The Lib Con
International observers—and no doubt, many of my own fellow subjects—might be forgiven for believing the hype that followed the May 2010 general elections. (I say ‘subjects’ because in the UK, we still can’t really speak of ‘citizens’; if shove had come to putsch in the general elections, the queen and her cortigianos would have had the right to choose the government).
In the end, the New Labour Party was comprehensively defeated –though not as comprehensively as many had hoped—and a country long accustomed to telling itself that ‘we need strong leadership’ suddenly found itself having to deal with the kind of politics that are par for the course in much of Europe. The politics in question have not yet led to the unmitigated disaster that the Tories predicted if they were not allowed to reign supreme, though at the rate things are going, perhaps disaster will strike in due course, albeit not for the reasons the Tories foretold.
In the end, three parties—shall we say two-and-a-half parties—had to figure out how they were going to work together (or not) to regenerate governance. The self-same Tories that warned of catastrophe were the first to offer their coalescing services, with New Labour an eager alternative. It seemed that a coalition might go either way until the very right honourable David Blunkett, MP for Entrust (pardon me, it’s actually Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough) launched a salvo of torpedoes of a kind last witnessed when Thatcher sank the Belgrano to scupper a UN initiative vis-à-vis the Falklands.
After Dem Tories did the deal, Nick Clegg declared that ‘this government is going to be unlike any other’. But scarcely a month since the ‘historic’ elections took place, I worry that it’s starting to look like political business as usual in England.
Three sets of events persuade me that this worry is no longer just a worry. The first, and most obvious, is that our good politicians have not been able to shake that ancient addiction to corruption. Much as I’d like to believe the long line of politicians who lined up to praise David Laws and condemn homophobia—heck, even Anne Widdecombe chimed in—it looks to me like yet another MP—this time from the holier than holy Liberal Democrats—was caught out helping himself to the state pie. That this selfsame politician was about to slash and burn a variety of state budgets is the best possible symbol of what neoliberalism is all about. One set of rules for the rich and powerful, another for the rest of us.
Had the politicians condemned Laws for what he did, they would have made it apparent that, despite Britain’s huge MP’s expenses scandal, nothing has really changed. So better to say it was a procedural mistake, and to co-opt the condemnation of homophobia for PR purposes.
The second set of events involve New Labour’s internal politics. Despite being defeated, New Labour has once again contrived to offer its members, and by extension the country, a choice between of its own very best men (I take it that Diane Abbot is not New Labour). One of these men has rather disingenuously suggested that his own New Labour is dead (Long Live New Labour!). Thus cleansed, the party apparatchiks will now be able to choose between two members of the old nomenklatura (and an emerging dynasty, a la George and Jeb Bush); one of two brothers whose main ideological difference can be found in their first names.
The third set of events involves our education system, which I also write about today. Having reproduced the New Labour ministerial nomenclature for higher education (universities are still in the grip of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Cable or no Cable), we have recently learned that the good David Willetts regards ballooning student loans as a ‘tax’ on higher education, and also that Secretary Gove (I use the American appellation quite deliberately) is also keen to bring business into primary and secondary education.
I could, and usually do, go on and on. But here’s the question: did we actually have an election in May?
