It seems very few people voting in the May 2010 election were aware that the Conservative Party, if it came to power, even as part of a coalition, was going to pursue a hard monetarist policy that makes the policies of the Thatcher years look bland. I complained on this blog that there was very little in the party leader, David Cameron's statements on policy before and during the election and now it is apparent why that was the case as his intentions were clearly to smash the public sector, stimulate the unemployment of millions, crush demand and find many more opportunities for his friends and potential future friends to make money providing previously state-provided services. The borrowing taken out by the Brown government 2008-10, following Keynesian principles, though ironically to buoy up only the banking sector (who without a gram of gratitude to us tax payers who saved them have continued to take huge salaries and bonuses), rather than stimulate the whole economy, has supposedly given Cameron as prime minister the right to smash up the British economy on the basis of ideology rather than any real practical economic approach.
Of course, we have seen this before. Margaret Thatcher was a convert to New Right monetarist views in the mid-1970s and they caught hold in different degrees of virulence in both the Conservative and Labour parties in the late 1970s, assisted by interest groups, notably in the UK's case, the International Monetary Fund. Consequently we saw in the economic policies of the Callaghan government 1976-9 the foundations of what Thatcher would pursue more vigorously 1979-90. The approach was echoed especially in the USA but also large parts of Europe and was seen as the path all the states coming out of Communist control towards the end of this period should follow. Thatcher's approach was to reduce direct taxation whilst increasing indirect taxation (i.e. VAT on goods) and severely reduce the public sector through privatisation in order to reduce the supply of money in the economy and keep down inflation. It was not applied that clinically and Thatcher also took revenge on certain sectors of the economy, notably coal mining and also embraced ideological, not only economic elements of the New Right, such as crushing trade union power, which, it was argued was an inflationary pressure too. Many supporters of Thatcher benefited, having their companies take over everything from collecting refuse and cleaning hospitals to running the major utilities, though railway privatisation was not to come until John Major succeeded Thatcher.
Thatcher's policies led to mass unemployment. People do not seem to realise/remember the way that unemployment was measured during the Thatcher years; the figures excluded numerous people who these days are counted as unemployed. Thus, when official figure in 1982 was 3.072 million there were actually hundreds of thousands more people out of work. In 1997 the new Labour government moved towards ILO figures which are more accurate, yet continued to massage their figures to an extent. You can see the gap when looking even at Labour figures in 2001 which claimed unemployment was below 1 million when, in fact, on ILO measurements it was 1.535 million. With such errors we can estimate that in 1982 unemployment was probably at least 3.5 million if not 4.5 million, anyway between one eighth and one fifth of the working age population was unemployed, depending on the region you were in, even under official Conservative government figures. The UK which had moved to have service-sector industry as the largest contributor to the economy over manufacturing as early as 1974, now rushed headlong into shedding much more of its manufacturing and primary industry, i.e. coal mining, agriculture. Of course, this was part of the European trend at the time but it was done sharply and far faster due to government policies.
Despite hitting record levels of unemployment, Margaret Thatcher kept on being voted back into power, being the longest serving prime minister since 1827. Her government had a 44-seat majority in 1979; 144-seat majority in 1983 and 102-seat majority in 1987. She was removed from power by her own party in 1990 so never actually lost a general election as leader of the Conservative Party. Her successor, John Major, who continued her policies, but tried a more 'human face' to them won a majority of 21 seats, though ironically receiving the highest number of votes any party had won up until that date, scoring over 14 million (of course rising population levels made this easier, but Major got 1 million more votes than the Labour Party scored in 1951 when it actually lost the election despite getting more votes than the Conservatives: this is a consequence of the distortion of the popular vote in the British system). Now, Cameron has no majority, he can only remain in power either with the acquiesence of the Liberal Democrats, or what he was fortunate to be able to do, having them in a coalition with the Conservatives. I doubt even if he manages to limp to the end of his (hoped-for fixed) term of office, he will not win the next election.
Why do I think this? Cameron has learnt from George W. Bush('s adviors) that if you use something so apparently scary, then you effectively get a blank cheque to carry out whatever extreme policies you want to. I have already outlined what cutting 25% from the Department for Education will mean to your local school in terms of teacher numbers, let alone what it will mean for prisons, social workers, health care professionals, job centre staff, etc. To reach that figure you could easily wipe out whole departments of government and their employees, e.g. laying off all teachers and all prison staff only scratches the surface of the cuts. Thus, all of us, even if we use private education, private health care and drive our car everywhere are going to see the impact. Have you tried telephoning a tax office recently? Will you dispose of all your own refuse when the dustbin collectors come once per month? Will you feel safe when every prison has lost a quarter of its staff and the police have lost a quarter of theirs and there are literally no social workers in some towns? Yes, Bush's policies work to a certain extent, but they do not buy you or your ideas longevity, you can see that the US electorate preferred a (half-)black President over more of Bush.
While Cameron may have learnt from Bush, he does not seem to have learnt at all from Margaret Thatcher. What enabled her to come back to office time after time, despite her running down so much of the British economy and so throwing people right across the social spectrum out of work, was that she worked on building a core constituency across the country. There has always been the 'working class Tory' in the UK, i.e. someone from an ordinary background who may not have had many opportunities in life but adheres to the aspirational aspects of Conservatism, driven by patriotism and a belief that personal problems are not shaped by impersonal factors like the economy or society but by personal effort. Thatcher knew that beside the big business people who went round gathering the fruits of lower taxes, deregulation of working environments and privatisation, there was another constituency to attract. These were the people enabled to buy their own council houses and who bought a few shares in British Gas. These were the people who were told it was the trade union at their workplace causing the unemployment not the employer making cuts to reduce costs and re-employ the same people at lower wages. These are the people that won John Major the 1992 election and bolstered Thatcher's majorities. These are the people who went over to Blair who seemed to speak their language, had a bit of the tawdry glamour they like, was not going to reverse the Thatcher policies and Thatcher bigotry against 'laziness' that they love.
Cameron is not addressing this constituency. Instead, he has gone for his 'big society' which sounds painfully like a Liberal Party policy from the mid-1970s. It may be based in Christianity, but these days it seems rooted in a kind of wishy-washy hippy approach to things. Of course, Cameron sees charities and volunteers as stepping into the void left by sweeping aside huge swathes of national and local authority provision. However, he does not realise, since Thatcher declared there was 'no society' people feel absolutely no obligation to help their neighbours, and their sense of 'community' is very narrow, excluding a large range of people in their district on basis of class, ethnicity, age, even which town they were born in. They have no interest in helping these people and feel uncomfortable in being pressed to do so. They never despised 'the state' in the way Thatcher did, because in fact through the 1980s it was the state which gave them the fruits. In addition, the state, takes away from them all the things they would otherwise have to worry about, like where the young people of their district will live. In fact, they want a stronger state with more police and stricter rules about who lives where. Cameron's big society depends on shared vision and a willingness to help the less fortunate, this is not what the Thatcher supporters want, they favour segregation and their 'fair share' of state provision. Just look at the schools they have flocked to, faith schools with selection. Cameron, and especially Michael Gove, in contrast, tell them to set up their own schools, something they do not have the time from watching sport or going to the tanning salon, to do.
Cameron's problem is that he has been far too distant, all his life, from mainstream society. Thatcher came from a grocer's family and went to grammar school. John Major worked in a garden ornament business, for the electricity board and in a bank. Cameron and Blair were clearly part of the elite and for much of their lives never mixed with ordinary people. Even though Thatcher and Major were certainly above working class, they met and saw people who were far worse off than themselves. They may have then seen it as the way to get on was through your own efforts, but they saw people who were less lucky or did not have the inclination to 'pull themselves up'. Thatcher knew that out of the batches of the ordinary she had to engage and get political support at least from the people like herself who ended up somewhere better than they had started. Cameron has no idea how to do this; I doubt he has any real understanding of such people, and unlike Blair, the prime minister he most resembles, he lacks the simple charm and good advisors to enable him to approach the interests of such people. Blair also had 'Old' Labour members still around to keep dragging him back to contact with ordinary people; Cameron seems to lack even the small business person connections, let alone any route into the views of the Disraelian-style working class Tory, whose watchword is not monetarism, but 'decency'. Cameron is too much like Bush when he told the ultra-wealthy that they were his core constituency. With the electoral college system and some jiggery-pokery that was sufficient for Bush to win twice. However, the British political system, even without proportional representation will not be that forgiving to Cameron.
Cameron is offering nothing to those people who will tip the balance between him winning or losing the next election or in fact, if the coalition chooses, to go for an election before then to boost the Conservative majority. The only thing we keep hearing is about cuts and even for those voters who like to pride themselves on being self-made, they will begin very soon to see the impact of those all over in terms of the condition of the roads, how long they have to wait in government offices, the level of crime and so on. Cameron could win them over by stealing more ideas from the UKIP, because one thing that this constituency likes is to bash Europe and foreigners in general. However, Cameron has backed away from even the kind of bigotry and high profile complaints over immigration we heard around election time. They have shut off immigration of the kind big business likes, i.e. low-paid, but I imagine they expect to fill those jobs with the growing domestic unemployed. The failure of the BNP at the last election and banning of English Defence League marches is taking some pressure off Cameron from the right, but the 'soft' bigotry of UKIP supporters and sympathisers is still a force out there. I am glad he is not tapping into it, but I think as a consequence he has lost the one tool for connecting with that constituency that Thatcher won and held for so long.
I imagine part of the problem is that Cameron's thinking is so distant from the middle classes let alone the working classes of Britain. Edward Heath raced yachts but had come from middle class background, not too different from Thatcher. You have to go back to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who only managed one year as prime minister to find someone so far away from even the well-off in Britain let alone the ordinary people. Cameron, like Bush, moves in such high wealth and privileged circles that he finds it difficult to engage with people who in fact got him into power. Fortunately for the moment in Britain, money does not entirely match votes and Cameron needs to find a way, as Thatcher unfortunately did, of engaging the 'ordinary Tory' if he wants to stay in power for any length of time. I do not think he has the capability of doing it.
Showing posts with label John Major. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Major. Show all posts
Monday, 11 October 2010
Friday, 14 May 2010
The Dark Days Return
When Margaret Thatcher was kicked from office as prime minister by her own party in 1990, I really hoped that we would have seen the last of the nasty, selfish, hopeless days that we had seen when she came to power in 1979. Throughout that period and as a direct result of her policies, Britain faced the highest unemployment it had ever seen, many industries disappeared and many people lived in poverty and others lost their homes. Society became sharply divided and this was expressed by the numerous riots the UK experienced in the early 1980s. Public service deteriorated as local authorities were compelled to take the lowest bidders for any service and they achieved this by paying poor wages; public bodies like utilities were broken off and sold off to the great benefit of speculators and already wealthy business people. The rights of the individual were seriously eroded and it took almost another decade to even get some of these back.
Of course, after Thatcher we had seven years of John Major. Whilst also a Conservative he did not pursue the assiduous campaign to undermine the UK. He did not deny that society existed in the way Thatcher had done and for much of the time he had too small a majority to introduce forceful policies, though railways were privatised much to the detriment of the British economy and society. Some of us hoped that he would fall in 1992, the last time the UK ever had a chance for a Socialist government, but through scare tactics and electoral irregularities the Conservatives remained in power until replaced by the Christian Democrat, New Labour Party which came to power in 1997. Of course, by then the 'centre' of British politics had moved far to the right of where it had been in 1975 and now privatised utilities, even an independent Bank of England were seen as acceptable. New Labour did introduce the minimum wage and signed up to the Social Chapter provided by the European Union but its other policies such as electoral reform and removal of the unelected House of Lords were soon dropped.
Now we have a coalition government, but as William Hague, the new Foreign Secretary noted, the 'bulk' of the Conservative election manifesto will be put into effect. Tactical voters like myself who voted for the local Liberal Democrat candidate they thought might keep the Conservatives out of a seat now feel utterly stupid. Effectively anyone wanting progressive approaches has no voice in this country. Of course, that is precisely what the wealthy like Lord Ashcroft and other corrupt ultra-rich want. The election of New Labour in 1997 was no restoration of democracy, given the deals Tony Blair had to make to get into power, it, in fact marked a further step in the erosion of the influence of ordinary people on politics. With David Cameron in charge control of politics and the economy is now more blatantly in the hands of the elites than it has probably been since Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a former lord, left office in 1964. Cameron is far less 'ordinary' than even Margaret Thatcher. Fortunately a number of his 'babes', young, glamorous, privileged candidates parachuted into constituencies did not get elected, but there are are tens of MPs who owe their position to Cameron and will follow him devotedly the way Blair was able to build a large coterie of devotee MPs around him when he came to power in 1997.
Even with my fear of the Cameron government I was startled at how fast he has moved to further damage democracy, by moving to 5-year fixed term parliaments and making the dissolution of parliament require a 55% majority rather than a 1 vote majority. Yes, of course, this brings stability in the way that a dictatorship brings stability by doing away with those tiresome things called elections. It is interesting that even Conservative MPs are opposing this step, barely days into Cameron's government. I just pray they give him a hard time over this threat to our polity. Cameron seems to combine all the worst of Tony Blair with the worst of Margaret Thatcher. This means not only will he pursue policies that will put millions of us out of work and hundreds of thousands to lose their houses, but he will expect thanks for all the suffering he is putting us through and like Blair be surprised when we complain about what he has done.
I hope that my expectations do not come true. I hope the Liberal Democrats and even Conservative backbench MPs can rein in Cameron's Frankenstein's monster of New Labour media manipulation, Thatcherite economic policies and an elitist focus on carrying out policies that benefit the already highly privileged. However, what I see at least is a return to the 1980s with mass unemployment and as a result social discontent leading to increased racism and rioting. I hate to think of how many wasted years we have ahead of us in which the average person is going to have to battle week after week just to keep a job and somewhere to live. People have analysed how much the people born just before and during the Thatcher period have suffered throughout their lives. I really pity the children of today who from this week onward will have their lives blighted as education and health funding is slashed. In the course of a day, the opportunities of millions were closed down. From now it will be the privileged who get the job, who get that place at university, not the average young person who will be marched into whatever schemes Cameron and his lackeys think up, notably the military-style national service for 16-year olds that he has already promised on numerous posters. Cameron seems to have been raiding Mussolini's handbook for policies. I can only hope that the day will come when I am among the crowd cheering as Cameron is strung up by his feet in Westminster. In the meantime we have to mourn yet another lost generation blighted by economic and social policies aimed at benefiting the very rich and in particular enabling them to deny opportunities and exploit the average person in the UK.
Emigrate now. How many people wished they had left Nazi Germany sooner? Leave now before the UK is turned into an utter wasteland populated by a bullied people struggling just to survive as the privileged literally lord it over them as we take step after step to an authoritarian regime.
Of course, after Thatcher we had seven years of John Major. Whilst also a Conservative he did not pursue the assiduous campaign to undermine the UK. He did not deny that society existed in the way Thatcher had done and for much of the time he had too small a majority to introduce forceful policies, though railways were privatised much to the detriment of the British economy and society. Some of us hoped that he would fall in 1992, the last time the UK ever had a chance for a Socialist government, but through scare tactics and electoral irregularities the Conservatives remained in power until replaced by the Christian Democrat, New Labour Party which came to power in 1997. Of course, by then the 'centre' of British politics had moved far to the right of where it had been in 1975 and now privatised utilities, even an independent Bank of England were seen as acceptable. New Labour did introduce the minimum wage and signed up to the Social Chapter provided by the European Union but its other policies such as electoral reform and removal of the unelected House of Lords were soon dropped.
Now we have a coalition government, but as William Hague, the new Foreign Secretary noted, the 'bulk' of the Conservative election manifesto will be put into effect. Tactical voters like myself who voted for the local Liberal Democrat candidate they thought might keep the Conservatives out of a seat now feel utterly stupid. Effectively anyone wanting progressive approaches has no voice in this country. Of course, that is precisely what the wealthy like Lord Ashcroft and other corrupt ultra-rich want. The election of New Labour in 1997 was no restoration of democracy, given the deals Tony Blair had to make to get into power, it, in fact marked a further step in the erosion of the influence of ordinary people on politics. With David Cameron in charge control of politics and the economy is now more blatantly in the hands of the elites than it has probably been since Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a former lord, left office in 1964. Cameron is far less 'ordinary' than even Margaret Thatcher. Fortunately a number of his 'babes', young, glamorous, privileged candidates parachuted into constituencies did not get elected, but there are are tens of MPs who owe their position to Cameron and will follow him devotedly the way Blair was able to build a large coterie of devotee MPs around him when he came to power in 1997.
Even with my fear of the Cameron government I was startled at how fast he has moved to further damage democracy, by moving to 5-year fixed term parliaments and making the dissolution of parliament require a 55% majority rather than a 1 vote majority. Yes, of course, this brings stability in the way that a dictatorship brings stability by doing away with those tiresome things called elections. It is interesting that even Conservative MPs are opposing this step, barely days into Cameron's government. I just pray they give him a hard time over this threat to our polity. Cameron seems to combine all the worst of Tony Blair with the worst of Margaret Thatcher. This means not only will he pursue policies that will put millions of us out of work and hundreds of thousands to lose their houses, but he will expect thanks for all the suffering he is putting us through and like Blair be surprised when we complain about what he has done.
I hope that my expectations do not come true. I hope the Liberal Democrats and even Conservative backbench MPs can rein in Cameron's Frankenstein's monster of New Labour media manipulation, Thatcherite economic policies and an elitist focus on carrying out policies that benefit the already highly privileged. However, what I see at least is a return to the 1980s with mass unemployment and as a result social discontent leading to increased racism and rioting. I hate to think of how many wasted years we have ahead of us in which the average person is going to have to battle week after week just to keep a job and somewhere to live. People have analysed how much the people born just before and during the Thatcher period have suffered throughout their lives. I really pity the children of today who from this week onward will have their lives blighted as education and health funding is slashed. In the course of a day, the opportunities of millions were closed down. From now it will be the privileged who get the job, who get that place at university, not the average young person who will be marched into whatever schemes Cameron and his lackeys think up, notably the military-style national service for 16-year olds that he has already promised on numerous posters. Cameron seems to have been raiding Mussolini's handbook for policies. I can only hope that the day will come when I am among the crowd cheering as Cameron is strung up by his feet in Westminster. In the meantime we have to mourn yet another lost generation blighted by economic and social policies aimed at benefiting the very rich and in particular enabling them to deny opportunities and exploit the average person in the UK.
Emigrate now. How many people wished they had left Nazi Germany sooner? Leave now before the UK is turned into an utter wasteland populated by a bullied people struggling just to survive as the privileged literally lord it over them as we take step after step to an authoritarian regime.
Friday, 2 October 2009
How 'They' Have Been Killing the Government
Following what seems to have been a very successful speech by prime minister Gordon Brown at the Labour Party conference this week it is interesting to note that the incessant campaign in the media which has dogged him since he became prime minister in June 2007 has slowed a little. I lived through the last days of the John Major governments especially the period 1996-7 when his slim majority was slipping away from him. Major, of course, had replaced Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in November 1990, as Brown did Tony Blair, without a general election until April 1992, more than 16 months after he attained office (Brown has been prime minister for 27 months). This time Brown retains a majority and though there have been some divisions among his MPs he is not as under siege as Major was; he seems to have ridden the scandals over MPs' expenses far better than Major handled the 'sleaze' cases of his terms of office. Brown has come out of the recession pretty well too, being a leading light in the international response and overseeing a stimulus package which may not have achieved all that was hoped for but is certainly immensely better for the average person than the Conservatives 'we can do nothing; it's global economics' approach.
Despite these aspects, there has been an assumption in the media from the moment Brown came into office that he would not remain there long. This is one reason why David Cameron shrieked repeatedly for a general election, even though the example from his own party's history (aside from Thatcher/Major, Harold Macmillan took over after Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister in January 1957 and there was no election until October 1959) showed such an election was 'constitutionally' not necessary, no matter what Conservative supporters argued. Brown had been commended throughout his period as Chancellor of the Exchequer 1997-2007, the longest person in that role since the 1820s, yet he was seen as reined in by Tony Blair so 'safe'. The change when Brown (and he is in fact Dr. Brown, having a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, but unlike in Germany it is seen as bad for politicians to have doctorates and as distancing them from the public) came to power was that the super-rich got nervous.
The very wealthy realised that whilst Blair was Christian Democrat in outlook, with authoritarian tendencies and in fact I have argued nothing more than a Blairist (in the Peronist and Gaullist styles), Brown was a Social Democrat and that seemed to spell an end (or least greater restriction) for their freedom to exploit the British public. Consequently, in their eyes, he had to go. This attitude is summed up by the coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-run, 'The Sun' newspaper saying it had stopped backing Brown, as if it ever really had. The power of 'The Sun' is taken as a given as its campaign against Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party during the 1992 election is seen as being instrumental in leading to their defeat just when it seemed they would be victorious, something they achieved by making repeated spurious claims about Labour's taxation plans that began to be accepted as true even by traditionally Labour supporters.
This time, it has not simply been the tabloid press, but also quality newspapers that have been speaking constantly as if it is fixed that Brown will lose the next election. In fact this easy assumption has done the Conservatives a disfavour because it has meant they have not had to put forward a raft of policies and months after I noted that they seemed to lack any clear policies very few seem to have appeared. It is clear that head of the Conservatives, David Cameron, assumes he will simply win by default and so has no need really to come up with anything distinctive.
Particularly critical is the lack of any policy on how a Conservative government will respond to the recession. This is partly because the Conservative policy going back to the 1920s is simply to do nothing in such circumstances. We may lack the tools for true Keynesian economics but at least Brown as offered things that will stimulate the economy and keep up demand and production and there are local initiatives as I have noted such as in Wales. The Conservatives have paid some lip service to reining in the bankers, but given that a lot of their support and funds come from that sector they are not going to properly restrain those people. Brown has found it near impossible to rein in the utility companies and bankers can we expect the Conservatives for whom these people are lead supporters to even try to be strict?
What policies could we expect from a Conservative government? Well, as I observed, some of them are being acted out in London where Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson has sought to politicise the police force. Aside from that we have seen him lose deputy mayor after deputy mayor due to allegations of corruption and we have seen moronic policies such as scrapping of 'bendy' buses which do nothing for the public but attract media attention. So, with Cameron in Number 10 we are likely to see a focus on headline grabbing policies which do nothing substantial (very similar to many of John Major's policies, remember the Patients' Charter and the Traffic Cones Hotline?) but which cover up some more serious political manoeuvring which takes Blair's steps towards authoritarianism to a further level and will see the police service become increasingly less independent and more directly under party political control.
I hope that the electorate can see through the constant grumbling in the media about Brown and note that Cameron offers nothing which will help people facing unemployment and repossessions. The media that have been peddling the line that Brown is ineffectual can offer no real alternative; many are just toeing the line of their millionaire owners rather than addressing general concerns of the public. Some in the media seem to have worked themselves up into witch hunt mode against 'the others'. I noted the 'Daily Express' headline last week claiming that no more immigrants could enter Britain because it was 'full up'. On that basis we should be compelling property owners to rent out the thousands of empty properties in the UK and stop families from assuming that 'three [children] is the new two' as is constantly stated. Lies about immigrants are now so widespread that it could almost be funny.
A taxi driver in Manchester the other day talking to me about housing started with 'Well, of course, all council housing goes to immigrants and then students...' before he even begun on his racist diatribe. The assumptions of these people is somehow that all councils are filled with liberal people prejudiced in favour of people from abroad and from outside the town, whereas in fact almost every council in the UK is full of conservative (and often Conservative) business people, as bigoted as the average taxi driver. Students are becoming the new pariahs in many towns, but immigrants remain the favourite. No student will get council housing unless they are a person already in a council house going back into study. The waiting lists are so long no student would be processed in the time it takes to study the average degree. The council 'housing' given to asylum seekers is often a detention centre and that to immigrants is usually a dingy bed & breakfast hotel room for a whole family, not a house. However, these assumptions run so deep that even council data will not shake these attitudes.
I honestly hope that the sustained, petty whining campaign against Brown fails. He is not superhuman but I can see that the alternative would be a lot worse. People make an assumption that a Cameron government would be much the same as Brown's, simply a little more glamorous. There is an argument that even if Tony Blair was standing as Labour leader now he would score few votes as at 56 (two years younger than Brown) in 2009 he would not have the appeal he had at 44 in 1997. Reference is made to Brown only having one eye as if that somehow makes him a poor leader. Yet, Winston Churchill, who suffered severe depression throughout his life has never been challenged for his fitness to be prime minister; Lord Halifax who almost became prime minister in 1940 had one hand and Franklin Roosevelt, US President 1933-45 could not stand or walk. In our jobs we cannot be prejudiced against any disability but it seems it is alright to be so in our political choices. I would rather have a leader who has suffered and triumphed than one like Cameron who has been privileged throughout his life. Most of us have never been privileged but so many feel we should have the people running our state to be from very privileged backgrounds. They are not born with any particular ability because of their social status and in fact it distances them from what the bulk of us experience in our lives.
I hope that when we look back on the period 2007-10 we do not see it as the protracted killing of a reforming government simply to install one which is far friendlier to the very rich. I make no predictions for the outcome of the next general election, as anyone who has looked at the 1970, the two 1974 and the 1992 elections will know, those who are confident of victory in British general elections are usually disappointed. However, I believe this media sapping of the Brown administration simply because his political slant is not entirely in line with the super-rich and because he looks the age he is, damages British democracy and quite possibly be leading us into a much more unpleasant civil society.
Despite these aspects, there has been an assumption in the media from the moment Brown came into office that he would not remain there long. This is one reason why David Cameron shrieked repeatedly for a general election, even though the example from his own party's history (aside from Thatcher/Major, Harold Macmillan took over after Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister in January 1957 and there was no election until October 1959) showed such an election was 'constitutionally' not necessary, no matter what Conservative supporters argued. Brown had been commended throughout his period as Chancellor of the Exchequer 1997-2007, the longest person in that role since the 1820s, yet he was seen as reined in by Tony Blair so 'safe'. The change when Brown (and he is in fact Dr. Brown, having a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, but unlike in Germany it is seen as bad for politicians to have doctorates and as distancing them from the public) came to power was that the super-rich got nervous.
The very wealthy realised that whilst Blair was Christian Democrat in outlook, with authoritarian tendencies and in fact I have argued nothing more than a Blairist (in the Peronist and Gaullist styles), Brown was a Social Democrat and that seemed to spell an end (or least greater restriction) for their freedom to exploit the British public. Consequently, in their eyes, he had to go. This attitude is summed up by the coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-run, 'The Sun' newspaper saying it had stopped backing Brown, as if it ever really had. The power of 'The Sun' is taken as a given as its campaign against Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party during the 1992 election is seen as being instrumental in leading to their defeat just when it seemed they would be victorious, something they achieved by making repeated spurious claims about Labour's taxation plans that began to be accepted as true even by traditionally Labour supporters.
This time, it has not simply been the tabloid press, but also quality newspapers that have been speaking constantly as if it is fixed that Brown will lose the next election. In fact this easy assumption has done the Conservatives a disfavour because it has meant they have not had to put forward a raft of policies and months after I noted that they seemed to lack any clear policies very few seem to have appeared. It is clear that head of the Conservatives, David Cameron, assumes he will simply win by default and so has no need really to come up with anything distinctive.
Particularly critical is the lack of any policy on how a Conservative government will respond to the recession. This is partly because the Conservative policy going back to the 1920s is simply to do nothing in such circumstances. We may lack the tools for true Keynesian economics but at least Brown as offered things that will stimulate the economy and keep up demand and production and there are local initiatives as I have noted such as in Wales. The Conservatives have paid some lip service to reining in the bankers, but given that a lot of their support and funds come from that sector they are not going to properly restrain those people. Brown has found it near impossible to rein in the utility companies and bankers can we expect the Conservatives for whom these people are lead supporters to even try to be strict?
What policies could we expect from a Conservative government? Well, as I observed, some of them are being acted out in London where Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson has sought to politicise the police force. Aside from that we have seen him lose deputy mayor after deputy mayor due to allegations of corruption and we have seen moronic policies such as scrapping of 'bendy' buses which do nothing for the public but attract media attention. So, with Cameron in Number 10 we are likely to see a focus on headline grabbing policies which do nothing substantial (very similar to many of John Major's policies, remember the Patients' Charter and the Traffic Cones Hotline?) but which cover up some more serious political manoeuvring which takes Blair's steps towards authoritarianism to a further level and will see the police service become increasingly less independent and more directly under party political control.
I hope that the electorate can see through the constant grumbling in the media about Brown and note that Cameron offers nothing which will help people facing unemployment and repossessions. The media that have been peddling the line that Brown is ineffectual can offer no real alternative; many are just toeing the line of their millionaire owners rather than addressing general concerns of the public. Some in the media seem to have worked themselves up into witch hunt mode against 'the others'. I noted the 'Daily Express' headline last week claiming that no more immigrants could enter Britain because it was 'full up'. On that basis we should be compelling property owners to rent out the thousands of empty properties in the UK and stop families from assuming that 'three [children] is the new two' as is constantly stated. Lies about immigrants are now so widespread that it could almost be funny.
A taxi driver in Manchester the other day talking to me about housing started with 'Well, of course, all council housing goes to immigrants and then students...' before he even begun on his racist diatribe. The assumptions of these people is somehow that all councils are filled with liberal people prejudiced in favour of people from abroad and from outside the town, whereas in fact almost every council in the UK is full of conservative (and often Conservative) business people, as bigoted as the average taxi driver. Students are becoming the new pariahs in many towns, but immigrants remain the favourite. No student will get council housing unless they are a person already in a council house going back into study. The waiting lists are so long no student would be processed in the time it takes to study the average degree. The council 'housing' given to asylum seekers is often a detention centre and that to immigrants is usually a dingy bed & breakfast hotel room for a whole family, not a house. However, these assumptions run so deep that even council data will not shake these attitudes.
I honestly hope that the sustained, petty whining campaign against Brown fails. He is not superhuman but I can see that the alternative would be a lot worse. People make an assumption that a Cameron government would be much the same as Brown's, simply a little more glamorous. There is an argument that even if Tony Blair was standing as Labour leader now he would score few votes as at 56 (two years younger than Brown) in 2009 he would not have the appeal he had at 44 in 1997. Reference is made to Brown only having one eye as if that somehow makes him a poor leader. Yet, Winston Churchill, who suffered severe depression throughout his life has never been challenged for his fitness to be prime minister; Lord Halifax who almost became prime minister in 1940 had one hand and Franklin Roosevelt, US President 1933-45 could not stand or walk. In our jobs we cannot be prejudiced against any disability but it seems it is alright to be so in our political choices. I would rather have a leader who has suffered and triumphed than one like Cameron who has been privileged throughout his life. Most of us have never been privileged but so many feel we should have the people running our state to be from very privileged backgrounds. They are not born with any particular ability because of their social status and in fact it distances them from what the bulk of us experience in our lives.
I hope that when we look back on the period 2007-10 we do not see it as the protracted killing of a reforming government simply to install one which is far friendlier to the very rich. I make no predictions for the outcome of the next general election, as anyone who has looked at the 1970, the two 1974 and the 1992 elections will know, those who are confident of victory in British general elections are usually disappointed. However, I believe this media sapping of the Brown administration simply because his political slant is not entirely in line with the super-rich and because he looks the age he is, damages British democracy and quite possibly be leading us into a much more unpleasant civil society.
Friday, 2 May 2008
People Wrong to Think Labour Will Lose the Next General Election
I was quite astounded at the weekend to read that Labour MPs are going around assuming that their party is going to lose the next election which has to be held by 2010. Labour has been in power since 1997 and it seems typical in Britain that we tire of the same politicians after a decade. This is why Tony Blair left office after that time, that and the fact he was exhausted by the job. Owing to the fact that in the 1970s Labour and the Conservatives came in and out of power almost in turn, there is some kind of assumption that long periods of rule by one party are not acceptable in the UK. However, in fact, it was the 1970s that were the anomaly. The National Government was in power 1931-45 (14 years), the Conservatives 1951-64 (13 years), 1979-97 (18 years) and Labour 1964-70 (6 years) and 1997-2008 (11 years, so far). Of course within those governments there have been elections and changes of leader and ministers, but it has been the same party in power. Why should not Labour have at least another 7 years following Blair's period, and Brown still be in power in, say, 2014 in the same way that John Major was Conservative Prime Minister 1991-1997 after the years of Conservative Margaret Thatcher (1979-1991)?
The government is facing many challenges, primarily economic, but ones which are predominantly out of its control and stem for the global jostling for resources that I have regularly noted on this blog and which seem to resemble a real-life game of 'Risk'. In fact Brown's economic stringency of the past decade has probably protected the UK from experiencing even worse problem. The UK is always going to be vulnerable because of its obsession with buying houses which are huge items of capital expenditure for most families that are hard to sell on and have so many elements feeding into them that people cannot modify their expenditure on them the way they can even with consumer items like food. In addition, the privatisation of the UK utility companies means that the government is powerless to rein in the huge profits they make at the expense of ordinary consumer. The fact that BP and Shell the UK and part-UK owned oil companies announced quarterly (i.e. just in 3 months) profits of £7 billion (€8.82 billion; US13.7 billion) suggests that actually big business is not suffering at all from the 'credit crunch'.
A Conservative government would be as impotent in the face of global demand and multinational companies as a Labour one is. In fact given their aversion to regulation and control they would probably handle it worse. The only thing that is going to stop the average person suffering even worse than they are now with consumer-goods inflation, is through greater regulation and intervention. Petrol has risen from £0.87 (€1.09; US$ 1.71) per litre last year to £1.10 per litre now and it is predicted to reach £1.50 per litre by mid-2009 almost a doubling in 20 months; diesel is even higher so affecting the freight industry so raising the price of food and consumer items. Clearly given the vast profits of the oil companies such price rises are not needed to compensate for their increased costs. With the Conservatives in power, the bank Northern Rock would still be floating around with no-one willing to take charge of it and with its risky financial products and need to secure more business it would be continuing to unsettle the jittery bank sector. Labour currently intervenes too late. The UK economy would be better if Northern Rock had been nationalised in 2006 not 2008. Fear of being labelled 'Socialist' is hindering the current government from acting in good time. The Conservatives, in contrast, would not act at all and simply blame workers for trying for higher salaries and would probably engineer a house price collapse as they did in 1990-3, knowing that British people do not riot or revolt they simply blame foreigners for their problems and the Conservatives can tolerate a few race riots.
Why would anyone then vote for the Conservatives? Okay, so most people dislike greater state control, but what different can the Conservatives offer compared to Labour anyway? The policies of Labour and the Conservatives are very close, centred around the Thatcher Consensus though Labour is only achieving things by stepping away from that consensus, but they are not straying far. The Conservatives do not even have that kind of distinctive economic alternative to offer. David Cameron is 41; Gordon Brown is 57 so an age difference seems to be the key thing between them. Neither is particularly charismatic. Cameron cannot shake off the silly public schoolboy image and Brown seems too dour for the British public.
I can accept the point that people may simply select the Conservatives because they have not been in office for a while and Cameron is a bit younger, but is there nothing else to motivate them to switch? I suppose given the level of voter apathy in the UK it will only come down to the votes of a few individuals. Then, again, I would suggest to anyone who is confident that Labour will fall at the next election to look back to 1992 when everyone was assured that Labour would win when put up against boring John Major and yet he was victorious and remained in power until 1992. Being in office so long, Labour has become the 'conservative' party if not actually the Conservative Party and I feel that the lethargy will bring a victory for Labour as it did for the Conservatives. By 2014 hopefully things will be totally different. For now, though, whether you are a Labour MP or just an ordinary member of the public I would not anticipate Labour leaving office at the next election at all, no matter if they lose council seats today.
P.P. Maybe I am deluding myself, with Labour down to 14 councils compared to 45 for the Conservatives and Labour only getting 26% of the vote maybe there will be a landslide for the Conservatives. Pundits always scale up local election results to give pictures of potential UK wide election which is always more distorted than usual assumptions. They suggest Labour would go down to 176 seats and the Conservatives would have a 138-seat majority. As I have commented before things are always distorted by the UK's first-past-the-post system and even if you get just one less vote than the candidate who beats you, you get nothing even though almost as many people have voted for you. I think why I find it incredible that Cameron could become prime minister is due to something Simon Hughes, President (not leader) of the Liberal Democrat party said about the Conservatives being 'policy light'. Labour as the incumbent government may be following 'steady as it goes', but the Conservatives have come through with no policies that are at all memorable. They are not even putting up a strong opposition to Labour on anything much.
The points of contest are not an issue at present such as the UK's role in the European Union. With the two parties so close on the various wars we are involved in, tax, education and the National Health Service, it seems unlikely we would get anything different if the Conservatives win next time. So, as I commented yesterday, it almost comes down to which person you prefer. An election on this basis would be a real step back for British politics. Even though I despise Tony Blair I could never argue that he did not come forward with distinctive policies in 1997 (whether he carried any of them out is another issue). What is Cameron offering but a smile?
P.P. 16/08/2010: I suppose some people could come back to me now and say 'ha, ha, you got it wrong' and yet I would argue that my judgement was not badly out given how incomplete the Conservative victory was and that the fact that we could have had a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government instead. The aspect in which I made my biggest mistake was in assuming that because Cameron was not outlining policies it indicated that he was close to Labour in his thinking on these issues. What I realise now is that he had an alarmingly virulent New Right agenda in mind which was going to smash the public sector and hamstring the British economy for years to come for the benefit of the already wealthy. I think in my worst nightmares I never foresaw the immense damage that the Conservatives would inflict on the UK. Using the cost of bailing out the banks as their 'September 11th' excuse (i.e. the way that President Bush used the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Centre and The Pentagon to justify harsh domestic policy), they have imposed such a swingeing attack on every facet on life in the UK. Their incredible arrogance is shown by the ending of support for speed cameras which were in fact self-funding and reduced road deaths, not for any financial reason, but simply because 'their people' love to drive recklessly with impunity.
The government is facing many challenges, primarily economic, but ones which are predominantly out of its control and stem for the global jostling for resources that I have regularly noted on this blog and which seem to resemble a real-life game of 'Risk'. In fact Brown's economic stringency of the past decade has probably protected the UK from experiencing even worse problem. The UK is always going to be vulnerable because of its obsession with buying houses which are huge items of capital expenditure for most families that are hard to sell on and have so many elements feeding into them that people cannot modify their expenditure on them the way they can even with consumer items like food. In addition, the privatisation of the UK utility companies means that the government is powerless to rein in the huge profits they make at the expense of ordinary consumer. The fact that BP and Shell the UK and part-UK owned oil companies announced quarterly (i.e. just in 3 months) profits of £7 billion (€8.82 billion; US13.7 billion) suggests that actually big business is not suffering at all from the 'credit crunch'.
A Conservative government would be as impotent in the face of global demand and multinational companies as a Labour one is. In fact given their aversion to regulation and control they would probably handle it worse. The only thing that is going to stop the average person suffering even worse than they are now with consumer-goods inflation, is through greater regulation and intervention. Petrol has risen from £0.87 (€1.09; US$ 1.71) per litre last year to £1.10 per litre now and it is predicted to reach £1.50 per litre by mid-2009 almost a doubling in 20 months; diesel is even higher so affecting the freight industry so raising the price of food and consumer items. Clearly given the vast profits of the oil companies such price rises are not needed to compensate for their increased costs. With the Conservatives in power, the bank Northern Rock would still be floating around with no-one willing to take charge of it and with its risky financial products and need to secure more business it would be continuing to unsettle the jittery bank sector. Labour currently intervenes too late. The UK economy would be better if Northern Rock had been nationalised in 2006 not 2008. Fear of being labelled 'Socialist' is hindering the current government from acting in good time. The Conservatives, in contrast, would not act at all and simply blame workers for trying for higher salaries and would probably engineer a house price collapse as they did in 1990-3, knowing that British people do not riot or revolt they simply blame foreigners for their problems and the Conservatives can tolerate a few race riots.
Why would anyone then vote for the Conservatives? Okay, so most people dislike greater state control, but what different can the Conservatives offer compared to Labour anyway? The policies of Labour and the Conservatives are very close, centred around the Thatcher Consensus though Labour is only achieving things by stepping away from that consensus, but they are not straying far. The Conservatives do not even have that kind of distinctive economic alternative to offer. David Cameron is 41; Gordon Brown is 57 so an age difference seems to be the key thing between them. Neither is particularly charismatic. Cameron cannot shake off the silly public schoolboy image and Brown seems too dour for the British public.
I can accept the point that people may simply select the Conservatives because they have not been in office for a while and Cameron is a bit younger, but is there nothing else to motivate them to switch? I suppose given the level of voter apathy in the UK it will only come down to the votes of a few individuals. Then, again, I would suggest to anyone who is confident that Labour will fall at the next election to look back to 1992 when everyone was assured that Labour would win when put up against boring John Major and yet he was victorious and remained in power until 1992. Being in office so long, Labour has become the 'conservative' party if not actually the Conservative Party and I feel that the lethargy will bring a victory for Labour as it did for the Conservatives. By 2014 hopefully things will be totally different. For now, though, whether you are a Labour MP or just an ordinary member of the public I would not anticipate Labour leaving office at the next election at all, no matter if they lose council seats today.
P.P. Maybe I am deluding myself, with Labour down to 14 councils compared to 45 for the Conservatives and Labour only getting 26% of the vote maybe there will be a landslide for the Conservatives. Pundits always scale up local election results to give pictures of potential UK wide election which is always more distorted than usual assumptions. They suggest Labour would go down to 176 seats and the Conservatives would have a 138-seat majority. As I have commented before things are always distorted by the UK's first-past-the-post system and even if you get just one less vote than the candidate who beats you, you get nothing even though almost as many people have voted for you. I think why I find it incredible that Cameron could become prime minister is due to something Simon Hughes, President (not leader) of the Liberal Democrat party said about the Conservatives being 'policy light'. Labour as the incumbent government may be following 'steady as it goes', but the Conservatives have come through with no policies that are at all memorable. They are not even putting up a strong opposition to Labour on anything much.
The points of contest are not an issue at present such as the UK's role in the European Union. With the two parties so close on the various wars we are involved in, tax, education and the National Health Service, it seems unlikely we would get anything different if the Conservatives win next time. So, as I commented yesterday, it almost comes down to which person you prefer. An election on this basis would be a real step back for British politics. Even though I despise Tony Blair I could never argue that he did not come forward with distinctive policies in 1997 (whether he carried any of them out is another issue). What is Cameron offering but a smile?
P.P. 16/08/2010: I suppose some people could come back to me now and say 'ha, ha, you got it wrong' and yet I would argue that my judgement was not badly out given how incomplete the Conservative victory was and that the fact that we could have had a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government instead. The aspect in which I made my biggest mistake was in assuming that because Cameron was not outlining policies it indicated that he was close to Labour in his thinking on these issues. What I realise now is that he had an alarmingly virulent New Right agenda in mind which was going to smash the public sector and hamstring the British economy for years to come for the benefit of the already wealthy. I think in my worst nightmares I never foresaw the immense damage that the Conservatives would inflict on the UK. Using the cost of bailing out the banks as their 'September 11th' excuse (i.e. the way that President Bush used the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Centre and The Pentagon to justify harsh domestic policy), they have imposed such a swingeing attack on every facet on life in the UK. Their incredible arrogance is shown by the ending of support for speed cameras which were in fact self-funding and reduced road deaths, not for any financial reason, but simply because 'their people' love to drive recklessly with impunity.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Gordon Brown and the Election
It is interesting how the political situation in the UK has changed since I began this blog. Whilst as I have noted the prime minister now, Gordon Brown, does not have a good human rights reputation, just like his predecessor, Tony Blair, but what we are spared is the smug, patronising tone of Blair which seemed to suggest that none of us could match his self-perceived saintliness and thus should defer to him in all things. At least Brown remembers he is a politician and not some spiritual leader. I am also glad to find that Blair has so quickly faded into obscurity despite the perversion of giving him the role of a Middle East envoy. Whatever can keep him away from the UK now is a good thing, but I do feel sorry for the Arabs and Israelis who now have to be patronised by him. I do fear for Middle East peace if Blair has anything to do with it and I just hope that people realise he is a failure and he can be properly pushed into retirement, say in a remote villa on a hillside in Tuscany, Italy, where he can do little harm to the world.
Anyway, back to Brown. There has been a world of speculation in the UK about whether he will go for an election in November. He is not obliged to do so, but having managed the crises of the Summer pretty well and with a good standing in the polls, there was temptation to do so. The Conservative Party were baiting him to do so. I think the media have assumed that Brown had risen to that bait more than in fact he had done, so it has been a very artificial disappointment and very artificial claims of cowardice now that he has ruled out an election that early. As Brown notes he has not had a chance really to put his mark on the political scene yet, especially on the agenda which he feels are important. That is less vital for winning over floating voters and more essential for securing traditional Labour Party supporters who had become disillusioned with Blair especially over the Iraq War. In this context, the announcement of withdrawal of 1000 British troops from Iraq and the report on National Health Service reforms coming at the same time are important.
David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party has proven he is a competent Opposition leader and that despite fitting the trend of bland personalities in the Conservative Party leadership since the departure of Margaret Thatcher and the marginalisation of Michael Heseltine and Michael Portillo, he is asserting some identity. He is also shaping the Conservatives' policy approach pretty well, seeing off extremist views and coming up with an agenda which is different from Labour's. For both parties putting 'clear blue water' between them (a lovely British phrase taken from the sports of rowing and sailing, in fact in British waters it is more likely to be green or brown water) has been difficult since the political consensus in Britain became focused around the Thatcher Consensus. Naturally this has gained Cameron support and has emboldened him. However, he does not have much basis on which to accuse Brown of cowardice as Brown had no obligation to go for an election now and not responding to media pressure actually demonstrates he is his own man, in contrast to Blair (and to a great extent John Major prime minister 1991-7, too).
It is foolish for the Labour Party to go to the polls in the Winter months. In February 1950, because Clement Attlee waited until the King came back from his tour, Labour lost its large majority and fell from office in October 1951. The one situation in which a delay beyond the Autumn was wrong was in 1978. Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan did not bow to media pressure that year and delayed the election until May 1979 and lost very heavily ushering in one of the worst periods in British politics and society by allowing Margaret Thatcher to wreck the economy and batter people to an extent that Britain still has not really recovered from. The so-called Winter of Discontent 1978/9 when many public sector unions went on strike damaged Labour's chances severely. Now, it is unlikely that Callaghan could have won in September 1978 given the economic problems Britain, like the rest of the Western world was facing in the light of the sharp oil price increases and the inflation they brought, but Thatcher's majority would have been less and she would have had to have dealt with the public sector issues. This probably would have been done very brutally and you would have seen the crushing on trade union rights in 1979 rather than in the mid to late 1980s.
Brown is going to face industrial unrest this Winter, postal workers are already on strike. However, things have changed greatly. With the mass privatisations of the 1980s there is hardly any public sector left in the economy, so even mass industrial unrest would not land at the feet of the government in the way it did in 1978. Even though Labour supporters are not made up of the industrial workers with no cars as they were in the past, they are still often working longer hours and have less opportunity to get to polling stations than traditional Conservative voters many of whom are self-employed or retired. Given that Brown's strategy is to shore up the loyalty of the traditional Labour voters, he needs to pick a time when his core support can get out in daylight and decent weather. I am sure Blair's victory would have been far less if John Major had called the election in November 1996 (as he could easily have done given his shrinking majority) rather than May 1997.
Whilst the media will taunt Brown towards an early election, it would be foolish for him to be swayed by this approach. With more time he can establish a true Brown government rather than a second-hand Blair one, which had lost far more glamour than many commentators have realised. Even if nothing changes between now and the late Spring, Brown will not lose anything by waiting. He is likely to lose some seats from those who fear he is too Old Labour, but with a majority of 66 he can afford to lose some. For Brown this will not be sufficient, he would want to come home with a raised majority rather than the 20 as threatened at present, which as with Major could be chipped away to being unworkable within 4 years. Brown's policy seems to be to work from the base up. He does not have to go to the polls until May 2010 at the latest and he could quite easily hold on into 2009. All of these claims of him lacking a mandate are foolish, people elect their own MP in the UK not a party leader, they vote for the policies that that MP is guided by and given that at least half the policies Labour stood on at the last election came directly from Gordon Brown, there is certainly a mandate for thes. By refusing to go now, even though he may have been tempted, Brown also demonstrates that it is he that dictates policy rather than the media. Personally I would have thought less of him if he had rushed to an election.
Anyway, back to Brown. There has been a world of speculation in the UK about whether he will go for an election in November. He is not obliged to do so, but having managed the crises of the Summer pretty well and with a good standing in the polls, there was temptation to do so. The Conservative Party were baiting him to do so. I think the media have assumed that Brown had risen to that bait more than in fact he had done, so it has been a very artificial disappointment and very artificial claims of cowardice now that he has ruled out an election that early. As Brown notes he has not had a chance really to put his mark on the political scene yet, especially on the agenda which he feels are important. That is less vital for winning over floating voters and more essential for securing traditional Labour Party supporters who had become disillusioned with Blair especially over the Iraq War. In this context, the announcement of withdrawal of 1000 British troops from Iraq and the report on National Health Service reforms coming at the same time are important.
David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party has proven he is a competent Opposition leader and that despite fitting the trend of bland personalities in the Conservative Party leadership since the departure of Margaret Thatcher and the marginalisation of Michael Heseltine and Michael Portillo, he is asserting some identity. He is also shaping the Conservatives' policy approach pretty well, seeing off extremist views and coming up with an agenda which is different from Labour's. For both parties putting 'clear blue water' between them (a lovely British phrase taken from the sports of rowing and sailing, in fact in British waters it is more likely to be green or brown water) has been difficult since the political consensus in Britain became focused around the Thatcher Consensus. Naturally this has gained Cameron support and has emboldened him. However, he does not have much basis on which to accuse Brown of cowardice as Brown had no obligation to go for an election now and not responding to media pressure actually demonstrates he is his own man, in contrast to Blair (and to a great extent John Major prime minister 1991-7, too).
It is foolish for the Labour Party to go to the polls in the Winter months. In February 1950, because Clement Attlee waited until the King came back from his tour, Labour lost its large majority and fell from office in October 1951. The one situation in which a delay beyond the Autumn was wrong was in 1978. Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan did not bow to media pressure that year and delayed the election until May 1979 and lost very heavily ushering in one of the worst periods in British politics and society by allowing Margaret Thatcher to wreck the economy and batter people to an extent that Britain still has not really recovered from. The so-called Winter of Discontent 1978/9 when many public sector unions went on strike damaged Labour's chances severely. Now, it is unlikely that Callaghan could have won in September 1978 given the economic problems Britain, like the rest of the Western world was facing in the light of the sharp oil price increases and the inflation they brought, but Thatcher's majority would have been less and she would have had to have dealt with the public sector issues. This probably would have been done very brutally and you would have seen the crushing on trade union rights in 1979 rather than in the mid to late 1980s.
Brown is going to face industrial unrest this Winter, postal workers are already on strike. However, things have changed greatly. With the mass privatisations of the 1980s there is hardly any public sector left in the economy, so even mass industrial unrest would not land at the feet of the government in the way it did in 1978. Even though Labour supporters are not made up of the industrial workers with no cars as they were in the past, they are still often working longer hours and have less opportunity to get to polling stations than traditional Conservative voters many of whom are self-employed or retired. Given that Brown's strategy is to shore up the loyalty of the traditional Labour voters, he needs to pick a time when his core support can get out in daylight and decent weather. I am sure Blair's victory would have been far less if John Major had called the election in November 1996 (as he could easily have done given his shrinking majority) rather than May 1997.
Whilst the media will taunt Brown towards an early election, it would be foolish for him to be swayed by this approach. With more time he can establish a true Brown government rather than a second-hand Blair one, which had lost far more glamour than many commentators have realised. Even if nothing changes between now and the late Spring, Brown will not lose anything by waiting. He is likely to lose some seats from those who fear he is too Old Labour, but with a majority of 66 he can afford to lose some. For Brown this will not be sufficient, he would want to come home with a raised majority rather than the 20 as threatened at present, which as with Major could be chipped away to being unworkable within 4 years. Brown's policy seems to be to work from the base up. He does not have to go to the polls until May 2010 at the latest and he could quite easily hold on into 2009. All of these claims of him lacking a mandate are foolish, people elect their own MP in the UK not a party leader, they vote for the policies that that MP is guided by and given that at least half the policies Labour stood on at the last election came directly from Gordon Brown, there is certainly a mandate for thes. By refusing to go now, even though he may have been tempted, Brown also demonstrates that it is he that dictates policy rather than the media. Personally I would have thought less of him if he had rushed to an election.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
