Duty of Opposition is to oppose

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first
refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming
that the matter is already settled.
Having established that, we can go on to something that
appeared in The Times on 3 January this year.Let's agree we want division by Ross Clark

JUST ONE little word from the lips of David Cameron has filled me with hope. The word was “awful”, and he used it to describe Gordon Brown. Thank God, I thought: the Tory leader and his frontbench have now finished their brief flirtation with consensus politics and can get on with the job we pay them to do: arguing with Her Majesty’s Government. Why David Cameron should ever have thought consensus politics was a vote-winner I can’t imagine. The last time the main political parties engaged in a consensual approach was in the 1970s, when they agreed to agree that workers should be forced to join trade unions, prices and incomes should be fixed by the Government and that most heavy industry should belong to the State. A fat lot of good that did the country. It was only thanks to a battle of ideas in the 1980s that such socialist dogma could be exposed as a folly. Consensus politics would do the country just as much harm now as they did in the era of Heath and Wilson. If the Tories send Tony Blair’s education “reforms” through on the nod, as Mr Cameron has indicated they will, the failed ideology of comprehensive education will be holding back pupils for another generation. Whatever the reason for the Tories’ third election defeat, it wasn’t because voters were put off by the party’s imaginative manifesto promise to give parents vouchers with which to buy their children’s education at independently run schools; in fact, given the reluctance of the Tories to sell their big idea, I doubt whether it registered with voters at all. I presume that Mr Cameron’s pledge to end “Punch and Judy” politics was an overture to that great swath of the population who are assumed to be “turned off” by politics. If the Tories think they can win over this group by politely agreeing with Mr Blair and doing little deals with him over lunch they can think again: it would merely give the chronically apathetic even more reason to denounce politicians for all being the same. As for those of us who do take an interest in the governance of the country, we expect something in return for the £60,000 a year that we pay our MPs: verbal bare-knuckle fights. After all, most of us bicker with each other over schools, hospitals, roads and Iraq all the time; unless our MPs do the same they are not properly representing us. I escaped any really heavy political education or indoctrination. I was for a brief spell a member of the Young Communists back in the days of Harry Pollitt. That was mainly because the female Young Communists were allegedly proponents of Free Love. One could also get very cheap flights to Russia - about £15 in todays money. My plot was to get £30 and a Free Lover. Don't quite remember what happened about the trip bit and I think one experience of unshaven armpits and un-deoderanted Free Love was sufficient. Harry gave me a bit of status at post-match celebrations in the Rugby Club when it came to the student song about him.