Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I think I know what the problems are with the Labour Party and perhaps I should write about them more. But I prefer to explore what I know don't understand, and I've just read this in today's Telegraph column by Simon Heffer, on the Northern Rock crisis:
If you aspire to prove you are fit to govern, you must also convince the wider world that, faced with such a crisis of this size, you could deal with it well.
He thinks that the Tories have not done so, whereas Labour did after Black Wednesday. If he is right, and his article is called 'Why the Tories can't Bury the Labour Party' then part of the answer lies in those three words, "the wider world". Not that I agree with Heffer's solutions: on Tory economic policy he is entertaining on the shadow chancellor and thinks the approach to Northern Rock by John Redwood (with whom I've had a small exchange in the comments to my recent post) is so superior it confirms that he should have the job. But there is something wrong with Tory strategy. What do you think it is - all abuse will be deleted.
PS: This graph from the Economist shows the Tories problem:
Comments
I think the problem is very similar.
New Labour stole most of their policies from the Conservatives, and Thatcher stole many of her policies from the 19th century Liberals.
And Cameron has stolen various things, including some hand gestures, from Tony Blair, and to a lesser extent the Greens.
It all makes for a very bland, and unrepresentative grey politics. No wonder people can't tell many of them apart. I tend to think the only real interest they have in Green matters is that they offer new forms of taxation.
David Willets on Vampire Bat Blood Sharing is what's wrong.
But not because he is wrong on this - actually, I think he is right on
the evolutionary foundations of group behavior - but because it won't do the poitical job the Tories want it to do.
Willets modestly agreed, talking on Today's 0857 "Funny Slot", that
the evolutionary game theory model of justice as fairness (developed by my PhD advisor, Ken Binmore), was to provide an intellectual foundation to Cameronism. The social glue that Margaret Thatcher derived from her religious beliefs could be replaced with genetic virtue for a secular society. The gene's-eye view leads straight to compassionate Cameronian Conservatism.
John Humphreys mumbled his interest in the
proposition. The promise is that here is a theory of society that
justifies decentralisation, small-is-beautiful all in the light,
compassionate embrace of Whitehall.
Attractive, but it doesn't actually work. The gene's-eye-view, even in
the Binmore version of it, is quite indeterminate: almost any outcome in terms of the distribution of power is possible---even
fair---depending on the socially set preconceptions for fairness. The
democratic project, seen as the self-creation of society, is the
project Europe has been engaged in for 300 years. It is the project
about how, all constraints being taken into account, we should seek to make a set of norms for justice. The landscape of political self-creation is a bit like Second Life - strewn here and there with outlandish constructions, exercises of willfulness that might provide the building block for something that works. The Nation, the Union, the Church, Slavism, Europeanism, the Caliphate and so on are all active parts of the world of self-creation that the gene's-eye-view will miss. And those are the important parts today.
Conservatism used to fall back on religion for its norms. It now falls
back on genetic history. But in neither case do we have any reason to believe that these are the sorts of constraints that bite in important
places. The gene's-eye-view ultimately pushes us back to socially constructed meanings.
So Conservatism still doesn't have any philosophy which is not anti-conservative. It remains as autophagous as ever. The project of self-creation, of course, is in no great shape either today.
I'm not convinced that Labour did convince the wider world that they would have handled Black Wednesday better - or even differently. They were extremely successful in keeping the analysis confined to - it was a disaster, the Conservatives were in charge therefore the Conservatives can't be trusted to run the economy.
I can't remember Labour ever putting forward a position on whether they would have pulled out of the ERM sooner or stayed in for longer. They did say that they would have entered at a more appropriate rate but I don't think this was ever taken seriously.
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