New Statesman & Society leader, 11 November 1994
The American election results should provoke some sober reflection
by Labour in Britain
The mid-term elections in the United States have turned out to be
precisely the disaster for President Bill Clinton that everyone expected. Throughout
the country, in Congressional and gubernatorial contests, the voters turned on
incumbent Democrats and sent them packing. The Republicans now have majorities,
albeit small, in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Unless
Clinton suddenly turns into a significantly more effective political operator than
he has been so far, he will spend his last two years in the White House as the
lamest of lame-duck presidents.
The fact that the electorate dumped on Clinton
is not surprising. He has proved singularly inept in his two years in office,
and the voters, whose approval of Clinton was never more than tentative, feel
badly let down. At home, "Clintonomics" has been little more than an embarrassment,
its "supply-side" measures failing to deliver promised jobs despite a
vigorous recovery. Clinton's attempts to reform America's shambolic healthcare
system got nowhere in the face of Congressional opposition; and the
"tough" parts of his programme – the twin assaults on crime and on
"undeserving" welfare recipients – have so far been ineffective where
they have not been counterproductive.
In foreign affairs, the administration has basked in the reflected
glory of peace in the Middle East and Ireland, and it has had an apparent
success over Haiti (although whether it will seem that way in six months is
another matter). But on everything else, from Bosnia and Cuba to the adapting
of international institutions to the end of the cold war, it has been
characterised by incompetence and uncertainty, the only constant being the
president's desire to improve his opinion-poll rating.
In the circumstances, it seems almost churlish to remind readers
of the euphoria with which Clinton's victory was greeted by much of the
British left in 1992. After the disappointment of the British general election
that spring, many in the Labour Party saw Clinton as a model to be emulated.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and the rest of Labour's "modernisers"
were particularly impressed: Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of
crime" and Brown's "new economics" both owed a lot to Clinton's
election strategy.
Neither Blair nor Brown is quite so keen to advertise his
admiration for Clinton today, to be sure; and both could plausibly argue that
it's one thing to learn from Clinton's successful election campaign and quite another
to be tarred with the brush of his failure in office.
But this argument is not entirely convincing. While it is
undoubtedly true that Clinton's inability to manage relations with Congress or
his dithering in foreign policy cannot be traced back to his campaigning
message, his problems are not completely unrelated to the programme on which
he was elected. In particular, the failure of Clintonomics to create jobs and
cut taxes and the ineffectiveness of "toughness" in social and penal
policy raise real questions about the credibility of Clinton's whole approach –
and should be setting the alarm bells ringing in the Labour camp.
Put simply, the problem is that Labour, having adopted substantially
the same politics as Clinton did, could all too easily find itself two years
into government facing much the same voter disillusionment. On economic policy,
Labour, like Clinton, argues that old-fashioned "tax-and-spend" "Keynesianism
in one country" is dead and that the key to success in the modern world is
the supply side (essentially improving education and training). That goes down
well with middle-class voters who shunned Labour in 1992 over tax. But what
happens if supply-side interventions fail to make a dent in the unemployment
figures and taxes remain at the same level? Similarly, while
"toughness" on crime and its causes might strike a chord with voters
today, what happens if it doesn't make any difference to the level of crime?
The British electorate might not be quite as volatile as the American, but the
potential for spectacular switches in allegiance is undoubtedly there.
To be fair, Blair has made it clear that he is aware of the problem
of a Labour government failing to satisfy raised voter expectations: one of the
main themes in his keynote speech to Labour conference last month was the danger
of making false promises to the electorate. Awareness of the problem, however,
is not the same thing as having a solution. The American mid-term elections
should provoke some serious thinking by the Labour leadership.
