New Labour at the Centre: Constructing Political Space

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NEW LABOUR AT THE CENTRE

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New Labour at the Centre Constructing Political Space

ANDREW HINDMOOR

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Andrew Hindmoor 2004 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0-19-927314-6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King's Lynn

To Jane Langham


PREFACE Journalists, political scientists, and politicians routinely describe New Labour as having moved to the centre and account for its election triumphs in terms of its occupation of this position. The question I address in this book is a simple one. How did New Labour move to the centre? The conventional answer to this question is that New Labour moved by changing its policies. It moved to the right and toward the centre by abandoning its commitment to nationalisation, higher income tax, the abolition of grammar schools, and so on. Against this I contend that changes in policy cannot in themselves constitute a complete explanation of changes in spatial position. They cannot do so because there is no pre-given and fixed relationship between policies and position such that the rejection of one policy and the adoption of another moves a party from one particular position to another. Policies are not immutably leftwing, right-wing, or centrist and to the extent that the position a party is thought to occupy is a function of the policies it is committed to, this means that parties are not immutably left-wing, right-wing, or centrist either. The relationship between policy and position and thereby between parties and position is constructed and is in part constructed by parties themselves. This argument has its precursors. All arguments do. The late William Riker's work on ‘heresthetics’ and Ian McLean's recent application of it to the study of British politics raise some of the same issues this book does. The position I argue for nevertheless remains an iconoclastic one. Because what I think is most interesting about party competition, the process by which parties construct their positions, is something that the rational choice models which dominate the academic study of politics tend to assume away. What kind of audience is this book intended for? Perhaps most obviously it is meant to be read by those with an interest in British politics. I use the vague term interest because I do not want to present this book exclusively as either a research monograph to be digested by political scientists or a textbook to be scanned by undergraduates. I hope that the argument developed here is original enough to interest some of my colleagues and its application sufficiently wideranging to engage undergraduates and lay readers. In saying this I am aware of a potentially damaging analogy with New Labour itself. Critics argue that New Labour's efforts to maximise its electoral market have proven counterproductive. In trying to be all things to all people the party has ended up being no particular thing to anyone. In trying to present

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this book as being all things to all readers, I leave myself vulnerable to the same criticism. This book is however not just for aficionados of British politics. It is also meant to be read by those with a more general interest in the dynamics of party competition. For whilst the application of my argument is to New Labour, the argument itself is a more wideranging one. It is developed through a sometimes critical examination of one of the single most influential works in post-war political science: Anthony Downs' (1957) AnEconomic Theory of Democracy. Downs' theory seeks to explain and predict the behaviour of political parties in any and all democracies. My argument, that parties must construct their positions, is equally general. The junior George Bush did not simply materialise at the political centre in the run-up to the 2000 Presidential election. Under the banner of ‘compassionate conservatism’ he and his election team carefully constructed a position at the centre from which they could eventually defeat Al Gore. Following successive federal election defeats in 1949, 1953, and 1957, Germany's Social Democratic Party did not simply move to the centre in time to enter into a coalition with the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union in 1966. Over a ten-year period which included but by no means ended with the Bad Godesberg programme in 1959, it painfully reconstructed its position. I started to write this book in September 2001 whilst a visiting fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland and living at Amity Point on North Stradbroke Island. Some time around the first draft of Chapter 1, my son, Jordan, learnt to walk. Whilst trying frantically to finish Chapter 8, my daughter, Asha, was born. At the end of otherwise very dry paragraphs and in occasional footnotes it may sometimes be possible to sense how happy a time in my life this was. My colleagues at Queensland were generous in their support and encouragement and offered many suggestions which have found their way into the final text. Two anonymous referees for Oxford University Press offered detailed and incisive comments. I doubt whether I have done their considerable efforts sufficient justice. The Department of Politics at the University of Exeter and the School of Historical Political and Sociological Studies within which it is located remain an excellent place to study and discuss ideas. A number of friends and colleagues within the Department — Iain Hampsher-Monk, Oliver James, Hilary Palmer, and Keith Zimmerman — read and offered comments upon the complete manuscript. I remain enough of a rational choice theorist to hold them entirely responsible for any omissions or errors which may as a result have appeared. AH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce published material: Sage (Figure 2.1), Blackwell (Table 7.1), and Cambridge University Press (Figure 7.4).


CONTENTS Preface List of Figures and Tables 1. Introduction New Labour at the Centre Downs and An Economic Theory of Democracy Constructing the Centre The Difference Construction Makes 2. The Centre, Downs, and New Labour Introduction The Median Voter Theorem Downsian Space The Construction of the Centre Conclusion 3. Rhetoric and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Rhetorical Forms Rhetoric, Beliefs, and the Construction of the Centre The Limits of Construction Conclusion 4. Rhetoric, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Devolution The Minimum Wage Trade Union Recognition The 2002 Budget Conclusion 5. Innovation and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Schumpeter: Innovation and Equilibrium Downs: Innovation and Equilibrium Innovation, Rhetoric, and Spatial Competition Conclusion

vii xiii 1 1 5 6 12 17 17 19 26 33 39 41 41 43 49 54 59 63 63 65 70 73 77 81 83 83 84 90 97 103

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6. Innovation, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction The New Deal Education Action Zones The Working Families Tax Credit Anti-Social Behaviour Orders Foundation Hospitals Conclusion 7. Framing and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Frames, Framing, and Priming Framing and the Construction of the Centre Framing Issues and Framing Dimensions Conclusion 8. Framing, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Framing (Valence) Issues: Europe, Tax and Spend, and Ownership Framing Events: Arms and Petrol Framing the Campaign: Issues and Dimensions Conclusion 9. Leadership and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Principals and Agents: Incentives Principals and Agents: Screening Leadership, Reliability, and Responsibility The Construction of Reliability and Responsibility Conclusion 10. Leadership, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction The British Presidency Blair as Ballast: The 1997 Election The Politics of Promises 1997–2001 Conclusion 11. Conclusion Index

105 105 108 112 115 118 121 124 127 127 130 136 140 145 147 147 148 155 160 167 169 169 171 176 179 181 184 187 187 188 193 198 200 203 211

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 2.1 Two-Party Competition and the Centre Figure 2.2 Voters' Political Position, 1997 Figure 2.3 Left and Right and Ownership Figure 3.1 Left and Right and Ownership Figure 5.1 Left and Right and Ownership Figure 7.1 (a) Abortion: the right to choose Figure 7.1 (b) Abortion: the right to life Figure 7.2 (a) Abortion: the right to choose Figure 7.2 (b) Abortion: the right to life Figure 7.3 Spatial position and framing the agenda Figure 7.4 Slavery and the creation of winning coalitions Figure 9.1 (a) Single-shot principal–agent relationship Figure 9.1 (b) Iterated principal–agent relationship Table 7.1 Opinions towards property development byframing condition Table 8.1 Issues Primed at Prime Minister's Question Time,1994–7 Table 10.1 (a) Leadership stretch: Guardian coverage,1994–7 Table 10.1 (b) Leadership stretch: newspaper coverage,7 May – 7 June 2001 Table 10.2 Expectations about policy delivery

21 21 27 51 93 137 137 137 137 142 145 173 173 135 163 192 192 199


1 Introduction New Labour at the Centre In the months following his election as leader, Tony Blair described Labour as a party of the centre-left. Accepting the leadership in July 1994, he argued that the country needed ‘neither the politics of the old Left nor new Right but a new left-of-centre agenda for the future’.1 Addressing the Newscorp Leadership Conference on the Cayman Islands in July 1995, he suggested that Labour offered a ‘new left-of-centre that is not simply an accommodation to the right but tries to move the political debate forward’.2 It was in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in April 1996 that Blair for the first time presented what had by then become New Labour as ‘a party of the centre as well as the centreleft’.3 With this linguistic barrier crossed, the description of ‘today's Labour Party, New Labour, as a party of the centre as well as the centre-left’ soon became a rhetorical orthodoxy.4 Once New Labour entered office in 1997, references to the left in centre-left began gradually to fade. In interviews Blair now proclaimed that ‘I believe passionately in Labour as a modern, progressive political party in the radical centre of British politics. This is where I am. This is where I will stay’.5 In a speech delivered shortly before the 2001 election, Blair told his audience that New Labour's agenda for the coming term would be ‘radical but firmly in the centre ground, the ground we have made our own in the past few years’.6 During a television interview in May 2001, he remarked that ‘I believe

1

Tony Blair, speech, ‘Accepting the Challenge’, 21 July 1994. Reproduced in Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 31.

2

Blair, speech, ‘Security in a World of Change’, 17 July 1995. Reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 207.

3

Blair, quoted, Peter Riddell, ‘Labour is the Voice of Middle Britain’, The Times, 12 April 1996.

4

Blair, quoted, Michael Prescott, ‘End Game’, Sunday Times, 14 April 1996.

5

Blair, quoted, Peter Riddell and Philip Webster, ‘Shaken and Contrite? Not a Bit of It’, The Times, 8 May 2000.

6

Blair, speech, ‘The Government's Agenda for the Future’, 8 February 2001. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page1579.asp .

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INTRODUCTION

passionately in the concept of New Labour…I think that a moderate sensible centre-ground Labour Party is what I believe in’.7 During his keynote address to the 2003 Labour Party conference Blair told delegates that by ‘occupying the centre ground, by modernising, by reaching out beyond our activists, we helped turn the Tories into a replica of what we used to be’.8 Blair's invocation of the centre is noteworthy not simply for what it tells us about how he views the party he leads but because it is common place of both politicians and journalists that elections are won by parties at the centre. Writing in The Times in June 1997, Matthew Parris argued that ‘without the centre ground which Labour is wooing with such skill, you will never win a general election outright’.9 Writing about William Hague in December 2000, Andrew Rawnsley suggested that his ‘failure has been his inability to fashion an approach which reaches out to the centre ground, the territory on which elections are won and lost’.10 At around the same time Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian in an article about New Labour's electoral strategy argued that Blair ‘will stay just where he is: neither left, nor right but straight down the middle. He has never wavered from the strategic calculation made years ago: that elections are won on the centre ground and whoever owns that territory owns power…the golden path runs through the middle’.11 In the Independent in July 2000, Anne McElvoy wrote of the Conservatives that they ‘continue to lack appeal to the centre ground—the territory in which elections are won and lost’.12 A year on and with the 2001 election lost, Donald Macintyre wondered whether the Conservatives' new leader Iain Duncan-Smith could, like Neil Kinnock, ‘drag his party back to the centre ground where elections are won and lost’.13 Following Duncan-Smith's appointment of a number of right-wing politicians to shadow cabinet posts, Andrew Grice wondered whether ‘a right-dominated team [can] deliver the centre ground needed to get back in the game’?14 As for the politicians themselves, Blair argued in the run-up to the 1997 election that ‘there is no doubt that if we continue to occupy the centre ground, if we become the national political party, if we attract support from the

7

Blair, quoted, Jonathan Freedland, ‘Labour is Fighting the Wrong Election: The Last One’, Guardian, 14 May 2001.

8

Blair, speech, Labour Party Conference, 30 September 2003. Full text available via www.labour.org.uk/tbbouremouth .

9

Matthew Parris, ‘What are the Tories For?’, The Times, 20 June 1997.

10

Andrew Rawnsley, ‘The Loathed Versus the Unloved’, Observer, 31 December 2000.

11

Jonathan Freedland, ‘Neither Left Nor Right’, Guardian, 14 June 2000.

12

Anne McElvoy, ‘Mr. Hague has Executed two Neat and Graceful U-Turns’, Independent, 12 July 2000, p. 7.

13

Donald Macintyre, ‘An Early Call to Make but the Indications are Pointing Right’, Independent, 14 September 2001.

14

Andrew Grice, ‘The Opposition: Right-Wing Team Aims for the Centre’, Independent, 28 December 2001.

INTRODUCTION

3

centre…that we will be able to benefit significantly’.15 Drawing one of the first of many comparisons between Blair and Bill Clinton, Peter Mandelson suggested that ‘both leaders show that a party of the left which embraces the centre ground is unstoppable’.16 For Blair's personal polling adviser, Philip Gould, Labour lost elections in the 1980s because it ‘abandoned the centre ground of British politics and camped out at the margins’.17 As for the Conservatives, Peter Lilley counselled shortly after the 1997 election that ‘the political centre ground is the key to regaining power’.18 In what many interpreted as a criticism of his successors' strategy, John Major subsequently warned that ‘the Tory party wins elections from the centre-right not the right. Without the centre, you are not a majority’.19 Commenting on the party's defeat in 2001, Michael Heseltine cautioned that ‘we have to win back the centre ground…you never win from the extreme’.20 Former Treasury Minister John Maples concurred noting that ‘elections are won and lost on the centre ground…the right strategy now is to fight [Labour] head-on for the centre, not to retreat to the right’.21 Descriptions of parties as occupying a particular spatial position offer journalists and politicians an effortless way of conveying information. We may disagree with a claim that some party has moved to the centre, toward the centre-left, or back to the far right but we at least think we know what such claims mean. The spatial metaphor offers a kind of political Esperanto, a shared political language that can be used to describe British political parties, communist generalsecretaries, American presidents, Latin American dictators, local council leaders, and trade union officials.22 The metaphor is a long-standing one. Left and right were first applied as terms of political description and evaluation during the French Revolution.23 In an Assembly

15

Blair, quoted, Anthony Bevins, ‘Blair Offers Tories a Haven’, Observer, 5 May 1996.

16

Peter Mandelson, ‘We Will Emulate Clinton’, The Times, 7 November 1996.

17

Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Little, Brown & Company, 1998), p. 4.

18

Peter Lilley, Conservative Party Deputy Leader, quoted, Ronald Watson, ‘Lilley Stakes Tories Claim to the Centre Ground’, The Times, 10 October 1998.

19

John Major, quoted, Michael Jones, ‘His Last Stand for the Tories’, The Times, 3 October 1999.

20

Michael Heseltine, quoted, Rachel Sylvester, ‘Can Anyone Lead the Party Now asks Heseltine’, Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2001.

21

John Maples, Conservative Party Deputy Chairman, ‘What Went Wrong with the Tory Campaign?’, Daily Telegraph, 14 June 2001.

22

Jean Laponce, Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 56.

23

As general analytic contrasts, left and right were being used over two and a half thousand years ago. Within the Pythagorean table of opposites, left was associated with darkness and evil and right with light and goodness. See Geoffrey Lloyd, ‘Left and Right in Greek Philosophy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 82 (1962), 56–66.

4

INTRODUCTION

within which voting was conducted not by roll call but by standing and sitting at required moments and in which rules barred representatives from describing each other as belonging to named political factions, individuals began to seat themselves next to like-minded colleagues on, literally, the left and right of the Assembly floor.24 It was out of this simple dyad that the idea of political space as a continuum with a centre developed. In the aftermath of the first few months of the Revolution, Mounier emerged as the leader of a group sitting at the centre of the Assembly advocating a kind of English constitutionalism as an alternative both to the republicanism of the left and the absolute monarchism of the right.25 Propelled first by the Revolutionary and then Napoleonic wars, the use of the spatial metaphor eventually spread to the rest of Europe. Today, self-styled Centre Parties continue to attract significant support in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, and Denmark. Parties describing themselves as centrist by name have never prospered in Britain.26 Yet at various times the most unlikely of politicians have described themselves as centrist. In the 1890s Joseph Chamberlain, who by then had already broken away from the Liberal Party to form the Liberal Unionists, called for the creation of a new National Party based at the centre which would exclude ‘only the extreme sections of the party of reaction on the one hand, and the party of anarchy on the other’.27 In the 1930s, Oswald Moseley sought support for his New Party by presenting himself as a ‘man of the centre’ who understood the anguish of ordinary voters.28 In more recent times Harold Macmillan, Reginald Maudling, Rab Butler, Edward Heath, and James Prior within the Conservative Party and Hugh Dalton, Clement Atlee, Anthony Crosland, James Callaghan, and Dennis Healey within the Labour Party have all described themselves or been described as centrist politicians.29 The easiest lesson to draw from this is the one that this can perhaps be easily drawn from any history. There is nothing new under the sun. In presenting itself as being a party at and of the centre, New Labour is only doing what others have done before.

24

See Laponce, Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions, pp. 48–51.

25

In his account published in 1837 Carlyle talks of Mounier as leading an ‘intermediate’ or sometimes ‘centrist’ faction. Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (London: Macmillan: 1921), p. 173.

26

A British Centre Party based in Norwich has been ‘established for the vast majority of people who believe in the centre ground’. Details not only of how to join but of how to become a candidate are available via www.Britishcentreparty.co.uk .

27

Geoffrey Searle, Country Before Party: Coalition and the Idea of National Government in Modern Britain, 1985–1987 (London: Longman, 1995), p. 34.

28

Quoted, Brian Harrison, ‘The Centrist Theme in Modern British Politics’ in Peaceable Kingdom: Stability and Change in Modern Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 320.

29

This list is taken from Harrison, ‘The Centrist Theme in Modern British politics’, p. 322.

INTRODUCTION

5

Downs and An Economic Theory of Democracy Within political science the spatial metaphor, and with it the claim that parties must be at the centre if they are to win elections, finds its most celebrated exposition in Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy.30 First published in 1957, this book, one of the founding texts of rational choice theory, has become the most widely cited research work in political science by a living scholar.31 Downs' argument, which will be outlined in some detail in Chapter 2, is assembled around the spatial metaphor. This he takes and turns into a formal spatial framework relying upon a scalar representation of political position. Voters have political preferences. These preferences can, it is assumed, be ‘ordered from left to right in a manner agreed upon by all voters’.32 Within this one-dimensional space, parties select policies, individuals then voting for the party ‘closest’ to them. Left-wing voters vote for left-wing parties, right-wing voters for right-wing parties, and so on. Given a further set of assumptions—most notably that there are only two parties—Downs uses this framework to show that parties can only maximise their vote by adopting policies that appeal to the median voter. The median voter is that person whose preferences are such that they have as many other voters to their left as to their right. There is no successful electoral alternative to this position. Parties that opt for ideological purity over compromise will be defeated. This, as it has become known, is the median voter theorem. Given a particular set of assumptions the spatial framework can be used to demonstrate that parties must move to the position of the median voter if they are to win. Over the last forty or so years this theorem has provoked endless debate. For, by altering one or more of the assumptions on which it rests, it can be shown that the incentive that parties have to converge upon the position of the median voter is circumscribed, non-existent, or relatively robust. Yet whilst the median voter theorem has been repeatedly challenged and reformulated, rational choice has remained largely faithful to Downs' underlying spatial framework and beneath that to the spatial metaphor. The one-dimensional, left to right, space of An Economic Theory has been superseded by more sophisticated models in which there are multiple dimensions of competition. But the basic idea of parties moving from one point in political space to another remains as

30

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).

31

See Bernard Grofman, ‘Introduction’, in Bernard Grofman (ed.), Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 2 (footnote 5 and reference therein).

32

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democrocy, p. 115.

6

INTRODUCTION

embedded within political science models as it is in politicians' speeches and journalists' articles. Because its conclusions are so intuitively plausible and derived from a presentation free of technical jargon or mathematical appendices, Downs' work has frequently been called upon to provide backing for descriptions and explanations of the behaviour and actions of New Labour. Within articles and books about New Labour, references to the more sophisticated and recently published models of party competition that now litter academic journals are few and far between. References to An Economic Theory remain plentiful. According to Pippa Norris, ‘Downsian theory’ provides ‘the most common explanation [of why] Labour moved centre-right’.33 The basic form this explanation takes is not difficult to relate. Labour moved to the right to achieve office. Labour lost in 1983 and 1987 because it abandoned the median voter, choosing instead a set of left-wing policies. It regained electoral respectability when Neil Kinnock used a formal review of policy undertaken in the aftermath of the 1987 defeat to jettison left-wing policies and move Labour back towards the median voter. Labour nonetheless lost in 1992 because it had not moved far enough. Reborn as New Labour in 1994 the party romped to easy victories in 1997 and 2001 by ditching many of its remaining policies and moving further to the right.

Constructing the Centre It would be a mistake to be too prudish about the use of the spatial metaphor, to argue simply that the terms left, right, and centre are, when they are applied to politics, meaningless. For such terms clearly do have a great deal of meaning for a great number of people. Metaphors are not simply a game we play with words, an optional rhetorical technique. They are embedded in normal thought and language. If we did not think of party competition in terms of space we would think about it in some other way: as a battle, a game of chess, or a gladiatorial contest.34 Metaphors are useful because by relating abstract concepts and ideas to immediate physical experiences with which we are familiar and comfortable, they help us understand the world we

33

Pippa Norris, ‘New Politicians? Changes in Party Competition at Westminster’, in Geoffrey Evans and Pippa Norris (eds.), Critical Elections: British Parties and Voters in LongTerm Perspective (London: Sage, 1999), p. 23. Emphasis added. A list of authors citing Downs' work is provided in Chapter 2.

34

The spatial metaphor is so pervasive that any of these apparently alternative metaphors is, at some point, likely to rely upon space in its exposition. Using the metaphor of a battle to understand party competition, Joseph Schumpeter talks, for example, about parties fighting to gain control of a hill affording a strategic advantage. More is said about Schumpeter's account in Chapter 5.

INTRODUCTION

7

inhabit.35 Without having to understand anything about economic theory, voters can, for example, know what a politician who talks about trimming a budget deficit or avoiding a run on the pound means. The spatial metaphor is an attractive and effective one because we are comfortable with the idea of there being a world around us within which we can move. The idea of a party moving leftwards to the centre is comprehensible because we can imagine moving to our left to get to the centre of a room. Indeed it is so compelling that it is easy to forget that political space is a metaphor. Language is littered with dead metaphors that have, over time, been lexicalised as literally true.36 We talk of chairs having legs, ideas dawning, clocks having faces, and bottles having necks without recognising the metaphors involved. In the same way we now talk of parties moving to the centre. But because we no longer see the metaphors here we risk losing sight of their limits, of the original and distinctive nature of the object or idea to which the metaphor is being applied.37 In the case of most of the metaphors listed above this is of little or any consequence. Reminding ourselves that clocks do not really have faces does not make it any easier or harder to tell the time. Yet, in the case of spatial metaphor, the failure to recognise the metaphor and to treat seriously the differences between political space and the space within which we lead our everyday lives has compromised theories of party competition in general and accounts of New Labour in particular. Thinking of parties as occupying points in political space encourages us to think of parties as moving from one existing point in that space to another in the same way that we think of a person as moving from one corner of a room to another. Thinking of parties as occupying points in political space encourages us to think of Labour as having abandoned and left vacant a centre it eventually returned to and reoccupied. Yet political space is not the same as the space within which we lead our everyday lives. Parties cannot move to and occupy the political centre in the same way that people can move to and occupy the centre of a room. The centre is not simply there. Parties must construct the positions they wish to occupy. The centre New Labour is now thought to occupy is one that New Labour has itself had to construct.

35

On the universality of metaphor see Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (New York: Cornell University Press, 1962); George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and Andrew Ortony, Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). On the way in which metaphors work by relating abstract ideas to immediate physical experiences see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 91–126; Philosophy in the Flesh (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

36

See Earl MacCormac, A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985).

37

Bernard Hibitts, ‘The Nature and Significance of Metaphors’, Cardozo Law Review, 16 (1994), 26–35.

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INTRODUCTION

Within the social sciences, constructivism offers an increasingly fashionable research programme replete with its own concepts and idiosyncrasies. Constructivists operate by showing how a category, concept, or idea generally seen as unproblematic, natural, and obvious is socially constructed. They show how our understanding of it is not simply determined by an underlying reality but forged by powerful actors, who have created particular constructions, the precise terms of which vary across time and place.38 So within, for example, sociology, constructivists have shown how beliefs about what counts as ‘scientific’ knowledge and what scientists themselves consider ‘facts’ are socially constructed.39 This book does not offer a constructivist theory of party competition. It does not use or seek to apply any terms, concepts, or methods developed within specific constructivist theories. It is certainly not constructivist all the way down. Terms like belief, party, self-interest, and competition that a constructivist would want to set about and unpack are scattered throughout the text. In developing an alternative account of the development, nature, and political trajectory of New Labour, two insights are however taken from constructivism. The first is that categories, concepts, and ideas, in this case the concept of the centre, are not natural and obvious brute facts in the same way that the tree outside my window is a brute fact.40 The second, by way of an alternative to such a view, is the metaphor of construction itself. The centre is constructed in one general and four specific ways. We will start here with the general and with the concept of the centre itself. As it is used by journalists and politicians, the centre sustains two meanings. On the one hand, parties are described as being and describe themselves as being at the centre by virtue of their popular appeal. Call this the electoral centre. Rephrasing Downs' argument, a party that is located at or near to the position of the median voter can be said to be at the electoral centre. Understood in this sense, parties are said to have abandoned the centre when they commit themselves to policies that find little support within the electorate. On the other hand parties are described as being and describe themselves as being at the centre by virtue of their moderation. Call this the political centre. The electoral and political centres are analytically distinct.

38

This attempt at a definition is of course itself a construction; it suggests that there is a ‘thing’, constructivism, which is out there and which can be objectively described.

39

See Barry Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1977); Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science (London: Routledge, 1993).

40

On the notion of brute facts see John Searle, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995). On constructivism as metaphor see Nancy Spivey, The Constructivist Metaphor (London: Academic Press, 1997). Constructivist theories are, generally, surprisingly reluctant to acknowledge construction as a metaphor.

INTRODUCTION

9

There is no reason why a party that is politically extreme might not enjoy electoral support. Yet, in practice, these two are linked. Parties acquire support to the extent that they are seen as politically moderate. By constructing and reconstructing people's beliefs about which policies are moderate, parties can construct their position at the political centre. By constructing their position at the political centre, parties can appeal to voters at the electoral centre. This argument will be developed further in Chapter 2, where it will be accompanied with a more detailed account of the nature of political space and of the role of the spatial metaphor. Through a series of more specific applications it will then be played out over the rest of the book. The four more specific ways in which the centre is constructed, the four applications of this general argument, are dealt with in chapters on rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership. First, the centre is constructed through rhetoric. The never-ending sequence of publicly conducted argument in which parties and their partisans seek to enhance their own standing and undermine that of their opponents, provides the backdrop to political reporting on television and radio and in print. It is the substance of which politicians' speeches, debates, interviews, newspaper articles, press releases, and briefings are made. Political argument may, as George Orwell once complained, consist ‘largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness’ but it should not simply be dismissed as sound and fury which signifies little.41 It is through political argument that parties seek to establish their positions and build political support. Politicians cannot simply move to the political centre by adopting one set of policies rather than another. For, the location of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. Using such rhetorical tools as ridicule, comparisons, examples, authority, contradiction, and arguments about cause and effect, parties must seek to persuade voters that they are at the moderate political centre and that their opponents are politically extreme. The political centre is something which parties must seek to construct particular understandings of. Chapter 3 shows how the political centre is rhetorically constructed. Chapter 4 goes on to illustrate this argument by showing how New Labour has sought to convince the electorate of the centrist credentials of a number of its key policies and policy decisions. These include devolution, trade union recognition, the minimum wage, and the tax rises announced in the 2002 budget. Policies are not intrinsically centrist. Parties that commit themselves to devolution and a minimum wage do not simply and by virtue of that commitment become centrist.

41

George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, in Collected Essays (London: Mercury, 1961), p. 123.

10

INTRODUCTION

Parties must present and defend themselves and their policies as being at the political centre. Second, the political centre is constructed through innovation. Within the spatial framework Downs develops, political position along the left–right scale is a function of policy. Parties are left-wing to the extent that they have left-wing policies, right-wing to the extent that they have right-wing policies, and so on. Parties move to particular positions by selecting particular policies. In Downs' account, there are a finite number of policies to choose between. One problem with the spatial metaphor and so with the spatial framework is that political space is not finite. For, as well as choosing between existing policies, parties can create new policies. There is a further complication here and with it a further source of party competition. The concept of innovation is itself a constructed one, the definition and particular instances of which parties can be expected to contest. A policy presented by one party as radical and innovative, as incontrovertible evidence of its modernisation, will be derided by an opponent as a retread of an old, failed, and extreme policy. There is no escaping rhetoric. Yet policy innovation clearly does occur. The policy options over which parties manoeuvre today are not primordial. All policies are at one point new policies. If position is a matter of policy, all positions, including positions at the centre, are constructed. Using an account of innovation developed by the economist Joseph Schumpter, Chapter 5 shows how innovation might be incorporated into the spatial framework. Chapter 6 goes on to illustrate this argument by showing how New Labour has presented a number of its policies including the New Deal, the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC), Education Action Zones (EAZ), and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO) as innovative. New Labour frequently claims to occupy a radical centre. Whether or not it is accepted, the best way to make sense of this claim is as its being about policy innovation. Third, the political centre is constructed through framing. Over any given issue, be it health, education, or defence, parties select policies. But they do not only select policies. They also select frames: particular ways of defining what a particular ‘policy dispute is really about, and what it has nothing to do with’.42 Parties seek to frame issues in particular ways because support for their policies will depend partly upon the frame being used to view them. For Philip Gould, momentum in political campaigns is created by ‘defining the political debate on your terms. Every political debate can be seen in two ways: one that will favour you, and one that will favour your opponents’.43 The

42

Thomas Nelson and Zoe Oxley, ‘Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion’, Journal of Politics, 61 (1999), 1040–67.

43

Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the modernisers saved the Labour Party, p. 294.

INTRODUCTION

11

existence of such framing effects is important because it means that parties can position themselves at the political centre by changing the frames used to view polices rather than the policies themselves. Because there is rarely, if ever, a single frame through which an issue can be viewed, the position of the political centre is not fixed. Whether or not a party is believed to be at the political centre will depend upon the frame being used to view its policies. Parties can construct the political centre by constructing the way in which voters see and understand political space. Drawing upon the literature on framing developed in political psychology, Chapter 7 shows how framing can be incorporated into the spatial framework. Chapter 8 illustrates this argument by showing how New Labour has sought to frame and reframe such issues as Europe, tax and spend, and ownership, and particular events and crises like the petrol blockades of August 2000 and the imbroglio over the arms embargo on Sierra Leone. Fourth, the political centre is constructed through leadership. Parties do not simply seek to persuade voters that their policies and ideology are centrist. They seek also to project their leader as someone who personally embodies the political centre. Politicians' values, background, formative experiences, education, interests, accent and manners, family, tastes in food, music, and football teams are all offered up as evidence of their centrist credentials, as being reassuringly normal and familiar traits and characteristics with which complete strangers can identify and empathise. Blair is clearly not an ordinary or typical person. Measured in terms of his personal abilities, he is extraordinary, a charismatic leader. Yet he is also routinely packaged as being someone who is entirely ordinary. Leadership image is constructed. This is not to say that such images are simply fabrications. Politicians are born in a particular place and go to particular schools and this kind of information is extremely difficult to bury. But image is not a simple one-to-one reflection of some underlying reality. Politicians and their advisers have room to create particular images and in doing so to attract votes. Chapter 9 shows why leadership is important and how it can be understood spatially. Chapter 10 goes on to show how Blair's image as an English middle-class family man who likes his football, an occasional pint, R.E.M., the Beatles, and ‘all the bands that everyone loves’, Gladiators, and Noel's House Party was constructed in the run-up to the 1997 election.44 Parties cannot simply move to the political centre by abandoning one set of policies and adopting another. They must construct the positions they seek to occupy. I do not however mean to suggest that any party with any set of policies can successfully construct a position for itself at the political centre.

44

Blair, quoted, John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little Brown & Company, 2001), pp. 299–300.

12

INTRODUCTION

There are, as I emphasise in subsequent chapters, limits to the possibilities of construction. At any one time voters will have particular beliefs about which parties and which policies are politically moderate and which are extreme. So at any one time it will appear that some policies just are centrist and this means that parties adopting these policies will also appear centrist. Yet, however natural and obvious they may appear, such beliefs are not hard-wired into our brains. Such beliefs have been constructed and can be reconstructed. Beliefs are not however equal in status. Some are more widely shared and deeply held and will consequently prove more difficult to reconstruct. There is no reason why a party advocating public floggings and national conscription must be seen as politically extreme. Indeed it is not that difficult to think of a world in which a party committed to such policies would be seen as being at the political centre. But at this moment we do not live in such a world and it would be extremely difficult for a party adopting such a set of policies to persuade the electorate that it was at the political centre.

The Difference Construction Makes As the party regarded as being in safe possession of the political centre, New Labour secured election landslides in both 1997 and 2001. New Labour has not moved to this centre. It has constructed it. The difference involved here may seem trivial, a matter of semantics. My argument is that the difference is a hugely important one. It is a difference around which can be assembled a distinctive account of New Labour's development, nature, and political trajectory. Four specific but related differences that follow from seeing the political centre as constructed will be identified in this section, elaborated upon in the following chapters and re-examined in the conclusion. The first difference relates to the relationship between policy and position. In Downs' account of party competition, a party's spatial position is a function of the policies it adopts. Downs asserts that ‘each party takes stands on many issues, that each stand can be assigned a position on our left–right scale’ and that a party's overall position on that scale is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies it upholds’.45 Parties move to the right by adopting more right-wing policies. They move to left by adopting more left-wing policies and so on. Applied to the study of the Labour Party this generates a political history in which the move first to the left and then from the left back to the political centre is told as a history of changes in policy. It is a history in which unilateralism gives way to multilateralism, nationalisation

45

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 132.

INTRODUCTION

13

to privatisation, and the abolition of private schools to the use of private firms in the state education system. Yet, political space does not come so neatly packaged. Political space is unbounded, infinite, and both disarranged and changeable. It is because political space is unbounded that parties must construct their positions through framing. It is because political space is infinite that parties must construct their position through innovation. It is because political space is disarranged and changeable that parties must construct their position through rhetoric. Applied to the study of New Labour this suggests a very different political history. Policy matters. The announcement in October 1994 that Clause IV was to be rewritten; the announcement in January 1997 that a Labour Government would leave the rate of income tax unchanged; the announcement in October 1997 that Britain would not, in that Parliament at least, adopt a single European currency; and the announcement in April 2002 that taxes would be raised to pay for investment in the National Health Service (NHS) were all hugely important moments. Yet spatial position is not simply a matter of policy. The belief that New Labour occupies the political centre cannot be accounted for simply in terms of changes in policy. Policies had to be presented and defended. They had, in some cases, to be developed. The issues the policies related to had to be defined and placed in a particular context. They had to be presented and defended by a leader whose own image had to be constructed. Any account of New Labour's development, nature, and political trajectory must take account of more than changes in policy.

14

INTRODUCTION

The second difference relates to the importance of creativity. In Downs' account, politics is a matter of calculation rather than creativity. Parties confront voters who have particular preferences and must choose between a particular set of policies placed before them on a spectrum running from left to right. Parties adopt particular positions by adopting particular policies, it being the responsibility of party leaders to identify the policy package that will secure the most votes. This is a calculation in which there are wrong answers and a right answer. Only by moving to the electoral centre can a party maximise its vote. Applied to the study of New Labour this makes the party's acquisition of that centre in the run-up to and aftermath of the 1997 general election seem unremarkable, the consequence of no more than a careful reading of opinion polls and focus groups. It also leaves the party's electoral future looking assured. To triumph in the future the party has only to continue doing what it has done in the past. If it can resist the call of the ‘heartlands’ and remain faithful to the voters of ‘Middle England’, future victories will be assured. Yet political space does not come so neatly packaged. Spatial position is not simply a function of policy. Parties must construct their position. The successful use of rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership to construct a position at the political centre requires creativity. Applied to the study of New Labour this makes the party's occupation of the political centre seem a genuine accomplishment, something which, although now taken for granted, required considerable political skill. It also leaves New Labour's electoral future looking less certain. If it is to retain possession of the political centre, the party will need to continue to exhibit creativity. There is however no guarantee that it will be able to do so. The third difference relates to the importance of news management or spin. Ever since Peter Mandelson was first appointed Labour's Director of Campaigns and Communications in September 1985, spin and the activities of spindoctors have been a source of endless fascination. Blair's personal hold on public opinion has been attributed to his ability to coin such soundbites as ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’ and ‘the Queen of Hearts’.46 At the same time some of New Labour's worst moments—the Ecclestone and Kelly affairs and the resignations of Peter Mandelson and Stephen Byers—have been attributed to an excessive and ultimately counter-productive reliance on spin. New Labour's critics on both the left and right have lined up to condemn the ‘culture of spin that lies at the heart of this Government’.47 But in Downs' account the forces driving party competition lie, like tectonic plates, far beneath this surface. Parties adopt particular positions by adopting particular policies. These positions are then offered to voters who opt for the party closest to them. There is no room for spin here, no room for parties to present their policies in certain ways, no room for arguments about the ‘real’ meaning of an issue, no room for claims that an opponent's policies are ‘really’ left-wing. Yet political space does not come so neatly packaged. Parties must convince voters that they are at the political centre, that their policies are moderate and that those of their opponents' are extreme. For this reason, spin is an essential part of the political process. The final difference relates to the amount of choice parties have. In Downs' account party leaders have no room for manoeuvre, no choice of electoral strategy. Only by moving to the electoral centre can a party maximise its vote. Parties that fail to move to the electoral centre lose. Applied to the study of British politics this suggests both a critique of and a defence for New Labour. The critique is that New Labour has done nothing to change the course of British politics, that it has embraced a post-Thatcherite consensus.

46

Although neither of these soundbites were actually coined by Blair. Gordon Brown is usually given the credit for ‘tough on crime’ and Alistair Campbell for the ‘Queen of hearts’.

47

Teresa May, Conservative Party Shadow Culture Spokesman, speech, ‘Culture of Spin Within Government’, 23 October 2001. Full text available via www.conservatives. com/news/speeches.cfm . As for critics on the left see Polly Newton, ‘Field Attacks Spin Doctors as Cancer at Heart of Government’, The Times, 4 July 1998; James Lansdale and Andrew Pierce, ‘Labour MPs Back Follett Attack on Spin Culture’, The Times, 4 July 2000; David Hencke, ‘Short Flays Blair's Dark Men’, Guardian, 8 August 1996; and Kamal Ahmed, ‘Mowlam: My Vicious, Horrible Colleagues’, Observer, 14 April 2002.

INTRODUCTION

15

The defence is that there was and is no alternative, that the failure to modernise and move to the electoral centre would only have meant further losses. As Blair told Labour Party delegates assembled to approve the text of the new Clause IV in 1995: I did not come into the Labour Party to join a pressure group. I didn't become leader of this party to lead a protest movement. Power without principle is barren. But principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.48 In the alternative account developed here, parties have some room for manoeuvre. There is no alternative to the electoral centre. Parties that do not appeal to the median voter will lose. Neither is there an alternative to the political centre. Parties that are thought of as extreme will fail to attract the support of voters at the electoral centre. But whilst there is no alternative to the political centre there are alternative political centres. Spatial position cannot be read off directly from policy. The creative ability of a party to persuade voters about the merits of its policies will shape perceptions of position. The creative ability of a party to frame an issue in a particular way will shape perceptions of its position. The creative ability of a party to develop new polices and to project its leadership in an effective way will shape perceptions of its position. The commitment to a particular set of policies does not entail a commitment to a particular position. This again suggests both a critique of and a defence for New Labour. The critique is that New Labour embraced a post-Thatcherite consensus when it did not need to do so, when it could have sought to construct an alternative understanding of the centre. The defence is that it has constructed just such an alternative understanding.

48

Blair, speech, ‘The New Clause IV’, 29 April 1995. Reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 54.


2 The Centre, Downs, and New Labour Introduction Within political science the argument that parties will move to the electoral centre in an effort to maximise their vote has acquired the formal title of the median voter theorem. It is a theorem routinely linked to Downs and An Economic Theory of Democracy. When textbooks offer an account of the median voter theorem, it is Downs' name that appears in the first paragraph. When theorists provide criticisms of and alternatives to the theorem, it is Downs' name that appears in the first footnote. Academics looking to describe and explain New Labour's move to the centre refer to An Economic Theory of Democracy. That the link should have been drawn in this way is no doubt unfair both to other authors and to Downs. Unfair to other authors because Downs was not the first person to apply the spatial metaphor to the analysis of party competition; does not actually use the nomenclature of the median voter and does not list precisely the assumptions needed to sustain the conclusion that parties will move to the electoral centre. Unfair on Downs because the median voter theorem presented in his name has been reduced to little more than a caricature of the argument he actually develops. Yet the link between Downs and the median voter theorem is one that has been made and which is not now going to be unmade. The following section offers an account of the basic structure of the theorem. It is introduced by way of four separate arguments: (1) that parties and voters can be described as operating in political space; (2) that spatial position is a function of policy; (3) that parties must maximise their vote by locating at the electoral centre; and (4) that parties are vote-maximisers. In standard textbook accounts of the median voter theorem these four arguments are usually bundled together. They are however analytically distinct. It is possible to believe that parties must maximise their vote by locating at the electoral centre without also believing that parties are vote-maximisers. It is possible to believe that spatial position is a function of policy without also believing that parties must maximise their vote by

18

THE CENTRE, DOWNS, AND NEW LABOUR

locating at the electoral centre and so on. It is difficult to exaggerate the amount of ink that has been spilt over the third part of the theorem, the claim that parties can only maximise their vote by locating at the electoral centre. Successive generations of theorists have argued about whether and to what extent parties have an incentive to converge upon the electoral centre. I provide a brief summary of this debate at the end of the next section. I do so because it obviously matters a great deal whether New Labour had to move as far to the right as it did in order to be elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2001. The argument in the rest of this book nevertheless follows Downs in assuming that parties must appeal to the electoral centre. I do not assume this because I believe Downs' argument to be incontestable. I assume it because closing down debate about this part of the median voter theorem allows me to focus instead upon the claim that parties can be described as operating in political space. This part of the median voter theorem has attracted far less attention. Yet the spatial metaphor upon which this claim is based is, as I have already emphasised, problematic. Parties must construct the positions they wish to occupy. The third section examines the way in which Downs develops his spatial framework, at the way in which he positions parties within political space and ties policies to particular spatial locations. Downs' determination to develop a theory that can be used to generate predictions about party behaviour is argued to have led him to construct the spatial framework in a particular and, it will be argued, particularly misleading way. Downs avoids having to confront any differences between political space and the space within which we lead our everyday lives by reducing ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’, ownership, within which political space is presented as being bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed.49 By focusing exclusively upon the ownership issue, Downs avoids having to treat political position as something that parties must construct. Out of this critique of Downs' account, the fourth and final section develops further my general argument that parties must construct their spatial positions and in doing so provides a more detailed account of the nature and meaning of the political centre. Overall, the chapter is, I should warn, a long one which jumps, perhaps disconcertingly, from very general discussions about the development of the theory of party competition to a very detailed examination of the minutiae of Downs' argument. In later chapters, I will, however, return to and develop more carefully many of the arguments introduced here.

49

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 116.


19

The Median Voter Theorem As it is used in this and subsequent chapters, the median voter theorem is the collective name given to four arguments about party competition. (1) It is possible to conceive of party competition in terms of a one-dimensional, left to right space. This requires not only that parties can be thought of as being located on the left, centre-left, far right, and so on but, as Downs recognises, that voters' ‘political preferences can be ordered from left to right’ and that voters vote for the party closest to them in political space.50 (2) Spatial position is a function of policy. Because a party's overall position in political space is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies [the party] upholds’, parties must change position by changing their policies.51 Parties must move to the right by adopting more right-wing policies. They must move to the left by adopting more left-wing policies and so on. Conversely, changes in policy result in changes in position. Adopting more right-wing policies means moving to the right and so on. (3) Parties must maximise their vote by moving to the position of the median voter, that is to the electoral centre. In Figure 2.1 the horizontal axis takes the form of a scale showing a series of alternative policy positions running from left to right and the vertical axis support for those positions. The median voter is that person whose preferred position along the left–right scale is such that there are as many voters to their left as to their right.52 In Figure 2.1 the line showing the aggregate distribution of preferences is drawn in such a way that the median is at X. If there are only two parties it is ‘now seen [by political scientists] as axiomatic that the policy packages offered by the parties will converge on the preferences of the median voter’.53 If there are only two parties, A and B, it is not difficult to see that if party A were to move to the left of this electoral centre, to point Z, party B would be able to acquire more than half of the vote by moving to any position between X and Z. Only when both parties straddle

50

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 115. The assumption that preferences can be expressed in terms of political space does not require that voters' preferences take the initial and underlying form of a preference for, say, right over left. It requires only that voters can translate their preferences into such terms. See Paul Sniderman, ‘Taking Sides: A Fixed Choice Theory of Political Reasoning’ in Arthur Lupia, Matthew McCubbins, and Samuel Popkin (eds.), Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

51


52

‘X is a median if ‘no majority of individuals have ideal points…to the left or right of X’. Thomas Schwarz, quoted, Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Analytical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 33.

53

Michael Laver, Private Desires, Political Action: An Invitation to the Politics of Rational Choice (London: Sage, 1997), p. 111.

20


the electoral centre can neither party increase its vote by moving position. Convergence to the electoral centre is a stable equilibrium.54 What then of the political centre? This is a concept I will examine more carefully at the end of this chapter. For now, we might however equate it with that point in political space half-way along the horizontal axis. This gives us a basic and fundamental contrast between the electoral and political centres. The electoral centre is defined in terms of the distribution of preferences, that is, in terms of the vertical axis. The political centre is defined in terms of the range of policy options, that is, in terms of the horizontal axis. In this particular case, the electoral and political centres fall at the same point. There is however no reason why this must be so. There is, as I have already emphasised, no great difficulty in imagining the distribution of preferences to be such that the electoral centre is to the left or right of the political centre. Yet the electoral and political centres do often coincide. In other words, the actual distribution of preferences sometimes looks very much like that shown in Figure 2.1. Figure 2.2 shows how respondents to the 1997 British Election Study (BES) positioned themselves along the left–right axis when invited to do so by an interviewer. As we can see here, the political centre, point 5 along this particular scale, attracts more than three times as much support as any other position. (4) The self-interest of party leaders will indeed lead them to locate at the votemaximising position. Downs assumes that leaders ‘act solely in order to attain the income, prestige and power which come from being in office’.55 As a result, parties formulate policies to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies'.56 This assumption does not mean that party leaders can have no preferences about policy, that they must be indifferent between right-wing and left-wing policies. It does however require that they give no weight to such preferences when they come into conflict with the requirements of vote-maximisation. Party leaders will not trade off policy against votes. They will sacrifice any policy in order to gain just one additional vote. An Economic Theory is an entirely theoretical work. It makes no references to and offers no analysis of the institutional environment or patterns of party competition in particular countries. Yet in recent years it has been seized upon to provide what has become the ‘the most common explanation [of why] Labour moved centre-right’.57 As Colin Hay remarks, ‘a quite startling range of authors have…been impressed by the similarities between Labour's

54

The nature of and requirements for equilibrium are discussed in Chapter 5.

55


56


57

Pippa Norris, ‘New Politicians? Changes in Party Competition at Westminster’, in Geoffrey Evans and Pippa Norris (eds.), Critical Elections: British Parties and Voters in LongTerm Perspective (London: Sage, 1999), p. 23.


21

FIGURE 2.1 Two-Party Competition and the Centre. Michael Laver, Private Desires, Political Action: An Invitation to the Politics of Rational Choice (London: Sage, 1997), p. 112.

FIGURE 2.2 Voters' Political Position, 1997. Q: 227a (BES, 1997). ‘In politics people sometimes talk of left and right. Where would you place yourself on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 means the left and 10 means the right?’ All BES questions are available on-line via: http:// nesstar.data-archive.ac.uk/ nesstarlight

politics…and the Downsian logic of electoral rationality’.58 Hay cites Mark Blyth, Neil Gavin and David Sanders, Anthony Heath and Roger Jowell, Michael Kenny and Martin Smith, and Eric Shaw as having ‘been impressed by the similarities between Labour's “politics of catch-up”, with its studious targeting of the median voter, and the Downsian logic of electoral rationality and/or expediency’.59 To this list might be added more recent publications by

58

Colin Hay, Labouring Under False Pretences: The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 76.

59

Hay, Labouring Under False Pretences: The Political Economy of New Labour, p. 76; Mark Blyth, ‘Moving the Political Middle: Redefining the Boundaries of State Action’, Political Quarterly, 68 (1997), 231–40; Neil Gavin and David Sanders, ‘The Economy and Voting’ in Pippa Norris and Neil Gavin (eds.), Britain Votes 1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Anthony Heath and Roger Jowell, ‘Labour's Policy Review’ in Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice (eds.), Labour's Last Chance? The 1992 Election and Beyond (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994); Anthony Heath and Bruno Paulson, ‘Issues and the Economy’, Political Quarterly, 63 (1992), 431–47; Michael Kenny and Martin Smith, ‘(Mis)Understanding Blair’, Political Quarterly, 68 (1997), 220–30; David Sanders, ‘The New Electoral Battlefield’ in Anthony King et al.(eds.), New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls 1997 (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1998); Eric Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation (London: Routledge, 1994).

22


Richard Heffernan, Pippa Norris, and Charles Pattie.60 It is not difficult to describe the basic form this application takes. Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair pushed the Labour party to the right and towards the centre. This movement increased Labour's vote in 1992 and 1997. The expectation that it would have precisely this effect provided the motive for the action. Neither is there any particular difficulty in marshalling evidence to support this analysis. In his detailed account of the Labour Party during this period, Eric Shaw shows how Labour came to use opinion polls and other quantitative research to identify ‘the degree of proximity between aggregate voter opinion and the electorate's perceptions of where the parties stood’ with the intention of ‘re-aligning…the party's overall policy package as closely as possible to the views of the median floating voter’.61 Blair himself repeatedly and carefully denied that he sought office for the sake of achieving office. ‘With my class background if all I had wanted to do was exercise power I could and would, let's be blunt about it, have joined another party’.62 Yet, in the run-up to the 1997 election New Labour also emphasised that there was nothing to be gained from remaining pure in opposition, that victory was worth making compromises for. Here, clear lessons appear to have been drawn from the United States. Blair and Brown visited Clinton's election team in January 1993, only a few months after the Presidential election. Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould returned to America in December 1996 in the aftermath of Clinton's re-election.63 According to John Rentoul, the

60

Richard Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2000), Pippa Norris, ‘New Labour and Public Opinion: The Third Way as Centrism’, in Stuart White (ed.), New Labour: The Progressive Future? (London: Palgrave, 2001), Charles Pattie, ‘New Labour and the Electorate’, in Steve Ludlam and Martin Smith (eds.), New Labour in Government (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001).

61

Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation, p. 60. Although highly critical of the median voter theory, Colin Hay makes a similar point. Downs' theory is worth taking seriously because New Labour ‘has come to accept many of the assumptions which inform [this] theory’. Hay, Labouring Under False Pretences: The Political Economy of New Labour, p. 94.

62

Blair, quoted, Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? (London: Faber & Faber, 1996), p. 32.

63

Michael Jones, ‘Clinton's Gunslingers Show Labour how to Shoot a Line’, Sunday Times, 27 April 1997. During the 1992 Presidential campaign the Home Office appeared to make available to the Republicans the contents of the file kept on Bill Clinton from his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Such was the Democrats' anger that New Labour found itself pushing it an open door when it asked for electoral advice.


23

lesson Blair and Brown learnt from their American adventure was ‘a banal but important one—that all politics is a battle for the centre ground’.64 In 1996 the lesson remained the same. At the behest of his prophetically named political adviser, Dick Morris, Clinton had pursued a strategy of ‘triangulation’: positioning himself between, whilst attempting to rise above, the Republican and Democrat parties.65 It was a concept which found instant favour with New Labour and was only abandoned in the aftermath of the 2001 election.66 New Labour's strategy in 1997 and 2001 was not onedimensional. Whether presented in the guise of ‘Essex man’ or ‘Worcester woman’, ‘Sierra man’ or ‘Galaxy guy’, New Labour searched long and hard for the centre-ground votes of Middle England. Yet, it balanced this with the promise to activists that it would remain faithful to policies like the minimum wage and devolution and would be more radical in office than most expected. To activists, soft-left MPs, and those who eventually came to be known as ‘heartland’ voters, the mantra of traditional values in a modern setting was repeatedly intoned. Seizing upon such ambiguities, the Conservatives attempted to present New Labour as no more than an exercise in slick marketing and clever spin. John Major warned the electorate that Labour remained on the left, that ‘the language is new but the prejudices familiar’.67 The electorate did not appear to be listening. In 1997 New Labour attracted, as might be expected, 75 per cent of the vote of those who, when asked by interviewers working for the BES, placed themselves on the most left-wing decile of a ten-point scale. Yet it also attracted around 45 per cent of the vote of those who placed themselves at the political centre: in the fourth, fifth, and sixth deciles.68 As Colin Hay observes, it is ironic that a forty-year-old book has been seized upon to explain the behaviour of a party which has gone to such

64

John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001), p. 197.

65

Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Getting Re-elected Against All Odds (Washington: Renaissance Books, 1996). Morris was forced to resign shortly before the 1996 Presidential election when details of his affair with a prostitute appeared in the press.

66

In May 2002 the new Education Minister, David Miliband, was reported as having concluded that triangulation worked as a strategy of opposition but not of government. Andy McSmith, ‘Miliband: Ministerial Material After a Year’, Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2002. Much the same point was made in a thoughtful speech by Peter Mandelson the following year. Peter Mandelson, speech, Swedish Social Democratic Party, 14 May 2003. Full text available via www.petermandelson.com/ssap.shtml .

67

John Major, House of Commons, 24 January 1995, Hansard, Col. 136.

68

Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice (eds.), The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 121.

24


lengths to proclaim the virtues of modernisation.69 Within political science, An Economic Theory remains a hugely influential book. It has, however, become a starting-point rather than an end-point in the debate about the nature and logic of party competition. Much of this debate has focused upon the third part of the median voter theorem: the claim that parties can only maximise their vote by moving to the electoral centre. This is a conclusion successive generations of theorists have challenged. Downs bases his argument upon the assumption that there is only one, left-to-right, dimension across which parties compete. Against this, Richard McKelvey, has shown that when there are two or more dimensions in political space, that there is rarely a stable equilibrium: that there will always be at least one other point in political space that is preferred by the majority to status quo.70 In recent years, this argument has swung back. It is now usually argued that parties still have an incentive to move if not to the electoral centre then at least to positions in its immediate vicinity.71 Downs bases his argument upon the assumption that there are only two parties. Gary Cox has shown that when there are three or more parties there is ‘no clear and consistent’ incentive for parties to converge.72 Downs bases his argument upon the assumption that parties only care about the votes they receive: that they formulate policies in order to win elections. In a series of path-breaking articles on ‘probabilistic voting’, James Enelow and Melvin Hinich have shown how candidates with preferences over policy will avoid moving to the electoral centre, if voters care about the character of a candidate, have an underlying identification with any party, or form any judgement about its probity or competence. If voters care about any of these attributes they may not vote for the party ‘closest’ to them. In this case, parties can remain on their preferred side of the

69

Hay, Labouring Under False Pretences:The Political Economy of New Labour, p. 76.

70

Richard McKelvey, ‘Intransitivities in Multidimensional Voting Models and Some Implications for Agenda Control’, Journal of Economic Theory, 12 (1976), 472–82. The basic terms of this argument had already been established by Kenneth Arrow and Charles Plott. Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley, 1951); Charles Plott, ‘A Notion of Equilibrium and its Possibility Under Majority Rule’, American Economic Review, 57 (1967), 787–806.

71

See Gary Cox, ‘The uncovered Set and the Core’, American Journal of Political Science, 31 (1987), 408–2; and Nicholas Miller, Bernard Grofman, and Scott Feld, ‘The Geometry of Majority Rule’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 4 (1989), 379–406. Gordon Tullock made much the same point in ‘The General Irrelevance of the General Impossibility Theorem’, Quarterly Journal of Economics', 81 (1967), 256–70.

72

Cox, ‘Multicandidate Spatial Competition’, in James Enelow and Melvin Hinich (eds.), Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 182. See also Cox, ‘Electoral Equilibrium Under Alternative Voting Institutions’, American Journal of Political Science, 31 (1987), 82–108; ‘Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems’, American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 903–35. Downs' discussion of multi-party competition can be found in An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 125–7.


25

electoral centre and still (probably) win. How far they will stray from the electoral centre depends upon the strength of their policy preferences and the strength of the voters' attachments.73 Downs bases his argument upon the assumption that party members have ‘exactly the same goals’ and that parties can, consequently, be viewed as having a ‘single, consistent preference-ordering’.74 Against this, it can be shown that when activists or elected party representatives have the power to select and re-select their leadership, that leaders may avoid moving to the electoral centre.75 Finally, Downs bases his argument upon the assumption that voters select the party ‘closest’ to them in political space. One alternative here are ‘directional’ theories of voting in which it is argued that voters select the party on their ‘side’ of an issue and in which parties, therefore, have little incentive to move to the electoral centre.76 I have not attempted to provide a detailed review of the literature on party competition as it has developed since the publication of An Economic Theory.77 Even this limited review is, however, sufficient for the simple point I want to make. For the last forty or so years theoretical interest has been focused upon the third part of the median voter theorem: the claim that parties must move to the electoral centre to maximise their vote. Other parts of Downs' theory have been brought into the light in so far as they bear upon this claim. The grip of the spatial metaphor upon our thinking is however such that the claim that it is possible to conceive of parties as operating in political space has remained largely unchallenged.

73

James Enelow and Melvin Hinich, ‘A General Probabilistic Spatial Theory of Elections’, Public Choice, 61 (1989), 101–13; ‘Nonspatial Candidate Characteristics and Electoral Competition, Journal of Politics, 44 (1982), 115–30; James Adams, ‘A Theory of Spatial Competition with Biased Voters: Party Policies Viewed Temporally and Comparatively’, British Journal of Political Science, 31 (2001), 121–58.

74

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 26–7.

75

John Aldrich, ‘A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 974–90.

76

George Rabinowitz and Stuart McDonald, ‘A Directional Theory of Issue Voting’, American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 93–121. The same argument was offered by Steven Matthews, and, from outside of the directional theory of voting, by David Robertson and Steven Matthews, ‘A Simple Directional Model of Electoral Competition’, Public Choice, 34 (1979), 141–57; Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition (London: John Wiley, 1976), pp. 58–60. In recent years it has been argued that ‘mixed’ models in which voters care about both proximity and direction are best equipped to predict election results; Samuel Merrill and Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

77

Accessible and detailed reviews are provided by Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Analytical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Peter Ordeshook, ‘The Spatial Analysis of Elections and Committees: Four Decades of Research’, in Dennis Mueller (ed.), Perspectives on Public Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and ‘Spatial Theories of Electoral Competition’ in Donald Green and Ian Shapiro (eds.), Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

26


The assumption that this space is one-dimensional has been set aside. The assumption that parties can be represented as moving between and occupying particular points in political space has not. Indeed, so fundamental is this link that the theory of party competition has actually become known as the spatial theory of voting.78 Having examined the basic terms of the median voter theorem and of the ways in which it has been developed over the last forty or so years, I will now more carefully examine the way in which Downs presents parties as operating in political space.

Downsian Space In an article first published in 1929, a professor of mathematics at Chapel Hill University, Harold Hotelling, offered a spatial analysis of the behaviour of entrepreneurs.79 The model depicted profit-maximising businesses as having to locate themselves along a one-dimensional space over which customers were equally divided. This space, Hotelling wrote, ‘may be the Main Street in a town or a transcontinental railway’.80 Hotelling's question was about where businesses would be located. His answer was that they would be located at the centre of the street, that is, at the point half-way between the left-hand and right-hand edges of the scale.81 In what is little more than a footnote to the main body of his argument, Hotelling then extended his discussion from economics to politics. So general is this tendency that it appears in the most diverse fields of competitive activity, even quite apart from what is called economic life. In politics, it is strikingly exemplified. The competition for voters between the Republican and Democratic parties does not lead to a clear drawing of issues, an adoption of two strikingly contrasted positions between which the voter may choose. Instead each party strives to make its platform as much like the other's as possible.82 Hotelling did not use the terms left and right to describe the position of parties in political space and did not seek to represent the position of parties

78

See, for example, the titles of the relevant chapters by Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A critique of applications in political science, pp. 147–78 and Ordeshook, ‘The Spatial Analysis of Elections and Committees: Four Decades of Research’.

79

Harold Hotelling, ‘Stability in Competition’, Economic Journal, 39 (1929), 41–57.

80

Hotelling, ‘Stability in Competition’, p. 46.

81

Hotelling also argues that businesses will not differentiate their products. Entrepreneurs will end up offering the same product at the same location. For the development of Hotelling's ideas within economic theory see Claude Ponsard, History of Spatial Economic Theory (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1983); Stephen Brown, ‘Retail Location Theory: the Legacy of Harold Hotelling’, Journal of Retailing, 65 (1989), 450–70; and B. Curtis Eaton and Richard Lipsey, ‘The Principle of Minimum Differentiation Revisited: New Developments in the Spatial Theory of Competition’, Review of Economic Studies, 42 (1975), 27–49.

82

Hotelling, ‘Stability in Competition’, p. 54.


27

using a scale. Nevertheless it is this basic argument that Downs sees himself as ‘borrowing and elaborating’ upon.83 The eighth chapter of An Economic Theory starts with the assumption that political preferences can be ordered from left to right’ and that these preferences can be represented using a linear scale.84 Notice that the left and right being invoked here are a left and right in metaphorical political space. Yet, to illustrate his argument and make it ‘more plausible’, Downs goes on to give the left–right scale a non-metaphorical foundation.85 He does so by reducing ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’: the degree of private ownership.86 Private ownership can, Downs suggests, range anywhere between 100 per cent of the economy and 0 per cent. As Figure 2.3 shows, these options can be mapped on to a linear scale running from the left (0 per cent) to the right (100 per cent) with each point in between representing an additional 1 per cent private ownership. It is this version of the left–right scale that is then used by Downs in his subsequent diagrams.87 Only towards the end of the chapter with the last diagram drawn and the argument about convergence to the electoral FIGURE 2.3 Left and Right and Ownership.

83


84


85


86


87

By using the ownership example Downs can show how parties choose between various policy options without having to use the terms left and right in their political and so metaphorical senses. The policy options in Figure 2.3 run not from ‘most left-wing policy positions’ to ‘most right-wing policy positions’ as they do in Figure 2.1, but from 0 % to 100 % private ownership. The labels left-wing and right-wing used in their political and so metaphorical sense are added to the left-hand and right-hand ends of Figure 2.3 and this looks perfectly innocuous because we are used to the idea of left-wing parties favouring nationalisation and right-wing ones privatisation. But if these labels were removed it would make absolutely no difference to the representation. Removing left-wing and right-wing from Figure 2.1 would render it incomprehensible. What then would the horizontal axis be measuring? Removing left-wing and right-wing from Figure 2.3 would leave a diagram still depicting the level of private ownership. The left and right over which policy options are being arranged in Figure 2.3 is a literal left and right. 0 % private ownership is, literally, on the left-hand edge of the scale and 100 % private ownership is, literally, on the right-hand edge of the scale. Yet, if we wanted to, we could arrange exactly the same information in such a way that 0 % private ownership was on the right-hand side and 100 % private ownership on the left. It would make no difference. Or we could, alternatively, dispense with the horizontal ordering altogether and place 0% private ownership at the top of a vertical line and 100 % private ownership at the bottom.

28


centre made does Downs return to an abstract conception of the left–right scale. Eliminating the assumption that politics is entirely a matter of ownership, he suggests that ‘each party takes stands on many issues, that each stand can be assigned a position on our left–right scale’ and that a party's net position is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies it upholds’.88 At this point, and as in Figure 2.1, the ends of the horizontal axis are now simply marked right and left, a left and right in metaphorical political space. It is this version of the left–right scale and not the ‘more plausible’ ownership one that appears in texts summarising Downs' arguments and in the models of party competition which have appeared over the last forty or so years.89 That Downs develops his argument in this way may seem entirely unimportant, merely a matter, as Downs suggests, of illustration. That textbooks jump straight to the use of a left–right scale relying upon notions of metaphorical political space may also be seen as reflecting little more than a matter of style. It will be argued not. The use of the ownership example is significant because it allows Downs to proceed without having to address the limits of the spatial metaphor and without therefore having to consider the possibility that political position is constructed. Chapter 1 suggests that the spatial metaphor is an attractive and effective one because we are comfortable with the idea of there being a world around us within which we lead our everyday lives. In terms of our common sense experience, we attribute particular properties to this everyday space.90 In the first place, we think of it as being bounded. When we walk into a room we think of the space in that room as being contained within a set of walls and doors. We also think of it as being finite. When we walk into a room we think of that room as having a particular amount of space in it, a space that we could, if we wanted, measure. Finally, we think of the objects in a room as being arranged in a particular way such that when, for example, we enter a room, there is a table to our left and to the left of that a chair. Ownership is a useful example for Downs because it is an issue to which can be attributed the same

88


89

In addition to Laver's Private Desires, Political Action: An Invitation to the Politics of Rational Choice, see Joe B. Stevens, The Economics of Collective Choice (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1993), p. 177; Dennis Mueller, Public Choice II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 119; and Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), p. 119.

90

This common sense conception of space is one in which space is just space, something that provides an unnoticed backdrop to the events and dramas of our lives. Such a conception was most obviously celebrated in Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in the seventeenth century. This Newtonian conception has however been supplanted first by Einstein's special and later by his general theories of relativity. That Einstein has shown our commonsense attributions to be mistaken does not however mean that we find it any more difficult to walk from one side of a room to another. It has not, in other words, undermined the force of the metaphor.


29

properties as common sense space. So as it is characterised by Downs, ownership is an issue the policy options for which are bounded. It is not possible to have a proportion of private ownership lower than 0 per cent or greater than 100 per cent. As a result, the one-dimensional scale on which Downs represents the issue in Figure 2.3 has clear ends. As it is characterised by Downs, ownership is also an issue for which there are a finite number of policy options. If we restrict ourselves, as Downs does, to whole numbers, then there are a maximum of 100 policy options. As a result, the one-dimensional scale on which Downs represents the issue of ownership in Figure 2.3 contains a set number of components. Finally, as it is characterised by Downs, the sequence of these policy options is prearranged and fixed. Fifty-nine per cent private ownership is placed to the right of 58 per cent private ownership and so on.91 There is no room for any disagreement here about where a particular policy option should be placed along the one-dimensional scale used to represent the issue. Yet the ownership example is atypical. It is far from clear that other issues can be arranged in this way. It is not even clear that ownership need be or should be arranged in this way. Who is to say that the issue of ownership must be about the overall level of private ownership rather than, say, the particular mix of industries that should be publicly owned? Chapter 7 argues that the ‘ends’ of political space are not bounded in the same way as they are in Downs' example. Chapter 5 shows that there are not a finite number of policies over which parties must choose. Chapter 3 demonstrates that the sequencing of policies from left to right should not be seen as being prearranged and fixed. Whether one policy is more right-wing than another is not simply a matter of counting. It is a matter of political argument. The spatial metaphor is problematic because political space does not share the same properties we attribute to the space within which we lead our everyday lives. By reducing ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’, Downs avoids having to confront the limits of the spatial metaphor and with this the possibility that spatial position is constructed. That, Downs equips himself with a spatial framework which allows him to represent political space in a particular and, I have argued, particularly misleading way is not a simple coincidence, a quirk of the text. The use of the ownership example needs to be understood and explained in the context of Downs' more general methodological commitments. An Economic Theory is noteworthy not simply for the conclusions it reaches about party competition but for being one of the first attempts to apply the techniques of

91

Measurements within the scale are not simply ordinal but cardinal. That is, it is not only possible to place 59 % ownership to the right of 50 % ownership but to show by how much 59 % ownership is to the right and left of all other policies.

30


economics to the study of politics in a method now known as rational or public choice.92 As a work of rational choice, Downs' argument is underpinned by a particular set of general assumptions. Foremost amongst these are the assumptions that individuals are utility maximisers whose preferences are, in the short-term at least, fixed. Utility maximisation means that individuals can be relied upon to ‘move toward [their] goals in a way which, to the best of [their] knowledge, uses the least possible input of scarce resources per unit of valued output’.93 The ends or preferences which individuals pursue or have are fixed. In the case of the electorate this means that ‘every citizen has a fixed conception of the good society and has already related it to his knowledge of party policies in a consistent manner’.94 In the case of party leaders this means that each seeks election and so seeks to ‘formulate policies to win elections, rather than win elections to formulate policies’.95 These assumptions, Downs goes on to argue, are valuable because they make individuals' actions and thereby eventual outcomes predictable. If a theorist knows the ends of some decision-maker, he can predict what actions will be taken to achieve them as follows: (1) he calculates the most reasonable way for the decision-maker to reach his goals, and (2) he assumes this way will actually be chosen because the decision-maker is rational.96 Although An Economic Theory closes with a list of twenty-five ‘empirically testable propositions’ derived from the book, Downs' work is an entirely theoretical one.97 Yet he is adamant in seeing the capacity for rational choice theory to generate testable predictions as valuable and as marking the key difference between his own work and that of its predecessors.98 Predictions are valuable because they allow hypotheses and claims to be tested against

92

Bernard Grofman lists the other founding texts of rational choice as being Kenneth Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley 1951), Duncan Black's The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge; Mass: Harvard University Press, 1965), and William Riker's The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). See Bernard Grofman, ‘Introduction’, in Bernard Grofman (ed.), Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 1.

93


94


95


96


97


98

On the importance of prediction within rational choice see Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Application in Political Science; Morris Fiorina, ‘Rational Choice, Empirical Contributions, And the Scientific Enterprise’, Critical Review, 9 (1995), 85–94; Cox, ‘The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theory: A Reply to Green and Shapiro’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 11 (1999), 147–70; and William Riker, ‘The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay in the History of Political Science’, American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 753–66.


31

the ‘real’ world. Predictions allow political scientists to test their claims in the same way as economists and natural scientists. Downs' theory is one that can tell us something about how the world actually is rather than simply how it should be. The few [existing] analyses of government activity as a whole are mostly normative, i.e., they deduce the types of actions which a government should undertake from some basic ethical principle about its proper function. Our analysis is likewise deductive, since it posits a basic rule and draws conclusions therefrom. However, it is also positive, because we try to describe what will happen under certain conditions, not what should happen'. (emphasis in original)99 It is Downs' argument that utility maximisation and fixed preferences are necessary and sufficient conditions for making predictions. I agree that they are necessary conditions. Predictions about behaviour cannot be generated if it is assumed that individuals do not seek to maximise their utility or if their preferences are constantly changing. Yet these are not sufficient conditions. Downs' argument in the extract just quoted is incisive and reveals another necessary condition. Individuals must also be calculative decision-makers. Calculation is not the same as utility maximisation. Utility maximisation refers to behaviour: that of selecting the option valued most highly. Calculation refers to a capacity: that of being able to recognise the most valuable option. Calculation is necessary for prediction because it reduces the problem of choice to a mathematical problem all can deal with and all deal with in the same way. If decision-making is calculative then individuals, who have the same preferences and are faced with the same options, can be relied upon to make the same choices in just the same way that different pocket calculators can be relied upon to provide the same answer when asked the same question. Rational choice means that all make the same choices and because all make the same choices, individual choice can be predicted. I can predict how you would behave in a given situation because I can predict how I would behave. There is plenty of evidence that people are not very good at calculation. They overestimate the likelihood of improbable events and underestimate the likelihood of probable ones. They fail to take baseline probabilities into account and are easily misled by sometimes subtle changes in the wording of a question.100 People's calculative shortcomings are starkly revealed when they are matched against computers. These are not only quicker but also far more accurate.101 Yet my objection here is not that calculative decision-

99


100

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky provide the most frequently cited work here. See ‘Choices, Values, and Frames’, American Psychologist, 39 (1984), 341–50; Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); ‘On the Psychology of Prediction’, Psychological Review, 80 (1973), 237–51; ‘The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice’, Science, 211 (1981) 453–8.

101

Robyn Dawes, David Faust, and Paul Meehl, ‘Clinical Versus Actuarial Judgement’, Science, 243 (1989), 1668–74.

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making is simply wrong. It is rather that it is insufficient. What is missing from it is any sense of the possibility of individual creativity: of novel ideas and solutions being generated to familiar problems. People are not simply calculators who choose carefully and precisely between available options. People often act creatively. In showing imagination, flexibility, expressiveness, and openness, they sometimes ‘discover’ previously unrecognised opportunities and options.102 Computers may be better calculators than people are but this does not mean that they are better decision-makers. Computers lack creativity. A creative person can look at the same data as a purely calculative person but will see in them different things. Creative decision-making is not inconsistent with the assumptions of either utility maximisation or fixed preferences. Creativity does however threaten the capacity to make predictions. If only some individuals are creative then different individuals with the same preferences will behave in different ways when confronted with the same options. Even if it is assumed not only that all individuals are creative but that they are equally creative, prediction will still remain elusive unless it is also assumed that all have exactly the same creative ideas. And ideas that everyone has are not creative. Creativity cannot be predicted.103 In order to make calculative decision-making possible, Downs must assume that individuals are calculative decisionmakers. He must also assume that political space shares the same properties we attribute to the space within which we lead our everyday lives. If parties confront a political space within which there are a finite number of prearranged and fixed policy options with clearly defined boundaries then they can calculate which position will generate the most votes. In Figure 2.1, parties will calculate (without any great difficulty) that they must position themselves at the electoral centre to maximise their vote. This calculation is also a prediction about how parties will behave. When a particular set of assumptions hold, parties, any party, will move to the electoral centre. The assumption of calculative decisionmaking dovetails with and indeed requires the assumption that political space is bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. For reasons we have already outlined, this, in turn, requires Downs to reduce ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’, ownership, in which the limits of the spatial metaphor are obscured. To see this

102

On the Concept of Discovery, see Israel Kirzner, Discovery and the Capitalist Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); How Markets Work: Disequilibrium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery (London: IEA, 1997); Discovery, Capitalism and Distributive Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).

103

To make the same point, John Elster quotes Humphrey Lyttleton as saying that ‘if I knew where jazz was going, I'd be there already’. Jon Elster, Explaining Technical Change: A Case Study in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 9.


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link again, consider the alternative position to be developed here: that position is constructed through rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership. These are, as we will see, activities that require creativity. They envisage parties as formulating new ways of persuading voters, new policies and new ways of understanding policies. Yet with this creativity is lost the possibility of prediction. Downs must treat political position as being something a party moves to rather than constructs because he wants to see in politics a science within which predictions are possible.

The Construction of the Centre Chapter 1 explains that the centre is constructed in one general and four specific ways. The four specific ways, the four applications of this general argument, are dealt with in separate chapters on rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership. In the rest of this chapter, I, therefore, want to develop more carefully my general argument about the relationship between the electoral and political centres and relate this to the argument in An Economic Theory. As we have already seen, the median voter theorem rests upon a particular set of assumptions: that parties are votemaximisers; that there is only one, left to right, spatial dimension; that there are only two parties; and so on. A further and crucial assumption can however be identified: that of perfect information. Figure 2.1 provides us, the reader, with a spatial representation that allows us to locate the electoral centre and judge the position of parties in relation to it. Using Figure 2.1 we can see whether voters at any one point along the horizontal scale are closer to party A or party B. Yet the information given to us here is also information that it is assumed voters and parties have. If parties are to move to the electoral centre they must know where that centre is. If individuals are to vote for the party closest to them, they must know where the parties are. Perfect information is the lubricant that keeps this part of the median voter theorem running smoothly and predictably. In the introduction to this chapter it was claimed that the theorem presented in Downs' name is often reduced to little more than a caricature of Downs' actual argument. For Downs actually dismisses the assumption of perfect information as being simply implausible.104 Uncertainty—which he defines as ‘lack of sure knowledge about the course of past, present, future or hypothetical events’—is argued to be a pervasive and important phenomenon.105 It is pervasive because, as we will see in the next

104

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 13. Indeed the second of the four parts of the book and the one in which the discussion of the median voter theorem can be found is called ‘The General Effects of Uncertainty’.

105


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paragraph, ignorance is rational. Important because it can be used to explain why parties might not always converge to the electoral centre. Here, Downs actually anticipates many of the arguments subsequently presented as criticisms of his argument. Uncertainty means that parties might not know where the electoral centre is and so might calculate incorrectly the vote-maximising position.106 Uncertainty means that voters need to be able to trust parties to keep their promises once elected and this means that parties must seek to acquire a reputation for being responsible, for not simply changing their policies in response to fluctuations in the most recent opinion polls.107 Uncertainty means that voters will struggle to keep track of what parties are saying and doing. This means that parties can try to maximise their vote by being deliberately ambiguous.108 Finally, uncertainty means that parties can seek to persuade voters that their policies are the right ones for them, an exercise which, because it is costly, requires parties to sell policy promises to wealthy interests. ‘Rationality under conditions of uncertainty leads government to construct policies often aimed at the good of a few voters than at the good of all, or even of a majority’.109 Each of these arguments suggests obvious lines of applied research. Accounts of how in its determination to correct the mistakes of its past, New Labour overshot its target and moved to the right of the electoral centre. Accounts of how it tried to create the impression of being all things to all people. Accounts of how it has been led into political difficulty by donations from Formula One tycoons and shady businessmen. Downs' arguments about persuasion and responsibility are discussed in Chapters 3 and 9 through the analysis of rhetoric and leadership. This section focuses upon the way in which Downs links uncertainty to ideology. Out of this link can be teased my argument about the nature and significance of the political centre. Downs suggests that every voter has a particular and fixed view of the ‘good society’, their own political philosophy.110 Within the terms of the model set out in the second section, voters can be imagined to derive from this philosophy their preferences over policy options. Yet individuals will have little incentive to acquire the information needed to form such judgements. People will acquire some politically relevant information in the course of watching news broadcasts and having occasional conversations

106


107


108

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 135. See also Kenneth Shepsle, ‘The Strategy of Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Competition’, American Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 551–68. Hotelling also talks about parties coming to adopt deliberately ambiguous strategies; ‘Stability in Competition’, p. 54.

109


110



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with friends. It will not however make sense for individuals to invest time and money in a deliberate effort to acquire information about public policy. For, individuals will realise that their vote is almost certainly not going to make any difference to the election result and that any such investment would therefore be wasted. As restated here by Samuel Popkin, the health of the national economy may in fact have a greater effect on voters than whether their next vacation is fabulous or merely good, but time spent deciding where to travel leads to better vacations, whereas time spent evaluating…policies tends not to lead to better policies but only a better-informed vote.111 The result is a great deal of uncertainty. Many voters will know relatively little about policy, certainly not enough to form the kind of fine-grained preferences required by the median voter theorem. It is at this point that ideology, defined as ‘a verbal image of the good society and of the chief means of constructing such a society’, enters Downs' argument.112 Knowing that many voters will know relatively little about policy, parties develop ideologies that offer to voters a kind of shorthand summary of their position. Ideologies are cost-saving devices that free voters from the ‘need to become informed upon a wide range of issues’.113 Voters can learn how close they are to a party by looking at its ideology. It is one of the four components of the median voter theorem presented in Downs' name that spatial position is a function of policy. Yet Downs actually emphasises limits to the significance of policy.114 The basic structure of Downs' argument at this point is simple enough. Yet, strangely, Downs never actually provides his readers with any discussion about or examples of ideologies. He tells us about the function ideology performs but, beyond this, does not tell us what an ideology looks like. One obvious possibility here is to think of ideologies as ‘isms’. Parties provide voters with information about what they stand for and will do if elected by defining and presenting themselves as socialists, liberals, conservatives,

111

Samuel Popkin, ‘Information Shortcuts and the Reasoning Voter’, in Grofman (ed.), Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective, p. 17. Downs' argument can be found in An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 241–5.

112


113

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 98

114

Downs does argue that voters will only care about ideology if they believe that ideology tells them something about policy. ‘In order to be rational short cuts, ideologies must be integrated with policies closely enough to form accurate indicators of what each party is likely to do in the future’. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 102. Policy is not rendered irrelevant. Yet in arguing that voters approach politics through ideology, the importance of policy is being down-played.

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and so on.115 Yet this is not the only possibility. For the spatial metaphor presents parties with an alternative form of shorthand. Parties can provide voters with information about what they stand for and will do if elected, by defining and presenting themselves in spatial terms. Left-wing, centre-left, right-wing, and so on are not simply labels applied to parties by journalists or political scientists. They are ways in which parties describe themselves. By describing itself as a party of the centre-left, then of the centre and centre-left, and, finally, of the centre, New Labour provided voters with information about what it stood for and the kind of things it would do if elected. Party competition clearly has an ideological aspect to it. Politics is not simply about policy. But party competition is not simply ideological. Policy does matter. For it is through policy that parties construct, defend, and contest ideological descriptions. Parties do not simply say that they are at the political centre. They argue that they are at the centre. They argue this with reference to the policies they are committed to. In suggesting that policy matters, we do not need to assume that voters have perfect information about policy. For although he himself chooses not to extend it in this way, Downs' general argument about the effects of uncertainty can be played out at the level of policy as well as ideology. Precisely because information about policy is imperfect, parties will offer summaries, particular presentations, of their policies. Parties don't just ‘have’ policies. They ‘spin’ policies. An argument that a particular policy shows a party to be at the political centre will be supported by a particular presentation of that policy. An argument that a political opponent's policies leave them far from the centre will be supported by a particular presentation of those policies. Policy does not map on to spatial position in a prearranged and fixed way. A commitment to some particular policy does not put a party on the political right in the same way that, in Figure 2.3, a commitment to 2 per cent private ownership puts a party on the left-hand edge of the horizontal scale. Equally, a change in policy does not result in a particular change in political position in the same way that, in Figure 2.3, a change from 59 per cent to 60 per cent private ownership entailed a move of a particular distance to the right. This ‘gap’ between policy and spatial position is sustained by uncertainty. Because voters do not know all that there is to know about a policy, they can be led to think about policies in different ways by being exposed to different summaries of it. These summaries will vary across a number of dimensions. Different summaries will contain different accounts of the terms left, right, and centre.

115

For just such an account see Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 105. Here, socialism, market socialism, welfare capitalism, and capitalism are laid out along a scale the ends of which are marked as left and right.


37

One presentation may encourage voters to think of a policy as being left-wing because it will lead to greater equality. Another may encourage voters to think of a policy as being left-wing because it will require greater government intervention.116 Different summaries will provide different accounts of how terms like equality should be understood. One presentation may encourage voters to think of equality in terms of equality of opportunity. Another might encourage voters to think in terms of equality of outcomes.117 Finally, different summaries will sketch differing accounts of the relationship between a policy and a particular concept. In one presentation it will be suggested that a particular policy is likely to generate greater equality. In another it may be argued that the same policy will have exactly the opposite effect. Spatial position is constructed. Parties do not take a particular representation of political space and their own positions within it as fixed data to which they must adjust themselves. They argue about how political space should be configured and where they are within it. They do so by constructing summaries of their policies that tie them to a particular spatial location in voters' minds. Parties are not inherently left-wing. They are constructed as being leftwing. A party that wants to present itself as being left-wing will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding presentation of its policies that best supports such a description. A party that wants to present its opponent as being right-wing will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding presentation of its opponents' policies that best supports such a description. In the same way parties are not inherently centrist. A party that wants to present itself as being at the political centre will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding presentation of its policies that best supports such a description. A party that wants to present its opponents as having vacated the political centre will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding presentation of opponents' policies that best supports such a description. Having now started to use the term so liberally, we need, finally, to say more about the political centre. In Figure 2.1, the political centre was characterised as falling literally at the centre of the horizontal scale. Having spent so long arguing that political space cannot be thought of as bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed, this now appears somewhat strained.

116

On differing conceptions of left and right see Norberto Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), Samuel Brittan, Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), and Jean Laponce, Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981).

117

On the contested nature and possible definitions of equality, see Charles Beitz, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); and Ronald Dworkin, ‘What is Equality: Part One, Equality of Welfare’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (1981), 185–246.

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The political centre cannot simply be associated with particular policies, for it has been argued that policies are not inherently left-wing or right-wing. At any one time, the electorate may believe a particular policy to be at the political centre but this belief will be a constructed one. So what then is the political centre to mean? In subsequent chapters it will be argued that New Labour has tied itself to the political centre by presenting itself as a moderate party with moderate policies and has contrasted its own moderation with the extremism of both a Conservative Party on the political right and an Old Labour faction on the political left.118 Moderation is, so to speak, the common coinage of New Labour's policy summaries. In the nineteenth century, Walter Bagehot claimed that ‘moderate’ and middling government was the ‘normal and natural government of the English people’ because it reflected their ‘loathing for extremes and their love of moderation’.119 A hundred years on and moderation remains a politically appealing virtue. As the proportion of the electorate believing Labour to be an extreme party fell from 49 per cent in 1987 to 29 per cent in 1992 to just 16 per cent in 1997, the party's vote correspondingly rose from 31 per cent in the 1987 general election to just over 43 per cent in 1997.120 Moderation has been interpreted in a number of different ways. It has been interpreted in such a way as to be synonymous with balance and compromise.

118

The argument here is about policy. It is however worth noting that Blair has (i) defined himself as being a ‘moderate’ politician (see, for example, his press conference on 25 July 2002. Full text available via www.number-10/gov.uk/output/Page3000.asp ), that he has (ii) routinely invited ‘moderate’ Conservatives to join New Labour (see Anthony Bevins, ‘Blair Offers Tories a Haven’, Observer, 5 May 1996; Michael White, ‘Join Us, Blair Tells Tories’, Guardian, 30 September 1999); and has (iii) talked repeatedly of the ‘moderate, middle-income majority’ whose votes New Labour needs to retain office (Blair, quoted, Jonathan Freedland, ‘In Search of Middle England’, Guardian, 18 June 1998).

119

Walter Bagehot, ‘Not a Middle Party but a Middle Government’ in Norman St John-Stevas (ed.), Collected Works of Walter Bagehot (London: The Economist, 1974), p. 199. For a similar but far longer account see Thomas Macaulay, A History of England (London: Longman, Brown & Green, 1849). For a more subtle account see Vincent Starzinger, Middlingness: Juste Milieu Political Theory in France and England, 1815–48 (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1965).

120

The material cited here is taken from the on-line British Election Survey archives available at http://nesstar.data-archive.ac.uk .


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New Labour has sometimes presented its policies as restrained compromises between unsavoury extremes. At other times it has been interpreted in such a way as to mean mainstream. New Labour has sometimes presented its policies as reflecting an underlying consensus of views and as promoting a set of shared values. At other times it has been interpreted to mean conservative. New Labour has sometimes presented its policies as being either consistent with or entailing only the slightest of departures from the established status quo. At other times it has been interpreted to mean reasonable and pragmatic. New Labour has sometimes presented itself as a party of ‘practical ideas’, that believes that ‘what counts is what works’.121 New Labour has not only constructed its own position at the political centre, it has contested the Conservatives' claims to be the party of the ‘mainstream majority in the centre’.122 John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith, and Michael Howard have all been presented as having led the Conservatives away from the political centre. In the aftermath of the 1999 conference season, Blair suggested, for example, that the past two weeks have defined the political landscape. Both main parties have emerged from their party conferences clear about where they stand. The Labour Party has finally come to terms with the idea of New Labour. We stand firmly and confidently in the centre. The Conservatives have taken a fundamental decision to vacate the centre and move to the right of anywhere they have been for at least twenty years.123 New Labour has presented the Conservatives as an extreme party with extreme policies and an extreme leader. The Conservatives have been presented as a party that has eschewed compromise and embraced extremism. The Conservatives have been presented as a party that has abandoned the mainstream, turned in on itself, and started talking about issues that are of little or no interest to most voters. The Conservatives have been presented as being committed to policies that would transform the economic and political landscape. Finally, the Conservatives have been presented as a party that places ideological purity and dogma before a genuine concern with the public interest.

Conclusion New Labour is routinely described as being at the centre. The centre being invoked in such descriptions can however mean two very different things. The electoral centre refers to the vote-maximising position of the median voter and is defined with reference to the distribution of voters' preferences. The electoral centre is the ‘territory on which elections are won and lost’.124 The political centre refers to a particular spatial position and is defined with reference to the range of available political positions. The political centre is the centre New Labour once occupied as ‘a party of the centre as well as the

121

Blair, quoted, Philip Webster, ‘There's no Going Back for Party, Blair Tells Voters’, The Times, 11 March 1997.

122

William Hague, quoted, Roland Watson, ‘Portillo Targets Centre Ground as Vital to Win’ The Times, 28 November 2000.

123

Blair, ‘Centre Forward’, The Times, 11 October 1999.

124


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centre-left’.125 The electoral centre can either be on the political right, left, or centre. New Labour has however operated on the assumption that the political and electoral centres coincide, that ‘opinion on most issues [tends] to peak at the centre and [that] therefore a vote-maximising strategy [requires] occupying the middle-ground’.126 In an effort to position itself at the political centre, New Labour has presented itself as a moderate party that has transcended the extremes of both the old Left and the new Right. Parties must move to the electoral centre if they are to maximise their vote. But this alone is to underestimate the importance of the centre within party competition. Uncertainty means that voters must rely upon shorthand summaries of policy positions. Uncertainty means that some voters will vote for parties whose policies they consider to be at the moderate political centre. What policies are believed to be moderate will depend, at least in part, upon the way in which parties present policies. Parties do not simply move to the electoral centre. They fight over the political centre.

125

Blair, quoted, Peter Riddell, ‘Labour is the Voice of Middle Britain’, The Times, 12 April 1996.

126

Eric Shaw, The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation, p. 60.

3 Rhetoric and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Rhetoric, defined here as ‘the art of persuasive communication’, is a subject political scientists have, strangely, turned their backs on.127 The term rhetoric is sometimes used, as most of us use it in our everyday lives, to denote empty declamation or dishonest artifice, but little or no effort is now made to define the different kinds of rhetoric or to explore its applications within politics. Interests and institutions are routinely invoked to explain political events and outcomes. The possibility that they are formed through and modified by rhetorical argument is largely overlooked. There is one important exception here. Coining the term ‘heresthetics’, the American political scientist William Riker has shown how politicians who expect to lose one election can divide the majority they expect to beat them by constructing and placing on the agenda new issue alternatives. Riker has applied this basic argument to the study of two key moments in American political history: the creation of the constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War.128 Jack Nagel has applied the same argument to the study of party competition in New Zealand and Iain McLean to the study of British politics.129 Riker's argument bears a number of obvious similarities to my own. I will, however, postpone

127

Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 1. Aristotle defines the function of rhetoric as being to ‘find out in each case the existing means of persuasion’; Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1926), 1355b. On the connection between rhetoric and persuasion see George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), Joseph Wenzel, Three Perspectives on Argument, in Robert Trapp and Janice Schuetz (eds.) Perspectives on Argumentation (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1990), p. 13, James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric (Scottsdale: Scarisbrick, 1997), pp. 8–11.

128

William Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); ‘The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787’, American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 96–111; The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

129

Jack Nagel, ‘Social Choice in a Pluralitarian Democracy: The Politics of Market Liberalisation in New Zealand’, British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998), 223–67; Iain Mclean, Rational Choice and British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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RHETORIC AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

a detailed discussion of it until Chapter 8. Riker relates his argument to the creation of new dimensions of conflict. By contrast, in this chapter, I focus on the construction of voters' beliefs about the position of policies within an existing dimension. That rhetoric has been pushed to the back of the political science stage is curious, because rhetoric is very obviously a pervasive feature of politics generally and of party politics in particular. Claims about the existence of ‘an axis of evil’, about there being, in Margaret Thatcher's formulation, ‘no alternative’, and about Britain being a ‘beacon of hope’ are rhetorical claims used to attract attention and secure support.130 Within parliamentary democracies politicians do not seek to subdue their opponents with guns or bribes. They use arguments. In their speeches, debates, interviews, newspaper articles, press releases, and briefings, politicians, their supporters, and advisers try to persuade the media, the electorate, pressure groups, and each other that their own positions, decisions, and policies are all that might be hoped and their opponents' all that might be feared. Developing a specific application of the general argument outlined in Chapter 2, this chapter will examine the significance, forms, and limits of political rhetoric and in doing so will show how the political centre is rhetorically constructed. For nearly two thousand years rhetoric has been divided, mainly for pedagogical convenience, into five parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.131 The rhetoric to be examined in this chapter will be the rhetoric of invention. The focus will be on the kinds of arguments politicians use to persuade audiences. Furthermore, and to use a distinction drawn by Aristotle in The Art of Rhetoric, the focus will be on rational arguments appealing to audiences' reason and understanding rather than their emotions or ethical values.132 Rhetoric will be equated not simply with efforts to persuade but with efforts to persuade using reasoned argument. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first documents the kinds of rhetorical argument politicians' employ. Ten different ‘argumentative schemes’ are identified and illustrated using a register developed by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric.133 The second section returns us to and develops further the argument of Chapter 2. Politicians construct the political centre by constructing voters' beliefs about the configuration of political space and the location of policies and parties within it. Beliefs about what and where the political centre is and

130

On Britain as a beacon of hope see Tony Blair, ‘We Can be a Beacon to the World’, Guardian, 30 December 1999.

131

Edward Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 22–8.

132

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1356a.

133

Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), p. 188.


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about whether some policy or party is at it are not immutable. Neither, however, are they entirely plastic. Rhetoric can be used to change beliefs but it cannot be used to persuade voters of just anything. In the third section the limits of rhetoric are accounted for in terms of the beliefs an audience already has. Persuasion is, in the jargon of economics, path-dependent.134 The beliefs an audience has today are not necessarily those it will have tomorrow. Rhetoric can be used to change beliefs. But rhetoric persuades an audience on the basis of the beliefs it already has. What an audience believes tomorrow will depend upon what it believes today. What it can be persuaded to believe will depend upon what it already believes. Political position is constructed but there are limits to the process of construction.

Rhetorical Forms At a first glance, politicians' arguments are hugely if not infinitely varied. One of the achievements of and recurring themes within the study of rhetoric has therefore been the identification of a more limited number of subject matters underpinning specific arguments as they relate to particular issues and events. These ‘common places’, ‘topics’, ‘building blocks’, ‘argumentative schemes’, or ‘lines of attack’ were first classified and used as prompts to be memorised by orators developing their own arguments.135 Today, they are more likely to be used to classify and identify the subject matters of others’ arguments. Aristotle, Anaximenes, Cicero, Quintilian, and Vico all offer different accounts of the common places.136 Without necessarily claiming any superiority for it, this section will adapt a register developed by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrecths-Tyteca (1969) in The New Rhetoric to identify ten common subject matters for political arguments.137 These different kinds of argument will be illustrated with examples drawn from British politics, these examples serving also to indicate the salience of rhetoric within party competition. Because the register they develop is a lengthy one, it will take some time to present and illustrate it. The arguments introduced here will,

134

On the concept of path-dependency within economics see Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 93–8 and references therein.

135

See George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece, pp. 100–2. The spatial metaphor is a pervasive one. Topics comes from ‘topoi’ meaning places.

136

See James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric; Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, pp. 539–78; Otto Bird, ‘The Tradition of Logical Topics: Aristotle to Ockham’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (1962), 307–23; Kennedy, Art of Persuasion in Greece, pp. 100–4.

137

It should be emphasised that Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca see themselves as providing an account of the common forms and types of argument, not simply of political argument. I adapt it by shortening Perelman and Olbrecht-Tytecha's register considerably.

44


though, provide a basis for examining a number of New Labour's policies in Chapter 4. First, contradiction and incompatibility.138 Politicians can try to persuade audiences by pointing to contradictions and incompatibilities in the arguments, claims, and behaviour of their opponents. This is not simply a matter of logical inconsistency, of identifying gaps between the premises and conclusions of an opponents' argument. Rhetorical argument of this kind comes loaded with more aggressive charges of hypocrisy, deceit, and treachery, of contradictions between opponent's promises and actions, between their words and deeds. In January 1996 it was revealed that Harriet Harman and her partner had decided to send their son to a selective grammar school. Because David Blunkett had, at the Labour Party conference, only recently pledged ‘no selection, either by examination or by interview, under a Labour government’, the decision, although a personal one, left the party vulnerable to charges to hypocrisy.139 In the following Prime Minister's Question Time, John Major was asked a series of questions about the decision by Conservative MPs. His replies, although temperate in their language, were pointed. I believe that the view of most people in the country is that the honourable Member for Peckham [Ms. Harman] was right to exercise choice in favour of her own child. No one objects to that. What is wrong is that the Labour Party would deny those same choices to other parents throughout the country.140 Second, politicians can try to persuade audiences that their opponent's arguments and claims are ridiculous.141 In the nineteenth century, Bishop Whateley ridiculed arguments doubting the existence and possibility of miracles by applying the same set of pragmatic and scientifically-inspired tests to the life and achievements of Napoleon. Just as others had doubted whether one man, Jesus, could be responsible for so much, Whateley doubted whether one man could ever have conquered Europe, concluding that he must have been a figment of journalists' imaginations.142 Here, the atheists' arguments were not simply challenged but ridiculed. In a part of the speech immediately preceding that quoted below, Blair ridicules John Major's policy on Europe by mentioning various statements made by his Employment Secretary and Chancellor and by then asking whether he agrees with them.

138

Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, pp. 195–205.

139

David Blunkett, Shadow Education Spokesman, quoted, Patrick Wintour, ‘Hattersley Loses Fight over Grant Schools’, Guardian, 5 October 1995.

140

John Major, House of Commons, 23 January 1996, Hansard, Col. 144.

141


142

Bishop Richard Whateley, Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bunoparte (London: Hatchard & Son, 1819). For a discussion see Michael Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 1212.


45

He ends that by speech making an initially unattributed remark about monetary union as not being a step in the ‘direction of a federal Europe’. Can the Prime Minister agree with that? I can; can he? Shall I tell the House the author of that statement? It was the Prime Minister. That is the position to which he has reduced the government. I find it odd that he cannot agree with his Chancellor, I find it strange that he cannot agree with his Secretary of State for Employment, and I find it unbelievable that he cannot agree with himself.143 Third, definitions.144 Because there is rarely, if ever, only one possible definition of an idea, value, policy, or object, politicians can gain advantage by developing and using particular definitions. This is a point that has already been made in Chapter 2. The terms left, right, and centre do not have fixed and unambiguous meanings. A party that wants to present itself as being at the political centre will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding account of its policies that best supports such a description. Politics throws up plenty of other examples of ways in which arguments can become arguments about definitions. In 1991, Peter Mandelson was credited with having almost single-handedly won a crucial by-election in Monmouth with an argument that hospitals seeking to acquire trust status as, at that time, the hospital in Monmouth was, were opting-out’ of the NHS. By defining trusts as a form of privatisation rather than, as the Conservatives preferred, a decentralisation of power, considerable advantage was gained.145 But what goes around comes around. Ten years later the Government unveiled plans to create ‘foundation’ hospitals freed, at least in part, from central control. Much to its intense irritation, critics defined the proposal as one which would lead to the break-up of the NHS and as being tantamount to privatisation.146 Fourth, politicians can seek to persuade an audience by ascribing either to themselves or their opponents the virtues or failings of one part of a group to the whole of that group, or of the whole of a group to one part of it.147 Such arguments are, at least in part, arguments about definitions. What will be thought of as a group will depend upon the way in which a group is defined. In his address to the 1999 Labour Party conference, Blair spoke of the ‘forces of Conservatism’ that ‘chain us not only to an outdated view of our people's potential but of our nation's potential’.148 Included in the forces

143

Blair, House of Commons, 1 March 1995, Hansard, Col. 1057.

144


145

Donald Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour (London: Harper-Collins, 2000), pp. 250–2.

146

Frank Dobson, ‘Health is Now Blair's Second Front’, Guardian, 14 March 2003; Allyson Pollock, ‘Foundation Hospitals will Kill the NHS’, Guardian, 7 May 2003.

147


148

Blair, Labour Party Speech, 28 September 1999. Full text available via www.guardian.co.uk/lab.99 .

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of Conservatism were not only the Conservative Party but also those who had voted against female suffrage, those who had imprisoned Nelson Mandela, and those who had assassinated Martin Luther King and murdered Stephen Lawrence. The whole, the forces of Conservatism, included within it a part, the Conservative Party, which, it was being implied, could be thought of as having the same attitudes and values. Fifth, comparisons.149 Politicians can try to persuade audiences by comparing either their own actions or record, or those of their opponents, to those of past, present, or possible future alternatives. Politicians often conjure up images, whether negative or positive, of entire governments with which their own record can be compared. Throughout the 1980s and also the 1990s, the Conservatives defended their own record in government by comparing it with that of the previous Labour administration; an administration defined in terms of the winter of discontent, the sacking of nurses, and borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Here, for example, is Major replying, in February 1995, to a question from Blair about a rise in mortgage rates: I have to say to the right honourable gentleman that he has a cheek to deny history in the way in which he just did. The level of interest rates that we have reached today is the level that was the lowest achieved at any stage under the previous Labour Government in five years of government. The average was far higher. They also had negative interest rates and were robbing savers of their savings by devaluing the currency. It is because of that sort of irresponsibility that no one will ever again trust the Labour Party to run the economy.150 Sixth, sacrifice.151 Politicians can try to persuade audiences of the merits of a particular course of action or the sincerity of their own motives with reference to the sacrifices that have been made by themselves or others in its pursuit. So politicians are likely to defend what they will present as their pursuit of world peace with reference to the sacrifice made by soldiers in previous generations. A government, taunted about a fall in its support in opinion polls, might well respond that it should be trusted and supported precisely because it has shown itself willing to make tough and unpopular decisions, because it has been willing to sacrifice its popularity. Here, and three years after leaving office, is Major's response to criticisms that he had broken promises he had made about taxation during the 1992 campaign.

149


150

John Major, House of Commons, 2 February 1995, Hansard, Col. 1213. During the same month of Prime Minister's Questions, Major was led to draw comparisons with the record of the previous Labour administration on 9 February (Col. 454), 14 February (Cols. 793 and 795), 16 February (Col. 1127), 21 February (Col. 152), and 23 February (Col. 483).

151



47

I have said before and I repeat: we did put up taxes. We put up taxes in a recession to help protect individuals and our national accounts from the economic downturn…it was right. It was very painful. Conservative Governments do not like to put up taxes. They do not wish to. They did not intend to, but the social requirement of protecting people in that recession was necessary.152 Seventh, cause and effect.153 Politicians can try to persuade audiences by linking and explaining events using particular arguments about cause and effect. Working backwards from effect to cause, they might argue that some undesirable state is attributable entirely to their opponents' actions or that some desirable state is due to their policies. Working forwards from cause to effect, they might argue that their opponents' policy proposals will generate unemployment and misery and that their own policies will bring happiness to all. Such arguments are sometimes very general, and rest on and invoke differing conceptual models. Inspired by the doctrine of monetarism, the Conservatives started to argue in the late 1970s that inflation was caused by expansion in the money supply. At other times, arguments can be more specific. During the 1992 election campaign, the Conservatives, whilst claiming to have detected the first signs of economic recovery, acknowledged that the country had undergone a severe recession. Labour argued that this recession had been caused by John Major. The Conservatives argued that it was a world recession that had been caused by events outside of their control and that it was being prolonged by uncertainty about the election result and the fear of a Labour Government.154 Eighth, and in a variant of more general arguments about cause and effect, politicians can seek to explain and predict actions on the basis of underlying personality traits.155 Rather than presenting particular decisions as the result of particular constellations of pressures, politicians will instead argue that a decision or action reveals something more general and enduring about a person. In the case of a political friend, a previous act of bravery, honesty, or prudence will be presented as evidence of their likely future behaviour. The person who commits a brave act becomes a brave person who will be equally brave in the future. In the case of a political opponent, past mistakes and misdeeds will be argued to be effective guides to future behaviour. In this way personality becomes a crucial political resource, requiring, as we will see in Chapters 9 and 10, the careful construction of image. Citing his past

152

John Major, House of Commons, 13 December 2000, Hansard, Col. 688.

153


154

This was an argument the Conservatives won. In April 1992, 48 % of those polled blamed the world recession for Britain's recession and only 4 % John Major's administration. See David Sanders, ‘Why the Conservatives Won — Again’, in Anthony King et al. (eds.), Britain at the Polls 1992 (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1992), p. 200.

155

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, pp. 293–304.

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membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and opposition to trade union reform and privatisation, the Conservatives argued, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, that Blair could not be trusted to be Prime Minister. In September 1994, Michael Heseltine asked, why should you believe a man who has got all the major judgements wrong in the first half of his life, when he tells you he is going to get them all right in the second half of his life?156 Ninth, authority.157 Politicians can try to persuade audiences by citing the judgements, opinions, and beliefs of other people and groups whose views are considered authoritative. When pressed to defend a policy or action, politicians will invoke either the support of others for it or even account for their decision to introduce it in terms of the support that policy received. The blessings of business leaders, international organisations like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations, pressure groups like the British Medical Association (BMA), assorted celebrities, and even, albeit occasionally, academics are sought out as offering authoritative backing for policies. Although it is a particularly risky strategy, politicians can also invoke their own authority, their own reputation for competence or honesty. In November 1997, New Labour was forced to admit that it had accepted a sizeable donation from an entrepreneur, Bernie Ecclestone, who had subsequently benefited from a decision not to ban cigarette advertising at Formula One races. Within a few days, Blair was interviewed on the BBC. Apologising for the way the issue had been handled, he nonetheless denied any impropriety, calling upon his own authority as evidence in his defence. I hope that people know me well enough and realise the type of person I am, to realise that I would never do anything either to harm the country or do anything improper. I never have. I think most people who have dealt with me think I’m a pretty straight sort of guy and I am…now I’m sorry about this issue. I should have realised that it was going to blow up into this type of importance before, but I honestly have done what I thought was best for the country.158 Finally, examples.159 In an attempt to persuade their audience of the virtues or dangers of a particular policy or course of action, politicians will pepper their arguments with examples and illustrations. A suggestion that a rival party is hopelessly divided will be illustrated with an example of some

156

Michael Heseltine, quoted, John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, pp. 251–2.

157


158

Blair, Interview, On the Record, 16 November 1997. Full transcript available via www.bbc.uk/otr (follow the link to archives).

159



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particularly public act of dissent. A claim that a policy will be a panacea for all problems will be escorted with an account of its successful implementation in another country. An assertion that the economy is recovering will be accompanied with a reference to a particular survey, investment decision, or economic statistic. The deployment and manipulation of examples is a staple of political argument. Arguments about the best way to define a subject, about the relationship between cause and effect, and about a person's underlying personality will all be accompanied with the use of examples.160

Rhetoric, Beliefs, and the Construction of the Centre Operating from within the rational choice paradigm, Downs develops a simple but powerful account of individual decision-making. Voters have complete and transitive preferences over policy options.161 These preferences are derived from voters' underlying desires, from their ‘fixed conceptions of the good society’.162 Preferences can be ‘ordered from left to right’.163 Voters calculate which party is closest to them in political space and vote for this party. So when asked to explain why a person voted for party A rather than party B we might say that they did so because they were ‘closer’ to A. But when asked to explain why they were closer to A we might say that they voted for A because A was committed to policy pX and because pX was most consistent with that voter's conception of the good society, cX. The argument here looks cut and dried but depends crucially upon the assumption of perfect information. Perfect information means that voters have no difficulty in relating their ‘conception of the good society to…[their] knowledge of party policies in a consistent manner’.164 That is, in conditions of perfect information, voters will know with absolute certainty which policies and thereby which party to favour given their conception of the good society. Yet the assumption of perfect information is, as I have already emphasised, one Downs distances himself from. Uncertainty is a pervasive and significant feature of political life. It not only creates a need for ideology. It makes persuasion possible. For in an uncertain world

160

Analogies offer a particular kind of example. An analogy is being drawn when a comparison or correspondence between two things is made on the basis of a third element they are said to share. So politicians argue that rail privatisation will be like a ‘poll tax on wheels’ or that failing to confront Saddam Hussein will be like appeasing Hitler.

161

For any given set of options (A, B, C), preferences are complete if an individual is capable of ranking each option against all other options and are transitive if the resulting ordering is consistent in such a way that if and then .

162


163


164


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roads leading toward the good society are hard to distinguish from those leading away from it. Thus, even though voters have fixed goals, their views on how to approach those goals are malleable and can be altered by persuasion.165 Voters' desires, their underlying ‘conception of the good society’, may be fixed but parties can change voters' beliefs about how these desires can be best realised. There is no pre-given and fixed relationship between the conceptions of the good society voters have and the policies they will thereby support such that support for conception cX translates into and only into support for pX and party A, whilst support for conception cY translates into and only into support for pY and party B. By persuading voters to revise their beliefs about policies, parties can effect a change in voters' preferences between parties. That is, by persuading voters that pY rather than pX is most consistent with their conception cX, they can induce a voter to vote for party B rather than party A. The third part of the median voter theorem presented in Chapter 2 maintains that vote-maximising parties must move to an electoral centre, the location of which is determined by the distribution of voters' preferences. But if parties can persuade voters to change their beliefs about policy and so about their spatial position, parties can increase their electoral support without necessarily changing their policy. Downs suggests that vote-maximising requires parties to ‘formulate policies to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies’.166 Yet if

165

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 87. Emphasis added.

166



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political parties are, together with interest groups and the media, ‘obviously’ persuaders, then this would imply that parties can also win elections by persuading voters to change their beliefs about their existing policies.167 I am not suggesting here that parties deploy rhetoric in order to change the distribution of preferences across political space.168 Voters, I have argued, prefer policies at the political centre. What parties can, however, change are voters' beliefs about which policies are at the political centre. There may be no alternative to the electoral centre but there are alternative political centres. Downs, however, draws back from any such conclusions. Having opened up the possibility of persuasion he rather meekly concludes that political parties are followers, as well as leaders, for they mould their policies to suit voters so as to gain as many votes as possible. Having done this, they attempt to lead all voters to believe their policies are best for them.169 Why? We have already seen how in an effort to make his argument appear more ‘plausible’, Downs reduces ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’, ownership.170 Figure 3.1 reproduces the relevant diagram from Chapter 2. Within this framework, space is bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. The significance of rhetoric follows from the implausibility of assuming that political space is prearranged and fixed. We will run through this argument again. In Figure 3.1 policy options are laid out from 0 per cent private ownership on the left-hand edge of the horizontal scale to 100 per cent private ownership on the right. The sequencing of policy options is prearranged and fixed. Once the ends of the scale are fixed, we cannot, without violating established mathematical conventions, rearrange the policies in such a way that 20 per cent private ownership is to the right of 30 per cent private ownership. Downs is committed to the use of this example because it makes the assumption of calculative decision-making plausible and so predictions about behaviour possible. It is, however, an example within which there is no room for parties to persuade voters to change their beliefs. Why would the inclusion of rhetoric preclude calculative decision-making and prediction? In the immediate post-war era, social psychologists assumed that there were clear and enduring relationships between argument and persuasion which they could, with sufficient research, discover.171 Knowledge of these relationships would, it was thought, allow them, the psychologists, to predict when and where an argument would prove persuasive. Two psychologists looked forward to a world in which a person would be able to stipulate to the researcher the effects he desired, and the researcher, now a mere technician, would need only to work out the mathematics to stipulate in turn the requisite content that should be disseminated over specific media to specific people in order to achieve the desired effect.172 FIGURE 3.1 Left and Right and Ownership.

167


168

In Patrick Dunleavy's ‘preference-shaping’ account, parties in power can shape the aggregate distribution of preferences through, for example, social engineering. By selling council houses and privatising industries, the government can shift the aggregate distribution of preferences. This is not the same argument. Through rhetoric, parties shift not the electoral centre but the political centre. Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).

169


170


171

The following draws upon Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, pp. 81–111.

172

Joseph Klapper and Leo Lowenthal, ‘The Contributions of Opinion Research to the Evaluation of Psychological Warfare’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 15 (1951), 651–62.

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If such great expectations had been realised, Downs would have been in a position to both have his cake and eat it. That is, he could have pursued his insights about persuasion without having to sacrifice his predictive ambitions. But such hopes have been almost entirely dashed. Forty years of research and tens of thousands of experiments have resulted in ‘an accumulation of largely contradictory and inconsistent research findings with few (if any) generalisable principles of effective communication’.173 The problem here is not that there are no discernible relationships between argument and persuasion. In controlled experiments social psychologists have been able to show that there are enduring relationships between such variables as, for example, the content of an argument, the way it is ‘framed’, the manner of its delivery, the character and reputation of the person delivering an argument, and the attentiveness of the person listening to an argument and the persuasiveness of that argument.174 But social psychologists have been unable to identify any overarching relationships between these variables or general rules, allowing them to establish the significance of these variables in particular cases. The most social psychologists can say is that it ‘all depends on the situation’ and this qualification is not followed by an extensive list of situations, which definitively distinguishes those occasions when one sort of message is effective from those when it is not. Certainly, much of the social psychological research is devoted to discovering such situations in the hope of then formulating the general rule by which situations can be classified. However, attempts at formulating general rules about situations are themselves subject to the same qualifications as are the simpler messages.175 The problem here is not simply one which afflicts plodding social psychologists and other academics. Politicians and pressure group leaders can be no more certain about the persuasive effect of the arguments they deploy in particular circumstances. It is possible that this problem is an epistemological one. That is, it is possible that there are such overarching relationships and general rules but that they have not yet been discovered. In this case it is possible that more appointments and experiments will be enough to overcome the problem and provide politicians and pressure groups with exceptionless laws of persuasion and clear-cut rules about how to apply them. But given the number of appointments and experiments that have already been made it is perhaps more likely that the problem is an ontological one. That is, it is possible that the relationship between argument

173

Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, ‘Acceptance, Yielding and Impact: Cognitive Processes in Persuasion’, in Richard Petty et al. (eds.), Cognitive Responses in Persuasion (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981), p. 340.

174

For an overview of such research see Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor, Social Cognition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), pp. 462–509.

175

Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, p. 101.


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and persuasion is inherently ‘complex’: that there are no such relationships or rules that can be used to comprehend the relationship between argument and persuasion.176 Voters do not have perfect information. For this reason parties have an incentive to develop shorthand summaries of their policies. The spatial metaphor presents parties with one possible form of shorthand. Parties that want to present themselves as being at the political centre will present their policies as being centrist. Policies are not inherently rightwing, left-wing, or centrist. They are constructed as being right-wing, left-wing, or centrist. Voters' beliefs about policies can be changed. It is through rhetoric that parties can attempt to tie particular policies to particular spatial locations in voters' minds. Parties will try to persuade voters that their policies are politically centrist by presenting them as moderate. A claim that a policy is moderate because it is a balanced compromise will be accompanied with reference to the favourable and authoritative judgement of a respected political commentator or pressure group leader. A claim that a policy is moderate because it is one that will preserve the status quo will be accompanied with a particular definition of both the policy and the status quo. A claim that a policy is moderate because it is one that will promote shared values will be underpinned by a particular account of the likely causal effects of the policy. A claim that a policy is moderate because it is one that has widespread backing will be accompanied with examples of other parties and pressure groups who support the policy and with examples of other countries in which the policy has been implemented. Political position is not only constructed. It is contested. Parties not only argue that their own policies are politically moderate. They argue that their opponents' policies are politically extreme. An opponent who claims that one of their policies is politically moderate will have thrown back at them earlier speeches or statements in which they or one of their colleagues appeared to argue the opposite. An opponent who claims that one of their policies is politically moderate will find their policy being unfavourably compared with their past policy positions. An opponent who claims that one of their policies is politically moderate will find their argument ridiculed, their past misjudgements and inconsistencies being called in evidence against them. Political arguments about position are endless. There does not come a time during a campaign when one party throws up its hands and agrees, after all, that its policies are ‘really’ left-wing. Every argument can always be met with a

176

On the concept of complexity see Michael Scriven, ‘Complexity and Social Scientific Laws’ reproduced in Michael Martin and Lee McIntyre, Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996). For a critical application to rational choice theory see Colin Hay, ‘Theory, Stylized Heuristic, or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Status of Rational Choice in Public Administration', Public Administration, 82 (2004), pp. 39–62.

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counter-argument and every counter-argument with a countering counter-argument and so on.177 Yet some parties are more successful than others in persuading voters to believe one thing of a policy rather than another. Some policies are believed to be at the political centre and others are not. To understand why one policy and, by extension, the party espousing that policy is believed to be at the political centre, it is not enough to describe that policy or party as simply being centrist. Policies are not intrinsically centrist. It is necessary to look at the way in which the policy has been rhetorically constructed as centrist.178

The Limits of Construction Beliefs about which policies are at the political centre are not fixed. Because beliefs about the location of policies within political space are not fixed, beliefs about the spatial location of parties are not fixed. But this should not be taken to mean, as the previous section might also be taken to imply, that beliefs are entirely plastic, that politicians can persuade anyone of anything; that any policy or party can be persuasively argued to be at the political centre. Practitioners have sometimes claimed such powers for rhetoric. Protagoras is recorded as having boasted of his ability to ‘make the worse case appear the better’.179 Gorgias, who declared that he could persuade anyone of anything, maintained that he had persuaded the Athenians to build a statue in his honour at Delphi, an honour usually reserved only for those born Athenian citizens.180 In the Gorgias, Plato has his hapless rhetorician, Callicles, present rhetoric as conferring upon those who learn its art ‘the power of ruling [their] fellow countrymen’.181 Yet such claims—

177

The claim that every argument can be met with a counter-argument and that rhetoric is endless is usually associated with the Sophist Protagoras. ‘Diogenes Laertius and Clement of Alexander refer to [Protagoras] in similar terms: ‘Protagoras was the first to maintain that there are two sides to every question, opposed to each other’ and ‘the Greeks claim, following Protagoras, that for every speech there is one that is opposed to it’. Jacqueline De Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 75–6.

178

I have so far followed Downs in assuming that political space is one-dimensional. The argument that position is rhetorically constructed in no way depends upon this assumption. Imagine that there is, in addition to left and right, a second dimension of libertarianism versus authoritarianism. More will be said in Chapters 7 and 8 about how such dimensions are defined and distinguished and how they might be constructed by parties. For the moment though we will simply assume that the dimension is a given one. A party's overall position on this second dimension will be a function of the ‘particular policies it upholds’. Yet the position of policies along this dimension will not be fixed and unambiguous. Whether a policy is believed to be libertarian, authoritarian, or centrist will depend upon the way in which it is rhetorically presented and defended.

179

Cited, De Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, p. 33.

180

Herrick, History and Theory of Rhetoric, p. 18.

181

Plato, Gorgias (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), p. 452.


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which, as teachers dependent upon their students’ fees, the Sophists had good reason to make—seem exaggerated. Politicians might successfully persuade many of us that some particular policy is at the moderate political centre but this does not mean that they will be able to persuade us that any policy is at the centre. In the run-up to the second Gulf War, New Labour invested huge amounts of time, effort, and political capital in the effort to persuade voters that its policy was, in the absence of formal United Nations approval, nevertheless a moderate and reasonable one. Yet so flimsy was the evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction and so intense the opposition of, amongst others, Germany and France, that, even on the eve of the war itself, the policy was still regarded by many if not most voters as an extreme one.182 Downs uses the ownership example to suggest that the location of policies within political space is prearranged and fixed. The argument in the previous section may have implied that because policy is disarranged and variable that any policy and any party can be constructed as centrist. What is needed here is a middleground in which beliefs are neither fixed nor entirely plastic. In this section such a middle-ground will be sought in Aristotle's discussion of the nature of enthymemes and his argument that audiences determine the ‘end and object’ of speeches.183 A syllogism is a sequence of three propositions such that the first two entail the third, the conclusion. A categorical syllogism contains three terms: the major term, which is the predicate of the conclusion; the minor term, the subject of the conclusion; and the middle term which appears in both premises but not the conclusion. ‘All men are mortal, Socrates is a man: therefore Socrates is mortal.’ Here, the conclusion, that Socrates is mortal, is valid because it follows logically from the stated premises. If these premises are true then the conclusion will also be true.184 This is the syllogism of ‘strict logic’.185 Rhetoric is, however, a subject dealing not with what is certain but with what is probable or, rather, with what ‘seems probable to men of a given type’.186 Premises in rhetorical arguments will not be clear facts but what is believed to be ‘usually true’.187 Arguments using premises that are only

182

George Jones, ‘Polls Shows Most Britons Still Against’, Daily Telegraph, 13 February, 2003; Alan Travis, ‘Support for Attack Jumps but Opposition Still in Majority’, Guardian, 18 March 2003.

183

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1358a. On the importance of the audience see Herrick, History and Theory of Rhetoric, pp. 10–12.

184

If the premises are not true then the conclusion will be valid but false. All men are made of cabbage, Socrates is a man: therefore Socrates is made of cabbage is valid but not true.

185


186

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1356b.

187

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric. See Edward Madden, ‘Aristotle's Treatment of Probability and Signs’, Philosophy of Science, 24 (1957), 167–72; Mary Nichols, ‘Aristotle's Defence of Politics’, Journal of Politics, 19 (1987), 657–77; Barbara Warrick, ‘Judgement, Probability and Aristotle's Rhetoric’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89 (1989), 299–311.

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usually true generate conclusions that are also only usually true. When they take the same deductive form as a syllogism, such arguments are called enthymemes and Aristotle suggests that they are the ‘substance of rhetorical persuasion’.188 George Kennedy offers the following example, ‘Good men do not commit murder, Socrates is a good man: therefore Socrates did not commit murder.’189 This argument appears persuasive because the premises underpinning it appear reasonable ones. Yet the conclusion is nonetheless a ‘contingent’ one.190 Good men sometimes do commit murder. So even if Socrates is a good man, he may have committed murder. Having outlined their basic structure, Aristotle suggests that enthymemes ‘consist of only a few propositions’ because ‘if any of these propositions is a familiar fact, there is no need even to mention it; the hearer adds it himself ’.191 The following example is offered: Thus, to show that Dorieus has been victor in a contest for which the prize is a crown, it is enough to say ‘for he has been victor in the Olympic games’, without adding ‘and in the Olympic games the prize is a crown,’ a fact which everybody knows.192 Or, as Kennedy restates his own example, the orator will argue that ‘it is inconceivable that Socrates who is a good man, could have committed this murder’, the underlying premise, that good men do not commit murder, being left implied.193 The speaker does not formally lay down premises in an enthymeme but allows the audience to supply them.194 As put in rather meandering fashion by Roland Barthes, the enthymeme has the pleasure of progress, of a journey: one sets out from a point which has no need to be proved and from there one proceeds toward another point which does not need to be proved; one has the agreeable feeling of discovering something new by a kind of natural contagion, of capillarity which extends the known (the opinable) toward the unknown. However, to produce all its pleasure, this progress must be supervised. The enthymeme is not a syllogism truncated by defect or corruption, but because the listener must be granted the pleasure of contributing to the construction of the argument; it is something like the pleasure of completing a given pattern or grid.195 The ability of an audience to understand an argument and the likelihood that it will find that argument persuasive will depend upon its knowledge of and

188

Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece, p. 97.

189


190


191


192


193

Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece, p. 97.

194

Lloyd Bitzer, ‘Aristotle's Enthymeme Revisited’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 45 (1959), 399–408.

195

Roland Barthes, The Old Rhetoric: An Aide-Memoire (New York: Hill, 1988), p. 125.


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agreement with these underlying and unstated premises. If an audience does not understand what premise an argument is being based on, the argument will seem incomprehensible. A reader who is used to Olympians being awarded with a gold medal and a urine test may, for example, struggle, at least for a moment, to follow Aristotle's example. If an audience understands but does not agree with the premise being used, the argument will be unpersuasive. Returning to Kennedy's example, a person who has, for example, lived through a brutal civil war and seen friends and neighbours commit horrible crimes might not agree with the premise that good men do not commit murder. They might not therefore agree with the argument that Socrates could not have committed murder because he is a good man. What audiences will find persuasive will depend at least in part upon what that audience already believes. The ‘social knowledge’ an audience possesses, the ‘mosaic of commonplaces, conventions, and provisional interests’ it shares, will create limits to the kind of arguments it can be persuaded to believe.196 To further illustrate the nature of enthymemes we can return to some of the argumentative schemes previously outlined. Take, for example, the tenth category of authority. Politicians sometimes persuade audiences by invoking either their own authority or the authority of others. Yet, in any particular audience of ‘men of a particular type’, there will be an existing set of beliefs about whose judgements and opinions are to be considered authoritative.197 An argument that a particular policy should be supported because it is favoured by a leading businessman is likely to be considered more persuasive at a Confederation of British Industries (CBI) conference than at a Trades Union Congress (TUC) one. What an audience can be persuaded to believe will depend upon what it already believes. As another example consider the ninth category, that of personality. A politician may seek to persuade an audience that a rival will behave in some way in the future because they have behaved in the same way in the past. Whether such an argument is considered persuasive will depend upon the beliefs a particular audience has about the possibility of drawing inferences from particular circumstances. If it is the argument that a politician will be a left-wing prime minister because he/she was a left-wing junior opposition spokesman, the argument will be unpersuasive if the audience believes that junior spokesmen have no alternative but to accede to the established party line. Finally, consider the second category, that of ridicule. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca define it,

196

Thomas Farrell, ‘Aristotle's Enthymeme as Tacit Reference’, in Alan Gross and Arthur Walzer (eds.), Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), p. 99.

197

Perelman and Olbrecths-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, p. 208.

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a ‘statement is ridiculous as soon as it conflicts, without justification, with an accepted opinion’.198 Yet different audiences will have very different ideas about what is to be accepted as an accepted opinion. An argument that a particular policy is ridiculous because it will, when pursued to its logical conclusion, result in the privatisation of health care will not appear ridiculous to someone who supports private health care. An argument that a policy is ridiculous because it is racist may itself appear ridiculous to a racist audience. If politicians are to persuade an audience of one controversial claim they must call upon other shared beliefs. If they are to change their audiences' beliefs, politicians must find common ‘starting-points’ from which they can proceed.199 Politicians who start a speech with a blanket denunciation of their audience and of its audience's beliefs will be unpersuasive. When Gorgias wished to reproach the Athenians for their warlike attitude he did not simply denounce their military campaigns. Instead he praised Athenian victory over the Medes, thereby implying that only victories over foreigners deserved praise ‘whilst victories over Greeks call for dirges’.200 When, in the sixteenth century, entrepreneurs wished to secure legitimacy for a set of economic activities then frowned upon by religious authorities, they did not reject the claims of religion itself. They instead suggested that the ordinary criteria for applying the strongly commendatory term religious could be found in their actions, that they were, essentially, acts of piety.201 When, several hundred years later, Blair sought to persuade those in the party he had just been elected to lead that Labour needed to change, he did not do so by arguing, in public at least, that the party needed to be entirely reconstituted. He instead suggested that Labour's traditional values of community, opportunity, responsibility, and equal worth needed to be placed in a ‘modern setting’.202 Rhetoric is path-dependent. The beliefs an audience has today are not necessarily those it will have tomorrow. Beliefs can be changed and can be changed through rhetoric. The beliefs an audience has tomorrow will however be affected by those it has today, because the beliefs it has today will partly determine which arguments it finds persuasive. Beliefs are not entirely plastic. Politicians, however rhetorically skilled, will be unable to persuade an audience to believe anything they want it to believe. To change some of an audience's beliefs, it will be necessary to call upon others, to find common ‘starting-points’.

198


199


200

Cited, Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, p. 225.

201

Quentin Skinner, ‘Language and Social Change’ in James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

202

Michael White, ‘Blair and Schröder Share a Vision’, Guardian, 9 June 1999.


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It is in precisely such terms that Plato attacks rhetoric. Alarmed by the importance of oratory within Athenian democracy and stung by the success of the Sophists as teachers, rhetoric is ridiculed as being the equivalent of cookery and cosmetics.203 For, rhetoric, like these skills, consists of learning routines and acquiring the knack of guessing correctly what it is that a person wants and then giving it to them. Rhetoric involves persuasion but the persuasion involved is superficial and limited. It often means no more than persuading people to give in to desires they already have. If they are to persuade an audience of anything, the rhetorician cannot stray too far from the beliefs and desires their audience already has. Plato has Socrates respond to Callicles' intemperate claims about the power of rhetoric cited at the start of this section in the following way: Wherever the occasion arises that for all your cleverness you are unable to contradict any assertion made by the object of your love [democracy], but shift your ground this way and that. This happens in the assembly; if the Athenian democracy denies any statement made by you in a speech, you change your policy in deference to its wishes.204 When it rests upon rhetoric, politics is a servile and menial art, its practitioners petty traders who must always give the customer what they want. For Plato, this is profoundly wrong. Responsible citizens and politicians should not pander to their audience but like doctors seek to improve them. Rhetoric is culpable because it teaches nothing about justice and because it results in persuasion without knowledge. Whether or not we accept Plato's underlying arguments about the purpose of politics, we are now left with a very different view of rhetoric. If a party is to persuade the electorate that its policies are at the political centre, it must use comparisons, definitions, examples, authorities, and arguments about cause and effect, sacrifice, ridicule, and contradiction that will be recognised and considered plausible. Rhetorically skilled politicians can persuade an audience to change some of their beliefs. But they cannot persuade everyone of anything.

Conclusion In the third section of Chapter 1, it was argued that seeing the political centre as constructed makes four differences to the way in which party competition should be understood. These can now be briefly reviewed as they offer a way

203

Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, p. 86.

204

Plato, Gorgias, p. 481.

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of summarising the argument in this chapter. (1) Policy and position. Possession of the political centre is not simply a matter of adopting particular policies. The location of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. Whether a policy is thought to be on the left or right, whether it is thought to be moderate or extreme, is a matter of belief. Voters' beliefs are rhetorically constructed and can be reconstructed. A change in policy does not necessarily entail a change in position and a change in position does not necessarily require a change in policy. Position is constructed. Parties must attempt to persuade voters that the policies they are committed to are at the political centre. There are limits to the possibilities of such construction. But persuasion is possible. (2) Creativity. If they are successfully to persuade an audience that some policy is at the political centre, politicians must identify common starting points with their audience and discover which kinds of arguments that audience will find most persuasive. Rhetoric is not simply a matter of calculation. It may be that ‘common places’ or ‘lines of attack’ can be memorised and students taught about the circumstances in which particular kinds of argument are likely to be most effective. It may be that politicians can be coached on how to change their tone during a speech or to read naturally from an autocue. But rhetoric is not simply a matter of calculation. Rhetoric also requires imagination, flexibility, and openness. All politicians have the ability to argue. The ability is not however equally distributed. It is through the discovery of new and persuasive arguments some politicians excel. (3) Spin. The argument here is perhaps the most obvious. Policy does not simply happen. It is presented. Beliefs about spatial position do not simply appear. They are argued over. News management and spinning are not activities discovered and practised by a handful of professional party functionaries since the appointment of Peter Mandelson in 1985 being an example. All politicians are and always have been spin-doctors. There is nothing beneath this spin. Whatever the temptations of the analogy, political arguments are not like boxing matches, for boxing matches can be ended by a referee stepping in and declaring one side the winner by a technical knockout. At various points commentators will pronounce one party to have the better arguments, one party to be at the political centre. But such pronouncements themselves become part of the rhetorical process. In order to persuade voters that they are at the centre, one party will cite the authority of that commentator. Another will then ridicule that judgement with reference to past claims the same commentator has made. Rhetorical argument and spin is endless. Every argument can always be met with a counter-argument and every counter-argument with a countering counter-argument and so on. (4) Choice. Voters' beliefs about the spatial position of policies are constructed and can be reconstructed. Because a party's overall position is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies [the party] upholds’, overall spatial position is not


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fixed.205 A party that wishes to position itself at the political centre is not constrained to adopt any one particular set of policies. No one set of policies is at the political centre. Rhetoric brings with it choice. There may be no alternative to the centre but there are alternative centres.

205



4 Rhetoric, New Labour, and the Constructionof the Centre Introduction Policies and parties are not inherently centrist. They are constructed as being such. A party that wants to present itself as being at the political centre will promote a definition of that term and a corresponding account of its policies that best supports such a description. Rhetoric offers parties one way in which they can tie policies to spatial positions. New Labour has positioned itself at the political centre by presenting its policies as politically moderate. This, as we will see, has meant presenting its policies either as balanced compromises, part of the political mainstream, reasonable and pragmatic, or as being consistent with the status quo. Labour's move towards the electoral centre following first Neil Kinnock's election in 1983 and then Tony Blair's election in 1994 can be described in terms of a list of policy changes. Indeed if we follow the median voter theorem in treating spatial position as a function of policy and in regarding the position of policies within political space as being prearranged and fixed, there is no other way of describing it. So, on this account, the story of Labour's move to the right becomes the story of how, on ownership, Labour went from promising to take a ‘significant public stake in electronics, pharmaceuticals, health equipment…building materials’ and ‘other industries’ in 1983, to acknowledging that ‘the market is potentially a powerful force for good’ in 1986, to touting the possibility of privatising Air Traffic Control during the 1997 campaign.206 It is the story of how, on the issue of industrial relations, Labour went from promising to repeal all Conservative legislation in 1983, to accepting the principle of ballots before strikes and for leadership elections by 1987, to assuring voters of a ‘fair framework of

206

The first quotation is taken from Labour's 1983 Manifesto, The New Hope for Britain. The second is taken from Neil Kinnock, Making Our Way (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 42. The full text of the manifestos cited in this chapter are available via www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area.uk/man.htm .

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RHETORIC, NEW LABOUR, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

law…but no return to the trade union legislation of the 1970s’ in 1992.207 It is the story of how, on the issue of defence, Labour went from a commitment to end ‘the nuclear pretence’ in 1987, to abandoning unilateralism at its 1989 conference.208 It is the story of how, on the issue of education, Labour went from the promise to end all selection in all schools in 1983, to the more limited promise to phase out grammar schools in 1992, to the wafer-thin promise to offer parents the possibility of a ballot on the future of grammar schools in 1997. It is the story of how, on the issue of taxation, Labour went from promising to increase income tax by two pence in 1987, to the unqualified and absolute promise to leave income tax untouched in 1997. Yet one implication of the argument developed in Chapters 2 and 3 is that position is not simply a function of policy. The relationship between policy and position is not such that parties can move to the political centre by committing themselves to particular policies. To understand why one policy and, by extension, the party committed to that policy is believed to be at the political centre, it is not enough to describe that policy as centrist, or to contrast it with policies that are believed to be left-wing. It is necessary to look at the way in which the policy has been rhetorically constructed. In this chapter, New Labour's efforts to rhetorically construct the political centre are examined through its policies on devolution, the minimum wage, trade union recognition, and the tax rises contained in the 2002 budget. The choice of examples is significant. In the run-up to and in the aftermath of the 1997 election, the Conservatives argued that ‘New’ Labour was an exercise in slick marketing and clever spin. Labour had not really changed. It remained a left-wing party because it remained committed to left-wing policies. New Labour was practising a form of ‘karaoke Conservatism: signalling right whilst turning left’.209 During this time, devolution, the minimum wage, and trade union recognition were singled out for attention because these were all policies that Old Labour had also committed itself to. Devolution and the minimum wage had, after all, featured in Labour's 1983, 1987, and 1992 manifestos.210 Trade union recognition was identified as a policy priority in both 1987 and 1992. Tax rises of the sort unveiled in April 2002 had featured prominently in and been blamed for the 1987 and 1992 election losses.211 As we

207

It's Time to Get Britain Working Again, 1992 Labour Party Manifesto.

208

Britain Will Win With Labour, 1987 Labour Party Manifesto.

209

Peter Lilley, Conservative Party Deputy Leader, quoted, Roland Watson, ‘Lilley Stakes Claim to the Centre Ground’, The Times, 10 October 1998.

210

In 1983 Labour promised only to ‘discuss with the TUC the possibility’ of introducing a minimum wage. The New Hope for Britain, 1983 Labour Party manifesto.

211

In 1992 only 30% of voters thought that they would be better off with Labour's tax proposals. 49% thought they would be worse off. Of this latter group three-quarters voted Conservative. David Sanders, ‘Why the Conservatives Won—Again’, in Anthony King et al., (eds.), Britain at the Polls 1992 (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1992), pp. 206–7.


65

will see, New Labour did not leave these policies untouched. Devolution was only to be pursued after it had been approved in referenda. The minimum wage was set at a lower level than had been envisaged in 1992 and small firms were exempted from the legislation on trade union recognition. Yet there is more to this story than incremental policy adjustments. For, the position of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. Polices are not ‘really’ leftwing because policies are not ‘really’ anything. The belief that some policies are left-wing and others centrist is constructed, and can be rhetorically reconstructed. New Labour's leadership used definitions, comparisons, ridicule, authority, and arguments about cause and effect, contradiction, and sacrifice in an effort to persuade voters that its policies were at the moderate political centre.

Devolution During the final few days of the 1992 election and to the apparent protest of his advisers and colleagues, John Major focused the Conservative campaign on Labour's devolution plans. At a rally in Scotland he told his audience that ‘if I could summon up all the authority of this office I would put it into this single warning. The United Kingdom is in danger’.212 Devolution was an extreme policy that would lead to the break-up of the country. With Labour's commitment to devolution if anything increasing following John Smith's election as leader, it was no surprise that Conservative MPs returned time and again to this same argument in the following years. Believing this to be an issue on which their opponents were vulnerable, the Conservatives assailed Labour's ‘constitutional meddling’ and proposals for a ‘tartan tax’. Tony Blair, who was, it has always been claimed, personally unenthusiastic about devolution, responded in June 1996.213 To the surprise of most in his party, he announced that a future Labour Government would hold pre-legislative referenda on the creation of a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and that Scottish voters would also be asked about giving their Parliament limited tax-raising powers. This shift prompted the immediate resignation of one of Labour's frontbench spokesmen and was interpreted and denounced as a softening in the party's commitment to devolution and a sop to the voters of Middle England.214 Michael Heseltine spoke of a ‘policy sell-out’ that had taken place ‘at the first whiff of anxiety in Middle

212

John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 303.

213

On Blair's personal attitude toward devolution see John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001), p. 287.

214

Joanne Robertson, ‘Labour's Tartan Retreat’, Sunday Times, 30 June 1996; Patrick Wintour, ‘One Eye on Middle England’, Observer, 30 June 1996.

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England’.215 New Labour responded by arguing that the change was one of tactics rather than policy. Referenda, it argued, would make it harder for the Conservatives to oppose devolution legislation and, in the longer term, to abolish the Parliament and Assembly if re-elected.216 It is difficult now not to have some sympathy with this argument. New Labour vigorously campaigned for a ‘yes–yes’ vote in the referenda eventually held in September 1997. The Conservatives did not then seek to derail devolution as it passed through the House of Lords and had apparently reconciled themselves to the existence of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly by the time of the 2001 election. Yet the focus on policy and changes in policy is too narrow. In the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the 1997 election, New Labour also sought to reconcile the voters of Middle England to devolution by presenting and defending it as a moderate, politically centrist policy. New Labour sought to construct devolution as moderate policy by defining it in such a way that the policy implied only the slightest of departures from the status quo. Blair, for example, often spoke of ‘decentralisation’ rather than devolution, a term Conservative administrations had used to describe their policies on health, education, and local government.217 Arguing that ‘decentralisation is right and proper’, Blair could, on this basis, argue that there was a contradiction between the Conservative's ‘saying yes to subsidiarity in Europe but no to it in the United Kingdom’.218 In the aftermath of the 1997 election New Labour's Secretary of State for Scotland and future First Minister, Donald Dewar, spoke of devolution as being a policy that would ‘forever’ change the face of Scottish politics and result in an ‘unprecedented’ transfer of power.219 When Blair spoke about the same policy before the 1997 election he referred to the far more humble-sounding creation of a ‘subsidiary’ body which would ‘exercise certain functions in one part of the United Kingdom’.220 At one point he even appeared to define devolution by way of a comparison between the powers of a future Scottish Parliament and those of a parish council.221 Above all,

215

Michael Heseltine, quoted, Jon Hibbs and Robert Shrimsley, ‘Devolution Backlash Hits Blair’, Daily Telegraph, 28 June 1996.

216

Tony Blair, ‘Tomorrow's Socialism’, Guardian, 19 September 1996.

217

New Labour's 1997 manifesto spoke of meeting ‘the demand for decentralisation in Scotland and Wales’. New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party Manifesto.

218

Blair, House of Commons, 20 February 1997, Hansard, Col. 1069.

219

Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, House of Commons, 12 January 1998, Hansard, Col. 21.

220

Blair, speech, ‘Devolution’, 28 June 1996, reproduced in Tony Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 270.

221

George Jones, John Hibbs, and Rachel Sylvester, ‘Blair in Tartan Tax Storm’, Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1997.


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devolution was defined in such a way that it carried no implications for the sovereignty of Westminster: By devolving power, Parliament will be deciding that some parts of the United Kingdom should be governed in a distinct manner. The sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament will of course remain undiminished.222 The ‘of course’ here is precisely what was disputed. The Conservatives argued that devolution would diminish the sovereignty of Parliament. New Labour, seeking to position its policy at the political centre, defined it otherwise. The Conservatives also argued that devolution was an extreme policy that would destroy the status quo of the Union. Devolution was a slippery slope and would ‘split this country more irrevocably and fundamentally than all Hitler's armies could possibly have done’.223 New Labour argued that this was simply to misjudge the likely causal effects of its policy. Devolution would preserve the status quo. Indeed it would, if anything, strengthen it by undercutting support for separatist parties. Conservative policy would have exactly the opposite effect from that intended. It would breed greater resentment and political alienation and so increase support for the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. Devolution was the only policy that would preserve the status quo. Invoking his own authority, as well as a particular account of cause and effect, Blair pleaded: let me be absolutely clear about one thing. I would never agree to anything which threatened to break-up the United Kingdom. I believe in the United Kingdom. Scotland is a vital part of it in every way—economically, socially, politically, historically. To us, devolution is essential if the unity of Britain is to be maintained and strengthened. The real threat to the Union comes from a government that will not face up to the clearly stated desires of the people of Scotland.224 New Labour also sought to tie devolution to the status quo by comparing its own policy to that of past administrations. Whatever the Conservatives' rhetoric, devolution was not a threat to a thousand years of constitutional stability. For successive governments, Labour and Conservative, had already devolved to the Scottish and Welsh Offices the powers New Labour was suggesting should be exercised by the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. Devolution would mean placing the ‘substantial and extensive powers at present exercised’ by two Secretaries of State under ‘democratic control’.225 But the principle of devolving power, of recognising the economic and cultural distinctiveness of Scotland and Wales, was far from revolutionary.

222

Blair, ‘Devolution’, p. 274.

223

Dame Jill Knight, House of Commons, 11 May 1995, Hansard, Col. 880.

224

Blair, speech, ‘The New Nation–State’, 30 November 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 261.

225

Dewar, House of Commons, 21 May 1997, Hansard, Col. 716.

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The Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies, defended devolution in such terms: What we can do is to look back, we can look back at the way since 1964 that powers have accrued to the Welsh Office. We can certainly do that, and it is interesting you know that the governments of both political persuasions, Labour and Conservative, have allowed this process of devolution to continue. The last Conservative government put new policies into the Welsh Office, albeit under the control of the honourable member for Reading and for Richmond in Yorkshire. But they allowed this process of devolution to go forward.226 New Labour also sought to construct devolution as a moderate policy at the political centre by presenting it as a part of the political mainstream. One strand of this argument rested on comparisons between Britain and other countries that had successfully devolved power; In Europe, too, more and more countries have gone down the road of devolving power—not just Germany but traditionally centralised countries like France and Italy. In Spain, a successful system of devolution has been in operation since the late seventies. Only in Britain does it seem that the government argues change is impossible.227 The comparison here was not just with other countries that had devolved power but with countries that had previously had centralised systems of government. If all these countries could devolve power without threatening the integrity of the state how could the Conservatives reasonably argue that devolution was an extreme policy? At other times, rhetorical examples were drawn closer to home. Confronted with the argument that devolution was alien to the British political system, Blair observed that, until the imposition of direct rule in 1972, power had been devolved to the Stormont Parliament without this resulting in the fracturing of the Union.228 Devolution had precedents. As the peace process rolled forward, this argument developed a new relevance. Blair was now able to ask why, as part of an overall peace settlement, the Conservatives were prepared to devolve power to a new legislature in Northern Ireland but not to Scotland and Wales.229 Devolution was also tied to the political mainstream through an argument that there was, in Scotland at least, a broad consensus already in favour of it. Of great assistance here was the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Created on a cross-party basis in the aftermath of the 1987 general election, the Convention met for the first time in March 1989. Its work, which culminated in the

226

Ron Davies, Secretary of State for Wales, interview, On the Record, 29 June 1997. Full transcript available via www.bbc.uk/otr (follow the link to archives).

227

Blair, ‘Devolution’, New Britain, p. 272.

228

Blair, ‘Political Sense’, Guardian, 9 September 1996.

229

Blair, House of Commons, 20 February 1997, Hansard, Col. 1071.


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publication of a report containing detailed proposals for the creation of a Scottish Parliament, attracted support from a range of parties and civic organisations. This support gave New Labour the opportunity to present devolution as entirely uncontroversial: What the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and many other non-party forces in Scotland—like the trade unions, many of the churches—a whole range of public opinion in Scotland has come together to make a very reasonable proposal for a sensible improvement in the government of Scotland. The real danger of fuelling the fires of separatism is if Government in London continues to say no: we are not going to listen to that sensible requirement.230 The Convention at times posed problems for New Labour. Opponents challenged the decision to hold pre-legislative referenda with reference to the Convention's earlier agreement that devolution was the ‘settled will of the Scottish people’.231 The Convention nonetheless offered, in the longer-term, an authoritative shield: a seal of moderation. Devolution was, finally, tied to the mainstream by way of a comparison with past Conservative policy. Here New Labour cited the authority of the Conservatives' own past arguments. For, as New Labour never tired of observing, critics like Ian Lang and Malcom Rifkind had once been in favour of devolution. Attacked during PMQT for supporting a policy that would lead to greater ‘centralisation’, Blair ridiculed the Conservatives by observing that their 1974 manifesto said that ‘devolution is our policy’ and that it was the opposite of centralism. It said that it would free Scotland from the rigours of centralisation and went on to say that it was the opposite of centralism. If it was right in 1974, surely after this passage of time it is right now?232 Finally, and perhaps most obviously, New Labour sought to construct devolution as a moderate policy at the political centre by presenting it as a balanced compromise between the unpalatable extremes of independence and constitutional inertia. For Ron Davies, devolution represented a middle way, but there's nothing wrong with a middle way if you know the extremes on either side are unworkable, and the extremes we are being offered are between… continual rule by John Redwood or whoever, or, on the other hand, complete independence and what we’ve managed to do is construct a very balanced set of proposals.233

230

Robin Cook, Shadow Foreign Secretary, interview, On the Record, 9 March 1997.

231

Edward Clouston, ‘Blair Accused of Devolution Fix’, Guardian, 21 September 1996.

232

Blair, House of Commons, 12 January 1995, Hansard, Col. 275.

233

Davies, interview, On the Record, 29 January 1997.

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The Minimum Wage During the 1992 election, Labour campaigned for a national minimum wage set at half of male median earnings, then calculated as being £3.40 an hour. The Conservatives argued that this would dramatically increase employment costs and result in anywhere between one and two million job losses. Labour was a left-wing party that was committed to a left-wing extremist policy that businesses opposed. Only a few weeks after acquiring the leadership, it was rumoured that Blair was going to abandon the minimum wage. Instead, and at the 1994 Labour Party conference, he announced that whilst a future Labour Government would indeed introduce a minimum wage he would not commit himself in advance to any particular hourly rate for it or formula for calculating such a rate.234 A policy paper subsequently issued in May 1995 suggested that consultation with and co-operation between employees and employers would be necessary to ensure the successful implementation of any wage policy.235 On this basis it was then announced that an incoming Labour Government would create a Low Pay Commission on which both sides of industry would be represented. This body would be asked to set a figure for the national wage and to decide whether there should be regional variations in it and or a lower rate for younger workers. As formally unveiled in July 1997, the Low Pay Commission was chaired by an economist, George Bain, and included three trade unionists, two industrial relations experts, a personnel manager, and a representative of Scottish grocers. After a year of representations and deliberations it announced that it had settled on a national figure of £3.60 an hour and a lower figure of £3.20 for those aged between eighteen and twentyone. Provoking the further ire of trade unions, one of whose leaders had described the Low Pay Commission's recommendation as a ‘disgrace’, the Government subsequently announced a lower figure of £3 an hour for younger workers.236 The Low Pay Commission allowed New Labour to make use of a number of rhetorical stratagems in its efforts to present and defend the minimum wage. Firstly, authoritative backing for the policy itself. The Commission allowed the Government to defend both the general principle of a minimum wage and the specific figure of £3.20 an hour with reference

234

Patrick Wintour, ‘Labour Leaders Aim to Dodge Wage Issue’, Guardian, 29 September 1994.

235

Michael White and Patrick Wintour, ‘Blair Pledged to Minimum Wage’, Guardian, 9 May 1995.

236

The figure was described as a ‘disgrace’ by the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Ken Cameron. Quoted, Ewan Macaskill and Seamus Milne, ‘£3.60 Minimum Wage Row Looms’, Guardian, 28 May 1998.


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to the independence of the Commission and the integrity and wisdom of its members. More specifically, the range of interests represented on the Commission allowed the Government to construct its policy as a balanced and so a moderate one. Because the Commission's report had been a unanimous one, New Labour was also able to argue that there existed a ‘consensus between business, unions and government’: that a minimum wage was a part of the political mainstream.237 Although depending upon a sleight of hand, through which members of a Commission appointed by the Government became representatives of industry, this argument was regularly deployed. Business had agreed to the minimum wage. Nothing was being ‘imposed’ on it.238 Anticipating this strategy, the Conservatives denounced the Commission as ‘unbalanced and unrepresentative’, as being ‘stuffed with trade unionists and academics’.239 They argued that far from there being a consensus, business was overwhelmingly opposed to a minimum wage. When not relying upon the cover provided by the Low Pay Commission, New Labour sought to immunise itself from such claims with reference to occasional surveys interpreted as showing some business support for or at least resignation to the minimum wage.240 With legislation pending, the Government was also able to point to examples of large and, by implication, respectable firms like ‘Burger King, McDonalds, Thomas Cook [and] Whitbreads’ which had, without complaint, apparent difficulty, or redundancies, managed to comply with the terms of the minimum wage.241 New Labour also sought to construct the minimum wage as a mainstream and so a moderate policy through a claim that ‘every other developed nation’ or ‘every modern industrial country’ already had one.242 The example, most frequently cited here was that of America where long-standing and bi-partisan support for the minimum wage was frequently cited in parliamentary debate. The use of this particular example rested on two usually unstated premises. The first was that America was the wealthiest economy in the world. The second was that it was the economic embodiment of neo-liberalism. If

237

Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, quoted, ‘Hewitt Says Business Will Remain at Heart of Government’, Department of Trade and Industry Press Release, P/2002/127, 27 February 2002. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

238

Stephen Byers, Shadow Spokesman for Training and Employment, ‘The Minimum is Victory’, Guardian, 13 September 1996.

239

John Redwood, Shadow Spokesman for Trade and Industry, quoted, Seamus Milne, ‘Packing of Low Pay Body’, Guardian, 26 July 1997.

240

Richard Thomas, ‘Minimum Pay Push by Labour’, Guardian, 24 June 1996.

241

Byers, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, interview, On the Record, 28 March 1999.

242

‘Every other developed nation’, Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, House of Commons, 16 December 1997, Hansard, Col. 171; ‘Every modern industrial country’, New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party manifesto.

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the American economy had not been damaged by a minimum wage why would Britain's? If Ronald Reagan could support a minimum wage what did this say about the political position of the Conservative Party? In the run-up to the 1997 election, John Major's opposition to the minimum wage was also made to appear extreme by contrasting it with past Conservative support for the minimum wage and wage councils. In his first Question Time as Chancellor, Gordon Brown responded to a series of questions about the minimum wage by referring to ‘the traditions of Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan and [Edward Heath] in supporting a minimum wage’.243 The Conservatives sought to present New Labour's commitment to the minimum wage as heralding a sharp break with the status quo. By pointing to the Conservatives' support for wage councils, a small number of which, including the Agricultural Wages Board, had survived into the 1990s, New Labour could present itself as restoring the status quo.244 In the 1992 election Labour's commitment to a specified hourly wage allowed the Conservatives to make specific predictions about the number of jobs that would be lost. The decision to give responsibility for setting the minimum wage to the Low Pay Commission denied the Conservatives such an opportunity in 1997. The Conservatives' more general argument that a minimum wage would cost jobs nonetheless remained.245 The minimum wage was an extreme policy because it would destroy the status quo of low and falling unemployment. In an effort to counter this argument, Blair sought to define the minimum wage in a way that allowed him to distinguish between a ‘sensibly set’ minimum wage and, presumably, a foolishly set one.246 A minimum wage could cause redundancies but set ‘sensibly and flexibly’ it would do no harm.247 By drawing this distinction and by then defining the Low Pay Commission's suggested wage as a sensible one, New Labour sought to deflect some of the criticism of its policy. New Labour's policy was a balanced one, falling between the New Right's unqualified and extreme opposition to any minimum wage, and the Old Left's commitment to a wage set at a level that would increase unemployment. Set at a sensible level, a minimum wage would actually be good for the economy: The national minimum wage will help raise the quality and output of British companies and enable them to compete more effectively in international markets…it will help reduce staff turnover, encourage investment in training and improve staff

243

Gordon Brown, House of Commons, 12 June 1997, Hansard, Col. 1262.

244

On the operation of the Agricultural Wages Board see Ian McCartney, House of Commons, 22 March 1995, Col. 413.

245

Major, House of Commons, 16 July 1996, Hansard, Col. 939.

246

New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party manifesto.

247

Blair, quoted, Keith Harper, ‘Blair Backs Sensible Minimum Wage as Battle Rages over Level’, Guardian, 4 October 1994.


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morale—driving up standards and improving competitiveness. The overwhelming majority of businesses welcome this.248 Offering this very different account of policy cause and effect, New Labour argued that a minimum wage would be no threat to the status quo of falling unemployment. Attached to this argument was an effort to characterise and ridicule Conservative policy for its attempt to turn Britain into the ‘sweatshop’ of Europe: Increasingly in recent years, the Conservative Party has argued that Britain can only and should only seek to compete by aiming to be the cheapest at all costs; aiming to be the bottom of the heap; aiming for the lowest wages and the worst working conditions…the underlying thrust of the policy of the previous government was to try to turn Britain into the sweatshop, certainly of Europe, if not of the world.249 Here and quite unambiguously, New Labour was seeking to present itself as offering an alternative to the status quo. Yet this was a status quo defined in such a way as to make Conservative opposition to a minimum wage appear extreme and unreasonable.

Trade Union Recognition In its 1997 manifesto New Labour stated that ‘people should be free to join or not to join a union. Where they do decide to join, and where a majority of the relevant work-force votes in a ballot for the union to represent them, the union should be recognised’.250 Upon entering office, it soon became apparent that this commitment would lead to a significant political problem. The TUC, who of course strongly approved of the principle of recognition, argued that the manifesto should be interpreted to mean a majority of those voting in any ballot. This would mean that a 51 per cent vote in favour of recognition in a ballot with a 40 per cent turnout would be sufficient to trigger recognition. The CBI and other employers' organisations opposed the general principle of enforced recognition, arguing that it would be divisive and impose unnecessary regulatory burdens on business. In so far as they were prepared to concede the inevitability of some legislation, they argued that the manifesto should be interpreted to mean a majority of the workforce. This would mean that a 70 per cent vote in favour on a ballot with a 70 per cent turnout would be insufficient to trigger recognition. The dilemma for the government was that it did not want to alienate either one of these

248

Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, quoted, ‘Death Knell for Poverty Pay’, Department of Trade and Industry Press Release, P/98/619, 31 July 1998.

249

Margaret Beckett, House of Commons, 16 December 1997, Hansard, Col. 162.

250

New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party manifesto.

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groups. Having laboured to establish its pro-business credentials, it did not want, during its first few years in office, to impose legislation upon business. Blair reportedly told his Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Margaret Beckett, that he ‘did not want this to be a choice between the CBI and the TUC’.251 In the immediate aftermath of the election, and in the hope of avoiding the need to make such a choice, the Government therefore encouraged the CBI and the TUC to find ‘common ground’ through private talks.252 In order to leave room for these talks it was announced that an expected White Paper on industrial relations would be delayed and that any deal struck between the CBI and the TUC would be respected and set in law.253 The Government presumably hoped that these talks would result in an agreement that would allow recognition to be constructed as a part of the moderate mainstream. Talks did lead to eventual agreement on a number of largely technical issues relating to the timing of ballots and procedures for arbitration in the event of a dispute. Yet the claim made by one Minister that there was ‘more about which the CBI and TUC agree than disagree’ was disingenuous.254 Talks did not reconcile the CBI to the principle of recognition and left unresolved the argument about the appropriate meaning of majority. With talks having ground to a halt, the Government's political difficulties appeared to be increasing. Knowing that legislation could not be delayed indefinitely, the CBI sought to strengthen its position by publicly questioning New Labour's understanding of and sympathy toward business. The unions responded by floating stories about possible cuts to Labour Party funding and by mobilising sympathetic MPs to lobby the Government on its behalf.255 The Secretary-General of the TGWU, Bill Morris, warned that there was ‘simply no room for compromise’.256 Yet, in the end, the strength of the disagreement between the CBI and the TUC provided the Government with an opportunity to present itself as a moderating force. For, it soon became clear that the new Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, Peter Mandelson, was determined to forge a compromise which, by virtue of it being a compromise, could be described as ‘reasonable

251

Blair, quoted, Patrick Wintour and Andy McSmith, ‘The Battle for Recognition: United we Stand’, Observer, 24 May 1998.

252

Beckett, speech, CBI Annual Conference, 11 November 1997. Full text available via www.dti.gov.uk/ministers/archived .

253

Philip Basset, ‘CBI in Talks with TUC Over Union Recognition’, The Times, 5 August 1997.

254

Ian McCartney, Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, House of Commons, 6 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 36.

255

Tom Baldwin and James Hardy, ‘Labour MPs Mutiny on Union Rights’, Daily Telegraph, 8 February 1998.

256

Bill Morris, General-Secretary of TGWU, quoted, Seumas Milne, ‘Trade Union Recognition: Will Tony Blair Pay His Dues?’, Guardian, 17 March 1998.


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and balanced’ and so positioned at the political centre.257 On the key issue of voting, this compromise meant legislation requiring the positive votes of at least 40 per cent of those entitled to vote and a blanket exemption for firms with fewer than twenty-one workers. This 40 per cent figure was to be reviewed after a ‘reasonable period’ and, for the unions, was to be further sweetened by an increase in the maximum payouts available to workers in cases of unfair dismissal.258 The compromise was one that left each side with less than what it had hoped for but just enough to secure their acquiescence.259 It also left the Government touting a new era of ‘partnership’. This was a term that became difficult to avoid during this period. Not only did Ministers pepper their speeches with paeans to partnership, the then Minister of State at Trade and Industry, Ian McCartney, took to calling himself the ‘Minister for Social Partnership’.260 Like stake-holding, the third way, and modernisation, partnership was a term easily derided as being vacuous.261 Yet it offered useful political cover. It allowed Ministers to emphasise that legislation was the product of partnership, of ‘detailed and lengthy consultation with employers, unions, and others lasting nearly three years’.262 It also offered a framework within which the likely impact of legislation could be assessed. Far from being likely to provoke endless and bitter disputes between employers and employees, as the Conservatives argued, partnership would mean that ‘99.99 per cent of ’ recognition disputes would be resolved amicably and without recourse to a ballot.263 The causal effect of legislation would actually be to encourage partnership and conciliation: The legal framework that we have proposed will come into play only when employers and employees cannot reach agreement on recognition; but, by ensuring that a clear procedure is in place and known from the outset of discussions, we believe that

257

Ian McCartney, House of Commons, 6 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 34. For references to the policy as ‘balanced and fair’ see Peter Mandelson, House of Commons, 25 November 1998, Col. 212 and as ‘scrupulously balanced’, Peter Mandelson, speech, CBI Annual Conference, 2 November 1998. Full text available via www.dti.gov.uk/ ministers/archived .

258

George Jones and Joy Copley, ‘Cabinet Extends Rights of Unions’, Daily Telegraph, 15 May 1998.

259

The CBI's Director-General, Adair Turner, said that ‘we have worked hard to make this legislation as workable as possible, and believe we have made considerable progress’. Hardly a ringing endorsement but sufficiently short of condemnation. Adair Turner, quoted, John Hibbs, ‘Mandelson Lets CBI Pressure Tell on Rights at Work’, Daily Telegraph, 18 December 1998.

260

Chris Ball, ‘Partnership Principle is New Labour's Big Idea to Sweeten Relations at Work’, Guardian, 8 August 1998.

261

See, for example, Andrew Lansley, House of Commons, 6 April 1998, Col. 33.

262

Alan Johnson, Minister for Competitiveness, quoted, ‘Trade Union Recognition Procedure Begins’, Department of Trade and Industry press release, P/2000/365, 5 June 2000.

263

Margaret Beckett, interview, On the Record, 24 May 1998.

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voluntary agreement is more likely to be achieved and industrial action to be avoided. Neither employers or employees gain from the current arrangements, and the protracted disagreements that can occur only damage future relationships.264 The compromise imposed on and eventually accepted by the CBI and TUC averted a major political crisis. Yet it still left New Labour vulnerable to the Conservatives' argument that trade union recognition was an extreme policy which showed how the party remained on the left. During the 1997 campaign, Michael Hesetline warned that talk of recognition would ‘send a shiver down the spine of every businessman’ in the country.265 In its aftermath, John Redwood continued to warn that New Labour's plans would ‘send us back to the bad old days of the 1960s and 1970s’.266 The CBI's grudging acceptance of legislation afforded New Labour some protection against such charges. The Government also countered them by placing recognition in a more general policy context. New Labour was a moderate party at the political centre that posed no threat to the status quo. Recognition was defensible and important but would not lead to resurgence in trade union power. There would be no slippery slope. In his foreword to the Fairness at Work White Paper, Blair wrote that there will be no going back. The days of strikes without ballots, mass picketing, closed shops and secondary action are over. Even after the changes we propose, Britain will have the most lightly regulated labour market of any leading economy in the world.267 The Government also sought to downplay the radicalism of its proposals by presenting them as entirely uncontroversial. Legislation was intended only to ensure the ‘smooth spread of best practice’.268 For ‘forty-four of the Financial Times (FT) top fifty companies [already] recognise trade unions’.269 Legislation would not disrupt the status quo. Working practices in most firms would be left unchanged. Legislation was directed not at the majority of businesses but at a tiny minority of employers who ‘believe solely in the principle of hire and fire’.270 Defined in this way, New Labour could present Conservative opposition to its policy as amounting to a positive endorsement of such practices. The Conservative Party was not the party of business. It was the party of a handful of businesses who paid ‘sweatshop’ wages and denied their

264

Beckett, House of Commons, 21 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 1105.

265

Heseltine, quoted, Robert Shrimsley, ‘Business Leaders Knock Labour's Union Payback’, Daily Telegraph, 25 March 1997.

266

John Redwood, House of Commons, 9 February 1999, Hansard, Col. 154.

267

Blair, ‘Foreword’, Fairness at Work. Full text available via www.dti.gov.uk/er/fairness/fore.htm .

268

Byers, House of Commons, 9 February 1999, Hansard, Col. 133.

269

Ian McCartney, speech, General Federation of Trade Unions conference, 12 May 1997. Full text available via DTI archives.

270

Ian McCartney, House of Commons, 6 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 33.


77

workers any representation. The Conservatives were the extreme party not Labour.

The 2002 Budget Gordon Brown's sixth budget was delivered on 17 April 2002. It included announcements about the introduction of a Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit, a cut in the starting rate of corporation tax, an increase in the Working Families Tax Credit, and a freeze on road fuel duties. Political and media attention focused however on a proposed rise in National Insurance Contributions and a freeze on personal income tax allowances to fund additional NHS expenditure. New Labour had previously been accused of raising ‘stealth’ taxes. In 2002 there was no attempt to conceal the budget's impact. On Gordon Brown's own figures, taxation would, for a person on the median income, rise by £3.70 a week. An additional £24 billion in revenues would be used to fund a 40 per cent rise in real, inflationadjusted, health expenditure.271 This would, ministers reported, mean 35,000 more nurses, 15,000 more doctors, forty new hospitals, and 500 primary care centres.272 In its immediate aftermath, many commentators suggested that this was a budget ‘suffused’ with the values of Old Labour and that the party was moving back to the left.273 In his post-budget reply, Iain Duncan-Smith denounced a return to an ‘old-style tax and spend’ previously practised by Old Labour.274 Notice here that the issue of tax and spend can, like ownership, be spatially represented as bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. Bounded in that, there can be no rate of taxation higher than 100 per cent or lower than 0 per cent.275 Finite in that, between these extremes there are exactly ninety-eight other policy options. Prearranged and fixed in that, once 100 per cent is placed on the left-hand edge of the scale and 0 per cent on the right, 58 per cent taxation must be placed to the left of 57 per cent taxation and so on. In terms of such a scale it is not difficult to see how Labour's tax rises can be argued to have moved the party to the left. But the location of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. Position is rhetorically constructed. In the days following the budget, New Labour sought to persuade voters that its policy was a moderate one. In

271

Brown, House of Commons, 17 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 591.

272

Jeremy Laurence, ‘Thousands More Doctors and Nurses to be Recruited’, Independent, 19 April 2002, p. 3.

273

Larry Elliot, ‘NHS Prescription Amounts to Kill or Cure’, Guardian, 18 April 2002.

274

Iain Duncan-Smith, House of Commons, 17 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 598.

275

Once the impact of the benefit system is taken into account it is however possible to have a marginal rate of taxation higher than 100 %.

78


a series of television and radio interviews and in a letter to all Labour MP's, Blair immediately denounced as ‘nonsense’ the claim that New Labour had, once again, become a tax-and-spend party.276 Eschewing the rhetoric of those on the left of the party, Blair repeatedly refused to describe the budget as ‘redistributive’.277 Instead, and in an effort to reassure the voters of Middle England by constructing his Government's policy as one that did not threaten the status quo, Blair sought to draw a comparison between his own record on taxation and that of Margaret Thatcher's: No one ever likes paying tax, but even after these changes the tax burden under this Government will be lower than in many of the Thatcher years, lower than the European average, lower than any of our major, comparable, European competitors.278 New Labour also sought to dispel fears that it had moved to the left by forging a clear link between the tax rises and the target of its expenditure. New Labour sought to make the argument not a general one about tax and spend, but a specific and more politically palatable one about raising taxation to fund the NHS. In the year prior to the 2002 budget, reports surfaced indicating that the Government was going to introduce a hypothecated tax to fund the NHS.279 In his budget speech, Brown admitted to having considered such a possibility but argued that hypothecation would destabilise long-term funding.280 Hypothecation was however unnecessary. Without having to introduce a ‘health tax’, Gordon Brown nonetheless managed to persuade commentators and the electorate that the policy choice was not between tax and spend but between tax and spend on the NHS. A political hypothecation was achieved in the absence of a fiscal one. New Labour also sought to construct its policy as a reasonable and so moderate one by placing its tax rises in the context of its other policies and more general record. Tax and spend was defined in terms of a more general economic philosophy of boom and bust, of reckless profligacy. Invoking his own authority and reputation for prudence, Gordon Brown presented his budget with reference to the ‘steady hand’ he had always kept on public finances:281 One of the key differences between this budget debate and budget debates that we used to have years ago is that my right honourable friend the Chancellor set out his

276

Blair, quoted, Andrew Sparrow, ‘Blair Refuses to Rule Out Further Tax Rises’, Daily Telegraph, 22 April 2002.

277

Blair, quoted, Andrew Sparrow, ‘Blair Refuses to Rule Out Further Tax Rises’.

278

Blair, quoted, Andrew Grice and Jeremy Laurence, ‘Blair Warns Unions: Don't Undermine my NHS Reforms’, Independent, 22 April 2002, p. 4.

279

David Smith, ‘Health Tax May Boost NHS Funds’, The Times, 21 October 2001.

280

Gordon Brown, House of Commons, 17 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 589.

281

Gordon Brown, House of Commons, 17 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 580.


79

budget proposals yesterday from a position of almost unprecedented strength and stability in the British economy…we took the necessary tough decisions right at the start of that Parliament and we took more necessary decisions yesterday.282 When still Leader of the Opposition, Blair had sought to change the existing debate about tax and spend into one about the direction of expenditure. In his first Labour Party conference as leader, he told delegates that ‘I don't mind paying taxes for education and health, and the police. What I mind is paying them for unemployment, crime and social squalor’.283 Rejecting the ‘intellectually lazy idea’ that tax should be a ‘virility symbol of the left’, Blair argued that New Labour would manage the economy in such a way that spending could be switched from subsidising the ‘costs of economic failure’ to ‘investing for the future’.284 Albeit in the context of a rise in taxes, New Labour returned to this argument in 2002 with a claim that most of the increase in health expenditure was being paid for by falling unemployment and lower interest payments on public debt.285 New Labour also constructed its policy as being politically moderate by virtue of it being politically balanced, as drawing from the right as well as the left. To do this, the Government placed its expenditure plans in the context of its on-going and, in established though not immutable political appearance, more right-wing reforms to the health service. These, it was argued, would mean that ‘this is not money for more of the same [but] more money for a different sort of health service’.286 Here, New Labour defined ‘old-style’ tax and spend in terms of inefficiency and its own proposals with value for money. This meant appropriating a political language developed by and associated with the Conservatives. Expenditure was to be overseen by a new ‘watchdog’ that would identify and expose examples of poor practice.287 Patients were to be given a ‘choice’ of which hospital to be treated at.288 New freestanding ‘foundation’ hospitals were to be created and ‘incentives’ restructured so that more efficient hospitals capable of treating more patients would receive more money.289 Finally, more use was to be made of private

282

Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, House of Commons, 18 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 742.

283

Blair, speech, ‘New Labour, New Britain’, 4 October 1994, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 37.

284

Blair, ‘Labour's Agenda for Social and Economic Advancement’, Guardian, 23 November 1996.

285

Darling, House of Commons, 18 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 743.

286

Alan Milburn, Secretary of State for Health, interview, On The Record, 21 April 2002.

287


288

Kamal Ahmed and Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Turning Point for Labour as Brown Reinvents the NHS’, Guardian, 21 April 2002.

289

‘Lobby Briefing’, 10 Downing Street Press Secretary, 18 April 2002. Full transcript available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page793.asp .

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firms to improve standards and ensure greater competition.290 In the aftermath of the 2001 election, Blair angered many on the left by outlining his plans for the greater use of private firms within hospitals and schools. These were characterised as being ‘more responsive to the immediate needs of demanding customers’.291 By tying higher expenditure to a style of public management associated with the Conservatives, New Labour sought to assure voters that there is ‘a world of difference between old style tax and spend where money went into unreformed systems and New Labour's invest and reform’ programme.292 Finally, New Labour sought to construct its policy as a moderate one at the political centre by presenting funding increases as a part of the political mainstream. This mainstream was defined partly in terms of the authority of an independent report, that the Government had commissioned, into the long-term funding of the health service in March 2000. This report, prepared by the former Group Chief Executive of the National Westminster Bank, Derek Wanless, was published on the day of the budget. Wanless, whose task it had been to ‘examine the technological, demographic and medical trends over the next two decades that may affect the health service in the United Kingdom as a whole’, recommended large increases in health expenditure to be funded out of general taxation.293 Wanless' report was originally intended to be fed into the Comprehensive Spending Review that was scheduled to begin once the 2002 budget had been completed. The report was however immediately accepted and was repeatedly cited in Brown's budget speech.294 For, what it offered was an impartial and so authoritative justification of policy. Beyond this, the Government claimed that there was a deeper and underlying agreement between the parties and within the country about the need to increase NHS expenditure. Gordon Brown, Alan Milburn, and Peter Mandelson all spoke of a ‘consensus’ about the need for greater expenditure.295 Far from pursing immoderate policies, New Labour was being led by this consensus. This claim about the existence of a cross-party consensus was important because it allowed the Government to present the ‘real’ debate as being about the best way of funding the NHS rather than being about tax and

290

Jeremy Laurence, ‘New Labour Reinvents the Tories’ Internal Market’, Independent, 19 April 2002, p. 7.

291

Blair, speech, ‘Reform of the Public Services’, 16 July 2001, full text available www.number-10. gov.uk/output/Page1579.asp .

292

Blair, ‘A Battle Half Won’, Guardian, 14 April 2002.

293

Celia Hall, ‘Wanless Calls for Doubling of Spending on Health Service’, Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2002.

294


295

Brown, House of Commons, 17 April 2002, Hansard, Col. 589; Milburn, interview, On the Record, 21 April 2002; Peter Mandelson, ‘If Middle England Wants Better Services, Middle England Has to Pay’, Guardian, 18 April 2002.


81

spend. Here, and because it was reaffirming the principle of an NHS funded out of general taxation, New Labour presented itself as the guardian of the status quo: We are continuing the principle established in the 1940s of raising resources towards the cost of the NHS through National Insurance Contributions. The Bill will allocate those resources to a modern health service, building on the Beveridge principles to provide a system of comprehensive care…an NHS free to all at the point of need has been the subject of a consensus that has endured for the past fifty years. It is the fairest and most efficient way of funding health care.296 Exploiting their reluctance to give an unequivocal commitment to a NHS funded out of general taxation, New Labour portrayed the Conservatives as the extreme party who had abandoned the centre-ground. The Conservatives ‘real’ and agreed policy was, it was claimed, to dismantle the NHS and introduce a ‘pay as you go’ system of private insurance.297 Such a possibility allowed ministers to conjure up the bogeyman of an American system in which many would be left without cover. The choice for the public was between ‘taxation or the American’ system’.298 New Labour's position at the centre was created through a construction of its opponent's policies.

Conclusion It has not been the aim of this chapter to provide a comprehensive list of the arguments used to defend or attack the four chosen policies, let alone to assess their relative importance or effectiveness. Many of the Government's more positive arguments have been either brushed over or ignored. The arguments, that devolution would allow for the expression of a distinct political identity, that a minimum wage would protect dignity and equality, that trade union recognition would protect workers from exploitation, and that tax rises to pay for core public services were fair and just, have been neglected. Instead, this chapter has focused on the way in which New Labour promoted particular accounts of its policies that allowed it to tie those policies to the political centre. The position of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. Policies are tied to particular points in political space through rhetoric.

296

Andrew Smith, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, House of Commons, 1 May 2002, Hansard, Col. 956.

297


298



5 Innovation and the Construction of the Centre Introduction In the Downsian framework introduced in Chapter 2, parties choose between a finite number of policies ranging from 0 per cent to 100 per cent private ownership. Policies appear to the parties as a brute fact over which they have no control. Policies are just there. What is missing from this account is the possibility of innovation, of the creative development of new policy options. Parties can react to but are not simply constrained by existing policy options. They can also create new policies. Political position is constructed. One way in which it is constructed is through innovation. This chapter will examine the concept of innovation, argue that it is an important one, and show how it can be understood in spatial terms. Innovation is a concept developed in economics and still used primarily by economists. So it is to economics that the following section turns with a review of Joseph Schumpeter#x0027;s theory of innovation. Schumpeter is an interesting character who was born in Austria in 1883 and took a doctorate at the University of Vienna. After working for a time as a lawyer, he drifted back into academe in 1909. After a series of university appointments, Schumpeter was, in 1919, appointed Austria#x0027;s Minister of Finance where he prevailed over a period of hyperinflation before being sacked. After becoming the President of a bank which collapsed, Schumpeter returned, once more, to university life and became, in 1932, a professor at Harvard, an appointment he retained until his death in 1950. Schumpeter was not the first economist to write about innovation. Nicholas Baudeau (1730#x2013;92), Jeremy Bentham (1748#x2013;1832), Johann von Thunen (1783#x2013;1850), Karl Marx (1818#x2013;83), Gustav Schmoller (1838#x2013;1917), and Max Weber (1864#x2013;1920) had all previously written about the way in which economies are driven forward by the economic application of inventions.299 It is, however,

299

For an account of the work of each of these, see Robert Herbert and Albert Link, The Entrepreneur (New York: Praeger, 1982). Of these it was Marx who had the greatest influence upon Schumpeter#x0027;s work. See Yuichi Shionoya, Schumpeter and the Idea of Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 78#x2013;83.

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INNOVATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

Schumpeter who has provided economics with its #x2018;single most influential#x2019; analysis of innovation.300 There is a second reason for making Schumpeter the focus of this chapter. In his account of the origins of An Economic Theory, Downs credits Schumpeter#x0027;s #x2018;profound analysis of democracy#x2019; with providing #x2018;the inspiration and foundation for my whole thesis#x2019;.301 Yet, strangely, innovation is a concept entirely missing from Downs#x0027; theory. Downs#x0027; failure to allow for the possibility of innovation is explained in the third section in terms of his more general methodological commitment to the general equilibrium theory. Returning to and building further upon the argument initially developed in Chapter 2, it is argued here that the assumption of calculative decision#x2010;making makes prediction, and so the attainment of equilibrium, possible but leaves no analytical room for innovation. The implications of allowing for innovation are then explored in terms of Downs#x0027; arguments about party competition. Tying the discussion of innovation to that of rhetoric, it is argued that innovation gives politicians a choice of electoral strategies, that innovation is uncertain, and that beliefs about innovation are themselves constructed and contested.

Schumpeter: Innovation and Equilibrium Within political science, Schumpeter is best known for his #x2018;elite#x2019; or #x2018;competitive#x2019; theory of representative democracy in which democracy is defined as that #x2018;arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people#x0027;s vote#x2019;.302 Schumpeter develops his theory as an alternative to and as part of a critique of a #x2018;classical#x2019; theory in which democracy is defined in terms of a kind of direct decision#x2010;making of the sort usually associated with Ancient Greece where major decisions were made by the Assembly, or Ecclesia, which met maybe fifty times a year and at which every citizen

300

Jon Elster, Explaining Technical Change: A Case Study in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 112.

301

Anthony Downs, #x2018;The Origins of an Economic Theory of Democracy#x2019; in Bernard Grofman (ed.), Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 197.

302

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen #x0026; Unwin, 1942), p. 269. For discussions of Schumpeter#x0027;s model see David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), pp. 182#x2013;91; Richard Bellamy, #x2018;The Transformation of Capitalism, Liberalism and Democracy#x2019;, Government and Opposition, 26 (1991), 500#x2013;19; Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (London: University of London Press, 1969); and John Medearis, #x2018;Ideology, Democracy and the Limits of Equilibrium: A Schumpeterian Critique#x2019;, British Journal of Political Science, 31 (2001), 355#x2013;388.


85

was entitled to speak and vote.303 Setting up a straw man he then has no difficulty in knocking it down; Schumpeter argues that this theory has no relevance to the modern world. Democracy has been transformed into a system of governance in which the participation of most citizens is limited to a periodic choice of #x2018;accepting or refusing#x2019; those who are to rule them.304 In their efforts to stitch together winning coalitions, politicians are, he suggests, motivated by the prospect of power.305 Politicians deal in votes in the same way that businessmen deal in commodities. In crediting Schumpeter with providing the inspiration for his own work, Downs was particularly taken in with this account of politicians#x0027; motives and with Schumpeter#x0027;s argument that policy emerges as a by#x2010;product of the competitive struggle for votes.306 Yet Schumpeter#x0027;s work on democracy really amounts to little more than a footnote to the main body of his work. It was with the Theory of Economic Development (1911) and the two#x2010;volume Business Cycles (1939) that Schumpeter established his reputation as an economist.307 The recurring theme within these two works is innovation. What Schumpeter means by this term and why he believes it to be of such importance can be best understood in terms of a contrast he draws between the stationary state or static economy in which innovation is absent and the dynamic economy of which innovation is the defining feature.308 In its purest form, the stationary state economy assumes all economically relevant factors#x2014;including population, tastes, and methods of production#x2014;to be fixed and for perfect competition to prevail.309 The key characteristic of

303

For a more careful analysis of the role of the Ecclesia than that attempted by Schumpeter, see Mogens Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

304

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 285.

305


306

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper #x0026; Row, 1957), p. 29. There are nonetheless a number of important differences between Schumpeter#x0027;s and Downs#x0027; theories. Schumpeter does not use the spatial metaphor in the sense of talking about parties or voters as being on the left or right. He instead thinks of parties as armies fighting for control of a #x2018;stretch of country or a particular hill#x2019;; Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 279. Schumpeter does not present parties as maximising their vote by accommodating themselves to the preferences voters have. For such preferences are, Schumpeter argues, unstable and malleable. Parties can manufacture public opinion. In this respect, Schumpeter#x0027;s argument is closer to that developed in Chapter 3. For a more detailed discussion of the differences between the two theories see David Miller #x2018;The Competitive Model of Democracy#x2019;, in Graeme Duncan (ed.), Democratic Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

307

Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1934 [1911]); Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York: McGraw#x2010;Hill, 1939).

308

Allen Oakley, Schumpeter#x0027;s Theory of Capitalist Motion: A Critical Exposition and Reassessment (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1990), p. 54.

309

Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, p. 39.

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such an economy is, Schumpeter argues, equilibrium. In the stationary state economy, the behaviour of consumers and producers will be optimally adjusted to the prevailing conditions. Markets will clear and price, demand, and supply will be unchanging because no one will have any reason to alter their behaviour. The economy will be stationary. Schumpeter claims that the idea of the stationary state economy is one used by #x2018;absolutely all economists of all schools of all times#x2019;.310 It is certainly true that David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Adam Smith all make use of the notion of a stationary state economy.311 Yet Schumpeter#x0027;s account owes its greatest debt to Leon Walras#x0027; Elements of Pure Economics (1874); a work he describes as #x2018;the Magna Carta of economics#x2019;.312 In this, Walras uses techniques for treating systems of simultaneous equations to construct a mathematical model of perfect competition in which productive factors, products, and prices automatically adjust in equilibrium. Schumpeter#x0027;s account of the stationary state economy and his argument about equilibrium is really a more accessible, non#x2010;mathematical, version of Walras#x0027; work. Given the very obvious implausibility of assuming population, people#x0027;s tastes, and methods of production to be fixed, of what value is this account?313 In part, the value is academic. The equilibrium model is useful because it most perfectly illuminates #x2018;the pure logic of interdependence between economic quantities#x2019;.314 Yet Schumpeter, again drawing on Walras, also held that there could be seen #x2018;in the reality around us#x2019; a #x2018;tendency#x2019; toward equilibrium.315 This is, he suggests, a matter of #x2018;common sense#x2019;.316 As such, the equilibrium model is valuable because it tells us something about how economies actually operate. When equilibrium is, for example, upset by a sudden and unexpected change in population, markets will no longer clear. In some places there will be excess demand and profits and, in others, excess supply and losses. These profits and losses will, however, act as a signal about the way in which resources need to be re#x2010;allocated. By responding to these signals and by pushing

310


311

On the history of the stationary state economy, see Richard Clemence and Francis Doody, The Schumpeterian System (Cambridge, Mass: Addison Wesley, 1950), pp. 25#x2013;30.

312

Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954), p. 242. Indeed Schumpeter did much to bring Anglo#x2010;American economists#x0027; attention to Walras#x0027; arguments which were not available in English until 1954 when a translation was prepared by William Jaffe and published by the American Economic Association and the Royal Economic Society.

313

For Schumpeter#x0027;s analysis of the implausibility of the assumptions in Walras#x0027; work see Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, pp. 50#x2013;5.

314

Schumpeter, Preface to the Japanese Edition of The Theory of Economic Development, quoted Medearis, #x2018;Ideology, Democracy and the Limits of Equilibrium#x2019;, p. 359.

315


316



87

more resources into more profitable sectors, the economy will slowly be pushed back towards equilibrium. Because of further changes in economic variables, equilibrium might never actually be reached. But there is a constant movement towards it. The economy is a #x2018;cosmos and not a chaos#x2019;.317 Schumpeter is generous and unstinting in his praise of Walras. Yet he is equally clear that economies cannot be analysed exclusively in static terms. The defining characteristic of the stationary state economy is equilibrium or, rather, the existence of or a tendency towards equilibrium. The defining characteristic of the dynamic economy is the #x2018;creative destruction#x2019; of equilibrium through innovation.318 By innovation Schumpeter has in mind a number of different activities: (1) the introduction of a new good or service with which consumers are not familiar; (2) the introduction of new methods of production; (3) the opening up of a new market; (4) the conquest of a new source of supply; and (5) the carrying out of a new organisation of any industry.319 What all these activities have in common is the #x2018;setting up of a new production function#x2019;, the development of a new way of doing things. Innovations are that which: forever alter and displace the equilibrium state previously existing#x2026;[such that the new equilibrium] cannot be reached from the old one by infinitesimal steps#x2026;add successively as many mail coaches as you please, you will never get a railway thereby.320 Innovation results in the destruction of equilibrium rather than a movement toward it. It is but common sense to recognise that the economic function of deciding how much wool to buy for one#x0027;s process of production and the function of introducing a new process of production do not stand on the same footing.321 At this point, Schumpeter#x0027;s argument is open to misinterpretation. For, innovation is not just a matter of the spectacular. When offering examples of innovations with which to illustrate his argument, Schumpeter returns time and again to epoch#x2010;making products like the railway and motor car. It is not

317


318


319

Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, p. 84. Having gone to such lengths to identify different kinds of innovation, Schumpeter only makes use of the first and, to a lesser extent, the second categories during his subsequent discussion.

320

Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle, p. 64.

321


88


difficult to see why. Such examples allow him to maintain the reader#x0027;s interest and to draw most clearly the distinction he requires, between movements towards equilibrium in the stationary state economy and the destruction of that equilibrium in the dynamic economy. Yet beyond the headline examples, Schumpeter is more subtle. #x2018;We must try to divest ourselves of the idea that innovation necessarily means something spectacularly important#x2019;.322 Innovation consists not only of the spectacular but of #x2018;innumerable#x2019; modest advances such as #x2018;making a success of a particular kind of sausage or toothbrush#x2019;.323 Innovation means introduction of new products and methods of production and this results in the creation of a new equilibrium. Differences between the old and new equilibrium need not be that great. It is the movement away from an existing equilibrium and not the extent of that movement which defines innovation. Schumpeter is determined to secure recognition of innovation as a distinctive economic process because he believes that capitalism itself can only be fully understood as a dynamic system in which equilibrium is being forever destroyed by the introduction of new goods and methods of production. Innovation is the #x2018;outstanding fact in the economic history of capitalist society#x2019;.324 In capitalist societies, the economic process that most affects most individuals#x0027; lives comes not with the steady adjustment to an existing equilibrium but through the destruction of that equilibrium as new goods and methods of production are introduced, adapted, and diffused. As an economic model, the stationary state account is inadequate because it is completely unable to deal with or account for this innovative process. The fatal flaw in Walras#x0027; equilibrium model is that it is #x2018;rigorously static in character#x2019;.325 He [Walras] would have said#x2026;that of course economic life is essentially passive and merely adapts itself to the natural and social influences which may be acting upon it#x2026;I felt very strongly that this was wrong, and that there was a source of energy within the economic system which would of itself disrupt any equilibrium that might be attained.326

322


323


324


325

Schumpeter, Preface to the Japanese edition of The Theory of Economic Development, quoted Medearis, #x2018;Ideology, Democracy and the Limits of Equilibrium#x2019;, p. 362.

326

Schumpeter, Preface to the Japanese Edition of The Theory of Economic Development, quoted Medearis, #x2018;Ideology, Democracy and the Limits of Equilibrium#x2019;, p. 363. The argument here hints at a second way in which Schumpeter distinguishes between the stationary state and dynamic theories. Change within the stationary state is exogenous to the model. It is caused by, for example, changes in population, but these changes are not part of and are not explained by the model. Changes within the dynamic economy are caused by innovation, an endogenous factor.


89

Innovations, whether spectacular or modest, are undertaken by entrepreneurs. In Schumpeter#x0027;s writings, entrepreneurs are portrayed as creative, heroic, and exceptional individuals who, in the search for the #x2018;spectacular prizes of success#x2019;, drive economic development and generate prosperity.327 Entrepreneurs are however a source of economic instability as well as development. Innovation is cyclical. Spectacular break#x2010;through innovations like the motor car or computers are, over time, refined and adapted. Yet, eventually, the possibilities of any particular innovation are exhausted. At this point, a period of profitability and economic boom gives way first to stagnation and then recession. Only with the emergence of new innovations does recovery begin. In this way, Schumpeter leaves innovation underpinning the business cycle. At a narrower level, the sheer difficulty of innovation also makes it a source of instability. Ninety per cent or more of entrepreneurial ventures fail.328 When operating within the stationary flow, the manager of a firm can judge the likely future demand for a product by looking first at current demand for it. Operating within the dynamic economy, the entrepreneur cannot enjoy this luxury. He#x002F;she cannot calculate in advance what the demand will be for a certain product because there cannot be any demand for a product until it exists and the public is made aware of it. An innovation for which there is already an established demand is not an innovation.329 If the entrepreneur is to succeed, this means that they will need, above all other qualities, imagination: #x2018;the capacity of seeing things in a way which proves afterwards to be true, even though it cannot be established [as such] at the moment#x2019;.330 The possession of such an imagination is, together with good luck, the trait that distinguishes successful entrepreneurs. Yet imagination is fallible and is a trait individuals cannot know in advance whether they possess. The numbers of factors that shape the future are huge. Even those entrepreneurs with good imaginations and impressive past records will frequently fail. Such is the difference between idle speculation about an entrepreneurial venture and the experience of actually developing an

327

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 73. Schumpeter is also prepared to concede that entrepreneurs are motivated by such non#x2010;pecuniary gains as the will to succeed, the desire to form a dynasty, and the joy of competition, so giving his work, in this respect as well, a broader base than the Walrasian equilibrium approach it sought to supplant; The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle, pp. 92#x2013;4.

328


329

Schumpter#x0027;s argument here should not be pushed too far. There may not be a demand for a particular product until that product exists but there may be a demand for that kind of product. There could not be a demand for trains until there were trains. But there was a demand for mobility.

330

Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle, p. 85.

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innovation that a person cannot know whether he#x002F;she possesses the required abilities until he#x002F;she becomes an entrepreneur. Hence #x2018;failure will threaten or actually overtake#x2019; 90 per cent of ventures.331

Downs: Innovation and Equilibrium During the years in which Schumpeter was honing his critique of the stationary state economy, Walras#x0027; model was being refined and extended.332 In 1920, and kick#x2010;starting what was to become known as the Socialist Calculation Debate, the American economist Fred Taylor argued that centrally planned economies could be as efficient as capitalist ones because central planners could solve the sets of simultaneous equations that Walras had demonstrated to be the key to achieving equilibrium. Responding to criticisms that no planner could be expected to solve these equations without making errors, Oskar Lange then argued that planners could adjust prices through a process of trial#x2010;and#x2010;error until equilibrium was attained.333 Then, in 1939, John Hicks published Value and Capital, in which, for the first time, a complete economic equilibrium model with aggregated markets for commodities, factors of production, credit, and money capable of dealing with multiperiod analysis was developed.334 Finally, and in the post#x2010;war years, Kenneth Arrow and Gerald Debreu gave the general equilibrium theory its #x2018;most precise statement#x2019;.335

331

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 75. There is a twist to this particular part of Schumpeter#x0027;s story. As capitalism develops, innovation is eventually routinised and the kind of swashbuckling entrepreneurship Schumpeter lauds is rendered obsolete. In a giant corporation, innovation becomes #x2018;depersonalised and automated#x2019;. The implication is that the process of innovation becomes more certain. At this point, and with the entrepreneurial strata endangered, capitalism crumbles and gives way to socialism; Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 133.

332

For a detailed history of the development of the general equilibrium framework during this period, see Bruno Ingaro and Giorgio Israel, The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990).

333

Fred Taylor, #x2018;The Guidance of Production in a Socialist State#x2019; and Oskar Lange, #x2018;On the Economic Theory of Socialism#x2019;, in Benjamin Lippincott (ed.), On The Economic Theory of Socialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938). Lange#x0027;s argument about trial#x2010;and#x2010;error planning also drew directly upon Walras#x2019; work. Friedrich Hayek, who argued that the general equilibrium model simply failed to say anything about how capitalism really worked as a competitive process, attacked the market socialists#x0027; arguments. See Friedrich Hayek, #x2018;The Use of Knowledge in Society#x2019; and #x2018;The Meaning of Competition#x2019; in Individualism and Economic Order (London: Routledge #x0026; Kegan Paul, 1945). It is strange that Schumpeter, whose criticisms of the equilibrium model might have led him to side with Hayek, actually offered, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, a defence of the economics of socialism. For general discussions of the socialist calculation debate and of the place of general equilibrium theory within it, see Don Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

334

Sir John Hicks, Value and Capital: An Inquiry into Some Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).

335

John Stigltiz, Whither Socialism? (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996), p. 5.


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Building with the #x2018;most consistency and logical rigour on the foundations of the equilibrium model#x2019; developed by Walras, Arrow and Debreu constructed a model which postulated large numbers of profit#x2010;maximising firms with rational, utility maximising consumers in an economy with a complete set of perfectly competitive markets for all goods in all periods.336 The resulting paper, #x2018;Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy#x2019;, was published to instant acclaim in Econometrica in July 1954.337 These and other theorists developed and refined the general equilibrium model. They did not however address Schumpeter#x0027;s fundamental criticism of Walras#x0027; model: that general equilibrium excluded innovation. Indeed in their history of the #x2018;invisible hand#x2019;, Bruno Ingaro and Giorgio Israel suggest that Arrow and Debreu offer no more than a #x2018;mathematical formalisation#x2026;of the fundamental concepts of the theory [first] formulated by Walras#x2019;.338 Arrow and Debreu were, like Walras, concerned with the possibility of achieving equilibrium. The contrast with Schumpeter, who defined innovation in terms of the destruction of equilibrium, remained sharp. Yet, by this time, Schumpeter was dead and Schumpeterian economics was dying. Although his own contributions to economics had been lauded, Schumpeter did not have disciples willing to develop his ideas. His work, which lacked the mathematical exposition already taken as the hallmark of scientific knowledge, was increasingly neglected.339 Schumpeter#x0027;s insights about the importance and nature of innovation had been presented in a series of brilliant essays. Emphasising, as they did, the importance of unpredictable individual creativity, they could not be developed into a rival model complete with formally stated assumptions, derived conclusions, and predictions.340 When compared with the rigours of the general equilibrium approach, Schumpeter#x0027;s arguments were easily dis

336

Ingaro and Israel, The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science, p. 274.

337

Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, #x2018;Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy#x2019;, Econometrica, 22 (1954), 265#x2013;90.

338

Ingaro and Israel, The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science, p. 298.

339

Schumpeter had, ironically, studiously promoted the use of mathematics within economic theory and, at one point, played a leading role in the newly created Econometric Society. His widow, Elizabeth, reported that he, Schumpeter, had hoped one day to develop a mathematical version of the dynamic theory; Shionoya, Schumpeter and the Idea of Science, p. 39. This never came about. In the 1970s Schumpeter#x0027;s arguments about innovation were, however, given a formal make#x2010;over by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, #x2018;Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Economic Capabilities#x2019;, American Economic Review, 63 (1973), 440#x2013;9; An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Esben Anderson, Evolutionary Economics: Post#x2010;Schumpeterian Contributions (London: Pinter, 1994).

340

Although it might be noted that the general equilibrium approach developed by Arrow and Debreu does not make any predictions either and may not have any explanatory value. See Daniel Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 54#x2013;6.

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missed as #x2018;supremely intelligent after dinner conversation#x2019;.341 So by the time Downs came to write An Economic Theory as a graduate student at Stanford University in 1955, general equilibrium was the only economic show in town. Although yet to receive their Nobel prizes, Hicks, Debreu, and Arrow were prized professors in three of the world#x0027;s leading universities.342 The general equilibrium model was feted as providing a proof of Adam Smith#x0027;s arguments about the invisible hand and so with establishing the economic superiority of capitalism over its rivals. It is therefore not surprising that Downs, whose doctoral work was being supervised by Kenneth Arrow, conceived of An Economic Theory as an exercise in the application of the general equilibrium model to the study of democracy.343 At the very start of the book, Downs laments that: little progress has been made toward a generalised yet realistic behaviour rule for a rational government similar to the rules traditionally used for rational consumers and producers. As a result, government has not been successfully integrated with private decision#x2010;makers in a general equilibrium theory. This thesis is an attempt to provide such a behaviour rule for democratic government and to trace its implications.344 In Downs#x0027; work, the influence of the general equilibrium framework can be most clearly seen in the emphasis given to equilibrium. The discovery of a vote#x2010;maximising equilibrium at the electoral centre is an essential component of the median voter theorem presented in Downs#x0027; name and one that has, as we have seen in Chapter 2, preoccupied rational choice theorists for the last forty or so years. In Schumpeter#x0027;s terms, Downs offers a stationary state model of political competition. Starting with the assumption that voters#x0027; preferences, politicians#x0027; maximand, the number of parties, and the left#x2013;right dimension are fixed, it proceeds to the identification of an equilibrium vote#x2010;maximising position. The influence of general equilibrium framework can also be seen in the neglect of innovation. In a 300#x2010;page book, this is a term Downs never once uses. In his concluding chapter, Downs describes it as being the #x2018;main thesis#x2019; of his book that #x2018;parties in democratic politics are analogous to entrepreneurs in a profit#x2010;seeking economy#x2019;.345 Yet, whatever the purported influence of Schumpeter upon his work, entrepreneurship is never

341

Lionel Robbins, quoted, Elster, Explaining Technical Change, p. 112.

342

At this time Arrow was professor at Stanford, Debreu was located in the Cowles Commission at Yale, and Hicks was professor at Oxford. Hicks and Arrow received the Nobel Prize for their work on general equilibrium theory in 1972. Debreu received a Nobel memorial prize in 1983. It should be remembered that the Nobel Prize for economics was only first awarded in 1969.

343

Downs, #x2018;The Origins of an Economic Theory of Democracy#x2019; in Bernard Grofman (ed.), Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective, p. 198.

344


345



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linked to innovation. This is not just an oversight, a simple omission that can be easily rectified. Downs#x0027; spatial framework leaves no room for innovation. To see why, we must return to the analysis laid out in Chapter 2. Downs, it will be recalled, introduces the spatial framework with the assumption that #x2018;political preferences can be ordered from left to right#x2019; but then reduces #x2018;all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue; the degree of private ownership#x2019;.346 Figure 5.1 reproduces the relevant diagram from Chapter 2 with policy options running from 0 per cent to 100 per cent private ownership. Reading across from Schumpeter#x0027;s economic theory to party competition, we can associate political innovation with the development of new policies. We do not need to think of politicians lying awake at night trying to develop new policy ideas. As Schumpeter emphasises, innovation is not the same as invention.347 Invention takes place when a new product is created. Innovation takes place when a new product is offered to consumers. Innovations often draw upon inventions. But invention and innovation are nonetheless distinct processes. It is possible to have invention without innovation and to have innovation without invention. We can, in similar fashion, distinguish between policy inventions and policy innovations. Policies are invented by, amongst others, academics, think#x2010;tanks, journalists, pressure groups, and politicians. Policy inventions acquire political significance when they are adopted by a political party, incorporated into its policy platform, and offered to the electorate. Policy invention can take place without innovation. Many policy ideas are ignored. Equally, policy innovation can take place without invention. Parties can, for example, import policy ideas from abroad. In such cases, an innovative policy is offered to an electorate without any invention having taken place. Within Downs#x0027; framework, space is bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. It is finite in the sense that there are a maximum number of 100 policies from which parties can choose. Because policy options are derived from an underlying numeric scale there is no possibility, here, of parties offering to the electorate innovative policy proposals. There can be no level of private ownership lower than 0 per cent or higher than 100 per cent. If the firms in Arrow and Debreu#x0027;s seminal paper and in Walras#x0027; Principles of Economics are price#x2010;takers, the parties in the Downsian framework are policy#x2010;takers. FIGURE 5.1 Left and Right and Ownership.

346


347

Schumpeter, Theory of Economic Development, pp. 88#x2013;9.

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The exclusion of innovation from the spatial framework Downs uses to analyse party competition is implausible. In the case of ownership, policy options are derived from an underlying numeric scale. It is the use of this scale which precludes the possibility of innovation. Now it is possible to think of other issues that might be represented in a similar way to the same effect. So if we think of tax and spend as a distinct policy issue, this can be represented on a one#x2010;dimensional scale with options running from 100 per cent taxation on the left to 0 per cent taxation on the right. With a little more effort and the help of the Phillips Curve, inflation and unemployment might be represented using a scale in which positions of ever#x2010;higher inflation and employment are placed on the left and ever#x2010;lower inflation and higher unemployment on the right.348 But this does not mean that every issue can be represented in this way or that voters or parties must conceive of these issues in this way. Let us deal first with the differences between an issue like ownership and one like law and order. In its 1997 manifesto, New Labour promised to introduce #x2018;fast#x2010;tracking#x2019; of young offenders, parental responsibility orders, community safety orders, child protection orders, random drug testing in prison, and a new offence of racial harassment.349 The Conservatives promised to extend the use of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) and electronic curfews and to introduce a voluntary identity card scheme, a national crime squad, parental control orders, and an automatic life sentence for those convicted of a second serious sexual or violent crime.350 With regard to any one of these policies, we could no doubt devise a one#x2010;dimensional scale with, for example, compulsory identity cards at one end, no identity cards at the other, and a voluntary system somewhere in the middle. With regard to the issue of law and order as a whole, we could no doubt map party position along a numbered scale of the sort employed in the BES using information gleaned from subject experts or a random sample of voters. In either of these ways we could present parties as operating within a one#x2010;dimensional policy space with fixed and pre#x2010;given policy options. Yet this would be entirely contrived. Once parties have revealed their policies, these policies can always be mapped on to a scale. Yet the creation of such a scale for the purposes of representation does not preclude the parties themselves from subsequently developing new policies. The significance of a policy like Child Protection Orders is not that it can be mapped on to a scale, but that it was an innovative policy others had not previously advocated. In the case of ownership, policy options can be represented using a scale. But those policies also constrain the parties in the sense

348

Peter Sinclair and Nicholas Horsewood, Has the Phillips Curve Been Reborn? (Florence: European University Institute, 1997).

349

New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party Manifesto. The full text of the manifestos cited in this chapter are available via www.psr.keele.ac. uk#x002F;area#x002F;uk#x002F;man.htm .

350

You Can Only Be Sure with the Conservatives, 1997 Conservative Party election manifesto.


95

that there cannot be a policy of more than 100 per cent or less than 0 per cent private ownership. In this case we could map the possible policies on to a scale before the parties had revealed their particular policy positions and be certain that the parties could not commit themselves to a policy not contained within that scale. This is not the case with issues like law and order. There is another problem with the ownership example. Downs shows that ownership can be conceived of in terms of the level of ownership and when conceived of in this way, it is certainly the case that innovation is precluded. But this does not mean that voters and parties must conceive of this issue in this way. Arguments about ownership have indeed sometimes taken the form of arguments about the appropriate level of public ownership. But they have also taken the form of arguments about the appropriate kind of public ownership. Take two political issues that confronted New Labour during its first term: the organisation of the Post Office and investment in London Underground. Bringing to a conclusion in 1998 a policy review initiated by the Conservatives, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Mandelson, announced that the Post Office and its constituent businesses, the Royal Mail, Parcelforce, and Post Office Counters, would be given greater freedom to price, invest, and borrow on commercial terms whilst remaining within the public sector. Subject to approval of a five#x2010;year strategic plan, the Post Office would be allowed to keep 60 per cent of its profits for investment and would, albeit only with Treasury approval, be allowed to borrow on private finance markets. This, Mandelson argued, offered the Post Office a #x2018;radical new form of public ownership#x2019;.351 Yet his proposals were criticised as falling short of the Trade and Industry Select Committee#x0027;s recommendation that the Post Office be turned into an Independent Publicly Owned Corporation and given a Charter specifying its objectives, a pricing regime agreed with a regulator, and the freedom to borrow, without consulting the Treasury, on capital markets.352 The argument here was not one about the most appropriate level of public ownership. The Conservatives had thought about but had later explicitly rejected the privatisation option. The argument was instead about the form public ownership should take. The range of options available was not fixed. In an effort to reach a politically attractive settlement, new ownership arrangements were sought out. Over the following years, a similar dispute arose over investment in and the ownership of London Underground. In an effort to ensure the injection of desperately needed capital, the Government here proposed creating a Public#x2013;Private Partnership under the terms of which the tube, station services, and drivers would continue to be operated by a publicly owned and accountable London

351

Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, House of Commons, 7 December 1998, Hansard, Col. 21.

352

Nicholas Bannister, #x2018;The Post Office: What#x0027;s Up Pat?#x2019;, Guardian, 1 September 1998.

96


Underground but in which licenses to maintain and upgrade infrastructure would be given to a number of private firms attracted by the prospect of long#x2010;term profits on thirty#x2010;year contracts.353 Against this, the Liberal Democrats and then, during his independent campaign to become London#x0027;s mayor, Ken Livingstone, proposed creating a new Underground Trust which would be allowed to raise finance for investment by issuing bonds against passenger revenues and proposed congestion charges. Citing the example of the New York metro in which such a scheme was claimed to have reinvigorated public transport, Livingstone argued that this innovative form of public ownership would bring in more investment at a lower cost. Once again, the dispute was not simply about public versus private but about the merits of an innovative ownership proposal. Policies are not the political equivalents of the Ten Commandments, handed down from on#x2010;high to grateful party leaders. Parties create them. Privatisation, trade union ballots, and a minimum wage were once policies being offered to the electorate for the first time. All policies are, at some point, innovative. Indeed, following Schumpeter, the development of new policies might be described as the #x2018;outstanding fact#x2019; in the history of party competition.354 The policies parties must choose between today are neither those fought over in the 1980s nor those of the 1940s. The political process that most affects most individuals#x0027; lives comes not with the steady adjustment of parties to an existing equilibrium but through the destruction of that equilibrium as new policies are introduced, adapted, and diffused. The creation of a NHS, the introduction of comprehensive schools, and the sale of council houses were spectacular policy innovations which forever altered the political landscape and which other parties were forced to respond to and eventually embrace. If position is a function of policy then position is constructed as all policies are created through innovation. Why does Downs commit himself to the use of a spatial framework from which innovation is excluded? For the same reason that innovation is excluded from the general equilibrium model developed by Walras and refined by Arrow and Debreu. As an offshoot of neo#x2010;classical economics, general equilibrium models assume, like rational choice models more generally and Downs#x0027; rational choice model in particular, not simply that individuals are utility maximisers but that they are calculative decision#x2010;makers.355 It has already been argued in Chapter 2 that utility maximisation is not the same as calculative decision#x2010;making. Utility maximisation refers

353

Will Hutton, #x2018;Sell#x2010;Off Will Bury the Underground#x2019;, Guardian, 18 January 1998.

354


355

On the relationship between neo#x2010;classical economics and the general equilibrium model, see Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics, pp. 52#x2013;6.


97

to a form of behaviour: that of selecting the option valued most highly. Calculation refers to a capacity: that of being able to recognise the most valuable option. Calculation reduces the problem of choice to a mathematical exercise all can deal with and deal with in the same way. Calculative decision#x2010;making presumes that individuals with the same preferences when faced with the same options will make the same choices in the same way that different pocket calculators will reach the same answer when posed a question. Calculative decision#x2010;making is an ingredient in general equilibrium models and in Downs#x0027; theory because it is a necessary one if equilibrium is to be attained. Equilibrium is that state in which individuals have no incentive to alter their actions in response to the actions of others. Unless by the wildest of coincidences or the most powerful of norms, equilibrium will only be achieved if individuals are able correctly to anticipate each other#x0027;s actions. For, it is only when individuals are able to select their own course of action on the basis of accurate predictions about how others will behave that they will have no need to alter their behaviour once others have acted. Calculative decision#x2010;making is not only necessary if individuals are to calculate their own optimal responses to the predicted behaviour of others. It is necessary if individuals are going to be able to calculate how others will behave. If calculative decision#x2010;making is a universal trait and if all know this to be so, then a person can predict how another person will behave in a particular situation by calculating how he#x002F;she would behave in that situation. Chapter 2 argues that the assumption of calculative decision#x2010;making is flawed not so much because it is wrong but because it is inadequate. What is missing from it is any sense of the possibility of individual creativity; of novel ideas and solutions being generated to familiar problems. Placed in the specific context of Chapter 2, what is missing from it is any sense of the possibility of innovation, of creative destruction, of the discovery of new and previously unforeseen opportunities, of the development of new policies. Calculative decision#x2010;making presumes that all will deal with the same problem in the same way. Yet, as Schumpeter argues, it is the essence of innovation that some, the entrepreneurs, will deal with the same problem in a different and creative way. Innovation is squeezed out of Downs#x0027; theory and Arrow and Debreu#x0027;s models by the assumption of calculative decision#x2010;making and the search for equilibrium.

Innovation, Rhetoric, and Spatial Competition Schumpeter, it will be recalled, argues that innovation is fraught with difficulties: that 90 per cent or more of entrepreneurial ventures will fail. When operating within the stationary flow, the manager of a firm can judge

98


the likely future demand for a product by looking first at the current demand for it. When operating within the dynamic economy, entrepreneurs cannot know in advance what the demand for their product will be because consumers cannot have preferences over products yet to be marketed. If they are to succeed, entrepreneurs will require imagination and good luck. Moving now from economics to politics, assume for a moment that parties operate purely within a stationary state; that there are indeed a finite and fixed number of policy options. In this case, parties will then be able to calculate in advance the electoral consequences of changing any policy by using opinion polls and focus groups to reveal information about voters#x0027; underlying policy preferences. New Labour#x0027;s use of such techniques has attracted a great deal of attention because it has been claimed to provide #x2018;the clearest evidence so far#x2019; of the impact of marketing on political competition.356 New Labour is said to have made polls and focus groups an integral part of its policy#x2010;making process. Policies have been rejected when it was shown that they would be unpopular and adopted when it was shown that they had support. Once spatial position is thought of as being constructed, the limits of polls and focus groups are however apparent.357 If policy preferences are a function of beliefs about spatial position and if beliefs are constructed and can be reconstructed, then polls and focus groups may not be an accurate guide to future preferences. A policy thought of as being politically moderate today may, once an opponent has attacked it, be thought of as extremist tomorrow. In the case of existing policies, current preferences may nonetheless be a reasonable guide to future preferences. Persuasion is, as we have seen, path#x2010;dependent. Rhetoric can be used to change beliefs but what an audience believes tomorrow will depend upon what it believes today. Yet when we move from stationary state to dynamic competition, further complications arise. Parties will struggle to calculate how an electorate will come to view, in the future, a policy it has yet to be offered and about which it cannot yet have any beliefs. In the case of innovative policies, future beliefs about a policy cannot be constrained by past beliefs about that policy. When developing innovative policies, parties can reduce the uncertainty to which they are exposed by trailing ideas in advance to gauge reaction and by using polls and focus groups to test likely reactions to a new initiative. But uncertainty cannot be eliminated. Until a particular policy has been launched at a particular time in a particular political context and been subjected to specific newspaper and opposition attacks, its fate will be uncertain. A policy

356

Margaret Scammell, #x2018;Political Marketing: Lessons for Political Science#x2019;, Political Studies, 47 (1999), 718#x2013;39. See also Pippa Norris, #x2018;New Labour and Public Opinion: The Third Way as Centrism?#x2019;, in Stuart White (ed.), New Labour: The Progressive Future? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).

357

Downs himself expresses some doubts about polls, describing them as being #x2018;expensive and difficult to interpret#x2019;. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 92.


99

presented as being a balanced compromise might come to be seen as extreme. A policy presented as being a part of the political mainstream might come to be seen as bizarre. A policy presented as being reasonable and pragmatic might come to be seen as dogmatic. A policy presented as being either consistent with or entailing only the slightest of deviations from the status quo might come to be seen as requiring fundamental change. If they are to anticipate correctly the electorate#x0027;s eventual response to a new policy, politicians will, like Schumpeter#x0027;s entrepreneurs, require imagination, #x2018;the capacity of seeing things in a way which proves afterwards to be true, even though it cannot be established [as such] at the moment#x2019;.358 Yet the imagination of even the most able of politicians will be fallible. How an audience comes to think of a particular policy will depend upon a huge number of factors, the relevance of which may only be apparent afterwards. Consider, briefly, the following example. Addressing an audience at the launch of a Global Ethics Foundation in Germany in July 2000, Blair, in a speech largely devoted to Britain#x0027;s role in Europe, unexpectedly proposed introducing on#x2010;the#x2010;spot fines for drunken and antisocial behaviour. A thug might think twice about kicking in your gate, throwing traffic cones around your street or hurling abuse into the night sky if he thought he might get picked up by the police, taken to a cashpoint, and asked to pay an on the spot fine of, for example, one hundred pounds.359 No doubt the policy initiative was intended to be a vote#x2010;winner. Having been pressed on to the defensive over the case of a farmer, Tony Martin, who had shot and killed a burglar at his house, Blair was at this time searching for #x2018;an initiative#x2026;something tough, with immediate bite#x2026;[which] I should be personally associated with#x2019;.360 Yet within just a few days the proposal was abandoned.361 Having anticipated opposition to the scheme as coming from libertarians on the left, problems arose when the media started to ridicule the idea of miscreants being escorted to cashpoints by police officers. This was an arrangement which senior police officers during and after a pre#x2010;arranged seminar on crime at Downing Street publicly dismissed as #x2018;not practical#x2019;.362 Coming just a few weeks after a speech to the Women#x0027;s Institute at which he had been heckled and booed, Blair was also attacked for having used a forum

358

Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, p. 85.

359

Quoted, John Hooper and Michael White, #x2018;Blair Wants On The Spot Fines for Louts#x2019;, Guardian, 1 July 2000.

360

That this was so, was revealed in the text of one of the #x2018;Touchstone#x2019; memos written in April 2000 and leaked to the press in July. #x2018;The Memo in Full#x2019;, Guardian, 17 July 2000.

361

Dressed in a different way it has however periodically resurfaced in some or other form. See, for example, Linda Steele, #x2018;Blair Unveils Young Offenders Scheme#x2019;, Guardian, 24 April 2001.

362

Richard Ford, #x2018;Police Chiefs Tell Blair that Spot Fines are Not a Goer#x2019;, The Times, 4 July 2000.

100


provided by a non#x2010;political body to score narrow party political points. No doubt the failure could have been avoided. The police could have been consulted about the proposal, as apparently they were not. The evocative line about cashpoints could have been excised. The speech could have been given at a different venue at a different time. Yet Schumpeter#x0027;s argument would be that failure is always likely because not everything can be anticipated. Parties may be driven by the desire to maximise their vote but this does not mean that they will always succeed in doing so. The construction of position through innovation is fraught with difficulties. This, however, poses an important question. If political innovation is so fraught with dangers, why do parties attempt it? Why do parties not simply adopt an existing policy which is already regarded as being at the political centre or try to persuade voters that one of its existing policies should be regarded as being a the political centre? In Figure 5.1 policies are constitutive of political space. There is no distinction to be drawn between points in political space and particular policies. Remove these policies and there is no remaining space. I have already argued that this example is a misleading one. In order to answer this question, I now want to suggest that political space exists independently of particular policies. The spadework here has already been completed. In Chapter 2, I showed how and why Downs argues that voters#x0027; preferences over policies and thereby between parties are derived from their particular and fixed views of the #x2018;good society#x2019;, their political philosophy.363 I went on to suggest that we might conceive of such philosophies in spatial terms. That is voters might think of themselves as being centrist. On this basis parties will try to persuade voters that their particular policies are also centrist. So why would a party which wanted to position itself at the centre not simply adopt a policy already regarded as centrist? If we follow Downs in treating the range of policy options as being derived from an underlying numeric scale and thereby as fixed and pre#x2010;given, there must be a policy at the political centre. In Figure 5.1 that policy is of course one of 50 per cent private ownership. If, however, we instead see political space as existing independently of policies then there is no reason why voters must at any one time regard any particular policy as being centrist. There need not be a policy for every point in political space. In order to position themselves at the centre, parties might not be able to adopt a policy already regarded as centrist. So why, in such a case, would a party not simply try to persuade voters that an existing policy should be regarded as being centrist? Clearly such a strategy is frequently adopted. Chapter 4 documented several instances of it. Yet parties might sometimes decide that they will be unable to persuade voters to revise their beliefs about existing policies. In Chapter 4, I

363

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 47


101

argued that there is no pre#x2010;given and fixed relationship between policy and position: that parties can persuade voters to change their beliefs about policies. But I also emphasised that beliefs are not entirely plastic, that politicians cannot persuade anyone of anything. If the belief that an existing policy is extremely left#x2010;wing is firmly entrenched, parties might decide that they will be best able to construct their position at the political centre by developing new policies. The notion of innovation has, so far, been treated as a relatively unproblematic one. In the final part of this chapter, I want to suggest that our beliefs about what constitutes an innovative policy are themselves rhetorically constructed and that the construction of such beliefs is itself an important form of party competition. It is normal for economic historians to argue that innovation is achieved through a series of cumulative and sometimes quite minor advances.364 As the point is succinctly summarised by the UK Patent Office, #x2018;innovation is evolution rather than revolution#x2019;.365 There are spectacular innovations. To use Schumpeter#x0027;s example, railways are qualitatively different form mail coaches. Yet, as Schumpeter himself recognises, spectacular innovations are rarely the result of one spectacular break#x2010;through.366 George Stephenson is often described as the #x2018;founder of the railways#x2019;.367 The launch of the Stockton and Darlington railway using Stephenson#x0027;s Locomotion in 1825 is lauded as a decisive moment in Britain#x0027;s economic and cultural development. Yet Stephenson#x0027;s Rocket was built on and in many respects simply copied from earlier innovations. A commercially successful rail service had already been launched in Middleton in 1812. A steam locomotive designed by Richard Trevithick to carry iron and workers between Pen#x2010;Y#x2010;Darron and Methyr Tydfill had been introduced in 1804. James Watts#x0027; steam engine had been unveiled in 1774 and Nicholas Cugnot#x0027;s steam carriage in 1769.368

364

See Eduard Marz, Joseph Schumpeter: Scholar, Teacher and Politician (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 7#x2013;9; Paul David, Technical Choice, Innovation and Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Nathan Rosenberg, Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 66#x2013;75; Robert Rycroft and Dan Kosh, The Complexity Challenge: Technological Innovation in the 21 Century (London: Pinter, 1999), pp. 36#x2013;9.

365

www.patent.gov.uk#x002F;patent#x002F;definition.htm .

366

#x2018;What we designate as a big invention hardly ever springs out of the current of events#x2026;every change seems to consist in the accumulation of many small influences and events and comes about precisely by steps so small as to make any exact dating and any sharp distinction of epochs almost meaningless#x2019;; Schumpeter, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, p. 227.

367

The Dictionary of National Biography, quoted, Christopher Hill, British Economic and Social History, 1700#x2013;1982 (London: Edward Arnold, 1957), p. 75.

368

For brief histories on which this briefer account is drawn, see Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain, 1700#x2013;1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 253#x2013;6; T.S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760#x2013;1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 70#x2013;2; and Hill, British Economic and Social History, 1700#x2013;1982.

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The point here is not that Cugnot, Watts, or Trevithick #x2018;really#x2019; deserves the credit taken by Stephenson. It is rather that the innovativeness of any one particular innovation will be limited, constructed, and contested. It is limited because nothing comes from nowhere. Innovations lauded as spectacular will nonetheless be building upon and incorporating earlier advances. It is constructed because in an effort to establish the relative innovativeness of a particular product, service, or method of production, an entrepreneur, company, region, or country will identify some particular aspect or feature of that good as being novel and particularly important. It is contested because such claims can always be disputed. Because nothing comes from nowhere, a rival will always be able to argue that the feature claimed as novel and important is derivative and trivial and that some other product was or is far more innovative. The process of constructing and contesting innovativeness is a rhetorical one. Whether submitting a patent application or writing the preface to an entrepreneur#x0027;s hagiography, advocates will use definitions, comparisons, ridicule, authority, examples, arguments about cause and effect, contradiction, and sacrifice to persuade others of their case. Reading across from economics to politics, the same point can be made about policy innovations. Nothing comes from nowhere. Spectacular innovations rarely result from any specific and spectacular single break#x2010;through. Take, for example, one of the policies mentioned in the previous section: the sale of council houses. On the basis of the sheer number of houses sold or its place within a broader programme of privatisation, this innovation might most obviously be linked first to the Conservative Government elected in 1979. The idea of offering tenants a statutory right to buy was however first included in the Conservatives#x0027; 1974 manifesto. Offering tenants discounts to buy their homes, an important feature of policy in the 1980s and 1990s, was trailed in the Conservatives#x0027; 1970 manifesto. Going back still further, the idea of allowing local authorities to sell council houses was first mooted in the Conservatives#x0027; 1957 manifesto.369 Nothing comes from nowhere. Policy innovation is nearly always achieved through a series of cumulative and sometimes quite minor advances. The innovativeness of any particular policy will always be limited, constructed, and contested. A party#x0027;s incentive to create new policies will be strongest when its existing policies are viewed as being extremist. The centrist credentials of any such policy will however be contested. One way in which they will be contested is through claims that a policy described by its proponents as innovative is #x2018;really#x2019; a retread of an old,

369

On the history of council house sales, see Stephen Merrett, State Housing in Britain (London: Routledge #x0026; Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 222#x2013;31; and Philip Booth and Tony Crook (eds.), Low Cost Home Ownership (Aldershot: Gower, 1986).


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failed, and left#x2010;wing policy. Pointing to some particular aspect of the policy, a rival will argue that what is being presented as innovative is derivative, that the new policy shares certain crucial features of some other and discredited policy. Confronted with such an argument, the first party will either dispute the comparison being made, or argue that it is some other feature of the policy that is the crucial one. It is upon this aspect of party competition that Chapter 6 will focus. Beliefs about the innovativeness of policy are constructed and can be reconstructed.

Conclusion As argued in the third section of chapter 1, viewing the political centre as constructed makes four differences to the way in which party competition should be understood. These can now be briefly reviewed as they offer a way of summarising the argument in this chapter. (1) Policy and position. Within the median voter theorem, spatial position is seen as a function of policy. Downs#x0027; preferred example of ownership presumes a finite number of policies. Chapter 3 argued that position is rhetorically constructed. The argument here has taken a different form. There are not a finite number of policy options. Parties must not only construct positions; they must also create policies. (2) Creativity. In Downs#x0027; account, party competition is a matter of calculation. Party leaders are not blessed with unique decision#x2010;making abilities. In deciding which policies to adopt they will #x2018;see#x2019; the same possibilities as any other actor. Yet, as Schumpeter argues, it is the essence of innovation that some, the entrepreneurs, will deal with the same problem in a different and creative way. Schumpeter suggests that only a #x2018;small fraction of the population#x2019; possesses the attributes required for successful innovation.370 Parties will prosper to the extent that they can harness the limited pool of creative talent available. (3) Spin. If we want to think of new policies as occupying a particular point in political space we cannot think of innovation separately from rhetoric. Beliefs about the spatial location of a new policy are constructed through rhetorical argument. Furthermore, beliefs about the relative innovativeness of any particular policy are themselves rhetorically constructed and contested. It is possible to draw an analytic distinction between innovative and non#x2010;innovative policies in terms of Schumpeter#x0027;s distinction between movement towards and the destruction of an existing equilibrium. In practice, beliefs about the innovativeness of a policy are formed out of political argument. (4) Choice. All policies are, at some

370


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point, innovative policies. Policy is not handed down from on#x2010;high. Yet, at any one moment, parties can choose between adopting an established policy or creating a new policy. A party#x0027;s incentive to create new policies will be strongest when its existing policies are viewed as being distant from the political centre.

6 Innovation, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction If we follow the median voter theorem in treating spatial position as a function of policy and assume also that the location of policies within political space is prearranged and fixed, then Labour's recent political history can most obviously be described in terms of a list of policy changes. Changes in Labour's policies on ownership, industrial relations, defence, education, and taxation can all be described in spatial terms as having moved the party from the left to the right and toward the centre. There is however another way of looking at and thinking about these same policies: as an accommodation to the Conservatives. In reconciling itself to privatisation, multilateral disarmament, and ballots before strikes, New Labour had betrayed its socialist past and embraced Thatcherism. On 1 May 1997, the country voted out one Conservative government only to replace it with another. Or so at least runs an argument often mounted by New Labour's opponents. For, the comparison between New Labour and the Conservatives is a politically charged one. It may be a comparison frequently made by academics wanting to place New Labour in a broader political context.371 But the comparison is far from being, in its pejorative sense, an academic one. In the run-up to the 1997 election, critics to New Labour's left drew the comparison in an effort to persuade voters and party activists that New Labour has conceded too much in its quest for electoral responsibility, that Tony Blair had betrayed his party's history and that a move back to the left was necessary.372 At the same time,

371

Numerous academics have argued that New Labour has accommodated itself to Conservative policies. See Richard Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2000); Colin Hay, Labouring Under False Pretences: The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Colin Crouch, ‘The Terms of the Neo-Liberal Consensus’, Political Quarterly, 68 (1997), 352–60; Colin Leys and Leo Panitich, The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour (London: Verso, 1997).

372

Stephen Bates, ‘Benn Calls for Radical Shift by Labour’, Guardian, 9 April 1994; Patrick Wintour, ‘Left Wing MEP Fires Broadside at Blair’, Guardian, 14 January 1995; Lawrence Donegon, ‘Scargill Hopes for New Left Party by Next May Day’, Guardian, 10 November 1995.

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INNOVATION, NEW LABOUR, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

right-wing politicians drew the comparison in an effort to persuade voters to choose ‘the real thing’. This, the ‘Coke strategy’, as it became known, was a claim that ‘there is a new consensus in British politics. If the people of this country [want to] support that consensus, which was created by the Conservative Party, the best thing that they could do is vote Conservative and not for the vacuous, pale imitation on the Opposition benches’.373 In an attempt to emphasise the extent of its break from Old Labour, New Labour has, on occasions, been happy to acknowledge at least a part of this comparison. In The Blair Revolution, Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle assured readers that ‘we have to be clear where they [the Conservatives] got things right’.374 Blair himself first courted, and then flaunted in the Sun, Margaret Thatcher's qualified endorsement of him as someone who ‘won't let Britain down’.375 Yet Blair has also described the comparison as ‘intellectually lazy’ and ‘simply wrong’.376 New Labour offers a ‘third way’ distinct from that offered by both Old Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right.377 On what basis has New Labour contested the comparison? One argument here is that New Labour has accepted Conservative policies where the Conservatives got things ‘right’ but, in addition, pursued a number of policies—devolution, the minimum wage, and trade union recognition being the most obvious examples—that have been consistently opposed by the Conservatives. On this reading, New Labour is at the political centre because it has pursued a balanced programme with policies, the best policies, drawn from both left and right. A second argument, much in evidence around the time of the 2001 election, was that New Labour's ‘first phase’ had to be ‘essentially one of reassurance’ and that this had meant conceding ground to the Conservatives. New Labour's ‘second phase’ would be devoted to ‘breaking down the barriers that [still] hold people back’. This would mean dealing not with the ‘problems of too much state interference, inflexible labour markets [and] too high taxes for top achievers; but from problems

373

William Day MP, House of Commons, 25 April 1995, Hansard, Col. 658. In the aftermath of the election, the same argument was offered as a reason for consolation in defeat. The Conservatives may have been badly mauled in 1997 but they were mauled by a party offering much the same policy agenda. ‘The Tory legacy has been left largely undisturbed’; John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 734.

374

Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? (London: Faber & Faber, 1996), p. 3. Nine pages later, these achievements are listed as including industrial relations, privatisation, income tax reform, and the closing of the productivity gap.

375

See John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001), pp. 277–8.

376

Tony Blair, ‘True Story of the Wilderness Years’, Guardian, 17 December 1995. See also Blair, ‘Centre Forward’, The Times, 11 October 1998; Gordon Brown, ‘Why the Party Still Needs Its Soul’, New Statesman, 28 February 2000, pp. 21–3.

377

Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century (London: Fabian Society, 1998), p. 1.


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Mrs Thatcher failed to tackle’ such as inadequate education and regional decline.378 A third argument, one upon which this chapter will focus, is that the comparison is false because New Labour has ‘moved beyond the old boundaries between Left and Right altogether’.379 New Labour is different because it has forged a new and ‘radical centre’ in British politics.380 When viewed from within the spatial framework laid out in Chapter 2, it is difficult to see this final argument as anything other than self-serving sophistry. If there are, as Downs suggests, a finite number of policies whose position in political space is prearranged and fixed then New Labour cannot have moved ‘beyond’ left and right. It can only have moved from left to right. In this case, the political centre to which New Labour has moved cannot be a radical one. This framework is however inadequate. Parties can react to, but are not simply constrained by, existing policy options. Political position is constructed. One way in which it is constructed is through policy innovation. We can make sense of New Labour's claim to have forged a radical centre if we interpret it as a claim about innovation: as a claim to have developed a set of new policies that are now also seen as being at the political centre. Policies are not the political equivalents of the Ten Commandments, handed down from on-high to grateful party leaders. Policies are created by parties. All policies are at some point innovative policies. Yet, at any one time, the innovativeness of any one policy will be limited, constructed, and contested. It will be limited because nothing comes from nowhere. Innovations lauded as spectacular will nonetheless be building upon and incorporating earlier advances. It will be constructed because in an effort to establish the relative innovativeness of a particular policy, parties will identify some particular aspect or feature of it as being novel and particularly important. It will be contested because such claims can always be disputed. Because nothing comes from nowhere, a rival will always be able to argue that the feature claimed to be novel and important is derivative and trivial. Using the examples of the New Deal, EAZs, the WFTC, ASBOs, and Hospital Foundation Trusts, we will see, in this chapter, how New

378

Blair, speech, ‘The Government's Agenda for the Future’, 8 February 2001. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/ output/page838.asp .

379

‘This new left-of-centre is not simply an accommodation of the Right but tries to move the political debate beyond the old boundaries between Left and Right altogether. The claim that “new Left” is just a fancy way of saying ‘Tory” is false’. Blair, speech, ‘Security in a World of Change’, 17 July 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 207. See also Rebecca Smithers, ‘Blair Woos U.S. With Pledge of Change’, Guardian, 12 April 1996, p. 11; Mandelson and Liddle, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?, p. 4.

380

Blair, quoted, Peter Riddell and Philip Webster, ‘Shaken and Contrite? Not a Bit of It’, The Times, 8 May 2000.

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Labour has sought to distinguish itself from both Old Labour and the Conservatives by constructing its policies as innovative. We will also see how New Labour's opponents have contested such efforts by presenting the same policies as staid and derivative imitations of Conservative policy. This argument has a spatial dimension. Chapter 4 demonstrated how New Labour presented itself as a moderate party by constructing its policies as being either consistent with or entailing only the slightest of departures from the established status quo. The Conservatives argued that New Labour was a left-wing party because it was committed to a left-wing policy, devolution, which would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. New Labour responded by arguing that successive governments, Labour and Conservative, had already devolved to the Scottish and Welsh Offices the powers New Labour was suggesting should be exercised by the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. The argument in this chapter takes a very different form. One of the ways in which New Labour has constructed its position at the political centre is through an argument that its policies are radically different from those pursued by Old Labour and the Conservatives. The hallmark of the party's moderation is its break with the status quo. Old Labour is on the extreme political left. The Conservatives are on the extreme political right. The proof of New Labour's moderation is that its policies differ from both. This spatial position, that New Labour sought to construct for itself, was one contested by others. One of the ways in which it was contested was through the comparison with the Conservatives. New Labour's left-wing critics sought to present the party as having moved too far to the right by arguing that its policies were actually comparable to those being pursued by the Conservatives. The Conservatives sought to contest New Labour's presentation of them as an extreme rightwing party by arguing that New Labour's policies built directly upon theirs. Arguments about spatial position were, in this way, played out through arguments about the innovativeness of New Labour's policies.

The New Deal Proposals for a ‘New Deal’ for the young unemployed were formally unveiled in November 1995.381 Over the following months, New Labour's promise to use the New Deal to get a quarter of a million of the young unemployed off benefit and into work became one of the defining policies of its campaign. Once in office, the New Deal formed the centrepiece of New

381

Paul Routledge and Gordon Brown, The Biography (London: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 174.


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Labour's first budget and was launched nationally in April 1998.382 The basic terms of the policy can be briefly described. As initially formulated, the New Deal was aimed at those aged between eighteen and twenty-five, who had been out of work and claiming the Job Seeker's Allowance for more than six months. After a series of interviews with a personal adviser, those joining the New Deal entered a ‘gateway’ period lasting four months in which they received advice, training, and counselling. At the end of this period, those still out of work were then offered a choice between (1) a subsidised job for six months, (2) a place on the Environment Task Force, (3) voluntary work in return for higher benefit, or (4) a full-time place on an approved training scheme.383 Those who refused to join the New Deal or who then refused one of the available options without good reason were to have their benefit suspended or stopped altogether. New Labour sought to construct the New Deal as a moderate policy at the political centre. It did so by presenting the policy as being a part of the political mainstream. Much, for example, was made of support for the New Deal from both unions and large business.384 It also presented the policy as being politically balanced. Much was also made of the way in which opportunities were to be balanced against responsibilities. There was to be no ‘fifth option’ as ministers continually intoned.385 Such arguments take us back onto ground previously covered. Yet, the government also sought to construct the New Deal as a moderate policy at the political centre by presenting it as an innovative policy different from those pursued by Old Labour and the Conservatives. Gordon Brown described the New Deal as offering ‘the most ambitious programme of employment opportunities our country has seen’.386 The then Secretary of State for Social Security, Harriet Harman, suggested that it represented the ‘the first step in a new direction for welfare’.387 Old Labour had recognised the tragedy of youth unemployment but had seen the solution to it exclusively in terms of higher economic growth. The Conservatives had ‘paid people a few pounds in benefit and

382

In the same budget, Brown announced New Deals for the disabled and lone parents. New Deals have also been introduced for the long-term unemployed and those older than twenty-five. There is now also a New Deal for young musicians. The moniker of a New Deal has been applied to numerous other policies. This section will focus upon the best known New Deal for the young unemployed.

383

A fifth option of support for starting a new business was subsequently added. See www.newdeal.gov.uk for full details.

384

‘Big Firms Sign up to New Deal’, 422/97, 9 December 1997. Full text available via www.newdeal.gov.uk/english/press/ archive.asp .

385

Blair, speech, ‘The New Deal: 250,000 Young People Off Welfare and Into Work’, 30 November 2000. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/ page838.asp .

386

Brown, House of Commons, 17 March 1998, Hansard, Col. 1102.

387

Harriet Harman, Secretary of State for Social Security, House of Commons, 4 July 1995, Hansard, Col. 522.

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then forgotten about them’.388 The New Deal was a new policy, one that showed New Labour to have a radical and radically different policy agenda. When Brown first announced details of the New Deal, critics within the Labour Party, including, as it was reported at the time, a number of Shadow Cabinet ministers, portrayed it as a ‘lurch to the right’, as an ‘aping’ of Conservative policy.389 Far from being radical and innovative, the New Deal's defining feature, its use of sanctions to punish those unable or unwilling to participate, legitimised Conservative ‘workfare’ policy. Far from positioning New Labour at the political centre, the New Deal pushed it further to the right and towards the Conservatives. As for the Conservatives themselves, when, two years later, the basic terms of the New Deal were introduced in Parliament, they refrained from making direct attacks upon it. Before the 1997 election, the Conservatives had argued that the New Deal, and the windfall tax on the privatised utilities that would fund it, revealed New Labour's ‘real’ interventionist instincts and mistrust of the free market.390 Confined to opposition, they changed tack and instead argued that there was little new about the New Deal; that far from being innovative the ‘previous government spent money on many similar schemes’.391 A number of policy precedents were cited. First, a series of pilot schemes introduced in December 1995 in which the long-term unemployed were, under threat of a cut in their benefit, given three months training followed by a placement in a private company, charity, or voluntary organisation.392 Second, the Training for Work programme which was first introduced in 1993 and which made use of an initial training or, as it became known in the New Deal, gateway period to make an assessment of individuals' needs. Third, Kenneth Clarke's self-proclaimed ‘welfare to work’ budget in 1995 which, like the New Deal, offered subsidies to employers who took on the long-term unemployed.393 Far from being innovative, the New Deal was derivative. Far from being, as New Labour suggested, an extreme party willing to condemn millions to long-term unemployment, the Conservatives had developed and implemented the very policies New Labour was

388

Brown, ‘In the Real World’, Guardian, 2 August 1996.

389

Anonymous Labour MP, quoted Erlend Clouston, ‘Brown Defends Benefit Cut’, Guardian 11 March 1996.

390

Michael Heseltine, House of Commons, 21 November 1996, Hansard, Col. 1120.

391

Stephen Dorrell, Conservative Party Shadow Education Spokesman, House of Commons, 19 December 1997, Hansard, Col. 566.

392

Seamus Milne and Michael White, ‘Major Defends Workfare Plan’, Guardian, 2 December 1995.

393

Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, House of Commons, 28 November 1995, Hansard, Col. 1071. Although New Labour would argue that this budget was designed as little more than a spoiler for their own, soon to be unveiled, plans.


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presenting as innovative and citing as evidence in support of its claim to be in sole possession of the political centre. Confronted with these comparisons with Conservative policy, the New Deal's architects conceded the debt their scheme owed to employment programmes in a number of American states and to the Jobs, Enterprise and Training scheme in Australia. They argued that the New Deal was however ‘completely different from the employment programmes’ pursued by the Conservatives.394 In an effort to maintain their monopoly of the political centre, they had to argue this. They had to argue that their policy was different from that of a Conservative Party which they were determined to brand as extremist. The New Deal was different because it was on an entirely different scale. Funded by the windfall tax on the privatised utilities, the New Deal represented ‘as big a partnership between business and government as there has ever been’.395 The New Deal was different because the options it offered were of a far higher quality. The Conservatives had offered the unemployed ‘skivvy’ work.396 The New Deal offered ‘real work’ and training programmes and placements with ‘real economic and social value’.397 These differences meant that the comparison between the New Deal and workfare was entirely misplaced. As defined by Gordon Brown, workfare meant ‘penalising the unemployed’ and asking them ‘to work in return for their benefit’.398 The New Deal offered real opportunities and required only that individuals took one of them. It was not workfare. All policies are at some point innovative policies. Yet, at any one time, the innovativeness of any one party is contestable. In their efforts to position themselves at the political centre, New Labour sought to present and defend the New Deal as being just that, new. The Conservatives and dissidents within the Labour Party argued, albeit for different reasons and in different ways, that the policy was derivative: that key features of the policy had been developed by the Conservatives. In this way, the political argument about the position of the New Deal was conducted as an argument about its innovativeness.

394

Blair, ‘New Deal For Young People’, speech, 7 August 1998. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

395

Blair, ‘Launch of the New Deal Advertising Scheme’, speech, 11 February 1998. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

396

Blair, House of Commons, 31 March 1999, Hansard, Col. 1083.

397

Andrew Smith MP, Minister for Employment, Welfare to Work and Disability Rights, House of Commons, 19 December 1997, Hansard, Col. 559.

398

Brown quoted, Jill Sherman, ‘Brown Unveils Plan for Young Jobless’, The Times, 11 November 1995.

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Education Action Zones The New Deal featured prominently in New Labour's 1997 campaign and received a great deal of media attention. In contrast, EAZs probably escaped most voters' attention. Yet, at this time, they nevertheless played an important part within New Labour's overall education policy. While in opposition, Blair famously described his priorities as being ‘education, education, education’. Yet this masked a considerable policy problem. New Labour wanted to present itself as providing a third way. In the case of education policy, this meant presenting past arguments about education as being divisive, ideologically driven, and destructive of standards in schools. It meant arguing that New Labour's overriding concern with ‘standards not structure’ was pushing the policy debate forward.399 Yet, most of the policies with which the party entered the 1997 election had been very obviously taken from either the Conservatives or Old Labour. From the Conservatives, New Labour had taken the National Curriculum, the use of tests and the publication of league tables, a tough inspection regime together with ‘fresh starts’ for failing schools and specialist schools. From Old Labour, the party had taken the abolition of the Assisted Places Scheme to fund the recruitment of additional teachers, a commitment to cut average class sizes, and, in the Conservatives' version, a determination to destroy grammar schools.400 The position of policies within political space is not prearranged and fixed. New Labour presented those policies it had once denounced as extremist as evidence of its political moderation. Yet, eager to create the impression of its own ‘fresh start’, New Labour also took to emphasising the significance of one of its few policies not obviously taken from either party: EAZs. As the then Conservative Education Spokesman, Stephen Dorrell, commented on the 1997 School Standards and Framework Bill within which provisions relating to the creation of EAZs were embedded, anyone looking at the publicity which the Secretary of State secured when the bill was published could be forgiven for thinking that the Bill was almost exclusively about education action zones.401 EAZs were to be composed of a small number of secondary schools together with their feeder primary schools; maybe fifteen schools in total. Situated primarily in poorer inner city areas, EAZs were to be run by a

399

David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education, ‘Labour Strives for that Elusive Goal’, Guardian, 8 July 1997.

400

Although the precise details varied, a commitment to reduce average class sizes and end the Assisted Places Scheme had featured in the 1983, 1987, and 1992 manifestos.

401

Dorrell, House of Commons, 22 December 1997, Hansard, Col. 670.


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management board composed of representatives from the schools themselves, the local community, and local businesses. EAZs were to act as ‘testbeds of innovation’, overseeing and encouraging the development of new teaching methods and projects.402 The Government's expectation was that EAZs would not only improve standards in the schools concerned, but that they would generate policy ideas that could be applied nationally. Schools that were successful in their bid to acquire EAZ status were given around £1 million in additional funding, the freedom to opt out of regulations on the national curriculum and teacher's pay and conditions, and priority in the allocation of new ‘Advanced Skills Teachers’.403 The Conservatives' education spokesman, Stephen Dorrell, admitted to finding the idea of EAZs ‘rather attractive’.404 Ballots on the future of grammar schools and the abolition of the Assisted Places Scheme were ideologically driven left-wing policies intended to appease Labour Party activists.405 The problem with EAZs was a very different one. Bowing to pressure from teaching unions and education authorities, the Government had, the Conservatives argued, placed arbitrary restrictions upon the freedom of management boards to set policy. The Government was to be criticised not for its convictions but for lacking the ‘courage of its convictions’.406 In its press releases, speeches, and interviews, New Labour presented EAZs as a radical and innovative policy. Old Labour had given control of schools to local education authorities. The Conservatives had stripped education authorities of their powers and given control to bureaucrats in Whitehall. EAZs offered a third way, the devolution of power to individual clusters of schools.407 To the then Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett, they represented ‘the beginning of an entirely new way of delivering the education service’.408 For his junior minister, Stephen Byers, they marked ‘a fundamental change to the education status quo and a real threat to the vested interests which have for too long held back our education system’.409 For the only

402

Blunkett, quoted, ‘Seventy Five Million Pounds Boosts Radical Education Action Zones to Raise Standards’, Department for Education and Employment press release, 319/98, 23 June 1998. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk

403

Advanced Skills Teachers were another policy innovation, offering a promotion route for teachers with particular classroom abilities who did not want to become managers. See Michael Barber, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, Guardian, 30 January 1996. A similar policy was subsequently unveiled for nurses.

404

Dorrell, House of Commons, 11 March 1998, Hansard, Col. 601.

405

Gillian Shepherd, House of Commons, 2 June 1997, Hansard, Col. 28.

406

Dorrell, House of Commons, 11 March 1998, Col. 603.

407

Estelle Morris, School Standards Minister, quoted, ‘Morris Tells Heads that Education Action Zones are Part of Standards Agenda’, Department for Education and Employment press release, 297/99, 29 June 1999. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

408

Blunkett, quoted, John Carvel, ‘Schools to be Given Radical Overhaul’, Guardian, 24 June 1998.

409

Stephen Byers, quoted, John Carvel, ‘Schools to be Given Radical Overhaul’.

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slightly more cautious head of the newly created Standards and Effectiveness Unit, Michael Barber, EAZs offered what might be ‘a blueprint for education in the next millennium’.410 Precisely because they did not oppose the policy itself, the Conservatives consistently challenged this construction. EAZs may have been a new policy acronym but they were not a new policy. New Labour claimed that EAZs were innovative because they devolved power to individual schools. The Conservatives argued that it was they who, through such programmes as the Local Management of Schools system and grant-maintained schools, had first devolved significant power to local schools.411 Citing their manifesto promise to give all schools greater freedom to employ staff, determine admissions policies, and, where they wanted it, take ownership over assets, the Conservatives argued that in 1997 it was they who had offered the truly radical and innovative policy.412 New Labour's policy would affect only a handful of schools and so could not be radical. New Labour's policy was built directly on Conservative policy and so could not be innovative. The innovativeness of EAZs was also contested by New Labour's left-wing critics. The argument here focused on the role of the private sector within the proposed scheme. In formally launching his Government's initiative, Blair suggested that EAZs had a ‘key role’ to play in breaking down barriers between the public and private sectors.413 Schools applying for EAZ status were encouraged to form partnerships with and acquire long-term funding from local businesses. Warning education authorities that they had no ‘God-given right to run and lead everything’, ministers made it clear that they wished to see private companies not only represented on boards of management but creating and managing EAZs.414 In using EAZs as a means of increasing private sector involvement, critics argued that New Labour was simply mimicking the Conservatives. For the apocalyptic Chair of the Education Committee of the Local Government Association, Graham Lane, EAZs ‘could be the beginning of the privatisation of state education’.415 Although having a far lower media profile, EAZs shared

410

Barber, quoted ‘Invitation to Invent the Educational Future’, Department for Education and Employment, press release, 003/ 98, 6 January 1998. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

411

See John Patten, Secretary of State for Education, ‘Parents Must Have Choice of School’, speech, August 1994. Full text available via www.conway.org.uk/forward .

412

You Can Only be Sure with the Conservatives, 1997 Conservative Party Manifesto. The full text of the manifestos cited in this chapter are available via www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/ uk/man.htm .

413

Blair, ‘Education Action Zones’, speech, 15 January 1999. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/ page838.asp .

414

Byers, quoted, John Carvel, ‘School Chief Urges Radical Shake-Up’, Guardian, 3 March 1998.

415

Graham Lane, quoted, John Carvel, ‘First Signposts to the Third Way’, Guardian, 5 May 1998.


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one important feature with the New Deal. Arguments about the policy revolved around an argument about their innovativeness and comparability to Conservative policy. A first wave of schools acquired EAZ status in September 1998. A second and then third wave followed together with announcements about additional funding to make good a shortfall in private sector sponsorship. A number of businesses with strong regional connections, including Cadbury's, Blackburn Rovers, British Aerospace, and The Halifax, formed partnerships with EAZs. Left-wing critics were however appeased when only one private firm emerged, in Lambeth, to take the lead role in the management of an EAZ. Over the following years, EAZs supported ‘best practice’ teams in Leicester, a virtual support college in Telford, a flexible curriculum emphasising links with local employers in Blackburn, and the use of cable television to make and deliver educational programmes in Grimsby. Although the Government pronounced itself satisfied with the quality of the initiatives, none were singled out for national application. With contributions from business continuing to fall, an Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) report published in March 2001 then revealed that, within secondary schools, standards in schools in EAZs had improved at a slower rate than in other schools.416 At this point, and with the Conservatives now presenting EAZs as an irrelevant waste of taxpayers money, a decision to phase the programme out was announced in November 2001.417

The Working Families Tax Credit When still enjoying the comforts of opposition, New Labour committed itself to a fundamental reform of the welfare state, to ‘ending welfare as we know it’, and to ‘thinking the unthinkable’.418 Such rhetorical commitments were attractive as they allowed New Labour to signal its detachment from an Old Labour Party wedded to ever-greater social security expenditure. Confronted with the complexities of government, New Labour struggled to deliver on this promise. The unexpected abolition of one-parent benefit and of the lone-parent premium in income support provoked, in December 1997, a mass Parliamentary rebellion with fourteen Labour MPs voting against the Government and a further thirty-nine abstaining.419 Far from reforming the

416

‘OFSTED Report on “Standards Raising” Education Action Zones’ Welcomed by Estelle Morris', Department for Education and Employment, press release, 2001/98, 5 March 2001. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

417

Will Woodward, ‘School Action Zones to be Phased Out, Guardian, 15 November 2001.

418

Frank Field, ‘the New Welfare State’, Guardian, 7 November 1995.

419

See Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, pp. 377–8.

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welfare system, dissident MPs argued that the party leadership was intent upon the pursuit of the same vindictive spending cuts as the Conservatives. Although subsequently launching a ‘welfare reform roadshow’ and announcing the creation of a Cabinet Committee on welfare reform that he was to chair, Blair struggled to regain the initiative. A Green Paper, New Ambitions for Our Country: A New Contract for Welfare, was, after a series of delays, eventually published in March 1998, but contained little by way of policy detail.420 In July 1998, Harriet Harman and her junior minister ‘for welfare reform’, Frank Field, were then removed from office during the first Cabinet reshuffle. Amidst the disappointments of this period, New Labour could nonetheless present itself as having overseen the delivery of one important and innovative policy: the Workings Families Tax Credit (WFTC). Unveiled in New Labour's second budget, and launched, like the New Deal, amidst a blaze of national publicity, the WFTC acted as an income guarantee. For families with one or more children in which one or more parent worked more than sixteen hours a week, the WFTC raised take-home income to a guaranteed minimum set initially at £200 a week.421 The WFTC was, like the New Deal, constructed as a policy at the moderate political centre. It was an entirely pragmatic and reasonable way of closing the poverty trap, the situation in which a small increase in a person's wage could reduce their overall income by triggering a far larger reduction in benefit. It was a policy that would benefit ordinary, hard-working families.422 As a part of its effort to position the WFTC at the political centre, New Labour also presented it as an innovative policy marking a clear break from the policy status quo. Whereas the Conservatives had sought to dismantle the welfare state and Old Labour simply to pay those on benefit more, the WFTC laid the foundation stone of a new welfare state that would, in the preferred terminology, give people a hand-up not a handout. The WFTC offered a ‘once in a generation’ reform that would bring a ‘transformation in the rewards for work in this country’.423 It marked ‘a major landmark, not just in the reform of the tax system-but in welfare reform’.424 It was ‘the biggest change in the tax and benefits system for over half a

420

‘Losing the Plot’, Sunday Times, Leading Article, 29 March 1998.

421

Andrew Dilnot and Julian McRae, ‘Family Credit and the Working Families Tax Credit’, Institute of Fiscal Studies Briefing Note. Full text available www.ifs.org.uk/ labmarket/wftc.pdf .

422


423


424

Brown, quoted, ‘Gordon Brown Launches a Better Deal for Working Parents’, Treasury press release, PN 140, 7 September 1999. Full text available via www.treasury.gov.uk .


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century’.425 For the then Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo, it offered a ‘radical and innovative approach to an ageold problem’.426 In its response to the WFTC, the Conservatives expressed concerns about the complexity of the new system, the administrative burden it would impose on businesses, and the political convenience of a programme within which payments would be counted not as social security expenditure but as revenue foregone.427 They did not however attack the basic principles of the reform. They did not seek to construct the WFTC as a left-wing policy marking the return to an old-style, Old Labour policy of tax and spend. They did not say that they would abolish the WFTC when re-elected. They instead argued that the policy was far from innovative and in doing so sought to bind themselves to a political centre New Labour was claiming sole possession of.428 The WFTC bore, they argued, a significant and unmistakable resemblance to past policies. First, to Family Income Support (FIS), a benefit introduced by the Conservatives in 1971. FIS was a non-contributory benefit paid to low-income families in which at least one person was in full-time work. FIS was, like the WFTC, intended to raise the income of working families on low wages and in doing so to ensure that work paid more than benefit. It did not guarantee a minimum income but raised income by half the difference between actual income and some specified minimum. Second, it was similar to the eventual replacement for FIS, Family Credit. Following a review into the workings and future of the social security system, Family Credit was introduced in 1988. Like the WFTC, Family Credit worked by guaranteeing a minimum income for families with at least one child in which at least one parent worked for more than sixteen hours a week. Like the WFTC, it sought to eliminate the poverty trap by withdrawing the benefit at a gradual rate above a specified minimum income. Confronted with such comparisons, New Labour identified a number of what it claimed were novel and important features of its policy. The first of these was its mode of delivery. The WFTC was different because it was paid in the form

425

Brown quoted ‘Most Successful Campaign So Far Brings a Better Deal to Working Families’, Treasury press release, PN 162, 5 October 1999. Full text available via www. treasury. gov.uk .

426

Dawn Primarolo quoted, ‘£10,000 Guaranteed Income for Low-Paid Families’, Treasury press release, PN 16, 26 January 1999. Full text available via www.treasury.gov.uk .

427

See Michael Fallon, House of Commons, 7 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 877 and David Heathcoat-Amory, House of Commons, 23 March 2000, Hansard, Col. 1194.

428

Nick Gibb claimed that the ‘only distinctive part of the working families tax credit is that it is paid through the tax system’. House of Commons, 26 January 1999, Hansard, Col. 230. During the same debate another MP argued that the Government could have achieved all that it wanted to achieve with the WFTC through some fairly minor reforms to Family Credit. Steve Webb, House of Commons, 26 January 2001, Hansard, Col. 168.

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of a reduction in tax on a person's pay.429 This was an important feature because it would reduce the stigma attached to claiming benefit and so improve take-up rates. The idea of a tax credit was far from novel. FIS had been introduced as a temporary benefit in 1971 prior to the development of an expected tax credit scheme. Until derailed by threats of rebellion in the House of Lords, the Conservatives had intended to introduce Family Credit as a tax credit. Yet, New Labour could nonetheless boast that it had shown the courage of the Conservatives' convictions. The latter was its generosity. The WFTC was paid at a basic higher rate, to a higher threshold with less drastic benefit reductions as income increased. As a result, families would ‘get twenty four pounds a week more than they would have received under the old system’.430 Finally, the WFTC was presented as being ‘ground-breaking’ in its recognition of the costs of childcare.431

Anti-Social Behaviour Orders At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, outlined a twenty-seven-point plan for law and order. Under the slogan ‘prison works’ he announced that the Government would introduce secure units for young offenders, qualify the right to silence, place further limitations on bail, and increase sentences for a variety of offences.432 Over the following years, streams of further initiatives were announced and legislation introduced. New Labour's qualms about or opposition to any of these measures was interpreted by the Conservatives as evidence that the party was still ‘soft on crime’.433 Yet, by and large, New Labour matched where it did not raise the Conservatives' commitments. Following the murder of James Bulger, Blair spoke about the continuing relevance of the categories of good and evil and the importance of individual

429

Under the original proposals, the WFTC would have automatically been reduced from the tax bill of the parent earning the most money. A number of groups objected that this would usually mean the money being paid to the male parent and that this would sometimes mean less money being paid to the primary carer, usually the mother. In response, the Treasury announced that the WTFC would be paid to either parent and that it would be paid as either a tax credit or cash benefit.

430

Brown, quoted, ‘Gordon Brown Launches a Better Deal for Working parents’, Treasury press release, PN 140, 7 September 1999. Full text available via www.treasury.gov.uk .

431

Brown, quoted, Larry Elliot, ‘Brown Proves a Covert Radical’, Guardian, 23 December 1998.

432

Stephen Savage and Mike Nash, ‘Law and Order Under Blair: New Labour or Old Conservatism?’, in Stephen Savage and Rob Atkinson (eds.), Public Policy Under Blair (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).

433

Michael Howard, quoted, Patrick Wintour, ‘Clear Blue Water? Not Any More’, Observer, 16 February 1997.


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responsibility.434 New Labour's shadow spokesman, Jack Straw, received an improbable amount of attention for his comments about ‘bullying and loutish behaviour on the streets and in our towns and city centres’.435 Both Blair and Straw spoke enthusiastically about ‘zero-tolerance policing’.436 This strategy left New Labour vulnerable to a different set of charges. Firstly, and from the left, the charge that it had conceded too much ground to an atavistic Conservative Party. Secondly, and from the right, that it was ‘following feebly’ in the Conservatives' wake and had no ideas of its own about how to reduce crime.437 It was in this context that New Labour's policy on antisocial behaviour gained its political significance. In a 1995 consultation paper, A Quiet Life: Tough Action on Criminal Neighbours, New Labour identified persistent antisocial behaviour as a growing problem which existing laws were poorly equipped to deal with. Although drawn initially to the problem of ‘nuisance neighbours’, New Labour soon came to define antisocial behaviour more generally. To tackle the problem, it proposed introducing what were initially called Community Safety Orders. These would restrain named individuals from entering particular areas or engaging in particular patterns of behaviour. Orders would be sought by local authorities or the police and granted by a Magistrates Court on the basis not of evidence beyond reasonable doubt but on the basis of the balance of probabilities. Breaking the terms of a Community Safety Order would be a criminal offence. With Community Safety Orders giving way to ASBOs, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Bill brought these plans to fruition. Defining antisocial behaviour as that causing ‘harassment, alarm or distress’, the violation of an ASBO was made to carry a maximum prison sentence of six months or a maximum fine of £5000. Far from opposing this measure, the Conservatives boasted of their record of having consistently supported it.438 Some disquiet was expressed about the potential breadth of the legislation, of the failure to provide for a specific definition of antisocial behaviour.439 Yet the Conservatives reported themselves as having ‘independently’ reached the same conclusions about the need for the same policy.440 The Conservatives' ‘greatest criticism’ of the Bill was, apparently, that it had been ‘hugely oversold’;441

434

Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister, p. 200.

435

Alan Travis, ‘Straw Takes on Addicts and Winos’, Guardian, 5 July 1995.

436

Ewen Macaskill, ‘Blair Opts for Zero Tolerance’, Guardian, 7 January 1997; Alan Travis, ‘Tories Launch Plan to End Yob Culture’, Guardian, 29 May 1997.

437

Howard, quoted, Travis, ‘Doubts Over Labour Plan to Jail “Hell Families” ’, Guardian, 20 June 1995.

438

James Clappison, House of Commons, 22 June 1998, Hansard, Col. 751.

439

House of Commons, Crime and Disorder Bill, Standing Committee, 28 April 1998.

440

Brian Mahwinney, Conservative Party Shadow Home Affairs Spokesman, House of Commons, 8 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 379.

441

Mahwinney, House of Commons, 8 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 382.

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Press release has succeeded press release and hype has succeeded hype; if the first hype of a particular feature was not thought to be good enough or effective enough, it was hyped and rehyped again.442 New Labour sought to construct ASBOs as a policy at the moderate political centre by presenting them as a response to the concerns of ordinary voters and as a response to a problem that Old Labour and the Conservatives had studiously ignored. The Conservatives had ‘forgotten [about] the order part of law and order’.443 Old Labour had been too ready to listen to ‘woolly-minded’ liberals who cared more for the rights of perpetrators than victims.444 Only New Labour understood and was prepared to deal with the problem of antisocial behaviour. ASBOs offered ‘a new approach’ to policing.445 They would overhaul a criminal justice system that ‘has for far too long- appeared incapable of enforcing decent standards of public behaviour by children and adults alike’.446 For the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, ASBOs marked a ‘major new development’.447 The Conservatives contested this. For, in office, the Conservatives had passed a series of measures ‘covering the sort of behaviour about which the [Labour] Government have complained’.448 Far from being innovative, ASBOs were essentially derivative. Far from being far to the right of a New Labour party in sole possession of the political centre, the Conservatives had actually developed a very similar set of policies. The Conservatives had passed the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act that contained a series of measures relating to behaviour causing harassment, alarm, or distress. The Conservatives had passed the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act that included provisions relating to the granting of restraining orders against individuals behaving in a particular way or entering a particular neighbourhood. Although initially promoted as dealing with the dangers of stalking, this legislation was, eventually, presented as a solution to the problem of ‘nuisance neighbours’.449 The Conservatives had passed the 1996 Housing Act which gave Local Housing Authorities and other social landlords powers to place tenants on probationary contracts and to evict

442

Mahwinney, House of Commons, 8 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 382.

443

New Labour Because Britain Deserves Better, 1997 Labour Party Manifesto.

444

Jack Straw, quoted, Michael White, ‘Straw Attacks Woolly Liberals’, Guardian, 10 January 2000.

445

Straw, House of Commons, 8 April 1998, Hansard, Col. 370.

446

Straw, quoted, ‘Home Secretary Publishes Guidance on how to Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour’, Home Office press release, 089/99, 16 March 1999. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

447

Lord Irvine, quoted, ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, Importance of Magistrates Role’, Home Office Press Release 75/99, 25 March 1999. Full text available via www.nds.coi. gov.uk .

448

Edward Leigh, House of Commons, 22 June 1998, Hansard, Col. 727.

449

‘New Bill to Stop Stalkers and Intimidatory Neighbours’, Home Office Press Release 375/96, 5 December 1996. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .


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individuals exhibiting persistent antisocial behaviour. The Conservatives had passed the 1996 Noise Act, which had extended to England and Wales powers enjoyed by the Scottish police to arrest people and confiscate equipment being used to generate excessive noise. Once the relevant legislation had been passed, political argument about ASBOs actually began to increase. Nearly eighteen months after their initial introduction in April 1999 only 150 orders had been granted.450 Referring to ministerial predictions that up to 5000 would be granted each year, the Conservatives started to talk about New Labour's ‘broken promises’ on crime.451 New Labour responded in a number of ways. It argued first that the number of orders issued was itself unimportant. The knowledge that an order could be imposed acted as a deterrent and so had helped to resolve ‘countless’ problems.452 The Government then argued that the problem was a purely short-term one caused by the very innovativeness of its policy. Local authorities and the police had failed to apply for orders because there was ‘a strong view in the criminal justice system, as elsewhere in British public life, that nothing should be done for the first time’.453 Finally, and as the perceived problem remained, the Government announced that it would amend the legislation itself. A series of Government-sponsored clauses were subsequently added to the 2002 Police Reform Bill. These empowered the British Transport Police and specified social landlords to seek ASBOs, allowed courts to introduce an interim order allowing immediate action to be taken against a particular person, and extended the geographic coverage of the orders to include, when appropriate, the whole of England and Wales. At this point, the parties found themselves pushed back together and arguing about who had first thought about how best to strengthen provisions.454

Foundation Hospitals In July 2000, the Government published its ten-year plan for the ‘modernisation’ of the NHS. In April 2002, Gordon Brown proposed raising National

450

See ‘Revised Figures Show 184 More Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’, Home Office press release, 291/01, 19 November 2001. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

451

William Hague, quoted, Andrew Sparrow, ‘Hague Denounces Labour as Soft on Crime’, Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2001.

452

John Denham, Junior Home Office Minister, quoted, ‘Extending the Use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders’, Home Office Press Release 241/2001, 9 October 2001. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

453

Straw, quoted, Michael White, ‘Fair and Effective Straw Lays Down the Law’, Guardian, 10 January 2000.

454

Peter Hetherington and Michael White, ‘Bold City Agenda Not Costed Admits Hague’, Guardian, 3 October 2000.

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Insurance Contributions and freezing personal income tax allowances to fund huge increases in NHS expenditure. At about the same time, and to the evident surprise of many in the Parliamentary party, the Government unveiled a new flagship policy: foundation hospitals.455 As envisaged by their chief architect, the then Health Secretary Alan Milburn, hospitals that applied for and were granted foundation status would be reconstituted as free-standing public benefit companies. In the most general of terms they would, he argued, become masters of their own destiny, freed from the day-to-day line management of the Department of Health. More specifically, and somewhat less impressively, they would be allowed to retain and invest proceeds from the sale of land, to borrow from private capital markets, and to introduce more flexible and innovative pay systems.456 Each hospital would be ‘owned’ by a Board of Governors, a majority of whom would be lay people elected by patients and local residents.457 This Board would, in turn, appoint and hold to account a Management Board responsible for the day-to-day running of the trust. From the moment of its launch, New Labour sought to emphasise how innovative their policy was. There was a broader political agenda here. In its second term in office, New Labour confronted, Alan Milburn suggested, a choice between continuing with what he described as the ‘cautious incrementalism’ of its first few years or committing itself to a ‘more fundamental transformation’ of the architecture of government.458 The proposal to create foundation hospitals showed that New Labour was determined to use its second term to ‘radically redraw’ the post-war welfare settlement.459 The creation of foundation hospitals showed that New Labour was not resting upon its laurels. They would ‘usher in’ a ‘new era of public ownership’ which would mark a ‘fundamental change in the governance of the NHS’.460 According to one very public supporter, Peter

455

Delivering the NHS plan, July 2003. Available via www.doh.gov.uk/deliveringtheplan/ index.htm . The policy was an unexpected one in the sense that, as critics have often emphasised, Labour's 2001 manifesto made no reference to any such proposal.

456

The borrowing rights of foundation hospitals became the subject of an eventual and surprisingly public row between the Department of Health and the Treasury. The former wanted to maximise and the latter minimise if not eliminate the freedom of foundation hospitals to borrow. In the end, a compromise of sorts was reached. Hospitals would be allowed to borrow but only subject to the approval of an independent regulator, whilst any borrowing would reduce the amount the Department of Health itself could borrow; George Jones, ‘Blair Settles Deal for Elite Hospitals’, Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2002.

457

The ownership involved was of limited scale. The Secretary of Health retains the right to revoke foundation status at any point.

458

Alan Milburn, Secretary of State for Health, speech, Social Market Foundation, 30 June 2003. Full text available via www.doh.gov.uk/speeches .

459

Blair, quoted, ‘Postwar Blair Pledges Radical Reform’, Guardian, 28 April 2003.

460

Milburn, quoted, ‘Power and Resources Shift to NHS Frontline’, Department of Health Press Release, 2002/0520, 11 November 2002. Full text available via www.nds.coi. gov.uk . Exactly the same phrase was then used by the new Health Secretary, Dr. John Reid, House of Commons, 8 July 2003, Hansard, Col. 1087; Milburn, speech, New Health Network, 5 February 2003. Full text available via www.doh.gov.uk/speeches .


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Mandelson, they represented an ‘entirely new and imaginative’ model which might, in time, be applied across the whole public sector.461 Why did New Labour go to such lengths to present its policy as an innovative one? It did so because it gave the party an opportunity to contrast its policy with the existing options of privatisation as advocated by the Conservatives and monolithic central control as favoured by Old Labour. At a time when New Labour was being attacked from both left and right for its ‘control-freakery’, foundation hospitals could be sold as a ‘middle ground between state-run public and shareholder-led private structures’.462 Five years after the term appeared to have passed its political sell-by-date, foundation hospitals were hailed as demonstrating the existence of a ‘third way’ between Old Labour and the Conservatives.463 Foundation hospitals ran into an immediate and unrelenting political storm in which they became, along with tuition fees and Iraq, the focus of left-wing discontent. In May 2003, sixty-three Labour MPs voted against the Health and Social Care Bill within which the policy was embedded. A further fifty abstained. During the 2003 Labour Party conference, the one major defeat the Government experienced came on this issue. The former Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, argued that foundation hospitals would introduce a ‘mixed economy’ into the NHS and in doing so ‘blur one of the few clear policy differences between Labour and the Tories’.464 Far from being innovative, this policy amounted to ‘the reintroduction of the [Conservatives'] internal market’.465 Foundation trusts would ‘inevitably’ lead to the kind of two-tier health service New Labour had promised to abolish in 1997.466 Another critic, the Chair of the Health Select Committee, David Hinchcliffe, suggested that foundation hospitals were a ‘Conservative idea’.467 The unions claimed simply that foundation hospitals were a ‘trojan horse’ for privatisation and that they would ‘devastate’ the ‘core values’ of the NHS.468 Sensing an opportunity to add fuel to this fire, the Conservatives concurred. In the

461

Peter Mandelson, House of Commons, 14 November 2002, Hansard, Col. 176.

462

Milburn, quoted, Simon Parker, ‘Milburn Outlines Plans for Quasi-Independent Hospitals’, Guardian 22 May 2002.

463

Michael White, ‘Milburn steps up fight for “third way” hospitals’, Guardian, 7 August 2002.

464

Frank Dobson, ‘Foundation Hospitals will Spell Political Disaster for Labour’, Guardian, 8 July 2003.

465

Dobson, House of Commons, 8 January 2003, Hansard, Col. 216.

466

Dobson, House of Commons, 8 January 2003, Hansard, Col. 216.

467

David Hinchcliffe, House of Commons, 8 January 2003, Hansard, Col. 218.

468

Dave Prentice, General Secretary UNISON, quoted, staff and Press Association ‘Unions Vote Against Foundation Hospitals’, Guardian, 10 September 2003; John Edmonds, General Secretary GMB, quoted, George Jones, ‘Rejection of foundation hospitals would be huge blunder, says Blair’, Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2003.

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House of Commons, their Health spokesman, Dr. Liam Fox, stated that on this issue at least Labour's policy was ‘entirely in line’ with its own.469 Stephen Dorrell welcomed Alan Milburn as a ‘turncoat’ whose ideas were ‘exactly the same’ as those developed by the Conservatives in the 1990s.470 Such arguments contributed to the size of the Labour rebellion and increased the pressure upon the Government. In order to give it self some leeway at a time when disquiet over the invasion of Iraq was growing, the Government started to emphasise points of similarity rather than contrast with existing arrangements. Time after time a beleaguered Alan Milburn reiterated that foundation hospitals would still be ‘part of the NHS, providing NHS services to NHS patients according to NHS principles’.471 The autonomy offered to foundation hospitals although real was, he pointed out, circumscribed. Hospitals would not be allowed to compete with other hospitals in their area, would not be allowed to poach staff from them, would not be allowed to sell-off their assets, and would not be allowed to take -on more private patients in order to increase their income. When, following Milburn's unexpected resignation, Dr. John Reid took over as Health Secretary, he discretely started to down-play the relative importance of foundation hospitals within the NHS plan.472 Yet this was a politically difficult strategy. For, in emphasising points of continuity with existing policy it became more difficult for the Government to present foundation hospitals as an example of innovative policy-making. The Conservatives began to talk about foundation hospitals as a ‘sham’ policy which, although right in principle, had been ‘neutered’ by a rebellious Chancellor and leftwing unions.473 Iain Duncan-Smith claimed that ‘New Labour has borrowed the language of reform without taking any substantial action’.474

Conclusion Introductory texts often present Britain as having an adversarial political system ‘characterised by an antagonistic relationship between major parties that turns political life into an ongoing electoral battle’.475 A plurality voting system, the physical structure of the House of Commons, and strong

469

Dr. Liam Fox, House of Commons, 8 January 2003, Hansard, Col. 209.

470

Dorrell, House of Commons, 8 January 2003, Hansard, Col. 209.

471

Milburn, House of Commons, 8 July 2003, Hansard, Col. 193.

472

Dr. John Reid, House of Commons, 8 July 2003, Hansard, Col. 286.

473

Dr. Fox, House of Commons, 8 July 2003, Hansard, Col. 217.

474

Iain Duncan-Smith, quoted, George Jones, ‘Rejection of Foundation Hospitals would be a Huge Blunder, Says Blair’, Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2003.

475

Andrew Heywood, Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 326.


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internal party discipline are argued to lead to a political system in which there is a clear and absolute distinction between the party of government and the party of opposition, and in which the latter has the duty and incentive to oppose every measure introduced by the former. Some have argued that adversarial politics has been a source of political instability and a cause of Britain's relatively poor post-war economic performance.476 Others have argued that it has given the British political system greater accountability and provided voters with a clear choice at election time. Yet viewed within the Downsian framework, claims about adversarial politics will seem strange. Far from having an incentive to oppose the Government's every measure, parties here have an incentive to propose the same policies as they converge upon the electoral centre. Yet in the account developed in this and the previous chapters, parties do, once again, emerge as clearly adversarial. Political space is not bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. Parties may have an incentive to converge to the electoral centre but this does not preclude adversarial competition. Because political position is not prearranged and fixed, parties can compete to persuade voters that their policies are at the political centre and that those of their opponents are politically extreme. Because political space is not finite, parties can, even when they agree with each other's policies, compete to establish whose policy is the innovative one. In an effort to establish itself as a new party occupying a position distinct from that of both Old Labour and the Conservatives, New Labour presented itself as having created a series of new policies. The five policies examined here are not exhaustive of New Labour's efforts in this respect. Proposals to create directly elected mayors were presented and defended as a ‘radical and innovative idea’.477 ‘Radical’ proposals to create a Commission for Health Improvement with responsibility for auditing standards in hospitals would mean that ‘for the first time in over fifty years the NHS will be subject to external scrutiny’.478 The Social Exclusion Unit, which promised to develop a new method of ‘joinedup’ policy-making, was an ‘important innovation’.479 In their efforts to persuade the electorate that their opponents were all spin and no substance,

476

Samuel Finer (ed.), Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London: Anthony Wigram, 1975).

477

John Prescott, Secretary of State for Transport and the Environment, quoted, ‘Prescott Pledges Swift Action on London Mayor and Assembly’, Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions press release, 353/ENV, 8 May 1999. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

478

Milburn, Secretary of State for Health, quoted, ‘New Standards Watchdog for the NHS’, Department of Health press release, 1999/0636, 28 October 1999. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .

479

Blair, quoted, Malcom Bean, ‘Attempting the Impossible’, Guardian, 30 January 2002.

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the Conservatives argued that New Labour's policies were far from innovative. In their efforts to persuade the electorate that New Labour had moved far to the right of the political centre, New Labour's left-wing critics also argued that the party had either adopted or adapted Conservative policies.

7 Framing and the Construction of the Centre Introduction In the Downsian framework introduced in Chapter 2, it is the role of parties to choose between a set of policies bounded by the extremes of 0 per cent and 100 per cent private ownership. It is most emphatically not the role of parties to argue about what the issue of ownership is really about. What the issue is about is fixed and is fixed by Downs. It is about the level of government intervention. In this chapter, it is argued that parties can also change their spatial position and so position themselves at the political centre by changing the frames voters use to view issues. How voters view policies and how they view the parties that espouse those policies will depend upon the frame they are using to interpret and so understand issues. By priming the use of particular frames, parties can change their position without changing their policy.480 A party whose policies are viewed as extreme when one frame is used may appear moderate when another is put in its place. The political centre is constructed and is constructed through framing. Operating from within the rational choice paradigm, Downs develops a simple but powerful account of individual decision-making. Voters have complete and transitive preferences over policy options. Voters' preferences are derived from their underlying desires, their ‘fixed conceptions of the good society’.481 These preferences are ‘ordered from left to right’.482 Voters calculate which party is closest to them in political space and vote for this party. The rationality of actors is a simple, shared, and predictable rationality. Individuals are all ‘wired’ in the same way. All are calculative utility maximisers. All look at, interpret, and so understand the world in the same way. Placed in the same choice situation and given the same preferences, individuals will act in the same way. Although An Economic Theory was published in 1957 it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that rational choice models using these kinds

480

Conversely, framing also implies that parties can change their policy without changing their spatial position.

481

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 55.

482


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FRAMING AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

of assumptions rose to a position of near dominance within North American political science.483 The timing here is ironic. For it was at precisely this moment that academic psychologists writing about individual decision-making began to move in the opposite direction: towards emphasising the idiosyncrasies of individual decision-making.484 Psychologists began to argue that individuals cope with the complexity of their environment by building and then using mental maps of their world, the contents of which vary between individuals. These maps, or, as they are more commonly known, schemas, help people interpret and so understand the world.485 They influence what people notice, how they interpret what they notice, and the significance they attach to it and their subsequent memory and recall of it. Because different individuals have and use different schemas they ‘construct’ the world in different ways.486 They process information and make decisions in different ways. Individuals differ not only in terms of their preferences but also, more profoundly, in terms of their internal ‘wiring’. At the start of An Economic Theory, Downs defends his assumption of a simple and shared rationality by contrasting it with the obviously unpalatable alternative of assuming that individuals ‘make decisions at random’, that they are irrational.487 Yet, that is an alternative of Downs' own rhetorical making. Psychologists would argue that the alternative to assuming a simple and shared rationality is not irrationality but the assumption of schematic decision-making. The concept of schemas and of schematic decision-making has been widely applied in psychology. Schemas have proven to be one of the most durable research concepts developed during the last twenty or so years. Individuals have been shown to possess self-schemas, person-schemas relating to particular individuals, role-schemas organising knowledge about people in particular social positions, and event-schemas relating to ways particular events are expected to unfold.488 A person might, for example,

483

Green and Shaprio report that in 1967, 5 % of the articles published in the American Political Science Review used rational choice theory. By 1972 that figure was nearly 20 %. By 1992 it was nearly 40 %. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 3.

484

For a brief overview see Richard Lau and David Sears, ‘Social Cognition and Political Cognition: the Past, Present and the Future’, in Lau and Sears (eds.), Political Cognition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986).

485

Schema is the term employed by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in their authoritative text Social Cognition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), pp. 96–177. Others refer either to ‘scripts’, ‘pictures’, or ‘conceptual maps’. See Milton Lodge and Ruth Hamill, ‘A Partisan Schema for Political Information Processing’, American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), 505–19 and references therein.

486

Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, p. 99.

487


488

Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, pp. 117–20.


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have a person-schema allowing them to anticipate the reactions of a friend to a particular piece of news, a role-schema they can use to judge whether their lawyer is behaving in an appropriate or unusual way, and an event-schema guiding their actions during the course of a restaurant meal. Yet, direct applications of the concept of schemas to the study of politics remain comparatively rare.489 Although commonplace in psychology, schemas are not a tried, tested, and familiar concept in political science. The same basic set of ideas, emphases, and method can however be found, albeit under a different name, in the burgeoning literature on frames. A frame is a mental map used to interpret and so understand a policy issue. A frame offers a particular ‘definition or construction of an issue…a declaration of what a policy dispute is about and what it has nothing to do with’.490 Frames influence what it is that people notice about an issue, how they interpret it, the significance they attach to it, and their subsequent memory and recall of it. Because different individuals have and use different frames they construct the political world in different ways and, crucially, develop different policy preferences over it.491 The implications of the existence of such framing effects, of changes in support attributable to changes in frame, are stark. By successfully framing a particular issue in a particular way, parties can generate additional support for their policies. The political centre is constructed. Beliefs about which policies are balanced, reasonable, politically mainstream, and consistent with the status quo will depend upon the frame voters are using; the frame voters are using will, at least in part, depend upon the parties themselves. In Chapter 1, it was suggested that the centre is constructed in one general and four specific ways. The general argument is that parties construct the political centre by constructing and reconstructing beliefs about where that centre is. This argument has already been given two specific applications. The centre is rhetorically constructed and is constructed through innovation. In this chapter it will be argued that the political centre is also constructed through framing. This argument is developed over three subsequent sections. In the first, more is said about the nature of frames and of framing effects. The process by which parties frame issues is explored through the concept of priming. As with the discussion of Schumpeter's theory of innovation at the start of

489

Furthermore, much of the available work is published in psychology rather than political science journals. See Jon Krosnick, ‘Expertise and Political Psychology’, Social Cognition, 8 (1990), 1–8 and references therein.

490


491

In a series of experiments Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky used the existence of such framing effects to challenge the notion of rational decision-making. In this chapter, I am more interested in the implications of such effects upon the logic of spatial competition. See Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

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Chapter 5, the argument here initially takes us away from the spatial framework and Downs' An Economic Theory. Framing is placed within the spatial framework in the following section. In the literature that has been published, framing has been related to interpretations of individual policy issues. Framing means framing education or framing defence. In the final section it is argued that framing can be used more generally to refer to the way in which parties develop competing definitions and constructions of election campaigns. At this point, I discuss and incorporate into my argument Riker and Mclean's work on heresthetics.

Frames, Framing, and Priming Previous chapters have spoken rather casually of ‘issues’. On the assumption that spatial position is a function of policy, previous chapters have, for example, described Labour's move to and possession of the electoral centre in terms of a list of policy changes over such issues as ownership, industrial relations, defence, education, and taxation. Issues have been used as a way of getting at what has been said to divide parties and define positions, that is, policies. Yet, parties argue not only about policy but also about issues, about the best way of defining, interpreting, and so understanding issues. Such arguments are arguments about frames. A frame is a ‘central organising idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events…[a] frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue’.492 Abortion can be framed as being about a ‘woman's reproductive rights…about the rights of women to make their own decisions’.493 Alternatively, abortion can be framed as being about ‘the existence and value of human life from the moment of conception’.494 Protest marches can be framed as being about freedom of expression or law and order.495 Affirmative action can be framed as either reverse discrimination or unfair advantage.496 Welfare assistance can be framed as a helping hand or a government handout.497 Frames are not right or wrong in the sense of being more or less real. Frames offer a way of

492

William Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ‘The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action’, in Richard Braungart (ed.), Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 3 (Greenwich, Co.: JAI Press, 1985), p. 138.

493

Taken from the National Abortion Campaign, Aims and Values, www.gn.apc.org/nac .

494

Taken from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, Aims and Achievements, www.spuc.org.uk.

495

Thomas Nelson, Rosalee Clawson, and Zoe Oxley, ‘Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and its Effect on Tolerance’, American Political Science Review, 91 (1997), 567–83.

496

Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders, ‘Mimicking Political Debate With Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action for Blacks’, Social Cognition, 8 (1990), 73–103.

497

Nelson and Kinder, ‘Issue Frames and Group-Centrism in American Public Opinion’, Journal of Politics, 58 (1996), 1055–78.


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classifying policy issues. Different frames classify the world in different ways. These systems of classification are essentially arbitrary, a matter of choice. The world divides up the way we divide it, and no matter how it is divided alternatives are available. One frame might be politically more useful than another and given a particular political culture one frame might be more familiar and easier to ‘see’ than another. But this does not mean that frames are more or less real. Frames are constructions.498 Individuals' use of frames can be rationalised in much the same way as can their use of ideology. Individuals confront a complex political environment and have little incentive to invest time or money in an effort to acquire information about policy. As we have already seen in Chapter 2, this gives parties an incentive to develop ideologies, shorthand summaries of their policies saving voters the need to ‘become informed upon a wide range of issues’.499 It also gives individuals an incentive to develop and use frames. Frames offer a way of coping with complexity, a way of filtering and storing information. Frames help people interpret and so understand complex events and processes by treating particular features of them as important and others as peripheral.500 Frames can be rationalised as a cost-saving heuristic. But frames are not simply the servants of rationality. Downs presents ideology as a result of the exercise of individual rationality. Rationality is not itself affected by ideology. The same cannot be argued of frames. Frames and schemas are like ‘internal structures of the mind’.501 Once a person has developed or adopted a particular frame, he/ she will notice, interpret, recall, and weigh information in a particular way. He/she will

498

Imagine that there is some part of the world as shown below.AOBO CO How many objects are there in this world? According to Carnap's system of arithmetic there are three: A, B and C. And given how we are taught, this answer seems not only the most obvious but obviously right. That this is the way we count is, however, simply a matter of convention. According to Lesniewski and other Polish logicians, for every particular there is an object which is their sum. So in this case there are actually seven objects; (1) A, (2) B, (3) C, (4) A + B, (5) A + C, (6) B + C, (7) A + B + C. So how many objects are there? Three or seven? There is no right answer here. All depends on the system of classification being used. With one system there are three objects and with another there are seven and it would no doubt be possible to develop systems of classification in which there were two, twenty, or 100 objects. Frames are systems of classification. All systems of classification are arbitrary. See Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 97; and John Searle, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), pp. 160–7.

499


500

Described in such terms, frames come close to what many people (although not, it should be emphasised, Downs) would describe as an ideology. See, for example, Ian Adams, The Logic of Political Belief: A Philosophical Analysis of Ideology (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989).

501

Nelson and Oxley, ‘Issue Framing Effects’, p. 75.

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construct the world differently. Operating from within one particular frame, people cannot easily make rational choices about frames. People cannot look in on themselves and calculate whether their frame is the best frame. People cannot calculate which frame is a better frame because they cannot know how the world would look from within a different frame without using that frame. There is no Archimedean point outside of a frame from which people can judge frames. Judgements about frames will themselves be informed by the use of a particular frame. Downs develops a simple but powerful account of individual decision-making in which the rationality of actors is a simple, shared, and predictable rationality, in which all are calculative utility maximisers who look at, interpret, and so understand the world in the same way. If people react to and cope with uncertainty by developing and using frames, that account of decisionmaking is rendered simply untenable. Frames attract attention because they affect support for policies. Those who believe that abortion is about a woman's right to choose are more likely to support legislation allowing abortion. Those who view protest marches as being about freedom of expression are more likely to support the right of people to march. Those who view welfare assistance as being about a helping hand are more likely to support the extension of welfare payments. Downs accounts for preferences in terms of voters' underlying desires, their ‘fixed conceptions of the good society’.502 But these desires are then left unaccounted for. Frames offer an alternative, although still only partial, explanation of preferences. Different frames lead individuals to develop different preferences. The strength of such framing effects can vary. William Gamson and Andre Modigliani caution that ‘frames should not be confused with positions for or against some policy measure’.503 Yet in some cases, the use of a particular frame seems only to leave room for one policy. It is, for example, difficult to see how a person who believes that affirmative action is about unfair advantage could support a policy of quotas. Indeed the very strength of the relationship between particular frames and particular policies suggests that causation may run in both directions. Framing refers to the process whereby the use of a particular frame leads people to support a particular policy. It is, however, not difficult to imagine someone using a particular frame because they support a particular policy. Someone who believes that abortion is right is likely to view abortion in terms of a woman's right to choose. How can a person's use of one frame rather than another be explained? Why do some people see abortion in terms of a woman's right to choose and

502


503

William Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ‘Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach’, American Journal of Sociology, 95 (1989), 1–37.


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others in terms of a right to life? Those writing about framing argue that parties, the media, and pressure groups can lead people to adopt particular frames by themselves using those frames. People can be primed to use particular frames. Priming describes the effects of prior context on the interpretation of new information. It refers specifically to the fact that frequently and recently activated ideas come more easily to mind.504 Priming is an unconscious process. It is likely to be most effective when a person does not realise that they are being primed. When this condition is satisfied, priming effects can be significant and durable.505 In one early and now frequently cited experiment, participants were subjected to two apparently unrelated tests.506 In the first, purportedly about the effects of information processing on perception, subjects were shown a series of slides containing words (yellow, tree, sky) on different coloured backgrounds and then asked to name the colour of that background as quickly as possible. Before being shown each slide, subjects were also given a ‘memory’ word they had to repeat immediately after naming the colour of the background. Some of the memory words given to some of the subjects included such positive terms as ‘adventurous’, ‘self-confident’, and ‘independent’. Others were given memory words including such negative terms as ‘reckless’, ‘conceited’, and ‘aloof ’. In the second experiment, subjects were then asked to read a short passage describing the activities of a character, Donald, who enjoyed adrenaline sports like skydiving and rafting. Subjects were then asked to characterise Donald's behaviour and personality. Those who had previously been primed to use the negative words were far more likely to describe Donald using either these words or other equally negative ones. Those who had been primed to use the positive words were far more likely to describe Donald using either these words or other equally positive ones. By themselves developing and then using particular frames in their speeches, interviews, debates, press releases, and articles, politicians can prime the use of particular frames. People are more likely to use frames they have either recently or frequently been exposed to. This is to brush against a long-standing debate within psychology, as frequency and recency each have their respective champions. Likening memory to a storage bin, some argue that concepts which have been recently primed, and so are at the top of the bin, will be the most accessible and will be the most readily used. Likening memory to a storage battery, others argue that the more frequently

504

Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, p. 257.

505

For a review of the literature on priming see E. Tory Higgins, ‘Knowledge Accessibility and Activation: Subjectivity and Suffering from Unconscious Sources’, in James Uleman and John Bargh (eds.), Unintended Thought (New York: Guilford Press, 1989).

506

E. Tory Higgins, William Rholes, and Carl Jones, ‘Category Accessibility and Impression Formation’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13 (1977), 141–54.

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a concept is primed, the greater its accessibility will be.507 The basic point is, however, a simple one. A person who has only heard others talking about abortion in terms of the right to life are themselves unlikely to frame this issue in terms of a woman's right to choose. Thomas Nelson and Zoe Oxley provide a good example of the way in which people can be primed to use particular frames and so be led to support particular policies.508 In one of a series of studies, they presented two groups of randomly divided subjects with slightly different stories about a proposed local hotel development. Both versions of the story were designed to appear as old copies of a local paper. Both versions began with a description of the proposed development and assessments of its likely impact. Both versions contained, for example, the information that the development would create two and a half thousand new jobs but put three new species on the list of endangered animals. Through differences in the photograph used to illustrate the story, the caption for that photograph, and some of the quotations used within the article itself, the two groups were however primed to use different frames. Those primed to use an environmental frame were given a story containing a picture of a wetlands area, the caption ‘area of wetlands would be lost to the development’, and the quote ‘we shouldn't sacrifice planet Earth's diversity for the sake of yet another hotel’. Those primed to use the economic frame were given a story containing a picture of a construction worker, the caption ‘thousands of construction jobs would result from the development’, and the quote ‘creating jobs through development extends the promise of the American way of life to more of our citizens – and that is more important than protecting frogs and snakes’. Having read the article, subjects were then asked whether they approved of the development, whether they would vote for it, and to rank-order a number of ‘facts or ideas’ in terms of ‘how important they were in helping you make up your mind about this issue’. Three of these items related to economic beliefs: ‘the economic impact of the development on the area’, ‘the rights of people to use and develop land for their economic benefit’, and ‘general support for jobs and economic development’. The other three items related to environmental beliefs: ‘the rights of people to preserve land in its natural, wild condition’, ‘the environmental impact of the property development on the area’, and ‘general support for the environment’. The differences in the primes used in this experiment were quite subtle. Participants were not induced to use an environmental frame by being exposed to a story containing references only to environmental issues. Subjects were given arguments from both sides. Furthermore, the dispute was about an issue many of the subjects, drawn from a political science programme, would have

507

See Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, pp. 263–4.

508

Nelson and Oxley, ‘Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion’.


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been familiar with and might already have adopted frames and preferred policies in respect of. Many being primed to use the economic frame might already have possessed an environmental frame and so opposed the hotel development, no matter what they were shown in the story. In other words, the experiment could test only for the effects of recency of exposure not of frequency of exposure. Yet, as Table 7.1 shows, Nelson and Oxley nonetheless found significant priming and framing effects. Those who had been primed to use the environmental frame were less likely to support the proposed hotel development or to say that they would vote for it. Furthermore, those placed in the environmental frame were more likely to assess environmental facts and ideas as being more important than economic ones. TABLE 7.1 Opinions towards property development by framing condition Opinion toward property development1 Would vote to approve the development in a special election Strongly support the proposed development Belief-importance: economic items 2 The economic impact of the property development on the area Rights of people to use and develop land for economic benefit General support for jobs and economic development Belief-importance The environmental impact of the development on the area Rights of people to preserve land in its natural, wild condition General support for the environment * ** 1 2

Economic Frame

Environmental frame

3.86

2.97**

3.64

3.03*

3.85

2.68**

3.56

3.25

4.48

4.54

3.59

4.46**

4.16

4.61*

Note: Table entries are mean scores. p < 0.10; p < 0.05 All significance tests are one-tailed. Each item is coded so that a higher number indicates greater support for or agreement with the item. Ranking items are reverse-coded such that a higher number indicates greater perceived importance. Source: Thomas Nelson and Zoe Oxley, ‘Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion’, Journal of Politics, 61 (1999), 1040–67.

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Framing and the Construction of the Centre Framing and priming effects have obvious implications for party competition. Articles on framing often conclude with a discussion of the ways in which parties can use framing to strengthen their position. Yet, these implications have not been cashed-out in terms of the spatial framework. As we have already seen, Downs introduces this framework with the assumption that ‘political preferences can be ordered from right to left’.509 In an effort to make this assumption appear ‘more plausible’ he then reduces ‘all political questions to their bearing upon one crucial issue’: ownership.510 What is this issue about? It is about the level of private ownership in the economy with the policy possibilities running from 0 per cent to 100 per cent. There is no possibility here of parties reframing the issue. What the issue is about is fixed and is fixed by Downs. The problem here is not just with the particular choice of example. There are other aspects of Downs' argument which also preclude framing. The assumption of a simple, predictable, and shared rationality jars with the idea that different people with different frames will notice, interpret, recall, and weigh information in different ways. The assumption that preferences are fixed allows Downs to make predictions about how parties and voters will behave but it is obviously inconsistent with the idea that different frames generate different preferences. However, there is nothing to prevent framing being incorporated into the spatial framework. Figure 7.1 depicts alternative spatial arrangements of the abortion issue. In Figure 7.1a, abortion is framed in terms of a woman's right to choose. Here, the left-hand edge of the scale is labelled ‘right to choose’ and the right-hand edge ‘no right to choose’. In Figure 7.1b the same issue is framed in terms of the right to life. The left-hand edge is now labelled ‘no right to life’ and the right-hand edge ‘right to life’. Notice that different frames do not affect the number or sequencing of policies. The issue in this chapter is not about whether political space is finite and both prearranged and fixed. So in both Figures 7.1a and 7.1b, policy options run from A to E. Framing can in this way be distinguished from both rhetoric and innovation. Differences in frame affect support for policies. This is the key insight of the literature on framing. Preferences are endogenous to the process of party competition. This is shown in Figure 7.2 where the aggregate distribution of preferences varies between the two frames. Viewed in terms of a woman's right to choose, there is more support for policy options A and B. Viewed in terms of a right to life, there is more support for policy options D and E.

509


510



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FIGURE 7.1(a) Abortion: the right to choose.

FIGURE 7.1(b) Abortion: the right to choose.

FIGURE 7.2(a) Abortion: the right to choose.

FIGURE 7.2(b) Abortion: the right to life.

By changing the distribution of preferences, framing changes the position of the electoral centre, the position of the median voter. Where the electoral centre is will depend upon the frame being used. If they can successfully

138


reframe an issue, parties can increase their vote without having to change their policy. The point here is a simple one. But it leads us on to rougher terrain. How does framing affect support for policies? This question has generated a lively debate within the literature on framing. Some argue that framing works by priming particular considerations, particular aspects of an issue. People who use a particular frame support particular policies because that frame brings certain considerations to the top of their minds. In such accounts, priming can be used to account not only for the frames people use but also their changing support for policies within frames.511 A second possibility is that framing works at a deeper level by actually changing not just the relative saliency of beliefs but the beliefs themselves. Policies viewed in one way, within one frame, will be viewed in a different way, within a different frame.512 It is this second possibility that is more consistent with the general argument developed in previous chapters. Framing works by changing beliefs about the political centre and its relationship to particular policies. Voters do not have perfect information. For this reason, parties have an incentive to develop shorthand summaries of their policies. The spatial metaphor presents parties with one possible form of shorthand. Parties that want to present themselves as being at the political centre will present their policies as being politically moderate. Policies are not inherently right-wing, left-wing, or centrist. They are constructed as being right-wing, left-wing, or centrist. One way in which parties can present their policies as centrist is by framing the issue that a policy relates to in a particular way. Because frames affect the way issues are interpreted and so understood, frames affect the ways in which policies are seen. They affect whether a policy will be seen as politically moderate. Whether a policy will be seen as a reasonable one will depend upon the frame being used to view the underlying issue. Whether a policy will be seen as a part of the political mainstream will depend upon the frame being used to view the underlying issue. Frames in this way can be used to change beliefs about the location of the political centre. The centre is constructed and is constructed through framing. By successfully reframing an issue, parties can change beliefs about the location of the political centre. Party competition is, in part, a competition to establish frames. Parties compete to establish their preferred frame, the frame that will best allow them to tie their policies to the political centre. Parties inculcate frames through priming. In their speeches, interviews, press releases, and newspaper articles, politicians prime frames by themselves using those frames. The

511

The prime exponents of this view are Kinder and Sanders, ‘Mimicking Political Debate with Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action for Blacks’.

512

The prime exponents of this view are Nelson and Oxley, ‘Issue Framing Effects on Belief Importance and Opinion’.


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frames voters use to understand and interpret issues are not fixed. Parties can lead voters to use one frame rather than another. But this does not mean that voters can be led to use any frame and that any policy or party can therefore be constructed as being at the political centre. Here, we need to return briefly to the argument in Chapter 3. Just as there are limits to the possibilities of rhetorical construction, so too are there limits to the possibilities of framing. Where these fall will depend upon the way in which priming is thought to operate. Returning to the previous debate, if priming is a matter of the frequency of activation, these limits will be most acute when a party that is trying to reframe an issue must compete against a long-standing and dominant frame. If priming is thought to be a matter of the recency of activation, these limits will be most acute when a party that is trying to reframe an issue must compete against a larger number of other parties and groups priming an alternative frame at the same time. As an example of the difficulties involved in reframing consider one issue that dogged the Labour Party throughout the 1980s: defence. Told purely in terms of changes in policy, the story here is of how Labour went from a commitment to end ‘the nuclear pretence’ in 1987, to the embrace of multilateralism in 1989.513 Yet there is more to this story. Recognising unilateralism to have been a deeply unpopular policy, Labour launched, in the run-up to the 1987 election, a high-profile media campaign on the issue backed by a new policy statement A Modern Britain in a Modern World.514 This affirmed Labour's basic commitment to unilaterialism but sought to reframe the issue of nuclear defence.515 In 1983 the Conservatives had framed this issue as being about deterrence and had presented multilateralism as the policy most likely to prevent war.516 Responding to this, Labour now argued that the real issue was Britain's overall defence capability and that nuclear rearmament was sapping the strength of the country's conventional forces. The choice between multilateralism and unilateralism was a choice not fbetween deterrence and surrender but between a Tory policy which, in the very act of building up nuclear armaments at ruinous cost, erodes conventional defence and adds to nuclear danger without enhancing in any

513

Britain Will Win With Labour, 1987 Labour Party Manifesto. The full text of the manifestos cited in this chapter is available via www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/man.htm .

514

The decision to launch the campaign was a controversial one. Believing this to be an issue on which Labour simply could not win, Peter Mandelson apparently advised that ‘the less said about defence the better’. Peter Mandelson, quoted, Donald Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour (London: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 125.

515

The policy document did reveal a slight softening of policy in its commitment to engage in, thorough bilateral disarmament, negotiations prior to the removal of any American nuclear missiles from British soil.

516

‘For nearly four decades, Europe has been at peace. The possession of nuclear weapons by both sides has been an effective deterrent to another war in Europe’. The Challenge of Our Times, 1983 Conservative Party Manifesto.

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way national security for Britain…[and] our policy, a policy which responds to the realities, ends the nuclear illusions and properly meets the conventional defence needs of our country.517 Labour was the party that would put ‘the defence of Britain first; that believes in strong, usable, effective defence; that believes in spending more on the Royal Navy, the Airforce and the Army’.518 Labour would strengthen Britain's defence by spending less on nuclear weapons. Labour's was the moderate policy at the political centre. Yet its campaign failed. Surveys showed that Labour's policy remained deeply unpopular.519 For, the deterrence frame was simply too firmly established in the minds of too large a part of the electorate. It had been the frame used by both parties in the post-war years to explain and justify Britain's nuclear programme. It was the frame Labour had used in 1983 to argue that far from deterring aggression, nuclear weapons fuelled international tension. It was, in 1987, the frame used by both the Conservatives and the Social Democratic Party and by most of the print media to justify the purchase of the Trident missile system.

Framing Issues and Framing Dimensions In the literature that has emerged and in the discussion so far, framing has been related to voters' interpretation and so understanding of particular issues. Framing refers to the way in which different issues can be viewed and understood. Framing effects are the changes in support for policies resulting from changes in frame. In this section, I want to argue that framing has a potentially more general relevance. Parties can secure a competitive advantage by framing not just specific issues but entire campaigns. When there is just one dimension of competition, parties can secure an advantage by framing a campaign in terms of a specific issue or set of issues. When there is more than one dimension of competition, parties can secure an advantage by framing a campaign in terms of a specific dimension or set of dimensions. We will deal first with the framing of particular issues in one dimension. If a party believes that voters believe it to be at the political centre with regard to some particular issue or set of issues, it will have an obvious incentive to

517

Neil Kinnock, quoted, Martin Westlake, Kinnock: The Biography (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001), p. 377.

518

Quoted, Eric Shaw, The Labour Party since 1979: Crisis and Transformation (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 73.

519

The 1987 British Election Study revealed that only 16% of the electorate thought that Britain should have nothing to do with nuclear weapons. Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 63.


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focus upon that issue in its speeches, debates, interviews, press releases, and articles. A party will prime that issue in an effort to ensure that voters construct their understanding of the political world in terms of that issue; that they notice, interpret, recall, and weigh information accordingly. Understood in this way, framing is about agenda-setting, a concept underpinning the saliency theory of party competition developed by Ian Budge and a number of his colleagues.520 The basic claim of this theory is that voters positively associate particular issues with particular parties. Voters believe left wing parties to be better equipped to deal with issues like education and health, and right-wing parties with issues like defence and taxation. These associations are stable and enduring, and act as an important constraint upon party behaviour. For they mean that parties are saddled with particular images. Parties cannot expect to gain voters by changing their policies on an issue. A party which is positively associated with health will gain votes whatever its policies are. Prior to the 1992 election, the Director of the King's Fund medical research charity, Gordon Best, approached Labour's Health spokesman, Robin Cook, with an offer to work on and make more specific Labour's policies. I don't want policies that are too specific, he [Cook] said. At that point he rummaged inside his top drawer, threw a folder on his desk containing a printout. ‘This is the latest focus group, giving us an 87 per cent rating on health. When it starts to go down I'll start to think about a new policy’.521 As Budge argues, parties cannot and do not compete by throwing themselves up and down the left–right dimension in the search for a vote-maximising position. Parties compete by seeking to control the policy agenda. Knowing that they are strong on some issues and weak on others, parties seek to ensure that the issues on which they are strongest feature prominently in the news and so are primed in voters' minds. To this only a brief footnote needs to be added. Parties can also prime issues by framing other issues in terms of it.

520

The saliency theory lacks any single defining text. Its basic terms are set out in a number of publications including Ian Budge, David Robertson, and Derek Hearl (eds.), Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analysis of Post-War Election Programmes in Nineteen Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Richard Hofferbert, and Ian Budge, Parties, Policies and Democracy (Oxford: Westview Press, 1994); Ian Budge, ‘Validating Party Policy Placements’, British Journal of Political Science, 31 (2001), 210–23; ‘Issues, Dimensions and Agenda Change’, in William Riker (ed.), Agenda Formation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie, Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty Three Democracies (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983); and Ian Budge, ‘Party Policy and Ideology: Reversing the 1950s?’, in Geoffrey Evans and Pippa Norris (eds.), Critical Elections: British Parties and Voters in Long-Term Perspective (London: Sage, 1999). Although Ian Budge's name has been placed to the fore, saliency theory's basic terms were, as Budge himself emphasises, developed by David Robertson in A Theory of Party Competition (London: John Wiley, 1976).

521

Robin Cook, quoted, John Kampfner, Robin Cook (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998), p. 77.

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A party can prime the issue of education by talking about education. A party can also prime the issue of education by arguing that other issues, unemployment, crime, and health, are related to and can only be understood in terms of education. In this way, and to re…use an earlier definition, parties can frame an issue by making it ‘the central organising idea or story line that provides meaning’ to a campaign. Budge and his colleagues present saliency theory as offering not only an alternative to but an indictment of the spatial theory of party competition.522 Yet there is nothing in the argument here about agenda-setting that is incompatible with the spatial framework developed by Downs. Recall that having introduced the spatial framework through the ownership example, Downs eventually suggests that ‘each party takes stands on many issues, that each stand can be assigned a position on our left-right scale’ and that a party's net position is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies it upholds’.523 The basic idea here is obvious enough. If a party is extremely left-wing on one issue and rightwing on another its overall position will depend upon the relative significance voters attach to the issues. But where do these weights come from? Downs simply does not say. Weights, like preferences, are exogenous to the model. Some voters simply believe defence to be more important than education. The alternative suggested by both framing and saliency theory is that weights can be made endogenous, that parties can, through their efforts to frame a campaign, change the way issues are weighted. In Figure 7.3, a one-dimensional left–right scale is shown, along which are ordered eleven (1–11) policies. Assume that there are just two issues, A and B, and that a party adopts a policy at 3 on issue A and at 7 on issue B. The party's ‘net position’ will depend upon the weights voters attach to the issues. If, initially, they weight the issues equally, the party's net position will be to the left of the political centre at 5. By successfully reframing the campaign a party can alter its position without having to alter its policies. If voters can be led to attach twice the significance to issue B the party's net position will be at the political centre.524 FIGURE 7.3 Spatial position and framing the agenda.

522

Budge, ‘Validating Party Policy Placements’.

523


524

If the issues are weighed equally, the party's net position will be

. If issue B is given twice the significance the party's net position will be

.


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In showing how the centre is constructed, previous chapters relied primarily upon the one-dimensional left–right conception of political space employed by Downs and applied to the study of British politics in his name. At various points, it has, however, been emphasised that arguments about rhetoric and innovation also hold when there is more than one dimension. What we have not yet done is look in any detail at what is to be counted as a dimension. As a term used in studies of voting behaviour, dimension refers to a group of issues over which voters have related beliefs. Ownership, unemployment, and taxation are part of the same socio-economic dimension because people who express left-wing opinions on nationalisation are also likely to hold left-wing opinions with regard to the other two issues. Attitudes toward racial equality, the death penalty, and stiffer sentences are part of the same libertarian–authoritarian dimension because a person who believes in the death penalty is also likely to believe in the virtues of stiffer sentences. The two dimensions are separate because attitudes on socio-economic issues cannot be used to predict attitudes toward authoritarian–libertarian issues. From the knowledge that a person is in favour of higher taxation, it cannot be inferred that they are either for or against the use of the death penalty.525 Returning now to the concept of framing, the basic argument remains the same as for the one-dimension model. If a party believes that voters believe it to be at the political centre with regard to some particular dimension, it will have an obvious incentive to focus upon that dimension in its speeches, debates, interviews, press releases, and articles. A party will prime that dimension in an effort to ensure that voters construct their understanding of the political world in terms of it: that they notice, interpret, recall, and weigh information in terms of that dimension. Framing is not however simply about agendasetting. Parties do not simply accept dimensions as fixed data to which they must respond. Dimensions are constructed and can be reconstructed. A party will frame the authoritarian–libertarian dimension, not simply by placing a greater emphasis upon it, but by trying to change beliefs about the range of issues that can be best understood in terms of it. A party at the political centre on authoritarian–libertarian issues but confronting voters who believe that unemployment is a socio-economic issue, will argue that unemployment is better understood as showing the need for a strong state willing to enforce responsibilities as well as rights. In this way some particular dimension can be made ‘the central organising idea or story line that provides meaning’ to a campaign. The competitive advantage to be derived from the manipulation of dimensions of conflict has been emphasised by William Riker.526 Using the term

525

Chapter 8 includes a brief analysis of the salient dimensions in British politics.

526

See William Riker, Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice (San Francisco: Freeman, 1982); The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); ‘The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787’, American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 96–111; The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); ‘Heresthetic and Rhetoric in the Spatial Model’, in James Enelow and Melvin Hinich (eds.), Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The following account draws heavily upon a summary of Riker's theory offered in Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Analytical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 69–71. Iain Mclean has developed a series of clever applications relating to British politics in Rational Choice and British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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heresthetics, Riker points to the way in which a person who expects to lose on some decision can divide the majority they expect to beat them, by constructing and placing on the agenda a new alternative.527 Riker's most famous example is drawn from a study of American politics.528 In the first part of the nineteenth century the salient dimension of conflict within American politics was socio-economic. The Democrats stood for agrarian expansionism, easy credit, and low tariffs. The opposition, whose name went from Federalist to National Republican to Whig to Republicans, stood for commercial expansionism, for tight credit, and for high tariffs. With politics cast in this mould, the Democrats, as Figure 7.4 shows, built a winning coalition out of the support of the southern and north-western states. As a consequence of this, the opposition, who relied on the votes of the north-eastern states, managed, between 1800 and 1864, to elect only one president with a majority of the popular vote. Riker argues that in the late 1850s, the Republicans, led by Lincoln, were able to overcome their political exclusion by igniting a second and previously dormant dimension of conflict: slavery. This dimension could be used to break the coalition between the northwestern states that were against the admission of new slave states to the union and the south, which argued that this was a matter for the states concerned. As Figure 7.4 indicates, the Republicans were able to build from this suddenly salient dimension, a new winning coalition out of the north-western and north-eastern states.529 Through framing the dimensions of conflict, parties can construct and reconstruct the political centre. Downs' theory is cast in terms of a single dimension but the notion of weighting remains relevant. If a party's ‘net position’ is a weighted average of all the particular positions it occupies on each dimension, the weights voters attach to different dimensions will determine its overall position. These weights can be made endogenous to the process of party competition. By reframing a dimension and so changing the weight attached to it, a party can move itself to the centre without changing its policies.

527

Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, p. 1.

528

The simplest summary is provided in Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, pp. 1–7.

529

For a detailed and persuasive assault on Riker's interpretation see Gerry Mackie, Democracy Defended (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 258–80.


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FIGURE 7.4 Slavery and the creation of winning coalitions. Source: Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Analytical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 70.

Conclusion As argued in the third section of chapter 1, viewing the political centre as constructed makes four differences. First, Policy and position. Possession of the political centre is not simply a matter of espousing particular policies. Whether a particular policy is thought to be at the political centre will depend upon the frame being used to view the policy issue. By successfully inculcating in voters' minds different frames, parties can change beliefs about which policies are at the political centre. One implication of this is that parties can move to the political centre without necessarily changing their policies. Second, Creativity. The link between creativity and framing will become apparent in Chapter 8, where we look at the ways in which New Labour has responded to particular policy crises by constructing new frames. A number of more general points can however be made here. Framing is not simply a matter of calculation. Parties will prosper to the extent that they can themselves construct and then inculcate new frames, new ways of looking at familiar issues. In this way, framing is most obviously creative to the extent that it requires innovation. Yet, creativity is not simply a matter of innovation. Parties must also be able

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to judge which existing frame is likely to generate most support for their policies and which frame the media, pressure groups, and the electorate can be primed to use. Third, Spin. Frames do not simply appear. Parties do not simply hope that voters come to use their preferred frame to interpret issues. They prime frames in an effort to ensure that voters use their frames. Whether it is thought that people are more likely to use frames that they have recently primed or frequently primed, parties must gain the most possible exposure for their preferred frame. The old maxim is the best. Announce what you are going to say. Say it simply and clearly. And then repeat it again and again. The message has to be absolutely driven and single-minded to get through.530 Fourth, Choice. Voters' beliefs about policies are not fixed. Beliefs about and preferences for policy can be changed through the efforts of parties to frame and reframe issues. Because a party's overall position is a ‘weighted average of all the particular policies [the party] upholds’, beliefs about a party's overall spatial position are not fixed.531 A party that wishes to position itself at the political centre is not constrained to adopt any one particular set of policies. No one set of policies is at the political centre, for, which policies are thought to be at the political centre will depend upon the frame being used by voters. There may be no alternative to the centre but there are alternative centres.

530

Peter Mandelson, quoted, Macintyre, Peter Mandelson, and the Making of New Labour, p. 153.

531


8 Framing, New Labour, and the Constructionof the Centre Introduction In the Downsian framework introduced in Chapter 2, parties position themselves within a political space that is bounded, finite, and both prearranged and fixed. In the example Downs uses to make his argument appear more ‘plausible’, it is the role of parties to select a policy between the bounds of 0 and 100 per cent private ownership.532 It is most emphatically not the role of parties to argue about what the issue of ownership is really about. What the issue is about is fixed and is fixed by Downs. It is about the level of government intervention. Yet parties can also change the way in which their policies are understood. How voters view policies and how they view the parties that espouse those policies will depend upon the frame they are using to interpret and, so, understand issues. By priming the use of particular frames, parties can change their position without changing their policy. A party whose policies are viewed as extreme when one frame is used may appear moderate when another is put in its place. That support for policies depends upon the frame being used to view them, has been recognised by Tony Blair's personal pollster, Philip Gould. He argues that campaigning means: defining the political debate on your terms. Every political debate can be seen in one of two ways: one that will favour you, and one that will favour your opponents. It is essential that your definition prevails.533 In this chapter we will see how New Labour has sought to ‘define and construct’ political debate by framing particular issues and events in particular

532

Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 116.

533

Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Little, Brown & Company, 1998), p. 294. See also Gould, ‘Why Labour Won’, in Ivor Crewe, Brian Gosschalk, and John Bartle (eds.), Why Labour won the General Election of 1997 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 6.

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FRAMING, NEW LABOUR, AND THE CONSTRUCTIONOF THE CENTRE

ways.534 The following section looks at the way in which New Labour has framed three general policy issues: Europe, public expenditure, and ownership. The Conservatives framed these as being about sovereignty, the overall level of tax and spend, and control, respectively. New Labour has tried to frame them as being about influence, the quality of expenditure, and partnership. New Labour argues that the choice confronting voters is not between the retention and loss of sovereignty but between influence and impotence. The choice is not between higher public expenditure and lower tax but between spending on social investment and spending on social failure. The choice is not between public and private but between partnership and confrontation. By priming the use of these frames through its speeches, interviews, debates, press releases, and articles, New Labour has tried to position itself at the political centre. Indeed, it will be argued that New Labour has framed these issues in such a way as to make them appear as valence issues, a term introduced at the start of the next section. Switching from general policy issues to specific policy crises, the following section then uses the concept of framing to retell the story of the Sandline affair of May 1998 and the fuel protests of September 2000. As interpreted by the Conservatives, Sandline was about the Government's probity and the fuel protests about the level of taxation. As each crisis unfolded, New Labour initially allowed itself to be drawn into a political fight set on its opponent's terms. The Government only regained the political initiative when it reframed these issues as being about democracy and the rule of law. In the final section of Chapter 7, it was argued that parties can frame not only specific issues but entire campaigns. They can do so by presenting an election as being about a specific issue or set of issues or some particular dimension. Through an analysis of the questions asked by Labour MPs during PMQT, the final section of this chapter identifies the salient issues and dimensions primed by Labour MPs between 1994 and 1997.

Framing (Valence) Issues: Europe, Tax and Spend, and Ownership In a detailed, critical, and still powerful review of An Economic Theory published in 1963, Donald Stokes distinguished between what he called ‘positional’ and ‘valence’ issues.535 A positional issue is one on which parties and the electorate can be expected to take conflicting stances. Devolution is a positional issue because some favour and some oppose devolution. A valence issue is one on which parties and the electorate can be expected to share the

534


535

Donald Stokes, ‘Spatial Models of Party Competition’, American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 368–77.


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same overall stance. To use some of Stokes' examples, corruption, economic recovery, and national prestige are all valence issues. Voters, all voters, are against corruption and for recovery and prestige. On such issues parties do not compete by taking stands for or against corruption. They compete by trying to persuade voters that they have not been and will not be corrupted. Stokes' point here is that Downs' spatial framework is constructed around positional issues in which parties can, for example, take a left-wing stance for public ownership or a right-wing stance for private ownership. But ‘it will not do to simply exclude valence issues from the discussion of party competition’ because elections too often hinge upon them.536 Yet moving beyond Stokes' distinction it should be noted that whether a particular issue is thought of as being a valence issue may well depend upon the way in which it is framed. Take, for example, the issue of corruption and the specific question of whether MPs should be allowed to act as paid consultants, directors, and advocates. Following the exposure of the ‘cash-for-questions’ scandal in July 1994 and the subsequent recommendation of the Nolan Committee that there be a ban on MPs working for multi-client organisations and a new requirement to disclose earnings from outside consultancies, this became the subject of intense debate.537 Framed as an issue about the need to avoid and to be seen to be avoiding conflicts of interest, this looked like a valence issue. Who could be for conflicts of interest? Yet many Conservative MP nonetheless opposed restrictions. In doing so they reframed the issue as being about the quality of democracy. Parliament, they argued, benefited from having representatives with knowledge of the ‘real’ world of business.538 The argument here was one many still disagreed with. But it was one that attempted to turn a valence issue into a positional one. The important point here is that valence issues do not simply exist. They are constructed. In the rest of this section we will see how New Labour sought to construct Europe, tax and spend, and ownership as valence issues on which it held the political centre by changing the way in which the issue was viewed. In 1997 and 2001, the Conservatives committed themselves, in their words if not always in their policies, to a sceptical position on Europe. In doing so they framed this as being, above all else, an issue about sovereignty. The Conservatives were the party prepared to defend, and Labour the party ready to surrender, British sovereignty. Upon his accession to the leadership,

536

Stokes, ‘Spatial Models of Party Competition’, p. 373.

537

Allegations that two Conservative MPs, Graham Riddick and David Tredinnick, had taken cash-for-questions were first made in the Sunday Times in July 1994. The scandal subsequently widened to take in two junior ministers, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, exposed by the Guardian in October 1994.

538

See the account in John Major, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), pp. 573–4.

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Blair inherited a pro-European policy platform. To it he remained essentially faithful. During its first term New Labour signed the social chapter, pushed hard for enlargement of the European Union, and committed itself to the principle of Economic and Monetary Union. In a 1998 Anglo-French initiative, New Labour even pushed forward the boundaries of integration by arguing that the European Union should ‘play a full role on the international stage…[and develop] a capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces’.539 Far from adopting the same basic set of policies, New Labour and the Conservatives remained far apart. But the story of New Labour's approach to this issue cannot simply be told in terms of policy. As well as adopting different policies, New Labour also constructed a different frame through which it interpreted the European issue. In this frame the underlying issue was one of influence rather than sovereignty and one in which the choice for voters was between influence and impotence. I'm a British patriot, and I want the best out of Europe for Britain, and so we need a government that is going to lead in Europe, shape Europe, not just follow along behind the Europe that's being shaped by others.540 Conservative isolationism ‘badly hurt’ Britain.541 As the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or Mad Cow Disease (BSE) crisis had shown, it left Britain without friends willing to protect its interests. As the failure to put onto the European agenda issues like reform of the Common Agricultural Policy had shown, it left Britain unable to control its own destiny. Conservative ‘posturing’ had not prevented further integration.542 It had however meant that Europe ‘is something that happens to us, rather than something we shape’.543 By adopting a more positive attitude in its dealings with Europe, New Labour would increase the country's influence and, so, better protect its interests. Labour will be strong in Europe…strong too in setting the agenda, with the right ideas. That is Britain's traditional role in Europe. That's what our allies are waiting for. For too long they've seen British ministers sent to Brussels to find out what the community is doing and to tell it to stop. They want us to help to decide what

539

‘Joint Declaration on European Defence’, British–French Summit, Saint Malo, December 1998. Quoted, Anne Deighton, ‘European Union Policy’, in Anthony Seldon (ed.), The Blair Effect (London: Little, Brown & Co., 2001), p. 321.

540

Tony Blair, 1997 Labour Party Election Broadcast. Full transcript available via www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/pebs/pblab97.htm .

541

Gordon Brown, ‘Inglorious Isolation’, Observer, 5 January 1997.

542

Blair, speech, ‘New Labour and the Unions’, 7 June 1995, reproduced in Tony Blair, New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p. 135.

543

Blair, speech, ‘Security in a World of Change’, 17 July 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 210.


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the community should do, and how it can do it better. They want us to be on the inside, arguing constructively for new directions and new reform.544 So Blair formulated the European issue in 1995. Seven years on, the same argument, stripped of its chauvinistic undertones, was still in place. Addressing a conference in February 2002, the Minister for Europe, Peter Hain, argued that New Labour had worked hard to make Britain's priorities the European Union's priorities. Priorities like the fight against crime and illegal immigration. Economic reform for more jobs and greater prosperity…and we've scored by being positive about Europe, engaging again, winning friends, winning arguments.545 Framed as an issue about sovereignty, Europe divided public opinion. New Labour was, in the run-up to the 1997 election, well aware of the Conservative's capacity to capture votes on this issue.546 In framing it as being an issue about influence, New Labour was trying to turn Europe into a valence issue. For, it is difficult to be against having influence. New Labour's policy of active engagement and agenda-setting was a policy constructed as being at the political centre. Active engagement was an entirely reasonable and pragmatic response, one that could be contrasted with the Conservatives' dogmatic isolationism. Active engagement was a balanced policy that allowed for integration when that integration was in Britain's interest but did not require Britain to accede to every European initiative. As such it was a policy that could be contrasted with the Conservatives' refusal to contemplate further integration, even when that integration could benefit Britain. It allowed New Labour to argue that Conservative decisions on Europe were damaging the country whilst papering over their own internal disagreements on this issue. Finally, active engagement was a mainstream policy, one adopted by most European countries and business and pressure groups. It was a policy most senior politicians—including of course Conservatives like Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine—subscribed to. Judged purely in terms of policy, New Labour flip-flopped on the issue of tax and spend. While in opposition, Blair sought to rid New Labour of its tax and spend image. By the time of the 1997 election, he had committed the party to the ‘golden rule’ of only borrowing to fund investment, had embraced the Conservatives' spending plans, and had promised to leave both the basic and higher rates of income tax unchanged during New Labour's

544

Blair, speech, ‘Britain in Europe’, 5 April 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 284.

545

Peter Hain, Minister for Europe, speech, ‘UK Perspective on Europe’, 22 February 2002, full text available via www.fco.gov.uk (follow the links to speeches).

546

Donald Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour (London: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 377.

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first term in office. As a result the proportion of the electorate seeming themselves as being to the right of New Labour on this issue fell from 53 per cent in 1992 to 34 per cent in 1997.547 Yet by the time of the 2001 election, the Conservatives had committed themselves to significant tax cuts and New Labour reinvented itself as the party of higher public expenditure. Arguing that tax cuts could only be achieved at the expense of reduced public expenditure, Blair accepted that New Labour had made a choice to put investment into schools, transport, the police and the health service because we believe it is the right priority for the country. The dividing line at the election is clear: it is between a party willing to invest in our public services; and sixteen billion pounds cuts.548 With the Government then very publicly raising taxes in its 2002 budget to increase NHS expenditure, this dividing line remained in place. Yet measured in terms of the frame it has used to interpret the tax and spend issue, New Labour has remained steadfast. The Conservatives framed tax and spend as being about more or less—more public expenditure or lower taxes. In 1987 and 1992, this was also the frame used by a Labour Party then arguing that tax needed to be increased to pay for higher pensions and child benefit. In the run-up to the 2001 election, New Labour sometimes used this frame. More consistently it argued then, as it had been arguing for the previous seven years, that tax and spend was better understood as being about the quality and not simply the quantity of public expenditure. The real choice was not between more or less expenditure but between spending on social investment and spending on social failure. In his address to the 1994 Labour Party conference Blair told his audience that: I don't mind paying taxes for education and health, and the police. What I mind is paying them for unemployment, crime and social squalor.549 The Conservatives were not to be condemned for having cut tax at the expense of public expenditure. They were to be condemned for having increased taxation and for having increased it to meet the costs of their policy failures. Labour has changed the argument on taxation…we have rejected the intellectually lazy argument that whatever the levels of tax and spend and borrowing under the Tories, they must automatically be higher under Labour. Of course Labour would like to give a higher priority to education and our health service. But there are many

547

Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 109. The proportion to the left of Labour rose from 19% in 1992 to 31% in 1997.

548

Blair, House of Commons, 19 July 2000, Hansard, Col. 367.

549

Blair, speech, ‘New Labour, New Britain’, 4 October 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 37.


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areas we would like to spend less on—health bureaucrats, the costs of unemployment and crime…the Tories have put up taxes twenty two times…this has not been to fund generously those most in need; government spending is now skewed towards picking up the costs of economic failure, rather than investing for the future.550 The argument is one that New Labour has remained faithful to. Justifying increases in public expenditure to an audience at the University of Northumbria in November 2000, Blair can be found arguing that the resources we have will be spent better today than before. From 1979 to 1997, rising debt interest, unemployment and social security accounted for forty two per cent of the rise in public spending. In the coming three years, unemployment, social security and debt interest will account for only seventeen per cent of the increase in public spending during this period. That is a huge shift in priorities…not luck but judgement.551 Thought of in terms of a zero-sum relationship between tax and spend, Labour's proposals to increase public expenditure divided public opinion. In trying to frame it as an issue about the quality and not the quantity of public expenditure, New Labour was trying to turn this issue into a valence issue. For, it is very difficult to be in favour of expenditure on the costs of social failure or to be against public investment. This was an issue-frame constructed so as to leave New Labour at the moderate political centre. Increasing investment was an entirely prudent and reasonable policy, one that only a dogmatic and unreasonable Conservative Party could oppose. Increasing investment was a part of the political mainstream, a policy that ordinary people could support. In 1992, the Conservatives unveiled the Private Finance Initiative as a way of securing additional investment in hospitals, roads, and other public infrastructure. Although the precise details varied with each deal, the Private Finance Initiative envisaged private firms taking on projects like the construction of hospitals which, once completed, the Government would then rent over an agreed period of time at an agreed fee. Labour initially denounced the Private Finance Initiative, characterising it as a form of stealth privatisation that exposed the Conservatives' determination to run -down the public sector and its position on the extreme right.552 Yet, by 1997, New Labour was promising not its elimination but its reform.553 Reborn as Public–Private Partnerships, the Private Finance Initiative eventually emerged as a

550


551

Blair, speech, ‘Investing for the Future’, 3 November 2000. Full text available via www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

552

Patricia Hewitt, Labour Shadow Health Spokesman, House of Commons, 7 December 1993, Hansard, Col. 230.

553

In office, New Labour has presented itself as having (i) ended the requirement that all public investment be considered for a Public–Private Partnership, (ii) introduced greater transparency into the contracts signed with private firms, (iii) simplified and standardised contracts, (iv) ensured that ownership of assets eventually returns to the state, and (v) created a new body, Partnerships UK, to speed up the process. See Andrew Smith, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Launch of the IPPR Commission Into Public Private Partnerships, 20 September 1999. Full text available via www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom .

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‘cornerstone of the Government's modernisation programme’.554 We have already seen in Chapter 5 how the Government proposed creating a Public–Private Partnership to entice investment into the London Underground. Even more controversially, Public–Private Partnerships emerged, at the start of the Government's second term, as the preferred vehicle for reform of the NHS. In a series of keynote speeches delivered shortly after the 2001 election, Blair announced that private firms would be given the opportunity not only to build hospitals but also to run clinical services within them.555 Under the terms of an agreement reached between private healthcare providers and NHS Trusts, it was also announced that patients on public waiting lists would be treated at private hospitals. New Labour had however changed not only its policy on this issue but also the frame used to interpret it. Claiming to have forged ‘new dividing lines in the debate’, New Labour presented Public–Private Partnerships as being about, as their name of course suggested, partnership.556 The choice confronting voters was not between public and private but between partnership and confrontation. Take the plans…to bring private capital into the London Underground, Air Traffic Control, the Tate, Royal Mint and into investment in our hospitals and schools. A decade ago Labour would have insisted all be done in the public sector; the Tories that all be done in the private sector. But surely when the public interest is involved, the way forward is not public versus private but public and private working constructively together.557 Partnerships offer a synthesis of the public and private sectors which ‘brings out the best elements’ of both.558 They offer a balanced compromise allowing the private sector to exercise its skills in risk-taking and project management whilst allowing public sector workers to concentrate on the delivery of services.559 Set against the alternatives of exclusively public or private

554

Ibid.

555

Blair, speech, ‘Reform of Public Services’, 16 July 2001. Full text available via http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

556


557

Brown, ‘My Vision for a Fairer Britain’, Observer, 10 January 1999.

558

John Reid, Minister for Transport, quoted, ‘No Fat Cat Rip-Off With NATS Partnership Says Reid’, Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions press release, 268, 22 March 1998.

559

Brown, speech, Transport and General Workers Union Conference, 5 July 2001. Full text available via www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom . John Prescott, ‘Public Private Partnerships are Here to Stay Says Prescott’, Cabinet Office press release, CAB057/02, 28 May 2002. Full text available via www.nds.coi.gov.uk .


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ownership, they offer a reasonable, practical, and pragmatic solution. Before being seduced by the charms of the third way, Blair often presented New Labour as a party distinguished by its rejection of ideology. New Labour was a party free of any ‘ideological preconditions’.560 It was a party of ‘practical ideas’ which believed that what counted was what worked.561 Seven years on it was in precisely such terms that Public–Private Partnerships were presented. I am not interested in the ‘public good, private bad’ argument. I am interested in ensuring that we set in place the correct frameworks that will actually improve public services.562 Because they must be against partnership itself, those who are against Public–Private Partnerships are dogmatic ideologues determined to revive arguments New Labour has consigned to the ‘history books’.563

Framing Events: Arms and Petrol Up until this point, we have looked at a set of broad and perennial policy issues that have provided the backdrop to party competition for over forty years. In this section, we will look at two specific and entirely unexpected incidents that although explicable in terms of broader policy issues, nonetheless presented themselves as self-contained events. Sierra Leone is a diamond-rich former British colony in West Africa that acquired its independence in 1961. At the end of a prolonged and particularly brutal civil war, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was freely elected as its President in 1997. Just a month later the Sandhurst-educated Johnny Paul Koroma toppled him in a military coup. Reacting to this coup, New Labour consistently backed Kabbah's legitimate claims to office. Blair invited him to the 1997 Commonwealth conference, pressed for Sierra Leone's expulsion from the Commonwealth, and sponsored a UN resolution imposing an arms embargo upon the country.564 Eventually, and with the assistance of Nigerian forces, Kabbah

560

Blair, quoted, Jill Sherman and James Landale, ‘Blair Promises to Follow Economic Third Way’, The Times, 8 April 1997.

561

Blair, quoted, Philip Webster ‘There's No Going Back for Party, Blair Tells Voters’, The Times, 11 March 1997.

562

John Prescott, quoted, ‘Public Private Partnerships are Here to Stay Says Prescott’.

563

Andrew Smith, speech to the Partnerships UK Conference, 7 December 1999. Full text available via www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom .

564

UN resolution 1132 said in its sixth clause: ‘all states shall prevent the sale or supply to Sierra Leone, by their nationals or from their territories.…of petroleum and petroleum products and arms and related material of all types’. Quoted, John Kampfner, Robin Cook (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998), p. 235. Britain initially intended the embargo to apply only to Koroma's Government and ministers interpreted it in this way in the House of Commons. Yet as drafted into law the embargo applied to all sides, so creating the conditions for the scandal itself.

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was returned to power in March 1998. All this happened without much in the way of media interest. In the same month as Kabbah resumed office, the Observer did however report on the involvement of a British company, Sandline, which it alleged had held a series of meetings with Britain's ambassador to Sierra Leone, Sir Peter Penfold.565 At first Sandline's involvement was little more than a footnote to Kabbah's restoration. But on 3 May 1998, the Sunday Times reported that Sandline had tried to ship arms to Kabbah's supporters in defiance of the UN embargo and that Customs and Excise had launched an investigation into the Foreign Office's knowledge and even possible approval of Sandline's activities.566 In a letter sent to the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, Sandline's lawyers alleged that their client had approached Kabbah at the suggestion of Penfold, had kept named Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence officials informed about their activities, and had acquired an arms export licence with, they believed, the blessing of the Foreign Office.567 As framed by the Conservatives, Sandline was about the Government's probity. It was about whether and when ministers had been informed about Sandline's activities, whether they had intentionally misled Parliament in their assurances that the embargo was being respected, or whether they had even conspired to break international law.568 With the first few lines of every newspaper story drawing parallels with the arms-to-Iraq affair, William Hague's claim that it was ‘almost beyond belief ’ that a shipment of arms could have taken place without Cook's approval was a dangerous one.569 In response to the allegations being made, Cook offered an unambiguous defence of his and his colleagues' behaviour. There was no cover-up. He personally had not received any briefing, written or oral, about Sandline's involvement until being informed about the Customs and Excise investigation and would resign if anyone could show otherwise. Other ministers had also been left in the dark. No one had intentionally misled Parliament let alone conspired to break the law. The fact of the matter is that there was no ministerial approval for the activities of Sandline, there was never any record, nor any evidence of any ministerial discussion with Sandline, there has been no ministerial involvement with Sandline. None of the

565

Peter Beaumont and Shyam Bhatia, ‘Britain Holds Talks with Hired Killers’, Observer, 8 March 1998.

566

Nicholas Rufford, ‘Cook Snared in Arms for Coup Inquiry’, Sunday Times, 3 May 1998.

567

Robert Shrimsley, ‘Cook's Job on the Line in Arms Row’, Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1998.

568

See the resolution tabled by the Conservatives at the start of an Opposition Day debate on this issue; House of Commons, 18 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 600.

569

Quoted, Lucy Wood, Ian Black, and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Cook on Defensive as Arms Pressure Mounts’, Guardian, 11 May 1998.


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papers, despite all that has been written today and yesterday, has produced a shred of evidence suggesting that there was.570 Cook's defence was eventually vindicated. A Foreign Office inquiry led by a retired civil servant, Sir Thomas Legg, published a report in July 1998, criticising Foreign Office officials for their failure to communicate with ministers, so exonerating Cook. Yet in the heat of the moment, the defence proved to be a difficult one to sustain. For it rested upon a precise chronology of dates and events the details of which were difficult to grasp when set against the clarity of the charges being levelled. Matters were not helped when, on the morning of 14 May, the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir John Kerr, appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He said that, contrary to Cook's claims, a junior minister in the Foreign Office, Tony Lloyd, had indeed been briefed about Sandline's arms shipment.571 Furthermore, and even in so far as it was considered plausible, Cook's chosen defence still left him politically vulnerable. In a BBC documentary broadcast in January 1998, Cook had boasted that it was possible to be a good Foreign Secretary without focusing on the detailed paperwork. Yet it was precisely his lack of detailed knowledge that could now be argued to have contributed to the problem. The more Cook protested his innocence the more the Conservative's presented his innocence as evidence of ignorance and incompetence.572 Framed as an issue about probity, Sandline left New Labour in a position in which it could only lose. With media interest continuing to grow, Blair entered the argument for the first time on 11 May in an effort to reframe the issue. In an apparently off-the-cuff remark to a television reporter he said: don't let us forget that the UN and the UK were both trying to help the democratic regime restore its position from an illegal military coup. They were quite right in trying to do it.573 The underlying issue raised by Sierra Leone was not about who knew what and when. It was about democracy. The real issue was whether the Government had been right to support a democratically elected leader. Cook

570

Robin Cook, interview, Breakfast With Frost, 10 May 1998. Full transcript available via http://193.114.50.5/texts/1998/may/10/sandline.txt .

571

Within a few hours Kerr was pressed by Cook to send a letter to the Chair of the Committee, Donald Anderson, clarifying his earlier comments. ‘Following your committee's hearing this morning, I have checked my memory of the briefing pack prepared for Mr Lloyd's use in the debate on March 12. It mentions reports about a possible deal by President Kabbah for Sandline's services. But it does not mention arms shipments; and, as I thought, it does not say that one such report had already been passed to Customs and Excise’. Quoted, Kampfner, Robin Cook, p. 241.

572

See, for example, William Hague, House of Commons, 13 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 369.

573

Quoted, Kampfner, Robin Cook, p. 239.

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accepted that the charges being levelled against the Government were serious ones.574 He simply denied that they were correct. Blair dismissed them as ‘hoo-hah’. As presented by Alistair Campbell, Sierra Leone had been a fight which the ‘good guys…won’.575 Directly confronting the parallels being drawn with Iraq, Blair told the House of Commons on 14 May that I think that I have finally discovered why the Tory party is so upset. We are accused of having helped a democratically elected regime. That is the Tories' problem. When it comes to gun-running to Iraq they are [interruption]…all right. I do not regret a single word I have said about this. I described it as overblown hoo-hah and that is what it is.576 Blair's argument left unanswered a number of questions about who had known what and when. Yet it had the great political advantage of turning Sierra Leone into a valence issue and of placing New Labour at the political centre. The decision to support Kabbah, the democratically elected leader, was an entirely reasonable one that ordinary voters would understand and agree with. Britain had a long-standing and bipartisan policy of supporting democratisation. New Labour's policy was explicable in terms of that status quo. Responding to New Labour's invitation to condemn their actions as improper, the Conservatives' Shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman, Michael Howard, condemned the ‘rather lofty’ attitude New Labour had taken and ridiculed its claim that ‘the only thing that matters is that President Kabbah was restored’.577 But this was an admission of defeat. For, by this time, the story was already dying. Following vigorous lobbying by the Road Haulage Association, Gordon Brown announced the end of the fuel duty escalator in his March 2000 budget. This escalator had, since 1993, increased annually the tax on petrol by 5 per cent more than the rate of inflation. With world oil prices continuing to rise, public anger about the price of petrol nonetheless continued to simmer. A ‘dump the pump’ protest in August 2000 failed to attract much support but generated a rush of publicity about prices.578 A few weeks later a successful blockade of Channel ports by French fishermen protesting about diesel prices created a successful precedent for collective action. Pickets appeared outside

574

On 6 May, Cook had told the House of Commons that if there had been a breach of the arms embargo it ‘was a very serious matter, which must be fully and openly investigated’. Quoted, Andrew Rawnsley, Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 2000), p. 180.

575

Quoted, John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2000), p. 426.

576

Blair, House of Commons, 13 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 369.

577

Michael Howard, Shadow Foreign Affairs spokesman, House of Commons, 18 May 1998, Hansard, Col. 605.

578

Barrie Clement and Ian Herbert, ‘Motorists Drive by as “Dump the Pump” Protest Misfires’, Independent, 2 August 1998.


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the Stanlow refinery in Essex on 8 September. Tanker drivers, citing threats of intimidation in public and political sympathy in private, refused to cross picket lines the police then failed to clear. Over the next few days the economy began to grind to a halt. As petrol stations ran out of supplies, panic buying was reported in supermarkets on 10 September. Then, just as the declaration of a state of emergency seemed likely, deliveries, initially of emergency supplies, slowly resumed and the crisis passed. On 14 September the organisers of the protest formally lifted the by then -already -crumbling blockades, saying that they would give the Government sixty days to address their concerns. Subsequent protests in the notably less balmy month of November failed to generate significant support and were met with a far firmer police response. As framed by the participants themselves, the fuel blockade was primarily about the price of petrol, taking the crisis in the countryside and foxhunting as side issues. The Conservatives agreed. The blockades were a ‘great taxpayers revolt’.579 Tired of New Labour's stealth taxes, the public had finally turned. Operating from within this frame, various Ministers offered assorted defences of the Government's position during the first few days of the crisis. High petrol prices were the fault of OPEC. High petrol prices were the fault of the Conservatives who had imposed the fuel escalator in the first place. Cutting duty and lowering prices would mean cutting expenditure on health and education. Yet these arguments made no apparent difference. The blockades continued and continued to enjoy overwhelming public support. The Government began to regain the political initiative when instead of arguing its case within a frame set by its opponents it reframed the issue. Once again the construction of this new frame coincided with the intervention of 10 Downing Street. Having been on a regional tour to promote the dotcom economy, Blair returned to London on 12 September 2000. In the press conferences he convened and chaired over the following days he consistently presented the issue raised by the blockades as being about democracy and the rule of law. The same day he told journalists that: we are taking the approach we are, not for the sake of it, or out of a lack of understanding of the problems caused by high fuel prices, but because I believe that whatever the rights or wrongs of the argument over fuel duty we cannot accept as a government or as a nation that policy should be dictated by illegal blockades, pickets or direct action…were we to yield to that pressure it would run counter to every democratic principle this country believes in, and what is more, if the government was to decide its policy on taxes in response to such behaviour, the credibility of economic policy vital to any country would be severely damaged.580

579

William Hague, quoted, Andy McSmith, ‘Milburn Accused of Spin and Lies’, Daily Telegraph, 15 September 2000.

580

Blair, press conference, 12 September 2000. Full text available via http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

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Two days later he argued that: however much people may dislike paying petrol duty there is no way that any Government could or should yield to this form of protest…these tactics cannot, I hope people understand, be accepted by any democratic government or country.581 The underlying issue raised by the petrol blockades was not about the price of petrol, it was about democracy. The real issue was whether the Government was right to stand firm against the protests. Interpreted and so understood as an issue about tax, the blockades left New Labour in a great deal of trouble. No matter how hard they tried, ministers could not convince drivers that petrol prices were reasonable. Framed as being about democracy and the rule of Law, New Labour was able to construct its policy as being at the political centre. Its decision to confront and face -down a group of politically-driven protestors willing to endanger lives in the pursuit of their cause was both reasonable and inevitable. It was a decision that any responsible government would have made. New Labour still suffered as a result of the blockade. Some of the polls taken in its immediate aftermath showed the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time since 1993.582 Yet the damage was short-term. Within a few months a healthy lead in the polls had been restored and the blockades largely forgotten.

Framing the Campaign: Issues and Dimensions In the final section of Chapter 7, it was argued that parties seek electoral advantage by framing not just specific issues but entire campaigns. For, if a party believes that voters believe it to be at the political centre with regard to some particular issue or set of issues, it will have an obvious incentive to focus upon that issue in its speeches, debates, interviews, press releases, and articles. A party will prime that issue in an effort to ensure that voters construct their understanding of the political world in terms of it; that they notice, interpret, recall, and weigh information in terms of that issue or those issues. That parties pay particular attention to particular policy issues is hardly a revelation. The careful selection and orchestration of press conferences, photo-opportunities, and policy statements so as to generate stories about one issue rather than another is a recognised staple of campaign strategy.583 Blair

581

Blair, press conference, 14 September 2000. Full text available via http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

582

George Jones and Andy McSmith, ‘Tories Lead After Blair's Worst Week’, Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2000.

583

Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, pp. 67–8; and Patricia Hewitt and Peter Mandelson, ‘The Labour Campaign’, in Ivor Crewe and Martin Harrop (eds.), Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1997 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).


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himself has described the business of politics as being about ‘hand-to-hand fighting’ for the following day's headlines.584 Biographies of figures like Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell and the leak-and-tell books of the BBC journalist Nick Jones have shown how New Labour has created and then planted stories in an attempt to divert media attention from some other issue.585 What issue or issues did New Labour seek to prime prior to the 1997 election? Any number of different sources might be consulted in an attempt to answer this question. Press releases, campaign press conferences, and manifestos might all be consulted in an effort to identify dominant issues.586 This section will however look at the issues raised by Labour MPs in their attacks upon the Conservative Government during the then twiceweekly ritual of PMQT.587 Broadcast live on television and radio and usually featured in evening news broadcasts and the following day's papers, PMQT is a high-profile event. It is also one of the few opportunities given to MPs to question the Prime Minister on any issue. For these two reasons it seems reasonable to assume that MPs think carefully about the questions they ask and that they ask questions about issues on which they believe their party has a comparative political advantage. In deciding what questions to ask, MPs will of course respond to events. They will often ask questions about the scandal or policy leak occupying that day's headlines. But they will have good reason only to ask questions about those scandals or policies they believe their party can extract political mileage from. Between Blair's first PMQT on 18 October 1994 and his last as Leader of the Opposition on the 20 March 1997, Labour MPs asked a total of 646 questions of John Major or his stand-in.588 One hundred and thirteen of these questions were not attacks relating to a particular policy. They were instead either (i) questions about a constituency matter, (ii) messages of support for the Government's position on, for example, Northern Ireland, (iii) general attacks upon the Conservatives' unpopularity or internal

584

Blair, quoted, Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour, p. 149.

585

Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour; Peter Oborne, Alistair Campbell (London: Aurum Press, 1999); Nick Jones, Campaign 1997 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1997); The Sultans of Spin (London: Victor Gollancz, 1999); The Control Freaks: How New Labour Gets its Own Way (London: Politicos, 2001).

586

Saliency theory often uses analysis of party manifestos. These are judged as having ‘a special standing as the only collective policy statement that parties as such ever make…no other source represents the combined views of the party as an organisation’; Ian Budge, ‘Validating Party Policy Placements’, British Journal of Political Science, 31 (2001), 210–23.

587

A few days after the 1997 election, Downing Street announced that PMQT was to be changed from two fifteen-minute sessions each week to one thirty-minute one.

588

Between July 1994 and July 1995, the stand-in was usually the Leader of the Commons, Tony Newton. Between July 1995 and May 1997, it was usually the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine.

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divisions, or (iv) general attacks about policy that did not focus upon any one particular policy issue. Five hundred and thirty-three questions were however attacks relating primarily or exclusively to one of sixteen policy issues.589 The first column of Table 8.1 lists these issues. The second offers examples of the specific kinds of questions asked about each issue.590 The third shows, in descending order, the total number of questions asked about each issue and that number as a proportion of the 533 questions asked. Over 60 per cent of all questions asked were related to one of just five issues: sleaze, privatisation, the NHS, tax, and Europe. New Labour did not try and frame its campaign in terms of any one issue. The pattern of questions asked at PMQT does however suggest that it sought to frame its campaign in terms of just a handful of issues. Some of the issues New Labour MPs shied away from asking questions about are worth separately noting. First, education. Blair may have described his priorities as being ‘education, education, education’ but Table 8.1 suggests that New Labour did not want to frame its election campaign in terms of this issue. Between 1994 and 1997 Labour MPs attacked the Conservatives' education policies on just twenty-seven occasions.591 Education was an issue far more likely to be raised by Conservative MPs either praising the record of Grant-Maintained Schools or attacking Blair or Harman's choice of school for their children.592 Second, law and order. When asked what issues were of most importance to them, 27 per cent of the electorate mentioned law and order in the run-up to the 1997 election.593 Yet Labour MPs only asked nine questions about this issue, six of these relating to the Government's failure to ban handguns in the aftermath of the Dunblane tragedy. With its talk of being tough on crime and its innovative policies relating to antisocial behaviour, New Labour overcame much of its traditional weakness on this issue.594 Yet the pattern of questions asked during PMQT suggests that New Labour did not see in law and order a potential vote-winner they could frame their campaign around. Third, the

589

Of course the issues that questions are filed as relating to, are themselves constructions. In this table there are sixteen issues. It would no doubt be possible to devise systems of classification in which there were ten issues, fifty issues, or 100 issues.

590

These examples are not, it should be emphasised, presented in the order of their frequency.

591

In contrast, 13% of New Labour's manifesto (excluding the preface by Blair) was devoted to this issue.

592

During same period of PMQT Conservative MPs attacked Labour's policy on education on at least fifty occasions.

593

In a Market & Opinion Research International (MORI) poll in February 1997 asking voters what they thought to be the most important issues facing the country, 27%mentioned law and order. See www.mori.com/polls/trends/issues.shtml .

594

MORI also asked voters which party they believed had the best policies on law and order. In January 1992, 39% thought the Conservatives had the best policies and only 19% Labour. By February 1997 the equivalent figures were 30% and 28%. See www.mori.com/polls/trends/bpoki-law.shtml .

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TABLE 8.1 Issues Primed at Prime Minister's Question Time, 1994–7 Sleaze

arms to Iraq, Jeffrey Archer (insider trading), Jonathan Aitken (financial interests), cash for questions, Conservative Party funding, Government's response to Nolan Report, Westminster Council gerrymandering Privatisation costs of privatising British Rail, folly of Privatising British rail, poor service of privatised water, ‘fat cats’—pay of privatised utility chairmen, possibility, folly, and U-turns on Post Office privatisation, MoD accommodation privatisation NHS spending cuts, hospital and ward closures, staff pay, waiting times, doctors' hours, morale, excessive bureaucracy, inequitiesof internal market Tax inequity of raising VAT on fuel, broken promises on tax (especially VAT on fuel), tax as a proportion of national income Europe likelihood of a referendum on a single currency, Government's isolation within EU, internal divisions over Europe Economy impending recession, Government debt, Inflation, unemployment—specific job losses, general record on, and inability todeal with Welfare social security cuts (various), evidence of growing inequality, evidence of growing poverty, inadequacies of the Child Support Agency BSE Government responsibility for crisis, failure to deal adequately with crisis, failure to reveal information about, failure to haveban on beef lifted Education class sizes, teachers' pay, spending cuts, inequalities in teaching system, Government's denigration of teachers, falling or poor standards, underfundingin higher education Foreign policy French nuclear testing, Government reaction to crisis in former Yugoslavia Housing cuts in mortgage tax relief increasing cost of housing, negative equity and Government responsibility for, repossessions and Government responsibility for, homelessness Constitution why devolution for Northern Ireland but not Scotland, Government failure to respond to public opinion on devolution, House of Lords reform E m p l o y m e n t minimum wage, Social Chapter, trade union recognition, position of partrights time workers Others animal welfare, environment, defence, immigration, equal opportunities, race, defence Law and Order rising crime rates, Labour crime initiatives, gun control and inadequacies of Government position on post-Dunblane Local gover n- spending cuts in, inequities in grant allocation, constraints on power of ment Northern Ireland partiality to and secret deals with Unionists, failure to respond to IRA ceasefire

88 (16.5%) 87 (16.3%)

54 (10.1%) 50 (9.4%) 43 (8.1%) 39 (7.3%) 29 (5.4%) 28 (5.3%) 27 (5.1%) 17 (3.2%) 14 (2.6%) 12 (2.3%) 11 (2.1%) 9 (1.7%) 9 (1.7%) 8 (1.6%) 8 (1.6%)

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constitution and employment rights. We have seen in Chapter 4 how New Labour presented and defended devolution, the minimum wage, and trade union recognition as centrist policies. Yet the pattern of questions asked, nonetheless, suggests that New Labour did not want to draw attention to these policies. Devolution was raised on eleven occasions, the minimum wage four times, and trade union recognition just once. Turning now to the issues New Labour did prime, the number of questions asked about the NHS is unsurprising. Voters not only saw this as being an important issue but one on which New Labour clearly had the better policies.595 Three of the other issues most frequently raised are however worth saying slightly more about. First, ownership. Labour MPs asked eighty-seven

595

The proportion of the electorate believing health to be an important issue rose from 28% in 1992 to 49% in February 1997. Only 13% of voters thought that the Conservatives had the best policies on this issue; 53% said that New Labour had the best policies. See www.mori.com/poll/trends/bpoki-health.shtml .


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questions about either Government proposals to privatise some body or the record of some recently privatised firm. Blair himself attacked rail privatisation eleven times. As privatisation was a stick with which the Conservatives had beaten Labour throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the salience of this issue may seem surprising. Although pushing the parties closer together, it may be that the decision to rewrite Clause IV of Labour's constitution rekindled this issue. Knowing that John Major could no longer reply to criticisms of his Government's record with an attack upon Labour's constitutional commitment to nationalisation, Labour MPs may well have been emboldened to raise the ownership issue. Second, tax. New Labour's announcement in January 1996 that it would, if elected, leave income tax unchanged was interpreted as a sign of the party's continuing nervousness on this issue.596 Yet the pattern of questions asked during PMQT suggests that the Conservatives' 1993 tax rises had already made this an issue New Labour believed it held the political advantage on. Third, sleaze. As a term of political description, sleaze entered common newspaper currency in 1993. Over the following months and years, the list of events and scandals to which this label was applied grew ever longer. As a result, the proportion of people believing the Conservatives to have acquired a sleazy image never fell below 60 per cent between 1994 and 1997.597 By the time of the election 49 per cent thought New Labour to be the party most likely to deal with the issue of sleaze as against only 23 per cent willing to believe the same of the Conservatives.598 For these reasons it is not surprising that Labour MPs raised this issue eighty-eight times. Yet this is still to underestimate its impact. In Chapter 7 it was argued that parties can prime issues by framing other issues in terms of it. Parties can manage their campaigns by seeking to make one issue a ‘central organising idea’ within it.599 In the run-up to the 1997 election, sleaze emerged as just such an issue. Although counted under separate headings in Table 8.1, Labour linked the issue of sleaze to the Conservatives' willingness to break their promises on tax, their tolerance of overpaid ‘fat cats’, and their secret deals on the future of Northern Ireland with the Official Unionists. So far in this section we have examined the framing of issues. In Chapter 7 it was, however, argued that parties can also frame campaigns in terms of a particular dimension. For a party which believes that voters believe it to be at

596

James Naughtie, The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage (London: Fourth Estate, 2001), pp. 92–6.

597

Robert Worcester and Roger Mortimore, Explaining Labour's Landslide (London: Politico's, 1999), p. 80.

598

See David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), p. 231.

599

William Gamson and Andre Modigliani, ‘The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action’, in Richard Braungart (ed.), Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 3 (Greenwich, Co.: JAI Press, 1985), p. 138.

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the political centre with regard to some particular dimension will have an obvious incentive to focus upon that dimension in its speeches, debates, interviews, press releases, and articles. In their analysis of the 1997 British Election Survey, Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell, and John Curtice identify three dimensions.600 The first is a socio-economic dimension taking in the issues of ownership, unemployment, and taxation. The second is a libertarian–authoritarian dimension taking in the issues of racial equality, the death penalty, and stiffer sentences. The third is a British nationalist dimension taking in the issues of devolution, Northern Ireland, and Britain's nuclear deterrent. Which of these dimensions did Labour MPs seek to prime through their questions at PMQT? Certainly not the libertarian–authoritarian one. We have already seen that only nine questions were asked about law and order. Six questions were raised about race relations, most of these by the Bradford West MP Max Madden, but these mostly related to constituency matters and did not involve direct attacks upon the record of the Conservative Government. No questions were asked about the death penalty. As for the dimension of British national sentiment, we have already seen that very few questions were asked about devolution. Only eight questions were asked about Northern Ireland and only one about nuclear defence. Europe was frequently raised but most of Labour's attacks on this issue related not to Government policy but to the Conservatives' internal divisions. Furthermore, Heath, Jowell, and Curtice show, perhaps surprisingly, that Europe was not a part of this dimension. On the basis of these figures, it is difficult to see New Labour as priming anything other than the left–right dimension. Dimensions are constructed. So far, we have looked at the way in which parties can prime existing dimensions. Yet parties can also try to create new dimensions of conflict. We have already seen in Chapter 6 how New Labour presented itself as having ‘moved beyond the old boundaries between Left and Right’ through its development of innovative policies.601 New Labour has also presented itself as being just that, new, by appropriating the language of modernisation. Peter Mandelson has suggested that it has been one of New Labour's ‘transforming achievements’ to have turned itself into the party of the modern and the future. The left can never succeed for long by being backward looking and reactionary: in the 1980s, Thatcher appropriated the title deeds to ‘future’. But New Labour has now appropriated modern from the Conservatives.602

600

Heath et al., The Rise of New Labour, pp. 78–81. See also the discussion in the previous chapter.

601

Blair, speech, ‘Security in a World of Change’, 17 July 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 207.

602

Peter Mandelson, ‘Revolution Revisited’, Guardian, 17 May 2002.


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Reforms to the Labour Party, the NHS, the constitution, the trade unions, the criminal justice system, the welfare state, comprehensive schools, and the taxation system have all been presented and defended as necessary modernisations. All have been constructed as showing how New Labour has ‘broken through the traditional barriers of left and right’.603 It is easy to dismiss this appeal as being entirely vacuous.604 Yet positing an overarching choice between modernisation and stagnation that binds together otherwise apparently distinct policy issues has given New Labour the opportunity to forge a new electoral coalition whose membership, according to Blair, includes ‘radical’ Conservative voters who, like Margaret Thatcher, recognise the need for modernisation.605 Excluded from it are those parts of the Old Left who are a part of the ‘forces of Conservatism’.606

Conclusion Political success is not just a matter of having the right policies. It is a matter of presenting these policies in the right way, of priming voters to interpret and so understand issues as being about one thing rather than another. According to Blair, the right were able [in the 1980s] to pose as the party of the market, enterprise, successful business, low inflation, low interest rates and prudent spending. The political dividing-lines were put in place entirely to suit them…the leftof-centre response should not therefore be to adopt Tory policies. That would be foolish because they have failed. But it should put in place the dividing-lines in better and more accurate places.607 In this chapter we have seen how New Labour sought to reframe a number of issues and events. These are examples of what is a pervasive, never-ending process. Framing is not an optional extra, a strategy that parties sometimes resort to and at other times disdain. It is an essential part of political competition. There are no issues without the framing of issues. In this chapter we could have looked at the way in which New Labour has presented itself as having ‘moved the education argument on’ from being one about

603

Blair, speech, ‘New Britain in the Modern World’, 9 January 1998. Full text available via http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page838.asp .

604

See for example the former New Labour stalwart Tony Wright, ‘Bad Language’, Guardian, 6 April 2001.

605

Blair, speech, ‘Security in a World of Change’, p. 206.

606

Blair, speech, 1999 Labour Party conference address. Full text available via www.guardian.co.uk/lab99 .

607

Blair, quoted, Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, p. 237.

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structures to being one about standards of teaching practice.608 We could have looked at the way in which New Labour presented the ‘real divide’ over welfare as being between those in the Old Left and New Right who viewed it as being about increased or reduced expenditure and New Labour which presented it as being about getting people back into work.609 We could have looked at the way in which New Labour argued that the real issue raised by asylum seekers was not the number entering the country but the speed at which their applications were processed.610 We could have looked at the way in which prior to the 1997 election New Labour framed the tax issue as being about ‘fairness and unfairness’ rather than more or less.611 Parties do not simply defend their policies. They frame the issues those policies relate to.

608

Blair, speech, ‘Realising Our True Potential’, 23 June 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 159.

609

Blair, speech, ‘Social Justice’, 13 February 1995, reproduced in Blair, New Britain, p. 146.

610

Jack Straw, ‘Asylum Abusers’, Guardian, 13 May 1999.

611

Brown, House of Commons, 3 February 2000, Hansard, Col. 1188.

9 Leadership and the Construction of the Centre Introduction On the morning of 12 May 1994, John Smith suffered a massive heart attack and died. The subsequent leadership contest, when it officially commenced, was a relatively low-key one.612 Journalists expected Tony Blair to easily beat John Prescott and Margaret Beckett and this is precisely what he eventually did, acquiring 57 per cent of the total vote. The key moment in the campaign came at the end of May when Gordon Brown announced that he would not stand against Blair. The circumstances of and reasons for Brown's withdrawal continue to attract considerable speculation. The simplest explanation is that Brown withdrew when he realised that he had no chance of winning. Blair attracted support because it was felt that he would, in Peter Mandelson's phrase, ‘play best at the box office’.613 John Rentoul describes as ‘decisive’ a MORI poll taken during this time which revealed Blair as the preferred choice of 32 per cent of the electorate and Brown of only 9 per cent.614 That Blair attracted so much more support is noteworthy. For these two were seen as ideological soul-mates sharing a determination to push Labour towards the centre ground. The obvious lesson to be drawn is of course that leadership matters: that political support for a party is a function not only of the policies it espouses but of the leader it elects. Yet, political scientists seem surprisingly reluctant to acknowledge the significance of leadership. In the introduction to an essay examining whether Neil Kinnock

612

The leadership contest itself was delayed until the completion of the campaign for elections to the European Parliament. For a general account see Keith Alderman and Neil Carter, ‘The Labour Party Leadership and Deputy Leadership Elections of 1994’, Parliamentary Affairs, 43 (1995), 438–53.

613

Donald Macintyre, Peter Mandelson and the Making of New Labour (London: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 294.

614

More generally, Rentoul says that ‘opinion polls were so influential in this [leadership] election that they might be described as the fourth section of Labour's three-part electoral college’. John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little, Brown & Company 2001), p. 230. On the importance of opinion polls also see John Sopel, Tony Blair: The Moderniser (London: Bantam Books, 195), pp. 185–92.

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LEADERSHIP AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

lost Labour the 1992 election, Ivor Crewe and Anthony King observe that ‘political scientists…largely ignore party leaders.…they are simply, for all practical purposes, written out of the script’.615 Rational choice theories of party competition do not constitute an exception to this general rule. Downs' An Economic Theory is a theory about party competition. It is a theory in which voters choose between different parties and in which, at an early stage, the analysis of leadership is effectively precluded by the assumption that parties are coalitions whose ‘members agree on all their goals’.616 From this lead, subsequent generations of theorists have taken their cue. Some theorists have recognised that the capacity of leaders to change policies will be constrained by activists.617 Others have observed that voters' preferences between leaders may sometimes lead them to select a party further away from them in political space.618 But leadership remains peripheral: a factor impinging upon, rather than the subject of, rational choice models. In this chapter, I argue that leadership is an essential part of the process of party competition. Political position is constructed. It is in part constructed by and through leadership. During election campaigns parties make promises. They promise to implement certain policies and not others. They promise to achieve certain results. They promise to govern from the centre and to react to as yet unanticipated events in a particular way.619 How a party is regarded and the amount of support it eventually receives will depend upon the credibility of these promises. Downs not only recognises this but provides a conceptual framework within which the significance of judgements about trustworthiness can be understood. Downs suggests that parties will need to be seen as reliable—by which he means faithful to their policy promises—and responsible—by which he means consistent. This argument has important implications for the spatial theory of party competition. For, it implies that the support a party receives will depend not only upon the position a party is thought to occupy but voters' beliefs about the credibility of its promises.

615

Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, ‘Did Major Win? Did Kinnock Lose?’ in Anthony Heath et al. (eds.), Labour's Last Chance? (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994), p. 126. For a more general analysis and critique of the status of leadership within political science see Jean Blondel, Political Leadership: Towards a General Analysis (London: Sage, 1987), pp. 8–15.

616

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 25. Downs subsequently (p. 26) recognises that ‘this definition treats each party as though it were a single person’. By assuming away a collective party Downs assumes away the need for and the possibility of leadership.

617

John Aldrich, ‘A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 974–90.

618

James Enelow and Melvin Hinich, ‘Nonspatial Candidate Characteristics and Electoral Competition’, Journal of Politics, 44 (1982), 115–30.

619

Parties can make promises about the issues currently exercising voters. They cannot make promises about how they will respond to as yet unforeseen crises and events. They can, however, promise to respond to such crises and events in a particular spirit and with the intention of promoting particular principles and values. See Melvin Hinich and Michael Munger, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 67–72.


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Drawing upon the economic analysis of principal–agent relationships, the first section of this chapter restates Downs' argument. Parties are vote-maximisers. They ‘formulate policies to win elections, rather than win elections to formulate policies’.620 Parties, once elected, have a strong incentive to honour the promises they made. For those that do not, Downs argues, will acquire reputations for being untrustworthy and be ejected from and kept out of office. The claim that parties can be viewed purely as vote-maximising, has proven immensely controversial. One now common alternative to it is the assumption that parties, at least some parties, are at least in part policy-seeking: that they attempt to win elections in order to implement particular policies. Such an assumption does not nullify Downs' incentive-based argument. It does however create an additional way in which we might think of elections: as a screening mechanism. In Downs' argument, elections provide voters with an opportunity to hold governments to account for their indiscretions. I argue that we might instead view elections as providing voters with the opportunity of distinguishing between parties whose commitment to policies is consummate rather than merely instrumental. The second section discusses the nature of screening and relates it to Downs' arguments about reliability and responsibility. The third section extends this argument to the analysis of leadership. In those parties within which decision-making powers are concentrated in the hands of an elected leader, the judgements that voters reach about the trustworthiness of a party will depend at least in part upon their beliefs about the trustworthiness of that party's leader. Drawing upon Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin's explanation for the creation of political parties, I argue that the incentive created by the prospect of having to fight future elections is weaker in those parties in which there is a strong leader. In such cases, voters are therefore more likely to rely upon screening. As a result, parties will select as their leaders politicians whom voters are most likely to regard as being personally reliable and responsible. In the final section I argue that the reputations individual leaders acquire are constructed by parties and leaders themselves. Party leaders are not simply trustworthy or untrustworthy. They seek to persuade voters that they are trustworthy and that their opponents are untrustworthy. Political position is constructed by and through leadership and leadership itself is constructed.

Principals and Agents: Incentives A principal–agent relationship arises when one actor delegates responsibility for performing some task which affects their interests to another actor. The

620


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actor performing the action is the agent and the actor on whose behalf the action is taken is the principal.621 Economists, whose terms these are, regard principal–agent relationships as pervasive. Firms hire workers to perform jobs. Shareholders charge chief executives with maximising the value of their shareholdings. Homeowners contract with estate agents to sell their houses. Such relationships are of interest because they are seen as a potential source of inefficiency. Modern economics is founded on the claim that the pursuit of self-interest within competitive markets is consistent with, is indeed a precondition for, the achievement of the collective good. The pursuit of self-interest within principal–agent relationships is however regarded as problematic. Economists assume that the interests of principals and agents conflict. Whilst firms will want to maximise productivity, workers will want to shirk. Whilst shareholders will want to maximise the value of their holdings, chief executives will want to use the firm's resources to line their own pockets. We can conceive of the resulting principal–agent problem as one of trust. The principal will want to devolve responsibility to the agent if they can trust the agent to pursue their, that is the principal's, interests. Yet in calculating whether or not they can trust the agent, the principal will know that the agent does not share and may well undermine their interests. The standard solution to this problem is seen as lying in the design of an incentive scheme which ‘motivates the agent…to act in the principal's interests’.622 By manipulating the incentives the agent faces, the principal can ensure that the agent has self-interested reasons for acting in a trustworthy manner. The principal's and the agent's interests may not coincide but they can be reconciled. Two broad categories of incentives can be identified. In the first category agents can be given an incentive to act in a trustworthy way by linking their payment to performance. So shareholders can, for example, insist that wages are linked to changes in share price.623 In the second category upon which we will focus here, agents can be given an incentive to act in a trustworthy way by linking performance to the continued existence of the relationship itself. The basic logic of this second form of incentive is illustrated in Figure 9.1. With reference to Figure 9.1a we start by assuming that there are only two time periods: T1 in which a principal must decide whether to enter into a relationship with an agent and T2 in which the agent must then decide whether to pursue their own interests (shirk) or those of their principal

621

John Pratt and Richard Zeckhauser, ‘Principals and Agents: An Overview’, in Pratt and Zeckhauser (eds.), Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business (Boston, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984).

622

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Incentives, Risk and Information: Notes Toward a Theory of Hierarchy’, Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 6 (1975), 522–57.

623

Michael Jensen and Kevin Murphy, ‘Performance Pay and Top Management Incentives’, Journal of Political Economy, Compensation and Principal–Agent Theory’, Journal of Political Economy, 102 (1994), 1175–99.

98 (1990), 225–64; John Garen, ‘Executive


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FIGURE 9.1(a) Single-shot principal–agent relationship.

FIGURE 9.1(b) Iterated principal–agent relationship.

(not shirk). There are three possible outcomes. A if the principal enters into the relationship and the agent does not shirk; B if the principal enters into the relationship and the agent shirks; and C if the principal does not enter into

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the relationship. We assume the following preference rankings. For the principal and for the agent . The principal does not want the agent to shirk (A) and most wants to avoid the outcome in which the agent shirks (B). The agent prefers to shirk (B) but will pursue the principal's interests (A) rather than risk being excluded from a relationship (C). Both, therefore, prefer the outcome in which the agent does not shirk to one in which there is no relationship ( ). It is the ‘paradox of trust’ that this outcome may not be achieved.624 The principal knows that the agent will shirk at T2 if they get the opportunity ( ). Knowing this, the effective choice for the principal at T1 is between entering into a relationship in which the agent will shirk (B) and not entering into the relationship (C). They will choose the latter ( ). Iteration changes the incentives the agent has and with this the outcome that will be achieved. In Figure 9.1b it is assumed that there is an additional time period, T3, in which the principal must decide whether to renew the relationship. There are now five possible outcomes: A in which the agent does not shirk and the relationship is renewed; B in which the agent does not shirk and the relationship is ended; C in which the agent shirks and the relationship is renewed; D in which the agent shirks and the relationship is ended; and E in which the relationship is not started. We now assume the following preference rankings. For the principal and for the agent . This means that if the agent acts in the principal's interests the principal will renew the relationship ( ). If the agent shirks, the principal will however end the relationship ( ). Knowing this, the effective choice the agent faces is between either not entering into the relationship (E), entering into a relationship which will be ended when they shirk (D), or entering into a relationship which will be renewed when they do not shirk (A). They will choose the latter ( ). Knowing this the principal will enter into the relationship at T1 ( ). Election campaigns amount to a series of promises. In their manifestos, press conferences, election broadcasts, and speeches, politicians promise to implement one set of policies rather than another. They promise to govern in a particular spirit, to remain faithful to basic principles, and to react to future and as yet unanticipated events in particular ways. These promises are, in themselves, of no value to voters. Downs is adamant that voters only care about policy outputs.625 Whether or not the promises a party makes are believed is therefore of crucial importance. Downs recognises this and argues that competition forces parties to act in a trustworthy manner. The concepts he uses here are those of reliability and responsibility. Reliability refers to the relationship between a party's promises and its deeds. A party is reliable if ‘its

624

Martin Hollis, Trust Within Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 3.

625



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policy statements at the beginning of an election period—including those during its pre-election campaign—can be used to make accurate predictions of its behaviour during the [subsequent] period’.626 Understood in such terms, a party is reliable if it can be trusted to not do the exact opposite of what it says it will do. Downs therefore talks about integrity as a particular form of reliability. ‘A party has integrity if its policy statements at the beginning of an election period are reasonably borne out by its actions during the [subsequent] period’.627 Integrity is ‘by far the most efficient form of reliability’ as it results in the simplest and for voters, therefore, the clearest relationship between words and deeds.628 Responsibility refers to the relationship between a party's current and past policies. A party is responsible if ‘its policies in one period are consistent with its actions (or statements) in the preceding period, i.e. if it does not repudiate its former views in formulating its new programme’.629 Downs argues that reliability and responsibility are essential features of a viable democratic process and that ‘political parties are inexorably, driven by their own motives’ to behave in a reliable and responsible way.630 In this way elections ensure that the pursuit of self-interest is consistent with the achievement of the collective good.631 Although he does not use the language of principal–agent analysis, Downs' argument is perfectly consistent with, is indeed a simple variant of, the incentive-based argument. If an opposition party has previously acquired a reputation for acting unreliably, voters will be unable to predict how it will behave. ‘Rational men will vote for an unreliable opposition party only if the incumbents and all reliable parties have such abysmal proposals that random policy selection is preferable to them’.632 Knowing this, a governing party will, Downs suggests, calculate that any short-term gains from shirking will be outweighed by the long-term costs of acquiring a reputation for unreliability. The ‘same forces’ also lead parties to act responsibly.633 Voters value responsibility because

626


627


628


629


630


631

At the start of the Chapter 5, I argued that An Economic Theory was greatly influenced by the competitive theory of democracy Schumpeter develops in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. The most striking difference between them is Schumpeter's greater scepticism about the extent to which parties will seek to reflect public opinion. Schumpeter presents parties as operating with a great deal of autonomy. This is partly because he thinks parties can manipulate and create the public will. It is, however, also because he strikingly fails to recognise the incentives created by the prospect of having to fight future elections. David Miller, ‘The Competitive Model of Democracy’, in Graeme Duncan (ed.), Democratic Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

632


633


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it makes the actions of a party predictable. For this reason voters will punish parties which act irresponsibly. ‘If a party frequently adopts new policies inconsistent with its old ones, voters will suspect that it cannot be trusted to carry out any long-range policies at all’.634 The fear of acquiring a reputation for irresponsibility leads parties to maintain consistent policy platforms and, so, act in their principal's interests. Is the prospect of having to fight future elections sufficient to ensure reliability and responsibility? At a first glance, Downs appears to argue that it is. Yet, whilst elections might give parties a stronger incentive to act reliably and responsibly, this incentive is qualified. Indeed in Downs' own arguments we can discern two reasons why elections are an imperfect incentive mechanism. The first relates primarily to responsibility. Downs argues that the ‘desire to hang on to a good thing’ provides parties with another reason to act responsibly.635 A party which has just won an election will be reluctant to change policies which have just proven successful. However this argument cuts both ways. A party which has just lost an election will have a good reason for changing its policies. In such cases parties will have to set the potential votes to be gained from changing policies against the potential votes to be lost from being seen to have acted irresponsibly. There is no guarantee that vote-maximising parties will always settle upon responsibility. The second argument relates primarily to reliability. During a discussion of how uncertainty affects government decision-making, Downs at one point observes that parties need to acquire resources if they are to fight election campaigns. In order to raise these funds, parties will, he suggests, sometimes sell policy favours to interest -groups. Parties will not always pursue the interests of the median voter. Sometimes parties ‘construct policies often aimed more at the good of a few voters than at the good of all, or even of a majority’.636 The argument that competition will force parties to act reliably must, therefore, also be qualified. Parties will set the votes to be gained through extra campaign resources against the costs of breaking policy promises.

Principals and Agents: Screening Arguments about and proposals for the design of efficient incentive schemes dominate the principal–agent literature. Manipulation of the incentive structure that agents face is not, however, the only way in which principal–agent

634


635


636



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problems can be overcome. A second solution relies on the possibility of screening. Screening-based arguments share with incentive-based arguments the assumption that agents are committed to the pursuit of their own interests. But they assume that some agents have interests that naturally coincide with those of their potential principal.637 Such an assumption does not preclude the use of incentives as a solution to the principal–agent problem. The principal may still calculate that they can best protect their interests through the use of an incentive mechanism so ensuring the performance of any and all agents. That the incentive mechanism will not affect the behaviour of those agents whose interests coincide with the principal is not a reason for abandoning use of the mechanism. The assumption that some agents share the principal's interests does however suggest that the principal might instead protect his/her interest by hiring only those agents whose interests are consistent with his/hers. This changes the nature of the principal–agent problem, because the difficulty the principal must then confront is of course one of identifying those potential agents whose interests are indeed consistent with their own. This is the problem of screening. As an illustration of the difference between incentive-based and screening-based solutions, consider the following example. Economists have for some time sought to account for the existence of remuneration schemes in which workers' wages are linked not simply to performance but to length of service. In such schemes workers are, on an average, paid less than the marginal value of their output during their first few years at a firm and more than the marginal value of their output in the years before retirement. The incentive-based explanation for this runs as follows.638 Workers, all workers, will try to shirk. Managers can then threaten to terminate the contract of those caught shirking. This deterrent will be all the more powerful if those who are sanctioned must forgo not simply future wages but future wages paid at a higher rate. Wage structures in which payment is linked to length of service therefore give agents a greater incentive to pursue their principal's interests. The screening-based argument runs as follows.639 Firms have an interest in hiring workers whose intention it is to work for them and for a long period. They will not want to hire workers who intend to leave shortly after expensive induction and training programmes. But knowing this, every applicant will have an incentive to pledge their allegiance to the firm. Wage structures, in which payment is

637

Geoffrey Brennan, ‘Selection and the Currency of Reward’, in Robert Goodin (ed.), The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

638

Edward Lazear, ‘Why is There Mandatory Retirement?’, Journal of Political Economy, 87 (1979), 1261–84. See also Paul Milgrom and John Roberts, Economics, Organisation and Management (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1992), p. 189.

639

Joanne Salop and Stephen Salop, ‘Self-Selection and Turnover in the Labour Market’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90 (1976), 619–28.

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linked to the length of service, encourage applicants to reveal information about their true preferences. For those who believe they may be tempted to leave after a short time will be reluctant to pursue an application if they know that they will initially be paid less than the marginal value of their output.640 Downs' argument that parties are pure vote-maximisers who ‘formulate policies in order to win elections’ has proven immensely controversial. Whilst it may be plausible to assume that some parties are purely vote-maximising and that no party will be entirely indifferent to the number of votes it receives, the assumption that all parties are purely votemaximising seems implausible. As the spatial theory of party competition has been developed in the decades following the publication of An Economic Theory, theorists have, for this reason, increasingly sought to model behaviour on the assumption that parties have preferences over policy and that they are, to varying degrees, willing to trade-off those preferences against votes.641 What theorists have not done is to link this assumption to Downs' arguments about reliability and responsibility. Assume that there are two parties and that both have promised to implement the same policy if elected. Assume that one party is purely vote-maximising and that its commitment to this policy is therefore entirely instrumental. Assume that the other party is purely policy-seeking and that its commitment is therefore consummate. The prospect of having to fight a future election campaign gives the vote-maximising party an incentive to act reliably. This incentive is however qualified. The vote-maximising party may, once elected, decide that it can best maximise its vote at the next election by changing its policy. If voters know this then they will have a reason to try and identify that party whose commitment to the policy is consummate. How might they do so? One possibility is in terms of each party's past record. Rather than view responsibility as the behavioural outcome of the incentive that parties have to acquire good reputations, we might instead view responsibility as a trait voters can use to screen parties. Voters are more likely to trust a party if that party has remained committed to a particular set of policies over a long period of time. Consistency of purpose will be taken as evidence of a consummate commitment to a policy. A party whose commitment to a policy can be dated to the moment when that policy began to attract political support will, conversely, appear untrustworthy. Downs suggests that parties are purely vote-maximising and that vote-maximising

640

As this example shows, incentives and screening are not mutually exclusive alternatives. In this case the payment structure changes the incentives that applicants' face and so makes screening possible.

641

For discussions see Wolfgang Muller and Kaare Strom (eds.), Policy, Office or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Choices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Michael Laver and Ben Hunt, Policy and Party Competition (London: Routledge, 1992).


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parties will ‘formulate policies in order to win elections’. A Downsian party is one that will abandon any policy and sacrifice any principle in order to get elected. The obvious objection to this argument is that the motives parties have are more subtle: that they will sometimes cling to policies even if doing so costs them votes. This may however be the wrong way round. Parties that formulate policies in order to win elections and constantly change their position will appear irresponsible and this irresponsibility will repel voters. The deliberate effort to maximise votes is therefore likely to prove counter-productive. Parties with a consummate commitment to policies and who cling to those policies through electoral thick and thin may well attract more support in the long-term. The standard distinction drawn between vote-maximising and policy-seeking parties may therefore be misleading. For, it may be that policy-seeking is the best route to vote-maximising.

Leadership, Reliability, and Responsibility Downs argues that the prospect of having to fight future elections gives parties an incentive to act reliably. As Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin observe in their analysis of the institutions of representative democracy, this incentive can also be used to explain positively and justify normatively the existence of political parties. The contrast they draw here is between political systems in which the winner of an electoral contest is a single person (the president) and one in which it is a team (the party). Parties, they argue, have a comparative political advantage over individuals because the discipline of continuous dealings, the constraint imposed by the desire to be elected at the next election, on which much of the logic of electoral discipline depends, is more effective with parties.642 Consider the position of voters deciding whether or not to vote for an individual politician. They will realise that the politician may retire before the next election. They will also realise that once he/she has decided to retire, the politician whose commitment to a policy is purely instrumental will have little if any incentive to act reliably. In the case of a political party, voters will realise that some of the politicians in that party will retire before the next election and that they will have no incentive to act reliably. But they will also, Brennan and Hamlin argue, know that the majority in the party will nevertheless have an incentive to behave reliably and so check the behaviour of those leaving. ‘The critical difference between the single agent and the party is that, in a real sense, the party does (or can) live forever, even though none

642

Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin, Democratic Devices, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (2000) p. 207. Emphasis in original.

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of its members does’.643 Brennan and Hamlin suggest that the comparative electoral advantage enjoyed by parties over individuals can be used to explain why ‘parties emerged fairly quickly’ in parliamentary systems.644 Their argument is, however, in one sense a limited one. Parties are not teams in which power is equally shared. Parties have leaders. In many, if not most, political parties, power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of an individual leader.645 Yet, if the discipline of continuous trading gives parties a comparative advantage over individuals it should also give parties in which decision-making powers are shared an advantage over those in which it is exercised by a single leader. Voters will have more reason to believe promises made by parties in which there is a strong parliamentary party or cabinet.646 The explanation Brennan and Hamlin offer for the existence of parties cannot simply be stopped short. If the discipline of continuous trading explains why parties emerged ‘fairly quickly’ it should surely also explain the distribution of power within those parties which it clearly does not. Brennan and Hamlin's argument can however be rescued. The discipline of continuous trading may indeed give an electoral advantage to parties in which decision-making powers are diffused. It may, however, be that this advantage is more than offset by other factors. Perhaps parties derive significant benefits from being able to respond immediately to a rapidly changing media agenda but that the only parties which can realise this benefit are those in which decisionmaking powers are concentrated in the hands of a single leader. Explanations in the social sciences hold other things being equal.647 In this case, these other things are not equal and this means that continuous trading can be used to explain the creation of parties even though it cannot be used to explain the distribution of power within parties. The point I want to pursue here though is a different one. On what basis will voters decide whether a party's promises can be believed when decision-making powers within that party are concentrated in the hands of a single or small number of

643

Brennan and Hamlin, Democratic Devices, p. 208. Emphasis in original.

644

Brennan and Hamlin, Democratic Devices, p. 207.

645

The concentration of power within political parties was dubbed the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ by the sociologist Robert Michels, Political Parties (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1915).

646

I am not arguing here that the powers exercised by individual leaders are equivalent to those exercised by a single person. The powers of even the most powerful of leaders are always circumscribed and can always be withdrawn. But I do not need to argue otherwise. A distinction nevertheless holds between parties with and those without leaders.

647

Downs acknowledges the Ceteris Paribus status of his explanations, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 108. On the status and value of such explanations see Daniel Hausman, The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 133–42; and George Ray and Paul Piertroski, ‘When Other Things Aren't Equal: Saving Ceteris Paribus Laws from Vacuity’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46 (1995), 81–110.


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leaders? In such cases the judgements voters reach about the trustworthiness of a party will be closely related to and informed by their beliefs about the trustworthiness of those leaders. The implication of Brennan and Hamlin's argument is, however, that the incentives generated by the prospect of having to fight future elections will be weaker in such parties. The knowledge that a current leader may well retire or be ousted before the next election gives voters more reason to doubt the trustworthiness of such parties. In such cases screening may therefore be of greater relative importance. In deciding whether the leader of a party can be trusted to pursue the policies they say they will pursue, voters will try and identify those leaders whose commitment to those policies is consummate rather than merely instrumental. In doing so voters will look to see whether the leader has expressed a commitment to those policies over a long period of time or whether they have consistently tailored their views to acquire short-term political advantage. Political position is not simply a function of the policies to which a party is committed. The relationship between policies and position is not such that the rejection of one policy and the adoption of another will move a party from one position to another. The position a party is believed to occupy will depend upon the way in which those policies are presented, defended, and framed. It will also depend upon whether and to what extent voters consider the policy commitments credible. Two parties may be committed to the same policies but nevertheless be viewed in very different ways because they have very different leaders with very different political and personal histories. A party whose leader claims to believe in and have positioned their party at the political centre but whose political past is one of radical speeches and extreme views, will be treated with more suspicion than one whose leader has maintained a consistent political outlook.

The Construction of Reliability and Responsibility The incentive-based argument presented in Figure 9.1 is of course highly simplistic. It assumes that there are only two actors, the principal and the agent, that the agent has two choices, to shirk or not shirk, and, in Figure 9.1b, that the principal knows at T2 with absolute certainty how the agent has behaved. As the principal–agent literature has been developed over the last few decades these assumptions have generally been relaxed. So models now frequently assume the existence of, for example, multiple principals or uncertainty about the actions of the agent.648 Yet, within this increasingly rich

648

See Murray Horn, The Political Economy of Public Administration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Roy Radner, ‘Monitoring Co-operative Agreements in a Repeated Principal–Agent Relationship’, Econometrica, 49 (1981), 1127–48.

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and technically complex literature, it is still usually assumed that agents confront a simple choice between shirking and not shirking, between pursuing and ignoring their principal's interests. Yet, agents do not simply face the choice of whether and when to pursue their principal's interests. They also face the choice of whether and how to try and persuade their principal that they have pursued their interests. Chief executives do not simply act in the interests of shareholders. They seek to persuade shareholders that they have acted in their interests and that any fall in share price was caused by factors outside of their control. The time and resources chief executives will invest in the effort to persuade Boards of Directors and shareholders that they have pursued their interests are likely to be a major source of inefficiency.649 In the same way it might be observed that, in contradistinction to Downs' argument, parties do not simply act reliably or responsibly. Through their speeches, press conferences, interviews, election broadcasts, and press releases, parties seek to persuade the media and voters that they have acted reliably and responsibly. In arguing that they have kept their election promises, parties will seize upon statistics, testimonials, and reports which they can use to bolster their case. They will argue that particular promises should be interpreted in particular ways and should be subject to particular qualifications. They will seek to draw the media's attention toward some promises at the expense of others. Confronted with the accusation that they have broken a particular promise, parties will argue that they were forced to do so by circumstances beyond their control, that these circumstances were beyond anyone's imagination, and that they should not therefore be judged harshly. Confronted with the accusation that they have changed their policies in an attempt to acquire additional electoral support, parties will argue that they have remained faithful to their underlying values and principles. They will, at the same time, seek to persuade voters that their opponents have callously broken their promises and that they will say and do anything in order to be elected. The argument has returned here to the discussion of political parties. But the point applies equally to individual leaders. Party leaders are not inherently responsible or reliable any more than parties are inherently centrist or left-wing. Parties construct their position by constructing an image of their leader as someone who can be trusted to keep their word and who has remained steadfast in their commitment to particular policies and beliefs. To this end incidents from the leader's past will be retrieved and

649

Such behaviour might be described as rent-seeking: the investment of resources, in this case time and effort, in an effort to capture the monopoly rent of a executive wage. See James Buchanan, Robert Tollison, and Gordon Tullock (eds.), Toward a Theory of the Rent Seeking Society (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 1980); and Gordon Tullock, The Economics of Special Privilege and Rent Seeking (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1989).


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interpreted in particular ways. Long-forgotten speeches emphasising the importance of particular issues will be argued to demonstrate a consistency of purpose. Where a promise has previously been broken or a policy abandoned, it will be argued that as a then junior member of the party the leader had no alternative but to agree to the change. It will however be hinted that in private they adopted a very different position. Where a party has previously acquired a reputation for being unreliable or irresponsible, the leader's image will be projected as an alternative to and a guarantee of the party's integrity. Voters will be asked to trust not the party but its leader and will be assured that the leader and the leader alone controls policy-making. For this reason, stories that the leader is considering retirement or that their position is insecure will be rubbished. In seeking to construct a favourable image, party leaders and their advisers will draw upon the leader's personal as well as political history. When appearing on chat shows or delivering their speeches party leaders will draw upon the experiences and lessons of their childhood. They will talk about their long-standing religious convictions and personal tastes. They will illustrate political points with reference to the difficulties they have experienced in raising children or sustaining a family income during moments of crisis. They will talk about the importance to them of the enduring friendships they have forged outside of politics, of their interests and hobbies, of the strength of their marriage and the sacrifices they have made. By selecting, interpreting, and editing the details of their past lives, they will seek to present themselves as the very embodiment of integrity. And where their past lives contain incidents too easily interpreted as evidence of unreliability or irresponsibility, it will be argued that the leader has learnt from the mistakes and that journalists should not invade his/her privacy. The leader's personal and political identities are likely to be fused in one further way. Party leaders will seek to underpin their centrist credentials by presenting their own their values, background, formative experiences, education, interests, accent and manners, family and tastes in food, music and football teams as being entirely ordinary. Political leadership is often equated with the possession of extraordinary powers be it of bravery, imagination, or rhetoric. Max Weber argued that people submit to political leadership out of a ‘belief in the extraordinary quality of that specific person’.650 Yet the argument here cuts in exactly the opposite direction. Leaders can create trust by presenting themselves as being, at least in terms of their personal values and circumstances, entirely ordinary.

650

Max Weber, Economy and Society (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 244. See also Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (London: Routledge, 1897). For a more general discussion of the prevalence of such views see Blondel, Political Leadership, pp. 19–24.

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Political position is constructed. One way it is constructed is through and by leadership. Policy promises are likely to be considered more credible if they are associated with a party leader who is believed to be personally committed to them and to have demonstrated that commitment over a long period of time. The way in which a leader's political identity and personal history is constructed by advisers, spin doctors, and image consultants is not a trivial or meaningless part of the process of party competition. It is of crucial importance. Yet, there are limits to the extent to which leadership image can be constructed. This has been a recurring theme of the argument in the previous chapters. In Chapter 3, it was argued that political position is constructed through rhetoric. But policies cannot all be constructed as centrist. The beliefs an audience has today are not necessarily those it will have tomorrow. Rhetoric can be used to change beliefs. But what an audience believes tomorrow will depend upon what it believes today. In Chapter 7, it was argued that political position is constructed through framing. But the ability of parties to construct their positions through framing is constrained. Parties will struggle to inculcate the use of a new frame if voters and parties are used to another frame. The capacity of parties to construct their image through leadership is also limited. Parties can manipulate their leaders' image by interpreting and selectively emphasising particular events and incidents. But parties cannot simply invent an image. The school a politician attended, the Parliamentary speeches they once gave, the marriage they once walked away from, the manifesto they were once publicly committed to will all be matters of public record. Beyond a certain point, attempts to construct images of responsibility and reliability are likely to prove counter-productive. A politician who denies or attempts to reinvent their political past will simply appear untrustworthy. The choice of leader therefore makes an important and enduring difference to a party's capacity to construct its political position. Leadership candidates may belong to the same wing of a party and express a commitment to the same policies. But they are unlikely to have the same backgrounds, beliefs, friends, tastes, families, and careers. Because of the differences in their backgrounds, leaders will have different images. Because a party's reputation for trustworthiness must be built around a leader's image, different leaders will bequeath to their parties different spatial locations.

Conclusion In Chapter 1, I argued that seeing the political centre as constructed makes a number of differences to the way in which we might understand party competition. First, Policy and Position. Possession of the political centre is


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not simply a matter of adopting particular policies. How a party is regarded will depend upon whether a party's policy promises are believed and whether they are believed will, in part, depend upon whether that party's leader is regarded as being trustworthy. Differences in leadership can lead to significant differences in support. Two parties may have the same policies but be regarded in very different ways. A leader who is trying to push their party towards the political centre but whose own political past is one of firebrand activism is likely to be mistrusted. Second, Spin. Party leaders are not inherently trustworthy or untrustworthy. Their images are constructed. There are, as I have emphasised, limits upon the extent to which parties can construct and reconstruct their leader's image. Parties cannot simply erase their leader's past. But parties do have some room within which they can try to construct a favourable image. The successful construction of image requires, thirdly, Creativity. In trying to project their leader as someone who is personally reliable and responsible, parties must exercise ingenuity and imagination. There is no simple set formula through the application of which a positive image can be constructed. A simple and in many ways quite trivial example might serve to illustrate the importance of individual creativity. During a visit to Russia a few months after his arrival in Downing Street, Blair was taken for a short ride on the Moscow underground. With journalists facing him as he stood in the centre of the carriage, the BBC journalist Nick Jones recounts how Alistair Campbell stood behind the cameras jerking his hand up in the air toward the handrail above his head.651 Blair soon realised what was being asked of him. Straphanging on the London Underground is a everyday experience for millions of voters. By clinging on to the handrail above his head Blair was affirming his credentials as an everyday leader with an ordinary background. Finally, Choice. Voter's beliefs about a leader and thereby about a party can be constructed and reconstructed. By carefully choosing their leader, parties can give themselves some room for manoeuvre. In the effort to change voters' beliefs about policies and, so, change perceptions about what and where the political centre is, parties can draw upon the resources of their leader.

651

Nick Jones, Sultans of Spin (London: Victor Gollancz, 1999), p. 63.


10 Leadership, New Labour, and the Construction of the Centre Introduction Michael Howard replaced Iain Duncan-Smith as leader of the Conservative Party in November 2003. Over the following weeks, Blair and Howard clashed during PMQT. In exchanges about the need for and the likely consequences of introducing university tuition fees, Howard noted that no mention had been made of this policy in New Labour's 2001 manifesto. He went on to warn Blair that ‘this grammar school boy will take no lessons from that public school boy on the importance of children from less privileged backgrounds gaining access to university’.652 Blair sought to portray Howard as an extreme, right-wing politician responsible for the introduction of the poll tax and for huge increases in unemployment. Whatever he said he had learnt, Howard, Blair argued, had not changed. ‘Same old people, same old policies, same old Tories’.653 Responding to this exhumation, Howard replied that he had a ‘dossier’ on Blair's past which would make for interesting reading.654 These attacks were not personal. Or, rather, they were not simply personal. Howard and Blair were seeking to make a political point: that it is possible to extrapolate, from someone's past words and deeds, lessons about their current values and likely future behaviour. That Blair had been to a public school meant that he did not understand the difficulties tuition fees might pose for poorer students. That Howard had once been a right-wing minister would mean that he would be a right-wing Prime Minister. Such exchanges are a routine part of the political process. Parties seek to manipulate and project their own leader's political and personal image in order to improve their standing in the polls. Opponents must seek to discredit

652

Michael Howard, House of Commons, 3 December 2003, Hansard, Col. 498.

653

Tony Blair, House of Commons, 12 November 2003, Hansard, Col. 279. Also see Alistair Campbell, ‘Nice Coup, Michael, But You Must Change or Die’, Sunday Times, 9 November 2003; and Alan Milburn, ‘United, Labour Can Defeat Wily Mr. Poll Tax’, News of the World, 9 November 2003.

654

Howard, House of Commons, 12 November 2003, Hansard, Col. 280.

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LEADERSHIP, NEW LABOUR, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE

that image. In this chapter, I look at the way in which Tony Blair's image was used as a political crutch for New Labour between 1994 and 1997. During this time, New Labour was attempting to position itself at the political centre. In doing so it left itself vulnerable to the charge that it was only attempting to change because it wanted to gain office; that it had no enduring principles or values and so could not be trusted. This was a potentially dangerous charge, one which had dogged the Labour Party in general and Neil Kinnock in particular in the run-up to the 1992 election. In 1997, New Labour was able to defuse it by running a Presidential campaign in which voters were invited to bestow their trust upon Tony Blair rather than the party he led. I open this chapter by examining the claim, found frequently in newspaper commentaries, that Blair is a ‘Presidential’ leader. Drawing upon Michael Foley's path-breaking analysis of the Rise of the British Presidency, I suggest that this debate, as usually construed, has too narrow a focus.655 In describing Blair as a Presidential leader, journalists are usually making a claim about the way in which New Labour and Blair govern. Blair is a Presidential Prime Minister because he dominates the Government. The Presidential analogy may however be more usefully applied to Blair's method of campaigning. In the following sections, I document the various ways in which the Conservatives reacted to and sought to undermine the political threat posed by New Labour, the way in which Blair's political and personal past were used to vouchsafe New Labour's bid for office, and, finally, the way in which this image was fought over by the parties. In terms of the distinction drawn in Chapter 9, most of the discussion in this chapter revolves around the issue of responsibility. In the final section I briefly examine the period between 1997 and 2003 in terms of New Labour's record of reliability.

The British Presidency Newspaper articles describing Blair as a Presidential leader first began to appear during Bill Clinton's visit to Britain in May 1997.656 The number of such references multiplied during New Labour's first term, becoming com

655

Michael Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); The British Presidency (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); John Major, Tony Blair and a Conflict of Leadership (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).

656

Sheree Dodd, ‘President Blair’, Daily Mirror, 26 May 1997; Philip Webster, ‘Clinton and Blair Hail New Partnership’, The Times, 26 May 1997. A number of journalists noted that Prime Minister Blair actually exercised more power than President Clinton. Bronwen Maddox, ‘Blair Should be Glad he is no President’, The Times, 10 May 1997; and Chris Buckland, ‘President Wields More Power than Bill’, Daily Mirror, 4 April 1999.


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monplace for political reporting during the Kosovo conflict when it was claimed that Blair was failing to consult the Cabinet about the prosecution of the war.657 In New Labour's second term, the description of Blair as a Presidential leader has become something of a cliché.658 The argument is of course nothing new. Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, and Margaret Thatcher have all previously been described in similar fashion. Indeed some commentators have claimed to detect the emergence of a Presidential system of government. Both claims remain controversial. The more simple suggestion, that Blair is a Presidential leader, is contested by those who suggest that his has been a ‘bi-stellar’ administration in which Blair has conceded control of economic, welfare, employment, and social security policy to his Chancellor.659 The former Foreign Secretary, David Owen, argues that the Treasury's power is such that the Presidential thesis ‘falls at the first hurdle’.660 In some ways this shows how misleading the dichotomy between Presidential and Cabinet government is. For Blair's concession of so much authority to Brown does not mean that Cabinet government is flourishing. The more ambitious claim, that Britain has or is inexorably moving toward a Presidential system, is contested by those who argue that political reality is messier. Two points tend to be made here. The first is that some Prime Ministers do not want to behave in a Presidential manner. James Callaghan and John Major are regularly cited as Prime Ministers who, by temperament and experience, chose to act in a collegial manner. The second is that some Prime Ministers are unable to act in a Presidential manner. Whilst some Prime Ministers appear to act in a Presidential manner they actually remain dependent upon their Cabinet and Parliamentary colleagues. When a Prime Minister has secured an election victory or is riding high in the opinion polls, the Cabinet may allow itself to be dominated. When the Prime Minister's political standing is at a lower ebb such behaviour is less likely to be

657

David Hughes, ‘President Blair has Sidelined his Cabinet’, Daily Mail, 14 May 1999; Peter Kellner, ‘Critical Moments for President Blair’, Evening Standard, 25 September 1999; Sarah Schaefer, ‘Benn Leads Backbench Attack on President Blair’, Independent, 10 November 1999.

658

Rebecca Pauley, ‘President Blair has Sidelined the Cabinet Says Mo’, Daily Mail, 17 November 2001; Michael Kallenbach, ‘Home front is Suffering Under President Blair Says Liam Fox’, Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2002; Marie Woolf, ‘Kennedy Takes Aim at President Blair’, Independent, 25 September 2003; and Nicholas Watt, ‘Short: Blair Lied to Cabinet’, Guardian, 2 June 2003.

659

Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 513. After many years of speculation, the Guardian acquired and published the terms of a deal apparently agreed between Blair and Brown in May 1994, whereby Brown would withdraw from the leadership race and Blair would guarantee Brown control over policy-making as it related to New Labour's ‘fairness agenda of social justice, employment, opportunities and skills’. Michael White, ‘Blair–Brown Pact—the Guarantee that Came to Dominate Labour Politics for a Decade’, Guardian, 6 June 2003.

660

David Owen, ‘Two-Man Government’, Prospect, December 2003, pp. 14–16.

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tolerated. Because the political fortunes of every Prime Minister rise and fall it makes no sense to talk about a Presidential system.661 This debate about the role of the Prime Minister is one that continues to loom large in textbooks about British politics. In at least one respect it is however potentially misleading. For, it revolves around issues of governance. What is at stake in the dispute are not the precise powers enjoyed by the British Prime Minister and the US President but rather the power the Prime Minister exercises relative to their Cabinet and Parliament. The evidence cited is, therefore, about the composition and authority of particular institutions within Whitehall and the way in which decisions are reached. In Blair's case, much is made of the creation of the Strategic Communications Unit and Delivery Unit within Downing Street and the Performance and Innovation Unit within the Cabinet Office. As for specific policy decisions, those arguing for the Presidential thesis point to the way in which Blair and Brown failed to consult with the Cabinet about the decision to give operational independence to the Bank of England and to the way in which Blair relied upon personal advisers like Charles Powell and David Manning during the Gulf War.662 What this debate misses is the role played by party leaders, whether incumbent or not, in the process not of governing but of campaigning. Party leaders are not Presidents and are not Presidential candidates. They are not directly elected and do not have to be impeached in order to be removed. But what is being claimed in the invocation of the label ‘Presidential’ is not the accuracy of the comparative description but the value of a heuristic. To say that the one is analogous to the other is not to say that they are equivalent. It is to say that we can better understand and appreciate features of one in terms of the features of another. New Labour's style of campaigning between 1994 and 1997 can be called Presidential in the sense that Blair was projected, as US Presidential candidates are projected, not as a part of a team beholden to a party machinery but as an individual whose qualities were to be assessed independently of his party affiliation.663 In 1997 Blair did not ask voters to bestow their faith upon New Labour. Offering a ‘personal covenant’ to the British people, he asked them to trust him personally.664 In assessing this style of campaigning, two concepts developed by

661

The most frequently cited example here is of course that of Margaret Thatcher who was summarily disposed of by the very Cabinet she had been accused of trampling all over. Frank Johnson, ‘The Cabinet was in Charge all Along’, Sunday Telegraph, 16 December 1990. As Blair's political fortunes have waned, a number of commentators have also begun to question the Presidential thesis. Andrew Rawnsley, ‘President Blair: Ha Ha’, Observer, 15 June 2003; Peter Riddell, ‘The Commons Denominator’, The Times, 20 November 2003.

662

See John Kampfner, Blair's Wars (London: Free Press, 2003).

663

See Robert Di Clrerico, The American President (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice -Hall, 2000); and Hugh Bone, American Politics and the Party System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971).

664

Anthony Bevins, ‘Blair's Pledge to Britain’, Independent, 4 April 1997.


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Michael Foley are valuable: ‘outsider status’ and ‘leadership stretch’. Like an American Presidential candidate, Blair was directly elected by his party.665 Like an American Presidential candidate, Blair used the legitimacy conferred by his election to proclaim a personal mandate during policy disputes. Yet even after his election, Blair continued to present himself as an outsider within a party, many of whose traditions and values he found alien. ‘Leadership stretch’ refers to the extent to which Blair has become the public face of his party, pushing senior colleagues into the shadows. In America, the existence of such an effect is unremarkable. Candidates surround themselves with experienced advisors but do not name their Cabinet until after the election. In Britain, where the membership of the Shadow Cabinet was relatively stable between 1994 and 1997, the level of leadership stretch is more surprising. Table 10.1 (a) indicates the number of stories published in the Guardian in which senior Labour politicians featured. The picture it reveals is a consistent one. Throughout this period Blair accounts for as much coverage as Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Jack Straw, Robin Cook, David Blunkett and Margaret Beckett combined. Table 10.1 (b) shows that Blair played an equally prominent role during the 2001 election campaign, consistently accounting for three times the coverage as his nearest political rival, Gordon Brown.666 Michael Foley argues that the cultivation of outsider status and leadership stretch have become enduring features of election campaigning. There are however exceptions. In 1992, Labour ran a campaign in which Neil Kinnock was presented as the leader of an energetic and youthful team.667 This was not simply a reflection of his personal temperament. In 1987, Labour had mounted a Presidential campaign in which Kinnock's personal leadership qualities were pushed to the fore.668 It was instead a matter of political necessity. Party support is not simply a function of spatial position. Parties cannot chase up and down the political spectrum in the search for votes. Parties that are judged as being irresponsible will not be trusted. Between 1987 and 1992 Kinnock tried to push Labour to the right and toward the centre.669 Yet the credibility of his claim to have achieved this was

665

American primary elections were reformed in the early 1970s to allow for direct elections amongst party members. Until that point, candidates had been selected by senior party members in each state. See Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties: the Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

666

The Guardian is the only national newspaper whose archives stretch back to 1994. By 2001 it is possible to sample coverage across a range of papers. See www.lexis-nexis. com .

667

Foley, John Major, Tony Blair and a Conflict of Leadership, p. 89.

668

Margaret Scammell, Designer Politics: How Elections are Won (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 138.

669

Patrick Seyd, ‘The Great Transformation’, in Anthony King et al. (eds.), Britain at the Polls, (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1992); and Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour, Labour Rebuilt: The New Model Party (London: Fourth Estate, 1990).

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TABLE 10.1 (a) Leadership stretch: Guardian coverage, 1994–7 Blair Brown Prescott Cook Straw Blunkett Beckett

July – Dec1994 50.4% 13.1% 10.4% 5.7% 7.5% 7.0% 5.9%

Jan – Dec1995 54.5% 11.8% 7.1% 6.1% 9.1% 8.1% 3.1%

Jan – Dec1996 55% 12.6% 6.9% 7.0% 8.6% 8.1% 1.9%

Jan – May1997 54.5% 18.4% 6.1% 5.7% 7.4% 5.8% 2.0%

TABLE 10.1 (b) Leadership stretch: newspaper coverage, 7 May – 7 June 2001 Blair Mail 50.1% Telegraph 50.3% Express 49.9% Guardian 50.2% Independent 48.3% Mirror 53.3% Sun 53.2% Times 50.3%

Brown 21.1% 22.3% 22.3% 19.4% 16.7% 15.3% 16.2% 20.5%

Prescott 10.2% 11.3% 14.9% 13.4% 16.2% 16.6% 11.9% 13.0%

Straw 9.5% 6.5% 7.8% 7.9% 5.8% 7.3% 8.1% 6.8%

Blunkett 5% 3.4% 4.9% 5.4% 6.0% 4.2% 6.3% 4.3%

Cook 4.6% 4.8% 2.9% 3.1% 3.5% 3.3% 3.5% 3.5%

Beckett 0.3% 0.9% 0.9% 0.5% 1.3% 0.2% 0.8% 1.6%

undermined by the details of his own political past. Kinnock had acquired a national profile as a ‘soft’ left politician with a deep personal commitment to trade union rights and unilateral disarmament.670 As the 1992 election drew nearer, this history became more and more of a political liability. The Conservatives portrayed Kinnock as either someone who was pretending to have moved to the right in order to garner votes or who had abandoned all his principles and beliefs in a self-interested quest to achieve office. Given such arguments Labour responded by downplaying Kinnock's importance. By 1994, the political landscape had changed dramatically and the Labour leader's Presidential style was to become a political asset.

670

Kinnock was, for example, frequently quoted as having once said that his wife, Glennys, ought to leave him if he ever abandoned his commitment to unilateral disarmament. For the story of this policy change see Martin Westlake, Kinnock (London: Little Brown, 2001), pp. 437–43.


193

Blair as Ballast: The 1997 Election The Conservatives reacted to Blair's election and the subsequent emergence of New Labour with something approaching dismay. Over the next three years they failed to settle upon any consistent line of attack.671 At various times, three basic arguments were used. First, that New Labour was a giant ‘confidence trick’: that the party remained as dangerously left-wing as ever.672 Blair, it was suggested, ‘pretends to be a moderniser’ but was in reality someone who ‘remains as Old Labour as any of his colleagues’.673 As its talk of ‘stakeholding’ demonstrated, New Labour remained committed to public ownership and tighter regulation of the private sector. As its record in local government showed, it remained, by instinct, a ‘high-tax party’ which put ‘political correctness above the interests of the nation’.674 One way in which New Labour responded to and so dealt with this charge was through changes in policy. The argument that New Labour would extend public ownership became more difficult to sustain once Blair had overseen the rewriting of Clause IV of the party's constitution. The argument that New Labour was a high-tax party became less persuasive once Gordon Brown announced, in January 1997, that he would leave the basic and higher rates of income tax unchanged. At a political Cabinet meeting held in June 1996 the Conservatives approved and then launched a second argument: that New Labour's new policies entailed, as the advertising slogan was to run, ‘New Dangers’.675 ‘Sidestepping’ the issue of whether or not New Labour had changed, the Conservatives began to focus upon the positive policy commitments the party had by then made.676 Devolution would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. The minimum wage would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Trade union recognition would lead to a wave of strikes. As we have already seen in Chapter 3, New Labour dealt with these arguments rhetorically, presenting its policies as moderate and pragmatic responses to policy problems created by their opponents. The Conservatives' final argument is the most interesting. This was that New Labour could not be trusted because it only cared about gaining votes and so securing its election. It took several

671

See, for example, Daniel Finkelstein, ‘Why the Conservatives Lost in 1997’, in Ivor Crewe, Brian Gosschalk, and Peter Bartle (eds.), Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997 (London: Frank Cass, 1998).

672

Michael Heseltine, quoted, Lawrence Donegan, ‘Union Fears Grow as MPs Play Down Aides Advice’, Guardian, 13 September 1995.

673

John Major, House of Commons, 12 December 1995, Hansard, Col. 830.

674

Andrew Rothbathan, House of Commons, 25 May 1995, Hansard, Col. 936.

675

Andrew Grice, ‘Tory Battle Plan Leaked to Blair’, Sunday Times, 16 June 1996.

676

Brian Mawhinney, Conservative Party Chairman, quoted, Peter Riddell, ‘Tories Finally Recognise Need for New Attack’, The Times, 2 July 1996.

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forms. First, that New Labour had shown that it could not be trusted by refusing to formulate any clear policies.677 In an attempt to appear all things to all people, Tony ‘Blur’ was someone who routinely made contradictory policy statements allowing him to ‘play at both sides of the same policy’.678 Because New Labour had no real commitments it would flounder in office where ‘you have to take decisions…[where] you have to have policies and cannot live with soundbites’.679 At other times, New Labour had shown how it could not be trusted by putting its party's political selfinterest ahead of Britain's national interest. By, for example, attacking the Government's handling of BSE, New Labour had made it more likely that sales of beef would fall, so harming British farmers. According to John Major, New Labour have done everything that they can to extract maximum political advantage [from this issue], at the cost, potentially, of jobs, and of the national interest, in the beef industry…it is considering votes; we are considering the industry and the national interest.680 Finally, the Conservatives argued that New Labour had shown that it could not be trusted by ‘stealing’ their policies.681 In an attempt to secure its return to office, New Labour had ‘accepted totally the philosophy of the party it had [previously] fought’.682 New Labour lacked any ‘principles or beliefs’.683 It would say or do anything to get elected. The claim that New Labour was an irresponsible party which only cared about votes and was unfit to govern was a potentially dangerous one. Many of New Labour's leaders had embarrassing left-wing political pasts. Margaret Beckett had been elected to Labour's National Executive Committee in 1980 where she had initially been a vocal supporter of Tony Benn. Jack Straw was a former adviser to Barbara Castle and an opposition Treasury spokesman between 1980 and 1983. John Prescott was a former union leader who had led Labour's delegation to the European Parliament between 1976 and 1979. David Blunkett had been the leader of the left-wing Sheffield City Council. By contrast, New Labour's new leader was someone who came without ‘any ideological baggage to scare off even the most nervous voter’.684 Blair had only joined the Labour Party in 1980. He had only entered

677

Derrick Hill, ‘Is There Less to Tony Blair than Meets the Eye?’, Daily Express, 17 May 1994.

678

Major, House of Commons, 11 May 1995, Hansard, Col. 881.

679

Heseltine, interview, On The Record, 2 March 1997. Full transcript available via www.bbc.co.uk/otr .

680

Major, House of Commons, 28 March 1996, Hansard, Col. 1162.

681

Major, House of Commons, 27 April 1996, Hansard, Col. 979.

682

William Day, House of Commons, 16 January 1996, Hansard, Col. 538.

683

David Amess, House of Commons, 15 November 1995, Hansard, Col. 103.

684

Chris Buckland, ‘The Way Labour Recovers from this Calamity’, Daily Express, 13 May 1994.


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Parliament in 1983 and had not entered the Shadow Cabinet until 1987. As Shadow Employment spokesman in the late 1980s, he had fought against the ‘closed shop’. As Shadow Home Secretary, he had championed the rights of victims and the importance of individual responsibility. These were not, he was keen to emphasise, the actions of a self-interested politician. Indeed his willingness to take on vested policy interests within the Labour Party had made him enemies. I was very aware when we [Gordon Brown and Blair] first came into Parliament that the Labour Party was in tremendous trouble with certain attitudes that made it unelectable, and those things had to change. And of course there was an electoral advantage in doing so. But it is quite wrong to say as a result of desiring to change things that you are merely people governed by electoral instinct rather than any system of fundamental beliefs.685 New Labour ran a Presidential campaign in 1997 because Blair's political responsibility could be used to reassure voters that the party he led could be trusted. The Conservatives' claims that New Labour remained left-wing and that it lacked any principles or beliefs could be countered using Blair's own history. In the run-up to the 1997 election, New Labour saw its political challenge as being one of persuading the voters of Middle England that it could be trusted.686 Here, it was an important part of New Labour's campaign to present Blair not simply as someone seeking the votes of Middle England but as someone who, by his background, tastes, and values, remained a part of it. Like most of the people he was seeking to represent, Blair had once regarded politicians as a ‘complete pain in the backside’.687 After several years in Parliament he nevertheless remained a ‘perfectly normal person’, suspicious of politicians whose every utterance seemed to reflect a calculation of self-interest.688 Although he had gone to an exclusive Oxford college he had always felt like an ‘outsider’ there and had no time for an ‘intellectual establishment’ whose members seemed to have ‘pokers up their backsides’.689 As a young man he had been a bit of a rebel, playing, famously, in a rock group and trying his hand as a promoter. As an adult his tastes had become more middle-of-the-road: the Beatles, Simply Red and R.E.M. Like most parents with a busy career he struggled to find time with his children. So

685

Blair, quoted, Iain Dale, The Blair Necessities (London: Robson, 1997), p. 103.

686

Sarah Baxter, ‘Blair Searches for the Pulse of Middle England’, Sunday Times, 11 December 1994; Nicholas Timmins, ‘Blair Makes Appeal to Middle England’, Independent, 6 February 1995; David Hughes, ‘Blair Backs Tory Values: Labour Woos the Middle England he Accuses the Conservatives of Deserting’, Daily Mail, 23 March 1995.

687

Quoted, Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency, p. 178.

688

Blair, quoted, John Rentoul, Tony Blair: Prime Minister (London: Little, Brown & Company, 2001), p. 300.

689

Grice, ‘The Man With an Eye on Number 10’, Sunday Times, 23 April 1995.

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‘every week’ he made a point of ‘sitting down with the family and watching a video or something’.690 In an attempt to relax after a busy day of meetings or speeches he liked nothing more than to kick a football around with his son, Euan.691 His family were a constant and recurring prop at this time; a proof of normality. Taking advantage of Fridays off at Westminster, Blair keeps an eye on his three children. His priorities are clear. He interrupts a session with our photographer to mark the half-term maths homework completed by Euan.692 Blair's image as a politically responsible and ordinary representative of Middle England was not a fixed and unchallengeable part of the political landscape between 1994 and 1997. It was a contested ground. Blair's personal and political image was what had made him so attractive to the Labour Party in 1994. But this image was not beyond reproach. Between 1994 and 1997, the Conservatives sought to attack Blair in a number of different ways. First, they sought to present him as someone whose political record was more problematic than usually thought. Here, much was made of the personal statements Blair had written as a candidate in the 1982 Beaconsfield by-election and 1983 general election. In these, the Conservatives argued, Blair had gone out of his way to emphasise his personal commitment to unilateral disarmament and to British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. He had remained a member of the Parliamentary branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament until 1986 and had only started to revise his political views once it was politically expedient to do so. That he had ‘changed his mind on every important issue of modern times’ showed that he lacked political judgement.693 He [Blair] was wrong on education; wrong on the Common Market; wrong on defence; wrong on industrial relations reform; wrong on privatisation. Five wrongs do not make a right leader for this country.694 In order to counter these claims, Labour argued that Blair's past positions had to be understood within the context of the times. In his personal statements, Blair had carefully signalled his reservations about his party's policies. He had only promised to support unilateral disarmament ‘if necessary’ and to pull Britain out of the European Economic Community ‘if radical reform’ were not forthcoming.695 This careful distancing was as much as might

690

Blair, quoted, Piers Morgan, ‘We Must Rebuild Britain's Trust’, Daily Mirror, 1 April 1997.

691

Simon Walters, ‘He Backs Maggie but his Son is Set to Lead Labour’, Sun, 14 May 1994.

692

Grice, ‘The Man With an Eye on Number 10’, Sunday Times, 23 April 1995.

693

Heseltine, interview, On the Record, 2 March 1997. Full transcript available via www.bbc.co.uk/otr .

694

John Marshall, House of Commons, 23 May 1995, Hansard, Col. 705.

695

John Sopel, Tony Blair: The Moderniser (London: Bantam Books, 1995), p. 70.


197

reasonably be expected of any centrist candidate in a left-wing party. The minutes of the Hackney South Constituency Labour Party, which Blair had joined in 1980, were leaked in order to show that Blair had always been a moderniser ready to argue for more internal democracy and to express reservations about his party's opposition to the sale of council houses. The Conservatives' second argument was that Blair was a part of a privileged establishment and so had no idea about the lives of ordinary people. Unlike John Major, who had been raised in Brixton and had left school aged sixteen, Blair had attended a public school, studied at Oxford, become a barrister, and then chosen to live amongst the ‘chattering classes’ of Islington.696 Blair was a political phoney who pretended to be something he was not. This was a difficult charge for Blair to counter. By talking about the emotional and financial havoc caused by the stroke his father had suffered when he was eleven years old, Blair was able to demonstrate that he had suffered setbacks during his life. As for his educational record, Blair was forced, defensively, to argue that I have never found my educational background a problem with ordinary voters. I have only ever found it a problem with middle-class journalists…people are more sensible than that…they don't give a damn where you come from.697 At times, Blair came close to trouble. He did not make William Hague's mistake of wearing a baseball cap or boasting of his teenaged drinking exploits.698 But his reminiscences about watching Newcastle United as a child and his fondness for being pictured nursing a pint in the pubs and clubs of his local constituency did invite cynicism. The Conservatives' final argument was that Blair was a hypocrite. As a young man he had benefited from an exclusive education. As a politician he had then opposed the Conservatives' efforts to extend parental choice. Despite this he had chosen to send his own son to a school, the London Oratory, which had opted out of local education authority control. Blair's decision to do so, and his subsequent support for Harriet Harman when she announced that her son was to attend a grammar school, generated considerable discomfort and some anger within the Labour Party. It was an issue the Conservatives returned to time and again. The former Education Secretary, Kenneth Baker, argued that it was ‘morally indefensible’ for Labour politicians ‘to grab privileges for their own children while denying them to other children’.699 Yet this was a decision which Blair ultimately played to his political advantage. Most politicians, Blair argued, would have done the

696

See Francis Wheen, ‘On the Side of the Angel’, Guardian, 19 July 1994.

697

Sopel, Tony Blair: The Moderniser, p. 6.

698

Simon Bowers, ‘Hague: I Drank 14 Pints of Beer a Day’, Guardian, 9 August 2000.

699

Kenneth Baker, House of Commons, 23 January 1996, Hansard, Col. 140.

198


politically easy thing and sent their child to the local comprehensive. He, Blair, had approached the problem as most normal people would have done: as a parent. It was portrayed as a decision taken for a political reason, but it was taken as a parent. That was the only basis on which I could live with myself.700 The decision to send his son to the London Oratory showed not that he lacked principles but that he was determined to fight for them. It had shown conclusively that he was willing to stand up for what he believed even when doing so was personally costly.

The Politics of Promises 1997–2001 Opposition parties must fight elections on the basis of the promises they have made. Incumbent parties must also fight elections on the basis of their record in office: that is on the basis of beliefs about their reliability. Parties who have acquired a reputation for acting unreliably will be punished by voters. In the run-up to the 1997 election, New Labour taunted the Conservatives for having broken their promises on taxation, health, education, and the economy. Once New Labour entered office, the Conservatives began to exploit the same argument. New Labour could not and should not be trusted in the future because it had broken its promises in the past. New Labour was a party which ‘always spins and never delivers’.701 We've seen Labour break its word again and again. And we can only watch in astonishment as Labour comes back and says: give us another chance. This time we'll keep our promises: this time we mean it.702 This argument was of course one New Labour vigorously contested. Ministers spent much of the last few years of their first term in office trying to persuade voters that they had kept the policy promises made in 1997. They were broadly successful. By the time of the election, an ICM poll conducted within the 100 most marginal constituencies showed that whilst only 5 per cent of respondents judged New Labour to have been ‘very successful’, 56 per cent regarded it as having been ‘quite successful’ during its period in office.703 The Conservatives lost the 2001 election but persisted in arguing that

700

Blair, quoted, Kevin Maguire, ‘Come in Number 10 Your Time is Up’, Daily Mirror, 6 January 1997.

701

Anne Widdecombe, Shadow Home Secretary, ‘Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime’, speech, 3 March 2001. Full text available via www.conservatives.com/ news/speeches .

702

William Hague, ‘I will Give you Back Your Country’, 29 May 2001. Full text available via www.conservatives/com/news/ speeches .

703

See www.icmresearch.co.uk/ reviews/2001/notw-marginals-march-2001.htm .


199

New Labour was failing to deliver upon its policy promises. In his response to the Queen's speech in November 2003, Michael Howard complained that ‘Labour promised far too much and has delivered far too little’.704 The argument began to prove effective. As Table 10.2 shows, there was, between September 2002 and September 2003, a significant fall in the number of people who expected service delivery to either get better or much better over the next few years. In the case of, for example, healthcare, by September 2003 8 per cent fewer people expected the NHS to ‘get better’ over the following year. At the same time, the Government's satisfaction ratings fell sharply from a 54 per cent in September 2001, to 36 per cent in September 2002, and to 25 per cent in September 2003. Over the same, Blair's satisfaction ratings fell from 67 per cent in September 2001, to 46 per cent in September 2002 and 31 per cent in September 2003. During and since the 2001 election, Blair has continued to act as the chief salesman for his Government. To this extent, he remains obviously indispensable to its fortunes. If Blair's satisfaction rating continue to fall, so too will those of the Government he leads. Yet, however Presidential his style remains, his relationship to the party he leads is now different. In 1997 Blair campaigned as an outsider. He asked the electorate to trust him individually. With the key political issue having now become New Labour's record in office, Blair can no longer stand politically apart from the Government he leads. His leadership will now be judged in terms of the collective TABLE 10.2 Expectations about policy delivery Question: Thinking about…over the next few years, do you expect it to get much better, better, stay the same, get worse or get much worse? Get much better Get better Stay the same Get worse Get much worse

NHS −1% −8% −1% +9% +2 percent;

Quality ofeducation −1% −3% +19% +16% −4%

Quality ofpolicing +1% +2% −2% +1% −1%

Public transport −1% −7% +1% +4% +4%

Note: The figures show the difference between the results of the polls taken in September 2002 and September 2003. Source: www.mori.com/polls/index/ shtml.

704

Michael Howard, House of Commons, 26 November 2003, Hansard Col. 17.

200


performance of his administration.705 Yet the opposite may not apply. That is, the Government's political fortunes may not be entirely bound to Blair's. Whether as a result of frustration, exhaustion, or rebellion, Blair will eventually resign or be forced to resign as Labour's leader.706 When this happens, Labour will want to claim a fresh start for itself and, with that, time to deliver upon the promises of its new leader. At this point, the Conservatives will argue that the new leader, be it Brown, Blunkett, or Straw, is tarnished by the Government's failures and that they do not deserve a second chance. It was in exactly such terms that the Labour Party reacted to the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the election of John Major. As the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Foreign Secretary, and Chancellor, Major, Labour argued, shared a large part of the responsibility for the Government's failings in general and for the economy's slide into recession in particular. Yet Thatcher's Presidential campaigning style was such that this argument failed. In terms of the public's perception, John Major clearly did represent a fresh start. As a consequence, Labour went from enjoying a 16 per cent opinion poll lead over the Conservatives in October 1990 to trailing them by 4 per cent in January 1991. Such is Blair's Presidential style that any reputation for unreliability his Government develops may, in a similar way, fade once Blair is no longer leader.

Conclusion Within the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal parties there have been a total of twenty-two leadership contests since 1945. All but four have resulted in a change of leader.707 As more and more party leaders choose to or are forced to resign in the immediate aftermath of a failed election campaign, the number of such contests is increasing. Since the general election in February 1974, only one leader, Neil Kinnock, has fought and lost an election and then remained leader of either the Labour or Conservative parties at the time of the next election. Leadership contests generate a huge amount of media interest. Newspapers devote considerable coverage not only to contests

705

Since entering office, the ‘gap’ between Blair's satisfaction ratings and that of the Government he leads has steadily narrowed. In May 1997, Blair's satisfaction ratings stood 19% above those of his party. By May 1999 this had fallen to 12% and by May 2000 to 11%. Since then, this gap has continued to narrow to 7% in April 2001, 6% in May 2002, and 5% in November 2003.

706

An ICM poll published in December 2003 indicated that 46% of the electorate believed it unlikely that Blair would be Prime Minister in a year's time. See www.icmresearch. co.uk/reviews/2003/guardian-dec-2003.htm . For a commentary see Andrew Rawnsley, ‘Washed Out not Washed Up’, Observer, 21 December 2003.

707

The exceptions are Harold Wilson's (1960) and Arthur Greenwood's (1963) challenges to Hugh Gaitskell, Tony Benn's (1988) challenge to Neil Kinnock, Anthony Meyer's (1989) challenge to Margaret Thatcher, and John Redwood's (1995) campaign against John Major.


201

once they have begun but to the possibilities of such a contest arising. John Major cited the debilitating effect of constant newspaper speculation about his position as the reason for his resignation as party leader in June 1997.708 In the twelve months leading up to the vote of no confidence in Iain Duncan-Smith's leadership in October 2003, the Daily Telegraph published sixty-one articles about either the need for or the possibility of a leadership contest. Such speculation might be deemed inappropriate not only because it is self-fulfilling but because it focuses attention upon personality rather than policy: upon political trivia rather than substance. But leadership contests do, in the short -term at least, appear to make a difference to the way in which voters regard parties. By looking at a party's average standing in opinion polls in the three months prior to a leadership contest and comparing this with its average in the following three months, it is possible to estimate the extent of this difference.709 In recent years, John Major's election in November 1990 added more than 8 per cent to the Conservatives' projected vote. Neil Kinnock's election in October 1983 increased Labour's average standing by 8 per cent, John Smith's in July 1994 by 5.7 per cent, and Tony Blair's by 10.6 per cent. The effects of a leadership consequence are not always positive. Michael Foot's election in November 1980 cost Labour 6.7 per cent and William Hague's in June 1997 took 5.3 per cent off the Conservatives' share of the vote. But whether negative or positive, leadership contests do seem to make a difference. In recent times, Iain DuncanSmith's election in July 2001 was the only one which failed to make any substantive difference to his party's standings.710 In an era of partisan dealignment in which voters are less likely to remain loyal to the same party over successive elections, party leaders do make an important difference.711 One way in which they can do so is by allowing a party to change its spatial position without necessarily having to appear irresponsible. Blair's personal background and political consistency allowed him to push his party towards the centre ground by the time of the 1997 election without making New Labour appear like a purely self-interested vote-maximising party.

708

‘The speculation about whether my leadership would be challenged was draining the government. It masked everything we did, and it was evident to me that we would not regain the political initiative unless we lanced the boil’. Major, The Autobiography (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p. 612.

709

The opinion polls used are, once again, those taken by MORI using all those naming a party. See www.mori.com/polls/trends/voting-all-trends.shtml .

710

The Conservatives' opinion poll standing fell by 2.06% in the three months following Duncan-Smith's election. At the time of writing, December 2003, the effects of Michael Howard's election are unknown.

711

Between 1964 and 1966 an average of 81% of voters said that they ‘identified’ with either the Labour or Conservative parties and 40% that they ‘strongly identified’. By 2001 the corresponding figures were 73% and 11%. See David Denver, Elections and Voters in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), p. 74.


11 Conclusion During a recession in which gross domestic product had fallen for four successive quarters and unemployment had risen from 5.7 per cent to 9.2 per cent of the workforce, Labour lost the 1992 election by over two and a half million votes. Cliché as it may now have become, it is still worth remembering that some commentators reacted by pronouncing Labour to be unelectable and Britain to be a one-party state.712 Times have changed. Since Blair was elected as leader, Labour have won two landslide general elections and remained ahead of the Conservatives in every single one of the 124 monthly opinion polls conducted by MORI between July 1994 and December 2003. In recent years New Labour's electoral machine has begun to show signs of fatigue. Its lead in the opinion polls has fallen from 26 per cent in September 2001, to 14 per cent in December 2002, to just 3 per cent in October 2003. The local elections in May 2003 became the first in which the Conservatives acquired a larger share of the vote than New Labour. Such difficulties do, however, need to be placed in context. The Conservatives were 5 per cent behind Labour in January 1986 and 24 per cent behind them in March 1990, but on each occasion recovered to win. At the mid-point of the electoral cycle, a lead, however narrow, is still impressive. At the time of writing, December 2003, it may nevertheless be worth asking whether New Labour can continue to sweep all before it.713 We can approach this question by asking why New Labour triumphed in the past. In Chapter 1, I showed, how journalists and political scientists attributed New Labour's 1997 victory to its erection of a ‘razor wire fence' around the political centre’.714 If correct, the implication seems obvious. New Labour will win the next general election

712

See Anthony Health, Roger Jowell, and Roger Curtice, ‘Introduction’, in Heath, Jowell, and Curtice, Labour's Last Chance? The 1992 Election and Beyond (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994). Giovanni Sartori defined a dominant one-party system as one in which a party acquired a working majority in three successive elections. By this measure, Britain became a one-party state in 1992. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 195–7.

713

Anthony King, ‘Blair Loses Iron Grip as Tories Take Heart’, Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2003.

714

Leading Article, ‘Lessons for the Tories’, Sunday Times, 4 May 1997.

204

CONCLUSION

and perhaps even the one after that so long as its leadership can resist the siren calls of activists and backbenchers and remain firmly at the centre, the ‘territory on which elections are won and lost’.715 The claim that parties must be thought of as occupying the centre ground if they are to succeed is not one I have disputed. I have not argued that New Labour is in some sense ‘really’ a left-wing party or that perceptions of spatial position have no bearing upon electoral support. The most interesting questions about New Labour are however not about whether voters believe it to have moved to the centre or whether it has benefited from this belief. The answers to these questions are obviously yes. The interesting question is about how New Labour persuaded voters that it had moved to the centre. It is here that we need to take care in using the spatial metaphor. Thinking of parties as occupying points in political space encourages us to think of parties as moving from one existing point in that space to another in the same way that we think of a person as moving from one corner of a room to another. Yet political space is not the same as the space within which we lead our everyday lives. Political space is unbounded, infinite, and both disarranged and changeable. Parties cannot move to and occupy the political centre in the same way that people can move to and occupy the centre of a room. The centre is not simply there. Parties must construct the positions they wish to occupy through rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership. In the final part of Chapter 1, I suggested that treating the centre as constructed creates four differences in the ways we might view the process of party competition. I will now return to these differences, identify more carefully the connections between them, and use them to suggest that New Labour's electoral future remains today, as it has always been, uncertain. The first difference concerns the relationship between the policies a party is committed to and the position it is thought of as occupying. In the account Downs develops in An Economic Theory of Democracy, parties adopt particular positions by adopting particular policies. They move to the right by adopting more right-wing policies. They move to the left by adopting more left-wing policies and so on. In the ownership example Downs uses to illustrate his argument and make it ‘more plausible’, each of the 100 policy options available to the parties maps on to a unique spatial location.716 Every change in policy results in a change in position and every change in position can be related to a change in policy. Against this, I have argued that changes in policy cannot in themselves constitute a complete explanation of changes in spatial position. They cannot do so because there is no pre-given and fixed

715


716

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 116.

CONCLUSION

205

relationship between policies and position such that the rejection of one policy and the adoption of another moves a party from one particular position to another. Policies are not immutably left-wing, right-wing, or centrist and to the extent that the position a party is thought to occupy is a function of the policies it is committed to, this means that parties are not immutably left-wing, right-wing, or centrist either. The relationship between policy and position and thereby between parties and position is constructed and is in part constructed by parties themselves. What this means is that parties may sometimes change their policies but nevertheless be thought of as occupying the same position whilst at other times they may leave their policies unchanged but be thought of as having moved position. For New Labour, the latter is the more troubling possibility. Even if New Labour continues to pursue the same policies, there is no guarantee that these policies will continue to be seen as centrist and that the party will therefore benefit from their pursuit. Consider, as just one example, the Government's policy toward Iraq and the Middle East. The basic terms of this policy now seem unlikely to change. Britain will continue to support America's occupation of Iraq whilst working towards an eventual handover to an elected Iraqi body. It will continue to press for a resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and will urge America to exercise caution in its dealings with the other members of the ‘axis of evil’: Iran and North Korea. Quite how voters will come to regard this policy is less certain. If America eventually pushes Israel into peace talks, the invasion of Iraq, although condemned at the time by the leaders of almost every Arab government, may nevertheless come to be regarded by British voters one part of a balanced policy programme. If Blair and Straw can remain publicly loyal to America whilst discretely briefing journalists and diplomats about the concessions they have extracted from the Americans during private talks, the Government may be able to present itself as a moderating force between the appeasers of ‘Old Europe’ and the Washington Neoconservatives. If no evidence of any programme to develop weapons of mass destruction is found in Iraq, this will weaken the Government's standing. But Blair may nevertheless be able retrospectively to turn the war into a valence issue by presenting it as having been about the restoration of democracy and the promotion of human rights. The beliefs voters come to have will also depend upon the policies the Conservatives adopt. At the moment the Government can cite Conservative support for its policy as evidence of its essential moderation. If Michael Howard can find a way of distancing his party from its current policy without simply appearing to be unprincipled, the Government may find itself in greater political trouble.

206

CONCLUSION

The second difference relates to the political significance of political argument or of what is now regularly called spin. In Downs' account, the assumption that preferences over policies and the relationship between policies and position is fixed, precludes any role for political argument.717 This assumption is false. Parties can persuade voters to change their beliefs about policies. The beliefs voters have are not entirely plastic. Politicians cannot persuade voters to believe anything they want them to believe. But beliefs are not fixed. The process by which parties attempt to change voters' beliefs is regularly denigrated as mere spin. For New Labour this term now performs the same role as that played by ‘sleaze’ during the last Conservative administration: a catch-all term of abuse which can be applied to almost any issue. Since the 2001 election, the list of incidents, accidents, and scandals to which the epitaph of spin has been applied has grown ever longer. In October 2001, the special adviser of the then Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, Jo Moore, was forced to apologise when details of an e-mail she had written, to officials urging them to make use of the attacks on the World Trade Centre to bury bad news, were leaked to the press.718 In May 2002, Byers was forced to resign following a long-running feud with his department's official Head of Communications, Martin Sixsmith, in which he, Byers, was accused of having deliberately misled Parliament and the media. In December 2002, stories began to appear about the advice Cherie Blair had received from the fiancé of one of her close friends, Carole Caplin, in regard to a property the Blairs were buying for their son in Bristol.719 The Downing Street Press Office was forced to issue a qualified apology when the story, which it had initially rubbished, was shown to have been, at least in its basic details, correct. In February 2003, the Government then published its famous ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq. The dossier, it transpired, had been written by a member of staff in the Downing Street Communications Unit, had not been approved by the intelligence services, and had been plagiarised from a doctoral thesis. Finally, in October and November 2003, the Hutton Inquiry showed how ministers, including the Prime Minister, had discussed how and when David Kelly's name might be made public in order to provide it, the Government, with further ammunition in its ongoing war of words with the BBC. Such has been the disrepute into which spin has fallen that Blair has been forced to use his appearance before a Parliamentary select committee in July 2002 and the aftermath of Alistair Campbell's resignation in August 2003 to renounce its future use. Yet whatever their protests to the contrary,

717

In Chapter 3, I argued that Downs' position here is inconsistent. At one point he does allow for the possibility of persuasion but fails to incorporate this into his basic spatial account.

718

Julian Glover, ‘Moore Apologises for Email’, Guardian, 16 October 2001.

719

Andrea Perry, ‘Blairs Deny Fraudster's Claims Over House Deal’, Sunday Express, 1 December 2002.

CONCLUSION

207

this Government, any government, has no choice but to spin. Because the relationship between policy and position is not fixed, parties must rely upon rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership to construct their position. Such is the media's current sensitivity to the use of spin that New Labour may now have to struggle to convey its message. A minister's argument that a particular policy will have a particular consequence is now more likely to be disbelieved. A claim, that some issue should be understood as being about one thing rather than another, is now more likely to be dismissed as self-serving nonsense. A press release proclaiming the launch of an innovative policy is now less likely to be faithfully reproduced in the following day's newspapers. An election broadcast in which the Prime Minister invites voters to question his policies but to regard his motives and sincerity as being beyond reproach is now more likely to be ridiculed. The third difference relates to creativity. Chapter 2 argued that Downs uses the spatial metaphor to render the process of party competition a calculative one. Downs wants decision-making to be calculative because he wants it to be predictable. This ambition is worth briefly placing in a broader methodological context. Downs' conviction, that it is both desirable and possible to predict behaviour and outcomes, although shared with other rational choice theorists, remains controversial. Many social scientists contend that behaviour and outcomes can be explained but rarely predicted. One stock argument is that human behaviour and the relationship between that behaviour and eventual outcomes is too ‘complex’ to allow for robust predictions.720 What is the source of this complexity? Creativity offers one candidate. It has frequently been observed that one difference between the natural and social sciences is that the latter must attempt to deal with the behaviour of rational actors rather than of inanimate objects.721 That people are rational does not however necessarily mean that they are unpredictable.722 If people's decision-making is purely calculative, that is, if individuals who have the same preferences and are faced with the same options can be relied upon to make the same choices in just the same way that different pocket calculators can be relied upon to provide the same answer when asked the same question, then behaviour can be predicted. If however some people's decision-making

720

Michael Sriven, ‘A Possible Distinction Between Traditional Scientific Disciplines and the Study of Human Behaviour’, reproduced in Michael Martin and Lee McIntyre (eds. ), Readings in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996); and Friedrich Hayek, ‘The Theory of Complex Phenomena’, in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). On the notion of ‘robustness’ see James Woodward, ‘Explanation and Invariance in the Special Sciences’, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, 51 (2000), 197–254.

721

Fitz Malchup, ‘Are the Social Sciences Really Inferior?’, Southern Economic Journal, 17 (1961), 173–84.

722

Indeed human behaviour is most likely to be unpredictable when people are irrational. See Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Ark, 1957), pp. 140–1.

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CONCLUSION

is creative, that is, if individuals sometimes discover previously unrecognised opportunities and options, behaviour cannot be predicted. In the previous chapters, I have suggested that New Labour's efforts to construct the centre through rhetoric, innovation, framing, and leadership should be understood as creative rather than calculative acts. Two implications seem to follow. The first is methodological. Because political position must be constructed and because the construction of position is creative, the behaviour of parties cannot be predicted. We can predict that parties will try to present themselves as being ‘moderate and sensible’.723 But this is not to say very much. The second returns us to the discussion of New Labour's future. If New Labour is to recover its strength and continue to win elections, it will need to find within itself continued sources of political creativity: innovative, policies, new ways of framing issues, and so on. Yet, there can be no guarantee that politicians who have acted creatively in the past will be able to do so again. Indeed it is a recurring theme of psychological research that creativity atrophies.724 After six years in office and sixteen years in the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet, New Labour's leadership may one day lose, if it has not already lost, its political vitality. The final difference relates to the amount of choice parties have. In the previous chapters I have argued that parties have no alternative but to position themselves at the electoral and political centres. There is no alternative to the electoral centre because parties which do not appeal to the median voter will lose to those that do. There is no alternative to the political centre because those parties which are thought of as extreme will fail to attract the support of voters at the electoral centre. But whilst there is no alternative to the political centre, there are alternative centres. Because there is no fixed relationship between policy and position, parties attempting to construct a position at the centre are not bound to pursue any one particular set of policies. Ten years after first using the distinction, Blair continues to frame the choice facing the Labour Party as being between New and Old. Given this choice, Blair warns his party that there is no choice and that he has ‘no reverse gear’.725 But Blair presents the choice in this form because it is politically expedient for him to do so. The image of Old Labour as an extreme and divisive force is now so deeply embedded within voters' psyche that any party describing itself in such terms would risk electoral suicide. The

723

Blair, quoted, Jonathan Freedland, ‘Labour is Fighting the Wrong Election: The Last One’, Guardian, 14 May 2001.

724

Harvey Lehman, Age and Achievement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953); Dean Simonton, Scientific Genius: A Psychology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

725

Blair, speech, Labour Party Conference, 30 September 2003. Full text available via www.labour.org.uk/tbbouremouth .

CONCLUSION

209

interesting question is not about Old or New, it is about the direction in which New Labour should now move forward.726 The Government has built its domestic policy agenda around foundation hospitals, tuition fees, antisocial behaviour, and increased public expenditure and has sought to present these policies as centrist. These are not the only policies which can however be presented in such terms. Politics remains, as Bismarck first observed, ‘the art of the possible’.

726

This is of course the debate Blair and Brown are reported as having been conducting in ever more bitter fashion since 1994.


INDEX Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) 119–21; innovativeness of, contested by Conservatives 119, 120–1 Aristotle 42, 56 Arrow, Kenneth 90, 91, 92, 93 ASBOs seeAnti-Social Behaviour Orders Bagehot, Walter 38 Bain, George 70 Baker, Kenneth 197 Barber, Michael 114 Barthes, Roland 56 BBC 206 Beckett, Margaret 74, 169, 194; newspaper coverage of 191, 192 Benn, Tony 194 Best, Gordon 141 Blair, Cherie 206 Blair, Euan 196 Blair, Tony ; 2002 budget 78; calling upon his own authority 48; comparison of New Labour with Conservatives 106; Conservatives' attack on his history and image 195, 196–7; devolution 65, 66, 67, 69; European policy 150; ‘forces of Conservatism’ 45–6; fuel blockade 159–60; image construction 185; importance of occupying centre ground 2–3; law and order 118–19; leadership contest 169, 201; ‘leading a party of Government’ 15; lessons drawn from the United States 22–3; Middle East policy 205; minimum wage 70; New Labour's campaign to present him as part of Middle England 195–6; newspaper coverage of 191, 192; on-the-spot fines for drunken and anti-social behaviour 99–100; persuading the party of need to change 58, 195; political career 194–5; presenting Labour as a centre-left party 1; presenting New Labour as a party of the centre 1–2, 201; presenting the Conservatives as an extreme party 39; Presidential leader campaigning as 188, 190, 195contesting the description 189described as 188–9leadership stretch 191, 192outsider status 191; Public–Private Partnerships 155; relationship to the party 199–200; renouncing the future use of spin 206; responsibility 195; ridiculing Major's policy on Europe 44–5; satisfaction ratings 199; sending son to London Oratory 197–8; Sierra Leone 157–8; soundbites 14; tax and spend 78, 79, 151, 152, 153; trade union recognition 76; university tuition fees 187

212

INDEX

Blunkett, David 44, 113, 194; newspaper coverage of 191, Crewe, Ivor 170 192 Curtice, John 166 Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) 150, 194 Brennan, Geoffrey 179, 180, 181 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 206 Brown, Gordon 22–3, 72, 109, 110, 111, 121–2, 189, 190, 193; 2002 budget 77, 78, 80; fuel duty escalator 158; leadership contest 169; newspaper coverage of 191, 192 BSE 150, 194 Budge, Ian 141, 142 Bulger, James 118 Byers, Stephen 113, 206 calculative decision-making 31, 32, 51, 96, 97 Callaghan, James 189 Callicles 54 campaign strategies 160; incumbent parties 198; leadership stretch 191; opposition parties 198; outsider status 191; Presidential campaign 188, 190, 195; priming a particular dimension 143–5, 165–6; priming issues 140–2, 161; securing competitive advantage 140–1; see alsoPrime Minister's Question Time Campbell, Alistair 158, 161, 185, 206 Caplin, Carole 206 ‘cash for questions’ scandal 149 Castle, Barbara 194 CBI 73, 74, 76 centrally planned economies ; achieving equilibrium 90 centrist ; politicians describing themselves as 4 Chamberlain, Joseph 4 choice 14–15, 208–9; framing 146; innovation 103–4; leaders 185; rhetoric 60–1 Clarke, Kenneth 110, 151 Clinton, Bill 188; strategy of triangulation 23 Community Safety Orders 119 Confederation of British Industry (CBI) 73, 74, 76 conflicts of interest ; MPs 149; principal-agent relationship 172 Conservatives ; comparison with New Labour 105–6; contesting the innovativeness of New Labour policies 110–11, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120–1, 124, 126; framing Sandline event as about Government's probity 156, 157; line-of-attack on Blair and New Labour 193–4; policy on Europe 149; presented as an extreme party by New Labour 39 construction ; limitations of 12; of the centre 7, 8, 12 constructivism 8 Cook, Robin 141; newspaper coverage of 191, 192; Sandline event 156–7 council houses ; sale of 102 Cox, Gary 24 creativity 13–14, 32, 207, 208; framing 145–6; innovation 103; leader's image 185; rhetoric 60

INDEX

Davies, Ron ; defence of devolution 68, 69 Debreu, Gerald 90, 91, 93 defence policy 139–40 devolution 65, 66; presented as moderate, politically centrist policy 66, 67, 68, 69 Dewar, Donald 66 directional theories of voting 25 Dobson, Frank 123 Dorrell, Stephen 112, 113, 124 Downs, Anthony 5–6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17–40, 55, 90–7, 103, 127, 128, 174, 176 Duncan-Smith, Iain 2, 39, 77, 124, 201; newspaper articles on leadership 201 dynamic economy ; destruction of equilibrium through innovation 87; see alsoinnovation EAZs seeEducation Action Zones Ecclestone, Bernie 48 Education Action Zones (EAZs) 112–15; innovativeness of, contested by critics 114, 115 education policies ; originality of 112; see alsoEducation Action Zones elections ; campaigns seecampaign strategies; won by parties at the centre 2–3 electoral centre 8–9, 20, 21, 24–5, 32, 39, 40; see alsomedian voter theorem; political centre Enelow, James 24 enthymemes 56, 57 European policy ; Conservatives 149; New Labour 150–1 Family Credit 117, 118 Family Income Support (FIS) 117, 118 Field, Frank 116 FIS 117, 118 fixed preferences 30, 31 focus groups ; use of 98 Foley, Michael 188, 191 Foot, Michael 201 foundation hospitals 122–4; criticism of 123–4; innovativeness of, contested by Conservatives 124 Fox, Liam, Dr. 124 frames 129, 130, 131–2; judgements about 132; see alsoframing; priming framing 130, 131, 167–8; affecting support for policies 129, 132, 136, 138; campaigns priming a particular dimension 143–5, 165–6priming particular issues 140–2securing competitive advantage 140–1; choice 146; creativity 145–6; electoral centre changed through 136, 137, 138; limitations of 139; policy and position 145; political centre constructed through 10–11, 127, 138; spatial framework, and 136, 137; spin 146; see alsocampaign strategies; defence policy; European policy; frames; fuel blockades; priming; Public-Private Partnerships; Sierra Leone; tax and spend policy

Freedland, Jonathan 2 fuel blockades 158–60 Gamson, William 132 general equilibrium theory 90, 91, 92, 97 Gorgias 54, 58

213

214

INDEX

Gould, Philip 3, 10, 22; campaigning 147 as following Conservatives 119; see alsoAnti-Social Grice, Andrew 2 Behaviour Orders Hague, William 39, 156, 197, 201 leadership ; choice 185; construction of political position 11, Hain, Peter 151 170, 184, 201; contests 200–1effects of 201; creativity Hamlin, Alan 179, 180, 181 185; image construction of 11, 182–3, 184, 185, 187 Harman, Harriet 44, 109, 116, 197 Hay, Colin 20, 21, 23–4 health policies 121–2; see alsofoundation hospitals Heath, Anthony 166 heresthetics 41, 144 Heseltine, Michael 3, 65, 76, 151; criticising underlying personality of Blair 48 Hicks, John 90 Hinchcliffe, David 123 Hinich, Melvin 24 Hotelling, Harold 26 Howard, Michael 158, 199; law and order plan 118; Middle East policy 205; university tuition fees 187 ideologies 35–6, 37, 131 Ingaro, Bruno 91 innovation 97, 125; choice 103–4; construction of innovation 102, 107; construction of political position through innovation 10, 83, 107, 108; contesting 102, 103, 107, 125; creativity 103; cyclical nature of 89; destruction of equilibrium 87–8; development of new policies 93, 94, 96; entrepreneurs 89; evolutionary nature of 101–2; examples of 88; imagination, need for 89, 99, 100; limitations of 102, 107; motivation for 100, 101; opinion polls and focus groups used to test reactions to 98; policy and position 103; source of instability 89, 90; spin 103; uncertainty 98–9; see alsoAnti-Social Behaviour Orders; Education Action Zones; foundation hospitals; invention; New Deal; Working Families Tax Credit invention 93; see alsoinnovation Iraq 55, 205 Irvine, Lord 120 Israel, Giorgio 91 Jones, Nick 161, 185 Jowell, Roger 166 Kabbah, Ahmed Tejan 155, 156, 158 Kelly, David 206 Kennedy, George 56 Kerr, Sir John 157 King, Anthony 170 Kinnock, Neil 2, 22, 169–70, 188, 201; election campaigning 191, 192 Koroma, Johnny Paul 155 Lane, Graham 114 Lang, Ian 69 Lange, Oskar 90 law and order policies 94, 119; criticism of New Labour policy

INDEX

opponents discrediting 187–8; newspaper articles on leaders 201; policy and position 184–5; political power concentrated in the hands of leaders 180; significance of 169; spin 185; trustworthiness of leaders 181; see alsoleadership stretch; reliability; responsibility leadership stretch 191, 192 Legg, Sir Thomas 157 Liddle, Roger 106 Lilley, Peter 3 Lincoln, Abraham 144 Livingstone, Ken 96 Lloyd, Tony 157 London Underground 95–6, 154 Low Pay Commission 70, 71, 72 Macintyre, Donald 2 Mad Cow Disease 150, 194 Madden, Max 166 Major, John 3, 23, 39, 44, 72, 189, 197, 200, 201; attacking Government's handling of BSE 194; focusing election campaign on Labour's devolution plans 65; newspaper speculation about 201; PMQT questions 161–5; rhetoric, use of 46, 47; ridiculed by Blair over policy on Europe 44–5 Mandelson, Peter 3, 14, 22, 45, 60, 74, 80, 106, 122–3, 161, 166, 169; Post Office proposals 95 Manning, David 190 Maples, John 3 Martin, Tony 99 McCartney, Ian 75 McElvoy, Anne 2 McKelvey, Richard 24 McLean, Iain 41 median voter theorem 5, 17, 19–25, 34, 35, 92; perfect information 33; see alsoelectoral centre Middle East policy 205 Milburn, Alan 80, 122; foundation hospitals 124 minimum wage 70; rhetorical strategy to present and defend 70–3 moderation 38; New Labour presenting itself as a moderate party 40; presentation of policies as moderate 38, 40, 53, 63, 65Anti-Social Behaviour Orders 120devolution 66, 67, 68, 69Gulf War 55minimum wage 71New Deal 109, 111tax rises to fund health expenditure 77–81trade union recognition 74, 75Working Families Tax Credit 116; see alsopolitical centre Modigliani, Andre 132 Moore, Jo 206 Morris, Bill 74 Morris, Dick 23 Moseley, Oswald 4 Nagel, Jack 41 national minimum wage seeminimum wage

215

Nelson, Thomas 134–5 New Deal 108–11; critics portrayal as aping of Conservative policy 110–11 New Labour ; lead in opinion polls 203; need to remain at the centre 204; persuading voters it had moved to the centre 204; reason for moving centre-right 6, 20, 21–2, 23–4 news management seespin

216

INDEX

newspaper coverage of MPs 191, 192, 201 Norris, Pippa 6 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie 43, 57–8 opinion polls ; New Labour's lead 203; use of 98 Orwell, George 9 outsider status 191 Owen, David 189 ownership 27–9, 32, 51 Oxley, Zoe 134–5 Parris, Matthew 2 partnership 75; see alsoPublic–Private Partnerships Perelman, Chaim 43, 57–8 persuasive effect of arguments 51–3; common starting point, need for 58, 59 Plato 54, 59 PMQT seePrime Minister's Question Time policy and position 12–13, 204–5; framing 145; innovation 103; leadership 184–5; rhetoric 53, 54, 60, 63, 81 political centre 8–9, 20, 21, 37–8, 39–40; alternative political centres 15, 50; construction of framing 10–11innovation 10leadership 11rhetoric 9; parties fighting over 40, 53–4; see alsoelectoral centre;framing;innovation;leadership;moderation;rhetoric Popkin, Samuel 35 positional issues 148, 149 Post Office 95 Powell, Charles 190 predictions of behaviour 30, 31, 32, 33, 51 Prescott, John 169, 194; newspaper coverage of 191, 192 Presidential campaign 188, 190, 195 Presidential system of government 189–90 Primarolo, Dawn 117 Prime Minister's Question Time (PMQT) 161; Labour MPs' questioning of John Major 161–5 priming 133–5, 138, 139, 146; see alsoframing principal-agent relationship 171–2, 181–2; agents persuading principals they have pursued their interests 182; conflict of interest 172; incentives for agents to act in the principal's interests 172–4; screening 177–9, 181; trust, problem of 172; see alsoreliability;responsibility Private Finance Initiative 153 private ownership 27–9, 32, 51 probabilistic voting 24–5 promises ; credibility of 170, 174; incentive to honour 171; see alsoreliability Protagoras 54 Public–Private Partnerships 95–6, 153–5 Rawnsley, Andrew 2 Reagan, Ronald 72 Redwood, John 76 Reid, John, Dr. 124 reliability 170, 174–5,

INDEX

217

198; motivation to behave reliably 175–6, 179–80; New policy;Public-Private Partnerships;Sierra Leone;tax and Labour's record of 198–9; voters' value of 175–6 spend policy Rentoul, John 22–3, 169 voters ; political positions 20, 21; preferences 49, 50, 127 responsibility 170, 175; motivation to behave responsibly 175–6; screening parties 178, 179; voters' value of 175–6 rhetoric 41, 42, 51; choice 60–1; construction of political centre 9; creativity 60; elements of ascribing the whole to one part or one part to the whole of a group 45–6authority 48, 57cause and effect 47comparisons 46contradiction and incompatibility 44definitions 45examples and illustrations 48–9ridicule 44–5, 57–8sacrifices 46–7underlying personality traits 47–8, 57; limits to 56, 57, 58; path-dependant 58; policy and position 53, 54, 60, 63, 81; power of 54–5, 59; premises 55–6; see alsodevolution;minimum wage;spin;tax and spend policy;trade union recognition Rifkind, Malcolm 69 Riker, William 41, 42, 143–4 Sandline 156–7 satisfaction ratings 199 schemas 128, 129 Schumpeter, Joseph 83, 84, 85–9, 91, 93, 97, 100, 101, 103 screening 177–9, 181 Shaw, Eric 22 Sierra Leone 155–8 Sixsmith, Martin 206 Smith, Adam 92 Smith, John 65, 169, 201 Socialist Calculation Debate 90 soundbites 14 spatial analysis of the behaviour of entrepreneurs 26 spatial position 26–7, 32; use of the spatial metaphor 3–4, 6–7; see alsopolitical centre;private ownership spatial theory of voting 26 spin 14, 60; framing 146; innovation 103; leadership image 185; political significance of 206, 207; see alsorhetoric stationary state economy 85–7 Stephenson, George 101, 102 Stokes, Donald 148, 149 Straw, Jack 119, 194, 205; newspaper coverage of 191, 192 syllogisms 55 tax and spend policy 77–81, 151–3 Taylor, Fred 90 Thatcher, Margaret 166, 167, 200; rhetoric, use of 42 trade union recognition 73–7 Trades Union Congress (TUC) 73, 74, 76 uncertainty 33–4, 35, 36, 40, 49–50 United States ; lessons drawn from 22–3 university tuition fees 187 utility maximisation 30, 31, 96–7, 127 valence issues 148–9; construction of 149; see alsoEuropean

218

INDEX

Walras, Leon 86, 88, 93 Wanless, Derek 80 Weber, Max 183 welfare policy 116; see alsoWorking Families Tax Credit WFTC seeWorking Families Tax Credit Whateley, Bishop 44 windfall tax 110, 111 Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) 116–18; innovativeness of, contested by Conservatives 117

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