Wednesday 21 March 2001

I'M NOT TAKING ANY OF IT BACK

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 21 March 2001

I seem to have upset a few readers with my last column advocating anti-Tory tactical voting in the general election. But I’m afraid I’m not taking any of it back. Not one of the correspondents who has denounced me has come up with a convincing argument against Labour supporters voting Liberal Democrat wherever the Lib Dem candidate won or came second to a Tory in 1997.

Apart from a few who seem to think vulgar abuse is the way to win political arguments, my critics fall into two categories: those who say that Labour supporters should vote Labour everywhere on principle, and those who say that my list of places where they should vote Lib Dem is wrong for some reason.

The first group rest their case on the assertion that there is a fundamental political difference between Labour and the Lib Dems. The problem is that not a single letter-writer has been able to identify it. Of course, there was a chasm on policy between Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance back in the 1980s. But – for better or worse – those disagreements are now ancient history. Since 1995, moreover, it has not even been possible to argue credibly that Labour is at root a socialist party while the Lib Dems are not: the abandonment of Clause Four saw to that. Like it or not, both parties these days are pro-European, pro-nuclear in defence policy and in favour of much the same sort of social capitalism.

What, though, of the accusations that my list is inaccurate? Leaving aside those who offer merely anecdotal evidence – I’m sorry, chums, but feeling in your bones that the Lib Dems have peaked in constituency X or constituency Y isn’t good enough – my critics say I didn’t take into account recent local or European elections in which Labour did better than in 1997.

Well, I didn’t, and the reason is that the local and European election results are a poor guide to the parties’ chances in the general election. Turnout was very low – and the Euro-election was conducted using proportional representation. The fact that Labour did better than the Lib Dems in a particular constituency in the Euro-election where the Lib Dem was second in 1997 shows only that many people who voted tactically for the Lib Dem in 1997 – Green supporters as well as Labour supporters – voted for their first-choice party because they knew their votes would not be wasted under PR. In the general election, those voters will revert to tactical voting, and most will do so, sensibly, on the basis of the 1997 general election result.

So, as Norman Lamont put it so memorably, “Je ne regrette rien.” The case for voting tactically remains as strong as ever – and I couldn’t care less if I’m chucked out of the Labour Party for ­making it.

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Like a lot of other people, I’ll be spending this Saturday afternoon in the pub watching England play football. But unlike most of them, I’ll find it difficult to enjoy it much, regardless of the result – and the same is true of everyone with whom I’ll be watching. The reason is simple: the occasion is a wake for a fine man who has died suddenly and tragically young, Denis Rees.

Many Tribune contributors who wrote for the New Statesman when Steve Platt and I worked there will remember Denis. He was the affable, sports-mad landlord of the Red Lion in Hoxton Street, Shoreditch, which we used almost as an extension of the Statesman office in the years before Geoffrey Robinson bought the magazine. The pub was a tiny place, and when Denis ran it with his wife Brenda it was the best boozer imaginable, with a clientele that was a microcosm of local society.

We spent far too much time there – thrashing out editorial policy, lunching contributors, conspiring to prevent the board firing Steve, arguing politics with the other regulars, watching football and, of course, just drinking. Denis and Brenda, though by no means sympathetic to the Statesman’s politics, became our good friends. The Red Lion was where we celebrated John Major dropping his libel action against the magazine and where we drowned our sorrows after Robinson’s new regime unceremoniously fired us all. It was where we caroused long into election night in 1997, with the door locked and the curtains drawn tight.

It was a sad day when Denis and Brenda sold up and moved up to the Midlands. The pub soon became just another trendy Hoxton bar packed out with wannabe artists. But it was infinitely sadder to hear of Denis’s inexplicable collapse and death a fortnight ago. Everyone who knew him liked him. Here’s to his memory.

Thursday 1 March 2001

LABOUR IS BLOWING IT ON THE EURO

Paul Anderson, Chartist column, March-April 2001

If you believed the press, when Tony Blair announced in the House of Commons last month that a second-term Labour government would decide within two years whether it was right to join the euro, he was making a stunning change of policy.

According to the Sun the next day, Blair had "sensationally vowed to kill the pound and adopt the euro within two years". The front-page headline in The Times declared: “Blair sets 2003 euro deadline.” The Daily Mail confidently reported that "the battle for the pound” had been “thrust dramatically into the heart of the election campaign”.

Yet all that Blair had done was to clarify a small point of detail of Labour’s policy as it has stood since 1997, when chancellor Gordon Brown effectively ruled out euro membership for the duration of this parliament and announced that “five economic tests” would have to be passed before the government decided whether to join the single European currency.

Labour’s line since then has been that, early in the next parliament, a Labour government would make its assessment of whether its criteria for British membership of the euro had been met. What Blair said last month was merely that “early in the next parliament” means “within two years” — and that is hardly a big deal.

Blair’s statement does not mean that the government will decide that the “five economic tests” have been passed, let alone that there will be a referendum on joining the euro during the next parliament. There is still every chance that the result of the government’s assessment will be an announcement that the criteria have not been met.

This is not because the British economy is no shape to join the euro. It meets all the criteria laid down in the Maastricht treaty for euro membership apart from participation in the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System. Although there is some room for argument on the first of Brown’s “five tests” — whether there is a sustainable convergence between the economies of Britain and the euro-zone — there is growing evidence that the British and continental economic cycles are more in step than for many years. (Brown’s other four tests are so vague they could be passed or failed on the whim of the tester.)

Rather, the reasons that the government might decide the time is not right to join euro-land are political. Labour is committed to holding a referendum on joining the euro if the government decides the time is right — and British public opinion is hostile to euro membership. Unless this changes decisively in the next couple of years, it is extremely unlikely that the government will risk holding the referendum.

This is partly because no government will ever hold a referendum that it stands a high chance of losing unless it really has no option. But this particular government is particularly wary of losing this particular referendum. New Labour is notoriously unwilling to do anything that goes against the grain of focus group opinion; and it is hyper-sensitive to criticism from the Murdoch press — of which there is bound to be a flood if it decides to ditch the pound. It is also worth remembering that Brown, who has effectively run Labour’s euro policy single-handed since 1997, cut his teeth in grown-up politics in the failed “yes” campaign before the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum.

If in spring 2003 there is the slightest doubt of victory in a euro referendum later that year or in 2004, the chances are that the chancellor will discover that the five economic tests have been failed.

It is, of course, a moot point how immutable public hostility to the euro really is, and some in the pro-euro camp say that a concerted two-year campaign emphasising the benefits of the single currency could turn public opinion in its favour.

They might be right — but only if such a campaign has serious backing from the government, and only if it makes the case for the euro in terms radically different from those in which the pro-euro camp has so far argued.

Up to now, the best the euro-enthusiasts have come up with are the arguments that joining the euro would mean greater exchange-rate stability, cheaper goods as a result of increased price transparency, and reduced transaction costs for businesses and holiday-makers.

These are all relevant points. But against the anti-euro camp’s emotionally charged denunciations of surrendering control of economic policy to faceless foreigners they do not amount to much.

The pro-euro camp desperately needs a simple populist argument — and the only one that has any resonance is the case for Britain committing itself to the European social model of capitalism rather than attempting to emulate the US laissez-faire version. The key argument for joining the euro is explicitly social democratic: it locks us into a bloc characterised by strong state welfare systems, well funded public transport networks and tough environmental regulations, along with a social partnership model of industrial relations. In other words, it offers a degree of protection against the ravages of capitalism red in tooth and claw.

This, however, is anathema to the leading lights in the government, who believe that what Europe needs is a large dose of US-style deregulation and privatisation. What’s more, their reluctance to put the case for the European social model is shared by the main pro-euro pressure group, Britain in Europe, which is largely business-funded.

The upshot is that, unless the pro-euro unions and what there is of a pro-European left in the Labour Party and elsewhere get their act together (which experience says is unlikely), the most convincing argument for British participation in the single currency will remain largely unheard and public opinion will remain hostile. The smart money is still on Britain being outside the euro-zone at the end of the next parliament.