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Emergency Diary Note /0047
Thursday 9 May 2002
This DiaryNote was drafted for publication 8 May, but has been delayed by maverick PC problems in Swansea (PC still out of commission), but I publish the text as written on 8 May, without the benefit of hindsight. Every judgment is conditioned by the precise moment of its making - I suspect eternal verities - so these are the thoughts of Tuesday 7 May... This is EMERGENCY EDITING, back to ol' HTML code-writing - wish me luck.. Note for Nerds: I have had to compose this Emergency Edition within the VIEW provision of FTP Commander, the program normally used only for transferring webpages from PC to server - but needs must, when the Devil drives.
Election Fever
It's verdict time! With 2002 General Elections still pending in the Netherlands, France, Ireland and Germany (and with Hungary still mired in judicial challenges to the validity of the socialists' recent victory), it is vital that a judgment is made now. Every politician should propound an explanation for what happened, as many journalists have done.
My explanation is threefold. I do not rely on either "apathy" or "contentment", by way of explanation. And I discount any reliance upon voting methods, although as an inveterate door-to-door canvasser, I can confirm that postal voting has proved a boon to many older people. These (and proportional representation) are marginal issues, of limited political significance.
I have reached three firm conclusions. They go to racism, constitutional reform, and the future of socialism.
First, "racism" - in quotations marks, because the term is much over-used. I am in no doubt that the future of mankind lies with tolerant, multi-racial, multi-cultural societies, especially with great city cultures like those of London and New York. But I do not wear rose-tinted glasses, and I know there will be great dissension, even violence, in the process of realising that goal. I am not at all surprised at the strength of Le Pen's showing in France, or the success of the assassinated Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, or the BNP victories in Burnley. It is clear to me that most of my fellow European citizens are "racist", in the sense that perceive race as significant, as a form of basic division of humankind. They spontaneously prefer the conventions of their own society and their perceived "race", and spontaneously resent immigrants, inexorably focusing that resentment on those with visible physical differences. It takes very little indeed to trigger the underlying racism of the majority - particularly in Germany, where Gerhard Schroder will have an uphill battle in the September Elections, given the Le Pen victory. And the same is true, throughout Europe, of anti-semitism, however strong the countervailing liberal conventions may be. Politicians would be sorely mistaken, if they made any other assumption.
For every democratically-elected Government the key question therefore is - - "How is that latent prejudice best addressed? Does one side with the majority, and seek to convert it from within? Or does one confront the prejudice, with a public commitment to the equality of all mankind, and a developed "liberal" philosophy of tolerance?
In making his "swamped schools" speech, David Blunkett wrongly chose the former option. Blair sits on the fence, avoiding any clear endorsement of the liberal position. My own judgment favours liberal confrontation, rather than any collaboration - however well-intentioned. If I were Blair, I would make a move now - and I would play the liberal card. The whole of Europe needs a decisive liberal lead, Blair is in a strong enough position to give that lead. In the business Boardroom I often have to confront racism explicitly, and to argue the case for equal treatment and tolerance - and the argument works. I do not mean that opinions are changed, racists immediately converted. But the sharp edge of prejudice can be sufficiently blunted so as to inhibit its public or legal expression, thus creating a kinder and more tolerant public realm, and laying the ground for substantive equality. True personal and cultural change is bound to take much longer, perhaps generations.
My second conclusion goes to constitutional reform. In both France and the UK, there is a growing sense of distance between the electors and the elected, and this is now proving corrosive. There is clearly a growing public resentment of professional politicians, of their comfortable salaried positions, of the influence they wield and the power they can access. Now - this professionalisation is inevitable I cannot imagine a democratic future without Party, or without salaried representatives. In the UK, it was the Labour Party that pioneered MPs salaries (from 1906 onwards). Democracy still demands that office should not be restricted to those who can afford it.
But the salaried political cadres are nevertheless in trouble, in the US, on the Contienent and the UK. They find themselves charged with sleaze, mistrusted, their motives constantly suspected. What is to be done? This is the territory in which, I believe, solutions will be found. - (A) The role of professional politicians must be better defined and contained, and their power redistributed away from Westminster. I favour the election of regional assemblies and regional councils, all staffed by professional politicians, competing unapologetically for salaried office. High concentrations of salaried political power are to be avoided: politicians should be spread around more. And we must integrate into the political cadre the professional politicians now emerging in local government. The politicians must re-structure their own act, and clean it up.>
(B) The work of professional politicians should be supplemented by unpaid communal representatives (parish councillors, called community councilors in Wales). There should be a gradual expansion of community governance at neighbourhood level, a revival of communal responsibility for the most local matters of environmental control and maintenance. Apart from Greater London, the legal machinery is already in place to accommodate such an expansion. By removing personal remuneration from the scene, the ground would be laid for the cultivation of a new trust between electors and their elected representatives.
(C) We should accept the further takeover of political functions by "non-political" institutions, particularly those of an arbitral character, the mainstream professional judges, arbitrators, Regulators and Magistrates. "Regulators" constitute a new class of judge, currently in fashion. There are signs that the electorate might well prefer a dikastocracy (I've made up that word, but it means "rule by judges", check your Dictionary for dikast, a Greek judge). After all, the distinctive legitimacy of the State, for the great 18th century French constitutional author Montesquieu, lay in its status as le pouvoir neutre, the force of neutrality, objectivity - and I sense that our politics moving in that direction. That does not mean, of course, rule by the UK High Court judges of today - Heaven forfend! Nor does it presuppose rule by lawyer judges at all (the Swiss Constitution actually prohibits the appointment of lawyers as Supreme Court judges...) But our fellow-citizens seem more inclined to ascribe legitimacy to arbitral institutions than to professional politicians. I think that tells us something.
Third, about the future of European socialism. I say that Tony Blair's approach is essentially right. Old-style collectivist reasoning no longer carries weight. Socialists must devise new supportive formulae, suited to rapidly changing market conditions. A deal must be done, with the corporate sector. The French socialists were caught with their pants down, because Jospin had simply not made up his mind. He was accused of trying to imitate Blair - but that was not true: he resisted the Blairite critique of collectivist socialism. His 35-hour week was old-style French collectivist
dirigisme, doomed to failure in global market conditions. The French regime of high-employment taxes, and the retention of legal constraints upon redundancy, continues to weaken the French economy. The French State remains crippled by the scale of transfer payments and public subsidy. Jospin got caught in the middle, without a convincing alternative. And if the French Socialists choose the backward-looking Martine Aubry as their leader, they will march off into the political wilderness, and surrender power to the Right for the coming generation. German socialists, under Gerhard Schroder, are similarly stranded, without any decisive change of direction, and now hemmed-in by the IG Metall strikes. They will pay the penalty in the September Elections.
For European socialists, there should be no question of going back. In the UK, we must work even harder to make Blairism work, in spite of Blair's shortcomings. The perceptions are right, even if there are shortcomings in delivery. Moi, je suis plus Blairiste que Blair. In 1998, Tribune published an article of mine, straplined Blair is too old-fashioned for me. He is too uncritical in his relations with the corporate sector, too illiberal in personal philosophy, and insufficiently creative is designing le socialism nouveau. But he is the best PM we've got - fluent, confident, decisive, young, pragmatic - and I'm glad he doesn't work for the Tories.
Blair has made many mistakes along the way, but he is taking the right road. I fear the dogmatism of the current UK trade union
campaign to "defend public services", however right the cause. I am suspicious about
the revival of the Tribune Group, partly because Tribune has itself become time-warped,
harking back to old rigidities. And in devising new socialist formulae, we must avoid
Blair's key mistake. Because by claiming the pragmatic high ground ("What we want is
what works") he is abandoning the prime asset of a political Party, namely its philosophical
patina. That is what generates its electoral image, and it emotive appeal. And that is the
second reason why Jospin lost: he did not give his policies a distinctive socialist rationale.
Pragmatism is not enough.
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