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Fight for the middle ground in Britain

Hasan Suroor

The Tories and the Liberal Democrats are targeting British mainstream politics' centre ground currently held by Labour. What kind of choice does this leave the voters with?

BRITAIN'S GENERALLY predictable and laid-back politics has suddenly come alive in the New Year infecting even those of us who come from cultures of non-stop political jousting. Indeed, not since the Labour Party's dramatic return to power in 1997 has the British landscape looked so "interesting" or "exciting" as breathless commentators keep reminding us.

After nine years of Labour domination and virtual absence of an effective Opposition, "tectonic plates" have started to shift, we are told, and even if no significant shift occurs immediately the developments in the coming months will have long-term consequences. Profound changes are predicted as a result of what is happening now in the three main national parties — Labour, Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats. All three are in turmoil caused as much by internal power struggles as by a wider crisis in the polity itself.

The immediate trigger is the arrival of the youthful David Cameron as the new leader of the Tory Party at a time when Tony Blair is preparing to hang up his boots to pave the way for Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to lead Labour into the next general election.

Although the next election is still at least three years away, the mood in Westminster and media circles is already jittery. Have the Tories finally found their "secret weapon"' in Mr. Cameron? Would Mr. Brown be able to maintain Labour's winning spree or would he be too old by 2009 (he would be 58 then as against Mr. Cameron's 42) to match the youthfulness of Mr. Cameron?

Indeed, would Labour stick to Mr. Brown or like the Tories "jump a generation" to give Mr. Cameron a run for his money? And what of the Liberal Democrats who, too, are wrestling with a leadership crisis after the resignation of Charles Kennedy over his drink problem?

A significant development taking place in the Tory and the Liberal Democrat camps is a realignment of political priorities as they try to target the centre ground of mainstream politics currently held by Labour. As one commentator remarked the three parties are engaged in a "dogfight" for the middle ground.

The Labour Party, which appeared to be happily ensconced in the centre, is now facing a challenge from the other two. The Tories, after losing three consecutive general elections under three separate leaders, have now decided to imitate Labour by moving towards the centre. The Liberal Democrats, who used to be slightly left of Labour, are also trying to reposition themselves to look more centrist.

British politics is in the throes of a makeover, but to what purpose? If everyone is going to be "Labour Lite" what happens to voters' choice? At the best of times, Britain with its two-party system offered rather limited political choices but at least there was a semblance of an alternative especially after the emergence of the Liberal Democrats as a robust force after the last two general elections. As the Liberal Democrats offered policies that were significantly different from those of the other two parties, voters had a distinct choice. Those who wanted to lodge a protest vote knew where to go — just as those who did not buy either the Labour or the Liberal Democrat agenda turned to the Tories.

On present reading, however, it looks like in the next election voters will be struggling to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. "It would be almost like voting in a one-party state where whomever you vote for you end up with the same policies," one critic said half-seriously.

There is concern over the trend towards "copy-cat" politics, which, in the name of a centrist consensus, effectively denies voices on the Left and the Right a chance to be heard. At a time when even with the choices available it is not easy to get people out to vote — as the abysmally low turnouts at the last two elections showed — what is likely to happen when the voting options become even more restricted?

Ironically, the whole centrist project is based on the assumption that this is what people want. The logic is that if Labour can win three consecutive elections on a broadly centrist agenda then this clearly is what voters favour and so we will oblige them by giving them precisely that. But there is another, more cynical, reading of this logic — namely that they see Labour-style "centrism" simply as a winning strategy. That it is all about stealing Labour's clothes, which is easier than coming up with a persuasive alternative .

Cynicism apart, the argument that Labour's centrist agenda is what the nation craves for does not stack up when viewed against the cold light of the day. First there is the opposition within the Labour Party itself to some of its major official policy planks and this is reflected in the frequent backbench revolts in Parliament. Implicit in these revolts is the deep dissatisfaction of Labour voters whom these MPs represent. After all, they are only messengers conveying to the party the message from those who voted for them. So every time Labour MPs stand up to vote against the party line they do it as a result of the pressure on them from their constituents belying the assumption that the Labour's centrist policies are popular.

Even as I write this, a rebellion is brewing among Labour MPs who have threatened to vote against the Government's education reforms and, given the scale of the hostility, the only way Mr. Blair can push them through is with the Tories' support.

Then there are stark statistics to disprove the myth of majority support for Mr. Blair's supposedly neutral winning formula. Labour's share of the popular vote in the 2005 elections was a mere 36 per cent. The rest was shared among the Tories who were a couple of points less, the Liberal Democrats who got 22 per cent, and other smaller parties. What these figures clearly show is that no single policy on either side of the ideological divide — and that includes the centre — has overwhelming support among the voters.

Under a proportional representation system, which the Liberal Democrats have been demanding, Labour would not have been able to gain a majority in the Commons. Governing parties in Britain — as indeed in India — become governing parties not because of their share of the popular vote but because of the number of seats they are able to win thanks to the first-past-the-post system.

Now that Labour has been in government for so long, the struggles behind its return to power after 17 years of exile are sometimes forgotten. The notion that it bounced back simply by moving to the centre ground is only partially true.

A part of the trick, of course, was to disown the ideological baggage that was seen to have made Old Labour an electoral liability. But it was not all self-serving opportunism. Building New Labour also involved an intellectual leap. Mr. Blair and his friends (Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell) struggled long and hard before they were able to present to the electorate a convincing alternative vision, however flawed it might look in retrospect. A critical factor was also the extent to which the Tories had been discredited by then so that any alternative appeared to be better.

The Labour revival became possible because of a combination of factors in which, contrary to the folklore, the so-called "rebranding" was only one element. Here it is worth quoting from an article Ed Balls, a prominent Labour MP and a member of the party's inner circle, wrote in The Guardian recently. Dismissing the idea that rebranding alone is enough to win back voters, he wrote: "It took Tony Blair and Gordon Brown a full decade to persuade the public to take the risk of electing Labour. We tried rebranding, ditching old policies and running better TV ads in 1987 and 1992. And still the public did not trust us. When we finally won in 1997, it was not only because the Tories were discredited. Voters were also persuaded our policies were right: a national minimum wage; a windfall tax on the privatised utilities to cut youth unemployment; abolition of the assisted places scheme."

Yet all that Mr. Cameron has been doing since he was elected as his party's leader last month is trying to play catch-up with Labour in presentational terms without producing properly thought out policies. As his grumpy senior colleague Norman Tebbit of the cricket "loyalty test" asked: would he mind telling his party and the voters if he has anything concrete to offer beyond his "non-stop political pyrotechnics"? Or has the king no clothes beneath the "centrist" armour?

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