September 1, 2010
Step Aside, Shakespeare
There was amazement across Britain’s print and broadcast media today, after a book was released which told the UK public absolutely nothing it did not already know.
Whilst more perceptive observers had warned that the title of Tony Blair’s memoirs already told us enough, commentators today fell over themselves to wax lyrical about what is normally described as “old news”.
The revelation that Mr Blair did not get along with his former ally turned power-rival Gordon Brown was received with wonder. Hacks across the land expressed detailed interest in a revelation they themselves had been covering on a weekly basis for a decade, and had recently been repeating after the publications of Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party and Peter Mandelson’s own memoirs.
Comment has also been dedicated to the utterly surprising discovery that Mr Blair is a rather conservative political figure, who still cherishes the New Labour project and blames Labour’s 2010 loss on a departure from rightwing market-orientated policies coated with a fat layer of spin. That this last claim is obvious garbage appears to have escaped most of Britain’s razor-sharp watchdog media, busy echoing trusted platitudes into the chamber that provides their shelter.
Most amazingly, it was also revealed today that Blair does not regret undertaking an illegal, unnecessary war which led to thousands of civilian deaths, destabilised the Middle East, increased the risk of domestic terrorism, diverted resources from the failing war in Afghanistan and rightfully discredited the Labour party in the eyes of millions of voters. What was particularly astounding was that Tony Blair had certainly not said exactly the same thing – complete with crocodile tears and solemn tales of nightmares – at the Chilcot Enquiry earlier this year. An appearance which led some observers to conclude that Blair was certifiably insane and living in a world of his own delusions.
Yet the enormous media interest generated in Blair’s book of revelations also stems, no doubt, from its sparkling prose and incisive intellectual analysis. Passages which will no doubt be immortalised in literary history:
“I heard an interesting example of this once from, of all people, Nelson Mandela. Mandela – or Madiba as he is also called (his clan name) – is a fascinating study, not because he’s a saint but because he isn’t. Or rather he is, but not in the sense that he can’t be as fly as hell when the occasion demands. I bet Gandhi was the same.”
“Hadn’t we fought a great campaign? Hadn’t we impaled our enemies on our bayonet, like ripe fruit?”
But on this day of revelations – when a multimillionaire megalomaniac is rewarded for war crimes and a betrayal of the British left by receiving even more cash and attention – I leave you with an observation, and a question.
Reflecting on election night 1997, Mr Blair proclaims: “Even then, the enormity of what was about to happen didn’t really sink in.”
The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions of “enormity”
1. Deviation from moral or legal rectitude. In later use influenced by ENORMOUS. Extreme or monstrous wickedness.
2. A breach of law or morality; a transgression, crime; in later use, a gross & monstrous offence.
More importantly, will the German edition of Herr Blair’s A Journey be marketed under its literal translation? Namely, Eine Fahrt.
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H/t to Chris for the OED spot, and other tweeted hilarities.
August 17, 2010
How Not to Run a Campaign Event
Update: in the interests of accuracy I should say that Martin of MayorWatch blog attended the event as well (see comments). But still, two people – not exactly a barn-stormer is it? I will try to reply to people later, but just finished a 90mile bike ride and feel like death, on the 2-hr train home, with no food. I have replied to Sarah Hayward of Oona’s campaign in the comments below.
I was recently invited to attend a “bloggers meeting” with Oona King, scheduled for last night. Having nothing better to do I decided to go along.
For anybody living under a rock, King wants to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor. That means overturning Ken Livingstone’s claim to the throne – not an easy task given his deeply-entrenched support. But personally I’m no fan of Livingstone, and think Labour needs to move on. So despite Oona’s deep unpopularity amongst much of the Labour Party, I went hoping to be impressed.
Arriving promptly at 7pm I went direct to the meeting room. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anybody there. A couple of waiters wandered by, and I asked if this was the right place. They consulted a clipboard: “Er, yes, but we haven’t seen anyone yet. However help yourself to drinks and snacks”.
Never one to decline free things, I indulged. But after 10 minutes I was feeling lonely. Where was Oona – or for that matter anybody else?
Suddenly, feet and voices on the stairs. Who could this be – fellow bloggers surely? Alas, no: enter King’s campaign team. The head of the group quizzed me as to whether I was a journalist. I replied that I’m just a blogger. “Which blog?” Er, Liberal Conspiracy. “Oh yeah? What’s that about then?”- asked with suspicion at the possibility of LibDem infiltration.
Now forgive me for being precious, but at a supposed bloggers meeting it might be worth knowing what the biggest left-wing blog in the country is. And the sort of content it runs. And that yes, it has covered the Ken-Oona race so far.
Anyway, small talk was made. Or rather, I was told that Oona needed to be Labour’s candidate because Ken is “old Labour, from the 1980s” and represents only inner London. After 5 subsequent minutes of being told I was wrong to suggest nonetheless that Labour’s Blairite past ought to be broken with, I made some excuse and disappeared to the toilet for 10 minutes.
When I returned there were in fact new people in the room. Bloggers, perhaps? Er, no. Some interns and staff from the New Labour “Progress” group, presumably there to represent the right of the party. And still no Oona.
For 20 minutes a guy from King’s campaign team did try to engage me in conversation. He was nice enough to ask about my background, though in future he should drop the Soviet-interrogation-voice when prying for information, such as how many readers LibCon gets, and what weight it gives to London issues. Also, whilst I know it’s hard for politicos to remember this, we ordinaries really appreciate it if you don’t constantly look over our shoulders to check nobody more interesting is around.
With still no sight of Oona, I tried to join a conversation amongst her campaign team and the Progress types. But when I questioned the view that it was “ridiculous” to attack Alan Milburn’s decision to help the Tories, a portly man apparently in charge of the conversation responded by addressing the group instead of me, and dismissing what I’d said as though it were a bad smell. As the group then physically closed around the circular table, I found myself pushed out and resorting to a discarded copy of the Evening Standard. And still no Oona.
I looked at my phone. 53 minutes had elapsed. Frankly, it was time to leave. But just as I started up the stairs – there was Oona, coming out of the lift! Except by that point I was queasy from my fourth glass of orange juice, and frankly things were beyond a joke.
Oona King’s campaign team can’t run a meet and greet where more than one person turns up.* And that one person sods off in boredom. Mayor of London? Pull the other one.
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*I mean, I could be wrong and perhaps some other bloggers were lurking incognito. But I genuinely believe I was the only person there not already affiliated with her campaign.
August 14, 2010
Dave and the Price of Beer
Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook have been poking fun at David Cameron’s belief that “tins” of larger cost 25p each:
“I think if what you’re trying to do is stop supermarkets from selling 20 tins of Stella for a fiver that’s what we’ve got to go after.
Where I want to try and help is ending the deep discounting on alcohol”
This incident recalls the old “what’s-the-price-of-a-pint-of-milk?” question politicians are supposed to answer to show how “in touch” they are.
But how significant is it when a top politician fails the ordinary knowledge test?
There seems to be a good reason for saying “not very”. After all, the Prime Minister (of all people) has much more important things to do than trundle around Tesco buying the weekly groceries. This fact extends backwards to when s/he was leader of the opposition. The truth is, top politicians don’t know basic facts about how the rest of us live because they are busy running the country, and that’s probably to be expected and somewhat welcomed.
And I’m not sure we should pressure politicians to know myriad facts about “ordinary” life, either. For that – in the modern age of 24 hour media spin – might just mean ministers rote-learning pre-prepared lists of factoids, designed to manufacture an image of being “in touch”.
But nonetheless there is something significant about Cameron’s ignorance over the price of beer.
Dave thinks 20 cans of larger sets you back a mere £5; what a nice world that would be for many! For better or for worse, alcohol is a major source of recreation for many Britons. Yet alcohol is expensive, and takes a significant chunk of many people’s disposable incomes. If 20 cans really did cost just a fiver, many people would be effectively richer than they are at present because they’d have more money left over to spend on other things.
Cameron’s 20-for-£5 gaffe illustrates that he – and presumably the politicians who surround him – lack any accurate conception of the cost of living for most Britons.
Minimum wage is currently a paltry £5.80. If you know the price of beer, the complete inadequacy of that sum is especially clear. If, however, you think that beer (and presumably other basic goods) is as cheap as D-Cam does, then suddenly minimum wage looks a lot more satisfactory.
Furthermore, the present round of Tory cuts is set to disproportionately affect Britain’s poor, as this graph stolen from the FT shows:
If you’re under the impression that 20 cans of Stella cost a mere £5, then a 7% reduction in yearly income might seem an altogether manageable reduction. Thus if you’re a Tory who doesn’t care about inequality anyway, ignorance about the basic cost of living will make it much easier to push-through measures likely to make the poor poorer.
Of course, it’s almost certainly true that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were equally ignorant about such things as the cost of beer. The latter, especially, was probably more partial to a vintage Merlot donated from a wealthy chum, than a can of Carlsberg piss-water from Asda.
But nonetheless, Labour’s relative – albeit heavily imperfect – concern for both absolute poverty and inequality, especially compared to the Tories, meant that such ignorance was less likely to provide support for policies that penalise the most vulnerable. So when people say there’s no difference between top Labour and Tory politicians, although at a superficial level that may be true, the consequences are nonetheless likely to be different.
And that’s why lefties are entitled to laugh at Cameron’s ignorance about the price of beer, whilst having a serious axe to grind.
July 20, 2010
Ireland and Lib Dem Soul Searching
Having just managed to crawl out of a two year recession, the Irish economy was recently branded the sickest of all advanced nations by the IMF. And despite the Fund making noises that Ireland will not default on its debt, its credit rating has just been downgraded regardless, to Aa2 according to Moody’s.
As the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan put it:
“Ireland, of course, cut like crazy to appease the gods of the bond markets but evidently it didn’t work out for them. Please note Mr Osborne.”
But the Lib Dems need to look in the mirror too.
That Ireland has just had its rating cut blows away the fig leaf which has so far been covering the ConDem cuts: that severe retrenchment of public finances is essential if Britain isn’t to lose its AAA credit rating and see the cost of borrowing soar in the long term. This talk was always highly dubious in itself – not least because Britain’s situation was always far healthier than Ireland’s (or Greece’s) – but it now looks ridiculous. Plus there is the very real risk that cutting too hard and too soon will cripple economic recovery.
The attack on Britain’s public services is ideologically-driven Tory opportunism; slashing the state in ways the Conservatives have always wanted, but previously lacked the pretext to carry out. Which raises the question: what on Earth are the Lib Dems getting out of their Faustian pact?
Pipsqueak Gove has merrily taken the axe to Britain’s education system – whilst protecting funds for his Free Schools experiment which will advantage the upper middle classes, if it manages to help anyone at all. Osborne’s hard-cutting emergency budget is going to impact disproportionately on the poorest in society – and the biggest cuts are still reserved for the autumn.
Yet all we’ve had out of the Lib Dems is a front bench minister resign over financial impropriety, and a welcome but ultimately timid and non-committal suggestion of a graduate tax. In truth, you’d be hard pressed to know this was coalition government at all.
The downgrading of Ireland’s credit rating should now serve as a moment of reflection for the Lib Dems regarding their future path. I see three options:
- Use greater influence within the coalition to rein-in the Tories
- Quit the coalition and have no more to do with the Conservative assault on public finances
- Remain in the coalition and continue to facilitate the Tory programme.
Option 1 looks an obvious non-starter; as junior partners the Lib Dems appear to exercise virtually no significant influence over the Tories.
The problem with 2, of course, is that whilst it might be highly principled the Tories will quickly accuse the Lib Dems of destabilising the country. They will then have a good chance of returning a Conservative majority in a fresh election which the Lib Dems (and Labour) probably can’t afford to fight anyway.
But as for 3, the long-term risk is that when the Tory cuts really start to bite the Lib Dems will take the flak as the enablers of a vicious programme which hurts ordinary people’s lives.
So although Ireland should be a prompt for Lib Dem soul-searching about the bed they’ve chosen to make, whether or not they continue to lie in it may end the same: that they are held accountable for making possible a political programme of pain that wasn’t even their own.
But if you’re tempted to sympathy it’s worth remembering that the history of Lib-Con coalitions is very much one where Tories gain and Liberals lose. The warning signs were there, and if the Lib Dems had bothered with a bit of self-knowledge they might have hesitated before putting themselves in this mess. And it definitely is a mess, even if it will only become fully apparent as the post-election honeymoon fades.
July 16, 2010
Cable’s Fair Tax
This blog post by Conor Ryan has me thinking about Vince Cable’s proposed graduate tax.
Basics first. Higher education provision is expensive, but it’s also beneficial to wider society (a public good) insofar as it results in a better educated, more productive and perhaps even more culturally sophisticated work force. But it’s also usually an immense boon to the individuals who receive it (a private good), insofar as graduates on average earn higher salaries than non-graduates.
Accordingly, it seems right that society should collectively fund the provision of higher education but it also seems fair that the recipients of such education contribute given the benefits they personally receive.
At present, an enormous spending squeeze is about to hit British universities at a time when many institutions were already warning that they needed to raise fees to meet costs.
We know that on average middle and upper class kids are more likely to go to university than working class kids. At present, however, most students pay the same level of university fees, although the poorer are entitled to grants. Fees are financed via The Student Loan Company, which pegs interest to inflation, meaning that the real cost of a degree does not increase over time (making it excellent value for money, in borrowing terms).
However the student loan does not cover (anything like) the whole of a degree cost, and because working-class kids are less likely to go to university, the result is that the state – by subsidising university places – effectively redistributes from poor to richer, albeit unintentionally. Furthermore, there is an after-the-fact problem of fairness with tuition fees: as Cable puts it, people who go on to be top bankers and lawyers after they graduate pay back the same amount as teachers and nurses, and that just seems wrong.
A graduate tax thus looks like an innovative and fair way to begin to solve both the funding issue and the social justice issue.
Looked at this way Vince Cable seems like he’s at the heart of what Stuart White calls the battle for liberalism within the Lib Dems. Against the small-state, pro-market libertarianism of people like Nick Clegg and David Laws, Cable’s plan chimes more with the “other” interpretation of liberalism. The one with a long and dignified English lineage, but most recently developed by American political theorists like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, advocating the role of the state as an enabling agent compensating for unfair disadvantage, inequality, and the lack of freedom and autonomy imposed by unregulated market systems.
Accordingly, those on the liberal left ought to welcome Cable’s proposal. Both as a matter of fairness, but also as part of the battle for preventing the Lib Dems become nothing but Conservatives dressed in yellow, enabling their hard-cutting ideological agenda.*
But it may not work out that way. Take Conor Ryan – with banners emblazoned on his site proclaiming him a “Top 100” Labour and centre-left blogger – attacking Cable’s proposal using tried and tested right wing tropes. For example, that the graduate tax may lead to a “brain drain” – a stupid argument beloved of the right that I’ve criticised before. He also – unbelievably – makes noises to the effect that it is unfair for those earning more to reciprocate with greater contributions: “What the Liberal Democrats are looking for is a backdoor way of raising taxes further on high earners.” I guess that tagline – “former adviser to Tony Blair” – isn’t there for nothing.
Having said that all the Labour leadership candidates except David Miliband have backed a graduate tax. This further solidifies my preference against D-Mil, but I’ll be interested to see whether Labour – when it gets a new leader – can resist the siren calls from within the party urging an attack on the Lib Dems, and stick to principle despite tribal lines. I’ll be honest and say I’m not particularly hopeful.
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* I accept that some Labour people want that to happen so that the Lib Dems are effectively redundant. That’s possibly a laudable long-term aim, but in the short term anything that can moderate a rampant Tory axe-attach on public spending is a good thing.
June 15, 2010
Red Ken, Blue London?
Jon Cruddas has endorsed Ken Livingstone as Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London. This in itself doesn’t strike me as all that significant – Cruddas himself is more likely as Labour deputy leader candidate, and JC and KL’s politics are hardly worlds apart.
I’m fairly convinced that Livingstone will get the Labour nomination. And this strikes me as not good.
First things first, I’m suspicious of Livingstone’s politics. Hearing him at the Ken Campaign Conference (aka Progressive London), I found it pretty galling that somebody in 2010 could stand up and unashamedly endorse the Chinese Communist regime, and demand that Britain’s economy-government relationship become more like those of China and Vietnam. They call him “Red” Ken for a reason, after all. But Livingstone continues to strike me (like his former advisor John Ross) as the sort of person who admired the Soviet Union until the bitter end. And that’s a part of the left’s history that needs to be discarded, not preserved.
Those who remember the 1980s often take a different view: as a friend once put it, Ken was (after all) the only person on the left that Thatcher went after but never got. I’m sure that elicits a certain fondness. But it doesn’t add up to making Livingstone the right candidate for Labour. After all, a man who fought his big battles and made his mark in the 1980s is not exactly what Labour needs to show it can govern effectively in the 21st Century.
In all honesty I’m slightly sanguine about whether or not Ken will win (if he does, he thankfully won’t be in a position to emulate China, as I suspect he would like to). My sense is that Boris is popular (proof, perhaps, of deep voter misjudgment given how atrocious he has been if one pays attention) and will beat Ken. And why would people vote Livingstone back, after giving him the decisive boot last time around? He’s offering absolutely nothing new, and his pitch of “I’m not Boris!” isn’t going to work if people think BoJo a sort of amusing affable chap who is funny on the telly.
Instead, it rather reinforces the message that Labour has no fresh blood, no fresh talent and no new ideas. Which is, perhaps, accurate. But for peat’s sake this is politics and the party should at least try to make itself look the other way around. Of course, London experienced a big counter-national, pro-Labour outcome in the General Election. Perhaps this will repeat in Ken’s favour. But then, perhaps it won’t because the dynamics are different.
Either way, it’s worth moving beyond the tribalism and asking: what’s the state of Labour in London when a hard-leftist apologist for authoritarian regimes, believing it is his god-given right to rule the capital, is effectively allowed to continue as such despite a decisive electoral rejection at the last showing? Where is the internal pressure in Labour telling Ken that his time is over and it’s time to retire into amphibian-raising obscurity.
So, despite my belief that the Labour machine is too in-thrall, or in-debt, to Ken to pick anyone else, I think Labour should choose Oona King. I don’t think she could beat Boris, to be hoenst. But sometimes in politics winning isn’t everything.
May 26, 2010
A Speculative Fiction
THERE was shock and outrage throughout Britain yesterday as it emerged that national leaders had backed down in the face of a powerful vested interest minority group with the potential to hold the country to ransom.
News that David Cameron had lost an early struggle with the 1922 Committee sent markets into panic at the prospect of a small group within Britain blocking crucial reforms, dictating government policy, and destabilising the attempt to find a new social settlement.
Critics of Cameron’s decision to back down say the 1922 Committee has been emboldened to resist necessary government reforms to our politics and economy. A leading Somebody said: “These are troubling times. The old political settlement is over and Britain is the sick man of Europe. What we need is strong leadership that can instigate a restructuring of our political landscape and ensure that the democratically elected coalition government has the power – not a minority-grouping advancing its own interests and holding the rest of the country to ransom.”
Apologists for the 1922 Committee have replied that their MPs possess a responsibility to protect the large detached houses, Suzuki 4×4 Rhino Killers and off-shore trust funds that the people of Surrey, Bedfordshire and South Suffolk depend upon to maintain the social status required to attend regular dinner parties. They accepted that there may be future conflict with the government, but denied that they were destabilising any political resettlement. They claimed: “what is good for the South is good for Britain; the professional classes and financial services keep this country alive and by protecting them the 1922 Committee fights for all of Britain.”
Political scientists have disagreed, however. Professor Whatshisname from Leading University stated: “Britain is in a terrible political mess. We need an urgent redefining of the political landscape, and that requires a prime minister and government able to take-on and unseat the 1922 Committee, which unjustifiably holds the cards when it comes to government decision-making. The old post-Falklands Consensus is over, and we need a strong leader who can give Britain the bitter but necessary medicine she needs.”
Leading Labour politicians have rubbished Cameron’s attempts to work with the 1922 Committee, calling instead for the government to get its house in order or launch a “slash and burn” attack on the Home Counties.
Spokesmen for local Tory councils and MPs offices have warned this could lead to devastation, with entire communities in the south being deprived of Ugg Boots, leather boat shoes and Land Rover Discoverys. A Conservative Council spokesperson warned: “if Cameron’s reforms had gone through the devastation to Southern communities could have lasted for generations with persistent lack of consumer goods and status symbols, ruining the lives of established generations and blighting the futures of the young, who might have had to go to state schools.”
Whilst the ’22ers claim they are democratically elected, their critics note that the 118 MPs who rebelled against Cameron’s reform proposals represent less than 20% of all elected MPs, and are themselves members of a party that secured a mere 32.3% of the popular vote. Furthermore, many of the 1922 Committee are ensconced in “safe seats”, meaning they effectively have jobs for life and there is little realistic prospect of their being removed.
Labour leaders last night denied that they were expressing a vindictive desire to revenge themselves for the humiliation of the financier class-induced 2008 economic crash that eventually saw Gordon Brown ousted from government. They deny that if returned to power they would seek to punish the 1922 Committee – and the class interest it represents – by laying waste to the south of England whilst systematically curtailing the democratic rights of conservatives and their ability to organise and represent themselves. Reports that heavy-handed police enforcement (or rather, brutality) and MI5 smear-operations would be used to “teach the South a lesson about who runs this country” have also been vaguely denied.
May 20, 2010
Why Ed Balls should not be Labour leader #1
Ellie Gellard thinks Ed Balls should be Labour leader. Her piece mostly operates at the level of vague gestures about “fairness” and something called “progressive universalism” (whatever the hell that is), and seems to think that Ed Balls should be leader mostly because he has “fire in his belly”.
I can’t comment on the bowel troubles which may or may not affect Mr Balls, but I can comment on why he shouldn’t be Labour leader.
Ellie notes that Balls is hated by the right-wing media. She somewhat bizarrely infers that this is because the right is afraid of him and his Grand Progressive Crusade. Which, let’s recall, included being Gordon Brown’s right-hand-man when it came to lightening the light-touch of City regulation in the early days, and pushing through the 10p tax reform later on.
I have an alternative hypothesis about Balls: that he comes across as a repulsive character, regardless of right-wing media glare. Put it this way: when someone like my dad – an instinctive left-wing voter, but deeply disillusioned with the Blair/Brown project – says to me “anybody but Balls, he’s bloody awful”, that’s something to take seriously. It’s not just that the right-wing media (of which my dad reads and watches none) don’t like Balls. It’s that he comes across like a slimy, self-satisfied, mendacious and slippery political manipulator. And the main reason for this, I think, is that whenever you see Balls on TV he looks like he’s sneering.
I don’t think he intends to look like he’s sneering. I think that’s just the way his face is stuck (although maybe there’s some deep Freudian causality we should postulate). But in a TV era, this sort of thing really matters. The Labour Party will not succeed if it is led by a man who constantly looks like he’s sneering at the electorate.
This may seem a petty analysis; “why not focus on E-Balls’ substance?” his apologists may cry. Well, aside from the fact that he doesn’t appear to have any that is desirable, the answer is: because politics is petty, and voters are fickle. Live with that, and adapt accordingly.
Bad Conscience is yet to endorse any single candidate, but it does at this stage have a clear message: No to Balls.
May 18, 2010
Here comes the future
As you may know there was recently an election. During the campaigning for that election, the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain ran a series of election posters with Gordon Brown’s face next to the words “I increased the Gap Between Rich and Poor, Vote for Me”.
As you may also know, the biggest jump in inequality in Britain of the past century took place in the 1980s. Under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher poverty measured as below 60 per cent median income rose from 12 per cent in 1977 to 25 per cent in 1992 – more than doubling. Poverty measured as below 50 per cent mean income rose from 8 per cent in 1977 to 25 per cent in 1992 – more than trebling. As this helpful graphic shows [PDF], that led to an explosion in inequality.
However, after 13 years of Labour government inequality was sadly even higher than the Tories left it, with the Gini Co-Efficient for the UK standing at it’s highest ever figure of 0.36.
But it’s important to remember that Labour was “running up a down escalator“. And indeed, it’s not enough to simply point to the increase in inequality. We must instead ask the counterfactual: what would have happened if the Tories had remained in power and all Labour’s achievements in poverty-reduction via redistributive policies (as confirmed by the IFS) had not taken place?As Giles has angrily pointed out, what happened under Labour was that the gap between rich and poor increased. That’s not the same as saying Labour increased the gap. And indeed, it seems overwhelmingly likely that sans-Labour action on redistribution inequality would be even higher.
But it’s now May 2010, and the Conservative Party has returned to power (albeit with a little help from their Liberal friends). We won’t need to keep asking the counter-factual question for long, because we’re about to see what happens to inequality under Tory governments.
Of course we all know there are going to be big spending cuts. And we all know there’s going to be a lot of pain. But in the midst of that we also have to remain focused on the most basic tenets of a nominally fair society: that individuals are not obstructed from gaining employment and advancing their careers because their parents are poor. In turn, we have to take steps to defend or establish such basic tenets of fairness. Accordingly, I’ve previously explained my objections to the present unwaged system of intern exploitation. It is an anathema to social mobility (one essential component of combating inequality), insofar as it debars the poorer from access to many professional, high-earning careers.
To say that I’m appalled to hear that the Metropolitan Police are planning to introduce compulsory internships in all but name is something of an understatement:
“Scotland Yard is considering an overhaul of police recruitment to save millions a year in training costs. Under the proposals, future police recruits in London would need to work as volunteer special constables for at least a year before they could apply to become full-time paid Met officers.
As the excellent Interns Anonymous website puts it:
“Who are the next generation of police officers? Only those who can afford to work for free for a year! Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
One thing is clear. This is a sign of things to come. If you want a job in the public sector APPLY NOW before this becomes the norm.
It’s one thing for small think-tanks or charities to employ unpaid interns… but for an organisation as big as the POLICE FORCE do away with paid training. We are lost for words.”
Nobody denies that the public finances are in a terrible mess. But cutting the deficit is not a government’s only responsibility: ensuring a fair deal for all people when it comes to employment and careers is also essential. Less than two weeks into the so-called New Politics, I’m distinctly pessimistic about the prospects of our new overlords ensuring that talent and hard work, rather than parents’ wallets, are the determining factors of future success.
May 15, 2010
That was all very nice, but what about the Calling for Politics?
Today I watched Ed Miliband deliver his opening leadership bid speech at the Fabian Society.You can read the standard summaries over at the standard news websites. What they won’t give you is an angle on whether E-Mil has the all-important ability to be a leader. Not just a leader of the Labour Party mind, but a real leader; a figure ordinary voters will back to govern the whole country.
The substance of Miliband’s speech was broadly pleasing to a Fabian audience. But then, positioning himself to the centre-left was always going to work with that crowd – which is maybe no bad thing. An acknowledgment that Iraq was a mistake, and a commitment to seeing increased gender parity within the Labour Party and across society more widely, can only be applauded. Similarly a belief that the state is vitally important to improving many people’s lives will be welcomed by all those on the left who see government’s role in reducing poverty and inequality as essential. On the other hand, acknowledging that the state can have extremely undesirable effects was good to hear – even though Miliband’s claim that New Labour has been “too casual” about civil liberties wasn’t enough. As Clifford Singer later noted, NewLab wasn’t casual at all: it was enthusiastically authoritarian.
These things all make E-Mil attractive to leftist Labourites. They may help drain support away from the Elder Brother, too. But will they make Miliband electable as a national leader?
As phrased, that’s actually a pointless question. First, as Sunny Hundal pointed out to me, today Miliband was solidifying his base; later he will reach-out and appeal to less natural supporters. Second, we don’t know what the hot-button issues of the next election will be, so it’s useless trying to guess policy-appeal now. Third – and most importantly – because the harsh truth is that policy is altogether less important in winning elections than politics geeks and party hacks might wish.
As anybody who’s ever watched Question Time or gone knocking on constituency doors will know, many (though certainly not all) voters hold contradictory and frequently factually incorrect views. Connectedly, people don’t straightforwardly vote in their obvious economic interests, or for parties that in policy-terms promise to do the most for them, albeit for myriad and complex reasons (but take, for example, entrenched hostility to inheritance tax by people who will never, ever be affected by it). And many voters straightforwardly mis-attribute policies to competing parties anyway.
What really matters in mass-democratic politics, especially in a TV era, is the entirely non-rational impact of the personal pulling-power of individual leaders. The ability to inspire confidence in an electorate. Call it charismatic authority, if you like.
Tony Blair had it in abundance. His policies weren’t so important to middle England as the belief that he was a pretty straight guy you could trust with your wallet and your daughter. What Labour ultimately needs is a man with Blair’s awesome political charisma – though preferably with principles and integrity to boot this time.
Does Ed Miliband have this something extra, this calling for politics? I’m afraid he doesn’t. No amount of walking around the platform without wearing a jacket, or giving a speech without notes (h/t David Cameron c.2005) is going to change that. Neither is sounding – and looking – so very much like Cleggeron, and being part of the same Oxbridge-Machinepolitics-Westminster elite.
What Labour really needs is someone who can storm the stage and inspire belief in the electorate. No matter how nice a guy Ed Miliband undoubtedly is, he doesn’t have that special leadership extra. Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean he shouldn’t be leader of the Party. He’s certainly preferable to D-Mil and the odious Balls. But my advice to Labour is to keep looking. Waiting in the wings could be somebody altogether special. It happened for Barack, after all, and it’s worth seeing if it can happen for us too. Which is only one more reason not to rush things.
