The Conservatives are the natural party of government

Labour has never been the “natural party of government” in this country. Harold Wilson’s claim was based on only one resounding election success under his leadership. Tony Blair, like him or loathe him, was perhaps a natural prime minister, the only Labour leader who was able to reach out beyond Labour’s comfort zones and into the socio-economic parts of Britain without which you cannot command a sustainable majority. Even in the face of his Iraq horror show, Blair led his party to its third comfortable election success.

Scotland is now pro-nationalist, and even perhaps willing to vote for independence in a year or two’s time. It has long been another country in political terms too. While it was revolting over the poll tax, England considered the mild radicalism of a Welsh Labour leader and, shyly, voted for John Major’s Conservative Party. Yesterday the Tories got a majority after hurting poorer “hard working” families for five years while those not in need of in-work welfare benefits feared that the Labour Party would somehow jeopardise the flimsy certainties of what, statistically at least, is an economic recovery.

The NHS is the exception to the rule, the last surviving nationalised industry and one that, broadly speaking, is popular. Labour may have won the 1945 election because its promise to introduce socialised medicine was the most believable, but after only six years in office it was out for another 13. Labour’s two election victories in 1974 were barely deserving of the name. The Labour government that lost office in 1979 had essentially been a minority one for most of its rule.

Now Labour has to consider whether a more authentically social justice and home rule message in Scotland and Wales will remotely help it in England (where Westminster elections, after all, are decided). To paraphrase Neil Kinnock, if you think that that is right, then go into the semi-detached homes of people struggling to pay their mortgage in the south of England and “tell it there, tell it there.”

The United Kingdom is under threat, and the very self-serving economic reasons why we joined the Common Market are increasingly being seen in England as not being upheld by the EU today. What will Labour do next? A lurch to the left will this time definitely consign it to the dustbin of history. There will be no electoral reform to save it, while Labour has lost Scotland (and its parliamentary support) whether it becomes an independent sovereign country or not. To be elected and then to govern in England will be impossible for Labour without being able to both appeal to aspiration and not somehow abandoning its so-called electoral base. In the 2015 election Labour absurdly pandered to that base without offering anything more than half-hearted apologies for past errors and an unconvincing line on deficit and debt reduction. The outcome was its third worst General Election result since 1935.

The recession was a fork in the road. In this election Labour tried to plough down the middle by refusing to say it had overspent in the last government whilst claiming it would reduce the deficit faster, but somehow more fairly, in the next. Electing a new leader who mouths the same (and, ironically, non-inclusive) platitudes about hard working families will not cut it, in England or Scotland. Something major needs to be tried. Reaching out to everybody, right across the Union, is an even taller order right now. Perhaps more honesty would help. If Scotland hasn’t already left the building by the time of the next Westminster election, tell voters that you will work with the SNP precisely to save the Union, that we should stay in the EU for the sake of jobs and, yes, for the sake of political stability across Europe, and that ever-expanding health and welfare budgets are not the answer. Otherwise, just carry on regardless.

Mandela is dead and so is debate

Nelson Mandela is dead. I feel relieved for him and his family. Nauseated at the often absurd coverage of the event in the UK media. Sad at yet another confirmation that the era of great men has given way to the almost universal reign of the indifferent, the ordinary, the petty-minded administrators of tax revenue.

He was to come to prominence in a very different age. His cause, long before it was made fashionable by pop stars and simple-minded sloganisers, obliged both Conservative and Labour governments in Britain to look to what they thought was a higher national interest than majoritarian politics in Africa. The 1980s version of this debate was used by the left of centre Channel 4 News in Britain to settle party political scores with those, mostly dead or irrelevant, in the Conservative Party who did not worship at the shrine of Mandela. Smug, self-righteous, sanctimoniousness abounds, a chance for people to feel good about what records they bought, what stickers they wore, what demos they went on thirty years ago.

The sin of having equated him with terrorism is once again ritually trotted out, as if it is only a term of abuse and not ever a tactic of politics and of war. To target or threaten civilians or civilian life, to seek to wreck or undermine public stability in order to realise a political objective, this is the stuff of armed struggle. It is what the Royal Air Force did against German cities during World War Two and it is what the armed wing of the ANC began to undertake under Mr Mandela’s command before he was incarcerated. It may well be the action of freedom fighters too. The French Resistance killed not just for revenge but to achieve political goals by spreading fear. That is what terrorists do.

Nelson did not agree with the targeting of civilians. He was arrested before the shedding of civilian blood became more acceptable in ANC circles and before he would either have had to resign or accept responsibility for it. I have heard no debate in the last 24 hours about these issues nor any serious assessment of the wisdom of Mr Mandela in going as far as he did in reassuring business and, effectively, white interests that in office neither he or the ANC would rock the boat that much. The legacy of that “pact” continues to this day.

It is ironic perhaps that people all over the world are so ready to deify Nelson as a secular saint when in their own country they bemoan the fact that democracy is “merely” about one person one vote every 4 to 5 years. Twenty two years after his release South Africa struggles to be even that, given the lawlessness and violence that is the stuff of daily life in some cities and the treatment that can be meted out to striking trade unionists.

If Nelson has one simple and yet rare political legacy to be applauded it is his promotion of inclusion and reconciliation. This from a man who could so easily have pursued narrow, sectional and vindictive interests. He is still revered by regimes and militant groups who have every interest in the slogans of liberation but who usually fail to understand that inclusion is not achieved by the denial of the humanity of the other. Just as he did not dress his cause in a racial colour, so Mandela had no sympathy with the communal politics of many of his sympathisers in the Middle East. These are attributes worth remembering and worth revering.