Every morning my email inbox contains several messages with the subject line ‘DoD identifies Army casualty’. Each is a Pentagon press release describing, with the sparsest of details, the killing of another American soldier in Iraq. The emails are a chilling reminder of the ongoing loss of life there. Tony Blair’s decision to follow President Bush into war created a huge backlash from party members and the wider public. Yet, as the election draws close, it appears that the Iraq conflict, like the soldiers in the emails, will fade into the background.
A Labour MP whose seat is vulnerable to the Lib Dems tells me that anger among local anti-war, left-of-centre voters is beginning to dissipate. The tide that swept Charles Kennedy’s party to victory in Brent East in 2003 and Leicester South in 2004 has run its course. The Iraqi election at the end of January was a turning point.
The truth is that elections are not fought on the betrayals of the past but on the policies of the future. The Tories recovered from the poll tax to win in 1992 by ditching the tax, ditching their leader and dreaming up the council tax as an alternative. They could not recover from Black Wednesday, not because voters were still angry in 1997, but because the public had lost faith in the party to manage the economy going forward.
In some seats with large concentrations of Muslim voters, like Bethnal Green and Bow where George Galloway is challenging Oona King, Iraq could make a difference. But across the board, Tony Blair will escape unpunished. Where Labour loses ground it will be where voters are unconvinced that health, education and crime are really improving.
If the big Lib Dem hope is Iraq, the big Tory hope is security. It means that suite of issues that helped Chirac in France and Bush in America – terrorism, crime, immigration. Tradition tells us that in troubled times voters prefer the authoritarian stance of the right to the civil liberties concerns of the left. But after a decade of New Labour policy-making on home affairs – by Blair in opposition, Straw and Blunkett in government – the battle lines are not so clear. Labour has needed to act tough on terror for real reasons, and talk tough on migration for political reasons. And that has left the Tories in a quandary.
A Tory frontbencher explained the problem to me. In 2001, William Hague’s campaign on crime, asylum and Europe backfired disastrously. The Tories don’t want to be the ‘nasty party’ again. Whatever they say on security, it must sound positive. What this all means is that Labour has crowded out the Tories on law and order. There is no clear political position to be taken that is to the right of Labour and still in the mainstream.
The strength of Labour’s position has left Charles Clarke, the new home secretary, a little bit of leeway to tone down some of the more strident positions he inherited from David Blunkett. He can do more to shore up Labour support on the liberal-left without letting the Tories back into the game.
One thing Charles Clarke is definitely not soft on is Brian Haw, the peace campaigner who has camped in Parliament Square since 2001. The Westminster establishment calls him an eyesore and an embarrassment, and wants him out.
The trouble is that Haw is not breaking any laws. Clarke has told friends he is determined to carry through the legislation David Blunkett started to evict Haw. The home secretary respects the right to demonstrate. But as he recalls from student marches of the 1970s, police used to enforce sessional orders that stopped protestors coming too close to Parliament.
So there is some consistency in the government seeking to ban Haw. But Westminster will be a less democratic place without him.