MrGareth’s Missives

A good friend of mine in London pointed out something that had already been rattling around my head: "the BA strikes are the fourth part of our return to the 70s....anything else we could copy from then? 3 day week???"

It seems there’s a couple of unique political scenarios in play right now that mirror the mid-1970s in remarkable clarity, and who knows how these retro-scenes will conclude.

So it seems today that what has amusingly become known as the “ConDem” alliance between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats has unravelled.  I think its wise for Mr Clegg to open discussions with Labour – afterall, if he and David Cameron can’t reach agreement with the lure of the keys to Number 10 Downing Street as the elephant in the room and with the media spotlight fuelled by an expectant nation as bright as it is; what chance do they have holding a government together in the melee of the day to day?

It turns out that parallel negotiations  between The Liberal Party and The Conservatives in 1974 to solve another hung parliament collapsed on exactly the same issue – electoral reform.  Its staggering that in 35 years this impasse is still not solved.  That break down in talks let the Labour party back into government as I hope it will today.

Of course, that situation is a slight reverse of what is happening now though – that scenario prevented the incumbent party from retaining government and allowed the opposition in the door.  Today of course, the reverse is – hopefully – happening: the challenging Conservatives might be denied power and the sitting government saved by Liberal collusion, bitter at their denial of electoral reform from the Tories.

Another major factor of course in this is Gordon Brown’s resignation (poor chap: "gifted man, ground down") – obviously a key condition of Clegg’s for negotiations to open.  Talks have already begun and David Miliband’s absence a clue as to who might be Gordon’s successor.  Of course Ted heath didn’t resign and was ultimately thrust out by his arch nemesis, Margaret Thatcher.  I often think that the relationship between Heath and Thatcher is a mirror of Brown’s and Blair’s.  I suspect Brown will now impersonate Heath’s grumpy back-bench grand-father demeanor for the remainder of his career.

But down under there’s another kooky mirror in play with those times.  Articles have started emerging drawing attention to the similarities between Kevin Rudd and 70s PM Gough Whitlam  – essentially boiling down to ‘lots of big ideas and good intentions; but executional incompetance’.  In fact, so much so that in a recent interview with Julia Gillard,  echoes of the great 1975 constitutional crisis of 1975 were heard.  The Labor party will – potentiall - nail the controversial Resources Tax to the Budget which Wayne Swan hands down today, thereby daring Tony Abbott to block it as Menzies did back then – triggering political crisis (known as “blocking supply”).

In fact, a half-way-house for Clegg is a mere “confidence and supply” agreement with one party or the other – agreeing only to support the government in confidence votes and in passing the budget. 

It struck me as odd though that while the Queen was able to solve the 1975  back then by empowering the Governor General to sack the Whitlam Government; she is not empowered right now – thankfully – to ask Mr Cameron to just get on and form a government according to what is clearly a popular mandate, if not a technical majority.

So while the famous line from Whitlam then: “God save the Queen, for no one can save the Governor General” one wonders who will save Nick Clegg from his very uncomfortable rock/hard place, Devil/deep-blue-sea dilemma.

(Fortunately, one parallel with the mid-1970s completely reversed is that England have qualified for the 2010 world cup which is more than they could manage in 1974.  Not only that but they are seeded for once!)

Elections are often entertaining blood sport (Bigot-gate a fine example!), and sometimes actually significant or important to your life.  Very rarely are they of generational and historical significance.  The 2010 UK Election could be.  

There’s a famous book most students of British Political History would be familiar with: The Strange Death of Liberal England.  

The Liberal Party of Gladstone and Lloyd George (even Churchill very briefly) died a sudden and mysterious death at the 1922 election.  Certainly it became for the most part politically irrelevant as the Union-backed Labour party surged into ascendancy on the back of Universal Suffrage in 1918 and the changing make up of industrial, urbanised, post-WW1 Britain.

Its a very exciting thought that Nick Clegg in 2010 – more than 80 years later – could be bringing the party back from the dead like one of those scenes in Sci-Fi movies where cryogenically frozen astronauts are resurrected (Cleggmania spreads across Britain).  It could mark another tide-mark in the fascinating story of British politics – hopefully.

Labour’s relationship with the Unions that blessed its founding almost became the death of it in 1978.  "The Winter of Discontent" was where that relationship had finally become abusive and a dysfunctional state of near-revolution existed as uncollected rubbish and unburied dead mounted up.  1979: Enter the Thatcher years which dragged Britain so far to the right that when Labour did win back power 18 years later, Labour were forced to have become a softer, more socially acceptable version of the same thing when “Tory Sleeze” brought an end to Major’s government in 1997.  But even those two truly historic elections might not be as important as the one about to happen in this narrative of the changing make-up of one of the oldest democracies in the world.  

And what of the Liberals?   Answer – an ever intensifying flirtation with the Labour Party:  the Lib-Lab pact in the 1970s that didn’t work; the “Gang of Four” Labour MPs that left Labour in the 1980s and formed the Social Democrats (that ultimately merged with the Liberals to form what we have today  - The Liberal Democrats); and Paddy Ashdown’s dalliance with Tony Blair in the 1990s that almost saw him in the cabinet.

The final chapter of that story could happen on Thursday when hordes of disgruntled Labour voters – betrayed by Iraq but still offended by Tory sleeze – can’t bring themselves to vote for either and flock to Mr Clegg as a last resort, giving him anointing-power in a hung Parliament.  The 1920s leftward-shift - over corrected in the 1980s by Thatcher’s angry lunge to the right - might finally be coming back to the centre ground.  (Check out Scenario B here.)

Whether Clegg is able to anchor it there is another matter.  But it makes a refreshing bloody change whatever happens!
(I would like to see: Brown back in, beholden to Clegg, until he is quickly sacked by the Milliband Borthers – Camelot-esque – who achieve Labour renewal after new election within the year.)

UPDATE: Now the results are in and what has amusingly become known as the ConDem coalition brought to life, this new era in Liberal England has fully dawned.  Despite losing seats rather than winning them, the Lib Dems are a renewed force on the British political scene.  With a referendum on electoral reform on the agenda, the 70-year effort to regain political relevance in England for the Liberal party has almost been achieved.  Nick Clegg has secured five Lib Dem cabinet seats including the nebulous role of Deputy Prime Minister for himself (portfolios to be announced), not to mention 15 ministerial posts across Whitehall. The Tories are apparently furious that Cameron gave so much away, and many observers are quietly admiring Labour's tactic of negative bidding to force Cameron into negotiating himself an even more powerless position than he already had.  How the coalition will operate - how right it will be and how centre - will be fascinating, particularly as they get down to the business of brutal spending cuts to reduce the Greek-sized deficit.  The youth and inexperience of the combined, not to mention their philisophical incombatability - will hamper them greatly.  It will be fascinating blood sport thats for sure!

I wonder if the UK election on May 6 is going to be a repeat of 1992 – but completely in reverse.

As I remember it, The Tories staggered into the 1992 election in much the same state Labour are now.  With an economy in shatters, an unelected leader – John Major – who while experiencing a slight bounce of popularity initially purely for not being his hated immediate predecessor – John's Margaret Thatcher to Gordon’s Tony Blair – normal unpopularity service was quickly resumed.  The Tories were HATED and Labour were a sure thing.

But, as the election grew closer and closer, the polls converged.  A Hung Parliament began to appear to be a distinct possibility.  As today, many speculate that “its too close to call”.  How Cameron has haemorrhaged his apparently unassailable lead is not clear to me living 11,000 miles away and not across the British political scene as much as I’d like to be.  But I wonder if its for the same reasons that Kinnock managed to lose in 1992.

To win a landslide in Britain with the “first past the post system” (FPTP) you’ve got to win over so-called “Middle England”.  This isn’t so much a place as a state of mind.  For Thatcher it was the Essex Man; Cameron seems to call them the "Great Ignored".  Upper Working Class types with aspirations for better things.  She promised them self-betterment, and Blair – as her theoretical heir – re-promised it.  They are a mix of Tory and Labour fair-weather supporters.

For the Tory flavour, Kinnock was as much anathema as Cameron is to today’s Labour equivalent.  Just as Cameron offends the working-class man – however disloyal – with his rich, privileged Etonian born-with-a-silver-spoon smoothness; so Kinnock was abhorrent to any swinging Tories.  Not only was he Welsh and Socialist – even his hair was red!

I think when it comes to voting day – perhaps the result will be the same but in complete reverse: a slight majority for the incumbent (Major stunned everyone with a majority of about 20, which he steadily pissed away over the next 5 years).  Not enough voters will be able to bring themselves to make a tick in favour of this anachronism just as they couldn't bring themselves to vote in Kinnock as PM. Kinnock's perceived arrogance and complascency (excemplified in the famous Sheffield Rally - said to have lost the election for him) - is also an echo of criticism of Cameron.  This is entirely possible given what a complete eediot-muppet Cameron is quickly revealing himself to be:

And maybe thats for the best. In 1992 I hoped for a hung parliament.  I longed for the paradise I imagined “consensus” politics might achieve.  I wanted Lib Deb balance-of-power.  After nearly 10 years down under, FPTP Rules!  The Federal Government hasn’t controlled the Senate here for more than about 18 months since I’ve been here and legislative failure is the name of the game.  Labor’s failure to pass the ETS Bill is a case in point. 

Today’s minority government decision in Tasmania is a great example of PR (Proportional Representation of course, not my profession!) of how it can fail the electorate.  And as I’ve always said, the idiocy of Steven Fielding of the so-called “Family First” Party is the perfect reason why PR and consensus politics talks a great game but delivers nothing but farce.

So I might be going out on a limb here but: I hereby predict (slightly wishfully) that Labour pull victory from the dark jaws of defeat.