George Osborne’s announcement to the Commons of the outcomes of the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review is already the single most talked-about political speech in a generation – and he hasn’t even made it yet. In fact, as of today, it is still fully four weeks away. Yet no significant political discussion since the election and beyond has escaped its mention or its influence.
It has hung like the biggest of black clouds over the first weeks and months of the coalition government’s reign, with commentators and voters alike appearing to hesitate in its wake before passing judgement on Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and co. And the Labour leadership contest has been so defined and dogged by it that it seems impossible to imagine the campaign without it.
And now, the cloud hangs over Liverpool, where the Liberal Democrats are holding the first of the annual party conferences – and their first since joining with the Conservatives to take power.
But while it is fair to report that practically little else has been talked about in and around the conference centre, media hacks are having to work hard to convince their audiences and readerships that genuine, deep-rooted discontent exists around Liverpool’s docklands.
In the plethora of interviews with Nick Clegg that we have inevitably been subjected to this week, the Lib Dem leader has rarely failed to impress with the way he has portrayed a tremendous sense of calmness and common-sense in the face of the forced anxiety and even desperation of his interrogators.
And there are several good reasons why; several obvious reasons why nothing like the party disintegration that had been billed by some, was ever going to occur this week.
The first of these is called TINA – ‘There Is No Alternative’ – and I will return to her later. The second is the lasting novelty, to Liberal Democrat parliamentarians and supporters alike, of simply being in power, something which the vast majority of conference-goers this week will not have seen in their lifetimes.
Then there is the tumultuous way in which the party’s fortunes have already swung this year, from riding high in the polls to the crushing disappointment on election night, to a role in government that includes some senior cabinet positions and a potentially ground-breaking deal on electoral reform. The party faithful knows that a split in the party now is a wound that may not be healed quite so quickly.
Another, less-discussed reason is the state of the opposition – while the two governing parties go into their respective annual gatherings looking to compile a progress report, build a consensus and rally the troops for a challenging year ahead, Labour delegates will arrive in Manchester this weekend still not knowing who will lead them through this crucial period of opposition.
In fact, for much of the marathon contest, it has been difficult to tell the difference between most of the candidates, a grim reality that has resulted in the contest often being more about publicity than policies, and which has latterly brought some to make bold but essentially contrived statements about “values” and “party direction”.
Forget ideology, on the evidence of the past few months, there is only one direction in which an opposition Labour Party can (and must strive to) go – upwards.
Bereft of a party line throughout the summer, Labour appears in some respects to still be coming to terms with the events of the spring – in stark contrast to the urgency with which the coalition partners have set out their methods and observations for this governmental experiment.
But if the opposition has failed to capitalise on the opportunities that the new government’s very different kind of honeymoon might have presented, an increasingly apparent reason for this is the party’s lack of conviction, and the painful absence of any moral high-ground, on the defining issue of contemporary British politics.
No matter how you dress it up, no matter one’s political persuasion, no matter how often the recession and the bubbles in housing and financial services are made into scapegoats for all that is wrong with Britain’s economy, the sheer scale of Britain’s government debt – not, contrary to popular belief, merely the deficit (which is a different thing – again, unbeknown to some) – renders urgent and decisive action unavoidable.
And what’s more, the debt is only so great because of the profligacy of the Labour government, especially (ironically) under the very man who wasted no opportunity to proclaim his prudence when he took hold of his first red box.
But the Con-Lib government is itself not immune from the charge of failing to land a decisive shot when offered the opportunity. Putting aside the charge of causing this mess in the first place, Labour has so far been able to get away with the illusion that had it won the election, none of the forthcoming medicine would have been forced upon the country’s millions of innocent patients.
The truth is that Labour would have made much the same diagnosis – they would merely have waited for the illness to get a whole lot worse before attempting to cure it.
TINA, it seems, is everywhere. She is sure to be spotted at the Tory conference in Birmingham. She may even turn up on the fringes of Labour’s do next week. And it’s a fairly good bet that she’ll be joining Messrs Osborne, Cameron and Clegg on the front bench come October 20th.
