What’s the Big Idea?
- 10 Jan 06, 11:40 AM
Rarely has politics been more fluid. Rarely though has politics seemed so lacking in big ideas.
Day by day David Cameron is shedding proposals that distinguish his party from Labour – subsidies for private health insurance one day, opposition to tuition fees and support for more grammar schools the next.
Day by day he adopts postures – concern about third world poverty, climate change and the ethics of Big Business – associated with his opponents. Already some in his party are taunting him for being an echo of Tony Blair and Labour-lite.
What about the Lib Dems? Mark Oaten will kick off their leadership race today by promising to water down his party’s distinctive platform on tax – he still wants a top rate of tax at 50% but now for even richer people. The favourite, Ming Campbell, is said to have opposed party policy on scrapping tuition fees and the owner of two 4 litre Jags makes a curious icon for the party that’s always claimed to be green-est.
Ask yourself a few questions and you quickly see how convergent British politics is becoming.
- Who’s in favour of ending taxpayer funding of the NHS? Bringing back grammar schools? Joining the Euro now? Radical tax cuts? No-one (in the big three parties, of course. There’s plenty of choice on offer if you include Respect, UKIP, the Nationalists, Scottish Socialists….etc)
- Who backs patient choice, schools choice, smoking bans, helping people off incapacity benefit but not cutting it? Everyone.
Now this convergence is largely a reaction to success. Labour’s third election in the case of the Tories, David Cameron’s in the case of the Lib Dems. All politicians now live according to New Labour’s bible (pollster Phillip Gould’s book) which preaches “concede and move on”.
In other words, shed those policies that are losing you votes even if you get taunted for making U-turns and being indistinguishable from your opponents. Something Labour did, of course, when they shed most of the policies they stood for in the early 1980s. This is the period of conceding. Let’s hope we can move on to some Big Ideas soon.
