Politics - don't bother with the small stuff

In October the Conservative Party had the edge on Labour in popular opinion, in case scoring a 24 point lead.  Not last month, but 50 years ago.  https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=IGxkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=63wNAAAAIBAJ&pg=1241,4966830&dq=opinion+poll+wilson&hl=en

It might well have seemed to Labour Party activists at the time that the world as they knew it was coming to an end and that the Conservatives were due to rule for ever. 


The Conservatives did in fact narrowly get in at the next election, and proceeded to serve up what must have been the most chaotic period of government until Mrs May arrived on the scene.  It's not a bad idea to keep in perspective that what matters is not the day to day warp and weft of politics but the long term battle of ideas.

I have found that by ignoring the day to day stuff I get a better idea of what is going on.   My feeling is that in the early seventies the Tories were winning the battle of ideas, but their leadership didn't realise it.  When they got in in 1970 they had a fairly unrealistic set of goals and policies, which they implemented in a pretty ham fisted way.  You'd have to be pretty partisan not to recognise that Heath, admiral man though he was in many ways, was simply not up to the wiley and effective Harold Wilson.  Viewed as a political duel between the two men the seventies went to Wilson.

But even so, the decade ended with Labour on the back foot.  The post war consensus had broken down and people wanted to move to a more market based economy.  They probably thought of it more as wanting more choice of what to spend their money on.  The seventies has a bad reputation for its economic performance, but the reality is that it put in an adequate amount of economic growth and technological innovation.  Everyone got better off and more interested in indulging themselves and less concerned about the common interest. The newsprint skirmishing and television duels no doubt had some effect. But in policy terms the trend for the next couple of decades was for the right to advance and the left to retreat.

That has been the real story of politics.  It explains why Labour could only win by adopting a big chunk of the Tory's approach.  In fact they proved rather more adept at doing Tory than the real Tories did, and managed a long spell in government as a result.  They got the big stuff for what people wanted about right and so could sneak in a few things in the back.  It wasn't very exciting, but it wasn't too bad.  It was certainly preferable to the feeling of near panic you get wondering what the current government will come up with next.  But the real story was that Labour did what the realities of the situation allowed them to do, while making a few big wins on the side like the minimum wage and dropping a few big clangers like the Iraq war.

Minute attention to the detail of the last Labour government while it was in progress,  wasn't just a waste of time.  It was a filter that distorted what it could and couldn't do.

Likewise the big picture now is that the public mood has swung decisively against the neoliberal consensus, and back towards public provision and social solidarity.  Brexit is going to be a victim of this swing, it seems pretty certain.  It is only popular with the old, and even there as its reality hoves more clearly into view its support is falling steadily.  There have been the odd anomalies, and no doubt there will be more.  But basically it is a move against the grain of the times and will be reversed sooner or later.  Already we are seeing that freedom of movement is coming back up the agenda.  I have stopped following the campaign but I did see that restrictions on workers coming from abroad are already being portrayed not as a clampdown but as a liberalisation.  There is talk of attracting the best and the brightest from around the world.

The swing to the left doesn't necessarily mean a Labour government any more than the previous swing to the right precluded it.  The personalities aren't totally unimportant and if the Tories can find some appealing ones they might well have a long spell in power.  But if do,  they won't be bringing back Thatcherism.   And they will take us back into the EU.