Brown and Cameron’s hangdog looks

THE NEW Labour project created by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has been in the doldrums since the early 2000s. How different things were during the heady days of 1997. Washed into power on a wave of public hatred for the tired, old Tory government that has (mis-) ruled Britian since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Blair looked more like a president, a saviour even, than a mere prime minister. Labour was back – and this time things would be different.

And how different they were! Well, sort of… this time Labour planned to social engineer through legislation and criminalisation of everyday activity rather than through meddling with economic forces – heaven forbid! Other than that it was an unremarkable Labour government, bashing the left openly instead of covertly.

By the early years of the new century, though, the shine had started to come off Blair’s smile. A few wars, one in Yuogslavia and one in Afghanistsan, indicated that New Labour was as good at good old fashioned militarism as the Conservatives, or indeed the ‘Old’ Labour Party.

Still, the fact of New Labour’s victory in 1997 stood. Blair was elected not because of his policies but because he wasn’t a Tory. The Tories were widely loathed, even by those who had voted them into power in the previous four elections. Labour’s slow decline didn’t matter because the Tories were still reeling from their worst defeat ever and the party’s lunatic fringes jostled for power, electing one no-mark leader after another. You think William Hague was bad? Do you even remember Iain Duncan Smith? What about Michael Howard?

Then the unthinkable happened: the Tories resurfaced as a real electoral challenge. How it happened remains a mystery – even after starting the disastrously unpopular Iraq war Blair and co. still looked like paragons of virtue next to the crazed and bitter Conservatives and it’s not as if David Cameron’s ‘New’ Conservative party actually offers any significant change from Labour in the policy stakes. Not only have the two parties ‘triangulated’ themselves to within an inch of one another, neither of them actually believes in principles or indeed politics anymore.

Ken Livingstone, the most joyless man to ever trudge the streets, lost his job as mayor of London Boris Johnson, a man best described as a ‘character’. But how characterful is Johnson really? Immediately on ascension to power Boris banned alcohol consumption on public transport, a move that would have made ‘red’ Ken green with envy.

The financial crisis hit and Gordon Brown’s infamous ‘prudence’ was unmasked as nowt more than fiddling with the financial system in the hope nobody would notice Labour had done absolutely nothing to rebuild the industries that Thatcher intentionally decimated. This was a result for the Conservatives: next to the Scottish miser with his hands on the levers of power anyone would look good. The Tories were back. And this time they were, er, exactly the same as New Labour.

Then the expense scandal hit at Westminster and although it damaged all parties it seemed to hit Labour hardest, despite the moat cleaning and duck pond being Conservative affairs.

The Tories under their fourth leader since Blair was crowned prince of Downing Street, David Cameron (an even more unctuous, upper-class clone of Blair) were suddenly riding high with a 20 point lead in opinion polls. It seems England at least was about to turn blue again. Quite an achievement for a party so decimated in the 1997, 2001 and 2004 general elections that it still has less seats in parliament than Labour did after the late, over-lamented Michael Foot led Labour to the brink of oblivion in 1983.

In the city and in the shires they dreamed of the nation turning blue – a Conservative super-majority was a sure thing.

Alas, like the memory of Ozzymandias, it all turned to dust. No-one quite knows how or why but Brown has recovered.

According to a Sunday Times/YouGov poll the Conservatives are on 37 per cent, just two miserable points ahead of Labour with 35 per cent. Worst of all, two per cent is within the margin of error. If these results were replicated in an actual election it could result in a hung parliament.

This would make the minor parties, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru and the DUP as potential kingmakers. The Irish republican(-ish) SDLP has a policy of not interfering in purely British matters and Sinn Féin doesn’t take its seats in accordance with long-held principles (abandoned in relation to both Stormont and the Dáil, but an article of faith when it comes to Westminster).

Traditionally hung parliaments have been disastrous for all involved, producing either weak, minority governments or, worst of all, governments of ‘national unity’ that inevitably launch massive austerity programmes. The 1931-35 national government led by Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald, for instance, presided over a serious assault of living standards.

Today, though, it is hard to see how things could get any worse: the recessionary slump has resulted in all two and a half main British parties vying to be the hardest, nastiest and most cuts-happy show on the road. The financial markets will freak out, of course, and demand that Something-Must-Be-Done – and it will be done, but will it matter?

Whether the result of this year’s general election turns out to be Labour scraping another victory, the restoration of the Tories or indeed a hung parliament or whatever, it will make little difference to government policy. It may not be a great idea to bet on the Tories winning but one bet that can’t lose is that things are going to get worse. No matter who wins, the British public will lose.