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Cross Party Consensus

Government- or at least good government - is a tough and difficult business. You could even argue that the true test of a government’s success is not how popular it is – which after all might just demonstrate that they are doing what the people think they want in the short term rather than what will be good for the country as a whole in the longer term- but how unpopular it is, which may well indicate that it is actually doing the right thing – videlicet Margaret Thatcher in 1981/2. If we Conservatives form a government at the general election, I am confident that we are taking on such a huge mess that we will soon be one of the most unpopular governments in recent history, which will actually demonstrate that we are doing a good job. By the time of the following general election, it is to be hoped that the people will have come to realise that we did what we had to do for the long-term benefit of the nation as a whole.

There’s been a bit of - slightly self-righteous - media tut-tutting about Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley breaking off talks about long-term care for the elderly because we would not contemplate the death tax which Labour are considering. Why should those who look after their loved ones at home in later years then have to contribute a whacking £20,000 to those who can’t or won’t? We are proposing a voluntary form of insurance instead - a lump sum payment of £8000 on retirement against the cost of possible long-term care. We estimate that those who eventually do not “claim” on that insurance policy will pay for those who have to.

But quite leaving the policy question on one side, I have some difficulty with the very notion that cross-party consensus is necessarily the right thing anyhow. Surely our system of parliamentary democracy depends on groups of people of a like mind – our political parties – coming up with ideas for the betterment of society which they then put to the people in a general election manifesto. Voters consider the various options on offer and cast their votes accordingly. Cross-Party consensus denies them that opportunity to choose. What’s more, since it would involve greater or lesser compromises it may well land up with some kind of lowest common denominator. Tough government demands tough choices which may be temporarily unpopular with the electorate, even if they are actually the right thing to do. Cosy cross-party consensus, government by committee, is likely to produce weak and therefore ultimately unsuccessful government.

And anyhow, it’s not just about how we should care for our evermore aging population. It’s about how we should pay for that care. The devolved government in Scotland, for example, chose to guarantee free long-term care at home for all. That is a political decision which the Scottish Nationalists took, and they have had to cancel a number of other projects to pay for it. At the elections the people will judge whether free long-term care is more or less popular than more or better schools, fewer potholes or rebuilt hospitals. That is a political judgement, and it is right that it is made by a political party who submit themselves to the judgement of the people in a general election.

So roll on our election. It cannot come too soon. The people will then cast their (doubtless quite definitive) judgement of the last 13 years without having that judgement clouded by bogus “cross-party consensus.”

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