Conference,

Today, Europe celebrates the 10th Annual European Day of Languages, a European Union initiative to appreciate linguistic diversity in Europe and promote language learning.

You might think it a bit of an anorak subject, and perhaps it is, but as a trainee interpreter of French and Spanish, it’s my anorak subject.

Britain cannot afford to lose languages, and it cannot afford to rely on the popular myth that everybody speaks English.

Ironically, it is only because English is widely spoken that we have a responsibility to promote, learn and use foreign languages.

As the party of openness and diversity, this should be a core Labour principle in foreign policy and in British diplomacy.

In the European Union, if a meeting cannot find any available English interpreters, that meeting is cancelled. Delaying the exchange of ideas, slowing down government, and hindering reform.

That’s bad for Europe, and bad for Britain.

In Brussels, Britain is often underrepresented because of a lack of language professionals.

In Business, Britain loses out to foreign enterprise because of a lack of language professionals. That means Labour loses the job creation and economic growth that goes with it.

English may be the lingua franca in many countries, but companies have to speak to customers in their own language.

So the business that do well are the business that go global.

As globalisation continues, languages are an obviously vital tool. Forging friendships, breaking barriers and sealing deals.

The Labour Party must be open to Europe.

Britain in the world needs languages, which is why, on the 10th European Day of Languages, Labour must not let Britain get tongue-tied or lost in translation, but be ready to promote, encourage and develop languages professionals.

Thank you.

Obviously, I’m not claiming to have a monopoly on ideas, but see if you can spot the difference.

Balls:

First, we risk falling into Mr Cameron’s trap by focusing our fire too much on the Liberal Democrats.

Roberts:

It is lots of fun and easy to do, but the Labour Party needs to be disciplined enough to resist attacking the Lib Dems over the betrayal of their voters.

Balls:

Yes, they have ditched their manifesto and sold their principles for power —

Roberts:

If Labour lost its soul during its period in office, the Lib Dems have sold theirs for a few ministerial cars (which Cameron then took away).

Copying some other kid’s homework.

Balls:

Even if Lib Dem ministers are wheeled out by Downing Street to defend the most unpopular decisions, we must not forget this is fundamentally a Conservative Government.

Roberts:

You can be sure that when things are going well a Conservative will represent the government but when it gets tough, they will wheel out a hapless Lib Dem fall guy.
It is thus appropriate to treat the Coalition not as something strange but as something that is all too familiar; this is a Tory Government in all but name. It is up to Labour to call it as it is.

Balls:

There is no doubt that Mr Cameron wants to use his alliance with the Liberal Democrats to achieve what he failed in opposition — to detoxify the Conservative brand in the public mind. At its heart, this will remain a neo-liberal government of the Right, but Mr Cameron will seek to present the coalition as dominating the centre ground, while caricaturing Labour as irrelevant, reactionary and retreating to the left.

Roberts:

Repeatedly, the Tories have taken advantage of the Lib Dems who are hopelessly out of their depth and essentially benign in that the Tories are winning the internal arguments so easily. On the Economy, on Foreign Policy, on Europe, on Health, Immigration, Families and more the Tories get their way, and that is just the original coalition agreement.
Ultimately, we have to keep in mind that the Lib Dems are just there to make up the numbers on the Tory backbenches. We should therefore show them up as what they are: useful idiots.

So, sound advice from Ed, and I’m glad we’re in agreement (apart from the Graduate Tax) but there is a reason I have a Referencing page!

It looks like Balls is talking complete and utter Roberts.

The Education Secretary’s disastrous mishandling over the Building Schools for the Future program posed the question of how long the government’s honeymoon will last and there are multiple factors worth considering in response. The fact that this is a coalition opposed to a single party gives the coalition a certain novelty aspect, particularly so as it follows 13 years where Labour has had extremely large majorities, meaning that the public will be more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

However, the conditions that prolong the government’s honeymoon like the ‘time for a change’ feeling are likely to dissipate very quickly. As cuts begin to impact on frontline public services people will inevitably become less sympathetic, in addition to this we have had a few minor political scandals with David Laws and Chris Hunhe, and now a larger competence-based scandal surrounding Michael Gove, which will accumulate and test the public’s patience.

Labour has to act in two stages, the immediate term and then a deeper approach. The timing of this falls along two parallels, primarily with the duration of the government’s honeymoon period and secondarily the long process of the Labour Leadership election.

The Tory strategy is almost crass in its execution; Labour left us in this mess, but we are clearing it up. They gibber about the deficit and they panic over national debt, completely neglecting the economic recovery and, even more surprisingly, forgetting the massive global financial crisis that Labour had to deal with to stop the economy collapsing.

True or not, fair or not, their criticism has a bold simplicity. Our argument is more evolved than theirs which means it is more difficult to understand and therefore less popular. It operates under what I call the “Garden Shed Principle,” which is to say that normal people understand how their household finances work, and how to use bank overdrafts, and so it resonates when Cameron uses such an analogy. Nobody knows whether saving the banks is worth trillions and billions because nobody can really understand whether it is value for money. Yet the anger was so much more explosive during the expenses scandal because people know the price of a garden shed, and when an MP claims several thousand pounds for a duck house, they can see the injustice.

The solution is to disarm the government of the argument. The Tories are in the same mode as they were before the General Election in that they are trying to frame the debate around what happened in the past instead of policies for the future. We have to move the debate forward by “accepting and moving on.” Harriet Harman as acting leader is in the perfect position to act as a lightning rod and clear the ground ready for the new leader to make a fresh start without so much baggage left over from the credit crunch.

A strategy of Soft Opposition currently seems the most appropriate for Labour. My example to follow is how Zapatero conducted his party before becoming the President of the Spanish Government in 2004. His prescription was to be as calm and constructive as possible, even going so far as to offer pacts to the government of the time, which under Aznar was as equally dangerous as ours is now.

Zapatero was famous for this almost bipartisan style of opposition, for which the British public seem to have an appetite at present. Although some would suggest that the Socialist victory in Spain was as an indirect consequence of the Madrid bombings, the evidence showed a firm, slow but steady improvement for the PSOE in the polls. This is exactly the kind of foundation we need to lay over the next four years.

In contrast, the bland and non-confrontational style of Zapatero in opposition, which I must say suits perfectly all five Labour Leadership contenders, made his attacks against the government much stronger. Labour will look so much more competent and even statesmanlike than Cameron did when he was constantly on the offensive like the noise of WWI artillery.

To conclude this series, I hope that I have demonstrated some of the key features of the new government and set out a plan for Labour to proceed in opposition. The coalition showed that the Tories could not win a majority by themselves even in such favourable conditions. Labour needs to use this to our advantage in order to shrink both the Tories and the Lib Dems into a co-dependent state. The Tories lose their teeth and the Lib Dems lose their independence.

The coalition will survive for the duration of the Parliament; the conditions are right for it to last because we have seen just how willing the Lib Dems are to throw away their principles. The government is structurally sound because the Tories do not depend on the Lib Dems to be in power, but for the Lib Dems this is their only chance.

The fact that the coalition will go the distance is good for Labour as we can occupy a broader space on the centre-left. It is important to stick the other two parties together, which is why we are better off referring to John Major’s government and its divisions over the callous spending cuts of Thatcher.

In doing so, we must move away from the line that the Lib Dems betrayed their voters. If the voters feel betrayed, we cannot mock them if we want their support, this is why it is better to dismiss the Lib Dem leadership as useful idiots or even hostages in some cases, while we concentrate are arguments against a typical Tory government.

However, we do need to understand that the game we play with the Lib Dems has changed, or perhaps it would be better to say ‘exposed.’ This is why we have to resist the obvious temptation to mock their hypocrisy.

Finally, Labour needs to accept responsibility for its record in government and act accordingly. We have to show that the party is not bitter and can be constructive, but that we are always ready to right for those who need help. It is a case of picking battles carefully.

The coalition does not represent New Politics, but as the Labour Party it is our duty to come up with new ideas.

In a Politics Show debate between the three prospective chancellors, Andrew Neil asked a flailing Vince Cable “Isn’t the greatest myth of this election your reputation?” In some respects, he was right, because when the Liberal Democrats joined the Tories in government several myths surrounding the party were proven and others were dispelled.

It has now proven beyond doubt that the party is a broad grouping of people from across the political spectrum, or a rag-tag mob of unprincipled opportunists, depending on your register. Clearly, however, it can no longer be suggested that the Lib Dems are somehow more to the Left than the Labour Party because with the exception of a few collaborators like Frank Field a Lab-Con pact is unthinkable let alone a full-blown grand coalition like in Germany.

Gone too is the myth that the Liberal Democrats are “equidistant” between Labour and the Tories as Paddy Ashdown had hoped. They best they can hope for now is to be known as watered down Tories, but considering that they are making up the numbers in a Tory government (as I set out in Part Four) this will be unlikely to comfort Labour tactical voters or anyone who voted Lib Dem to stop the Tory candidate.

Most importantly, we can no longer say that it doesn’t matter whether you vote for them or not because “they’ll never get in.” We now know that they can get ‘in’ and after all the interfering in the electoral system, it is quite possible that a permanent feature of government will have the Lib Dems ‘in’. Fortunately, though, it is still true that whether you vote for them or not, their policies will never be implemented, just those of the party with which they side.

This presents an extraordinary opportunity for Labour. As the one and only party of opposition (ignoring ‘others’) we can legitimately and effectively steal what made the Lib Dems unique as a party, which is to take away the catchphrase of “the other two parties.” Throughout the debates, Nick Clegg tried continuously to emphasise or create similarities between Labour and the Conservatives. With the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives together, both of which will be, defending their identical record in government (taking credit themselves for successes and blaming the other party for failures) the work is already done for us.

The Lib Dems threw away their independence as the third party; they are no longer a protest vote and can no longer claim to be an alternative, real or otherwise. It is now clearer than ever that it is up to Labour to resist the damaging austerity of the new conservatives, and the ones Cameron is leading as well.

The idea of the Lib Dems as an alternative to the Tories as a kind of Labour substitute is an important one. It leads me to explain in more detail a point I made briefly in part Four, which is to examine the case of the MoDem in France.

The MoDem is almost identical to the Lib Dems, from its orange/yellow colours, to its centrist rhetoric to its composition of left and right factions. It also provides an interesting precedent for what might happen to the Lib Dems in Britain from which we may draw some conclusions.

In the Presidential elections in 2007, the MoDem leader Francois Bayrou won a surprisingly large 18% of the vote. This gave the party a certain element of confidence before the local elections in 2008, at which he tried to assert his party’s independence as the ‘third force’ in French politics. The strategy was to refuse ‘bipolarisation’ and make deals on a case-by-case basis. Depending on local factors, the MoDem decided either to go it alone, campaign alongside the Socialists or campaign alongside the conservatives. Consider the difference between what Lib Dems say and do in the North with the words and actions of Lib Dems in the South.

The strategy was confusing and opportunist, and showed just how little independence it really had as a third party, provoking internal dissent (notably in Lyon, a large socialist city) and their vote fell considerably.

The decline continued in the European Union Parliamentary elections in 2009, where the MoDem vote dipped from 12% to 8%, and it officially lost its ‘third force’ status to the Greens. There were two main criticisms that explained such a failure. The first was the MoDem’s lack of an ideological spine; the second was that the campaign focused itself too much on the personality of its leader. The parallels for Britain should be evident. Finally, in the Regional Elections in March 2010, the MoDem secured its worst score ever of 4.2% leaving the movement essentially moribund.

The MoDem lost because they failed to win credibility. The question we have to pose is whether the act of being in government makes the Lib Dems more credible, to which I would say no. Though they have a little bit of experience for a handful of ministers, they have lost or thrown away everything the party had tried to establish since the 1980s. They abandoned their position on Tuition Fees, they abandoned their position on cuts and it can only be a matter of time before the voters abandon them.

If Labour lost its soul during its period in office, the Lib Dems have sold theirs for a few ministerial cars (which Cameron then took away). Our job now is to make sure Labour remains credible in Opposition, which I shall discuss in my sixth and final article.

Primarily, coalitions do not break down as easily as we are prone to think they do, and they last for as long as they need to last. Cameron can no longer call an election as it suits him, not least because he would need to include his deputy, who happens to be leader of a different party, it will even be constitutionally unavailable pending the introduction of Fixed-Term parliaments. Given the games the two parties are playing with 55% and 66% and dissolution votes being different from No Confidence votes, the framework is being set to keep the coalition in government for the whole five years.

If the coalition is going to be constitutionally secure, it is also structurally sound. We might have assumed that more Lib Dems would be feel uneasy working with the Tories but there has been little resistance so far, with the exception of a little tantrum over the rise in VAT. There seems to be very little dissent and no defections yet.

However, the VAT rise may be revealing. The parliament is young and the government has yet to face any real stress tests on difficult decisions where there exists a huge canyon between policies. With the exception of the Euro currency crisis, “Europe” as an issue is unlikely to arise as it did over the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. The economic crisis is over and slowly recovering, giving the government a temporary sense of direction as it aims to reduce the deficit, which will keep the two parties on the same path.

The real pressure will come when by-elections and councils start to swing, but until then we have no effective barometer. Thus far, the Liberal Democrats have shown themselves to be much closer than anyone had expected, and coalitions have gone the distance between much more distant colleagues.

The regional government of the Generalitat in Catalonia has been governed by a coalition of three parties (a ‘tripartit’), and is now just a year away from the end of its mandate. They have been able to stick together despite mutually exclusive policy differences; that is to say, one party is against independence and the other is for it, as we might imagine a Labour-SNP coalition in Holyrood. The tripartit has been relatively successful in implementing and delivering a program. A government with three voices and three leaders gives itself to certain incoherence; the government will spin “normal constructive debate” but it inevitably gives the impression of disunity and confuses the public.

On a national level, it is more appropriate to draw a parallel with cohabitation in France. Cohabitation, where the President was of one party and the Parliament was of another, occurred three times. There was the widespread assumption that the public institutions would halt, and there would be political deadlock until the next election. This never happened because they found a way to work together; in essence power, responsibility, and the realities of government; something with which the Lib Dems are wholly unaccustomed, kept them together.

The Cohabitation governments were inevitable when Presidential terms were seven years and parliamentary terms were five years, but there was a constitutional provision for it but our constitution (or lack thereof) means that on the one hand the Coalition is flying blind. On the other hand, it also means that they are free to move and adapt with little constraint. As constitutional reform is on the agenda, they have even more freedom to set precedents for the future.

The coalition only exists because no party could win a majority. Depending on the effects of tampering with the electoral system, this is not the New Politics, but we are stuck with it for now at least.

In 1993 there was talk of conservative one-party hegemony, and that Labour would probably never govern again. We know now that it was not the case. Then in 2006, it was thought that Labour had established permanent electoral advantage, which wasn’t true either. Since before 1945, it seemed impossible to believe the Liberal Democrats would ever be in government, but how wrong we were.

The coalition had a lot of new features and breaks several historical precedents but there is no reason, above all after just a few months, to assume it is here to stay forever. Despite this, it presents Labour with a very special window of opportunity to which it must learn to adapt quickly.

I consider myself to be in a unique position to observe the coalition; from June 2009 to January 2010 I worked for Labour’s sister party in France, the Parti Socialiste. From then until June 2010 I moved to Spain where I was a student and activist in our other sister party, the Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol. Since then I have returned to Nice where we, that is to say the Socialists, are in a coalition government following a victory in the regional elections on March 2010.

Coalitions, with a few historical exceptions, are not the British way. The panic and confusion in the days preceding and succeeding the General Election over the spectre of a hung parliament demonstrated the lack of precedent in a constitutional blind spot. Such uncertainty rarely happens on the continent, where deal making and compromises are a regular component of politics in other European countries.

This is why I have written a series of six articles under the theme “Countering the Coalition.” Having discussed the issue with everyone from grassroots members to civil servants to parliamentarians, I hope that my proposals and conclusions we be of use to the Labour Party, as we learn to adjust to our new role in Opposition against an unknown enemy.

In the series, I intend to discuss first what Labour’s aims and objectives should be and how the coalition might affect politics in general terms. In the second part, I will argue why the coalition will stay the course for the duration of the parliament, instead of breaking down as originally predicted. Next, I intend to show how a durable coalition is more beneficial to the Labour Party than one that breaks down. The fourth part will set out how we should react to the Lib Dems, while the fifth will discuss how we should act against them, as well as considering why their poll rating and publicity failed to translate into electoral success. Finally, I will make the case for how Labour should conduct itself in Opposition in order to achieve the objectives described in the previous sections.

It will be to nobody’s surprise that the main goal of a political party in Opposition is electoral success. I will discuss short-term strategy in Part six, but in the long term it is clearly in Labour’s interest to steal permanent support from both of the government parties. The Lib Dems are an obvious target, particularly in the south of England.

Tactical voters do not tend to come home. An example of this is my own constituency party of Bath; a safe Liberal seat, but with the Tories posing some threat. It became that way in 1992, where the safe Tory seat of Chris Patten became the site of a famous decapitation by the Lib Dem Don Foster (who until recently was Culture/Media/Sport spokesman). His win was largely attributed to a large portion of the Labour vote voting tactically, which has never recovered. In 2010, the Labour vote was reduced by 7%, and Foster increased his majority.

The example should hopefully show that we can now use this period to bring back Labour tactical voters and soft Lib Dems (who ever heard of them?). A university lecturer of mine was a strong Labour activist in the 80s, but left the party because of New Labour and the Iraq War, he said something that will stay with me for a long time: “I didn’t feel like it was home anymore, in many ways, it was the Labour Party that left me.”

In wider terms, we have to accept that the next election is five years away, but it presents us with a new challenge. There is a lot of ground that needs to be recuperated in local councils, because it is only by showing people that we have a local dynamism we can be trusted with a local mandate. Time means that we should revive the Blairite “toehold strategy” of a Labour group in every council.

By increasing Labour representation as a whole, the party can grow permanently, which is desirable. This seems fairly evident, but it is worth considering on a more profound level. A good illustration is the fall and rise of the Liberal Party, which in the post war period had between 6 and 12 MPs. Instead of being consigned to the dustbin of history, they have slowly a steadily grown and their party has now returned to its status of “a party of government.”

Parties, therefore have a certain status that give them credibility and consequently representation. In Europe, there are generally three types: the dominant kind, like the Labour Party in Britain and the PSOE in Spain, which can form governments and command majorities. Then there are opposition parties like the Parti Socialiste in France and the SPD in Germany, which are capable of governing, provided only that smaller parties give them a boost. The rest can usually be called influential parties, like the French Communist Party, that can only hope to participate in a minor capacity as part of a coalition, trying to extract the odd concession.

Labour should therefore allow the coalition parties to be so tightly bound that they can be squeezed together and compressed, while Labour expands to fill the gap. The idea behind it is to try to “downgrade” the Tories from dominant to opposition while also weakening the Lib Dems. The ideal result will be to make them co-dependent without the capacity to form a permanent anti-Labour alliance.

The coalition is already showing signs that it is more cohesive than we might have originally anticipated. In part two, I will try to show why coalitions, in particular this one, stay together more often than they fall apart.

A is for… Afghanistan

NATO forces are fighting insurgents in Afghanistan with casualties increasing; each week the Prime Minister announces a few more British troops who have lost their lives.

B is for… Brussels

The Government plans to introduce a “Sovereignty Bill” to require a referendum every time power is moved from Westminster to Brussels. They have broken away from their natural sister parties in the European Parliament to form their own group.

C is for… Cuts

Cuts dominated the election campaign and the Chancellor is pushing for up to 40% budget cuts in government departments, as well as public sector pay and jobs.

D is for… Deficit

The government claims to be dealing with the largest peacetime deficit (ignoring Afghanistan and Iraq) in history, forgetting the massive bailout required to stop economic collapse during the financial crisis.

E is for… Emergency Budget

A manifesto commitment, the Chancellor announced an “Emergency Budget” within 60 days of taking power. It announced cuts and tax hikes in an “80-20” ratio.

F is for… Fisking

A debate technique for internet nerds, whereby one article is ripped apart and argued with point by point, usually producing very long, boring and anal responses.

G is for… Gulf War

The Iraq war remains a controversy; the Conservatives forgot they voted in favour of it, Labour tries to distance itself from it and the Lib Dems can’t criticise it anymore because they’re now in government.

H is for… Harriet Harman

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who is now Acting Leader until the end of September, she took over when Gordon Brown suddenly resigned after the election.

I is for… Immigration

Always a subject of debate; from asylum seekers to polish plumbers.

J is for… Johannesburg

Where the World Cup took place.

K is for… Kremlin spies

Russian Spies from the Cold War were caught operating in a small house in the USA, 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down.

L is for… Labour Leadership

Following Gordon Brown’s resignation, the Labour party is now in the process of electing its new leader.

M is for… Milibands

David and Ed Miliband, two brothers, two former cabinet ministers and two leadership contenders.

N is for… NHS

The National Health Service is apparently to be ring fenced from damaging cuts.

O is for… Obama

The American President is under pressure to save the world, and then a massive oil disaster washes onto his shore.

P is for… Petraeus

The general who masterminded the “troop surge” in the Iraq War, he is now in command of the troops in Afghanistan, replacing General McChrystal who was fired for a series of unwelcome remarks.

Q is for… The Queen

This was the first election where it was thought that the Queen might need to intervene. She didn’t though.

R is for… Referendum

The Lib Dems wanted PR, then a referendum on PR, then AV. In the end, they got a referendum on AV. The conservatives plan to campaign for the “No” side and Labour should do likewise.

S is for… Smoking Ban

The Labour government had planned a review of the Smoking Ban five years after it was introduced. This will not happen under the new government.

T is for… Twitter

This was supposed to change the election. All it did was change the columns in the Guardian. A “social networking site” for political obsessives.

U is for… Underdog

During the election, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party tried to present themselves as the “underdog”. It worked for Rocky, after all.

V is for… VAT rise

One of the main features of the Emergency Budget was to raise Value Added Tax to 20%, after the previous government lowered it from 17.5% to 15%

W is for… Website

Please vote for mine in the Total Politics Blog Poll. Click the button on the right or this link here.

X is for… X-factor

Simon Cowell, famous for manufacturing Pop Tarts through TV “talent” shows came out and supported, to everone’s surprise, the Conservative Party.

Y is for… Youtube

YouTube never really took off in politics, after the Tory Party launched “WebCameron” featuring the Conservative leader washing dishes.

Z is for… Zac Goldsmith

The Tory MP who ousted former Lib Dem London Mayoral candidate Susan Kramer, it was published in 2009 that he had “non-domiciled” tax status.