the new politics anim eapcang ua Aer daaccastiasanatel re eet lae who find it difficult to picture Mr Peel netasc ein ten Shs idle aged, eddtengiana tainesarataslnday Che Guero A Teron is happening aad ria gator is Tony Blair. Reader, I detect fangs sesed Cures ns Visine His Uno In fue he's more ky offer yo ety isced al bantian'a hoes Sse oe eer ini latte aia “te my have cea nn ated themsclves into the popular per- Ghachalipraiicbehdeetec rh a First: Margaret Thatcher, love her or loathe her, through the sheer ram- pant force ight ‘or wrong ~ fundamentally altered the very fabric of society, for better or ‘worse. And secondly: Tony Blair, bless him, bereft of any Big Ideas and able only to follow a Thatcherite agenda ~ right and wrong ~ will try to be well meaning, for richer or poorer. Le's the obvious first Thatcherism failed. The Conservatives made two basic promis. ¢3 on coming to power, way back in 1979 when Posh Spice meant tar- 18 Isis cS | @] Is words Stephen Fairweather-Tall ragon and Ken Livingstone was a Socialist: to cut taxes and to slash pub- lic spending. Yet expenditure on pub- lic services has remained a stubborn 40% of Gross Domestic Product, while the burden of individual taxa- tion, despite having shifted from. income to expendinare, actually rose between 1979 and 1997. What of that second myth? Te, grandiose promises and. visionary policies are scarcely the New Labour ‘way. Rather their great success has been in reassuring the British people. ‘This was the significance at the last election of Blair's five famous pledges, bland promises which in themselves were and are and will Worried about youth unemploy- ment? No hassles, there’s a New Deal ready to expunge 100,000 jobless 18- 24 yearolds from the statisties. Never mind that a third of these have cho- sen the ‘soft option of education and training, Uneasy about schools and hospitals? Then be woned by the tra £40 billion resources miracu- ously found by the Treasury. So what if it’s to be spread over the next three years. Upset by widespread poverty? Hey, there's a minimum wage just slavering to help two million of the neediest. Who cares that it’s only £3.61 per hour. New Labour has given the elec- torate exactly what it ordered: free market economics with a social com science, And in so doing they have anaesthetised political debate. But that's not the revolution. No, Blai 1m concerns the British constitution, that impotent concoction of gentlemen’s agree- ments, unwritten rules and patrician privilege by which this country is ruled, And itis here that he has slain the myth that new Labour has no Big Ideas to contribute. Devolution is, as 's revol irrelevance, a footnote in an appendix to an epilogue on the history of the death of the Tory Party. yet, the most substantial of Blair’s achievements as well as being one of the most important domestic events this century, 199 marking the first exer elections to Scottish and Welsh Parliaments. It is unlikely to stop there. Back in the 1960s the promise of self government was simply an expedi- ent for Labour to woo defectors in traditional strongholds back from the Nationalist parties. Now, though, | regional government is mainstream and crusading groups are springing upall over the United Kingdom. Overthe last 30 years the campaign for a north-east assembly has accelerated to the point where itis embodlied by the Constitutional Convention chaired by the Bishop of Durham and supported by businesses, unions and voluntary organisations. The Campaign for Yorkshire, which has as its aim the establishment of a parliament for England's largest county, was launched in March, Its chairman, Paul Jagger, has vowed to support the Government's regional initiatives declaring, “We don’t want to put walls around the region — we're not an island.” “The days when English regionalism was exemplified by the narrow parochialism of the Cornish separatists, Mebyon Kernox, have long since vanished. Devolution’s cause is aided still fur- ther by the Labour Government's publicly proclaimed ambitions. Yet Labour is proceeding with a caution which borders on terror Last July a White Paper, In Touch With the People, was published promising a truly radical extension of local democracy. Referenda, more fre quent local elections, the abolition of rate-capping, the freedom to vary Did anyone seriously expect anything other than foot dragging from New Labour? business rates and ‘yalueformoney’ audits to replace compulsory comper- itive tendering were all proposed, along with the more familiar pledge to create directly-elected mayors in all major citics. Strangely the Bill did not survive intact for last year’s Queen's Speech, New Labour has been made well aware in the last couple of years of the problems inherent in openly support ing participatory politics. This has exhibited itself very publicly in Millbank’s none-too-subile efforts to thwart both Rhoddri Morgan's chances of becoming leader of the Welsh Labour Party and Red Ken's valiantly showbiz selfpromotional blitz in London. However, this is as nought com- pared with the internal battles that have raged between the Treasury and John Prescott's super-Department of Environment, Transport. and the Regions, which bears the responsibili- ty for the Greater London Authority Bill enshrining the new Mayor of London's powers. The Deputy Prime Minister - 2 man about whom the phrases ‘he looks like’ and ‘he’s chew: ing a wasp! are often to be found in conjunction ~ had sought to win for the Mayor the freedom to raise and spend new traffic taxes within London. He lost. New taxes can be levied on Londoners by the Mayor but a prescribed portion may be seized by the Treasury, via the Secretary of State responsible, to be spent nationally. Electors can be entrusted with many things but not, apparently, how their ‘own money is to be spent. Indeed this Government is giving every appearance of starring in its ‘own badly dubbed film, You could swear that the main character declares, "New millennium, New Labour: let's try a pluralist political system”, Yet all that can be heard is the desperate cry, “Batten down the hatches everyone and prepare to cen- tralise power like you've never cen tsalised it before.” But it doesn’t matter anymore, The zenie’s out of the bottle, the cat's out of the bag and the dish has run away with the spoon. Critics are right to carp that the isis 14| RO acne (eae eee The New Labour project has always defined itself by its opposition: the Conservatives. Each and every Policy was formulated, drafted, market- tested, re-drafted, leaked, re-drafted again and announced in their shadow Government's existing proposals for local goverment reform are merely half hearted sops tovards liberalism, Did anybody seriously expect any- thing other than foot-dragging from Labour? This is a party which has maintained, for almost the entire cen- tury ofits existence, that all social and economic problems can be solved only through national policies enact ed from the top down by Jeaders accountable not to members but to activists, New Labour might have fh ed with Charter 88 but ~ pending the protracted divorce proceedings ~ it remains married to the trades unions, All that’s irrelevant, though, nov constitutional reform has its own momentum. Just because Blair insti gated this revolution does not mean that even he is capable of halting or controlling it. As Professor Robert Hazell, director of the non-partisan Constitution Unit, has noted in its recently published analysis, Constitutional Fatures, “the cumulative impact will be profound, because the constitutional reforms already set in train will unieash a political and legal dynamic which the Government will not be able to rein back” Proof of this truth abounds. At the last election John Major sought 10 rally the country in outright oppost- tion to Labour's plans to sip heredi tary peers of their right to vote. Back in December William Hague even sacked his Shadow Leader of the House of Lords, that ‘ill trained spaniel” Lord Cranborne, for dating 0 propose Labour's reform bill be given an easy ride in return for reprieving 10% of the hereditaries threatened with extinction. Since then, Hague, the Tories’ very own Millennium Dome, has been assailed by a ‘wind of change’. He meekly accepted Cranborne’s compromise within days of the peer's dismissal. Indeed it seems increasingly likely dat Hague will campaign for a partly- elected ‘Senate’ in’ a last-ditch attempt to seem relevant and out flank Labour who so far have resisted this option, And as proportional representation becomes an accepted reality for the Scottish, Welsh and European elec: tions, so it will seem increasingly bizarre that these are fought under a different system from the local and general elections. Thus will the out dated banner of firstpastthe-post, which condemns to obscurity parties unable to concentrate their support in particular regions and elevates to supremacy parties unable to secure the support of a majority of the clec- torate, be torn down by a Government dependent upon such bias for its: thumping majority. Someone once observed, “It’s a funny old world”, and she wasn’t wrong. Where, then, does this leave British politics? Well for a start, swo-party pol- itics is out and two-party government That should trouble the modern Conservative Party, hell-bent as it is ‘on going out on a European limb and excluding itself from grownup poli ties for a generation, Of course this could suit Hague who by that time Just might have matured sufficiently to be thought a credible political fig- ure. As Harold Wilson so nearly said, “A weak leader is a long time in poli- tics”. In all likelihood, however, he is a doomed irrelevance, a footnote in an appendix to an epilogue on the history of the death of the Tory Party. And when that destruction occurs it will complete the New Labour project which was always defined solely by its opposition, the Conservatives: they were its enemies. Fach and every pol icy was formulated, drafted, market tested, redrafted, leaked, redrafted again and eventually announced in their shadow. Once they are deceased New Labour will have no positive pur- pose. Who cares? The legacy will five Blair meanwhile can rest easy and bask in the anticipation of his place i history. He might not have control of the political situation but nor has he sought it, merely abiding by ‘omwell’s dictum, “He who does not know where he is going wavels fur thest.” Now where could that be ~ frst President of Europe anyone?