Author Archives: Paul Anderson

New Times, 17 October 1997

Most of the British press had no doubt who was responsible for the collapse of Italy’s centre-left government last week: the unreconstructed hard-line Marxists of Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation). They refused to tone down their opposition to the government’s plans for cuts in pensions – part of its attempt to ensure that Italy qualifies for first-wave membership of European economic and monetary union – and thus left prime minister Romano Prodi facing the prospect of losing a parliamentary vote on the budget.

The story is a little more complicated than that, however. It is true that Rifondazione, led by the stubborn Fausto Bertinotti, includes some real political fossils. It is also true that it was intransigent in its insistence that the government make some concession to secure its support in parliament.

But by no means everyone in Rifondazione is a diehard Stalinist, and winning concessions from the government is what Bertinotti and his comrades see as their job. In the April 1996 general election, which gave Italy a left-dominated government for the first time, Rifondazione, created by members of the old Italian Communist Party (PCI) who opposed its transformation into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) in 1991, won nearly 9 per cent of the vote. That gave Rifondazione 35 seats in the chamber of deputies – enough to make it an essential ally of the PDS-dominated “Olive Tree” coalition whenever the right and the regionalist Lega Nord voted together in parliament.

Until discussions began on the budget, Rifondazione was broadly supportive of the government, flexing its muscles only intermittently. But it consistently made clear that it would not back large-scale reductions in welfare spending merely to allow Italy to take part in EMU. Bertinotti and his party would have lost the substantial credibility that they have patiently built up with working-class voters if they had not used all their leverage over pension rights. Italy’s economy is doing well, and many voters do not see why they should go through yet another bout of austerity.

Equally important, Rifondazione was not the only one playing intransigent over the budget. Bertinotti had made it clear that, although he needed a concession, he was open to suggestions about what precisely it should be – and it is likely that agreement could have been reached had it not been for the inflexibility of PDS leader Massimo D’Alema.

D’Alema was quite happy to see the collapse of the government because he wants an early general election, which he believes would return a PDS-centre government  that would not have to rely on the support of Rifondazione – and would thus have far greater freedom of manoeuvre.

He might be right. The main right-wing party, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, is doing poorly in the opinion polls and is tainted with corruption. There is a good chance that the Olive Tree coalition, making the most of the voter-appeal of its latest recruit, Antonio Di Pietro, the investigating magistrate who became a popular hero for his pursuit of political corruption in the early 1990s, would make substantial inroads into the territory formerly occupied by the Christian Democrats.

There is, however, a big problem with D’Alema’s strategy. The president of the republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who alone has the power to appoint prime ministers and dissolve parliament, does not want a snap election and is doing all he can to create a new government without one. If he succeeds, D’Alema will not be easily forgiven by many in the PDS for the part he played in throwing power away.

New Times, 19 September 1997

If all that mattered in politics was the state of the economy, this month’s general election in Norway would have been a walkover for the Labour Party, in government as a minority administration since 1986, latterly under Thorbjorn Jagland . Unemployment is below 5 per cent and falling, inflation is just over 2 per cent, and interest rates are low. Largely because of a dramatic growth in North Sea oil revenues, Norway’s gross domestic product grew last year by more than 5 per cent. Norway has never had it so good.

Yet far from expressing their gratitude by backing Labour, Norway’s voters decided to give Jagland a bloody nose. Before the election, he had stupidly announced that he would resign if his party did not better the 36.9 per cent of the vote it took in 1993. In the event, Labour managed only 35.1 per cent, and Jagland had no option but to go – even though his party remains by far the biggest party in the Storting (parliament), with 65 of its 165 seats. He left Kjell Magne Bondevik, leader of the Christian Democratic Party, to try to put together a minority centrist coalition government with the Liberals and the anti-EU Centre Party.

There are several reasons that Labour lost support. Jagland is a lacklustre figure by comparison with Gro Harlem Brundtland, his predecessor as party leader and prime minister – his television performances during the campaign were particularly mediocre – and his government had acquired a reputation for arrogance that was exacerbated by his turning the election into a vote of confidence.

More important by far, however, was Labour’s failure to persuade voters of the wisdom of its welfare policies. Norway’s oil revenues are set to decline in the early years of the next century, just as demography suggests that the country’s spending on pensions and healthcare for the elderly will have to rise. In government, Labour followed a prudent policy of restricting current welfare spending and investing Norway’s oil revenues in equities to ensure that there will still be the means to pay for a comprehensive welfare state in the middle of the 21st century.

But the election result showed that many voters want to have their cake and eat it. The two parties that are most pleased with the election result, Bondevik’s Christian Democrats and the far-right populist Progress Party, led by Carl Hagen, both argued for using oil revenues for increased welfare spending now. The Progress Party’s gains were particularly spectacular: standing on an anti-immigration law-and-order platform, it took more than 15 per cent of the vote (up nine points on 1993) and equalled the Christian Democrats’ haul of 25 Storting seats.

Apart from Labour, the main losers were the Centre Party (which slumped to 8 per cent of the vote from 17 per cent), the Socialist Left Party (down two points to 6 per cent) and the Conservatives (down three to 14 per cent, their worst result since 1945). Both the Centre Party and the Socialist Left Party had more often than not given Labour parliamentary support.

Most commentators believe that Labour will be back in office before long because of the instability of the centre coalition and its weakness in the Storting. But there can be no doubt that Labour has been rattled by the experience of parties to its right gaining by promising more generous welfare provision. Despite all the differences between Norwegian and British politics, there is a salutory warning here for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

New Times, 15 August 1997

After 15 years in power, German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s centre-right coalition government is showing signs of exhaustion. The economy is faltering: unemployment is more than 4 million and the Deutschmark is dwindling in value. The government is desperately trying to reduce its debts to qualify for European economic and monetary union – but its enthusiasm for EMU is not shared by the voters or the Bundesbank, which earlier this year humiliated the government by refusing to allow it to use new estimates of the value of its gold reserves to make the debts look smaller.

Key elements of the government’s legislative programme, most notably its plans for reforming the tax system, have been scuppered by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) majority in the federal upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, which comprises representatives of Germany’s 16 regional states, the Lander. Relations among the three parties in the ruling coalition, Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union, the Bavarian Christian Social Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party are at best fractious.

Rivals to succeed Kohl as the leader of the CDU/CSU are already jockeying for position. In other words, everything suggests that it is time for a change.

But whether the SPD can capitalise on Kohl’s misfortunes remains to be seen. Although it is running at around 40 per cent in the opinion polls, compared with the 36 per cent of the vote it won in the last Bundestag election in October 1994, it is poorly led, divided over Europe and unsure about how far the ‘German model’ of the social market economy needs to be reformed.

Its current leader is Oskar Lafontaine, the rhetorically left-leaning Saarland premier who unexpectedly ousted the ineffectual Rudolf Scharping at the party’s 1995 conference (although Scharping remains the leader of the SPD in the Bundestag). Lafontaine was the SPD candidate for the chancellorship in the 1990 federal election, and he desperately wants to have another go at Kohl in 1998. But he has not given the SPD a clear sense of direction, and he faces a strong challenge for the party’s nomination as candidate for the chancellorship from Gerhard Schröder, the Lower Saxony premier.

Schröder is a right-wing populist in SPD terms who has taken a sceptical position on EMU, arguing that it should be delayed if the convergence criteria in the Maastricht treaty prove too tough. Most of the smart money is currently on Schröder – although that could easily change before the party makes its choice early next year.

Meanwhile, the SPD’s most likely coalition partners in government if Kohl does not make a comeback, the Greens, are enjoying a period of sustained popularity unprecedented since unification, with ratings in the polls of 11 per cent (compared with 7 per cent of the vote in 1994). They have long since metamorphosed into a mature and credible parliamentary party, and in Joschka Fischer, their leader in the Bundestag and a convinced proponent of greater European integration, they have far and away the most impressive politician of the German centre-left.

Green optimists believe that they might take as much as 13 or 14 per cent of the vote in the general election. The first test of the long election campaign for both SPD and Greens comes next month (September) in Land elections in Hamburg – but more important by far are next spring’s elections in Schroeder’s home state of Lower Saxony, which will play a crucial role in determining his chances of becoming Kohl’s SPD challenger.

No one is yet counting any chickens, however. Kohl is the great survivor of contemporary European politics – and it would be no surprise come next September if he manages a fifth consecutive victory.

New Times, 4 July 1997

The new British defence secretary, George Robertson, chose the right time to launch the government’s strategic defence review – the morning after Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton and the leaders of the European Nato countries met in Paris to sign the security deal between Russia and Nato that will allow the alliance to expand eastwards, initially to incorporate Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

The newspapers were almost unanimous in heralding the agreement as an historic breakthrough, not least because of Yeltsin’s surprise declaration that Russia would remove the nuclear warheads on missiles pointed at Nato countries (a statement subsequently toned down by his officials to a promise no longer to target missiles at signatories to the deal).

There could not, it seemed, be a more propitious opportunity to start what Robertson said would be the most fundamental reassessment of Britain’s security needs since the end of the cold war.

And indeed, there is much about the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Co-operation and Security that is very good news. The agreement sets up a new Nato-Russia Council with a permanent secretariat, which will give each side a voice in the other’s security affairs; and it suggests a long list of topics that the council might discuss, from conflict prevention and peace-keeping to nuclear safety and theatre nuclear missile defences. Nato has agreed to re-examine its “strategic concept”, which has remained unchanged since before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Founding Act states that Nato has “no intention, no plan and no reason” to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members. Nato will guarantee its new members’ security by promising to reinforce their defences in time of emergency rather than with substantial permanent deployments of troops.

Yet there are also grounds for scepticism about the deal. For all the hype surrounding it, it could well turn out to be no more than an agreement to create a talking shop. Nato’s declarations on nuclear and conventional deployments and nuclear strategy fall short of absolute promises. And the Founding Act is not a legally binding treaty: it needs no ratification, and it puts neither side under any obligation. Neither can veto anything the other unilaterally decides to do.

Of course, warm words count in international diplomacy, and it is better to have non-binding agreements than none. It is possible that the Founding Act marks the definitive end of the division of Europe created in Yalta at the end of the second world war, as French president Jacques Chirac said.

But it could just as easily be a harbinger of disaster. The success of the agreement depends crucially on Yeltsin’s ability to sell it at home as a victory – which will not be easy. Nato expansion is deeply unpopular across the political spectrum in Russia, and the concessions that Yeltsin has wrung from Nato are too few and too small to guarantee the acquiescence of even liberal opinion. Nationalists and communists have already denounced the Founding Act as a capitulation.

The danger is that as Nato expansion comes closer, its opponents will gain the upper hand in Russia and do their best to block it, which in turn will push Nato to take a less friendly attitude to Russia, which in turn will lead Russia to flex its muscles in what it sees as its sphere of influence (particularly the Baltic states), and so on. Even with the Founding Act in place, Nato expansion could all too easily set off a spiral of mutual mistrust and military escalation every bit as dangerous as the one that characterised the cold war.

The best way to avoid this would be for Nato to reconsider expansion. Failing that, it is essential that Nato takes the sting out of expansion by taking the initiative in disarmament negotiations – particularly on nuclear arms, where progress is stalled by the Russian parliament’s unwillingness to ratify START 2 (largely because of Nato expansion). One easy way to break the logjam would be a unilateral gesture by one of Nato’s nuclear weapons powers. Now how about that as a fresh idea for the defence review, Mr Robertson?