The biggest issue of the moment…
by James on Jul.04, 2011, under Blog
A comment from a reader that deserves it’s own post…
I want to start a discussion. The country needs certain essential services, such as the NHS or looking after the elderly, or reasonable, affordable pensions. The requirements need to be defined, and then money has to be raised to pay for them. This can only be done by a fair, but large enough national income from Taxation, even if politically difficult to achieve. Discuss. MHM
Why is this the issue of the moment? Because there are no quick fixes or easily solutions. I think this is a discussion worth having, so I am going to collect my own thoughts and then post them here. Comments section is free for anyone else to join the debate too.
Despite being a supporter of the Coalition, my patience with the Lib Dems is starting to wear thin!
by James on May.09, 2011, under Blog
Even before the votes were fully counted, Hughes, Ashdown, Huhne and Cable had thoroughly reviewed all the evidence regarding their party’s electoral disaster and made the following conclusion: it was the Conservatives fault. Unfortunately for them it almost certainly isn’t the Conservative’s fault and if they fail to address the real issues then their fortunes are unlikely to improve. I am feeling charitable today, so here are some observations that may help:
Tuition Fees
Despite all the polls pointing to a hung parliament in the run-up to the election and a external review into Higher Education kicked off by Labour and supported by the Conservatives. The Lib Dems decided to campaign against tuition fees and had their prospective MPs in University towns across the country sign pledges to this effect.
During the Coalition talks the Lib Dems then decided against putting tuition fees as one of their priorities and red lines. Instead they focused on raising tax thresholds for the poorest, pupil premiums and a vote on AV. Furthermore, a little later it came out that the leadership actually wanted to junk the campaign against tuition fees.
The Browne Report on tuition fees was published and given to Vince Cable’s department to shape into public policy. Cable’s department produced the current proposals that have created so much animosity.
Lesson: Don’t actively campaign for something you don’t believe in, as if you find yourself in a position of power you will have egg on your face.
A second good example of this is VAT. The Tories were careful not to rule out an increase – the Lib Dems tried to make political capital out of this during the General Election. Again, blocking a VAT increase was not a high priority for the Lib Dems during the Coalition Agreement and they caught most of the political fall-out from this decision.
AV Referendum
A referendum usually involves an argument with two opposing sides. If one side of the argument was so obviously correct, we wouldn’t need a referendum to decide the issue in the first place. Secondly, expecting those who support the opposite side of the argument (for whatever reason) to roll over and not compete is extremely naive. Thirdly, it would be even stranger to fall into the first two traps if the subject of the referendum wasn’t something you really wanted in the first place.
So the spectacle of Lib Dems assuming they would easily win the argument on AV, being angry that the those opposed wouldn’t give them a free-ride and privately conceding that they thought AV was crap anyway and merely a stepping stone to something else is probably without precedent in modern day politics.
Add to this the fact that they had control over the timing of the referendum and you have a terrific balls-up.
Lesson: If you intend to stake your political credibility and long-term success on something, then make sure it is sensible and then fight with every sinew of your being to get it. Anything less will mark you as a failure.
You can only successfully negotiate from a position of strength – so the the Lib Dems need to fix their weaknesses
The Lib Dems are currently in a very weak position and everyone with an interest in politics knows it. If an election was called tomorrow they would be annihilated at the polls. This would also be fair given their track record on tuition fees and AV. The electoral territory they have gained over the last 30 years would be lost in a month and would probably take a similar period to rebuild.
So, the current spectacle of slagging off their coalition partners, making big noises about blocking policy and playing to their grass-roots is completely wrong-headed and potentially disastrous.
What is their alternative? To grow up and focus on those “new politics” ideals. Primarily to take resp0nsibility for their errors, hold their hands-up to the electorate and then give a positive message for the future of the Lib Dems and the ruling Coalition.
Their current attacks on NHS reforms will not serve them well. Better for them to let Cameron u-turn on this in his own time. At the moment he can legitimately point to coalition-pressure to postpone the reforms. He can also point to Lib Dem duplicity given that they have a minister in the Health department who has helped to draft the legislation and both Clegg and Cameron supported the bill through Parliament. If the Lib Dems had kept quiet, they could have divorced themselves from the policy and watched Cameron struggle with the issue to their electoral benefit.
The tuition fee issue will be the hardest to shake-off. Their only salvation is to stick with the Coalition through to the economic uplands. Collective responsibility is more than just a political convention, it is also attractive to the public. The sight of Huhne, Cable, Hughes and Ashdown sounding-off in public is deeply off-putting. Being a party of the centre, you would expect approximately 50% of the Lib Dem’s potential voting constituency comes from the centre-right. These voters have voted Tory in the past and don’t want to be made to feel embarrassed by the self-righteous Democrat-wing of the Lib Dems.
The behaviour of the Lib Dems also undermined their arguments for electoral reform. The main argument for electoral reform is that it stops a party wielding power with only 30-40% of the share of the vote. Given that no modern-day party achieves 50% of the vote in national elections – any change would necessitate more coalition government. If the Democrat-wing of the Lib Dems truly believe in a Progressive Majority and are really only comfortable sharing power with Labour – then they are alienating a sizeable chunk of the population and a condemning the public to one-party government. Voters are clever enough to realise that they couldn’t have got rid of Gordon Brown in this scenario and are rightly repelled.
Lesson: The business of politics is to build a wide constituency of voters who will support your party in an election. To do this you need to appeal beyond your grass-roots without alienating your core vote. The Lib Dems currently have the balance completely wrong. They have already alienated a large block of their core support when they entered the coalition and now seem willing to alienate a wider constituency of voters to try an win back what they have lost.
The party is desperately lacking coherance in terms of policy and how that fits in with the Coalition. They need to address their own internal failings rather than focusing on the failings of their Coalition partner. They haven’t yet realised that the Coalition is their life-support system – if it finishes before they have solved their problems then it will take them with it.
Anarchy in the UK? Perhaps not…
by James on Mar.28, 2011, under Blog
Language is one of the most powerful tools in politics, it can be subtly or crudely deployed to influence the nature of national debate and to shape our pre-conceptions. Should the current Government be referred to as a “Coalition” or a “Tory-led Coalition”. Both are factually accurate, but the former implies consensus and harmony and the latter focuses attention back onto partisan politics and competing ideas. Labour are pushing the media to use “Tory-led” to assist with their attempts at opposition.
So what to make of this week’s TUC-led anti-cuts march and riot (see what I did there). Well, the language being used by commentators and pundits is as important as the events on the ground. Boris Johnson, a brilliant conduit of English, effectively demolishes Ed Miliband’s speech in his telegraph column today. In the column Boris re-writes Miliband’s speech based on the current Labour policy and then imagines what the reaction of the audience would be. On a side-note, Miliband has also asked the media to call him Edward rather than Ed as it supposedly gives him more gravitas. Language is effective, but not that effective!
So, the young and impressionable Miliband gives a duff, vacuous speech to 250,000 anti-cut protesters who then have their peaceful cause disrupted by anarchists. Well there are a few factually inaccurate claims in that sentence and I am not referring to my description of Miliband or his speech.
How many were demonstrators were actually there? Well this excellent post on Conservative Home should encourage you to disregard any estimates of the numbers given by the Police or the TUC. Inflating numbers is one of the cruder elements of propaganda. It is usually more successful in situations like this where the actual numbers are very hard to estimate. This post gives very good evidence that the official estimates should be halved.
Thankfully with the Tory-inspired Office of Budgetary Responsibility now in place, the current Government is not able to inflate the expected growth figures in the way that unrepentant former Chancellor, Gordon Brown used to. Brown now spends his time trying to push pregnant women out of their business-class seats in favour of his aides. Unfortunately we are probably still paying for his unpleasantness.
But what about the anarchists? Well anarchists usually believe in zero government. So it is interesting that they turned up at an anti-cuts rally in favour of big-spending government; a point eloquently made by Guido. If these were real anarchists wouldn’t they have attacked those attending the TUC rally.
Here the media needs to be careful as it is factually mis-leading to call these people anarchists; they are in fact left-wing thugs and hooligans. I could go further and describe them as Labour-inspired left-wing thugs and hooligans, but that would give far too much credit to Miliband’s vacuous speech. Had Miliband given the honest speech provided by Boris, he probably would have inspired many more of the thousands on the demo to join the riot as they begin to realise that there really is no alternative and they may as well cut-loose and tear up London a bit for a laugh before heading home. Thankfully our consensus-building Coalition is holding together better than Portugal’s ex-administration. Complacency is fatal however and the Lib-Dem’s polling and their potential wipe-out in the May local elections could still push us back towards the brink.
The Blog Returns
by James on Mar.22, 2011, under Blog
I love this blog and it is a great hobby, but sometimes the impulse to blog is weak. It is very strange this is lack of impulse has corresponded with so much going on in the news.
Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen (and to a lesser extent Jordan and Syria) have all faced upheavals and we seem to be living through one of those watershed years in foreign affairs (think 1989 for the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1992 for the false dawn of democracy in Africa and inevitably 2001 for the terrorist attacks on the WTC and Pentagon).
Lack of commentary from me is purely down to ignorance. I love international politics, but my knowledge of this region is limited. Events have also moved at such a frenetic pace that it is hard to keep up. Finally we have a military intervention by the West against a long-standing tyrant. This will inevitably crowd out news from the rest of the region and simultaneously boost public interest – a strange paradox that will lead the 24 hour rolling news networks to give less information to a bigger audience.
There is then the horrific situation in Japan. This is a tragedy that will continue to unfold with a staggering loss of life. Add to this the panic from potential nuclear melt-down and it is hard to fathom the impact on those affected. Again the there is a paradox between the excessive coverage of the nuclear plant disaster where 15 people have been injured and the tsunami where thousands are known to have died. Hat-tip to Fraser Nelson at the spectator for linking to this fascinating article on the long-term impacts of Chernobyl. What isn’t in question is the bravery shown by Emergency services and workers at the Fukushima plant.
Closer to home we have the budget. The national statistics are all over the place – inflation up, unemployment up, tax receipts up, projections of the borrowing requirements down, growth forecasts down. Given that in economics there is a significant lag between policy implementation and impact; the politicians and media pundits providing instant analysis and conclusions should be completely ignored. At this time it should be more about philosophy and trends and in that sense the Government (with its plan) is in a stronger position than the opposition (with its blank sheet of paper).
A key highlight will be the unification of tax and national insurance. This process might not be perfect, with winners and losers, but for the first time since 1911 the amount of tax we pay will become a lot more transparent. The Tories are hoping that once this is achieved there should be a shift in public attitude to tax. It will be harder for future Governments to increase the burden of tax significantly and will hopefully result in taxpayers demanding greater value for money. It is also a simplification that should reduce company admin and therefore cut costs.
I am easing myself back into blogging after an enjoyable rest.
One good thing about Alan Sugar’s peerage…
by James on Mar.10, 2011, under Blog
…he can’t run for Parliament and presumably holds no ambition to become Prime Minister.
Unfortunately Americans have no such mechanism for barring their host of The Apprentice, Donald Trump, from running for President.
