And that position will face its greatest crisis with the loss of the Alternative Vote referendum. The success of the ?No? campaign, achieved with the help of a great tranche of Labour politicians whose delight at stuffing the Lib Dems will be palpable, is going to be a meltdown moment for Mr Clegg and his party ? the point from which there will be no return. But the Coalition will not dissolve: it will simply decline in political credibility to the point where nobody sees the point of persevering.
Somehow, the shift from Coalition-speak to party-based accountability will have to be managed. The ground for a return to traditional party politics will have to be laid well in advance of the next general election, while still maintaining the fiction of a happy, united Coalition. Out of genuine friendship and gratitude to Mr Clegg and those Lib Dem ministers who have played constructive roles in the reforming plans of the government, an extraordinarily delicate formula will have to be devised for liberating the Lib Dems without appearing to cast them out in disgrace.
This will be the greatest challenge ever faced by a team of spin doctors, some of whom may actually expire under the pressure. But the eventual consequence of having passed through this phenomenally devious exercise will be relief that it is now possible simply to say what you think. Political leaders will be amazed by the traction that this has with voters.
Second, the euro will not ?collapse? either ? at least, not officially. But it will be accepted in those secretive enclaves in which these things are decided that the present situation cannot continue without risk of Germans, never mind Greeks, rioting in the streets. So there will be some form of administered release of the problematic economies (whose number seems to be growing by the day).
In effect, collapse will be avoided by a managed disintegration of the eurozone. The words ?default? and ?devaluation? will not be used in the formal communiqu�s but that is, in effect, what will have been permitted to occur. The governments of the failing national economies having, variously, tried everything ? drastic austerity programmes in the case of Ireland, anarchic denial in the case of Greece ? and nothing having worked, there will be no choice but to withdraw from the present constraints of euro membership.
Which economies will be left in the strong centre of the currency is an open question. With Belgium teetering and Italy?s unacceptable debt level now being acknowledged, even countries that would once have been thought to be at the core of the enterprise look dubious. But because, for political reasons, the single currency project cannot be allowed to fail, the charade will have to go on under some elaborately constructed pretence of continued unity ? while individual countries are actually permitted to rebuild their economies on terms that are suited to their own needs.
(Having written this, it occurs to me that there is a striking similarity between the trajectory I have suggested for the euro, and for our own dear Coalition: the deliberate unravelling of both arrangements will require a quite remarkable level of deceit and duplicity, which will hopefully result in greater democratic accountability. What is the lesson here? That, in the end, grand projects devised by an elite political class cannot survive if they defy the will of the people? It would be nice to think so, but maybe this is just my own wishful thinking.)
Lastly, Ed Miliband will not be replaced as Labour leader. He will be kept in post partly by the trade unions and the absence of any obvious alternative, but also by the party?s respectable showing in the opinion polls. Labour?s poll ratings are unlikely to drop below 38 or 39 points: there is a bottom-line, core vote level that is indelible whoever is leader and whatever the party professes. This is being bolstered by defecting Lib Dems, who are acting out their sulk by telling the people with the clipboards that they now support Labour. But Lib Dem support is whimsical and unreliable ? even for its own politicians ? and much of this would evaporate in a real election.
I strongly suspect that the country has decided that Ed Miliband, like Neil Kinnock, who actually led in the opinion polls before the 1992 election, should never be prime minister. And I am quite sure that the Labour Party knows this, too. But so long as the Coalition continues to provide it with an endless supply of disillusioned Lib Dems and the Conservatives fail to break through the smug fog that envelops them with a message that inspires voters? confidence, Labour will bide its time.
If I am right about all (or most) of this, then 2011 will be a climactic year in modern political history ? but one in which, bizarrely, the main actors will pretend that nothing dramatic is happening at all.
Hillary Clinton Bill Clinton Rudy Giuliani Jimmy Carter Dick Cheney
No comments:
Post a Comment