Intro to AS politics: party political divisions

I think most students who take up politics in order to find out a bit more about how Britain works look forward to discovering what, if anything, the main political parties stand for. This initial interest does not manifest itself in terms of the topic being hugely popular come exam time, with even the judiciary appearing to attract more attempts than parties.

There’ll be no more of this for a while

But conference season is nearly upon us and this is always a good time to look in depth at party policies. Given the surprising amount of activity that has taken place within the current government one would think that Labour would have been able to more clearly define itself, and that its leader would have laid out more of a vision. Perhaps this will begin to take shape with Ed Miliband’s keynote speach at this year’s conference.

What is interesting is a “leaked” internal Labour document reported in this week’s Observer, suggesting that the Tories are “recognisibly rightwing”.

As the paper reports

“Labour is developing a new strategy to paint David Cameron as an old-style, traditional Tory, according to confidential documents obtained by the Observer, as the parties prepare to do battle during the coming conference season. The opposition believes the prime minister has abandoned the centre ground in recent months to adopt a more orthodox conservative stance on issues such as law and order, immigration and welfare.

They are now set to launch a concerted campaign to brand Cameron as a “recognisably rightwing” leader in a move that will inevitably inflame political debate. The creation of the strategy follows reports last month that Cameron had polled negatively for the first time, with more people saying that the prime minister was doing a bad job than those backing him.”

Looking for inspiration, Ed?

The document apparently doesn’t go into specifics other than to suggest that on the NHS, rights, and the environment the party does not live up to the liberal credentials it claimed to have during the election campaign.

Clearly there is a great deal of overlap between the two main parties, with much of the discussion focusing on policy management, although Labour will seek to frame the gap between the parties in ideological terms—as it tried to do relatively unsuccessfully over Osborne’s deficit reduction strategy.

In terms of how students manage the parties topic I suggest it is always a good idea to file any story where the opposition attacks the government to be revisited come revision time. Here on the blog I try to highlight these, and you can have a look back at earlier postings for examples. See this one here for example that I drew up before last summer’s exams.

In terms of where we stand now in terms of the main policy divisions, here is a brief summary (and one that will be updated to form the basis of my teaching notes)...

The following points generally highlighting differences in policy management and delivery suggest there is less overlap between the two parties.

• The Conservative in opposition were frequent critics of how the Labour government had allowed private and public sector to grow, and saw it as a major contributory factor behind the 2008 banking crisis. There parties also clashed on how best to respond to the mortgage meltdown. When then Chancellor Alistair Darling announced plans to take the bank into public ownership, his opposite number, George Osborne, said it was the “worst option”. Since the election there have also been disagreements about how tackle the deficit, with Labour arguing that cuts should be delayed and take place over a longer time period, since the severity of the cuts would harm the recovery and low-income earners.

• Divides between the government and Labour have become evident since the election on public services. In health care, Andrew Lansley’s plans to devolve power to GPs have been described as a “dangerous experiment”, since it involves one of the biggest reorganisations of the NHS in its history at a time when the public spending is being tightened. In education, Labour have been highly critical of the idea of “free schools”. While they fit with the Labour mantra of choice in public services, shadow ministers have accused the government of prioritising a project that will affect a tiny number of pupils at the expense of improving schools for the majority. Labour also opposed the ending of the EMA payments to 16-18 years olds, proposals to allow universities to raise tuition fees to £9,000 (a decision which, according to John Denham, has been driven by an ideological imperative to shift the cost to students and away from the taxpayer, rather than a need to cut the deficit), and cuts to school sports funding. Gove’s education white paper has also met with opposition, with Andy Burnham arguing that it will result in a two tier education system, cementing a divide between educational and vocational qualifications.

• Labour have been less than enthusiastic to the Con-Lib government’s plans for welfare reforms. The changes to child benefit have been described by Ed Miliband as “unworkable”. The 10% cut in housing benefit is, according to Douglas Alexander, “unfair”. And while Labour agree with the principle of IDS’s welfare reforms, they have attacked the Conservative government’s plans to tackle unemployment on the grounds that they will have a negative impact on the poor when changes to tax credits and the elimination of the child trust fund are taken into account.

• Differences have also emerged on how best to tackle crime and manage the criminal justice system. Teresa May’s announcement to scrap ASBOs was criticised, as have been plans to cut the number of front line policemen.

• The Labour government’s Big Brother state has also been scaled back. ID cards have been kicked into the long grass, as have a number of databases, such as Contactpoint. DNA storage and CCTV camera use will be more tightly regulated, and the Conservatives have committed themselves to a review of a host of other measures that were a feature of the 1997-2010 Labour governments including: local authority surveillance powers, control orders, pre-charge detention, and the Human Rights Act.

• The clearest blue water emerges when we consider the relative positions of the two main parties on the European Union. The Conservative Party is almost homogeneously Eurosceptic. They have consistently taken a much colder stance with regards to entry to the single currency than Labour, and ruled it out entirely in their 2010 manifesto. They have also proposed negotiating opt-outs from the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Working Time Directive, and under the European Union bill, plan to hold a referendum before any further “significant” powers are transferred to Brussels.