After Blair: A Liberal Agenda
Julian Astle, David Laws and David Marshall
Profile Books, 256pp, £9.99
Britain After Blair: A Liberal Agenda, the successor to the infamous Orange Book is described by Menzies Campbell as part of the process of ‘preparing for government’. Given current electoral realities this could be either wishful thinking or hubris. Can we really take this seriously as the programme of a determined and disciplined political party with a decent chance of putting their ideas into practice?
Gordon Brown consistently emerges as the real enemy, accused of almost every sin in the Lib Dem lexicon, with ‘micro-management’ and ‘collectivism’ as his worst deviations from the path of virtue. Nonetheless, the Lib Dems are confidently pitching their tent on New Labour’s ground – much of the present policy architecture is accepted, with the Lib Dems simply saying that they could achieve the same objectives more effectively. Their agenda is more consolidatory than radical.
Big issues to be addressed include a more determined assault on poverty and inequality, a widening of educational opportunity, improving the ‘transparency’ of fiscal policy and dealing with the unfairness of the council tax. Yet we might observe that these are issues on the government’s agenda too and despite the anti-Labour rhetoric there is little here that would give aid and comfort to ‘Dave’ Cameron. This is not so much a programme for government then as a litany of complaints about what Labour has got wrong, with some clear bottom lines for negotiating a coalition agreement in the event of a hung parliament after the next general election. Wishful thinking or hubris anyone?