Sunday 10th December
Tony Blair has come in for a lot of criticism of late, not least from me; though that is mostly because of Iraq – but even here his defence was that it was really pragmatism rather than conviction that motivated him. He argued that it was better for the U.K. to support America rather than to leave them isolated. I am not sure on that one. The U.K. was vilified in Europe and hated in the Middle East. It is also impossible to prove but in my view highly probable that our joining the U.S.A. helped to create much of the terrorism of today and despite Blair’s arguments made us less safe.
And that judgment call between pragmatism, that is what works, and conviction, what you believe in – is a very difficult one. For quite a few years we had a mix of conviction and pragmatism, exemplified by Harold Wilson (in retrospect one of our best Prime Ministers) whose instincts were left wing but learnt that sometimes being pragmatic was a better choice. Thatcher was almost exclusively a conviction politician who believed in Private over Public every time. She certainly changed Britain but many of her policies are coming home to roost, such as selling off our Utilities and Council Houses (49% of the population lived in council houses in 1979 and now only 8% do – most who do not own are private renters and at the mercy of the market).
Blair was mainly a pragmatist and in many ways continued the Tory policies, leavened maybe by Gordon Brown’s massive injection of cash into the NHS and the creation of the Minimum Wage and Family Tax Credits.
Cameron is an instinctive Tory, but he is prepared to be pragmatic when he needs to, pedalling back occasionally from disastrous ideas. But his main fault I would say is that he is lazy; he allows his Ministers too much freedom to lead us down the conviction road. Academies must be better than State-run schools – no question. People must be forced to work even if they are sick – it stands to reason. And he allows George Osborne to do almost what he wants in the name of Deficit Reduction, when it is really the reduction of the State and replacing it with Private firms that is his agenda.
And Labour are now led by Jeremy Corbyn, another conviction Politician. He needs a bit of pragmatism to soften his convictions or he will never gain power. It is at the end of the day a fine judgment call; a Politician needs to have convictions; ideas that can enthuse the public but must also have the ability to realise how sometimes those convictions will simply not work. Someone once said that ‘Politics is the Art of the Possible’ and despite your convictions it is sometimes better to be pragmatic.