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UK Higher Education Policy and the Global Third Way

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Title: UK Higher Education Policy and the Global Third Way


1
UK Higher Education Policy and the Global
Third Way
  • David Jary

2
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3
The argument
  • Concept of Third Way much disparaged as lacking a
    clear definition.
  • Anthony Giddens, the theorist most identified
    with the concept, insists that the case for the
    reform of social democracy and social welfare
    that is central to the Third Way has gained
    global support
  • New Labour higher education policy remains
    much influenced by the concept.
  • I explore the view that working with the grain of
    Third Way theory, Labour governments policies
    and provides the best way forward to a higher
    education that matches the needs of the global
    knowledge economy and enhances social inclusion
    and social justice.

4
The article
  • The article reviews developments in UK higher
    education including the 2003 Higher Education
    White Paper and the 2004 Higher Education Bill in
    the light of central tenets of Third Way theory,
  • Sees New Labour Higher Education policies as
    strong embodiments of Third Way principles
  • Although they build on Tory policies grounded in
    neo-liberal and mainstream management theory -
    and a good deal of disparagement of these
    policies within higher education including
    widespread criticism of a culture of targets and
    audit New Labour policies differ significantly
    in other respects, not least in combining an
    emphasis on sound public finance and strong
    public services.

5
Giddens on the Third Way
  • Critique of historical materialism (1985)
  • Account of the dynamics of global society and the
    global knowledge economy (1990).
  • Mouzelis (2001 436) unlike most other
    progressive thinkers, he squarely sets aside
    all expectations of a transition to socialism and
    concentrates on the much more relevant problem
    of the humanisation of capitalism.
  • Beyond Left and Right (1994) a bridge between
    Giddens previous theorising and his later
    writing on the Third Way.
  • Giddens (2001) argument is that with the
    collapse of state socialism and the triumph of
    market mechanisms and the new importance of the
    knowledge economy there is today no political
    alternative to the Third Way.
  • For Giddens the Third Way, and in the UK New
    Labour is, for the present at least, the only
    show in town capable of responding realistically
    and progressively to modern requirements,
    including the reform of the welfare state and of
    education

6
The rationale of the Third Way
  • Expressed most fully in the writings of Anthony
    Giddens (1994, 1998, 2001, 2002a). His
    articulation of the Third Way is aimed at taking
    progressive politics beyond the traditional
    dividing lines of left and right and at the same
    time meeting the demands of the global economy
    and the objective of advancing social justice.
  • The Third Way not an attempt to find a halfway
    point between the Old Left and free market
    fundamentalism (Giddens, 2001).
  • Rather, as seen by Giddens, it is a
    distinctively left of centre project it is
    about the modernisation of social democracy.
  • Giddens has continuously reoriented himself as a
    public intellectual and has become far and away
    the major theorist of the Third Way.
  • Sometimes referred to as Blairs guru, Giddens
    accompanied Blair in his Third Way seminars with
    Bill Clinton, whose Democrat administration and
    the Democratic Leadership Council first advanced
    Third Way politics in the USA.

7
Blair on Third Way
  • For Tony Blair (2003), the main elements of the
    Third Way for New Labour are as follows.
  • the economy, acceptance of fiscal disciplines
    together with investment in human capital,
    science and knowledge transfer to meet the needs
    of knowledge and information society
  • civic society, an emphasis on rights and
    responsibilities, a new citizenship contract
  • public services, investment to ensure equality of
    opportunity, but a restructuring to provide more
    individually tailored services built around the
    needs of the modern consumer and to secure the
    public goods that markets, if left to themselves,
    could not provide.
  • Thus New Labours modernising stance
  • Differs significantly from Old Labour or
    neo-liberalism/Thatcherism not least in combining
    an emphasis on sound public finance and strong
    public services
  • As such, New Labours policies involve
    continuities as well as discontinuities with
    traditional Labour values.

8
Not only Blair or New labour
  • Although a significant influence on New Labour,
    the Third Way is not simply about Blair or New
    Labours policies or programmes.
  • As well the current policies of New Labour, it is
    the more general potential of Third Way theories
    and politics that are the focus of this article.

9
Looking at higher education specifically
  • What is above all distinctive about the Third Way
    is its dual nature its mix of marketisation,
    the introduction of market relations between and
    across various sites in society on the one hand
    and its concern with equity and social justice
    on the other with the intention of deflecting
    the most corrosive effects of market forces
    through state regulation and state support.
    (Rajani Naidoo 200025)
  • Reform strategies in higher education reflect
    these twin aims.
  • Whether the tensions between them e.g.
    maintaining globally competitive world class
    universities whilst widening participation can
    be satisfactorily resolved is a primary issue.
  • However an explicit recognition that these
    tensions exist and must be confronted in a
    realistic higher education policy can be regarded
    as a crucial feature of distinctively Third Way
    higher education policy.

10
1996 General Election campaign emphasised
education, education, education reflected
Gordon Brown endogamous growth assumption of a
virtuous circle between human capital and
economic growth
  • The expectation that higher education will
    contribute to enhancing the nation states
    competitive edge in the global market place by
    developing innovations in knowledge and
    technology and producing new smart workers
    (Naidoo, 2000).
  • Traditional role in training an academic elite
    and attention to the importance of an improved
    science base plus a heightened emphasis on the
    importance of higher education as preparation for
    increasing areas of employment requiring
    adaptability and flexible skills.
  • Although disparaged by some critics on the Left
    as a narrow emphasis on employable selves also
    an argument that an expansion of numbers and a
    widening of participation in higher education
    will be crucial in delivering increased social
    inclusion and wider social benefits, including
    citizenship and social justice.
  • But the role of education in a fulfilling life,
    as a good in its own terms receives emphasis,
    notably in The Learning Age a Renaissance for a
    New Britain. Education is extolled as a personal
    acquisition and a collective benefit. (Toynbee
    and Walker, 2005)

11
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13
Significance of key documents in relation to
Third Way themes
  • Higher education expansion increased student
    numbers and improved research funding aimed at
    improving economic competitiveness and expanding
    the personal and social benefits from higher
    education
  • Widening participation aimed at achieving
    improvements in social justice as well as human
    capital
  • Increased student contribution to the funding
    of higher education seen as necessary to expand
    mass provision and also to support financially
    poorer students
  • Greater accountability and improved management of
    higher education and support for enhanced
    professionalism
  • Improved responsiveness of higher education
    (including targets and resource competition and
    emphasis on partnership and knowledge transfer)
  • Encouragement of increased private funding

14
Three Phases in New Labour HE policies -
Continuities and discontinuities with Tory
policies Whilst phase 1 and 2 list policies
already implemented, Phase 3 is more promissory
and represents the aspirations of New Labour
15
Uncertainty and risk and accountability, audit
and enhancement in an expanded new higher
education
  • Uncertainties re new kinds of students, new kinds
    of courses and newly established institutions and
    the efficiency and value for money of higher
    education expansion
  • Demand for accountability and audit also fuelled
    by pressures
  • from students for a democratisation of the
    control of teaching and learning,
  • from employers and students a demand for greater
    relevance and transferability in the
    knowledge and skills provided by courses..
  • Although commissioned by a Conservative
    government, the Dearing Report provided a
    powerful impetus to New Labour policies not least
    in the areas of quality management and
    enhancement.
  • One significant outcome of Dearing was the
    creation of Institute of Learning and Teaching
    (ILT) and the Learning and Teaching Support
    Network (LTSN), now incorporated into the Higher
    Education Academy, developments generally viewed
    favourably as involving an appropriate mix of top
    down and bottom up processes.

16
Negative aspects of regimes of accountability
and quality enhancement in UK Higher Education
  • Successive regimes of quality assurance and
    accountability and new managerialism in UK
    higher education in part associated with New
    Public Management continued under New Labour,
  • The importation of new languages new
    discourses and Foucauldian cultures of
    self-improvement within institutions
  • Alienating to many academic staff and often
    regarded counter-productive as distracting from
    the real world of teaching and learning, and
    leading to a game playing pursuit of favourable
    ratings without necessarily contributing to an
    enhancement of learning and teaching.
  • Nor, is the information provided by audits
    about institutional performance or the
    standards of learning and teaching always seen
    as useful.
  • As suggested by Michael Power (1994 1997), the
    messages given-off by audits often fail to
    reflect institutional realities.

17
Power, Giddens, Keoane etc on Audit and a Third
Way agenda
  • Notwithstanding the pathologies of audit, the
    ubiquity, inescapability and legitimacy of what
    Power refers to as the audit explosion is
    emphasied by him.
  • Appeal of audit as a seemingly effective
    portable management tool directly related to a
    new environments of trust and risk and the
    increasing centrality of institutional and
    personal reflexivity in a global society.
  • In such a risk society (Giddens Beck, 1992)
    the internal monitoring and adaptation of
    performance becomes a prerequisite for survival
    and effectiveness.
  • Robert Keoane (2003) also sees the necessity and
    legitimacy of accountability in a global and
    would-be democratic age. Accountability as
    hierarchical and supervisory legal, peer
    accountabilityalso arises from the
    reputational sensitivities of institutions.
  • Thus accountability is not only a consequence of
    neo-liberalism but is a vital element in a
    necessary democratisation of control of public
    institutions and crucial in the context of a
    Third Way agenda.

18
Quality assurance mechanisms in universities
  • First introduced in 1992 the Teaching Quality
    Assurance became the responsibility of the
    Funding Councils, and the Higher Education
    Quality Council carried out reviews of
    institutional processes.
  • In 1997 the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) was
    established, replacing this arrangement, but a
    troubled organisation widely regarded as failing
    to respond adequately to the critiques of
    audit.
  • In recognising the pathologies but also the
    legitimacy of audit, the objective of critics
    like Michael Power is to seek its reform.
  • Seeks move from Type A low trust, mechanistic
    and ineffective or counter productive forms to
    Type B, high trust, dialogical forms of audit

19
Powers Two Types of Audit
  • TYPE A TYPE B
  • Quantitative Qualitative
  • Single Measure Multiple
    Measures
  • External Agencies Internal Agencies
  • Long Distance Methods Local Methods
  • Low Trust High Trust
  • Discipline Autonomy
  • Ex Post Control Real Time
    Control
  • Private Experts Public
    Dialogue

20
Reform
  • A reflexive debate on accountability and audit
    in higher education prompted by critics such as
    Power is an emerging system with less mechanical
    systems of audit and greater trust
  • Subject reviews, previously conducted by the QAA
    and formulaic, will now be the responsibility of
    institutions, expected to make use of external
    reference points such as the Qualifications
    Framework and Subject Benchmarks provided by QAA.
  • Institutions also to publish a wide range of
    data, including summaries of internal reviews,
    examiners reports, student feedback, together
    with quantitative data on entry qualifications,
    retention and progression, including degree
    results and employment data.

21
Subject Benchmarks
  • Originating with Dearing
  • Subject Benchmarks state the outcomes to be
    expected from particular subjects.
  • Designed to provide frames of reference for use
    in programme specification and in the
    identification and assessment of learning
    outcomes.
  • Provide a reference point for external examiners
    and for subject assessors appraising standards of
    provision.
  • Provide public information about subjects
    intended to be useful to students and employers.
  • Can provide frames of reference to promote
    reflexive internal and external discussion of
    provision.
  • A key issue is whether Subject Benchmarks can
    overcome their association with disparaged
    aspects of QAA processes and contribute to the
    public accountability and enhancement that a
    Third Way higher education policy seeks to
    obtain?

22
Changing methods
  • In terms of Powers Two Types of Audit, changes
    in QAA methods involve movement in the direction
    of Type B Audit, including expanded internal and
    public dialogue
  • Often academics (e.g. Ryan, 2004) deny any
    benefit from quality processes or accountability.
    But researchers into universities as
    organisations (e.g. Becher and Kogan, 1980) have
    long noted a producer interest and a persistent
    lack of social responsiveness of universities
    left to their own devices.
  • An enhanced focus on learning and teaching in
    contemporary higher education has owed a good
    deal to the presence of the quality processes
    extended and fine tuned under New Labour.
  • The Third Way rhetoric is a far from closed
    rhetoric and capable of being taken further by
    academics as well as stakeholders .

23
Four drivers of general UK HE policy
  • 1. Research improvements in the research base,
    especially via world class institutions, to be
    achieved by increased selectivity in research
    funding
  • Teaching and learning maintaining and enhancing
    the quality and reputation/international market
    value of learning and teaching
  • 3. Enhanced engagement of higher education with
    the community, including knowledge transfer
  • 4. Widening participation (and also achieving
    fair access to elite institutions) by
    increasing institutional funding to support
    students from under represented groups and by
    increasing the diversity of institutional
    missions and concentrating new courses on 2-year
    Foundation Degrees.

24
Third Way elements of the HE White Paper
  • Both the White Paper and the HEFCE Strategic Plan
    are replete with earlier Third Way language,
    themes and managerial devices including a
    continuing emphasis on accountability and the
    measurement of performance.
  • But also noticeable is the presence of the newer
    emphasis on the themes of Progressive
    Governance referred to by Giddens (2003).
  • These include a focus on such themes as policy
    delivery, transformative leadership,
    partnerships, enhanced stakeholder involvement as
    well as a further foregrounding of social
    inclusion,
  • The documents also begin to address the decline
    in funding per student of 36 per cent in the
    period 1989 and 1997 and an 8 billion investment
    backlog in investment in teaching and research
    facilities and promise an annual increased real
    funding of 6 per cent
  • All four of the main policy drivers central in
    both documents seek to confront the issues facing
    governments seeking to manage the transition from
    elite to mass higher education.
  • Misplaced to suggest, as does Collini (2003),
    that the White Paper is simply an exercise in
    managerialist language and empty rhetoric. In
    confronting and attempting to reconcile the four
    drivers the White Paper can be seen as a
    radical paper.

25
Potential contradictions between the four drivers
  • Drivers 1 can support 2 learning and teaching
    excellence in top-ranking research universities,
    but 2 is threatened by the reduction of a
    research presence in universities in which
    research funding is already limited and subject
    to further proposed reductions
  • ? Difficulties in realising 3, a strong regional
    research role, in non-research intensive
    universities subject to reduced research funding
  • ? The association of 4 especially with research
    weak and teaching only universities accentuates
    an already existing perverse access in which
    students from under represented groups are
    increasingly located disproportionately in lower
    status and less well resourced institutions.

26
Problematic resolutions of dilemmas
  • The White Papers proposed resolution of such
    contradictions is an increasing acknowledgement
    and encouragement of diversity of institutional
    mission.
  • This resolution is advanced with the best of
    intentions to meet the diverse requirements of
    the global economy and to enhance social
    inclusion and social justice, but the potential
    contradictions are obvious.
  • If only a relatively few institutions are funded
    fully for research, a separation of teaching from
    research will become the reality for other
    institutions. Although largely accepted for Big
    Science, for most other subject areas the
    appropriateness of extreme research selectivity
    and a separation of teaching from research has
    been widely challenged (e.g. UniversitiesUK,
    2003).
  • Whilst widening participation is now a central
    aspect of current higher education policy
    including a unified Aim Higher Programme of
    outreach and partnership activities such new
    access for previously underrepresented groups
    risks being even more a perverse access if it
    occurs mainly in second class institutions and
    is associated only with second tier of graduate
    or non graduate careers.
  • Advantages may exist in a limited reputational
    range in university provision that must be
    weighed in the balance against any more extended
    hierarchy.

27
But confronts dilemmas
  • Although it can be critiqued in the above ways,
    it is characteristic of the White Paper that the
    dilemmas of higher education expansion are
    confronted even if it can be argued that the
    White Paper sometimes resolves these largely
    rhetorically.
  • What the White Paper can be commended for however
    is its recognition of the requirement for major
    system change as part of the worldwide transition
    of higher education from an elite to mass and
    to an increasingly universal system (Trow,
    2005).
  • This contrasts with a much commentary critical of
    the White Paper that responds to higher education
    change only with traditional higher educational
    mantras.
  • The prominence of such nostalgia and a seeming
    denial of any necessity for change found
    especially in the UK reflects the previous
    exceptionalism of UK higher education, its
    relatively delayed passage to a mass system and
    an, in some ways, beneficial attempt to run an
    expanded elite system seen notably in a
    unitary conception of the undergraduate degree.
    However, this mind-set can become a limit on
    discourse, restricting imagination in envisaging
    reforms
  • A modernising Third Way rhetoric offers instead
    an expanded context for discussion of the future
    of higher education in which the dilemmas of
    expansion can be debated.

28
The 2004 Higher Education Bill and the Third Way
  • Main debate about the 2004 Higher Education Bill
    focussed on three of its proposals
  • Legislation to allow universities to charge
    top-up tuition fees of up to 3,000
  • 2. a deferred, income-dependent graduate
    contribution to the costs of higher education to
    the costs of higher education
  • 3 the creation of the Office for Fair
    Access (OFFA) charged with approving individual
    agreements with institutions intending to charge
    top-up fees on their proposals to improve access
    from underrepresented groups, including provision
    for scholarships and bursaries.

29
Third Way logic of the proposals
  • In underlining the the Third Way logic of these
    proposals we can note the support for a graduate
    contribution expressed by Anthony Giddens (cited
    in Goddard, 2003)
  • Higher education will be free at the
    point of delivery. I think theres a principle of
    equality. Its crucial that universities get more
    funding and the proposal is equitable. The
    current scheme is like a middle class subsidy.
  • The overall justice of New Labours proposals
    also arises from a generous provision for
    bursaries, scholarships, maintenance grants, and
    access funds for students from poorer
    socio-economic backgrounds. This is substantially
    the case also argued by the then Education
    Secretary, Charles Clarke. Giddens reiterates,
    as does Clarke, that renewal is essential.
  • Critics of the policy of a student contribution
    (Callender and Kemp, 2002) point to debt
    aversion and less family support for students
    from lower socio-economic groups as likely to
    deter participation. But such research is not
    conclusive and there is no direct evidence of a
    deterrence effect. In so far as top up fees
    represent a further increment in the
    marketisation of higher education that may
    exacerbate perverse access, this will need to
    be kept under review and there are proposals to
    do so in association with the Bill.

30
Giddens on Current Policies Generally
  • For Giddens and New Labour The contemporary
    left needs to develop a dynamic life-chances
    approach to equality, placing the prime stress
    upon equality of opportunity (Giddens, 2000
    86).
  • As clear in The Third Way (Giddens, 1998),
    despite its revaluation of the terms of Left and
    Right politics, equality, remains a highly
    important aspect of the renewal of social
    democracy.
  • It is crucial especially with respect to its
    implications for social inclusion life
    chances, a personal sense of wellbeing and
    self-respect are directly at stake
  • A democratic society that generates large-scale
    inequality is likely to produce widespread
    disaffection and conflict (Giddens, 1998 42).
  • Giddens notes that from 1975 and 1995 the
    percentage of total national spending on
    education declined but has increased under New
    Labour.
  • Since educational success reflects economic
    inequalities, family income support and
    pre-school provision is also crucial. Hence the
    continued emphasis by New Labour on the
    importance of successful programmes such as Sure
    Start and Family Tax Credits aimed at supporting
    young families especially in areas of
    deprivation.
  • Without an emphasis on a more general uplifting
    of opportunity and social justice a 50 per cent
    enrolment in higher education may exacerbate
    social exclusion by creating a new education
    divide.
  • Nevertheless the goal of a 50 per cent
    participation rate remains emblematic of New
    Labour higher education policy and the Third Way,
    compared with Conservative higher education
    policy which is to end expansion.

31
Giddens on Current Policy
  • Significantly Giddens (2002b 2003) refers to
    the necessity of a more ideological Phase 2 of
    the Third Way that supplements the investment
    state with an ensuring state.
  • In more general terms, the Third Way is
    reasserted as involving a defence of the public
    interest and the public sphere, and the provision
    of public goods.
  • This does not mean always eschewing markets but
    it will require a renewal of trust in the public
    sector, which more satisfactory forms of
    accountability can help to realise.
  • As Giddens insists, endorsement of a market
    economy does not imply endorsement of a market
    society.

32
Conclusions My argument is that
  • In viewing New Labours higher education policy
    in Third Way terms its coherence is apparent.
  • In the Higher Education 2003 White Paper and the
    2004 Higher Education Bill, the Third Way focus
    of New Labour policy has been significantly
    extended.
  • A previous over emphasis on efficiencies ended
    and funding increased.
  • New managerialism and a recourse to management
    tools continues, but these tools has been refined
    and the harder forms of top-down management
    counterbalanced by a greater recognition of the
    importance of working more with the grain of
    academic subjectivities in pursuing Third Way
    objectives.
  • The Office for Fair Access can be viewed is a
    crucial part of a compromise on top-up fees and
    is a departure some previous performance-oriented
    policies in that it will aim to achieve its
    objectives via dialogue with institutions rather
    than by imposing targets
  • Marketisation and resource competition continue,
    but these represent strategies that seek to meet
    intractabilities and genuine dilemmas in higher
    education policy exacerbated by global pressures
    on UK higher education. New Labour higher
    education policy can be commended for facing up
    to these.

33
Conclusions
  • Reservations exist even among supporters of the
    generality of New Labour higher education
    policies (Scott, 2004).
  • Nevertheless, although it should be acknowledged
    that management tools such as performance targets
    can be associated with unwanted unintended
    consequences, it should also be recognised that
    they have played a positive part in focusing on
    the enhancement of both teaching and learning and
    research.
  • An enlargement of the ways in which the student
    voice can be heard such as the national
    student questionnaire can be viewed in a
    positive light as advancing Third Way objectives.
  • Compared with a previous donnish dominion and
    the producer interest that has sometimes
    prevailed in higher education, an emphasis on
    students as critical consumers (Blackstone,
    1999) The ivory towers have been breached and a
    much more inclusive system created (Bahram
    Bekhradnia, 2004)

34
Conclusions
  • The Third Way is far from being the contentless
    rhetoric its critics sometimes suggest.
  • Even if it remains in part merely a rhetoric, it
    is a rhetoric that provides significant space for
    debate and further policy developments.
  • There is in the Third Way a recognition of the
    difficult dilemmas posed by global context of UK
    higher education provision, that the goal of
    social inclusion and social justice on the one
    hand must be counterbalanced against the aim of
    an enhancement of UKs global market position on
    the other. The hope of 2003 White Paper is that
    the two goals can be complementary although it is
    clear that contradictions exist.
  • A crucial ongoing issue will be how far the
    current policies in fact achieve a satisfactory
    balance of elite and mass provision. For example,
    an increase in positional advantage may be the
    paradoxical outcome of democratisation in which
    free markets always risk leading to
    winner-take-all outcomes.
  • Thus a higher education system that seeks to
    minimise unnecessary accentuation of positional
    advantage must be the objective of a Third Way
    policy. An emphasis, for example, on improving
    fair access to elite institutions should not
    distract from the wider objective of limiting to
    what is strictly necessary the institutional
    hierarchy and perverse access within a
    functionally diversified but, in fact, socially
    divided higher education system.

35
Conclusions
  • The merit of Third Way policy is that it links
    economic necessities and social justice.
  • With the demise of the old left, no other
    current political context offers this possibility
    or confronts the dilemmas in higher education to
    the same degree.
  • This is the sense in which the Third Way can be
    seen globally and for the UK as the only
    show in town with any prospect of continuing the
    enlightenment project of an emancipatory social
    democracy.
  • It is for this reason that it can be suggested
    that no alternative currently exists to working
    with the broad flow of a global Third Way and
    that the Third Way may represent the best way
    forward for a higher education that meets
    national needs within the whilst attending to
    social inclusion and social justice.
  • Particular formulations of the Third Way need not
    be accepted uncritically. I would argue that it
    is integral to the Third Way that it can be
    reflexively refined.

36
Critics, Questions
  • Critics
  • Unraveling?
  • Alternatives
  • But real alternatives?
  • Correctible - Giddens cf Blair. Toynbee

37
Postscript 1 The 2005 Schools White Paper
  • Raising standards for a globalised world
  • Audit and information and accountability (but
    lighter touch)
  • Diversity and choice
  • Partnerships and new providers
  • Rights and responsibilities, e.g. parenting
    contracts

38
Postscript 2 Cameron and New Conservatism?
  • Kettle requirements for a successful Tory leader
  • Cameron
  • End to oppositions for oppositions sake
  • A new consensus?
  • Miliband and Alexander
  • Different values traditional values in a modern
    setting (Prescott)
  • Texas (tone and personality) not Islington and
    Third Way
  • Ideology, e.g. no return to selection on
    ability
  • The Tories do not believe in equal opportunity

39
Martin KettleDecember 3, 2005 Guardian
  • 1. Set a new tone and set it now.
  • Cameron must announce himself unequivocally and
    immediately as a different kind of Tory and a
    different kind of leader. He needs to make a
    clear choice between wanting a low-tax/low-spend
    party and wanting a current-tax/current-spend
    party. He should choose the latter - and then
    stick to it.
  • 2. Stake a claim as Tony Blair's successor.
  • Cameron's main priority must be to push Labour
    off the centre ground by embracing Blair's agenda
    on the public services and economy while
    positioning the Tories, not Labour, as the party
    that delivers without conceding to vested
    interests. Offer Blair's goals without Blair's
    methods.
  • 3. Don't misread Gordon Brown . as the "block
    to progress", Labour's next leader will always
    outsmart them and make them look silly. Brown's
    vulnerability is in the way he works. Attack him
    as a control freak whose plans don't work.
  • 4. Attract voters back from the Lib Dems
  • More than a million voters have abandoned the
    Tories for the Lib Dems in the last decade.
    Cameron needs to invite them back to his changed
    party.
  • 5. Embrace electoral reform.

40
Martin KettleDecember 3, 2005 Guardian
  • 6. Offer a home to green voters.
  • Environmentalism should be at the heart of a new
    conservatism, broadening and modernising the old
    Tory obsession with farming and hunting to
    include climate change, conservation and support
    for cleaner public transport.
  • 7. Modernise on foreign policy.
  • Leave both the obsessive anti-EU and obsessive
    pro-US stances behind. Develop a more moderate
    and pragmatic internationalism, sceptical of both
    federalist Europe and neocon Washington alike.
  • 8. Rebuild the Tories as a national party.
  • The Tories need to look like the rest of the
    country, with more women and ethnic-minority
    representatives.
  • 9. Don't pander to the party.
  • Ditch old obsessions about Brussels, Ulster,
    the West Lothian question, immigration,
    Gibraltar, the BBC, Ken Livingstone, the
    Guardian, Gypsies, shooting burglars, and the
    rest of it. Make use of Ken Clarke.
  • 10. Hope for the economy to go bad
  • Yes, it's still the economy, stupid.

41
Miliband and Alexander December 8, 2005 Guardian
  • In the last three elections Labour has reflected
    the progressive instincts of the British people
    in favour of quality childcare, greater
    investment in achools and hospitals and the urge
    to make poverty history
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