30 Apr
“There was one issue where the other two did turn on him: over his policy of an amnesty for long-standing illegal immigrants. And Mr Brown uttered the immortal and long-awaited phrase: “I agree with David.”
It may or may not be coincidence that this is an issue where both men are almost certainly aware that the Lib Dem policy makes sense, but dare not say for fear of the editors of the Sun and Mail. Probably not a coincidence, on reflection.”
The whole column is good.
24 Apr
I doubt I will make many friends here by linking with some measured approval to this Matthew Parris column, which may be partly wishful, but surely contains some true insights. Discussing Brown’s ‘moronic’ remark about Clegg being ‘Anti American’, Parris writes:
The expression that briefly stalked the Liberal Democrat leader’s normally bland face, however, betrayed a loathing that went beyond the routine attitude-striking of a British election campaign. It was deep and it was personal. . . Mr Clegg, I speculated, is a man on a mission. He wants to kill the Labour Party and he wants to kill Gordon Brown. The Tories couldn’t be more mistaken about his strategy. There is no way that in a hung Parliament the Liberal Democrats would prop up a Labour Government in office . . .
Over the years I’ve tried to follow the remarks, guarded or unguarded, of the Lib Dem leader; and the body language too. Ideologically, Mr Clegg is not far from the Conservative centre-left, but he has a distaste (more Dutch than it is left wing) for the Tory association with class and privilege; he thinks that culturally the party lacks instincts of fairness. I doubt he particularly admires Mr Cameron or feels much personal warmth towards him, but his overall attitudes towards the Tories are better described as irritable than murderous.
I am not going to come near attempting to answer the question: “should Lib Dems be closer to Tories than to Labour”. I know just what the blogosphere would serve up – a ferocious battle of the straw men: “So you think liberalism is about crushing the hopes of millions of people? Favouring privilege?” or “so soggy lefties always end up the same”, and so on.
But given a predominantly them’nus webosphere, with ‘them’ being Conservatives, it is worth remembering how differently liberal progressives and Labour progressives see the world*. An example: how positive I tend to feel towards the school reform ideas supported by David Laws and Michael Gove (read this Economist piece); while Labour launched the Academies, it has been against the most basic statist instincts of that party. Parris tries to put some thoughts into Clegg’s head:
He thinks Labour has traduced and betrayed progressive politics and that there are strands in its DNA — the old Left, the trade union links, the inborn, knee-jerk collectivism, the State-authoritarianism and the suspicion of individual liberty — that condemn it for ever to lead Britain’s centre-left astray. Ideologically, Mr Brown embodies that genetic inheritance.
I have no idea how all this will play out. Even the Times Leader today concedes that its traditional support for FPTP is weakened if we really do have a three party system. This election will be the first that ever produces a greater return for “neither of those two” than “either of those two”, I reckon.
I have not even heard of this polling company that puts Labour on 23%. But way too much emphasis has been put on how the Clegg surge has provided an alternative home to the anti-Labour vote, than the realisation that people who don’t like the Conservatives now realise they don’t have to vote Labour. ( Are those people who are waking up to that realisation following a similar path to that taken by the Liberal Democrat leadership in their political journey?
UPDATE: to those (tiny number of) undecided voters out there, reading this, who also want to send a powerful message against the Labour party, ask yourself this: what is the most important ‘result’ that would do this: Labour being beaten by the Conservatives (almost a cert); or Labour being pushed into Third? Use your vote wisely …
(*update: read Anthony Painter here on the same topic: “Just out of curiosity, I engaged with a few Liberal Democrats on Twitter this morning to market test my hunch that Liberal Democrats see themselves as an alternative to Labour not an ally, a contender not a collaborator.”)
23 Apr
Phil Stephens video (FT): Gordon Brown becoming irrelevant, which is extraordinary; Clegg keeping post 1st debate position, also extraordinary
Robert Shrimsley (FT Blog): One of the most LibDem positive things I’ve ever read:
David Cameron is not in trouble because he lost the first debate. He lost the first debate because he was already in trouble. Mr Cameron – as Labour leaders never tire of pointing out – should have closed this deal months before the election was called.
The astonishing lack of substance – in some ways manifested best by David Cameron’s presposterous claim that Labour’s National Insurance contributions rise represents the biggest threat to the recovery (you may not like the Labour policy but it’s hardly the ballgame).- has made the debates all the more central but also played to a TV format. Only Mr Clegg is offering both a vision of change and something approaching comprehensible set of policies which underpin it. Mr Cameron offers the vision without the policies; Mr Brown the policies with the vision. You may not like or agree with the Lib Dem platform but it exists and ticks both boxes.
James Crabtree’s 5 thoughts (Prospect magazine). Also pro Clegg, and on Brown, “There is a real danger that Labour now find themselves solidly—in the polls, in the public eye and in the mind of media—the third party in this election.” It is a change election. A tough one for Labour. Still, Cameron the most likely next PM, but a host of problems for both of them.
J Freedland: more on Brown being irrelevant. “A government in power for 13 years cannot hope to win an election that is now all about change. Instead its best hope surely has to be to maximise its core vote to prevent a collapse into the low 20s on percentage points, a defeat even more absolute than that of 1983.”
And what do the Tories do now? Go negative or positive? Is there a difference, when this is what Conservatives regard as a positive message? But being properly negative risks having them dragged down with what looks like an unpopular press (see Chancellor on this)
23 Apr
Ian Cowie really is plumbing the depths here. I should not read such stuff on so much caffeine. Imagine a starving Jack Russell being electroprodded by a toddler and you are nowhere near the level of irritation. Here is Cowie’s thinking, to put it kindly:
The last time a British election failed to produce a decisive result, in February, 1974, the FTSE All Share Index – a broad measure of the stock market – fell nearly 15pc in a month and ended the year more than 50pc below where it began.
then he notices
Of course, the past is not necessarily a guide to the future and many problems present 36 years ago are absent today. For example, there are few strikes, no oil crisis and electricity supplies are uninterrupted. More than two thirds of earnings reported by companies listed in London are generated overseas today, compared with less than 10pc in 1974.
In which case, perhaps the right reaction is “I should stop writing this column now”. I believe we may have had divided Parliaments the 1660s too. Shall we look up the stock market from then as well? But, no, Cowie ploughs on:
But human nature and market psychology have changed little. Ted Scott, director of UK strategy at F&C Investments, which runs some of Britain’s biggest investment trusts, said: “The initial reaction of both the equity and gilt markets to a hung parliament would probably be sharply negative.
What is soaring inflation, cratering profits, a rampant labour sector, a chronically inflexible and structurally unsound manufacturing sector, a government newly arrived to the difficulties of floating currency management, all of these things compared to Mighty Human Sentiment? In the 1970s, some companies fell to a Price Earnings ratio of about THREE. If the stock market ‘crashed’ 15% now, it would still be about 40% above the lows of March 2009.
He goes on to repeat a bunch of outofdate nonsense about ‘defending the pound’ (why? We want exports. Osborne wants exports! That’s why you Telegraph types hate the Euro!) and mortgage rates soaring (again, why? With long term inflation expectations at 3% or so, why? The article gets even worse when he wheels out Ros Altmann to do her usual pro-savers pitch: you know, how we might have been better off if interest rates had been 5% instead of 1% (imagine what the static money supply would have been in that case. Down 10% perhaps? Why do people always use the Telegraph to post their entries for the Worst Economic Advice of the Year competition?)
It looks like Hamish McRae is more sensible here: “The election will not ultimately determine the route of Britain’s recovery”
we tend to overstate the significance of politics in determining economic outcomes. Of course the election matters; it just does not matter as much as it might seem . . . ome things have become clearer over the past couple of weeks. The most important is that the global recovery is broadening. The data is still uneven but then it is always uneven at this stage of the cycle. Corporate confidence in both the US and Europe seems more secure and I find that particularly comforting because many people in the business community were really quite frightened by the collapse of demand they found themselves confronting..
His column remains fixed on the World Economy.
Come back to the implications for financial markets. We can be reasonably sure of the recovery. We know that the world’s big companies have made big advances to their performance and efficiency. We have seen this confidence reflected in share prices.
How very very different from the 1970s. Pity for the Telegraph, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of their time fantasizing about us being back there.
UPDATE: A friend and FTE reader sends me a link to David Marquand, which puts it plainly:
There was a hung Parliament in 1974, but the circumstances then were so different from ours that it has no useful lessons for today.
Instead we get the 1924 precedents for hung parliaments. How did it go?
Baldwin made it clear that he would have no truck with any anti-Labour deal. Asquith did the same. As the leader of the largest party, Baldwin rightly stayed on as Prime Minister until the new Parliament met in January 1924. His Government drew up a King’s Speech. TheLabour and Liberal parties joined forces to vote it down. Baldwin then resigned, and the King, George V, sent for MacDonald, who formed a minority Government – the first Labour Government in British history. It turned out to be spectacularly successful abroad and boringly competent at home, an ideal combination for a party whose chief task was to prove that the country and the constitution were safe in its hands.
Read the whole fascinating article, unless you are Labour and queasy about the future.
22 Apr
is here.
No, it is not Nick Clegg viciously attacking a pensioner with a walking stick (hattip James MacKintosh of the FT). But it may explain why even cardcarrying members of the NeoClassical School of Economics may be starting to make these kinds of argument:
In general, I am opposed to state-run, nationalized industries: managing industry is without a doubt the private sector’s role, not the government’s … But the interaction of rent-seeking industry with a flawed political system has made me willing to make an exception in the case of America’s carbon-based energy industry. True, government ownership will increase inefficiency and the misallocation of resources. But it will also increase political efficiency, since the energy industry will no longer be able to purchase Members of Congress and use them to strangle the policy innovations needed to advance the national interest. So nationalize the carbon energy sector — not to expropriate wealth or to penalize shareholders, but to remove a selfish and destructive political force that threatens our future.
Woah.
22 Apr
No, I’m not stalking him. Two posts in two days is not stalking, alright?
But this is fine.
21 Apr
Tom Gibson has been lending invaluable support to CentreForum in the last few days, so I thought I’d ask him what he thought of events since the Debate. Note: he’s supported Labour in the past, and is now that most precious of things, a Floating Voter. For a tenner, you can have his phone number. Here’s Tom:
——————–
David Yelland has written an excellent article on the Lib Dem surge which identifies it as the first time in recent British political history where a party without substantial media connections has found itself splashed all over the front pages. For the five years that Yelland edited the Sun he didn’t even meet a Lib Dem leader, yet the successor of these ignored figures may soon hold the balance of power in Westminster.
The scene which Yelland imagines – of journalists scrabbling for Lib Dem phone numbers – seems to be happening already (note the sudden proliferation of Nick Clegg profile pieces and the fact that Times Online now has a dedicated Liberal Democrats section on their Election ’10 page). Recent events bear out his disturbing assertion: that while the Lib Dems were not ‘banned’ from Murdoch’s papers, they were ‘purposely edged off the paper’s pages and ignored’. Our politically aligned press has long ignored the middle party out of the self-perpetuating assumption that it would never win power. While it is hard not to be sceptical of much of Nick Clegg’s notion of a ‘new politics’ (see the Guardian’s recent article of ‘the British Obama’), the potential end of such a situation must surely bring a smile to the face of anyone who hopes for a better democracy. I’m not alone in feeling there is something dodgy about party leaders jetting across the world to hold meetings with a billionaire who most certainly isn’t one of their constituents in the hope he holds the keys to 10 Downing Street.
The newspapers’ discomfort seems apparent in the changing attitude of the Times to the Lib Dems over the last few days. On Sunday the Lib Dems were cast as vulnerable to further scrutiny. They were ‘slavishly pro-European’ and their plan to cut the deficit contained ‘even more sleight of hand than that of the other two parties’. Cameron was told to up his game in order to avoid a future permanently made up of coalition governments. On Monday the Lib Dems were a ‘contradictory party’, on both sides at once of a philosophical debate between Labour and the Conservatives which was the real issue of the election. Three-horse races were described as ‘best left to sport’. On Tuesday Lib Dem tax policy was ‘nakedly populist’, and Clegg was ‘being less than straight’ with the electorate. This came with fearful predictions about what a hung parliament could mean for the economy.
Yet today the tone has changed. The focus shifts to Tory proposals on welfare reform which are praised and identified as Blairite, ‘a timely reminder…that policies matter’. One should remember that a fair number of Liberal Democrats favour such ‘Blairite’ policies too. Yes, Clegg’s popularity is still shrugged off as a fad, mere personality politics, but seen alongside an article by Danny Finkelstein which describes Clegg’s vision of his party as, ‘a middle-class revolt against the system, one that appeals to Tories as well as the Left’ it seems to begin to set out the case for a potential Lib-Con coalition. He calls the Lib Dem’s experienced councillors ‘pragmatists and people of power. They have learnt how to co-operate with others, and this includes Tories.’ In just a matter of days the Times has begun to take the Lib Dems seriously. Ridicule has given way to attempted seduction. I suppose the Lib Dems should be flattered.
The debate last Thursday gave the electorate a rare opportunity to see their potential Prime Ministers free from the distorting prism of a partisan press. The outcome is multifaceted. Above all, there is now a growing awareness of a shameful political system under which a party which comes third in the popular vote can win the most seats. But people are waking up to a realisation that our media had for years ignored a potential leader who clearly appeals to many people. Clegg’s rise is a breath of fresh air, yet it would be wrong to see this as the end of the two-party bias. Labour, despite being the party of government, are receiving far less coverage since they slipped into third. Yvette Cooper may not be the only one who feels like she’s been relegated to the second division.
21 Apr
He says in his title: ‘Unemployment is always higher under Labour’
Well, no. Let’s look at the Claimant Count as a simple measure:
My rough averages say: Conservatives since the War have averaged a claimant count of 1.56 million. The Labour party: 900 thousand. Clearly you have to interpret Iain’s post differently from the obvious “unemployment under Labour is always higher than unemployment under the Conservatives”, because that would be an obvious lie – and Iain is not a liar.
What he is saying, instead, is that unemployment has always ended Labour’s terms in government higher than at the beginning. Well, quite possibly. Since the War, as the graph shows, we have been through a period of generally rising unemployment. But it is not true that each Labour electoral term in power has seen such a performance; neither 1997-2001 nor 2001-2005 had higher UE counts at the end than at the beginning.
Can the Tories be accused of ending each period in office with higher unemployment? No; because of Edward Heath. 1952-63 saw higher unemployment. 1979- 1997 did too, breaking several records along the way. Edward Heath managed to avoid it through what was perhaps the worse period of economic management ever – the Barber boom, one of the major reasons that Healey had such a devil of a time in the next few years (Heath’s caving to the miners also helped). Otherwise, Tory Governments can be accused of the same thing that Iain Dale implicates Labour governments in – causing unemployment to rise.
Bizarre, huh? perhaps Dale wants to write a post defending Heath’s economic policies next, because the by the criteria he uses for judging success, they were the only decent government we had.
UPDATE: Paul C has a narrative version of the point I’m making here, which is well worth reading.
20 Apr
… or at least, that may be how things look soon if inflation continues doing what it has just done – rise faster than expected. Because while my original points about base effects and so on are correct, it is no good if the actual index rises 0.6 points in a month like this. Perhaps the VAT rise has a delayed effect. Prices are up 0.8% since December, while VAT rose over that period by 2.5%. But perhaps instead the economy is stronger than I expected, deflation is unlikely, and I will lose my bet with Guido.
Who is interesting and generous here about Liberal Democrat MP’s:
As Tories scream and point to Lib-Lab councils and the bearded sandal wearing activists who want to ban the bomb and legalise dope for purchase in euros, Guido says look at the reality. Since Charlie Kennedy’s demise the LibDems have been moving quietly to the right on economics, have jettisoned a lot of their loopiest policies and the Tories under Cameron have moved towards the LibDems on civil liberties, the environment and localism
(whereas Redwood is typically hysterical about 3.4% inflation here. Coming of age during the 1970s seems to play havoc with your sense of proportion. Chris Giles is more nuanced here: “A little more equivocation and is once again likely. Sadly, it appears no longer a time for complacency over inflation.”
And Conway’s take is always worth reading – though I think he is wrong about how easily our debt costs could rise. Because of long maturity funding, a 200bps rise in funding costs would not be drastic, since we don’t need to refinance soon. )
Being wrong part II: I thought following Odone’s nastiness yesterday that I could casually wander over to the Telegraph and pick up more examples of that sort of thing. But no. Here is Tracy Corrigan in a very forthright post about why she can’t vote for Cameron:
The fact that Clegg appears to address others as equals suggests either that he is naturally personable or, at least in this matter, politically adept. That is quite an important skill in a political leader, and neither of the other two have it.
And here is Mary Riddell:
The one certainty of this election is that the case for electoral reform will be irrefutable. If Labour end up ahead, they may have to accelerate the plans for an AV system and House of Lords reform. That might (just) satisfy the LibDems, and the country. But Mr Cameron’s only promise of change is to cut the number of MPs, which would make the first-past-the-post system even more unfair than it is now. Nor has he any plans to oust the last of the hereditary peers. That makes the Tories not the party of change but of stasis.
Something else I am wrong about: listen to the first 5 minutes of this podcast and you learn that all three parties pay pretty serious lip service to the mistaken idea that a transactions tax is what is needed to fix finance. They are confronted with a Robin Hood Tax campaigner who does not seem to see any serious implications from trying to raise $400bn annually from the seriously undercapitalised banking sector, and none have the courage to be remotely analytical about it.
But here finally is something I feel right about. Marriage is not the reason children do better in married households. That was put clumsily – read the original. It adds even more fuel to a sceptical fire burning under the Tories’ marriage tax proposals. Here is the essence:
there are differences in development between children born to married and cohabiting couples, but this reflects differences in the sort of parents who decide to get married rather than to cohabit. For example, compared to parents who are cohabiting when their child is born, married parents are more educated, have a higher household income, and a higher occupational status, and experience a higher relationship quality early in the child’s life. It is these and other similar factors that seem to lead to better outcomes for their children.
Good to get some things right
20 Apr
I am taking time out today to familiarise myself with the Liberal Democrat manifesto, in preparation for a podcast later. One of the things that bothers me as a reader of all the manifestos, from the point of view of someone unused to Westminster’s interfering ways, is how they deal with everything. And in this micro-policy blizzard it is hard to really tell one party from another: tell me, honestly, that reading this list of things the Conservatives intend to do for Universities, that they could not have come from Labour or the Lib Dems as well. That does not mean they are bad; just politically squidgy.
I agree with a more experienced colleague, however, that having a short important-issues-only manifesto looks cheap (or like a single issue nutter). According to the Vote Now show of 12th April (about 6 minutes in), the Greens included in a speech on their tax policy “restore the 10p tax band, and so on“. Yeah, tax policy, easy.
So you have to show where you stand on a lot of different things if you aspire to be in government. Fair enough; once in government, you end up being blamed for them all, after all. The LibDems make this policy blizzard more apparent by having a handy index to their manifesto, which stretches from Adult Learning Grant and Dartford Crossing to Tuberculosis and Zero Carbon Britain.
And in there is Airbrushing. A single sentence: “Help protect children and young people from developing negative body images by regulating airbrushing in adverts”. Liberal Vision have taken issue with this ‘maternalism’. Libertarian Tom writes:
Even if it is true that the existence or prominence of [airbrushed] models adversely influences people’s behaviour (which has in no way been proven), it is still not government’s role to protect individuals from their own actions. The state’s role is to protect people from being coerced by other people; to allow the individual the maximum freedom that does not restrict the freedom of others
Now, we have all had that feeling of waking up and worrying that we have not read enough Kant. There is probably even a medical term for it. I am particularly afflicted, because I have read virtually none, despite majoring in Philosophy and even penning an article in an encyclopedia on him (for shame). I have reached that point in Sandel’s Justice where his conception of freedom is brought out. It is the chapter after Libertarianism, which is appropriate, because its major aim is to dispute the notion of human actions in a market being straightforwardly uncoerced. It also deals with utilitarianism. To quote from the book:
“what we commonly think of as market freedom or consumer choice is not true freedom, Kant argues, because it simply involves satisfying desires we haven’t chosen in the first place .. trying to derive moral principles from the desires we happen to have is the wrong way to think about morality. Just because something gives many people pleasure doesn’t make it right”
To paraphrase and simplify horribly, real freedom is choosing ends as well as the means to already given ends. Get a person addicted to burgers, crack or Arsenal Football Club and their choices are no longer ‘free’ in this sense. In this way, Kant provides some underpinnings to Swinson; and other economists over the years, such as Galbraith.
I still remain bugged by such policies of ‘protecting ourselves from our coerced desires’ because of the sheer difficulty of determining where human free will ends. Taken too far and you end up with the sort of miserable view of human nature that can sometimes seem to animate Labour, and also leads to kooky Behavioural Economic policies to make us all want better things. I just don’t like where that leads. You start with something uncontroversial, like warning kids off smoking, and end up with something Orwellian.
Libertarian is a naive creed; the assumption that all actions in a market are uncoerced is just one example of such naivity, the list of which could go on and on. But I still find it a useful as a corrective to other creeds when they go too far. The IEA from its appreciation of Antony Flew alerted me to an article of his criticising Rawls and his views on Justice. I am finding it handy. For example, it argues that Rawls seems to assume that all present and potential property really belongs to the collective and is therefore available for distribution or redistribution, and that he also assumes that all rights enjoyed by an individual either are or ought to be allocated collectively. No doubt this is an exaggeration of Rawls, whose work I don’t know well enough to say. But I am glad to have read the thought.
Great thinkers often occupy polar opposites. It leads actual decisions to be made by careful empiricists. How much freedom DO we have in our consumerist desires? I don’t know the answer.
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