Smash hit

By letting Mr Blair off the hook in this way, and simultaneously reminding many voters of why they hated the Tories, even in Margaret Thatcher’s heyday, Mr Howard seems to have paved the way for another Labour triumph. To say this is not to trivialise politics or reduce it to the level of a personality contest. British voters have never, thank goodness, judged their politicians by the American or Australian test: “Which of these guys would you rather have a beer with?”

The Tory failure is more important than that. The Conservative decision to run an intensely personal and emotional campaign, revolving around allegations of lying and visceral fears about foreigners, left Labour ideas unchallenged in every other part of the political battlefield — not only in education and health, but even in such traditional Tory areas as taxation, deregulation and law enforcement.

In many areas of policy, Tory researchers and think-tanks have produced interesting proposals for new approaches to social policy, based round private initiative and competition, rather than taxpayer funding and government control, but these received almost no airing in their election campaign. The alternative plans which the Tories did push strongly — for example, the setting of numerical quotas on immigration or the uprating of the basic state pension — mostly involved expansions in the scope of government, as well as its cost.

THUS THE end result of the Conservative campaign has not just been to frighten reluctant liberal-minded floating voters back into the Labour fold. It has also been to discourage serious policy thinking in the Conservative Party and to put back the day when the Tories could re-emerge as a plausible alternative government, or at least a serious Opposition, with a distinctive view about the size and scope of government in a modern lib eral state.

Many social and economic liberals (myself included) flirted with the idea of voting Tory to cut Labour’s majority down to size, send a rebuke to Mr Blair and possibly accelerate the handover of power to a new prime minister. But given the Tory campaign priorities, I think that many concluded that a vote for Mr Howard would send a host of other less desirable signals, not only to a re-elected Labour government whose social instincts are far from liberal at the best of times, but also to the Tory Opposition. If the Tories significantly increased their share of the vote or their representation in parliament in this election, might not the backwoodsmen conclude that Mr Howard’s campaign strategy was, after all, right?

The Liberal Democrats, in contrast to the Tories, have had a good campaign and have done nothing to make themselves less attractive as a party of protest. For those who regard Iraq as the most fundamental issue in this election, a vote for the Lib Dems is an obvious choice. But for others of an economically liberal persuasion who want to encourage a reforming Labour government, the trouble with a Lib Dem vote is the message it sends to the Labour Left. The Lib Dems stand for much higher taxes, even more public spending on health, education and pensions, even more European regulation, even more influence for half-baked proponents of progressive education in the schools.

Where does this leave those of us who want to express our dissatisfaction with Mr Blair and set limits on his vanity and arrogance by reducing the Labour majority, while encouraging the Conservative Party to develop as constructive liberal alternative to new Labour?

I would not presume to provide an answer for others, but a few days ago I came up with a stratagem that will leave my conscience at ease. I decided to vote Labour but to place a spread-bet with an online bookmaker which will pay me nothing if the Labour majority ends up at 80 (which was the number most punters at that time expected) but will pay me a handsome dividend if Labour does better than that. If Labour manages to get a majority of more than 100, I will win several hundred pounds.

If Labour does better than the punters expect and I win any money (the unlikely event of Labour preserving its present majority of 160 would win me £1,000) I will divide my jackpot into three equal parts and send them to three organisations that I think could promote liberal values, and encourage a more constructive Tory Opposition and help to keep an overweening Labour government in check. The three are the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance, the pro-immigration Refugee Council, and the pro-market Adam Smith Institute.

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