Politics

UKIP Panic Sets In

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Nigel Farage UKIP voting

 

Yesterday I wrote about the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and the way in which they have transformed themselves over just a few years from being an upstart fringe party full of “fruitcakes and closet racists” (thanks, David Cameron) into a populist, compelling electoral force to be reckoned with.

I set out the reasons why I think that UKIP offer a compelling manifesto, and how they may well escape the usual fate suffered by smaller parties in general elections, i.e. falling back into obscurity, single-digit vote shares and zero parliamentary representation.

Evidently other people see the writing on the wall for the traditional Labour/Conservative/LibDem trifecta too, and none do so with more trepidation than loyal-but-ideologically-compromised traditional Conservative supporters, who rather than re-examining and changing their own faulty policies would rather destroy the newcomers who make them look bad by comparison.

Cue this hit piece from Mary Riddell, writing in The Telegraph. She thunders:

So consider, this morning, what a Ukip Britain would look like. it would be a locked-down land, armed to the hilt, where good foreigners were repelled and bad ones expelled, no questions asked. It would be a country concreted over for extra jails (though never for high speed rail lines). It would be a quaint place – an old curiosity shop of matrons and smoking rooms.

It would be a nation of wild spending, of derisory taxes for the rich and – not least because all talk of climate change would be abandoned – a country programmed for ruin. Welcome to Mr Farage’s Britain.

That future should not only alarm Ed Miliband. It should horrify us all.

More insidiously, she continues the old-guard Tory attempt to paint UKIP as the British National Party in a pin-stripe suit disguise, warning:

Moreover, today’s results are the first sign that Britain is far from immune to the lurch towards extremism that has shadowed other European countries and been exacerbated by recession. For sure, Ukip is no Golden Dawn and Mr Farage no dangerous rabble-rouser. Even so, his party’s performance invites comparison with the progress made by Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France.

If UKIP is no dangerous party and it’s leader no Jean-Marie or Marine Le Pen, why is Liddell then inviting comparison with those very same people and entities? Such a heinous accusation, so innocuously put. And of course the answer is as obvious as the motive of her rhetoric is tawdry – you can put two groups together in the same sentence and protest loudly that you are not comparing one with the other, but all that people will take away and remember is that UKIP and the far right are somehow associated.

Note also the total lack of any evidence to back up her words. Is Mary Riddell being serious? From where is she conjuring this nightmarish dystopia of a UKIP-ruled Britain? Certainly not from their own manifesto, which reads like a broadly libertarian (though a touch too socially authoritarian) set of policies that many Tories and centrists could get behind.

If she is choosing to smear UKIP based on some of their whackier supporters or representatives, she should remember that less mature parties have a harder time screening their candidates as they work to develop a national presence, and that there are plenty of thoroughly cringeworthy people in the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat ranks, too.

I was a UKIP doubter once, but now I’m not so sure. Their advocacy of smaller government, more competition and less regulation in both private and state sectors, and a flat tax are all very appealing to me. If the Conservative Party and their allies in the right wing media want to keep my loyalty and win my vote at the 2015 general election, the surefire way to fail in that task is to tell me that I am an ignorant reactionary being seduced by a borderline nationalist outfit favoured only by curtain-twitchers, closet racists and little-Englanders.

Mary Liddell and her ilk would do well to remember that.

 

UPDATE (16.25PM) – I took a closer look at the article byline and realised that Mary Riddell is actually a Labour supporting journalist, so my mistake. Of course, she has her own reasons for wishing to bash UKIP. What actually makes my misunderstanding funnier, and even more pertinent, is that her words could be so easily confused with those of any right-leaning journalist or commentator wringing their hands at the rise of UKIP.

Why Politicians Are Hated, Ctd.

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

I wrote yesterday about the scourge of the newly-minted career politician, and the damage that this particular breed of “public servant” is doing to the perception of politics in the United States and the United Kingdom.

I received a rather surprising amount of feedback on this piece, both in support and in dissent, so I thought it worth my while to clarify and expand upon my position.

My point was not that all young politicians or wannabe politicians are bad people, or that they are bad for our politics on an individual basis. There are many examples of young MPs or congressmen who do fine work on behalf of their constituencies or districts, and who go above and beyond the call of duty to champion important issues and causes. For evidence we need look only at the work of Labour MP Stella Creasy in her campaign to crack down on illegal loan shark activities in Britain, or Patrick Murphy, US congressman from Florida, who was so incensed by some of the extremist rhetoric coming from the mouth of his then-incumbent representative, Tea Party favourite Allen West, that he switched party affiliation from Republican to Democrat to run against him.

The point is not that being young and untested in the world makes one automatically unfit for public service. The point is that because the overwhelmingly predominant route into political office now favours people such as this – especially those who find themselves in the fast track to even higher office and power – we end up with a type of uniformity of temperament and experience in our legislatures and executives that can be quite damaging.

Many people remarked, after the death of Margaret Thatcher, that the age of the conviction politician is now over. And this is largely true. Those who remain tend to be the old dinosaurs from the past, and even they are dying out or retiring. Ted Kennedy, the “liberal lion” senator from Massachusetts, is dead. Glenda Jackson, my local constituency MP for Hampstead & Kilburn in London, is retiring at the end of this parliament.

There is, at least in the United States, a countervailing force against the move away from conviction politics in the form of the Tea Party. I happen to find their particular convictions rather false and opportunistic (ObamaCare is socialism but MediCare is great, government spending is terrible, but we only just realised this in the Age of Obama…), but there is nonetheless that sense of ideological purpose underlying what those politicians say and the way in which they vote. A better example might be the more principled small government libertarianism of former Texas congressman Ron Paul, and his son, Kentucky senator Rand Paul.

And in the United Kingdom, the UK Independence Party sent shockwaves through the British political establishment after their recent successes in the local council elections in England, largely because they campaigned as the Conservative Party But With Principles, rather than on a continually-triangulating, consensus-seeking David Cameron Tory platform.

I also received feedback from other readers telling me that “hated” is a rather strong word, and that people tend to be indifferent to politics rather than truly hating it. This is a fair point, to a degree – many people are so zoned out and entranced by the world of reality TV and other inane distractions that they just don’t know or care about politics, and are unable to connect the dots and understand how political decisions impact their lives.

But having stood on the main street in my town, campaigning with my hometown MP in the run-up to the 2010 general election, I can also say with absolute certainty that there is a deep contempt, and yes, hatred, that goes well beyond mere indifference to what goes on in Westminster or Washington. As I spoke to members of the public on the street and handed out campaign literature, there were many people who expressed their revulsion against politicians of all parties, and were happy to back up their arguments with a litany of (sometimes rather irrefutable) reasons why.

When I first started work I sat next to a stridently anti-political man at my office, and had terrible trouble convincing him that some politicians were really motivated by the desire to do good, and in fact were not engaged in the devil’s own work. When our argument spread to the wider office, I found myself firmly in the minority.

The fact remains that in both the United Kingdom and the United States, we have gravitated toward a system where the path of least resistance toward high political office favours the young career politician who has no real prior experience in the world, and little intention of ever doing anything else (aside, perhaps from a lucrative lobbying position should they be unlucky enough to lose their seat).

These people are not necessarily worse than the various other breeds of politician in the Westminster/Washington zoo. But too much of any one species tends to upset the ecosystem, and that is exactly where we find ourselves today – with too many carp in the fish pond.

Why Politicians Are Hated

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

On Tuesday, voters in South Carolina’s first congressional district will go to the polls to choose whether they want to elect Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democrat, or Mark Sanford, a Republican.

Mark Sanford was formerly the governor of that same state, a career politician, who was forced to leave office in June 2009 after explosive details of an extra-marital affair gave him too many of the wrong kind of newspaper headlines. However, after a short time in the political wilderness, he felt the need to return to the world of political power, and won the Republican nomination to run in the election.

The voters of the first congressional district did not look kindly on Sanford’s early attempt at redemption, and he is almost certainly likely to lose what was otherwise an eminently winnable seat for the Republicans on polling day.

Two things stand out here – first, the stupidity of the state Republican Party that they would nominate such a flawed candidate. But second, and most important, is what Mark Sanford represents. He is the epitomy of a career politician, whose whole life was about gaining political power, and who is totally unable to contemplate a career doing anything else. Oh, he may waffle about “devoting himself to public service” and suchlike, but it is self-serving nonsense. His career was, and is, about power, the pursuit of political power, and nothing else.

And it is precisely this phenomenon of the ubiquitous career politician which explains why people are so thoroughly disenchanted with politics and politicians today. Here in Britain, and evidently in the United States too.

Ask a typical voter (or non-voter, as these often make up more than half of our potential electorate) what is their idea of a typical politician, and you won’t hear a rapturous description about some incredibly well-credentialed person, someone who has a proven track record of success in their life, someone who has been a part of their community, who understands and knows and talks with people from all walks of life, and who was called to politics to try to accomplish something for the good of their fellow people and their nation, and who intends to do their part and then go back to living their life.

No.

The typical voter, once they swallow the bile that rose into their throat upon hearing your question, is more likely to paint a picture of an oily, self-entitled oik who got into politics for the power and trappings associated with it, who is intent more on climbing the greasy pole of power rather than serving their constituents, and who intends to cling to their position for as many elections and terms as they can possibly get away with, health and lack of scandal permitting.

In other words, there is no concept of the citizen-politician any more. Perhaps in Britain there never was, at least not in the modern age, but throughout American history one can see many examples. Look no further than the father of the nation, George Washington, who not only rejected entreaties for him to become a king-like figure to be addressed as “Your Majesty”, but finished serving his presidential term before retiring to his home and his farm.

You don’t get that with today’s class of professional politicians. Sadly, the well-trodden route taken by today’s slick young political wannabees is almost unvarying from candidate to candidate.

In Britain it looks like this:

1. Ingratiate yourself with your chosen political party’s university society, and start climbing the ranks. On day one of your first term. Get on committees. Make friends with the influential people.

2. Outside of your political society and party political affiliations, be as dull as possible. For heaven’s sake, don’t entertain any foolish notions of doing anything controversial, or exciting, or distinguishing, or any of the things that students should do. You can have no black marks on your resume when the time comes.

3. Graduate and move into a boring job. The law will do nicely, as you won’t be short of opportunities to make powerful new connections.

4. Join the local party association wherever you live, and get involved. Very involved. Attend all the meetings, all of the garden parties, all of the school fairs and church bake sales (if you do church – no longer required or admired). Try to become a school governor if you can, or get onto the board of a local charity. You are now Involved In The Community.

5. Schmooze. Schmooze, schmooze, schmooze. Climb the ladder. Think about trying to become a parliamentary researcher or assistant for an existing MP if you have the connections, or join a  “think tank”. Write lots of articles for anyone who will publish them. It doesn’t matter if they are any good or not.

6. Get selected as the party’s candidate. It doesn’t matter if it’s an unwinnable seat the first time, you are still building your profile. Campaign hard, and ultimately win at all costs.

7. Congratulations, you’ve been elected to parliament. Now you can choose whether to climb the ladder within your parliamentary party and try to get a cabinet position, or just relax and be a constituency MP. But why would you want to do that? Your whole life has been a continuous glide toward the Palace of Westminster, and you sure aren’t about to take your foot off the accelerator now.

And so we have a whole generation of MPs from all parties – people like Chukka Umunna – who are basically airbrushed, well-groomed and telegenic candidates who never really lived in the real world before entering politics and who have no idea what they would do with their lives if they ever had to leave it. Umunna likes to style himself as “the British Barack Obama”. He is not. Like or dislike Obama, he does possess significant leadership and rhetorical skills, and did his fair share of work in the community before his rapid ascent through the political ranks.

An important point here – we should not look to deify private sector experience above all else as Mitt Romney tried to do in the 2012 US elections. Running a government is not the same as running a private enterprise, and different skills and experiences are needed. Success in the private sector does not automatically lead to success in the public sector, and vice versa. So it is not my contention that we should be looking exclusively at corporate C-suites or the ranks of entrepreneurs for our future political leaders. There are people who have served the community deeply in many ways, who are capable of becoming excellent legislators and political leaders.

But neither should we be looking for the next bland, cookie-cutter candidate who has gone through the 7-step “become an MP by the age of 35” programme. If a candidate’s life up until that point has been all about gaining political power, what chance is there that they will ever want to relinquish it and do anything else after their first term? Their second? Their third? Their fourth? Until retirement beckons?

Thus, without term limits we end up with the same boring old faces hanging around forever, and with them a dearth of new ideas.

In South Carolina, voters are about to reject Mark Sanford’s attempt at early political redemption because they do not recognise that he has a divine right to be a politician forever and ever, until he dies, simply because that is what he wants to do with his life.

In a democracy, we get the politicians and leaders that we deserve. Let’s stop deserving bad ones.

The UKIP Insurgency

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Nigel Farage UKIP voting

 

Well, those local council elections across England this past week were quite interesting.

The United Kingdom Independence Party has firmly established itself as Britain’s fourth (or maybe even third) party with a strong showing in which they received over 25% of the vote across those wards where they were able to field candidates.

And this despite a volley of negative and dismissive statements ahead of the elections, in which UKIP’s leadership, membership, policy positions and candidate screening processes were all mocked and derided.

Cue lots of hand-wringing about what the Tories can do to win back their disaffected supporters, etc. etc. As The Guardian reports:

A contrite David Cameron has promised to show a surging UK Independence party respect after it gained more than 130 seats in the English county elections and polled 25% of the national vote. The result led the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, to claim the birth of a new and irreversible era of four-party politics.

Cameron, who once described Ukip as fruitcakes and closet racists, admitted his mistake, saying it was no good insulting a political party that people had chosen to vote for: “We need to show respect for people who have taken the choice to support this party. And we’re going to work really hard to win them back.”

Cue also some quite entertaining journalism about the quirky, eccentric nature of British local politics. As Iain Martin writes in The Telegraph:

What is even funnier is the confusion it is causing the leaders of the established political class. They are already emerging for a round of local election bingo, with the key phrases drawn from the standard issue manual used by all the major parties. “We hear what people are saying… people want to make a protest… they want us to get on with the job… people have very real concerns… it’s mid-term… we’ll be reflecting.” But this time, when they mouth the words, they look as though they know their platitudes have been rumbled.

The distress the voter rebellion causes the bigger parties does seem to be an important part of the appeal of Ukip. Voting for Farage is an entertaining way of giving the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems two fingers. Of course the longer-term implications are not necessarily funny. This is a country, not a comedy club. But large numbers of voters are so disenchanted that they see no possibility of an answer in the old parties. They are having a lot of fun trying to blow up the system.

Of course, this runs contrary to the counterargument that these were only local elections, that off-cycle elections always see the governing party (or parties in this case) punished at the ballot box, and that people will return to one or other of the Big Three come the general election in 2015.

But a 25% share of the vote, and a national second place position, can start to shift perceptions, a fact that Nigel Farage, UKIP’s leader, is no doubt counting on. If people absorb the consequence of these election results and no longer see UKIP as a party of “fruitcakes and closet racists”, as David Cameron once uncharitably called them, their support may not peel away as it has previously done, and we could see a number of newly minted UKIP MPs entering parliament.

But what is contained within the UKIP manifesto? Well, quirky though some of their individual members and candidates may be, the manifesto on which they are running is actually quite appealing to those who favour smaller government. The BBC offers a fair overview, which includes the following:

EUROPE: Nigel Farage says he wants an “amicable divorce” from the European Union. Britain would retain trading links with its European neighbours but would withdraw from treaties and end subscription payments, adopting a similar relationship with the EU to Norway or Switzerland.

TAX: UKIP favours a flat tax – a single combined rate of income tax and national insurance paid by all workers. It claims this would end the complexity of the current system and allow people to keep more of the money they have earned. It would also lead to a major shrinking of the size of the state, which would revert to a “safety net” for the poorest. The party has yet to decide the rate at which the flat tax would be levied. Its policy at the 2010 election was 31% but a recent policy paper suggested 25%. It is having an internal debate about whether there should be two rates.

EDUCATION: UKIP backs selection by ability and would encourage the creation of new grammar schools. It would give parents vouchers to spend in the state or private education sector. It also advocates the return of the student grant system to replace loans.

DEMOCRACY: The party wants binding local and national referendums on major issues.

Freedom from EU meddling and over-regulation. A fair, flat tax. Freeing the education system from those who want uniform mediocrity at the expense of individual excellence. A strong national defence. All of these are causes dear to the hearts of the small-government conservative, and make the party worthy of support.

Of course, with the good also comes the less-good:

ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: UKIP is sceptical about the existence of man-made climate change and would scrap all subsidies for renewable energy. It would also cancel all wind farm developments. Instead, it backs the expansion of shale gas extraction, or fracking, and a mass programme of nuclear power stations.

GAY MARRIAGE: UKIP supports the concept of civil partnerships, but opposes the move to legislate for same-sex marriage, which it says risks “the grave harm of undermining the rights of Churches and Faiths to decide for themselves whom they will and will not marry”.

LAW AND ORDER: UKIP would double prison places and protect “frontline” policing to enforce “zero tolerance” of crime.

THE ECONOMY: UKIP is proposing “tens of billions” of tax cuts and had set out £77bn of cuts to public expenditure to deal with the deficit.

Anti-science climate change denial is tempered with a pragmatic approach to ensuring energy security through next generation nuclear power. The unfortunate opposition to gay marriage is at least balanced with support for civil partnerships. The spirit of cutting taxes and controlling spending is absolutely right, but the wisdom to wait until a stronger recovery exists is lacking. And the draconian, counter-productive policies on law and order are just bad.

So there is good and bad in the UKIP manifesto, just as there is in the manifestos of the other main political parties. As always, the ultimate question must be who delivers the best package of policies to improve the country?

Until now, I have been fairly dismissive of UKIP’s offering to the electorate, but no more. Here is a broadly libertarian-leaning party, offering a no-nonsense, very pro-British package of policies. And while there is a little too much authoritarianism and social conservatism still in the mix, the failings of the present Conservative-led government to revitalise the economy and enact any of the urgently-needed supply side reforms in Britain make UKIP a potentially viable alternative for my vote.

The UKIP manifesto is worth a read. Are there unsavoury fringe elements within UKIP, and endorsements from without? Certainly. Are there some rather eccentric characters representing the party at the moment, yes. Are all of the policies fully costed and backed with feasibility studies? Of course not – UKIP has never seen power, and remains a less mature political party. But then so were the Liberal Democrats until the 2010 general election gave them the chance to wield real power and become as dour and unappealing to the electorate as Labour and the Conservatives.

We currently suffer under a Conservative-led government that has done barely anything to shrink the scope and size of the state, and the meddling influence of all levels of government in our lives. UKIP promises to do differently.

And, based on their manifesto if not their fringe supporters, would that not potentially be a very good thing for the cause of smaller government and individual liberty?

“Patriot” Watch

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Let me whisk you on a journey to an alternate universe.

A dark, scary universe where the government bombs their own citizens in “false flag” terrorist attacks in order to create an excuse to curtail civil liberties.

A threatening world where most people are “sheeple”, unwittingly controlled by the shadowy leaders of the New World Order, and only a few brave “patriots” know the truth and stand up for their freedom.

A world where your every spare dollar should be spent on firearms and ammunition, survival seeds, water purification systems, freeze-dried food rations and your subscriptions to the few media outlets brave enough to tell you the truth.

Welcome to the world of Alex Jones, and InfoWars:

 

This is a typical Alex Jones show, though I could easily have shown any other – the message is always the same, and the “urgent breaking news” the same recycled expositions carried over from one show to the next. Here’s the most recent:

 

To watch Alex Jones at work is to enter into a world where you are under permanent siege by the forces of darkness – it is by no coincidence that the Imperial Death March from Star Wars is used to open many of the segments.

I must admit that the show is strangely addictive, and without wishing to sound condescending to all of the true believers and regular listeners, I can understand the appeal. It’s nice to think of oneself as being part of a small band of people who understand the truth, who know what is coming and who are getting prepared. It’s nice to have that feeling of camaraderie and belonging. And when startling, inexplicable events such as the recent Boston Marathon bombing suddenly explode into the news, it can be comforting to be able to neatly fit the bad things that are happening into a pre-existing narrative that some of these conspiracy theories provide.

If one can understand the appeal of these conspiracy theories to the people who believe them, one can certainly understand their appeal to the people and outlets who ply their trade in peddling them. The idea that the Boston Marathon bombing was a deliberately staged “false flag” attack isn’t a widely held opinion, but the people who do believe things like this represent a very lucrative market for certain right-wing media outlets.

Aside from making money selling subscriptions to your news outlet by telling people that you are the only one that can be trusted to deliver the truth, you can also make money selling advertising space to the people who sell survival seeds and emergency food rations, and body armour, and home security systems, and all manner of things. There is a hugely vibrant economic ecosystem at work here. It reminds me somewhat of South Park’s hilarious takedown of the Jewellery Channel Shopping – Cash4Gold store cycle:

 

I think Rachel Maddow sums it up the best in her analysis on her MSNBC show. She basically concludes that as long as these fringe conspiracies remain at the fringe, they do no real harm (at least not to those who don’t buy in). But the problem comes when a conspiracy becomes too lucrative and tempting, and starts to be embraced by a major political party, as has recently been happening with the InfoWars-style theories and some elements within the US Republican party.

 

As Maddow notes, even notable politicians such as former Congressman Ron Paul will sometimes go on the Alex Jones show; not, I believe, because they truly buy into all of the conspiracy theories themselves (you can listen to Ron Paul squirm and prevaricate as Jones tries to gain the Ron Paul seal of approval for some of his wackier ideas in the segment below), but because they know they can pick up valuable support and engagement from the audience who do buy into the whole package:

 

This is disappointing from Ron Paul, a man whose stance in favour of liberty I respect immensely, and whose insurgent campaign for the Republican nomination for president I strongly supported. When good people like Ron Paul flirt with outlets like InfoWars, it weakens their message and makes supporters such as myself look stupid by association.

Nonetheless, I shall continue to join Alex Jones and his merry band for a few minutes every week, for the amusement value of the whole experience. It makes perfect background noise whilst doing something more profitable. You can leave the room while he is talking about secret underground biological weapon labs underneath shopping malls, the perils of the Large Hadron Collider, the imminent declaration of martial law, FEMA prison camps, the dangers of water fluoridation, or the New World Order. And when you come back, he will still be talking about secret underground biological weapon labs underneath shopping malls, the perils of the Large Hadron Collider, the imminent declaration of martial law, FEMA prison camps, the dangers of water fluoridation, or the New World Order…

There is a kind of beautiful, self-contained symmetry to the whole experience.

So think of me tonight, peeking through my drawn curtains, baseball bat at the ready, drinking my filtered water and eating my freeze-dried meal, and communing with America’s real patriot community.