TMP Online

TMP columnist Tim Caswell returns and ponders the future for Britain’s three main political parties.

The Liberal Democrats increasingly remind me of Newcastle United. They have a distinguished history and a loyal band of friendly fans, but they never win anything and change their leader frequently. The latest looks a bit like Tony Blair and sounds identical to David Cameron (Nick Clegg that is, not Kevin Keegan). But there the similarity ends.

Keegan’s third coming was heralded by near hysterical adulation by the Geordie faithful and more than a modicum of interest, curiosity and goodwill from the population as a whole. Mr. Clegg assumed office with the endorsement of just over a third of his party’s members and was met with a wave of complete indifference from the general public. A third of the Lib Dem membership voted for his opponent, another Blair/Cameron clone; the other third abstained. It is hard not to marvel at the level of apathy entailed in an abstention by 20,000 people in their own party’s leadership election. But what is really surprising is not the narrow margin of the victory (dolly the sheep versus dolly the sheep was never going to be a landslide) but the size of the party’s membership, apparently a mere 60,000.

Labour’s membership has fallen from 405,000 in 1997 to less than 200,000 ten years later, a loss of one every twenty minutes. Cameron’s Conservatives claim a larger membership than Labour, which is plausible as it is rumoured that in some parts of Surrey buying a double Gin and tonic at the local “Con Club” qualifies one for life membership, if not a peerage, when they return to power.

Mathematicians among you will have already calculated that this gives the three “big” parties a combined mass membership of less than half a million in a nation where the National Trust has more than a million members and more than three and a half million of us belonged to a political party in 1950. Yes, membership has declined all over the world but in Britain participation and turnout are now almost the lowest in Europe, although the percentage of British adults who tell pollsters that they are “very or fairly interested” in politics has remained constant at 60% for the last thirty years.

The received wisdom is that people are more likely to engage with politics if they believe that their participation will make a difference and is being actively sought. The record turnout in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in the US, in which Senators Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama fought a close contest with energy and passion, would seem to prove the point. If Hillary adopts Barack as her running mate at the Democratic Party’s convention in August, the race for the White House will be a global fascination. If he beats her, it will be a global sensation. When he becomes President in 2008 or 2016 after serving as Vice President, it will be an interstellar galactic phenomenon!  Well, maybe not, but the point is it won’t be boring!

The contrast with our own politics could not be starker. Vince Cable, proving that even Leaders of the Liberal Democrats can be famous for five minutes, suggested at Prime Minister’s Question Time that Gordon Brown has evolved from Stalin to Mr. Bean in his first three months in office. Nice try, I always say politicians will cease using sound bites the day after everyone forgets who said “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” but the truth is more mundane. The Iron Chancellor has not become Eddie the Eagle, Frank Spencer, or Corporal Frazer from Dad’s Army; he has turned into John Major.

A thoughoughly decent man who has taken over from a charismatic iconoclast who stayed in power too long, Brown’s government like Major’s is now tired, uninspiring and unimaginative, buffeted by events and mired in sleaze, not of his own making. He combined all of these elements last week when he bizarrely intervened personally in the Hain “Thoughtless Think Tank” affair attempting to excuse his conduct by labelling him “incompetent” then leaving him in his job.

If history repeats itself once as tragedy and then as farce, the European Treaty, coming to a Parliament somewhere near Westminster this week, will eventually be ratified. How much collateral damage the government will sustain having promised a referendum on the European Constitution now embodied in this treaty is hard to overestimate. Like Major, whose Waterloo was Maastricht, Brown will find that the Lisbon Treaty heralds the start of backbench rebellions which will continue with 42 days detention and identity cards, not to mention nuclear power and weaponry.

In “What’s Next after New Labour” in the first edition of TMP I predicted that Brown, would win a small majority and a fourth term before following the trajectory of Major’s fourth term Tory administration. Now only the grossly unfair first past the post electoral system can afford him even that slim hope.

Europe will again be a catalyst. Fears that the European Elections, due on Thursday 10 June 2009, will be a farce with an abysmal turnout and heavy Labour casualties in the wake of the failure to hold a referendum are fuelling speculation that the General Election will be held the same day to minimise focussing on Europe separately and maximise the vote.

On current polling evidence the most likely outcome will be a hung parliament with Mr. Cameron leading the largest party and Mr. Clegg’s Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power and hence the keys to 10 Downing Street. Their price for handing them over will be a once and for all “in or out” referendum designed to finally settle the question of Europe and fundamental reform of the electoral system. They may get both from David Cameron’s modernisers , and participation in our politics might improve.

Tim Caswell is a Labour Party member of over 30 years standing and a writer. His radio play, Extra Time was produced by the BBC and he has written for the film, Nineliveslondon.