That is for starters
That is for starters.Inevitably there are doubts over whether their spending plans add up. As he demonstrated at his conference yesterday afternoon in a question and answer session with The Independent’s editor, Simon Kelner, he is more at ease as a relaxed political conversationalist. He could make a cautious approach to public borrowing seem like a radical vision and reassuringly conservative.Mr Kennedy is not in their league of evangelical oratory. Mr Blair was the type of leader who could make a bowl of lentils seem like a gourmet three-course meal. Before 1997, radicals on the centre-left came away from meetings with him convinced that his programme was not only a gourmet feast, but innovative and original in its conception.But when Mr Blair addressed business leaders or Middle England voters he reassured them that new Labour was prudent and Calvinistic enough to cook a bowl of lentils and leave it at that Bill Clinton deployed the same skills. Before the 1997 election, Labour presented a cautiously incremental programme.
Most members of the Government and its advisers are also to the left of Mr Blair. It does not get politicians very far to measure their radical credentials against those of the Prime Minister. More obviously, it makes sense for the Liberal Democrats to maximise support rather than acknowledge its limits in advance of an election.But there are risks for the Liberal Democrats as well. I have spoken to several senior Liberal Democrats who confirm they are deliberately attempting to re-create the early spirit and broad appeal of New Labour. Yes he is radical, but not in a way that cannot be rooted firmly on the political spectrum.So the Liberal Democrats are going back to the future, to the politics that might have been after New Labour’s landslide in 1997 This is not mere conjecture on my part.
He placed himself on the ” radical centre”, a term that managed to sound simultaneously crusading and reassuring Now Mr Kennedy strides on to the same terrain Do not talk to him about the political left or right He will have nothing to do with such terms. He needs the support of disaffected Tory voters and that is not an obvious way of attracting them.The wider situation is more complicated than that. They believe the vast coalition that propelled Mr Blair into power is still more or less in place. All that has changed is that Mr Blair is no longer in a position to lead it.There are obvious benefits in this strategy. In my view Mr Kennedy would be committing political suicide to declare openly that his party is to the left of the Prime Minister. You can trust us.” Now it is the Liberal Democrats who make “trust” their pre-eminent value. Similarly New Labour proclaimed that it was the party of fairness.Tony Blair declared in 1994: “The dividing line is no longer between high and low taxes, but between fair and unfair taxes.” Listen to Charles Kennedy and others explain their approach to taxation.
They insist that they want nothing to do with higher taxes, but with fairer taxes. I almost expected Mr Kennedy to state that he looked forward to a new Britain, a young Britain, a country re-born.More broadly Mr Blair abolished the terms “left” and “right” soon after he became leader. Instead their policies are based around the principles of “fairness” and “trust”. The two words pepper their pre-election manifesto, with a radical assertiveness that disguises the conveniently vague imprecision of the terms. No party would claim their policies were unfair and worthy of mistrust.The party’s favourite themes have familiar echoes.