FROM BRUGES TO BEVERIDGE

Why examining the coalition's DNA reveals the seeds of its own destruction

Marjorie Smith

One of Labour's main strategic pre-occupations has to be how to unpick this coalition of parties (if not of interests).  Any hope of returning to government has to be dependant on the Tories and the Lib Dems either hanging separately or being hung together. Either the coalition splits, or it becomes overwhelmingly unpopular at the next election.

Whilst an extended marriage of convenience, at first glance, may well be in Labour's interest, with the probable deep unpopularity of this coalition becoming a political fact. It would also mean five long years in opposition and having to fight the next general election with a new 'reformed' electoral system stacked against the party.

Make no mistake, the early indications of this coalition's instincts concerning electoral reform do not presage well for Labour. Cameron's proposals to cut 100 plus MPs combined with significant changes to constituency boundaries is a direct threat to Labour's medium and long-term interests. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems will become increasingly desperate to hold on to power in a mutual embrace as electoral unpopularity will surely hit them in the medium-term.

The coalition's pre-nuptial agreement already includes proposals to shore-up the coalition in the face of real threats to its existence. The proposed 55% threshold of MPs needed to call a new general election before a government has completed its five years term of office is a naked attempt start building the first steps into locking Labour out of power for at least one to two generations.

The coalition's proposals to stack the House of Lords with well over a hundred new Tory and Lib Dem peers is a blatant attempt to gerrymander the constitution in favour of the coalition's political interests. A gerrymandering, it should be noted, that was completely absent from either of the coalition's manifestoes. It is also clearly in the interests of the Tories and the Lib Dems as separate parties, as they can reward their financial benefactors and influential supporters with the prizes of patronage.

Whilst most of the Mainstream media in the UK seems to have meekly accepted that the recent compact between the (what is now quite apparent) two UK parties of the centre-right is a sustainable concoction. The DNA of the two parties is still radically different, as any perfunctory analysis of the make-up of either party reveals.

The coalition's leadership may well sit (and fit) comfortably with each other, after all they share common backgrounds, common schools, common universities, all very different from the experiences of the common man. There is very little political capital to be made out of trying to divine differences between Clegg and Cameron (One Nation Tories in all but name) or, for example, between Osborne and Laws (Thatcherite free-marketeers). These are However, there are also significant elements in both parties, presently marginalised, that are as different as chalk and cheese. 

For simplistic (but pertinent) purposes, it is highly revealing to examine the two extremes of the coalition. If one accepts that there are still some well-meaning centrist, or even some who would claim they are of the centre-left, then they are to be found in the Beveridge Group of Liberal Democrat MPs. Whilst many of those on the right of the Tory party are members of the Bruges Group, a radically eurosceptic group that also appears to share a deep and abiding belief in free market fundamentalism with libertarian tendencies.

It is quite apparent that the fault lines between the Tory's Bruges group and the Lib Dems' Beveridge group are very deep and, in the main, irreconcilable on most social and international issues.

It is into these obvious fissures that Labour has to drive home, at every opportunity, exposing the crass hypocrisy that is so blatantly obvious in the make-up of the coalition. The idea that Lib Dem figures such as Simon Hughes and Don Foster can sit comfortably on the government benches with the likes of Bill Cash, John Redwood and the odious David Heathcoat-Amory is an illusion that deserves to be shattered.

The social market values that the Beveridge group purports to share is a total anathema to most Tory MPs (including most Ministers) and that is why most of the Lib Dem MPs belonging to the group have been deliberately ignored for Ministerial posts (even at junior level). This faction of the Lib Dems could be a rich source of discontent and internal unhappiness with the direction of the centre-right coalition.

In Prime Minister's Questions, Deputy PMQs, Ministerial Questions, speeches in the chamber, Select Committee meetings, appearances on TV, radio etc, i.e. at each and ever opportunity, Labour has to focussing on exposing and magnifying the discomfiture of Beveridge group Liberal Democrat MPs. The idea that there is a permanent air to this coalition needs to be exposed as a lie as soon as possible, before the commentariat in the UK media persuade everybody that this is an established fact.

What should also be exploited is the deep, but presently underlying, anger on the Tory backbenchers about Cameron's acceptance about the status quo in the European Union. There are a host of Tory eurosceptics, both inside and outside of Parliament, who viscerally hate the EU and deeply resent having to make accommodations with Clegg over the European issue.

These very same people are ant-statist and instinctively opposed to nearly all aspects of public expenditure (except for the Ministry of Defence obviously). Again, this exposes a rich seam of discord for Labour to exploit mercilessly.

This campaign against this contradictory coalition should also be extended to local government and with party activists. At every turn the Labour leadership, MPs, Councillors, party membership and the wider Labour movement should be exploiting the discomfiture that is already there about this posh alliance and the growing discomfiture that is to come.

Every Labour party member and supporter has an opportunity to contribute to undermining this real threat to labour's interests by foreshortening the lifetime of the coalition by helping to spread a growing discord amongst its supporters and members, thereby establishing an irresistible momentum that will destroy this iniquitous government.

Right-Wing Entryism and the Neo-Liberals

This article will be published in Tribune Magazine on 28 May 2007 -  http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/

The new Con-Dem coalition should come as no surprise to those who have studied the development of a free market philosophy at the core of current Lib Dem thinking. What we have witnessed since the election is the culmination of a right-wing grab for power in what was formerly (albeit loosely) perceived as a progressive centre-left party.

The actual final nail in the coffin for a progressive alliance of the centre-left was marked by the leadership contest between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne in 2007. Both firmly on the centre-right of their party, the contest was between two free market fundamentalists far more interested in individual rights (by itself commendable) than in state intervention to address manifest injustices.

The party of Grimond, Steele, Ashdown and Kennedy has had its progressive heart completely hollowed out by neo-economic liberal activism in the party and replaced by a right-wing cabal of Clegg, Huhne, Davey, Laws and Cable amongst others. It should come as no surprise that a coalition with the Tories was no ideological barrier to their personal ambitions. Supposed left-leaning Liberal MPs such as Simon Hughes are either now Tory lackeys or simple hypocrites.

The only faction within the Liberal Democrats that would have been able to oppose the relentless drive to the right in their party, the Beveridge Group, made up of social liberals who are convinced that the role of the state should be a force to increase social welfare by state intervention, has been completely emasculated by the leadership cabal. It should be noted that only 2 out of their 28 members in the House of Commons have been given ministerial posts and inconsequential ones at that, one as deputy chief whip and one as a junior transport minister.

The Beveridge group (whose inspiration includes Keynes as well as Beveridge) would have been the core of any progressive alliance with Labour. Even if it was a loose arrangement in this Parliament, it would almost certainly have been able to help Labour block the worst excesses of George Gideon ‘Gus’ Osborne’s savage cuts to come. Instead they have meekly accepted the triumphant entryism from the right and allowed Clegg and his followers to lurch the party rightwards.

Chris Huhne, unsurprisingly, has tried to straddle both factions, being a member of the Beveridge group and former highly successful economist in the City, but crucially a contributor to the Orange Book. Of course, the ex-Labour party supporter has obviously been on a personal political journey, ‘rightward, ever rightward’, However, Huhne, owns seven houses (five of which are rented) and is independently wealthy.

In fact it can be argued that the current Lib Dems have reverted to being a party more akin to a historical Whig position, with its main concern being the defence of the merchant class with their interest in protecting property rights, laissez-faire economics and a penchant for free trade rather than any real or feigned concern for the working class.

What many term as a Blue-Yellow coalition is in reality a Blue-Orange coalition with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable coalition has come to pass is to forensically examine the political thinking laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism edited by David Laws (yes that Laws) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems' current leadership.

The Orange Book published in 2004 marked the start of the decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of commitment to a social market system. It also provided the ideological pole for the party's right wing to coalesce around and start the march to seizing power in the Lib Dems. What is also remarkable is the complete failure of the former SDP (and originally Labour) element in their party to sound the warning bell as to the direction the party was going. Ex-Labour people like Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be thoroughly ashamed about their inaction.

Clegg et al are a mirror image of Cameron's philosophical approach with its social liberal solutions to society's perceived ills. At the core of the Orange Book is an abiding belief in the role of the free market's ability to address most of societal issues, such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons. Laws even advocated replacing the National Health Service with an insurance-based scheme.

What is also remarkable is how easy the Lib Dem leadership sits within the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a very similar social class. Even the historical Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, whilst similar in class, at least it had fundamental political differences. In many respects we are seeing a Government being formed made up of a single ruling elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties whose leading figures can now be seen to have been divided more by subtle shades of opinion rather than any single ideological difference.

The Orange Book contributors of David Laws, Vincent Cable, Nicholas Clegg and Chris Huhne, Edward Davey are all Oxbridge-educated (as was the remaining member of the cabal, Danny Alexander) and four out of the five went to private schools with Cable an ex-Grammar schoolboy.

These are not people who know how it is to struggle financially, socially or academically. Its leader Nicholas William Peter Clegg was educated at the exclusive and highly expensive Westminster school (as was Huhne). He was also educated at his family's expense in the USA and at the very exclusive and super-elitist, College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He was a member of the Conservative Association at Cambridge University and was an integral part of Tory European Commissioner Leon Brittan's private office in Brussels. It should come as no surprise which party and which party leader he feels most comfortable with.

The idea that the current Lib Dem leadership clique could have easily sat with the Labour party; either in Government or in opposition was always fanciful and a forlorn hope to those on the right of the Labour party who thought that an accommodation could have been reached.  The electoral mathematics gave the perfect excuse to the Lib Dem's right-wing cabal (or more accurately neo-Liberals) to refuse to deal with Labour at a strategic level. Whilst hints of a deal with Labour were useful in dealing with the Conservatives tactically, Clegg was quite obviously never interested in a deal.

One salutary lesson to be learned from this squalid deal amongst the country’s forces of conservatism is that the Tories real intentions are plain to see. The Lib Dem Ministers have, to use the vernacular, got ‘the shitty end of the stick’. Appointed to Cabinet Posts with little power (i.e. Clegg and Alexander) or little room to manoeuvre as the Chancellor of the Exchequer holds the purse string (Laws, Huhne and Cable), the Tories’ disdain is manifest.

Finally, the main justification for this squalid coalition agreement being that the country needs strong and stable Government ((i.e. absolute power for a guaranteed five years and a signaled gerrymandering of national elections, Parliamentary procedure and a short to medium-term stitch up of the House of Lords) is vacuous in the extreme.

The basis for the Con-Dem coalition is nothing more than naked class interest that will cost the working class of this country dear and may well endure far beyond the initial five-year proposal, if their naked attempts to gerrymander Parliament bear fruit.