Last night in London, Liberal-Democrats leader Nick Clegg learns what it’s like to be the junior member of a coalition … again. Speaking to try and keep open his doomed House of Lords reform bill, he was all but drowned out by a wave of abuse from both Labour MPs and conservative rebels, whose numbers will probably kill it.
It was a pretty strange sight — especially given that the Tory rebels were arguing that changes to the Lords would challenge the legitimacy and authority of the Commons.
But for all the roasting Clegg was getting, at least it was coming from the rebels. The bizarre ALP attack on the Greens is on another level entirely, because it is coming from the heart of the government which the Greens support.
It seems strange to be pointing this out, yet the essential absurdity in this last desperate strategy by the ALP seems to be little discussed. It’s a measure of how cynical many of the party are about their own electorates that they have no problem bitterly denouncing a party that they are practically in a civil commitment with, if the Julia/Bob Brown/bloke from The Big Bang Theory photo is anything to go by.
Who knows? Perhaps the strategy will work in the short term, among a section of the terminally confused. It relies on Sam Dastyari’s argument that the ALP had to treat the Greens like One Nation and define them as an enemy. That was to be expected. What was depressing was to see the move being taken up by usually decent people such as Greg Combet, announcing that the Greens did not share “our values”.
But in the longer run, such a strategy is more contradictory than the ALP realises. The ALP didn’t have to “make” an enemy of One Nation — it was an enemy of One Nation. There was a genuine underlying division between the philosophy of the two parties, with the ALP being, however vestigially, a progressive humanist outfit, with an implicitly universal standpoint. One Nation was conservative/reactionary, chauvinist and racist, paranoid and resentful. Putting One Nation last was a no-brainer — the ALP has always preferenced hard-right parties behind the Liberals. And putting One Nation last was a “popular front” strategy as well, in which the Libs also participated. One Nation defined themselves against the universal values of enlightenment modernity.
In that context, the term “enemy” is literal — there’s a point in relations with a party like One Nation where dialogue ceases (all the more so when pointing to examples with fully fascist parties such as Greece’s Golden Dawn), where it would be improper to continue dialogue, where all that one can decently do is oppose. To have a genuine enemy is a source of energy, self-definition and clarification.
To define the Greens as an “enemy” is to do something entirely different. It is to take a party which has the same values — equality, self-flourishing, universalism, scientific rationality, etc — put together in a somewhat different constellation and emphasis, and try and define it as radically “other”. Mainstream social democratic parties have done that to parties to the left of them before of course — but that usually involves literal extermination. When the more leftish party keeps hanging around, the shared nature of the values tends to become obvious.
How, for example, is the ALP going to make an “enemy” out of Adam Bandt’s campaign to have Medicare extended to the dentistry through the “Denticare” program? Or of a campaign for a better work/life balance? Or for a sovereign wealth fund? Of course they can’t and won’t. They’ll try and paint the party as a “deep green” outfit, out to de-industrialise the world. Which happens to support them in government. Which, etc, etc. Turning the Greens into a political enemy demands an extraordinary degree of fabrication.
One danger for the party centre in trying this malarkey is that they won’t be able to enforce the strategy and lose the loyalty of local rank and file, such as they are. Asking voters to put the Liberals ahead of the Greens in certain electorates will expose the fabricated nature of the “enemy” relationship. If this ludicrous campaign continues, the ALP may well find itself in a worse position.
Even worse than Nick Clegg. And that takes anti-talent.
A “ludicrous” campaign? Really? Why do the Liberals ask their voters to install Greens candidates by consistently pref-ing them in seats like Melbourne and Grayndler? They’re not getting a return favour.
In Grayndler in 2010, the Greens candidate was able to demand a recount on 24% of the primary, knowing that he had the Liberal prefs. Adam Bandt is only a member because the Liberals wanted him there… and they would do that again without batting an eyelid… Who really is being ludicrous, Guy?
Greens do very well in very affluent areas (Balmain, Byron Bay, Carlton), some of the richest electorates in the country. These people are not Labor voters, never have been and never will be. I reckon that’s a good enough definition of “enemy.”
The ability of Labour in retreat to make a bad situation into a terrible one, is just amazing. If they suceed in convincing voters that the Greens’ values differ to the ALP’s, the least likely result is that those who vote Green 1 ALP 2 (for the want of any better alternative major party) will come scurrying back to the ALP. More likely is that the vote will change to Green 1 full stop.
While it may be refreshingly honest for the ALP to admit that it is nowadays far closer to the conservatives than it is to any semblence of a progressive, humane social democratic party, it’s hardly a way to differentiate itself in the political marketplace. Those of conservative bent will continue to vote for the real thing. Those of progressive bent have now been given the best authority to cut loose from the ALP at last.
Scientific rationality a Greens ‘value’? Don’t make me laugh. Sure Greens look at scientific information rationally, unless it comes from forestry science, hydrogeological science, nuclear science, epidemiological science, radiological science, the science of risk analysis, genetic engineering science, fisheries science…and don’t get me started on the dismal science.
That’s a pretty big reach, Russel.
Rather than argue that the Greens must be an enemy of Labor because of their electorates, how about explaining the ways in which the Greens are closer to the Liberals in policies and philosophy?
‘Howard battlers’ ‘NSW Right’ ‘Labor heartland’
If those are the terms in which our political strategists think, is anyone surprised by the outcomes?