Blunkett steals a 'racist, nasty, extremist' Tory idea and lo, it becomes 'courageous and wise'
PETER OBORNE
While Tony Blair's commitment to prosecution of the war has so far been unswerving, since 11 September his government has changed its mind on practically everything else. He or his ministers have announced about-turns on: personal taxation, drugs law, worker protection in private-sector partnerships, individual learning accounts, student tuition fees, AS-levels, the sale of Treasury silver. The aggregate of these reversed decisions can only have jolted the self-confidence of ministers and reinforced the impression of an incompetent government that does not know its own mind.
None of these policy transfigurations, however, gives quite as much food for thought as David Blunkett's renunciation of Labour's bitter opposition to induction centres for asylum-seekers. It will be recalled that during the election campaign Ann Widdecombe's almost identical proposals — to get rid of the hated voucher system and replace dispersal with secure centres where asylum-seekers could be rapidly processed — was the subject of hysterical attack. Her plan was Exhibit A in the charge list that the Conservative party was nasty, extremist, racist and 'right-wing'. Jack Straw, then home secretary, asserted on 26 April this year that camps would be 'impractical, inhumane and expensive'. He insisted that the Tories are more interested in exploiting the asylum issue than they are in dealing with it'. Three weeks later he added for good measure that the Tory party was offering 'simplistic solutions which won't work', Tony Blair proclaimed that detaining asylum-seekers would be 'expensive and unlawful'. He followed this up with the charge that William Hague, merely by advocating reception centres, was 'stirring up' public concern over immigration.
The backbench MP Diane Abbott asserted before the election that the Tories were 'playing the race-card'. This week she welcomed David 131unkett's announcement. The Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy damned the Tory asylum policy as 'inhumane', while his deputy Simon Hughes, in one particularly disgraceful outburst, blamed the Oldham riots on the Tories. Last week Hughes was one of the first to lick David Blunkett's boots when he assured the Home Secretary that his principles and general proposals have a welcome from those on the Liberal benches'.
The New Labour media has fallen into line. Last week the Times, which repeatedly charged William Hague with fostering Tory
'extremism' during the election campaign, gravely judged in its leader column that `Blunkett shrewdly shifts the government's stance on asylum'. On the BBC's ten o'clock news Andrew Marr — who normally strives for balance — implausibly asserted that the Blunkett proposals should not be compared with the Widdecombe plan. The prize for sheer shameless hypocrisy, however, went to the Daily Express. On 19 May this year, it ran a bold leader headlined 'Hague's Flawed Idea Offers Asylum Only To Bigots'. Last Tuesday the same leader column claimed that 'Blunkett's Asylum Reforms Are a Victory for the Express'.
The Blunkett announcement graphically illustrates the difficulty that the Tory party has faced since 1997, if not before. It is constantly being accused of 'failing to provide an opposition', come up with good ideas, etc. And there is no denying that there have been weaknesses. But the Strange Case of the Blunkett U-Turn indicates that there is more to it than mere Tory incompetence. The MEP Daniel Hannan, in a brilliant article in last week's Spectator, got close to the problem. He noted how the English language itself has been appropriated by New Labour so that the word 'Tory' has come to be synonymous with racist, corrupt, extreme, generally distasteful and not to be welcomed in polite society.
This means that any idea that the Tories come up with — and, contrary to popular impression, this does happen — is tainted. So every time that a party spokesman outlines a proposal, he or she is automatically confronted by a conspiracy between the government (fair enough), the Liberal Democrats and the chattering classes to present it as in some way cheap, nasty and extremist. The same idea from the mouth of a government spokesman is, by contrast, typically greeted by the chattering classes and the Lib Dems as courageous and wise. It should not be thought that reception centres for asylum-seekers is an isolated exam ple. There are plenty of others, of which health policy is an outstanding case in point. In the run-up to the last election, Dr Liam Fox, the Conservative health spokesman, made the lucid and convincing argument that, while increased spending was indeed desirable, the only way to produce a 21stcentury health service was structural reform and private-sector involvement. Fox produced a series of practical suggestions.
These proposals were greeted with horror. Tories were denounced as if they were maniacs intent on the destruction of the NHS. Most agitated of all was Tony Blair, who proclaimed hack in January that to 'privatise even more of our services is not the solution to the problem. They are the cause of it.' The very day after the election the Prime Minister changed his mind and embraced the hated Tory policy. He declared that 'if you can deliver that service, or help deliver it, through co-operation with a private-sector organisation that is making a profit, then why not'. The Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, has gone on to adopt many of the Tory proposals which he and his colleagues denounced as unworkable and immoral before the election.
This has been standard procedure ever since Tony Blair entered Parliament, As John Rentoul reminds us in his admirable biography of the Prime Minister, Blair used his maiden speech to denounce as repugnant to all civilised values the rather timorous stab at trade-union reform then being embarked on by Margaret Thatcher. In the fullness of time Blair went on to embrace those reforms and make them his own. He has repeated this trick 100 times.
The greatest political achievement of New Labour, in collusion with the media class, has been to propagate the notion that the Tories are extreme and not fit to take part in mainstream political debate. This notion, as the events of the last week demonstrate yet again, is a lie. And yet it is an astonishingly enduring one. While it persists — while the word 'conservative' remains identical in public perception with sleazy, incompetent and corrupt — it is impossible for any Conservative leader to make headway_ No matter how sound his judgment, how compassionate his policies, how authoritative his presence, he will still be fighting a game that can only be lost. It must be the first priority of the Duncan Smith opposition to deal with this longstanding obstacle to a resurrection in Conservative fortunes.
Previous page
