europe, The Liberal Democrats & Labour

Europe is central to the world view of the older generation of Liberal Democrats. Cameron's euroscepticism will cause them to bridle as Europe integrates under the guise of saving the Euro in a way that makes it increasingly difficult for a Tory Government to accommodate change.

New Labour is infinitely more pro-European than the Tories, seeing it not as competitor for influence within the West but integral to a West that is lead in part from London and wholly in partnership with Washington. It is just a variation on a shared Atlanticist theme but an important one.

New Labour's Manifesto was supportive of European social protection legislation (a core trades union demand), supportive of enlargement and supportive of the integration of EU anti-crime, anti-terror and defence operations with NATO. The concession of a referendum on the Euro was merely tactical.

But, other than Europe, foreign policy is less important to Liberal Democrats than to either of the other two parties who, paradoxically, given all their debates over sovereignty, are heavily beholden to the joint security arrangements with the US that make Trident such an expensive white elephant.

What the Liberal Democrats offer is a softer approach to issues of war and peace, assertive in defence of human rights and opposed to WMD but not necessarily adopting the 'hard' Western view that the exercise of forward military power is the means to guarantee rights and democracy.

Since many of the Labour Left and certainly the Scots and Welsh nationalists share these views, are more suspicious than nearly all Conservatives of Atlanticism and are more instinctively pro-European, the idea that the Liberal Democrats can 'tame' New Labour in an alliance has its attractions.

The State Carries On Regardless

The State (the Crown), after fifty years of Atlanticism, is relaxed. It is confident that 'plus ca change'. The nuances may be different but the core of the next Government will still be embedded in a vision of the West, the UK at its heart, a post-imperial vision of global influence under the wing of America.

The Liberal Democrats are scarcely revolutionaries, merely replacing America with Europe as the focus of attention within a values-driven conception of a 'progressive alliance' and softening the means to attain the same values-driven ends in either model.

The questions this week are whether these differing nuances in foreign policy are going to be at all central to the decision whether to take one path rather than another in the formation of the next Government and what each 'model' may mean in practice.

Our view is that they will play a role in the negotiations but they are far from central. The big economic decisions (including Trident and the Eurofighter) are going to be driven by market factors and it is probable that Tories and New Labour would combine to save the central core of Atlanticist policies.

The Liberal Democrats know that they cannot do anything about the Tory position on Europe and the best that can be done is to fight the big battles through referenda rather than on the floor of the House.

Similarly, the Liberal Democrats can make a lot of noise about right-wing posturing on sovereignty on matters of detail and principle and might combine with the 'progressives' to block a particularly obnoxious bit of nationalism (as they would see it) but this need not cause a Government to fall.

Outcomes

At the end of the day, the prize for the Liberal Democrats has little to do with Britain's place in the world and a great deal to do with political reform.

If you add in the chance to influence the Tories towards their own avowed 'compassionate' conservatism and a shared agenda on the restoration of civil liberties, there is a lot to be said for a Liberal-Conservative alliance until the next election.

On the surface, the Liberal Democrats may have much more in common with the 'progressive coalition' in foreign affairs than they do with the Tories but we need to dig under the surface of what is going on here.

The two nationalist parties have opportunistically sought to out-flank New Labour to the Left. Their package of measures has included the attack on Trident and on post-imperial interventions overseas but this radicalism is really only skin-deep.

The nationalist parties are simply against the 'Empire' and they want to continue its break-up whereas the Liberal Democrats have only ever wanted to liberalise and humanise it. Indeed, liberal enthusiasm would often extend Empire where pragmatic Tories might justifiably only see the costs.

So what influence would the Liberal Democrats actually have on New Labour's policies in office (in foreign policy)? We would suspect - despite the best wishes of what remains of the Labour Left and the progressive grassroots - very little indeed.

Foreign policy is central to New Labour's positioning and many Liberal Democrats are happier with its general thrust in terms of forward promotion of Western values than they like to admit. The 'real' Left had a more revolutionary take, wanting to liberate the world by liberating the British working classes.

New Labour Right assumptions are not so very different from Liberal Democrat instincts. Both New Labour and Liberal Democrats like big things the country can belong to! They both want them to have some basis in universal values rather than mere statecraft.

The Labour Left, on the other hand, is on its knees. Its progressive elements are very little different from Liberal Democrats and its radical elements are crushed with no hold on either Party or State. The collapse of RESPECT in East London matched the crushing failures of the Radical Right.

The addition of Liberal Democrats and Nationalists to New Labour would be an occasional irritant rather than the cause of major change. If the Liberal Democrats joined the 'progressives, it would be for political reform, electoral advantage and civil liberties - not for a sea-change in the British State.

In other words, here, as with the Tories, foreign policy is a second order consideration in any negotiations. The Liberal Democrats in office with New Labour are unlikely to be at the heart of external State policy unless given greater prominence in Europe.

The current negotiations, like the election itself, are primarily about domestic reform and domestic crisis - how to rebuild confidence in the system to weather major cuts and tax rises. They are not about foreign policy. In that area, expect business as usual constrained by lack of cash.