Chris Burford wrote:
> On the day a former Conservative finance minister Anthony Nelson defected
> to Labour, the Times and the FT have publically endorsed a Labour win. I
> have not been able to track down the Times editorial yet
Any more arguments needed, why _not_ to vote for New Labour?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,56-2001191308,00.html
TUESDAY JUNE 05 2001
Leading article
In our time
It is Labour which deserves the votes of reformers
Elections, said Enoch Powell, "are about something more important than choosing between a man with a pipe and a man with a boat". He was commenting on the campaign fought by Harold Wilson and Edward Heath in February 1974; and he was right. The choice on Thursday will be more than that between an amateur guitarist with a large family and a professional Yorkshireman without much hair. This election matters. It matters how our readers cast their votes. This has not been the most dramatic of election battles. But serious differences in policy and priorities have been on show. All politicians like to present elections as a struggle for the future and, in a superficial sense, they are all telling the truth. But not even the most imaginative politicians paint on an empty canvas. They are almost always constrained by limits set by others.
Only rarely does a politician have a chance to set a new pattern which holds for decades to come. This present election, like the two before it, is taking place in the aftermath of the impact which Margaret Thatcher had on the character and conduct of British political life. Thatcherism did not "transform" every aspect of society and was certainly not the sort of revolutionary movement which some of her more zealous supporters pretend it was. But it altered the accepted definitions of the intellectually plausible and the politically possible. We are all "post-Thatcherites" now. The real challenge for, first, John Major and then Tony Blair, was to recognise that fact and for each to adjust his plans accordingly.
Lady Thatcher was, however, an exceptional figure who served in exceptional circumstances. The reception for her relatively few forays on to the hustings in this campaign is testimony to her lasting influence. In the past 150 years only perhaps William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith and Clement Attlee have been presented with a similar opportunity. Mr Blair did not have the same chance in 1997 nor will he have such a chance whatever his majority in the House of Commons is on Friday. The task for those who toil in politics today is largely that of consolidating the core aspects of Thatcherism and extending them to fresh areas of policy.
One of the many confusions created during this election is the idea that Mr Blair and Gordon Brown are "closet Conservatives". Both men have a clearly different view from that of Lady Thatcher as to the viability of activist government and the desirability of collective action. But Lady Thatcher was as much a liberal or a radical as she was a conservative, maybe more so. There is no reason why the energy and principles she brought to certain parts of political life could not be duplicated in others by reformers of the Left to produce social democratic objectives.
If new Labour turns out to be the vehicle by which Thatcherism is consolidated and extended, this would fit a historical pattern. Mr Gladstone 's reforms were legitimised by Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury, not by the unsuccessful late Victorian Liberal Party. Mr Asquith's version of the welfare state was embraced by Stanley Baldwin for the Conservatives and Ramsay MacDonald for Labour and not by a Liberal Party which imploded in the 1920s. Mr Attlee's programme was protected by Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan while Labour spent the same 13 years out of power and plagued by civil wars - a haunting precedent for modern Tories.
The central question this year is to ask which of the political parties is more capable of making permanent the achievements of the 1980s and extending reform into areas which Lady Thatcher either neglected or did not recognise as consistent with the ideas she promoted elsewhere. This is the best yardstick by which to measure the performance of the present Government and the prospects of the official Opposition.
After only four years Labour has consolidated many elements of Thatcherism. The central tenets of the economic settlement of the 1980s - a fierce resistance to inflation, a recognition that taxation at a certain level inflicts more harm than good and a distrust of trade union power - are further entrenched today than they were four years ago. The model of an independent Bank of England selected by the Chancellor has been a striking success and has laid down roots of iron. The fear of many electors in 1997 (including some of those who backed Mr Blair and others, like ourselves, who could not) was that Labour would first lose control of its own party and then of the state. These fears have been unfounded.
Mr Brown has enjoyed his fair share of luck as well as displaying much skill. There is legitimate concern that the burden of regulation (not all of it born in Brussels) has yet to register its full impact on the vitality of British business. There will continue to be a war of attrition between the instincts of "old" and "new" Labour. But it would be churlish to say that the Government has not outstripped expectations. In doing so it has enhanced its standing more broadly. Most fruits of the 1980s have looked safe in Mr Blair's hands.
Whether or not he can extend the drive for reform into the central public services - education, health, crime prevention and transport - is far less clear. This is a quest scarcely less difficult than that which Lady Thatcher entered upon elsewhere. The established interest groups and their practices at work are peculiarly strong. The stomach of the electorate for protracted combat is weak. The Labour manifesto offers some encouraging hints of radicalism in secondary schools, a firm and proper pragmatism over the use of private means for public health and an interest in encouraging more dynamism in the police force. It is too early to anticipate success or failure, but Labour has placed itself in the right territory.
There are numerous areas of policy where The Times has severe reservations about the path which ministers wish to take. We hope - and will argue strongly in the months ahead - that second thoughts will follow. While primary schools have improved in the past four years, the universities are in a weak and nervous state. The new system of 16-plus examinations is already looking like the shambles which we and others predicted. The National Plan for the NHS is no plan for the long term. Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, does not seem a sincere advocate of decentralisation. There has been too much disdain for civil liberties at the Home Office. Core parts of the established constitution have been left unfinished on the Whitehall floor.
For all that, we feel comfortable, as never before, with the case for Labour. Mr Blair, either out of conviction or out of fear that his proposed expenditure increases will be inadequate, is likely to blend Thatcherite means with social democratic ends in a manner which will benefit public services. The electors would be best advised to let him continue what he has begun.
The Conservative Party is not yet at the stage where it wants to compete with Labour on this terrain. Still less is it able to prove itself. In the Tory manifesto some imaginative ideas are outlined on education, health and pensions. But they have not been put at the front of the Conservative campaign to the country. This is partly a matter of deliberate political strategy: Mr Hague and his advisers have determined that tax, crime, asylum and the EU should be highlighted. But the failure is fundamentally because so many of the specific schemes - the endowment of the universities, the Patients Guarantee and an opt-out from the conventional state pension in favour of an insurance-based alternative - lack coherence, detail and precise costings.
This was never destined to be an easy Parliament in which to lead the Conservative Party. Mr Hague began his tenure with many of the right instincts but found himself beaten back by individuals and factions who were determined to avoid a searching inquest after 1997. The result has been a confused campaign, reflecting a confused four years, in which measured politics and the crudest populism have sat uneasily side by side.
The Conservative Party is not dead. But, to the regret of many who have supported it in the past, it will have to be hit hard by voters for a second time before it provides a full alternative to Labour. The past decade has been frustrating, even maddening, for thoughtful Tories: to borrow from Winston Churchill's condemnation of Mr Baldwin's failure to rearm, these have been "the years the locusts ate".
In 1997 The Times felt unable to endorse any of the major parties and put forward a series of Eurosceptic candidates instead. We did so then because we felt that, although there was a powerful case for a change of government, we did not care for Labour's ambiguity on the single currency. We felt then that there was a real danger that an incoming government could, if it were minded, assert that having "seen the books" and "discovered the facts" it would hold a snap referendum on the euro. We also feared that public opinion at that time was uncertain and that an energetic drive to persuade electors of the merits of the single currency might carry all before it - with disastrous implications for Britain. If that were still our feeling today, it would be impossible for The Times to commend the Government's re-election. Conditions are not the same now as then. We think, and have argued during this campaign, that for practical and political reasons a referendum is unlikely to be possible in the next Parliament. Even if we are wrong, we believe that the process of economic assessment set down by the Chancellor will allow for a reasonable period of time to pass between the election and a referendum. We also note that national sentiment on the single currency has changed substantially since 1997 and we are confident that the euro can be defeated in any plebiscite. If a referendum on the euro takes place, our voice against it will be vigorous and loud.
We hope that Mr Blair has the wisdom to concentrate on the series of challenges that he has set out at home and to avoid a reckless continental adventure that could destroy both his premiership and his reputation. On that basis, and for the first time in its history, The Times offers a cautious but clear endorsement of the Labour Party in this election.
To return to Enoch Powell, he always considered himself to be a Tory. This did not stop him recommending the Labour Party in February 1974 and later spending 12 years as an Ulster Unionist in the House of Commons. William Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill all transferred in or out of the Conservative Party in their time. In our time, in this election, it is Labour which deserves the votes of the reformers.