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.

The 'Clegg Bubble'

There are some very good reasons for the ‘Clegg bubble’. It might well be sustained on the basis that a lot of people just want to strike out at the Labservative system and do not care over much about promises from any side of that particular game.

Keeping Things In Proportion

But let's keep this in proportion. Yes, we have seen polling show the Liberal Democrats in second and even, in one case, first place this past weekend and, yes, this surge is significant. However, the numbers shifting their opinion are still only a small proportion of the electorate.

The social networks drove a lot of sentiment in the days after the TV Debate. The common denominator in these circles was that of depressed disillusioned centre-left people finally feeling that there was ‘something that could be done’. This alone was probably enough to explain much of the surge.

The question is whether these left-liberals will move back into anomie, into the Labservative camps or into the small protest parties once the emotional catharsis of rebellious support for the historical no-hoper passes. If it does not, British politics may never be the same again.

But what drove this shift? It did not happen simply because Clegg outperformed his rivals. It was a political accident waiting to happen.

When the history is written, Clegg's performance will be laid out alongside Cameron's longer term failures, attrition within the Labour movement and some Liberal Democrat courage over policy.

The Discovery Of Mr. Clegg

The point about Nick Clegg was that no-one really knew who he was before he appeared on our screens last week. His appearance on TV against two ‘heavyweights’ showed him to have far more substance than anyone had expected.

Brown may have been widely regarded as ‘heavyweight’ but he looked tired while, bluntly, Cameron did not come across as a ‘heavyweight’ at all to many people, perhaps appearing to some as just there to persuade us to give him what he and his pals wanted.

Cameron's odd mix of ‘fluffy’ image and perceived cynicism is not being helped by Tory election material which looks as if it is designed by marketing people to sell a product or service. People are resistant to this. The leaflets look professional and certainly look 'compassionate' but they don't convince.

So it was with Cameron in the debate - perceived by some as a competent performance by someone who had been over-trained to the point of blandness with a not-so-faint suspicion of insincerity lurking in the background. He gave Clegg his Kennedy moment by default.

Cameron Fails To Win Over Liberals

David Cameron quite simply does not impress his key target market on the moderate centre-left and his attempt to shift to a compassionate Blairite position was poorly timed – just as the public was turning away from a culture of communitarian promises.

What had started out as a sensible attempt to capture Blairism for Conservatism now looks very old-fashioned. A strategy suitable for prosperity and the two-party system should have been changed with the credit crunch and the growth of mass anger over expenses. It was not. This was a mistake.

This error may prove fatal because Blairism's star has waned with economic crisis. War-mongering and authoritarianism were tolerable prices to be paid by Middle England when jobs were secure and prices relatively low. Even Blair himself has become tarnished not only by Iraq but by the mess he left behind.

Cameron is thus losing his petit-bourgeois Right to UKIP without winning any serious support from a liberal Middle England that is disillusioned with a system and not just with a Government. His own libertarian Right is not exactly enthused in its support for him either.

Meanwhile, the ‘Red Toryism’ of Phillip Blond is already being exposed as a form of Christian paternalism, not much liked below a certain generation and not helped by the growing belief that it is a scam to get elderly people to volunteer as cheap social labour.

Close scrutiny also suggests that it may have serious potential for informal interference in private life. Combine Christian enthusiasms with the half-baked fashion for 'nudge' social intervention and with Blair's now jaded communitarian impulse and you have something quite illiberal in the making.

‘Volunteer’ culture is also often a recipe for bumbling. Everyone knows it who has ever dealt with the so-called 'Third Sector'. New Labour managed to keep this sector working and on message by pouring money into it but that money is not going to be there under the next Government.

The public are still basically libertarian in morals. Church-based thinking creeps out many urban liberals, with the Catholic Church’s recent and increasingly disturbing troubles adding to the worry pot. Social authoritarians are not shifting from New Labour, left-libertarians are not going to the Conservatives.

Left-Liberal Depression Lifted

Meanwhile, the Labour Party is coalescing into its tribal electoral coalition but this has long since shrunk to its core vote. The Party has had great difficulty in making its liberal and Left elements cleave to it, especially after the production of a Manifesto of the Right that took its liberal-Left support for granted.

Older Labour people will vote tribally, especially public sector white collar workers, turkeys who won’t vote for cuts Christmas, but the calculation that the non-public sector libertarian and liberal centre-Left have nowhere else to go (standard thinking within New Labour) has now been blown sky high.

Liberal-minded people angered by war and civil liberties issues and disillusioned private sector white collar Labour supporters, filled with gloom at the choice between Brown and Cameron, find that Clegg now offers a way out – through Scylla and Charybdis to ‘hope’ beyond. Basically, a desperate punt!

What is not appreciated is the degree to which New Labour itself is on the edge of civil war. The conduct of the Party in imposing candidates has alienated even stalwarts in key areas like Tameside and Staffordshire.

Independents are also popping up in odd places with direct appeals to the Labour vote. Many traditional Labour supporters will be tempted to vote Liberal Democrat outside the North as a vote loan to punish the Party where they do not have such a choice. And this brings us to Trident ....

The Labservatives are both trying to paint the Liberal Democrat's Trident policy as a national own goal but it makes sense for them. Many Labour people are horrified by the whole idea of billions being spent on a Churchillian monstrosity that cannot be used without killing indiscriminately and en masse.

On the other hand, not enough Tory Party people care about ‘big willies’ in defence compared to having the funds to keep taxes low or soldiers in Afghanistan well armed and protected.

Some serious left-liberal votes may well move from New Labour to the Liberal Democrats on this marker policy alone and the SNP and Plaid Cymru are lined up behind it as well. There are also many people who want something to take revenge on New Labour over Iraq – Trident does this.

So there we have it - the 'bubble' may  prove to be just that but there are some fundamental reasons to believe that the libertarian centre-left may be prepared to make a decisive move not to the conservatives as Cameron may have hoped but to the Liberal Democrats.

A weak performance by Clegg at the next two debates may well burst this bubble quickly and will certainly halt any secondary drift from the Tories but it is now within the realms of possibility that the Liberal Democrats could displace one or other of the major Labservative powers.

At the least, this 'bubble' has made one of the most boring elections in living memory extremely interesting. This is now one for the Liberal Democrats to lose and there is little that either of the other two 'main' parties can do to push back Clegg into the obscurity that they believe is his due.

The Trident Gamble

Planning for the Strategic Defence Review appears to have started. There is widespread acknowledgement that national security is going to be conducted under conditions of austerity.

The initial study, covering policy but not equipment, will be produced by early next year. It will then feed into a full review after the election. Getting even this rather mealy-mouthed approach agreed has been like getting blood out of a stone.

Throwing Trident Into The Pot

Both the military and the defence industry have been desperate for guidance, but these special interests have been stymied by a much more powerful one – the desperation of the New Labour elite to get itself elected.

At some stage between the next party conference and the early summer, Gordon Brown has to go before an extremely miffed electorate. He needs no bad news from now on, only good news. His mass death-dealing nuclear weapons system is grist to this mill.

The Government now wants the cover of the US-Russian arms limitation treaty to reduce the number of nuclear warheads deployed by the UK. This is grandstanding of a higher order.

This cover is needed because the UK must create the illusion that its arms cuts are a positive decision for world peace rather than present the grim reality that the country is weakened and cannot immediately afford the luxury of a large scale nuclear capability.

To get to this point though, the Prime Minister has had to raise his hand in the poker game by stating (at the G8 Summit) that there is no question of the UK unilaterally abandoning its 160-warhead Trident arsenal or the upgrade of its submarines.

The implicit offer is to throw these weapons into an American pot as a bargaining tool, which rather presupposes that the Americans want them there and that the Russians will accept the offer at face value.

It also presupposes that domestic circumstances will not force the Government’s hands before the December deadline set for the US-Russian strategic arms treaty.

The Odds Of Success

This is a fairly good gamble by a desperate player. There is every reason to believe that the US and the Russians will come to a bargain although the missile shield may cause a crisis that could lose the deal just as Start 2 and Start 3 were lost.

Brown could then announce a weapons reduction as part of a global peace initiative in the next Parliamentary Session as the first step in the electoral unification of the centre-left for a hard-fought election in the Spring against an increasingly unimpressive Tory Party.

We still consider the main problem for the Government to be the justification of Trident’s sheer cost in a country faced with possible mass unemployment and a degradation of public services.

The political class, however, seems to be far more interested in the wrong signal that it sends to the rest of the world about nuclear proliferation.

If the US and Russia are cutting back on arms and the Europeans expect states like Israel and Iran to denuclearise, then mid-sized powers like the UK and France should really be offering an example of withdrawal from WMDs rather than holding on to their expensive rights.

But the status that WMDs gives this declining state is not easy to abandon – the act of arms reduction, if mishandled, may not look noble at all, merely a confirmation of the weakness of the country both to foreign powers and to its own population.

Meanwhile, there is still no love lost between the British and the Russians. This is much more deep-seated than a conflict between State institutions. Both the Duma in Russia and the House of Commons have a tendency to rattle their cages.

The latest rattlings come from the British side where Parliamentarians (House of Commons Defence Committee) have asked the Government to get tough with unauthorised Russian military aircrafts' incursions into the airspace surrounding the UK.

This Anglo-Russian tension may be truly counter-productive for Brown’s ambitions. A Russian assessment may be that the opportunity for a fresh start with a realist bunch of Tories suspicious of the European Project is too good to miss.

Assisting Mr. Brown present himself as a global peacemaker may just not be good politics for Moscow. As so often, we shall have to wait on events …

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