The Great Lib Con

  It’s called the Great Lib Con.   You voted for an end to foreign wars, nuclear power, Trident and for a more positive attitude to immigration and Europe.  You got a Tory government.  On Tuesday,  many liberal-left voters in Scotland were incoherent with rage when they discovered that they’d actually voted for David Cameron when they thought they were voting for Charles Kennedy.  How the F@@k did that happen?  I’ll never vote Liberal Democrat EVER again! were some of the more moderate comments on the new political order.  

  Now, as someone who urged tactical voting to change the electoral system, I suppose I have to take my share of the blame for this.  Before the election, a number of people asked me if there wasn’t a danger of “letting the Tories back in” if they lent their votes to the Libdems.  My reply was if we took that attitude, nothing would ever change.  We’d be left for ever  with a reactionary two-party duopoly in Westminster.

   

 Bumping up the Liberal Democrat vote, which  seemed to be building nicely during the campaign thanks to Nick Clegg’s TVcoup,  seemed the surest way of delivering a fatal blow to the corrupt and undemocratic Westminster system.  But tactical voting isn’t an exact science.  The Liberal surge faded fatefully on polling day, and that fatally weakened the third force.  Labour rejected a “coalition of losers” and the rest is history. 

   So, am I eating my words in the cold aftermath to the Great Lib Con?  Is it humble pie time for misguided, too-clever-by-half hack?  Perhaps - but I’m not alone: electoral reformers like Billy Bragg have also been seen with pastry crumbs on their chins.  Others, including journalists on the Guardian and Independent newspapers, have been eating hats and running naked down high streets.  No, I really didn’t expect that there would be a formal coalition between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.  My forecast was that there would either be a Tory minority administration after a hung parliament, or a Liberal-Labour progressive alliance.  In the end - ha ha ha - we got the Nick and Dave show.  George Osborne in charge of the public finances.  Iain Duncan Smith in charge of welfare.   Liam Fox with his finger on the nuclear trigger. Five non returnable years of Conservative government. 

   It was a shock certainly.  If you think Tory government is the end of the world - and who knows it might come to that - then you’re probably right to think that we’ve all been lib-conned.   But the inconvenient truth is that the coalition deal, if you study it, is actually a rather good one.  It wasn’t just the five cabinet seats or the fifteen junior ministerial posts.  Or the referendum on AV, which isn’t actually proportional representation.  No, reading the document, I can understand why the Liberal Democrat negotiators were astonished when they saw what the Cameron Tories were offering them.  An elected House of Lords with PR, curbing the power of the executive in the Commons, repealing Labour’s anti-civil liberties legislation, reforming the banks, the £10,000 tax threshold, scrapping ID cards, tax powers for Holyrood, no third runway at Heathrow, etc.  Also, the Liberal Democrats negotiated opt out on clauses things like nuclear power, married couples allowance.  

  Yes, the penalty  is that the Libdems have to sit - metaphorically at least  - alongside the “nutters” as Nick Clegg described the Tories' far right partners in the European Parliament.  Libdems will have to accept a cap on immigration, the renewal of the Trident missile system, savage cuts in public spending, probably withdrawal of benefits from many lower income families.  There may be all manner of nasties lurking in the Tory in-tray that we don’t know about.

  But was there an alternative?   The Lib-Lab progressive realignment that we all talked about was a non-starter, and not just because Labour MPs like Tom Harris and Douglas Alexander refused to sup with the hated Nats. On Tuesday it became clear that there was not only a deep mistrust of the Liberal Democrats on the Labour benches, but a profound antipathy to thoroughgoing political reform. Senior Labour figures like John Reid and David Blunkett ensured that no deal would be struck by launching very public condemnation of the talks even as Labour and the Liberal Democrats were sitting in Number Ten trying to find common ground. This wasn’t isolated indiscipline either: the ex-ministers were clearly speaking for many on the Labour backbenches. 

   No guarantees on electoral reform or the rest of the reform agenda were forthcoming.  So, what were the Libdems to do?  Accept no deal from Labour or a great deal from the Cameron Conservatives? Difficult choice, I know - and one I’m glad I will never have to make.  The Tory offer was carefully calibrated to deliver genuine and far reaching reform in exchange for stable government - stable Conservative government. The Liberal Democrats may end up as human shields for Tory cuts, and they have a hell of a job justifying themselves in Scotland.  But here’s a thought: Alex Salmond only managed to secure power, and the first nationalist administration in history, by doing a deal with the Tories.  Sometimes, party leaders have to deal with the devil. 

  

  Last week reminded me a little of the 1992 general election when everyone expected the Tories to be wiped out in Scotland, and they returned with an extra two Scottish seats, as well as retaining control in Westminster.  There were howls of anguish and gloomy forecasts of the end of civilisation as we know it.  Five years later the Tories really were wiped out, such was the force of the Scottish tactical vote against them.   That led to an irreversible process of constitutional reform which led to Scotland regaining its parliament after 300 years.  

   I’m not saying that’s going to happen again. But what we can say is that the process of political and constitutional revolution that was begun in the Scottish Parliament has now moved south.  Westminster will be radically changed under this coalition. And so will Scotland,  because the Calman reforms and other constitutional changes, will take us much further down the road to federalism.   Of course, many suspect this Lib-Con deal was cooked up before the election by two public schoolboys seeking to edge Labour out of power for a generation. But if so, all you can say is that Labour fell for it hook, line and plonker. 

How I survived the Tory Conference.

For the last decade or so, Tory party Conferences have been been like gatherings of an obscure cult - devotees of a faith that time had passed by. New Messiahs came and went: William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard. False Gods appeared like Michael Portillo, urging a clean break with Old Testament Thacherism. But no one really cared about the Tories' petty passions, their esoteric doctrines, and congregations dwindled. Until now. Suddenly, the Tories are back.

The atmosphere in Manchester last week couldn't have been more different from that of the humbled, apologetic almost abject party of the last twelve years. Peckers are up, eyes bright and tails are bushier than ever. Conference looks younger - all the wannabe politicians, with their spiky haircuts and TK Maxx suits, who used to hang around the Labour Conference now seem to have decamped to the Tories. 

The women are more attractive. I know it sounds facile and sexist to judge a party on the appearance of its female camp followers, but believe me it is the first thing you notice. For years, younger, fashion-conscious women wouldn't have been been dead at a Tory conference. It was strictly for the over sixties - the average age, indeed, of a Conservative Party member in the late nineties. Now the Tories are socially acceptable again, even eligible. 

Going to and from various events I kept bumping into Zac Goldsmith, the glamorous and rich Tory environment guru, who seemed to have been posted outside every venue, surrounded by elegant women and young men with those suit jackets that are too small for them. Hah - I thought - bet he's been placed there by the PR people as a permanent photo op. Until I asked him and it emerged that, as a heavy smoker, he has to spend a lot of his time out doors. 

Of course, many of the sharp and smart young men and women I saw around aren't actually Tories, but representatives of the many firms, lobby groups, NGOs and trade associations here to lobby the people everyone expects to form the next government. But that only confirms the sense of a party back on a winning streak.

I recalled the days I used to attend Tory Conferences under Margaret Thatcher. Then the Tories exuded power like a pungent pheromone. They knew who they were: the most electorally successful party in Europe. The party of government; inheritors of The Great Tradition: Pitt, Disaeli, Churchill, Thatcher. Tories were bred for government and expected it as their birthright. 

A little of that arrogance is back, but not much. Every Tory I spoke to insisted that there was still ' a mountain to climb...couldn't take voters for granted' etc.. The Tories seem a bit like a young offender who isn't entirely confident that they've gone straight, or an alcoholic only recently on the wagon. Rather like the underclass victims of 'the broken society' who featured in the endless Tory videos. Conference these days is less like a series of debates than a film festival intererspersed with chat shows and the odd speech. They even had to put up with a video of Bono.

In the new user friendly Tory party every platform has to have a serial offender (reformed) a member of an ethic minority and a presentable woman. The Tories were trying so hard it hurt. So it was a shock when one of the youngest Tory stars - the shadow education secretary Michael Gove - a man who used to have sideburns and appeared with the luvvies on Newsnight Review - gave the only truly traditional Tory speech of the week. Failing schools? Discipline, school uniforms, harder exams, more discipline. Staff Sergeant Gove even promised a "Troops to Teachers" programme in which soldiers will be fast tracked to the classroom to inject a bit of army discipline instead of that self expression nonsense. Pure Monty Python, but the Tries loved it.

Back in the law and order chat show we had obligatory mix of dark skins, high heels and hard luck stories. In place of capital punishment and prison works,  we were offered understanding, summary justice, and, yes, more discipline. To tackle the drunken society the Tories promise to increase drink prices on things like high strength cider - though Buckfast wasn't mentioned. The SNP claimed a Tory own goal since the Scottish Tories have opposed minimum pricing in Scotland

The Scottish Tories are undoubtedly the weakest link in the new Tory chain. There was precious little glamour at their fringe event. The shadow Scottish secretary, David Mandell, or " Man dull " as he is known by his detractors, was on exceptional form -  literally boring for Britain. They desperately need something to talk about in this election other than the the West Lothian Question, the Union and Alex Salmond's perfidy.  Then the Scottish parliamentary leader, Annabel Goldie, took the stand, dressed in a lumberjack shirt and trousers. Had she decided to express sartorial solidarity with the proletariat? Had she just come from the first ever gay pride reception at a Tory Conference? No - she had been roped into one of the 'community initiatives' that are obligatory for the modern Tories to show they are street smart and down with the people. 

Annabel is a great character, but she doesn't make up for the lack of a proper party in Scotland. They have only one MP and little chance of winning more than three or four in May. It is a shocking reflection on their political failure that while Cameron is streets ahead of Labour in England, in Scotland the Tories are a very poor third, and less popular than under Margaret Thatcher. They can't go on blaming her legacy and the poll tax. That was all 20 years ago.

The Scottish Conservatives have not reformed. They are time warp Tories,  They could worse than take up the calls I heard repeatedly in Manchester - though not from Scottish spokespeople - for Cameron to call an independence referendum. What better way to margialise the SNP and defend the Union by revealing majority support for it in Scotland. It would give Cameron a stake in Scottish politics and make up for the lack of MPs But it's just not going to happen. 

The failure of the Scottish Tories is all the stranger when you realise that many of the brightest Tories in the UK party are Scots. At one of the best fringe events I attended, at the think tank the Centre for Policy Studies, Fraser Nelson, Scottish editor of the Spectator and the former Scotsman editor, Iain Martin did a very good job of popularising the arguments of another Scot Professor Niall Ferguson about the economic crisis. In an important new CPS pamphlet Ferguson warns of the danger of leaving the banking cartels intact. . We are not living in a market economy any more, the Harvard Professor argues, but under a form of "state monopoly capitalism" . A handful of banks that are too big to fail have managed to capture the state. Ferguson argues passionately that if capitalism is to survive then these big banks must be broken up. 

This was fascinating. And a million miles from the politically correct chat shows on the conference floor. If only the Scottish Tories had an ounce of this intellectual firepower. If only they could find some way of modernising and tapping into the new energy that Cameron has unleashed. Tories are still a race apart and still the party of wealth, but following my bold probe into the outer reaches of the conference, I can report that there is intelligent life in the Tory Party. Just not as we know it.