STILL BLAIR'S ENGLAND:

Watch the Tories sidling up to the Lib Dems: the foundations for a post-election pact (Fraser Nelson, 2nd April 2008, The Spectator)

The British electoral system remains notoriously biased against the Conservatives, such that a ten-point lead over Labour is a necessity rather than a luxurious advantage for David Cameron. To achieve a Tory victory will require a 7 per cent swing — something that has only been achieved twice, in 1945 and 1997. Mr Cameron does not just need more votes than Mr Brown. He has to secure the largest swing in the history of the modern Conservative party.

So the Tories’ contingency planning behind the scenes has to involve an unwelcome interloper: Nick Clegg. Mr Cameron can win a million more votes than Mr Brown and still be unable to form a majority — leaving him with a choice between forming a coalition, or trying to struggle by in the Commons day by day, hand to mouth (the heir to Callaghan, so to speak, rather than the heir to Blair). This means party strategists are already placing prospective policy measures into three categories. Those that could be implemented without any new legislation (such as welfare reform), those that would require Lib Dem support (education reform) and those that would only be possible with a working Commons majority (renegotiation of EU membership).

For there to be any prospect of co-operation with Mr Clegg, the intellectual framework must first be established. The task is to render obsolete the old-fashioned, conventional left-right divide — a psychological fissure in national life which Labour has always used to appeal to Lib Dem sympathies (remember Blair and Ashdown and their plans for a ‘Full Monty’ merger?). Those seeking to lay the philosophical groundwork for Tory–Lib Dem collaboration claim that the dividing line that counts in 2008 now lies between those who believe in the power of the state (Mr Brown and the Labour left), and those who seek instead a ‘post-bureaucratic state’ and the empowerment of communities and citizens (Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and key Blairites).

The task is to become sufficiently Blairite that the Tories recapture Thatcherism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2008 6:19 AM