After Mandelson goes, Ashdown goes:
Clear out all the coalitionists!
Tony Blair seems to have been one of the first to know Paddy Ashdown’s retirement plans - before the rest of the Liberal Democrats. This is a good indication Ashdown’s priorities.
There has been much press speculation about who will succeed him. Blair is even said to have stated his preference, learning nothing from his failed attempt to influence last year’s Labour NEC elections. In a Liberal Democrat Party not entirely convinced of Ashdown’s policy of co-operation, any intervention by Blair is bound to produce a backlash.
The debate about contenders for the succession has not surprisingly focused on their attitude to `the project’. It seems that even the most hostile, like Simon Hughes, have tempered this. Maybe the opportunity of a seat at the cabinet table has changed some minds.
The Blair-Ashdown co-operation did not go down too well with either parliamentary party. Ashdown had a hard time winning over his party over their joint statement at the end of last year, and Blair recently had to give an undertaking to the Parliamentary Labour Party that there would be no extension of co-operation without consultation with senior backbenchers. Beyond parliament the hostility is greater.
With Mandelson temporarily out of the picture (although no doubt advising behind the scenes), Blair has lost his most vociferous advocate not just of greater co-operation, but of eventual merger with the Liberal Democrats.
Ashdown was apparently lined up for a Cabinet place before the General election. This only became unnecessary (and indefensible to the Labour Party) in the light of the scale of Labour’s victory. Instead he was given a seat on a Cabinet committee on electoral reform, since extended to cover defence and other matters.
Blair has obviously been hoping to gradually draw the Liberal democrats so far into government that they would barely be a parliamentary opposition, be part of a formal coalition after the next election and eventually be subsumed into `New Labour’ (or whatever else it would be called) to keep it (and Blair) in power for many years to come.
Whether that strategy unravels with the departure of Mandelson and Ashdown (and the hostility of much of the Labour Party to the Jenkins proposals on voting reform, essential to keeping the Liberal democrats sweet) remains to be seen.
There is another strand to Blair’s love affair with the Liberal Democrats. As the exposure of Derek Draper and the power of the lobbyists last year showed, and Paul Foot has continued to expose in Private Eye, Liberal Democrats and ex-SDPers have immense say in government.
This goes well beyond the large number of them working for Westminster lobby firms who have the ear of government to those working in government policy units. Former SDP and Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidates advise Blair on economics, Europe, defence and education. This is of course in addition to the Liberal Democrats, SDPers, businessmen and now wet Tories who have been appointed to countless posts by Blair.
While Blair has been working to draw the Liberal Democrats overtly into government, the policy advisers have been working with Blair to ensure the government follows the neo-liberal path, whatever the muted objections of the likes of Prescott.
Socialists should use the demise of Mandelson and the pending departure of Ashdown not only to campaign for the end of the informal coalition at leadership and Cabinet level, but also for the ejection of those still working to keep alive the SDP project of turning the Labour Party into a capitalist party.