Politics

We already know what the political event of 2007 will be, so let’s move on

6 January 2007

But it is not just about image. The axis of politics will be different under Mr Brown. That, though, will not be because of Gordon Brown. It will be because of his opponent. If Mr Brown was fighting a Conservative party led by David Davis, the battle lines would be much the same as in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections. Blair versus Major, Blair versus Hague and Blair versus Howard were fought as the centre versus the Right. Not surprisingly, the centre won. It always has. Even Baroness Thatcher won her three elections because she was seen as being closest to the centre, in contrast to an unelectably left-wing Labour party.

When Mr Brown takes over from the pro tem Prime Minister, the axis will shift not because Brown is some Old Labour dinosaur (he isn’t — he is the creator of New Labour) but because David Cameron is making his pitch from the centre. Indeed, in areas such as the environment, he wants to be seen as being to the left of Labour. This shift in the axis would have happened already, had we not been in a political phony war since Mr Cameron’s election as Conservative leader, awaiting Mr Blair’s departure.

As ever, the main battle will be over public services. But it will be an oddly muted battle. Under the old axis, Labour’s scream of ‘cuts’ worked, whatever the Conservatives proposed. Because Tory leaders were right-wing, Labour could get away with a message that it cared and the Conservatives didn’t. No more. Indeed, Mr Cameron’s most daring raid on Labour’s territory is to fight on Labour’s ‘we are nicer and smile a lot more’ ground. Politically, it is brave, but the previous strategy of traditional Conservativism could hardly be described as successful; it led to three landslide election defeats.

But whatever the political merits of Mr Cameron’s strategy, it is a depressing time for those of us who believe in competition in public services. The Conservatives have only one pledge so far: to keep the NHS fully tax-funded. In education, the best they can come up with is a risible list of ‘12 great people’ to be taught in schools, including Aneurin Bevan, which is almost beyond satire.

What would tilt the new political axis even further off its existing kilter is the likely triumph of the Scottish Nationalist party in the May elections to the Scottish Parliament. An SNP administration using an expected referendum in Scotland on the issue to step up the push for independence, in combination with an unpopular Scottish prime minister and growing English resentment at the subsidy paid by taxpayers to finance the bloated Scottish public sector, would produce a cocktail the like of which has not been since the Act of Union.

Mr Brown will seek to govern like Mr Blair because caution and conservatism are his natural instincts, whatever the spin might pretend. The impact of the Scottish elections, however, may focus that caution not on public services but on keeping the Union together.

Stephen Pollard is president of the Centre for the New Europe.