Sheriff running-more difficult." That is the caption of a cartoon in 1066 And All That: it shows Robin Hood trying to shoot the Sheriff of Nottingham. Those who set out to oppose Tony Blair should remember this cartoon. Political generals, like military ones, are trained to attack fixed positions. As the generals discovered in Vietnam, it is much harder to attack an enemy which cannot be found.
Those who attacked Margaret Thatcher were able to attack an ideological position which had a fixed cartoon-like identity. Showing the link between an error of policy and an ideological position was not difficult. Those who attack Tony Blair have a much more difficult task. Take the reactions to last July's comprehensive spending review. Blair's opponents disagree both about what he actually did and about what ideological position his presumed error illustrates. Francis Maude, for the Tories, accused him of "spending us into recession." Malcolm Bruce, for the Liberal Democrats, said the spending settlement was "not Major-plus but Major-minus." If we cannot agree-either on what the government has done, or on the ideological position from which it has done it-it is indeed a case of "Sheriff running-more difficult."
We are told that Blair's ideological position is the Third Way. Maybe so, but the fact that the No.10 policy unit is holding seminars to find out what the Third Way is suggests that Blair has not yet found it. To choose your way before you have found it sounds like a worse mistake than putting the cart before the horse.
If this makes life difficult for government, it makes it even more difficult for opposition. Yet a democratic country needs an opposition. It is necessary for constitutional reasons. Without an effective opponent at the next election, Blair can acquire no great democratic legitimacy if he wins it. Without effective scrutiny in parliament there is no significant check on a prime minister's abuse of power other than that provided under the European Convention of Human Rights. This lack of challenge breeds intellectual sloppiness in government, as the Tories demonstrated in 1988. Measures such as the Poll Tax, the Football Spectators Act, the Dangerous Dogs Act and the Child Support Act would not otherwise have been proposed. Even if Blair does not realise it, it is in his interest as much as ours that he should have an opposition. Indeed, it is part of the function of governments to create one.
All government is about choices and all choices create disappointment. This is true whether the choice is between Frank Field and Alistair Darling, or between going in and staying out of the single currency. Each choice creates enemies; and when those enemies are able to rally around a single programme or creed, the government becomes vulnerable.
An opposition politician is like a rugby centre three-quarter: he is looking for the gap in the defence. He needs to understand the movement of the defence in order to see where the gap is likely to open up. Successful opposition requires foresight as well as opportunism. There are other requirements, too. Opposition must enjoy public credibility. It must offer relief where the shoe is pinching. A long-term opposition, then, must foresee where the public will be feeling the pain in four years' time. Moreover, the proposed remedies must enjoy credibility with the media. It is not enough to identify where the shoe pinches: the proposed redesign must carry conviction with a jury of amateur cobblers. Unless an opposition has an effective reply to the curl of Jeremy Paxman's lip or the unnerving silence of Andrew Marr waiting for something noteworthy, it will not take off. It must offer not just criticism, but an alternative.
The alternative must be credible both in terms of party ideology and practicality. It is no good if a three-quarter sees a gap in the defence but is running fast in the wrong direction when he sees it. For example, at prime minister's questions the day after the comprehensive spending review, Paul Beresford complained that standard spending assessments in London were too low. He was right, but he was running in the wrong direction and was easily bundled into touch. Coming from a Tory, the claim lacked credibility.
Opposition must rest on a political base large enough to win elections and growing. Labour's weakness in the 1970s was its attachment to a working class base which diminished with every parliament. Daily Mail moralism may be a similar trap for the Tories: it is rooted among the over-60s and almost unknown to the under-25s, as William Hague appreciates much better than his party does. The public service professional base on which the Liberal Democrats fought the 1992 election may be a similar trap. Yet, as Labour learnt in 1983 and 1987, escaping from these electoral ghettos may in the short term lose more votes than it gains.
Finally, opposition must rest on an understanding of what a government is trying to do (which is why a party's best critics often come from within its own ranks). The function of opposition is to sow doubt in ministerial minds. This is why it was so difficult under Margaret Thatcher: self-doubt was an emotion from which she enjoyed a remarkable immunity. If the same turns out to be true of Tony Blair it will make the task of opposing him more difficult.
where will the gaps in Labour's defence open up? This is not the same question as "where do I disagree with the government?" although, being human, I risk confusing them. The question is: where will criticism be most effective? And when a gap in the defence is spotted, which party-Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Scottish National-will be best positioned to get through it? The question which will sow doubt in opposition minds is: which side of the defender to go? This is precisely Blair's intention.
The government's programme of constitutional reform is a good example of this dilemma. Critics must decide whether to object to it being done at all or to complain that it should have been done differently. The Tories have chosen the former. This is a blind alley; they have debarred themselves from doing much about the many ways in which constitutional reform could be improved. The Tories have accepted their crushing defeat in the Scottish referendum, but they have not understood what it means. This prevents them, for example, from doing anything to allay the fears of English-speakers in Wales. Above all, they are still strapped (by their European policy) to a belief in a unitary national sovereignty which precludes them from understanding what devolution is.
On electoral reform, on the other hand, the Tories have made some very effective criticisms of the system of election by closed lists. In that system, the party, not the voters, ranks the order of the party's candidates. The voters determine only how many Labour or Conservative candidates are elected. If Peter Mandelson were top of Labour's list for the European parliament, voters could only vote against him by ensuring that no Labour candidates were elected from the relevant region. Once he was elected, only offending his leader, not offending the voters, could move him further down the list. The Tories are right to say that this destroys the accountability of member to voters and increases the power of the party managers. These arguments strike a chord with the public, as the focus groups employed by the Jenkins commission have revealed. Also, there are perfectly good open list systems of proportional representation (PR) available. Yet Tory criticisms have not taken off because they sound too much like an attempt to defend the party's long hegemony on only 43 per cent of the vote. There is much in the Tories' history which should make them credible as opponents of centralisation, but they cannot draw on it until the Thatcher legacy has faded into oblivion.
By contrast, there is a good case to be made for the proposition that the programme of constitutional reform is not delivering its stated objective. This objective, as outlined in the Blair-Ashdown declaration, is the dispersal of power. It risks being defeated because Blair is centralising his party at the same time as he decentralises the state. Because Blair often confuses party with state, he cannot be an effective decentraliser. For example, Labour recently proposed that the party should make a "contract" with its MPs. It cannot do this because it is not its MPs' employer. Their employer is the Crown, whose Writ of Summons is their title to sit. The Writ knows nothing of party. Nor does Labour understand criticisms of Alistair Campbell's freedom to act as a servant of the party on a salary from the state.
In the first week of the election campaign, Tony Blair was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. He said that there would be no increases in income tax during the lifetime of a Labour government. Paxman asked: "What, not even in Scotland?" Blair appeared not to understand the question. A few days later, when it had been explained to him, he announced that the Labour prime minister of Scotland would not use his tax-raising powers. He did not understand that, under devolution, that decision was not his to make. The centralisation of the party had defeated the decentralisation of the state, and the SNP had been given the kiss of life.
Much the same seems to be happening to the selection of potential members of the Scottish parliament under the closed lists. Ken Livingstone has discovered that it also applies to the selection of potential Labour mayors. The mayors of our great cities will be as much central nominees as any French intendant. Is this the dispersal of power we have heard so much about?
The biggest remaining test of whether constitutional reform is really meant to control power is freedom of information, a matter of division within the highest ranks of the government. A flurry of signals in the last week of the session indicated that the champions of freedom of information have lost. The Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, its leading supporter, has had to cede the chairmanship of the future legislation committee to Margaret Beckett. Two days later, we were told that the Bill would not be in the Queen's Speech, on the grounds that it would not be ready until September-although David Clark, the minister who drew it up, said it was ready now. Then we were told that responsibility for the Bill had been transferred to the Home Office, the powerbase of its opponents.
All this suggests a significant opportunity for any party which can exploit the pitfalls in setting a control freak to manage the dispersal of power. The SNP is best positioned: its credentials as opponents of control from London are unassailable. The Tories don't stand a chance: they do not approve of the objective. In Labour's own ranks, Ken Livingstone has scored heavily on this theme, but it is hard to see how the bulk of the party, which has patiently submitted to Blair's control over the Commons, can follow his lead. What of the Liberal Democrats? Their ideological credibility is not in doubt. But are they moving in the wrong direction? Liberal Democrats have always defended PR (for Westminster and elsewhere) as a form of political pluralism-part of their agenda for the control of central power. Yet, as Blair points out, PR would deliver a great deal of central power to the Liberal Democrats themselves; a complaint which has resonance with the voters. This charge can only be answered if the Liberal Democrats would use the power PR gives them to ensure that constitutional reform really does lead to the dispersal of power. The objective is incompatible with any prior agreement to go into partnership, however loose, with Labour to keep the Tories out of office for a generation. This would be an agreement to take power away from the people and could well lead to defeat in a referendum on PR. This is not a call for an immediate return to "equidistance": the Tory party has a lot of work to do before that can be discussed. Yet it is only if return to equidistance is the Liberal Democrats' long-term goal that PR can be presented as part of a programme for controlling power. Will they take the opportunity?
this constitutional argument may be the staple of Westminster debate, but for the mass electorate there is still truth in the Clinton rule: "It's the economy, stupid." Here, the writing is already on the wall. The CBI is reporting the fastest fall in export orders since 1980 and the lowest level of business confidence since 1991. These figures are evidence of impending recession; if this recession is as severe as seems likely, it will be a central element in the campaign against Labour in 2002. The prize for prophecy here goes to Kenneth Clarke, who predicted this in an article in the Independent on 3rd July 1997-the day after Gordon Brown's first budget. There is no doubt about the proximate cause of the recession: successive rises in interest rates and the consequent rise in the value of the pound. In his anxiety to avoid a repeat of 1988, Gordon Brown has run us into a repeat of 1981.
The struggle will be about where to lay the blame for the rises in interest rates. This will be a myth-making struggle; the most successful myth-maker will win, but it is still worth trying to establish the truth.
Kenneth Clarke lays the blame on the decision to transfer control of interest rates to the Bank of England. This is an easy myth to sell. The change did indeed follow hard upon the transfer of power to the Bank. Yet the Bank did not acquire this power in a vacuum. It acquired it in the light of the policies followed by the chancellor, limited by terms of reference of his devising. These included no mention of responsibility for the exchange rate. The responsibility of the Bank's monetary policy committee is confined to the control of inflation. The Bank took over responsibility in a situation of excess consumer demand. This could have been mopped up either by tax or interest rate rises. The chancellor did indeed raise taxes, but by raiding pension funds and taxing saving instead of spending. He was prevented from raising income tax by Blair's foolish promise not to raise income tax during the parliament. This is like driving a car with a promise never to use the brakes. This promise forced the Bank to raise interest rates and push the pound up to danger levels. Blair's desire for popularity, compounded by his reluctance to enter the single currency, is leading him to undermine that popularity by creating a recession. This is indeed poetic justice.
The worsening economy has made the comprehensive spending review a myth even before it was announced. The projections for growth, inflation and unemployment on which it rests have been overtaken by events. Yet it is worth analysing what the statement actually offered. The treasury select committee may serve as umpire between Tory and Liberal Democrat interpretations of spending growth, and it has come down in favour of the Liberal Democrats. If we judge spending over the five years of the parliament and not the three to which the government is directing us, the average annual growth of expenditure is 1.7 per cent, as against 2.2 per cent over the last parliament. The Blair government is controlling spending more tightly than the Major government. This is bound to mean a swelling volume of discontent. Public sector pay is the most obvious example. People have never learnt the lesson of the winter of discontent: that it is not possible for any length of time to apply restraints to public sector pay which do not apply to private sector pay. The shortage of teachers may as yet be only a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but this could change by the next election.
Another place where discontent will show is transport. On the day John Prescott announced the white paper, Euston station was closed because a train had caught fire. The closure was so typical that it was not newsworthy. In this context, attempts to drive traffic off the roads risk becoming attempts to prevent the public from travelling at all. This is liable to be a vote-loser; only a party which did not privatise the railways or condemn the comprehensive spending review as "profligate" will be able to benefit. This is the Liberal Democrats' opportunity, but can they take it?
In social security, the likely rise in unemployment will put even more pressure on a government analysis which was always misconceived. The objectives of government policy are to contain the growth of social security spending while insisting that "our commitment to the vulnerable is not negotiable." Unless they hold a very restricted definition of the vulnerable, these objectives cannot be made compatible through any measures which can be introduced by the department of social security. Blair insists that "tackling social and economic failure" is the way to cut welfare bills. This is fair enough if he recognises that tackling social and economic failure is not the department of social security's job. It is the chancellor's job; Alistair Darling should refuse to carry the can for Gordon Brown's failures.
The measures taken to spring poverty traps and improve training are mostly good, but they increase employability, not employment. Improvement in employability is of no use if a strong pound wipes out the employment. Without a recession, Labour could have achieved the containment of spending projected in the comprehensive spending review by carrying on Peter Lilley's policy of sinking the stragglers such as asylum seekers and single parents, while not attacking the main convoy. With a deep recession, they would either have to change their spending projections, or introduce cuts which would hit the main body of pensioners, disabled and unemployed. Such cuts would extend well beyond the people the Daily Mail demonises and would mean a heavy loss of votes. The Tories, who attack the government for not cutting social security faster, are in no position to benefit. The situation would call for a repeat of the alliance between Liberal Democrats and Labour dissidents which we saw over single parent benefits. Will the Liberal Democrats take the opportunity?
perhaps one of the biggest resentments Blairism is raising is against its intrusive moralism, expressed in parenting orders, parenting classes, curfew orders forcibly driving the homeless off the streets, and so on. There is nothing wrong with voluntary parenting classes, but parenting, like many other jobs, can only be done according to one's conscience. Even a correct method of bringing up children, if carried out by a parent who believes it is wrong, will be done badly because the parent will be acting against his conscience. It is like forcing a catholic priest to preach protestantism. As for parenting orders, we already have a big problem with parents who throw out troublesome 16-18 year olds, who have no entitlement to benefit and can only support themselves illegally. Will parenting orders do anything but make this problem worse? What happens when a curfew is imposed on a child whose mother has been compelled by benefit cuts to take a late night job as a waitress? The state is failing to respect the principle of subsidiarity; the government is meddling in spheres where it has no competence and no business. Tories will present this as examples of the "nanny state," Liberal Democrats as a failure to respect pluralism or individuality. Either language will be a vote-winner.
The outlines of a successful anti-Blair campaign become clear. The "control freak" theme will be central, holding together issues ranging from Scottish taxation to parenting orders. So too will the related theme of centralisation, which will range from the selection of candidates for the European parliament to education reform. With this will go the unctuous moralism implicit in communitarian rhetoric.
If the recession can be pinned on the refusal to raise income tax, the theme of "moralism without money" will also become central to an anti-Blair campaign. The likely decrepit state of the public service will make such a campaign easy to run. The question is, again: who will run it successfully? At every stage, the Tories have been wrong-footed by their inability to decide which side of Blair to go. Their tax-cutting instincts are against attacking him for spending too little, yet they cannot attack him for spending too much when he is controlling public spending more tightly than John Major. Above all, the Tories must get over their 16th century obsession with national sovereignty if they want to convince the media that they can handle Europe or Scotland. They must also get over their obsession with ever-sinking taxes: leaving aside the problem of financing public services, this is incompatible with prudent economic management. And the Tories cannot convince opponents of centralisation until the Thatcher legacy has been replaced by an older Burkeian tradition. This does not seem likely to happen this side of the next election-but who foresaw Tony Blair in 1992?
A great deal will depend on whether the next election is fought under PR or first-past-the-post. Under PR, a Clarkeian European Conservative party could make hay: it could get through every gap in the defence it could find. So could the Liberal Democrats, who are philosophically and historically well-placed to take advantage of the opportunities. The question is why Blair should give them a helping hand by introducing PR. He is probably not terrified of a revival of the Conservative right and regards a Clarke-Ashdown alliance as his greatest danger. Why should he give his enemies ammunition?
It seems likely that he will not concede PR unless he can tie the Liberal Democrats to his coat-tails by some form of lasting agreement. In other words, he will only accept PR in return for the restoration of the two-party system. In a two-party system, PR would serve no purpose, unless by PR with a closed list Blair were able to increase his control over his own party. Why should a third party, which should be campaigning against him as a control freak, help him to do that? Why should a third party risk its survival by pinning its fortunes on the task of protecting a government against its growing unpopularity? Roy Jenkins is right: throughout the 20th century voters have punished third parties which have done that. Why should the 21st century be different? It is clear why Blair should want to neutralise his most potentially dangerous rival by a pre-election pact. But why should a third party buy a favourable electoral system at the price of extinguishing any distinctive reason for voting for it?
In the absence of any such agreement, Blair would probably opt for first-past-the-post because he has no clear interest in anything else. This would lead to an election in which Liberal Democrats and Tories competed for the role of opposition. Blair would then win his second term. He would have created a formidable case against him, but also nullified both his potential opposition parties. Is this good or bad politics?
The effective criticism would then come from within his own party. The Blair regime, like the Thatcher regime and many monarchies before them, would fall by divisions within its own court circle. Gordon Brown would have no difficulty in playing the part of Michael Heseltine. Blair's John Major, like the original, is probably waiting prudently in the shadows.
