The soggy consensus of our times is about the very future of Western civilisation

The image of Tony Blair and David Cameron exchanging frilly skirts and pearls is certainly arresting, but the Prime Minister’s reference in California last weekend to rampant cross-dressing was, disappointingly, political. For all the comment that his remarks have engendered, however, we have been here before. When the Economist coined the term ‘Butskellism’ in 1954, it was simply observing that, as Gaitskell wrote after being succeeded by Butler as chancellor, the Conservatives ‘have really done exactly what we would have done, and have followed the same lines on controls, economic planning, etc….’ Both parties were effectively interchangeable, working within the same framework of a mixed economy and government responsibility for full employment.

Today’s fixed points may have changed but the story is essentially the same. There is almost nothing to choose between Blair-ism and Dave-ism. But just as Butskellism was, despite its apparent solidity and safety, fundamentally dangerous — the Keynesian consensus, the soggy centre and the muddled middle which it represented led Britain into potentially terminal decline in the 1960s and 1970s — so today there is another perilous cross-party consensus.