The Spectator’s Notes | 15 July 2006

Because everyone can see that the government can no longer do anything worth doing, there is a widespread assumption that its days are numbered. But this is a non sequitur. In the past, Labour governments could do things only in the short gap between their election victory and their sterling crisis. Conservative governments had a slightly longer effective life, but the Heath administration was pretty much disabled after the failure of its industrial relations legislation in 1972. The period between 1979 and, roughly, 1989 was quite exceptional in having a government that had ideas about what it wanted to do and the political ability to do them. Implosion does not necessarily produce defeat. One might dispute the precise date — it might be Nigel Lawson’s resignation in 1989, for instance — but it would be hard to disagree that Conservative governments achieved very little from 1989 onwards, yet they remained in office for eight more years, winning one election on the way. This could easily happen with Labour, especially under a new leader. Nothing changes the electoral arithmetic that the Tories need an almost unprecedentedly enormous swing to form a government next time, and no law states that boredom and disgust with Labour must translate into Tory victory. It may even be that a prolonged period in which governments can achieve very little is good for the country. Towards the end of her time Mrs Thatcher spoke about there being ‘new dragons still to slay’, and there was a widespread public feeling that the field was already clogged with quite enough dead dragons. Tony Blair says that he needs to stay in office in order to implement more radical reforms. Labour is at its best when at its boldest, he says. Having seen what its boldest is, the country might well benefit from a period of timidity, not to say cowardice.