It has become a cliché of political commentary to quote the remark of the
conspiratorial French politician Talleyrand on hearing of the death of a
rival: “I wonder what he meant by that?” But seldom has it been more apt
than this weekend, as we contemplate the shambles of Gordon Brown’s shock
attempt to bring leading Liberal Democrats into his tent.
Theories abound. Writing yesterday, Mary
Ann Sieghart suspected it was little more than mischief-making. Peter
Riddell thought it was a natural extension of the Chancellor’s
long-observed habit of roping in outsiders to add authority to government.
Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph considered it a brilliant strategy to
undermine Sir Menzies Campbell so that his clever underling Nick Clegg –
who’s good at wooing Tory voters – becomes leader in time to clobber the
Conservatives at the next election. The Guardian’s former political editor
Michael White saw a long-term plan to woo Lib Dems so they may in future
prop him up.
Tory MPs, meanwhile, remain unsure whether to be indignant or contemptuous.
Labour MPs are wondering whether to praise their incoming leader for
magnanimity or for guile. And Lib Dem MPs are all over the place.
I think it was just a monumental cockup – on all sides. I think Mr Brown was
trying to copy Nicolas Sarkozy but went about it ineptly, as so often
happens when you attempt brain surgery with a big clunking fist. It’s only
because people are still a bit in awe of Mr Brown that they continue trying
to interpret his works in terms of intelligent design.
I wish in a moment to explain why I think this failure of lift-off for
consensus politics is no disappointment at all, but a good thing. First,
though, let me point to the problems (in this case) with the intelligent
design theory of Mr Brown.
The trouble with the “pure mischief-making” theory is that undermining the
third party is not in Labour’s interests. The Tories would benefit
disproportionately from any dip in the Lib Dem vote.
The trouble with the idea that Brown is preparing the ground for a Lab-Lib
pact after the next election is that he has now queered this pitch. Mutual
trust has been undermined.
The trouble with the Riddell theory is that though (like most modern political
leaders) Brown has always seen advantage in leaning on respected individuals
outside party politics, he has been fiercely tribal in his approach to rival
parties and encouraged his friends and backbench supporters in that
attitude. Watch him in the Chamber. Nobody is more regularly infuriated by
Lib Dems and Tories than the Chancellor. We should not confuse a
bloody-minded determination to capture enemy regiments and conscript them to
his own cause with the instincts of a conciliator.
And the trouble with the theory that it was all a fiendishly Machiavellian
plot to make Mr Clegg leader of the Liberal Democrats is that, although this
may indeed be the final outcome, that can only happen after another awful
bout of Lib Dem infighting. Mr Clegg could inherit a demoralised army, not a
lean, mean, Tory-ambushing machine.
So much for What He Meant By That. Yet there’s a little truth in all these
conflicting explanations. Brown, I suspect, does sort-of like the idea of
ennobling his politics by bringing in respected people from the outside; did
sort-of think it might work; does sort-of fret that he may not win an
outright majority next time. And doubtless it did sort-of occur to him that
he might present a rebuff as a mean-spirited response to a big-hearted
offer; and set Lib Dems fighting among themselves . . . . . . And if A then
B, and if not-P then possibly Q . . . and it all got horribly tangled up in
the great man’s head, so he stomped in and gave it a try anyway because
isn’t that what everyone is praising Sarkozy for pulling off in France? And
isn’t that how Tony wrapped Ashdown and Roy Jenkins round his little finger
after 1997? And didn’t all the commentators love Tony’s moving speeches
about a New Britain, and a new and inclusive kind of politics?
And there was another sort-of, I believe, troubling the Brown imagination as
well. He must be bothered about not being elected to his next job. He didn’t
want a contest, but now has no mandate. Nor will there be an early general
election, though at the most recent election Tony Blair had promised to
serve a full term. Nobody has voted for Brown: not his own party, and not
the British public. “What can I do,” he asks himself, “to get my own special
mandate like Tony, but without the danger of a real election?” One response
is to try at least to lead a government of the best. To invite respected men
and women from other parties is a nod of acknowledgement towards Brown’s
democratic deficit: winning legitimacy without the horrible danger of going
to the country.
If he reads the press he’ll know he’s escaped from this mess without too much
damage. The Westminster world doesn’t quite know what to think, and is
inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that doubt will have
lodged in many minds: “Does this man really have the necessary sureness of
touch?”
Brown has been lucky, this time. Lucky, too, because something worse than the
rejection might have occurred. The offer might have been accepted. Imagine
if Campbell and Ashdown had said yes.
Within hours Lib Dems would have been making demands and announcing that Brown
was “on trial”. There would have followed a messy period in which
accusations about betrayal flew. Both parties would have been dogged by
argument about what they had agreed and why. Tories would have cackled from
the sidelines.
So Mr Brown lives to fight another day. He is not the man, anyway, to pioneer
big-tent government, and these are not the circumstances. Propping up a
party whose grip on power is faltering is the easiest sort of cooperation to
attack. Were the Lib Dems minded (as Sir Menzies is not) to cooperate with a
Tory principal Opposition that fell just short of being able to dislodge an
enfeebled majority party after the next election, the democratic case for a
cross-party deal would be easier to make.
I hope it is not successfully made. I worry that British voters benefit from
dingdong politics without really liking it, or understanding why. We say: “I
don’t need a choice of schools in my area, I just need one good school”; and
many of us might say: “I don’t need competition between political parties, I
just need one good administration made up of the best of all of them.” We
might equally say: “I don’t need a choice of supermarkets in my town: just
one good one.” But the point is that in all these areas it is choice,
competition, the rivalry and the edge that sharpens performance and
stimulates ideas. You may say that coalition politics leaves us free to
choose between alternatives, but simply asks them to cooperate afterwards;
but an ethos of cooperation suffocates argument, works against the careers
of those who think the unthinkable and stick to their guns.
Good new ideas in politics and economics are often aggressive things; they
often hurt somebody; they challenge vested interests; they challenge
complacency. They do not thrive in committee rooms whose wood-panelled walls
breathe the search for compromise. Would privatisation, the enforced sale of
council houses, the taming of the trades unions, have survived a 1980s
big-tent government? A political party is a kind of forcing-house for the
growth of new ideas and spirits. It is an army by turns beleaguered or
hubristic. It holds to and defends and hones doctrines and theories with an
enthusiasm born of danger. A big-tent government produces a different
internal culture – we see these all across Europe. Though in form it may be
democratic because its formation follows an election, its spirit is that of
an oligarchy. It ceases to believe, as a political party does, that it is
going anywhere. It just is.
I don’t like oligarchies. I distrust consensus. I hate fudge. I relish
contrast, competition and choice. These are saving qualities. I began with a
cliché and so will end with one. The call for consensus in politics is a
siren voice.
