The Labour left has never particularly cared for David Marquand. That much is underlined by an amusing story about Roy Jenkins’ farewell speech to the House of Commons, prior to taking up a job as Britain’s European commissioner.
Marquand - pictured left - had resigned his seat to become his mentor’s chief bag carrier.
Jenkins – often nicknamed Woy, on account of his tendency to pronounce the letter R the way the rest of us pronounce W – announced: ‘I am leaving without rancour’. Quick as a flash, Dennis Skinner quipped in that Derbyshire accent of his: ‘I thought you were taking Marquand with you!’ Boom boom.
A classic one liner indeed, but perhaps a little unfair. This man probably qualifies as Britain’s leading living social democratic intellectual. Think of him, if you will, as the Ideas Man behind Polly Toynbee.
Over a long career in politics and academia, Marquand has displayed a definite ideological consistency, to an extent that makes him something of a broken record. It’s just that this consistency that has found expression through a bewildering variety of vehicles.
A Labour MP from 1966 to 1977, he went on to join the breakaway Social Democratic Party, sitting on its leading bodies throughout its entire existence. By the early 1990s he had metamorphosed into an enthusiastic Blairite; these days, he is an equally enthusiastic critic of Blairism, and was one of the 20 founder-members of soft left pressure group Compass. Now, it seems, he has rather taken to that nice young man David Cameron.
In an article in the Guardian today, he chides the left for habitually deriding DC as a closet Thatcherite. That is a serious misunderstanding, he reckons: Cokehead is actually a ‘Whig imperialist’, a term that appears to be of Marquand’s own devising, and moreover one that has not found widespread acceptance outside his own writings.
As befits a good pet concept, the term is conveniently malleable: for today’s purposes, it seems to mean what the rest of us would refer to as a One Nation Tory of the Baldwin, Butler or Macmillan stripe.
In other outings, Churchill is upheld as the main exemplar of this strand. Indeed, not so long ago, Marquand was arguing that Churchill-style Whig imperialism is nowadays ‘untenable’, as it does ‘not address the reality of a post-imperial Britain in a proto-federal Europe and therefore cannot mobilise the kind of support that would be necessary for a new paradigm to come into effect’.
Just hang on a minute, though. I seem to remember that as recently as 2003, Cameron was still a rightwing backbencher who mocked wind farms as ‘giant bird blenders’, called for ‘a massive road-building programme’, supported Section 28, and opposed the minimum wage.
True, he’s projecting a new image for electoral purposes, and very successfully too, it seems. But it’s quite clear what his gut instincts are, and ‘Whig imperialist’ seems an unnecessarily hifalutin way of describing a guy who is essentially just another Tory under the skin.
I expect the coming Conservative government that will be in office shortly will be rather more moderate than its 1980s predecessor. But that will be because that is what the ruling class requires of it, and not because of any inherent philosophical differences with the past.
Posted at 14:13, 29 August 2008
Comments (12)
I think he means a Whig Imperialist as in someone who believes that the export of Western Values, Liberty, Democracy, Enlightenment etc etc should be key planks of a bold and expansive foreign policy. Cf The Whig view of History.
Thanks, Persephone. But (a) isn't that neoconservatism? and (b) is that what David Cameron thinks?
He had a point when he spoke about 50s Conservatism not being a regression to the 30s. He might have added that prior to 1997, Tories said Labour were going to take us back to the 70s, which palpably didn't happen.
The claims emanating from Labour are not generally convincing people...
Denis Skinner? I was told it was Neil Kinnock (and for a few minutes I thought more highly of Kinnock because of it).
Did Cameron support Clause 28?
Dave
We've reviewed your blog here
Thought from his other witterings that the Wancour kinda meant impiricist? I think he is projecting his own fantasy onto a tabla rasa on this one. He almost says as much. There is no evidence I can think of for any of his analysis.
Cam will do whatever it takes to get on the right side of the electorate.
Perhaps Boris is a Whig and Ken too ... but not Fox or Gove or Osborne or Duncan or even the freedom fighter Davis ... they're proper Cons the lot of them.
‘not address the reality of a post-imperial Britain in a proto-federal Europe and therefore cannot mobilise the kind of support that would be necessary for a new paradigm to come into effect’.
*Puts head in blender*
I assume that Marquand uses a nineteenth centrury reference deliberately, and therefore surely a "whig" is by definition the opposite of a "one nation Tory".
To me it would imply laissez faire capitalism with pateralist imperialism.
Strange though that Marquand should use this as a distinguishing mark distinct from thatcherism, because Thatcher hersoelf explicitly located herself as a whig rathet than a Tory, praising Palmerston as the greatest nineteenth century prime minister.
"...a definite ideological consistency, to an extent that makes him something of a broken record."
As a journalist, you probably don't regard that as an accolade Dave (hardly makes for good copy) - but in my book, there's no higher praise.
Britain – or England, to be more exact – was famously the home of the first great revolution of modern times, in the shape of the Civil War of 1642-1651.
*ahem*
I'd say the Dutch revolt against Spanish oppression of 1568-1648 has as much if not more of a claim to that title.
Some of us thought the British Empire couldn't come back from the surrender of Singapore in February 1942, during the second world war. Why didn't people who were alive at the time see it like that?