It’s hardly news that the last UK election delivered a coalition government. And while the press have been looking for splits and rifts, that too is nothing new. They would have done that with a one-party outcome, just as they explored and dramatised the wedge between Brown and Blair, or talked up the euro-split of the previous Tory administration.
What may be more of a novelty is the speed and energy of the new administration. It has hit the ground running. Having put together its heads of agreement in just a few days, it seems to be capable of delivering policy proposals and discussion documents at a rapid rate. And despite the internal resistance from the fringes of both parties (Cameron’s right wing and Clegg’s more doctrinaire members) the centre-ground is holding up.
Perhaps no-one is clear who the enemy is any more! Both might consider the Labour party to be the enemy, but it is currently on the sidelines and even leadership candidate David Miliband is warning that Labour may be out of office for ten years. That leadership contest itself has two brothers as leaders who, while they are not identical in viewpoints, hardly represent a struggle for the soul of the party. The contest itself does not appear to be a fundamental review of Labour identity.
There may be good reason for this. The deeper history of the three parties would show some degree of divergence. Conservative, as the name suggests, was about preserving the status quo and changing as little as possible. Broadly speaking its founding Value system was core BLUE order, with a nod to Red aristocratic hierarchy – the fruits of earlier conquest. The Liberal party, over the past 150 years was characterised by a more radical and reformist stance and by a strong social conscience. Their position was economically laissez-faire ORANGE, plus a “BLUE with fairness” social conscience that may even have hinted at GREEN. They introduced the first health insurance, unemployment assistance and old age pension schemes before WW1, but their economic freedom did nothing to change working conditions.
The Labour party was born out of demands for improved working conditions and propelled by the trade unions. With this background came the fear of a communist-inspired socialism that was central to the struggle between Labour and Conservative during the past 80 years. That socialism is a mix of GREEN egalitarian human values and BLUE “right way” which was hostile to much of entrepreneurial ORANGE, resulting in ineffective nationalisation and progress through conflict.
So where are we now? Socialism is a remnant with decreasing amounts of traction, smashed by Thatcher and quietly buried by Blair with his “third way” politics and his flirtation with Ashdown’s Lib-Dems. If you watched the TV election hustings you may have found it hard to see any difference in most policy arenas because the parties have converged on a centre ground. This was evidenced by the belief that both Con-Lib and Lab-Lib alliances were possible last May, and liberal deputy leader Simon Hughes is still advocating the latter. It was not policy differences which drove the decision but tactics over leadership and voting systems. There is no sign of any fundamental shift underway within the Labour debate and their identity may well be defined now by attempts to find some distinction from the coalition.
Where there was divergence in the party histories, now all three are fighting for the middle ground between the BLUE edge of entering strategic ORANGE and the GREEN edge of its exit. There are some complex thinkers talking in YELLOW ways, but not many. And there is now as much divergence within the parties as between them. Some Labour looks like Liberal (or vice versa) and Cameron is closer to Clegg than to some of his own party backwoodsmen.
The point of this posting is to say that this is not just accident. I am suggesting that it is a natural outcome as we approach society’s transition into second tier. Management of a complex society requires the ability to address the entire bandwidth of social groups and Values systems. It demands that we end the oscillation between two poles of thinking. The same polarity is built into US politics, and even more entrenched there, with Republicans deeply opposed to social programs and Democrats attempting a progressive agenda. The swings from one to the other were always disruptive and expensive. Now the scale of provision and the complexity of relationships between multiple agencies for service delivery impose longer timescales on any change and the pendulum is dysfunctional.
In my view the party system cannot deliver the intelligence for a second-tier version of democracy. Its existence is part of what inhibits the emergence of second-tier leaders since they must first navigate the constrictions of their first-tier party dogmas. In the absence of a proportional voting system this effect is compounded; even the current coalition does not in its balance reflect the support for the Lib-Dems. The whole mechanism is clumsy and inadequate to a responsive, culturally diverse and flex-flow future. Replacing it may not be easy, but it is no longer fit for purpose and needs to go. We might even have to start knowing who our candidates are, what they think and voting for people, not platforms.
integralian
freejon
