How the Tories Could Win the Next Election. Oh, and Labour*.

As things stand, we’re probably heading towards another hung parliament. Cameron is not repelling people as much as many thought he would, despite his apparent lack of anything approaching a spine. Ed Miliband is a total disaster for his party, and is largely responsible for that party failing to make headway even as the coalition becomes less popular than dysentery. But both of those leaders could win the next election – but only if they are willing to take a gamble and do something bold. But both could do it.

How? Cameron could offer an referendum on the EU. Or, even more radically, he could redress our membership of the EU perhaps even to the point of pulling us out of that whole fucking mess. In doing so, he would become the hero of his party (including those on the right who remain very suspicious of young Hug A Husky). People across the country would also love this; it would be met with rapt applause from The Sun and The Daily Hate. Sure, many wouldn’t like this, but they would be the sort of people who wouldn’t vote for Cameron anyway. The ex-marketing man would be the hero to millions of people across the country, and he’d be able to spin himself as the courageous and visionary leader who dragged his country out of an expensive, bureaucratic mess.

What about Miliband Minor? Well, he could try being the socialist he sometimes hints at wanting to be. He could ramp up the rhetoric against the banks, and present himself as a genuine man of the people fighting on their behalf against reckless and dangerous financial institutions. He could get himself photographed with those members of Middle England struggling to make ends meet, and talk about how he is going to help them. Hell, he could even stand with those at the Occupy protests and claim that he, too, represents the 99%. Of course, it would be a blatant attempt at naked populism. But talking at the anti-war demos never hurt Charles Kennedy, for example. In fact, the opposite is probably true. And yeah, some people would find this sort of approach utterly repellent – myself, for example. But guess what? Those people, including me, would never vote for Miliband Minor anyway.

Which is part of the problem our party leaders have; they are so determined to try to please everyone all the time they lose sight of the fact that to do so is impossible and in trying they run the risk of really pissing off their core supporters. They fight so hard for the centre ground that they become myopic about the whole, broad range of the political spectrum. And then they wonder why fewer people vote, and they get approval ratings that, at best, are flat-lining, and at worst in free-fall. There is a real need for bold leadership in this day and age; unfortunately our leaders do not seem willing or able to provide it. So instead, we end up with cowardly, centrist jellyfish who actually please no-one; not even the core supporters of their own parties.

*And the Lib Dems? How could they win the next election? Well, they can’t. Hell, I don’t even know how they can maintain the disappointing result they got in 2010. Unless something pretty bloody spectacular happens, then the next election is not going to be very pleasant for the Liberal Democrats. 

Riots, Individuals, Communities and Bullshit

Over at The New Statesman, we have some robust analysis dismissing the claims of the right that the recent riots were anything to do with family. Oh, actually, we don't. Instead we have lacklustre and predictable analysis just as tedious and meaningless as those people who drone on endlessly and without mercy about "broken Britain". Let's take a look and some choice cuts of prime grade bullshit from the article introducing the leading left thinkers (who, laughably, include Diane Abbott):

In his great book After Virtue, published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the most striking feature of "contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements . . . There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture." Moral statements amounted to little more than statements of personal preference.

Now MacIntyre - a Catholic Thomist - strikes me as an odd choice for a left-wing magazine to be citing. After all, it is difficult to imagine the modern MacIntyre being classed as left-wing. Of course, the author of the article could argue that the Thomist turn in MacIntyre's work came after the book quoted above - and they'd be accurate. But let me pluck a copy of After Virtue from the bookshelf and turn to the pessimistic conclusion. MacIntyre writes "This time the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers: they have already been governing us for quite some time". So MacIntyre believes the barbarians have been in charge for quite some time and MacIntyre was writing in 1981... meaning that, in this country, the Tory administration was circa two years old (and you don't write a book like After Virtue in a hurry) whereas the Labour party - as well as a post-war consensus worshipping Labour-lite Tory party - had been in power for, well, quite some time. It would appear that MacIntyre was attacking the very sort of politicians that The New Statesman loves to praise.

Thirty years later, little has changed, as the aftermath of the English riots and responses to them show. Appalled and embarrassed by the marauding gangs and looters, David Cameron speaks of the "sickness" in our society, showing himself to be a classical conservative pessimist, a believer in original sin and in the futility of all utopian schemes to remake society.

I have to say that it is a bit of a stretch to call Cameron a believer in "original sin" (although, as a Catholic, the approvingly quoted Alasdair MacIntyre actually is) but there is nothing wrong with being a political pessimist and there is nothing wrong with believing the futility of "utopian schemes to remake society". You only have to look at France in the reign of terror or Stalinist Russia or the nightmare of the Cambodian Year Zero to see just how badly wrong such utopias and go - and how devastating they can be when they do go wrong. Whatever crass schemes Cameron embarks on and whatever damage he does to this country, it is pretty hard to imagine him doing anything as devastating as those utopians who have managed to gain control of certain societies in history.

He says nothing about the socio-economic forces that shape behaviour, or the corrosive effects of entrenched inequality (for the true conservative, there are always natural inequalities). Nothing about how three decades of neoliberalism have coarsened our society, debased our discourse and corrupted our public morality.

Y'know, I'm sick of left-wing people using the term "neoliberalism" in such a way. It is a bit like those tedious right-wingers who rail against political correctness or multiculturalism without ever really engaging with what those terms mean. Yeah, there's a critique of neoliberalism to be made, but it requires consistent, intelligent engagement with neoliberal thinkers in order to make it credible. And part of that will be acknowledging that we have never seen the free market in action - at least not in the period since 1981. What we have seen is varying degrees of the Mixed Economy.

Nothing about how the venality of those at the top of society affects those at the bottom.

Ah, venality. Let's ask those venal bastards like Tony Blair about the impact they have had on our society. We should probably acknowledge at some point that they are Labour politicians, though. Or is that a bit too inconvenient? Yeah, yeah, you might well argue that bankers are also examples of the venal. And they tend to be Tories... except for their willing less to enter into pacts with the Labour party during the latter's thirteen years in power.

As for the left in general, there has long been a reluctance to address what it means to live a good and fulfilled life in an age when religion, for most of us in the secular west, can no longer offer guidance and when family life has become dysfunctional for many. The solution to all problems, it is said, is more state intervention and greater redistributive taxation.

And that is precisely the solution we have heard trotted out time and time again in the aftermath of the riots. The biggest problem is that pretty much any situation, according to the left, requires more state intervention. If you comprehensively made the case that state intervention was the problem then I don't doubt that some people would respond - completely in earnest - with the idea that more state intervention is the solution. The fucking morons.

Long before the rise of Red Tories and Blue Labourites, Houellebecq articulated how globalisation had disenfranchised the urban poor and how lifestyle libertarianism had broken society. It is an insight understood by Phillip Blond, who, in 2009, in his essay "Rise of the Red Tories", wrote: "The current political consensus is left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be." One need not endorse Blond's religiously inspired social conservatism to acknowledge that many of the ties that used to bind us together - ties of familial, communal and civic obligation - have frayed.

MacIntyre probably would embrace Blond's conclusions, at least to some extent. But to say that the ties that bind us together have been "frayed" is to make a massive assumption across a broad, diverse and pluralistic society. But even if we accept that, then what is the alternative to the reality we now face? Forced state intervention to rebuild those ties? 'Cos that seems to be completely counter-productive and utterly naive.

Pleasure without happiness, freedom without responsibility: we are living through a profound cultural crisis. Does the left in Britain have anything original to say about family breakdown and our moral confusion? Can agreement be reached about what has gone wrong and what should be done about it?

Agreement seems unlikely - a tenuous consensus is probably the best we can hope for. But that would involve interested parties not adopting the casual and thoughtless positions that left and right demand. Just a cursory glance at the very titles of the articles in The New Statesman suggest that there is precious little original thinking going on there.

Overleaf, leading thinkers attempt to answer these questions and others as they, like the rest of us, move uncertainly through the burnt-out and blackened landscape of our cities, looking for a way forward.

Oh, please. I live in Leeds, and nothing happened. Across this country, millions of people live in cities and parts of cities where nothing happened. And that is just the people who live in cities; people who live in unaffected towns or the countryside are also probably rolling their eyes at the needless hyperbole that rounds off this article. An article that adds little to the debate on the riots.

But given my criticisms of the views of both left and right in the aftermath of these riots, it would probably be remiss of me not to offer my own opinions on those riots. I think some peope rioted because of poverty. And I think some people rioted because of the lack a father figure in their lives. And I think that some people rioted because (once again) the police gunned down someone. And I think people rioted because of peer pressure, because of uncontrolled rage, because of a desire to have new trainers for literally no cost whatsoever. The point is that disparate people with all kinds of different motives took part in those riots - when we attempt to ascribe a common cause, we are bound to get into trouble.

Which is part of the problem facing both those who claim that the riots were down to poverty etc and those who claim that it was down to a breakdown in some families. It seems to assume identikit people inhabit this country - people with the same motivations, across the board. Now I'm not trying to deny the existence of community - or, on a more micro-level family or on a more macro level society - but I am pointing out that we are a collection of communities of individuals. We respond to different things in different ways - hell, we even respond to the same things in different ways. To deny this is to deny our true nature as individuals, and to suppose that we can truly build a better future through such a denial is to embrace the sort of utopian politics that should be rejected based of, if nothing else, than the lessons of history.

Why The Tories Will Almost Certainly Win A Second Term

Guido has recently had a post up questioning whether we are witnessing a one-term Tory government. While the points raised are relevant, I can’t help but feel that Guido is hedging his bets to some extent. If the Tories win outright, he has a whole host of posts highlighting the failure of Labour to get anywhere. If the Tories lose, he can point to this post and again be “proved” right. But that could just be my natural cynicism (which is generally rewarded where Mr Fawkes is concerned, though). The point of my post is that, as things stand, I think the Tories will go on to win a second term.

There are three reasons for this. Firstly, while things may get worse in terms of the economy, there is also the possibility that things will get distinctly better – especially if George Osborne clocks that economic recovery is aided by tax cuts as well as spending cuts. A recovering economy tends to reward the incumbent government; if Cameron & Co can pull it off, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t reap the rewards in the ballot box. And, after a year and a bit in office, there is still a lot of time to do it before the country has to go back to the polls in 2015.

The second reason is that the Tories aren’t really campaigning at the moment. They’ve got other stuff to do. Like govern. And, of course, muzzle their coalition partners as much as possible. However, come the next election (and they will effectively decide when that is – don’t rule out the possibility of a snap poll if a Tory victory looks likely in one), they will be coming out all guns blazing, using the healthy war chest to try to dominate the core messages of that campaign. And I think they will be emphasising the compromises they have made for the supposed good of the nation (for example, going into the coalition), the difficult choices they believe they have made (cuts etc) at the same time as hammering Labour for leaving them such a fucking mess to deal with in the first place. In the meantime, Labour have little else to do but campaign. And how well are they doing at that? Well, they are attracting back some of the supporters they lost during the long, messy years they spent in power, but those people are coming back for no real reason other than they don’t like the Tories and the reality of that party being ineffective control of the country narks them a bit. Labour, despite having all the time that no longer governing affords a party, are struggling to effectively vocalise any sort of popular message or image.

Which leads me to the third reason why a Tory victory still looks likely – Ed Miliband is just plain shit at the job of being Leader of the Opposition. And if you are shit at that job you have precisely no credibility when it comes to pitching for the promotion to the top job. Especially when the guy you are fighting for that job is already in it. Cameron may be compromised by, say, his association with Rebekah Brooks, but he still looks a lot more credible and Prime Ministerial than his Labour counterpart. Of course, Miliband Minor might be binned before the next election. But who would they replace him with? The reason he won the last Labour leadership election was because he appeared to be the least shit of those running in it. That situation hasn’t changed; there appears to be no-one in the upper echelons of the Labour party who could look credible against even that lightweight David Cameron.

Of course, lots could change, politics is constantly changing blah blah fucking blah. And yeah, something could happen that radically changes the political landscape. But as things stand, I think that enough of the British people will decide, in balance and when faced with the reality of voting in the ballot box on Election Day, that they prefer the devil they know rather to the one they don’t. The Tories will, most likely, benefit from a grudging refusal on the part of the British people to embrace change unless they absolutely have to or have grown utterly repelled by the incumbent government.

After all, that’s what allowed the odious Tony Blair to be re-elected. Twice.

An Epic Summer Recess

I always wonder why it is presented as something that is in some way comforting when the House of Commons returns from a recess to debate a key issue of the day. Why would a bunch of self-important, indolent and self-serving gobshites pontificating on riots or on phone hacking make a blind bit of fucking difference out there in the real world? No doubt the rioters are now shitting themselves and would never dare to rob a Foot Locker again, and all because Cameron and Miliband returned (no doubt briefly) to the Commons to engage in an extended bout of meaningless posturing.

But what is really striking is that this is the second time that the Commons has been recalled from its recess since it began about halfway through July. I don’t care that there have been two crises in that short space of time; rather, I’m staggered by just how many recesses the Commons has awarded itself and how long the summer recess is. MPs don’t have to attend the Commons from 19th July to 5th September this year, and then they’re back for a whopping 10 days before getting a Conference recess from 15th September to 10th October. Yeah, I know that they have constituency duties, but effectively from late June until mid-October MPs are doing at best half their jobs, and they aren’t doing one of the crucial things they are elected to do; they aren’t debating legislation, they aren’t legislating, and they are not governing despite being, y'know, the government. I feel some relief that they aren’t adding to the legislative burden of this country for much of what we laughably call the summer**, but I’m staggered given the amount they are paid and the role they do (governing, for fuck’s sake) which apparently still allows them to take a large swathe of the summer off. Because, as the hacking scandal and the riots show, politics does not stop just because we are in the summer months.

It would be too much to state that the feckless indolence of much of the population is the result of the feckless indolence of the parliamentarians who apparently see nothing wrong with taking the majority of the summer off*** - I suspect that most people don’t know about the recess and probably don’t care. But there is a concept called “leading by example”; our MPs expect us to follow them but time and time again they show a steadfast refusal to demonstrate why we should follow them or actually consider them to be leaders. At a time when the economy is struggling and disaffection with politicians is running at an all-time high, a starting point to turn this situation around could be our MPs starting to work at full pelt not just in parts of the year, but across the whole year. Which is not too much to ask, surely?

*Or in the case of Gordon Brown, pretty much at all.
**Given this positively autumnal August.
***There are some who have argued that the summer recess would be reduced – such as former MP Chris Mullin. The fact that their aruments have made sod all difference is probably a good indicator of the mindset of those who sit in the Commons.

Quote of the Day and Another Rant About Conspiracy Theories

From Longrider on yet another post at OoL expounding dubious and unconvincing conspiracy theories:

I have to say that conspiracy theories really undermines what we are doing here. When we point out genuine, provable malfeasance on the part of those who would steal our liberties, our opponents will point straight back to the conspiracy theories and laugh.

Couldn't agree more. While I absolutely believe that James Higham et al should have a right to publish what they want, especially on a site co-run by Higham, I have to say the conspiracy theory guff does nothing for the cause of liberty and will probably end up harming it. We don't need a conspiracy theory about 9/11 to show that the Patriot Act was wrong, and we don't need a conspiracy theory about 7/7 to show that all the attempts to increase the detention periods in this country were wrong. All those conspiracy theories create straw man arguments that our opponents can easily bat away, making themselves look right in the process. And the worst thing is, in articles like the one linked to above, we create those straw man arguments, not our opponents.

And I don't understand why we have to create these largely unprovable and, in my humble opinion, false ideas that cultural Marxism has taken over the world, or that Obama is closet Marxist, or that Christianity is being undermined by arguably the most incompetent organisations in the world (namely, local governments). We're not dealing with opponents who are generally very subtle about what they do. There's no great attempt to hide the fact that the DNA of innocent people is being kept on the DNA database in what represents a massive u-turn and a real concern to anyone interested in championing civil liberties in this country. They're doing it, right now, down in London. We don't need to fight members of the Frankfurt School who have been dead for decades when Clegg and Cameron are doing tangible things to damage freedom in the here and now, right in front of our noses.

But anyway; enough. Fighting conspiracy theorists is a waste of time and effort. I believe in freedom and that belief encompasses the freedom of conspiracy loons to spout their paranoia on any platform they see fit. But that same freedom allows me to point out that what they are doing doesn't help the cause of freedom and actually hinders it.

Blue Sky Thinking

Anyone who has ever worked in business and heard the ominous phrase "blue sky thinking" will not be surprised with the sort of unrealistic toss Steve Hilton has apparently been spouting in the hallowed halls of the Prime Minister's home. "Blue sky thinking" is a euphemism for chatting nonsense that quite simply isn't ever going to happen. I have no idea why Hilton - who seems to just say that the first that floats into his brain - is employed by the incumbent Prime Minister, who is the most risk averse and anodyne politician to climb out of the bog of mediocrity that is modern politics in this country.

Although I do like this observation in the Telegraph (emphasis mine):

Mr Hilton, who often walks around the Prime Minister's office without shoes, is an increasingly influential figure who often suggests seemingly crazy ideas in an attempt to spark creative debate.

Must be fucking mental to walk around without shoes. What a crazy fool. Definitely want to certify someone for not wearing shoes.

The Ludicrous Idea of Cameron Resigning

Cameron is now the bookmaker's favourite to be unseated as party leader first. All I can say to this is "oh please".

What has Cameron actually done wrong? Well, he displayed poor judgement when he employed one Andy Coulson. Poor judgement, mind, because of what that man has allegedly done in the past, not because of anything he did in power. I mean, there's no evidence of Coulson invovling himself in... say... a dodgy dossier now, is there? And Cameron's lapse of judgement really is small fry compared to the sort of mistakes made by his predecessors in the role - Brown nearly bankrupted us while trying to prop up failed banks and his own spurious and false claim to have ended boom and bust; Blair dragged us into an illegal and largely unwinnable war so he could continue to act as the fluffer for the most idiotic president of recent times; Major sank the economy for a bit through his desperation to be part of the ERM. A bit of perspective here would be good, people. Cameron fucked up - but employing Coulson is really rather low on the list of fuck-ups when it comes to those who have inhabited Number 10.

And the other charges - that Cameron is too close to News International, for example, are true both of the most recent Labour Prime Ministers. And it is probably worth asking when this phone hacking took place - on Cameron's watch? Err, no, it appears it took place under Nu Labour, when both Brown and Blair where desperately courting the man who is now public enemy Number One - Rupert Murdoch.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this because I support Cameron or the Tories - regular readers of this blog will know just how little I rate both the man and his party. But we really have lost the plot if we are going to demand the resignation of a PM because he employed the wrong person to talk to the press on his behalf. The whole thing reeks of hysteria and hyperbole. And the thing most likely to sink Cameron isn't the accusations - which, as things stand, are a mild squall in a very small thimble of tea - but his failure to stand up and just brush off the calls for him to go. Cameron needs to get a grip; so do those calling for him to go.

Cameron, News International and Moral Authority

One of the more extraordinary claims I've heard since it was alleged that the News of the World have been hacking the phones of a missing schoolgirl and dead soldiers is that the ongoing scandal in some way robs Cameron of his moral authority. But seriously, folks, what moral authority? Cameron has always had all the moral authority of a slimline soft drink - he's not as bad for you as some of his rivals, but still not good in his own right. He was, and remains, an exercise in political triangulation - the last roll of the dice over half a decade ago by an increasingly desperate Tory party shell-shocked by three successive election defeats.

But if this scandal does destroy Cameron's moral authority, it does equal damage to the already tarnished reputations of his two immediate predecessors in Number 10. Blair and Brown courted Murdoch like the most desperate teenage boy at a teenage disco; they are key to propagating the myth that the backing of Murdoch means the difference between a win and a loss in a General Election. That hasn't, of course, stopped the perennially vengeful Brown sticking the boot in to the Murdoch empire as it continues to struggle. But that's the nature of the Brown and, since he has thankfully been relegated to where he belongs to the dustbin of history, rather tangential to the point. It is difficult to see any of the recent incumbents of No. 10 having any moral authority. And please don't tell me that Miliband Minor wouldn't have dropped his pants at the very first whiff of attention from the Murdoch empire prior to this scandal escalating.

The best way in which Cameron can be differentiated from the others who have sought or inhabited his current address is not down to moral authority but rather his judgement in employing Coulson. Both Brown and Blair employed repellent individuals to do their dirty work on the media for them, but both of those figures were only really discredited during their bosses' tenure at the top. Coulson was clearly damaged goods when Cameron hired him before Call Me Dave ever crossed the threshold at the No. 10. Why hire such a person? Why take the risk of it all blowing up in your face like it has done for young HugAHusky?

But those who believe that this is a resigning issue for Cameron are a mix of hopelessly optimistic and hopelessly naive. Cameron has been in office for just over a year and this is the first real shit that has any hope of sticking to him. This is the equivalent of the Ecclestone affair for one Anthony Blair. Cameron will take a (deserved) kicking for this but when the dust has settled I think it will make fuck all difference. Cameron will go on and this whole affair will probably end up no more than a couple of pages in his no doubt tedious and self-indulgent memoirs (which I very much look forward to not reading).

Cameron leaves this debacle with no moral authority - in other words, much the same way as he was when he went into it. He made a bad and naive judgement call when it came to Andy Coulson - something he definitely won't hang for. I mean, the last PM bankrupted the country so he could look like a jowly, greying version of Superman, and the PM before that dragged us into an unwinnable war just so he could posture next to George W Bush. And this is a classic example of the bar being set so low for Cameron that it is next to impossible for him to do something so comprehensively wrong that he has to resign for it. The sad reality is that this sort of thing is now par for the course for a modern PM, not something out of the ordinary. Even sadder, the man now in Number 10 never had moral authority to lose. This is modern Britain - and modern politics.

Best News In The World Ever...

...Cameron has called for a phone hacking probe.

Well thank fuck for that! Jesus, I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that there is a phone hacking probe to come! This is on a par with the Declaration of Indepedence. Thank Christ for that brave, bold politician named David Cameron.

More seriously, though, I can't remember when the coalition ran out of steam, but I think it was quite early on. But whenever it happened, the coalition has now become largely reactive. It does not offer bold, new policies designed to better the lives of the people in this country. Nor does it offer a genuinely new politics that might allow power to be returned to the people of this country. Rather, it offers a bland and facile reactive approach to politics, where responding to media narratives is far more important than doing anything big, ideological and genuinely radical. Therefore, when there was a chance to create positive headlines or, at the very least, offset some of the more negative ones, Cameron lept at that chance. Just as he has done with, say, his coalition's healthcare reforms.

Government needs to be more than a response to the 24/7 media cycle. It needs to be more than about responding to particular new stories. It needs to be visionary, and it needs to be confident. It needs to be able to say "I don't care about the phone hacking scandal because (a) it is being investigated by the police anyway and (b) I am trying to transform this country for the better". Unfortunately, our current government seem terminally unable to cope with the relative bravery that such a position might entail.

So thank fuck for Cameron's commitment to a phone hacking probe. Because that really is the biggest challenge facing us at the moment in this country. And it is precisely what he should be doing. In the world of Cameron, anyway...

Predicting the Opinion of Political History

This proved, somewhat unexpectedly, to be a very interesting documentary.

In a sense, I know very little about the Wilson/Heath years. I mean, I know the basic outline of what happened, if only because it provides some of the context for contemporary politics. But for me, the Wilson/Heath years (and the Callaghan administration) is part of the dour, drear post-war consensus era – that dull time when politics ground to a halt because the main parties pretty much agreed on everything. The programme did little to change my opinion of this era, but it did reframe it in a way that I hadn’t considered before through making it a duel between two of Britain’s least compelling Prime Ministers. It’s an interesting way of looking at politics between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies.

And it did leave me wondering how the current political era will ultimately be viewed when similar documentaries are made in the future. I mean, in a sense it is easy to write the history of the Nu Labour years as it has two defining characteristics (ignoring the obvious ones like spin, mendacity and crushing incompetence). You can sum up the Nu Labour years by referencing the illegal and pointless war in Iraq at the same time as talking about the Blair-Brown rivalry. Unlike the Wilson/Heath years you don’t really need to mention whoever was in opposition. But what about the current era? How will the first year of the coalition be remembered?

I suspect that it will be remembered as the time when politics – or at least politicians and political commentators – went a little mad and forgot that the main party in government was the Tories rather than the Liberal Democrats. It will be about how the opposition party decided to fight Britain’s third party rather than the first party, and how the pointless chunterings of a second-rate politician like Vince Cable became front page news. And I rather suspect that historians will be incredulous as to the extent to which Nick Clegg became a Teflon coating for David Cameron. Above all, though, I think that this era could be framed around the question of why the Labour party allowed the Tories to coast to a real general election victory under the vacuous and utterly pointless Ed Miliband…

Government Enforced Giving

Longrider comprehensively fillets this pile of shite here, and I've not got a lot to add. All I would like to highlight is in relation to this idea:

The Government will also launch a ‘major campaign’ to promote payroll giving, where employees are encouraged to commit a slice of their monthly pay cheque to charity.

I would just like to point out that I already give up - without being given the choice - about a quarter of my monthly pay cheque to the government. It's a bit like charity but with me having the choice to (a) give up the money and (b) choose what it is spent on. But that's not relevant. My point, rather, is this - if the government wants me to give more to charity, they should substantially reduce the amount the extort from me each month. Economics plays a crucial part in all this, see? I only earn a certain amount of money each month, which means I can only ever give a certain amount to others. You want me to give more, Mr and Mrs Coalition? Let me give more by letting me retain more.

But this is the problem with the Big Society, and it is the logical fallacy at the very heart of David Cameron's spurious, ill thought through project. He expects more from the people of this country - he expects them to go an build a big society. But he won't reduce the burden that the state places on them. This is why the Big Society will fail. At its heart, it could be about a radical redistribution of power in favour of the people of this country. In reality, it is little more than a fig-leaf to disguise the fact that the money has run about but that the Tories are afraid of the genuine spending cuts and tax cuts that would really make a difference to this country.

So, yeah, by all means ask me to give more from my monthly pay cheque. But until you reduce the tax burden, you can frankly whistle for it.

Yes to AV - Where Did It All Go So Wrong?

May as well jump on the bandwagon and spend a bit of time autopsying the Yes to AV campaign - because, and let's be clear on this, Yes to AV were pretty much humiliated at the polls.

They'll be some who argue that the problem was that AV is more difficult that FPTP to explain. Well, yes it is. But then again FPTP can be summed up in a short sentence. Yet AV isn't that much more difficult to explain. It isn't like trying to explain the Theory of Relativity, or Plato's Theory of Forms. Besides, the campaign had the best part of a year to explain it's preference to voters. Frankly, that should be enough time to explain that voting system.

And they'll be others who point out that the No to AV campaign had more money than the Yes campaign. Which is true, and certainly an advantage to No to AV. But Yes to AV could have made money for themselves had their campaign been a little better. They could have rivaled the spending power of No to AV had their campaign actually been good.

Which leads me nicely to the biggest problem Yes to AV had. Their campaign, with the best will in the world, was shit. It seemed entirely to consist of them trying to rebut claims made by their opponents. Which means, almost every time they spoke, they were not only on the defensive but also reinforcing everything the No camp threw at them almost by default. If you feel you have to answer a charge in a political campaign, you are saying that there is something credible within that charge. And I think the No camp clocked this, and made their claims more and more outrageous. Therefore, you ended up with headlines along the lines of "Yes to AV will help the BNP" closely followed by headlines like "Yes campaign reject BNP claims". Which creates the mental association of "Yes to AV" and the BNP. And it is no good carping that the BNP's Nick Griffin did not favour a yes result in the referendum - he's a slack-jawed, know-nothing moron anyway who wouldn't know something was good for him if it smacked him square in his jowly face.

And finally, the No to AV campaign really thought about who it had speaking on its behalf. You had David Cameron - the incumbent Prime Minister - on a stage with a Labour heavyweight and former Home Secretary supporting No to AV. Margaret Beckett - a former Labour Foreign Secretary - also argued against electoral reform. On the flipside, you had Ed Miliband and Vince Cable on the same stage - something that will only really appeal to self-identified progressives who would probably back AV anyway. And on the sidelines you had Chris Huhne chuntering away - surely counter-productive, as he seems to be a man that precisely no-one likes. And the whole keeping Nick Clegg at arm's length thing ended up being counter-productive as well, if only because it generated much press speculation about why Clegg was not spear-heading the campaign.

So in short the Yes campaign was always fighting with one arm tied behind its back - its mistake was to tie the other hand behind its back as well through utterly inept campaigning. There is much to learn from the Yes campaign for those who would reform the electoral system, and they've going to have a long time to learn it since, given the result announced yesterday, it is going to be a long time before electoral reform is on the agenda again.

General Election 2011?

Not often I agree with something Jackie Ashley has to say, but her parts of her analysis here are spot on. An election this year would benefit the Tories and would almost certainly result in an outright win for Cameron and his band of happy campers. The Tories have the money to fight and Cameron looks Prime Ministerial in a way Miliband Minor just can't match. Furthermore, Labour has done little to change or reform itself; it remains a party based on negativity, with no positive message to offer whatsoever.

But if anything can stop an election this year, it's the Liberal Democrats. Yeah, they're getting little from the coalition other than flak (which would have happened had they signed up with Labour as well) and it seems unlikely that they will get their much hoped for electoral reform. But they made their bed, they've got to lie in it. Breaking away from the coalition now would mean they are showing that they can't be trusted as partners in power (a big problem for a party that has only governed once as a junior partner in the current coalition). Furthermore, the Liberal Democrats aren't popular at the moment - in a General Election right now, they'd face something approaching a wipe-out. Finally, their leader, Nick Clegg, must know that he will only lead his party for as long as the coalition lasts. If there was a General Election now, I'm pretty sure his leadership of the Liberal Democrats would end shortly after the results of that election came in (and there are no guarantees that he would keep his own seat in the Commons).

The Tories have a lot to gain through an election this year; it remains unlikely as the Liberal Democrats have literally everything to lose.

Stuff I Couldn't Give a Fuck About Part One: The AV Referendum

Can we have the referendum on AV right now please? Because I'm mightily sick of the whole thing.

I get the impression that we are supposed to be surprised by elements of how the whole campaign has gone - like it is supposed to be some sort of revelation that David Cameron and the ever thuggish John Reid should share the same platform. Of course they can share the same platform; they've both spent enough of their careers chasing Daily Mail headlines. Likewise, seeing Ed Miliband and Vince Cable on the same stage is meant to be news, but I can't really see why. They are very much the same, both in terms of the way they think and the (generally idiotic) way they act. Cable and Miliband Minor together isn't so much a campaign as the queue for the audition for a political version of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.

And then there's been the proper campaign (by which I mean the one not conducted by jobbing politicians looking for a photo opportunity). What is striking about it is that neither side has ever made the case for their particular voting system. No To AV have stuck resolutely with the twin pronged attack of "ooo, AV'll cost ya" (ironically spending vast sums of money to convey that message) and "AV works for the BNP"* while Yes To AV have fought (judging by the completely unsolicited and unwelcome e-mails they insist on sending me) a purely reactive campaign, indignantly rebutting charges from the other side with the playground logic of "I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?" at the same time as thinking the use of the word "Fair" will automatically win people over to their side. As I say, neither campaign has truly set out to make an effective case for or against AV - in part, I suspect, because they know that their system is just as flawed (albeit in different ways) as the other side's.

And, of course, this referendum is basically on nothing - it is on a minor change to our unwritten constitution that will have precious little impact on the problems of politics in this country regardless of the outcome. The problem isn't the voting system - it is the political class, and those vainglorious turds who enter it. Show me a way of changing the type of person and raising the calibre of the individuals who enter our political elite, and I'll be listening. Hell, if it works, I'll campaign for it. But given the amount of power that has been ceded to the EU without a referendum and the wars we have entered/the near bankrupting of our country that took place without consulting the British people, you'll have to forgive me if I consider the AV referendum little more than a sideshow in British politics. The fact is, the real stuff is happening elsewhere while some people bicker about the system we use to vote.

*The irony is that the voting system impacts on the BNP remarkably little. Their grubby little star is in ascendance when mainstream politicians fail to make the strong and inclusive case for immigration, while it is in freefall when the BNP actually get some of the limelight and people see what nasty, ignorant and pointless thugs they are.

PTSD in Political Parties

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is pretty well recognised in humans; I think it also happens in political parties. In fact, I think it is one of the reasons why the dominant political discourse in our country is so anondyne. In the past 20 years, both of the dominant political parties in this country have had PTSD.

For Labour, it hit them in 1992 when Neil Kinnock managed to snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory. The party had already changed – it had moved to the centre from the alarmingly leftist Labour party of 1983. But it still hadn’t won – despite facing a tired government led by a weak-willed PM. At that point, the party changed. The desire to win became everything. And that led to the gutting of any real ideology. It led to the election of Tony Blair as party leader. The rest is now, mercifully, history.

For the Tories, it probably hit about the time they decided to concur with what just about everyone else was telling them – that IDS was an utter disaster as a leader. Their PTSD took a little longer to fully manifest itself, though. Of course, that manifestation is embodied in the incumbent Prime Minister – a man who dragged the Tory party to the centre ground and away from any controversial opinions or positions whatsoever. He gutted the Tory party just as surely as Blair did for Labour.

And herein lies the problem – both Cameron and Blair have gone on to get the top job in British politics, whereas many of their predecessors as party leaders did not come close. And that is what tends to silence the ideological critics in both of their parties – it is pretty difficult to argue with success. So we can trace the impact of debilitating events such as the 1992 General Election defeat for the Labour party and the failure of the IDS leadership for the Tories through to the eventual return to success – but at the price of shedding much of the ideology that made the different parties distinct in the first place. Success – but at what price?

Don’t get me wrong, an election defeat is a clear indicator for a political party that something needs to change, and the answer is seldom a superficial change like a new leader. This is a lesson that the Labour party – post-2010 – has still yet to learn. Yet the extent to which a party changes is the crucial issue; recent politics gives us two examples of political parties who sold their souls for a chance for electoral glory. They gave into the panic of PTSD, and lost their way as a result.

So what hope do we have that parties can start to take defeats – a natural part of any engagement in a democratic political process – as a reason for change, but not a mad dash from ideological commitments to the centre ground? Well, Blair is utterly discredited and a strong candidate for the dubious title of Worst Prime Minister in Living Memory (along with his successor as PM). And while Blair – for all of his flaws – did win a stunning victory in 1997, Cameron is only in power through a coalition with the Lib Dems. Labour gained 145 seats in 1997, the Tories 97 in 2010. The law of diminishing returns seems to be rearing its head for those party leaders who choose success over political commitments.

So my point is this – any defeat is difficult for a party to take. Any failure to be returned to power or to win an election is potentially traumatic. But the key thing is how parties deal with that trauma. Gutting yourself in order to win next time or the time after that is undeniably one option, but there are others – the options that allow a party to both win and lose at the next election, but to do so with dignity.

British Politics, Libertarians and LPUK

This post will be long; for that I offer a warning, but no apology.

I haven’t been a member of LPUK for about a month now, and after Anna Raccoon’s devastating post on that party’s current leader, it seems unlikely I will be again. Personal responsibility is crucial to almost every successful formulation of libertarianism, but according to Raccoon’s post, the current leader of LPUK is utterly irresponsible. More than a bit of a problem, I would argue.

Of course there may be those who argue that I’m judging based on only one side of what will probably be a vicious argument. But the facts presented in the post fit the facts as I have observed them, and the whole post has more than a ring of truth to it. And it is a thoroughly depressing truth.

LPUK now appear to have two choices. Either they can ditch Withers and elect a new leader (Christ knows who, and doing so would enhance the perception of a party in crisis) or they can keep him on, and become increasingly like a version of Veritas without the unique selling point of having a celebrity as leader. Neither fate is particularly edifying; it is more than possible to see the Libertarian Party of the UK as entering terminal decline.

But there’s another reason why I don’t much care about hearing both sides of the story. And it’s this: the accusations about Withers are just the icing on the cake for me. The reality is that it is easy for LPUK to enter terminal decline, and easy for it to wink out of existence. And the reason for this is simple – they have made startlingly little progress since they were formed. The party, when it has contested elections, has done beyond poorly. And this is a crucial, debilitating problem. If you can’t credibly contest elections, then the media won’t care about you. If the media doesn’t care about you, you can’t win elections. And so the vicious circle continues, and LPUK remains a largely virtual entity, incapable of the sort of practical action needed to make a genuine political impact in our deeply flawed democracy.

In fact, LPUK are a standing rebuke to those who wax lyrical about the importance of the internet in modern politics. The internet has a role to play, for sure. But if your party was formed, largely managed and supported through the internet, then you have a problem. In a constituency based electoral system such as ours, you need to have constituency organisations that are building support across years, doing the endless (and endlessly tedious) work of canvassing on rainy Saturday mornings. If you are largely an internet organisation, you don’t have that. In fact, the internet becomes as much a virtual prison as it does a virtual tool. After several years in existence, LPUK have remarkably little to show for their efforts. And for all the talk of a resurgence under Withers (a resurgence surely dead in the water now, if it ever truly existed) the party has a mountain to climb, and seemingly precious little resources to allow it to do so in order to get anywhere. The odds were stacked against the party before this scandal (if we can call something a scandal that precious few people in this country will really care about). Now proper political influence seems further away than ever before.

There will be some who will crow over my acceptance that LPUK are not going to go anywhere; the sort of libertarians who have always argued for entryism into the main political parties now have every right to say “I told you so”. Except their victory is pyrrhic, and their laughter hollow. Because there is no natural home in British politics for the genuinely libertarian.

Anyone who argues that libertarians have a natural home in one of the main parties (by which I mean a party larger than LPUK; a pretty minimal hurdle to overcome) is simply wrong. We can ignore anyone who says that libertarians have a natural home in the Labour party as utterly delusional. The same for anyone who might make the claim that the Greens have something to offer libertarians. Their environmental and economic policies could only ever be implemented through draconian state intervention.

Which takes us to the Tories. So many professed libertarians seem to reside in the Tory party, and I don’t really understand why. The Tories are deeply socially conservative. And there is nothing libertarian about social conservatism. In fact, I have a little litmus test I always use when I think that the Tories are a good idea. I think about whether I could honestly vote for the policies they championed at the last election. Then I think of their National Service plan, and remember why I don’t vote for them.

The same for UKIP. There are some who would make UKIP a libertarian party. Sadly, I think they are in an ineffective minority. And to emphasise that point, I can always remember something like their proposed ban on the burqa to reassure me that they are often little more than the right-wing of the Tories in self-imposed exile.

And the Liberal Democrats? Well, I had hope when Nick Clegg was elected. And it lasted for about five seconds. He’s an apologist for the Tories with, according to his writing in The Orange Book, staunchly Europhile leanings (albeit with a reformist bent). Not an intolerable position, but hardly libertarian either. And his party is fatally flawed in my eyes because, as vast swathes of the party has shown since they gained some real political power, far too much of it is still social democratic, and thus Labour supporters who can’t quite bring themselves to be Labour.

Which leads us back to LPUK. A tiny party that has spent most of its life fighting for survival, rather than for power. And I want to stress this point – the alleged behaviour of Andrew Withers is just the tip of the iceberg. The party is sinking; which is hardly surprising, since it has always struggled to stay afloat.

But whatever. I don’t need to be a member of a political party. In fact, a spell as an independent is very, very appealing. I wish LPUK the very best – and they’re going to need all the goodwill they can get over the coming days, I rather think. But no more money from me; no more links; no more support.

And that’s that. LPUK is done, as far as I’m concerned. Finished.

What’s next?

Prime Minister David Davis

I love a good counter-factual. I even love a lactlustre one, like this effort. And there can be no doubt that recent politics will generate more than a few “what if?” scenarios. What if Miliband Major had been elected Labour leader and therefore Prime Minister in 2009? What if Brown had been challenged properly rather than just being crowned as Prime Minister? What if the Labour party had scored a few more seats at the last election, and been more open to meaningful negotiation with the Lib Dems?

Inevitably, a lot of these scenarios focus on Labour – after all, they did spend over a decade in power. But I’ve got an alternative counter-factual. What if David Davis had won the Tory leadership contest in 2005?

If is an entirely realistic scenario. He was the front-runner for ages, and he clearly bested Cameron in their TV debate. In fact, all it might have taken to make Davis Tory leader is a decent speech to the party conference. It was that hurdle he failed to clear, and it was at that point that he ceased to be the presumptive leader.

Had he won, I think he would have made a formidable leader of the opposition. He wouldn’t have started with the aspiration of ending the Punch and Judy side to modern politics – from the outset, he would have relished it. Furthermore, his commitment to civil liberties would have enabled him to put clear blue water between his party and the Labour government very early on. And as leader of the opposition, he probably wouldn’t have gone ahead with that faintly pointless stunt of resigning his seat in the Commons (although quite how his impatience and desire for a fight would have been sated throughout his time as opposition leader is an open question).

Furthermore, his relatively humble background would have enabled him to avoid all the tedious charges of poshness that have dogged Cameron. Indeed, Davis’s status as a self-made man would have answered many concerns about the Tory approach to social mobility. And not being distracted by such concerns, Davis could have spelt out a more meaningful version of modern Conservatism than Cameron’s notoriously vague “Big Society”.

So Davis would have entered last year’s election campaign in a strong position. And in that campaign, he’d probably have excelled. Imagine him in the debates – he’d not only have seen off Brown (which, in all honesty, isn’t that difficult) but he’d have nipped Cleggmania in the bud. In fact, a Davis leadership might have meant the end of Clegg as party leader as well as Brown. Because I think Davis, with a pugnacious attitude and clearer alternative to the Labour agenda, would have won the election outright. It wouldn’t have been a massive majority, but it would have been enough for the party not to need a coalition in order to govern. And with his party's mediocre showing in that election, Clegg would have fallen.

But there would have been a downside as well. Because if Davis hadn’t won the election outright, it is difficult to imagine him being as open to a coalition with the Liberal Democrats as Cameron. Furthermore, his personality – which often comes across as difficult, idiosyncratic and monomaniacal – would not have been conducive to the needs of running a minority government or even a government with a small majority. Indeed, it is difficult to see how Davis would have inspired a team across his time in opposition when he himself is so clearly not a team player.

Still, these problems notwithstanding, a Davis premiership would have given us one of the finest sights modern politics could imagine – David Davis against Ed Miliband at Prime Minister’s Questions. He’d have eaten Miliband Minor alive.

So my point is this – counter-factuals are great, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that the leadership choices made by the Tories in the last parliament are just as important as those made by the Labour party.

More please, David:

"I wish the shadow chancellor would occasionally shut up and listen to the answer," said Mr Cameron.

He told a grinning Mr Balls: "I may be alone in thinking him the most annoying person in modern politics."

And I very much doubt you are alone in the opinion.

Cut Protestors and Their Idiocy

As up to a quarter of a million people descend on London to protest against unavoidable spending cuts, I sit in Leeds shaking my head in mild despair.

These people truly are economic dullards. To bring London to a standstill on a Saturday afternoon is an immensely economically damaging plan. Businesses will face reduced custom - if not having to close - on their busiest day of the week. Which will lead to less revenue for businesses, which in turn will lead to less tax for the government. Which in turn will lead to what? More spending cuts. So in order to protest about spending cuts, the protestors could risk future spending cuts. Meaning they truly are absolute lackwits.

Fortunately, some muppet from Unite is on hand to clarify what they want to achieve:

"Our alternative is to concentrate on economic growth through tax fairness so, for example, if the government was brave enough, it would tackle the tax avoidance that robs the British taxpayer of a minimum of £25bn a year."

Where to start? Ok, let's concede that this is a marginally more sophisticated position that simply picketing businesses because they (completely legally) avoid taxes since it instead focusses on the government who, after all, allow them to avoid taxes. Of course, having the demonstration on a Saturday when most of that government have buggered off elsewhere to avoid the inconvenience seems to be a stupid position. But nevermind, eh?

I do like the conflation of bravery with agreeing with a personal opinion. There is nothing intrinsically brave about challenging banking tax avoidance, just as there is nothing intrinsically brave in people following my personal opinion that people should ignore Unite. Bravery is about a bit more than complying with the prejudices of another.

Now, it is true that I don't see a lot of bravery in David Cameron. In fact, it looks to me like he has all the backbone of wilted spinach. Which makes his refusal to truly jump on the bash-the-banker bandwagon (at least to the same extent of Labour and the anti-cut protestors, because he and his government still have their anti-banking moments) is a rare example of mild courage from our Prime Minister. It is arguably more brave, see, to stand against the current anti-banker mindset so prevalent in this country at the moment.

But even if we do agree that standing up to banking tax avoidance is brave, we should also acknowledge that bravery can also be stupidity. And we can then argue that penalising banks through the tax system may be a brave but also stupid thing to do in this day and age. Because we live in a global economy, and if banks feel they are being shat on they will upsticks and fuck off elsewhere. So the end result of tackling (perfectly legal) tax avoidance is pretty stupid. And counter-productive. And deeply naive.

Still, naive is probably the best word for those who are protesting these cuts. At least, it is the best possible non-profane word.

UK Uncut Cretins

From UK Uncut - a group that seems determined to make student politics seem credible and forward thinking by comparison - I give you the concept of a bail-in. What is a bail-in, you might ask. You really don't want to know, I'd reply. But I'll tell you anyway:

Our next wave of actions will be even more exciting. A Bail-In means marching into our broken banks and building something better. Make your silent, sterile Barclays branch sing, dance, explode with life! Reclaim the space and make it into something thrilling, something that shows how much creativity the anti-cuts movement has. Let’s smash austerity with a smile on our faces. We are Cameron’s nightmare, a real big society with the vision and bravery to transform the institutions at the rotten heart of our system.

Right. So... a broken bank is what, then? One with a leaky roof or a run-down cash machine outside? Or is it one that we had to bail out? Because if it is, then you shouldn't be heading to Barclays because, as Jackart points out, they found other ways to keep going. I guess we're back at the idiot's equation when it comes to banks. The (il)logic runs something like this: I don't like bankers therefore bankers must be bad and therefore banks must be broken. It is audacious in its breathtaking stupidity.

This idea of making banks thrilling through singing and dancing also seems curious. To me, banks aren't cold and sterile - they are trying to project an image of being professional places where you can do business and where you can safely store your money. There is a reason why they don't normally have singing and dancing, my people. It's because it would be a fucking stupid idea for a bank.

And while we're on the subject, the talk of "reclaiming" a bank is also pretty stupid - at least until you realise that what we're talking about here is people invading the private property of others. Then it becomes downright malign. Think about how you would feel, Mr and Mrs UK Uncut, if I came round to your house and invaded your front room because I happen to think you are total dickheads disagree with you on this one. Wouldn't be fun, would it? But that's exactly what your bail-ins are about.

Oh, and by the way, you are not Cameron's nightmare. You are a minor irritant - like a mosquito bite on the butt cheek. If Cameron ignores you for long enough, you'll vanish. You're not going to change any institutions, rotten or otherwise, with your bland, anodyne and pathetic protests. All that will happen is that you'll look like cocks on Saturdays until you find something better to do at the weekend.

Which is rather the point. Far be it from me to champion Cameron's Big Society, but I dare say his response to this sort of guff would be "if you genuinely want to make a difference, stop interrupting businesses and do some constructive, voluntary work in your spare time". But that would be too difficult, wouldn't it? To do something that might actually be constructive. But that wouldn't get the media's attention.

Anyway targeting businesses like Barclays - which has done nothing more than trying to avoid (not evade) tax - is targeting the wrong people. Any tax bill has to be agreed with HMRC - if you don't agree with that tax bill, go bellyache to them. Furthermore, by damaging the trade of banks such as Barclays through these tedious sit-ins, you will potentially damage their future revenue and therefore decrease the amounts they will have to pay in tax in future. Which is the final irony - with behaviour like this, UK Uncut may actually be making future cuts more likely.

Absolute wankers.