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It's not the policies, stupid

5 May 2003

The results of the local elections in England raise questions for all three main parties. But really it all comes down to one big question: What is a political party for?

For the purposes of problem-solving - and, let's face it, all three parties have electoral problems big time - this question has fundamental importance. Are these parties like corporations, for whom winning votes is like making profits - if one way doesn't work you re-engineer your product line and try another? Or are they like religious sects - associations of believers for whom the purity of the faith is more important than the number of adherents?

It is fair to say the political needs of a mature democracy like Britain don't change that much. As a rule, voters favour competence, consequently they react against failure and vote for the other side. They also favour moderation: change for change's sake is not part of the equation but corrective change back towards the middle ground is more likely when one side becomes entrenched and starts acting from an entrenched point of view. That middle ground is all important, but it is a wide middle and able to accommodate a fair range of views.

In this context political parties are like organised clusters of opinion - like-minded people comfortable with if not necessarily sharing precisely each others' views. They stick to one another to increase their prospects of achieving influence and power. But power is not power unless it brings the opportunity to act according to one's own ideas, so in a way the distinction between the purity of the faith and the need to win votes is a spurious one. Real power comes from winning votes because of one's ideas.

It doesn't often happen, but when it does it really shows. Both Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher had moments like this. Then the question is: "Where do the ideas come from that make it happen?" Their ideas were not detailed policies but a sense of what approach was needed and would succeed at that time. Was this opportunistic or merely sensible? The success of these two party leaders would suggest that for a political party to address itself to contemporary needs rather than recycled dogma is not a bad plan.

Looked at like this, a political party appears as neither corporation nor cult but an empty vessel waiting to be filled. The mix of ideas and personalities appearing in it at a given moment will determine how the electorate responds.

The emptiness of this vessel is important. Parties going into opposition need to tip out their accumulated baggage and start anew. Problems arise when the vessel is only half-tipped, or when bits and pieces from the past stick to the sides and bottom. At present the Conservatives haven't tipped anything like enough. Loads of stuff is still slopping around from their eighteen years of power and despite the efforts of many forward-thinkers they still hark back to it. Their ageing membership is keener to re-fight the battles of years ago than to look to the future.

Labour has a different problem. In opposition in the early 'nineties they tipped like crazy and then came before the electorate with just the right amount of new and promising stuff. Very little old baggage but not too much new baggage, either: an emphasis on managerial competence and few grand schemes set up to fail. But after six years in office the vessel is beginning to fill up again: a mixed bag of moderate success and relative failure, a lot of commitment to particular courses of action that may be right but are quite possibly wrong; a bit of sleaze and in-fighting, quite a lot of detachment - the beginning of that aura of entrenchment that suggests that competence may be the next thing to go.

What Labour needs to do now is to imagine itself in opposition once more; to look at itself from the point of view of a rival hungry to displace it and to ask itself where its weaknesses lie.

The Liberal Democrats have a distinctive problem that is all their own. For many decades this party and its Liberal predecessor has had significant electoral support but no whiff of power in central government. As the third man, standing slightly aside from a two-way fight, the Lib Dems have neither lost not won. Both the purging that ought to follow failure and the strenuous testing that comes with success have eluded them. Consequently their vessel is stuffed full of bright and optimistic notions that seem strangely unreal. High time to tip the lot and start anew.

It is worth remembering that on a practical level the purpose of political parties is to identify a working majority in parliament. To the electorate, therefore, the question is really: "Which lot do you want?" That is precisely the question the electorate should be asked. The answer they give will depend upon the contents of those vessels - the people, their ideas, their convictions, their sense of purpose, their relevance, their competence, their probity. So often, politicians deficient in many of these qualities have fallen back upon the issuance of reams of policy to cover these shortcomings - policy that has half an eye on their traditional supporters and half an eye on the uncommitted mainstream, and which therefore fails to satisfy on both counts.

Policy is useful when you're faced with a real-life problem. But what governments do is rarely what they said they would do precisely because the problems of government are rarely what they first seemed. The message to all the parties now, therefore, (and this includes the government) is to dump as much as possible of their policy baggage and to sharpen up their approach. Which of the parties which will be vying for power at the next election will most look like it can hack it? What price effectiveness, acuity, dynamism, relevance: that's what people want (and pretty much all they want) in the bunch of characters to whom they are about to hand the reins of power.