UK Politics

Labour’s Best Frenemy

Samuel HooperLeave a comment
edballsedmiliband
Maybe a 65% top marginal rate of income tax would make us even more popular.

 

Dan Hodges may have resigned his Labour Party membership last year in protest of the parliamentary party’s opportunistic stance on intervention in Syria, but he still strongly identifies with Labour values – indeed, his Telegraph biography states that he “writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation”. One would expect no less from the son of my firebreathing local MP, Glenda Jackson. Which makes his scorn for the current Labour leadership and pessimism for their prospects in the 2015 general election all the more compelling.

Of course, one might say that it is perfectly natural for someone who has publicly fallen out with the party hierarchy to publicly root for their demise, and that it is unseemly to trumpet the latest poll results showing Labour’s lead over the Conservative Party almost completely extinguished. But Dan Hodges comes packing precedents, facts and statistics.

First come the simple, time-tested truths:

The party that is seen as being best placed to run the economic affairs of the nation normally wins the election. And at the moment that party is seen to be the Conservative Party. In fact, that party has been seen to be the Conservative Party ever since Labour was ejected from office in 2010. Through rain, through shine, through double-dip (erroneously reported double-dip if you prefer), and through recovery, the Tories have enjoyed a comfortable lead on the economy. The perception that David Cameron and George Osborne are the guys to run the nation’s finances is baked in.

Another issue is leadership. The man who people see as the best suited to be prime minister is usually the one they select as their prime minister. In this case that man is Cameron. From the day Miliband was elected Labour party leader, people have looked at him, and then they’ve looked at Cameron, and they’ve said “David Cameron is the one best suited to running the country”. There has never been a single day when they’ve said “Actually, I think that Ed Miliband is best suited to running the country”. Again, the Tory advantage on leadership is baked in.

Strikes one and two. On economic stewardship, for better or worse, the question is quite settled. George Osborne, for all the many things he has done wrong and key conservative principles on which he has compromised (partly through necessity of coalition and partly through want of a backbone), has still managed to deliver the strongest rate of economic growth since 2007. Meanwhile, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls’ continued shrieking about economic flatlining and living standards (always a lagging indicator) are increasingly coming to sound churlish and divorced from reality.

Hodges also considers the trove of other indicators that are trending in favour of the government at present:

If you think abut it, it’s fairly logical. “So, Bill, I see the economy is growing faster than any of our EU rivals, unemployment is falling, crime is falling, that wave of east European migration didn’t materialise after all, business optimism has returned, wages are rising again, inflation is still low, interest rates are still low, and this lot seem the ones best placed to help the family finances. What are you going to do in the election on Thursday?” “You have to ask? I’m going to kick the bums out.”

The crux of the matter, according to Hodges, is that in order for Labour to win, the British electorate would have to simultaneously break almost all of their recent behavioural precedents and behave in a most unpredictable way, namely:

An opposition party could retain its midterm vote share. A party in power could be ejected after just one term. Even though the economy is improving and unemployment is falling and crime is falling and business optimism is increasing and interest rates are historically low and inflation is historically low and wages are rising in real terms, people could say “It’s time for a change.”

Well, when you put it like that…

It did not have to be this way. As any reader of this blog will know, I am no supporter of the Labour Party, and given the fact that the Conservative-led coalition government is at least making timid steps to roll back the size of the state and tackle government spending, I have no great desire to see things change in this regard. But I also saw a path that Labour could have taken to put themselves in a better position going into the 2015 general election, a path that they conspicuously chose not to take.

This route to potential victory involved making an initial very public mea culpa accepting responsibility for their previous economic mismanagement and unsustainable growth of government (and so drawing a line under it) and a pledge to take deficit reduction at least as seriously as the Tories, followed by a pivot to actually address some of the British public’s legitimate concerns on welfare, on Europe and on government spending. From his recent columns, it is evident that Dan Hodges also saw this potential door back into power, just as it was firmly being pushed shut by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

The Labour Party leadership and allied local party activists who have drunk merrily from the Ed Miliband Kool-Aid since 2010 probably do not like to hear any of this, from someone they no doubt consider a turncoat. But I have a strong premonition that, should the 2015 general election not go Labour’s way, it is the words of Dan Hodges that people will summarise and plagiarise when writing their post-mortems of the Ed Miliband era.

Maybe Dan Hodges isn’t Labour’s worst enemy in their own midst; in fact, he is quite possibly their very best friend at the moment. If only they could see that.

UKIP In The Spotlight

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Cognizant of the UK Independence Party’s likely strong performance in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections, some reputable publications have joined the long-established monitors such as UKIP Watch in paying closer attention to the daily goings-on within the resurgent party. Displaying great originality, The Telegraph calls their version…UKIP Watch too. So no possibility of confusion there, then.

To their credit though, The Telegraph’s UKIP Watch redeems itself with some insightful analysis on Day 1, effectively countering the oft-repeated myth that UKIP’s support is comprised almost exclusively of disaffected “grumpy” Tories:

Why is the myth of Ukip as an army of angry, middle-class suburbanites who are obsessed by Europe and having a referendum so widespread and persistent, when the reality is so different? Most likely because of the difference between Ukip’s activists and their voters.

Committed activists and politicians, the kind of Ukipper the media are most likely to encounter, very often are middle-class, Southern and suburban former Tories (particularly the Ukippers you are likely to stumble across in the Westminster village, where most journalists congregate). Add to this the continual fascination in the media with Conservative splits over Europe and it is easy to see how the “Ukip = angry Tories + Euroscepticism” formula has taken hold.

A very good point. Why would UKIP be immune from the phenomena that affects the main three parties, namely that their most strident activists little represent their average voter? It is good to hear this point addressed in the media, and it would be even more encouraging to see the stories about the kooks and crazies in UKIP’s midst covered in the same way – namely that those on the cutting edge, whether for good or bad reasons, tend not to represent the whole.

Godfrey Bloom will be sitting out the next few rounds. Image from ITV News.
Godfrey Bloom will be sitting out the next few rounds.
Image from ITV News.

The column’s authors, Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin, also make clear that the ‘typical’ UKIP voter is nothing like the cartoonish stereotype of a stuffy, old-fashioned Conservative, and that the retired colonel or Women’s Institute stalwart image is misplaced:

If Spitting Image were still around they would most likely portray the average Ukipper as a ruddy faced, middle-class, middle-aged golf club bore, who lived in a suburban semi-detached house in the Home Counties, wore lots of tweed and bored his neighbours to death by droning on about the evil Eurocrats in Brussels. But this stereotype could scarcely be further from the truth.

Ukip’s supporters look more like Old Labour than True Blue Tories. Ukip’s supporters tend to be blue-collar, older, struggling economically, and often live in poorer, urban areas, with big pools of support in the Labour heartlands of the North. Middle-class suburbanites do not dominate Ukip. They shy away from it.

In fact, Ukip are Britain’s most working-class party. Blue-collar workers are heavily over-represented. Middle-class professionals are scarce. Such voters often express as much hostility to the Conservative party as they do to Labour. This news should not be surprising. Earlier research on Goldsmith’s Referendum Party in the mid-1990s found that they too came from across the spectrum. But despite this research the “disaffected Tory thesis” has become entrenched in the Westminster village, and now dominates misguided coverage of the party.

This, if anything, is the area on which UKIP will need to focus the most if they are to make the perilous transition from successful protest party to a real general election player capable of winning seats in the House of Commons – the fact that the spot in their party reserved for middle-class professionals is currently Tumbleweed Central. These higher-information voters are key to credibility, and they are also primarily the movers and shakers who keep the British economy ticking over. Not having these people in your camp in any significant numbers is a cause for concern, and one that will certainly need to be addressed after the upcoming European elections.

So far, however, UKIP seems to be showing no signs of wilting under the increased scrutiny – indeed, their affable leader Nigel Farage MEP seems to have recovered some of the form which deserted him last week, going so far as to record this spoof weather forecast segment for the BBC’s Sunday Politics show:

 

Perhaps this further helps to explain the reason for UKIP’s continued popularity and appeal – which of the other party leaders, emerging from a week of very difficult and in some cases embarrassing press coverage, would be so relaxed and willing to poke fun at themselves in so self-deprecating a manner? There is something inherently appealing about a politician who is willing to speak

Nigel Farage is confident, and as more and more of the media is coming to realise, his confidence may be well placed.

Labour Reveal Their Priorities

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Miss me yet?

 

It was heavily trailed, but now we know for sure – Labour, who have been feeling the heat as a result of their total lack of credibility on the economy and the fact that the Tories are finally starting to benefit from the fruits of economic recovery, have been forced into revealing some of their plans for the future. And what plans they are. They can best be summarised as “let’s return to how things were in the final days of Gordon Brown’s premiership”.

Whether this makes you want to get out or chequebook and make a huge contribution to the Labour Party or scream and and fall down on the floor in absolute incredulity depends entirely on your political leaning.

The Telegraph reports on Ed Ball’s major policy speech:

[Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls] said it was wrong for the Coalition government to have decided to cut the 50p top rate of tax to 45p from April last year.

“When the deficit is still high, when tough times are now set to last well into the next parliament, when for ordinary families their real incomes are falling and taxes have risen, it cannot be right for David Cameron and George Osborne to have chosen to give the richest people in the country a huge tax cut,” Mr Balls said.

“That’s why for the next parliament the next Labour government will reverse this government’s top rate tax cut, so we can finish the job of getting the deficit down and do it fairly.

“For the next Parliament, we will restore the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 – reversing this unfair tax cut for the richest one per cent of people in the country and cutting the deficit in a fairer way.”

Ed Balls calls cutting the top rate of income tax from 50 to 45% a “huge tax cut”. Let us leave aside for a moment the ludicrous presumption on Balls’ part that taking a full half of the incremental pound that someone earns in income tax alone (never mind National Insurance, indirect taxes and VAT) could ever be proposed in a sentence together with the word “fair” and be taken seriously. I am more interested in what Ed Balls and the Labour Party had to say when Gordon Brown decided to raise the top rate of income tax from 40% to 50%. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t call it a “huge tax increase”. In fact, I know that they didn’t sell it to the country that way. So if increasing the top rate of income tax by ten pence in the pound is not a huge increase, how can a partial rollback of five pence be considered a huge tax cut? The answer, of course, is that it cannot.

So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax...
So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax…

 

In what was doubtless intended as a ringing statement designed to assure us of Labour’s new-found commitment to sensible economic management, Balls also committed to eliminating the budget deficit by the end of the next Parliament, in 2020:

Mr Balls announced what Labour said would be a binding commitment to balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling in the next Parliament.

Quite why we would want to exchange a government that tried and failed to manage this feat in the lifetime of the current Parliament for one that never displayed an interest in doing so until now but which suddenly claims to be able to achieve it in the next Parliament if only they are given the keys to power is never fully explained.

Neither does Balls acknowledge the fact that even when the budget deficit is eliminated, the national debt will remain intact and ominously large – he makes no proposals about running a future surplus to begin paying down this debt and lowering the nation’s interest payments. Neither, of course, does George Osborne devote much of his time to that niggling fact – but if Ed Balls really wants to seize the mantle of economic trustworthiness from Osborne he needs to aim higher and show that he has a better grasp of the longer term picture than his counterpart.

The reaction to Balls’ speech from the business community – who Labour like to malign, but are actually the ones who create the jobs and pay corporation tax and National Insurance contributions – was predictably scornful. Words and phrases such as “absurd”, “disaster”, “unmitigated disaster”, “putting our economic security at risk”, “unhelpful” and “political posturing” were often deployed.

By contrast, the Unite trade union saw Balls’ announcement as a fantastic development, and urged Labour to ever more destructive heights of foolishness and irresponsibility:

However, the Unite trade union, Labour’s biggest donor, welcomed the policy but warned it was only “a beginning”.

A Unite spokesman said: “The commitment to restore the 50p top rate of tax is a sign that a future Labour government understands the need for a fairer taxation system in this country.

“This is a beginning; we would urge Labour to also tackle the disgraceful abuse of the system by the evaders and avoiders too.

You know what would make tax avoidance really difficult, unnecessary and socially unacceptable? A flat tax. But somehow I don’t see Unite advocating for that any time in the near future. Because, though they do not like to admit it in public, high taxes are not a regrettable but necessary evil to people like Ed Balls and his cheerleaders on the left. For Ed Balls, higher taxes are a desirable end in themselves, a last line of defence to ensnare anyone who defies the odds and manages to break through Labour’s dragnet legacy of mediocre standardised education, burdensome regulations and big government and succeed in spite of themselves.

With regard to Labour’s brave new economic stance, the British electorate will cast the only verdict that matters in May of 2015. But I think David Cameron and George Osborne will be sleeping a little more easily in their beds from now on, warm in the knowledge that Ed Balls has set Labour on a firm course back to 2010.

On Gun Control In Britain

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

UKguns

 

It’s difficult at the moment to know precisely how seriously to take Nigel Farage’s public pronouncements. In a matter of days he has managed to offend a great number of people by suggesting that once you adjust for maternity leave, women working in finance have at least a level playing field with (if not an easier time overall than) men; he appeared to prevaricate when confronted with another loony UKIP local councillor, this one publicly attributing the UK’s recent bad weather to the coalition government’s legalisation of gay marriage; and he publicly disowned the 2010 UKIP manifesto, which he personally helped to launch.

All of this is rather unfortunate, because in many ways Nigel Farage remains one of the most principled and straightforward politicians in Britain today. Aside from some heavy-handed and paternalistic conservative attitudes to social issues such as gay marriage and an excessive obsession with immigration restrictions, the policies currently espoused by UKIP are ones which would appeal to many a libertarian-minded voter grown disenchanted with the Tories under David Cameron – myself included. Therefore, I hope and trust that the PR wobbles of this week will soon be behind him.

But more importantly, I hope that the current furore does not drown out a more important debate that Farage has initiated – whether or not to relax Britain’s stringent gun control laws and relax the blanket ban on handguns. Farage is of the opinion that to do so is right in accordance with conservative principle, with individual liberty and with common sense.

The Guardian reports:

Asked about gun controls, Farage said: “I think proper gun licensing is something we’ve done in this country responsibly and well for a long time, and I think the kneejerk legislation that Blair brought in that meant that the British Olympic pistol team have to go to France to even practise was just crackers.

“If you criminalise handguns then only the criminals carry the guns. It’s really interesting that since Blair brought that piece of law in, gun crime doubled in the next five years in this country.”

“I think that we need a proper gun licensing system, which to a large extent I think we already have, and I think the ban on handguns is ludicrous.”

The initial arguments brought to bear against Farage are not terribly convincing:

Ian Mearns, Labour MP for Gateshead, said the comments were an example of “how extremely dangerous Ukip are”.

“Families facing a cost-of-living crisis will find it bizarre that one of Nigel Farage’s priorities would be to relax Britain’s tough gun controls,” he added.

So we are told that the policy is “dangerous”, and then fed the old line that the British public believe that politicians can and should only ever focus on one issue at the time, and that the economy must crowd out everything else. When someone leads off with the “why aren’t we focusing on something else?” argument, they generally don’t have much else in the way of persuasive arguments.

As a libertarian-minded voter, given a blank slate and in an ideal world I would like to see the blanket bans on handguns in the UK repealed. While recognising that Britain is very different culturally to America on this issue, where the Second Amendment enshrines the right to bear arms very clearly, I believe that our country (at least the people, if not our government) do also place great value on the freedom to defend oneself with any force necessary if required. The strength of public feeling in the Tony Martin case rather proves my point, no matter how much gun control advocates might desire to wish it away.

Where we differ more substantially is the fact that in America, the Constitution makes clear that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed not only for reasons of protection and self-defence against personal violence, but also against oppression by the government. In Britain, where our rights are granted to us by the government and it is our lot to bow and scrape and be thankful for what we are given by way of freedoms, this is clearly not the case. The government is not ours; rather, it belongs to Her Majesty. This may seem like a quibbling detail, but when looking at issues of civil rights and liberties it is an important one.

As a general principle, I don’t think it should be the government’s business to ban or to allow small arms, or to do many other things. I would be quite happy if the government could content itself with competently undertaking its core functions of defending the nation, protecting property rights, providing law and order and providing a framework for other institutions to deliver much of what currently falls under the welfare state. I have sufficient belief in the goodness of human nature to think that, if properly guided and harnessed, this might be achievable.

However, I also recognise that this is not the seventeenth century, and I am not a stockinged, bewigged colonist in the New World. We do not live in a time of attempting bold new methods of self governance – or bold new methods of doing anything at all, and there is little desire among the public to become the kind of country where such experimentation takes place. And this is where conservative pragmatism comes into play. On the topic of gun control specifically in the UK, I cannot support Nigel Farage’s belief that gun control laws should be repealed.

Guns are not plentiful in the UK as they are in the United States. Making it legal for average members of the public to own firearms again would initially empower those people, but there would be a gradual and inexorable drift of firearms from law-abiding citizens to active criminals. Like almost anything, if you are criminally minded and you want to lay your hands on a gun, you can do it if you invest time making the right connections. But it is difficult to do unless you already have those links with the criminal world, and so guns are not purchased in the UK on a whim, or by ordinary folk for use in a moment of high passion – the supply is small and in the hands of professional criminals, and therefore it simply takes too long for someone not in the know to make the purchase. Why expand the supply and start to make it exponentially easier?

In the United States, the case is very different. Guns are a dime a dozen, and any blanket ban on firearms in America, as well as being grossly unconstitutional, would leave law-abiding citizens defenceless in a country where almost every criminal has ready access to a gun. In short, banning guns in the United States would put the population at risk while the population of the United Kingdom would be more endangered by the legalisation of firearms.

I freely admit that a bulk of conservatism and libertarian opinion may differ with me on this issue. Indeed, The Commentator last year revealed something of the depth of feeling on the repeal-gun-control side:

The choices include term limits for Prime Ministers, a flat tax, a law to encourage the ‘greening’ of public spaces and the repealing of Britain’s hand gun ban. Following the Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which 16 schoolchildren were killed, Parliament passed The Firearms Act of 1997, which essentially banned handguns for the atrocity.

But Britons seem unconvinced by the law. The proposer, known as “Colliemum” asked, “…why should only criminals be ‘allowed’ to possess guns and shoot unarmed, defenceless citizens and police officers?”

While the poll continues, so far over 80 percent of the 11,000+ respondents have told the Telegraph that they want to see the handgun ban repealed.

Unscientific, yes. But also highly emphatic.

I have called often and loudly for a constitutional convention for the United Kingdom, to decide once and for all the powers we are willing to give to the government and those which we insist on keeping for ourselves, as well as to fairly and equally devolve powers to the four home nations under a federal system. Part of the output of such a convention would inevitably be a decision on whether we are happy to continue being granted our rights or having them taken away by the whim of each successive Parliament, or if we want to enshrine certain inalienable rights in a more permanent and unyielding document.

But until my call is heard and a Constitution is written and adopted, there is no document to which we British can point to say that government shall not deprive us of the right to own guns. Neither is there precedent, or a persuasive common sense argument. Ceteris parabus, just as there is no sound or legal way in which American citizens can be deprived of their right to bear arms, so there is no reason rooted in law why the British should have theirs returned.

As the American civil war drew to an end, James Russell Lowell wrote:

Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.

Sincerity formulated into dogma. We see this a lot today, both in Britain and America. In the United States it is manifested most obviously in the Tea Party and the demands of its more fanatical members to immediately roll back the functions of government regardless of the potential suffering of those who have come – and in many cases been encouraged – to depend on it. Pitiless yes, and often cruel too. And in Britain we see this dogmatic approach, I am sad to say, in Nigel Farage’s call to repeal the gun control laws.

When my libertarianism meets the fact of modern Britain, the conservative in me must side with the real world as I find it, and for that I do not apologise.

Nepotism Alert – Stephen Kinnock

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Lord Stephen of House Kinnock. Winter is coming.

 

Watch out, there’s a new man in town. He is going to shake things up. He’s going to get things done. He’s a policy heavyweight and an inspirational leader-in-waiting. He’s going to rise up through the Westminster power structure and eventually become the Labour leader that Ed Miliband can only dream of being. He is Stephen Kinnock.

The face has the wistful, simple and vacant look reminiscent of Prince Edward on a bad day, albeit with even less charisma. Presumably he is charming enough in person, as he is happily married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Prime Minister of Denmark. Kinnock Jr. currently lives in London while she and his children reside (naturally) in Copenhagen.

But now Stephen Kinnock, Son of Neil, First of his Name, is throwing his hat into the ring to be the Labour candidate for the Welsh constituency of Aberavon at the next general election.

The Guardian observes that this is by no means the first nonentity with a famous surname to try to make politics a family business in recent years:

Will Straw, son of Jack, will contest Rossendale & Darwen for Labour in next year’s general election. David Prescott, son of John, stood unsuccessfully for selection in the Greenwich and Woolwich constituency in November. There has been speculation that Tony Blair’s eldest son, Euan, might seek a parliamentary seat after he gave up a career in banking to work for a small Coventry charity.

The four young men, were they successful in their ambitions, would be the next wave of political offspring to carry on the family tradition. Hilary Benn, son of Tony, Ben Gummer, son of John, and Nick Hurd, son of Douglas, are all MPs. Anas Sarwar was elected Labour MP for Glasgow Central after his father, Mohammad, stood down from the seat in 2010. Francis Maude, Bernard Jenkin, Andrew Mitchell and several others at Westminster all succeeded a parent to the role. There are plenty of recent historical examples too, from Douglas Hogg, the former Tory agriculture minister, to Estelle Morris, education secretary under Tony Blair, both of whom came from dynasties of MPs.

Just what Parliament needs – another untalented, uninspiring wet rag of a candidate with next to no real life experience (aside from the inevitable internships and think tank jobs that having a politician’s surname makes getting easy) to lower the average IQ of the Commons even further. Stephen Kinnock’s credentials and life experience? Being a research assistant at the European Parliament, a succession of jobs at the British Council, a job for the World Economic Forum and his present role at a consultancy that “helps global businesses go beyond the green basics and reinvent the way they grow”. Make of that last one what you will.

Parliament and politicians are thoroughly despised at this country at the moment. I know they are because I helped to campaign for one in the 2010 general election and many members of the public told me exactly what they thought of the lot of them. The expenses scandal is still fresh in the minds of many, and public fury will surely erupt again when MPs accept their proposed inflation-busting pay raise in the near future. With political engagement at an all time low, is now really the time to be throwing more prime examples of nepotism from the political elites in our faces?

Of course, these shenanigans are not restricted to the Labour Party – though they certainly take the biscuit for nominating Emily Benn to be a candidate back in 2007, when she was still only seventeen years old. There was a time when the runt of the family litter would be encouraged to join the clergy while the oldest son inherited the family estate. I certainly do not propose a return to those days, but surely we can come up with a better career path for the rootless and questionably-talented progeny of famous politicians than our current scheme of packing them back to Westminster before the green benches occupied by their parents have had a chance to grow cold?

And if we must continue to indulge in nepotism in British political life, can we at least try to make it a little more glamorous? In America, they make up for their lack of a royal family by bestowing on their political dynasties a real aura of magic and sparkle, wealth, privilege and scandalous intrigue worthy of a daytime soap opera. The Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons – their style of nepotism is no more morally acceptable, but it is a hell of a lot more fun to watch. No television producer is in a hurry to start making Keeping Up With The Kinnocks.

This is the son of a man who fell into the sea while posing for a photo shoot:

 

Somewhere, lurking well out of sight, are talented potential citizen politicians whose civic instincts we should be tapping to devote five or ten years of their life to serve a term or two in Parliament for the good of the nation.

Stephen Kinnock can sit this one out. The World Economic Forum surely misses his talents.