The Written Word
for December 12, 1999

Spending some time in Britain on a frequent basis, as I do, gives a perspective on their politics which is instructive as related to our own. This is especially true as Tony Blair crafts a House of Lords that looks eerily like our Senate. There is a difference of course – while Britain has many regions the need to have an upper chamber that reflects them is less than in Canada. Although, in fairness, our Senate has never really reflected regional differences so much as bury them in a Chamber packed with loyal toadies by Prime Ministers.

Tony Blair has taken presidential charge of the government in Great Britain and clearly has taken a leaf out of Jean Chretien’s book. Indeed, the complaints one hears about Blair are much the same as one hears in Canada about Chretien – he doesn’t listen to the backbench if only because there’s no need to. And in Blair’s case his majority is so enormous he can put up with a lot of dissent before there’s any real threat to his position of power.

But never let it be said that Mr Blair is going to rely upon his present good fortune – he is moving very quickly to the point that his opposition is permanently isolated. The Labour Party’s problem has always been, you see, the fight between left wing purity and those who would like to be in government, thank you very much. For decades Labour was in thrall to its Union wing and was denied power because of that unless the Tories had simply been in too long or had one too many cabinet minister caught in his Chelsea supporters shirt, and nothing else, in the wrong lady’s boudoir. A combination of Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair saw the Trade Union movement off and Labour has never looked back. Mr Blair has no intention of changing any of Margaret Thatcher’s hated (by Union leaders) labour legislation. The left of the party is now so marginalized that the only thing now left to do is castrate the center – and that Tony Blair is doing.

Britain has been a 2 ½ party state since the great wartime coalition of World War I broke up in that famous meeting in 1922 at the Carleton Club. That meeting destroyed any chance the Liberals would have of gaining power because it left the party divided between the Asquith Liberals and the Lloyd George Liberals. The breach was never healed. There was a bold attempt to reform the center with the creation, in the 80s, of the Social Democratic Party made up of Liberals and right wing Labourites, but Mrs Thatcher crushed it and the Liberal Democrats are all that remains.

Except. Except that if Tony Blair can capture that Liberal Democrat support he need never ever again have to worry about the left wing of the Labour Party. And Mr Blair has found the way to do just that.

For years the Liberal Party has demanded that the voting system be changed. The “first past the post” system kills them as it so often does to parties caught squarely between a left encroaching on the center from one side and the right doing the same from the other side. What if Labour were to change to a proportional representation system? That would enhance the strength of the Liberal Democrats but it would hit the Tories harder than Labour. Even it didn’t, Labour plus the Liberal Democrats could always be trusted to do better than either the Tories or the old left wing of Labour. Wouldn’t this be a beautiful was to force a coalition and then, no doubt, an amalgamation of the Liberal Democrats and “New” Labour into a force of the center which would be well nigh unbeatable?

Before the 1997 election Tony Blair, bound to win a landslide, promised the Liberal Democrats Proportional Representation as a condition of their support – a support he didn’t need then and doesn’t need now. Why would he do this?

The only logical explanation is what I just gave you.

So watch now as the left in Britain is shoved to one side, the right to another, as Tony Blair – a very smart politician, elbows his way into a very large center and keeps power for the foreseeable future.As I write this from London, that’s sure the way it all looks from here.