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.

In Praise of Mr. Seddon ...

I recently got hold of a copy of a new memoir by Mark Seddon, former Editor of Tribune, past elected member of New Labour's National Executive Committee, UN correspondent for Al-Jazeera and now back in London as Director of the People's Pledge.

The fact that he says some really, really nice things about me on pages 153-154 and 186 (we have worked together on this or that project since the mid-1990s) should not cause doubt about my thoroughly straight assessment that this book is very good indeed.

But this is not a book review. I can simply say that anyone who really wants to know what life was like for an honest man in a dishonest political party will find this book entertaining and informative. The cartoons by Martin Rowson, an old Seddon mucker, add some tasty icing to the cake.

This is not the only public reference to my work in the Labour Movement in the mid-1990s. I wrote background pieces for Lobster some years ago, just to have it on the record, and NEC slate candidate Liz Davies also gave a good mention some years ago that was not entirely accurate but well-meaning.

Even Mark (for lack of space) over-eggs my guru status in the formation and running of the internal Grassroots Alliance in 1995/1996. Andy Howell, Trevor Fisher and Ann Black (still on the NEC and working hard) are owed equal billing for constructing the core centre-right element of it, Labour Reform.

Similarly, the project, though firmly under my pragmatic strategic direction, would have been impossible without the immense subtlety and organisational talents of my Left counterpart Redmond O'Neill who was to play a central role in Ken Livingstone's return to the centre stage in London.

What interests me more are the two small vignettes surrounding my entry in Mark's story, both of which tell us a great deal about why New Labour failed - and fail it did, in terms of both core economic competence and ability to provide a sustainable commonweal for the most vulnerable.

The first has a prominent political journalist 'cautioning' Mark against becoming involved in our pitch to get independent grassroots members elected to the NEC because he had 'heard' that the Blairites would 'probably succeed in stopping us'. I have to assume that Mark is reporting him correctly.

The second has Gordon Brown calling Mark in to say that he was pleased that he was running (thus the tensions with the Blairites were clearly very early in their making) but that he should be careful in allying with 'Trots' (the internal party term for the very tiny band of 'revolutionary socialists' in the Party).

What do these two stories tell us about the British political establishment in 1995/6? It tells us two things. The first was that journalists were already ceasing to report in a detached way and were engaged in the construction of a group-think about what was appropriate behaviour.

Yes, this was just the friendly tip of one journalist to another but it was also a piece of advice that did the political classes' leaderships' job for it. It tried to persuade a moderate and sensible person not to join a sincere group of grassroots radicals because it might be bad (we presume) for his career.

This was clearly not intended by the journalist. He was just trying to be helpful. But a journalist who ceases to be detached and gives advice on a political matter is slipping over a line - and the British Establishment has long since slipped over a line that separates it from the mass of the population.

The caution was probably right - from a careerist perspective - but Mark decided to do what was right. The democratic vote was overwhelmingly for his position despite a hugely aggressive operation by the Party machine.

I am not particularly attacking one single journalist. He gave honest advice which was well meant but, whether politics or economics, the general habits of British journalism were already those, in the mid-1990s, of pragmatic group-think based on private briefings, 'things heard'.

Journalists are not wholly neutral in politics. Opinions become aligned with primary sources in State, Party and even Business, those who wield power - neutral between elements in the elite but not between elites and their subjects.

What was relatively trivial in our case (if rather non-democratic) became serious when no journalist until Peston was prepared to question the economic assumptions of that same elite. That failure to question meant that they were surprised and then we were surprised by a system breakdown.

Now we come to Mr. Brown. His opinion was no doubt a tactical one - the Grassroots Alliance would have crumbled quickly without two sensible proven mainstream Party players like Ann Black and Mark Seddon so it was sensible to try to frighten Mark into distancing himself.

If you know Mark, then such tactics are likely to flow over him like water off a duck's back. He will give that disarming smile of his, crack a self-deprecating joke and suggest lunch at the Gay Hussar. What is disturbing about Brown's advice is that he had more of a point than Mark credits.

The moderates, who actually ran the Campaign on a moderate and simple democratic platform, did have Trotskyists in their ranks in a junior capacity as engines for mobilising the vote (Trots may be a little mad but they work damn hard).

What Brown never asked because he is a surprisingly unsophisticated thinker is why Labour right-wing traditionalists, centre-left radicals and democrats were working with these people in the first place? Probably because they had nowhere else to go.

In a series of clumsy 'Stalinist' moves designed to crush dissent, Labour loyalists who believed in simple values such as consultation and democracy were pushed ever outwards by a combination of union self interest, a centralising party machine and competing kitchen cabinets in Parliament.

We return to group-think - a relatively small coterie of professional politicians and special interests were so determined on acquiring power that they did not consider that a small group of Party members might be speaking for the Party and that some compromise might have been a cheap and useful investment.

Far from revolutionary, the Alliance was conservative. It wanted a genuine partnership between members and elected representatives for the common weal. Its trajectory to the Left reminded one of nothing so much as that of the Russian liberals into the narodniki under the Tsar - mere desperation.

Be all that as it may, the Alliance won an outstanding victory that was meaningless. Elected members were a Potemkin village. Power was exercised entirely by a decidely dodgy Party civil service and then by an autocratic gang who drove the nation to petty warfare and, ultimately, economic ruination.

Do not misunderstand - our challenge to the elite was totally absurd, pure existentialism. It ruined political careers and changed nothing. And, yet, I cannot regret it for a moment ... because it was the right thing to do, something that was not mere pragmatism within a closed culture.

Today, I am largely de-politicised. I find myself unable to criticise the Conservative element within the Coalition with the force that I might once have done because I think of the alternative - an authoritarian, economically incompetent, war-mongering, centralised operation with a disdain for civil liberties.

England (which I see now as more meaningful than the UK) struggles to manage appalling levels of debt in a crumbling world economy and continues to blow a small fortune on foreign adventurism while 25% of the over-55s subsist on £24 per day and students pile up debt just to get an education.

Whatever will 'save' England, it won't be the corrupt 'official' Left within the existing system - not without precisely the democratic revolution inside it that we advocated fifteen years ago.

It will either be a steady pair of hands from its old Tory enemy or some revolutionary transformation of a Parliamentary and Party system that is way past its sell-by date and may not survive a second failure by another Great Party of State.

But do I get excited by all this? No, I do not. Good men and women once saw this coming and did what they thought was right. I learned a hard truth in the process. There are wise and good people across the political spectrum, rich and poor - but there are no wise or good political parties.

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.