Posts Tagged ‘Conservatives’

I never thought I’d say it

But well done that man. Watching David Cameron speaking before 10 Downing Street, I realised what a long way has been travelled since 2005. For a long time I didn’t think it could be done.

Of course, I’m talking about myself, and my achievement of being able to look upon another Tory prime minister without despair and loathing.  Five years ago, I exulted at the defeat of the Conservatives -how I hated that ‘are you thinking what we’re thinking’ stuff! – and actively relished the idea of them tearing themselves to bits.  I readily dismissed criticisms of Labour, thought little of the Lib Dems, and saw the Conservatives in only negative terms.

Now I find myself looking at Cameron and feeling admiration for what he has achieved.  Of course, all this detoxification will mean nothing if the policies are wilfully nasty.* And much of their new liberalism may be a result of pressure from their newfound electoral partners.  And, yes, their willingness to contemplate reforms and compromise may reflect powerhunger and a terror of the disunity that more opposition would have brought.

But like Paul I find it very hard to dislike the man, and see plenty to admire in his recent conduct – in particular if Matthew D’Ancona is right and Cameron is as enthusiastic about this ‘new politics’ as I am.   I hope there is truth in what D’Ancona sees here:

Though he may not pull off the big deal, Cameron’s conduct in the past three days has done more to transform public perceptions of his party than anything in the previous four-and-a-half years of his leadership. The images of Conservatives such as William Hague and George Osborne trying to broker an understanding in the broader public interest has done the party more good than anything it did during the campaign, and will serve the Tories well in office, even if they now have to fall back on the daily uncertainties of minority government.

When the Lib Dem Fed Ex votes the right way, my even greater praise goes to Clegg, who has dragged his party up from 14% in the polls to sharing power. But in the meantime, well done David Cameron (and me).

* which must be distinguished from ‘forced by fiscal necessity into being tough’

Answering the question of @samfr: how long can this go on before it’s a bad idea?

Some of you may have heard of Sam Freedman, an excellent chap behind interesting Conservative ideas on education, and top Twitterer .  He has asked me and another defender of interparty horsetrading “how long would this have to go for before you decided it wasn’t a good idea?”

Well, let’s distinguish a few things:

  • What we are used to and what is normal in other countries

Let’s return to those excellent slides from the Institute for Government, hattipping the peerless Nick Timmins of the FT and Westminster Blog along the way.  Here is slide 11:

I’ve just done some quick research on the vital question: “of those countries taking over a week to form a government, how many have descended into social chaos, bond default, wolves roaming the streets and the only valid currency, snout?”  Totting up my numbers quickly, I get zero. The Germans take weeks, and still their trains work.  Calm down, dears

  • Let’s distinguish how it is for Westminster Political Nerds and Normal People

For those of us plying our trade in Westminster, for whom the decision about the make up of the next government is rather crucial, this may feel like hell, like watching World Cup penalty shootouts for days on end.  But for the rest of the world it looms less large.  Yeah, of course we need a government soon, but business is still continuing – I mean, check out the massive Euro bailout, which seemed to happen with some UK input.

  • Distinguish what is happening now and normal horse trading in ‘majority’ rule

Can you remember the rows about ID cards (2004-8), VAT on Fuel (1994), Maastricht, and so on?  We are always having to do negotiations with groups with radically different interests.  Just this time, the groups stood, honestly, on different manifestos at the election

So, SamFr, my answer is: from the country’s point of view, this could go on for a while – and under future voting systems, might well do so.  Whether it is in anyone’s political interest is another matter.

Wanted: a good demonstration of how these things can work out well

There are plenty of places you can go if you want to read about how any deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats would ‘kill the Lib Dem vote’ (Phillipe Sands), cause it to be ‘swallowed’ by the Tories (in a more thoughtful piece by Anne Perkins) or could invite a mass-migration of Lib Dems into Labour (see the tweeting of HopiSen).

See also  the commenter, ‘How could I be so stupid?’ on Rentoul’s blog for a Tory-hater’s perspective.

The basic premise is distressingly tribal.  If you voted LibDem, you are being betrayed if the elected MPs then support a Conservative administration.  This premise is: if you vote Lib Dem you are finding an alternative way of opposing Tories. That is all your LibDem vote means – a neat way of standing against Tories in places where distaste at Labour-support somehow prevents that option being used.  So if you don’t oppose Tories, then you are not doing your job.

Let’s remember a few things.

  • Voting Lib Dem means supporting a fairer voting system
  • A fairer voting system means that most of the time power in Westminster is divided between different political blocks that have to negotiate with each other
  • The negotiations are only meaningful if there is more than one outcome possible!  Read some of the Guardianistas and you would think that the only allowable result is Lib-Lab.  What sort of ‘new politics’s is it that offer,s as an example of how to proceed, some automatic stitch up between two of the parties – and one that explicitly rejects Clegg’s honest pledge to first talk to the party with the largest mandate?
  • For those who believe, passionately, in possible coalition politics as a default setting for the future, the next few months and years are crucial.  They are a chance to show the voting public how it produces better, more democratic, more negotiated, um, more liberal and democratic outcomes.   Personally, I don’t think a presumption that it must mean a permanent soft-left coalition is a good advert.  When that ‘coalition’ has just dropped 5% in the national polling, it is a very awkward advertisement indeed.

The anger from the Left at being denied first-dibs reminds me of the same sense of entitlement that characterises the Tory attitude to power, ironically.   ‘What right have you liberal nobodies got to prevent us taking control?’ seemed to be the dominant attitude of a Tory press gone mad after Cleggmania.  Now we have the equally insulting “Don’t you realise that we in the Labour party know perfectly well what all your voters wanted and curse you for not realising it”.**

What I find particularly galling is their pleasure at the logic of a future two-party squeeze eliminating the LibDems at the next election.  Yeah, nice way to show your disgust at the current electoral system: revel at how its perverse results might give you some revenge some day. Remember this whenever you hear Labour types making pious statements about electoral reform, just after extolling their efforts in getting voters to vote tactically.

No, LibDem voters did not want a Tory government.  Well, they are not going to get one!  In an excellent post at Liberal Vision, Angela points out that if we end up with a Lib Dem-Tory coaltion, a vote for the Lib Dems has prevented the Tory government most feared: the majority Tory government that would have been able to force through inheritance tax cuts, subsidies to marriage, a ferocious line on immigration and Europe, a gerrymandering piece of political reform and so on.   How sad that some LibDems might think our leadership of Clegg, Huhne, Laws and Cable might be unable to change anything in a Tory government!*

Of course, negotiations might fail to produce enough.  Of course, it is possible that a Labour deal might be tempting, particularly since his fingernails have finally given way. But voting Lib Dem has ensured that the Conservatives are negotiating at all.   If there had been no LibDem surge and the 3rd party was left with 40-5 seats (the likely result for most of 2005-7), the Tories would have been negotiating only with themselves, in my opinion.   If a Lib-Con alliance of some sort now operated for a few years, the Lib Dems could say, proudly, that they achieved something at this election.

*they could certainly restrain the EuroScepticism according to a Tory defector or move civil liberties further up the agenda

** here is a PERFECT example from Polly Toynbee.  Apparently they would only deal with Tories because ‘the establishment leans on them’ and ‘dragooning’ them. If the Lib Dems don’t resist the Conservatives, they lack “intellectual, political and moral fibre”, and to take an “inauthentic view of legitimacy”.  And here is the killer, the begged question, the you-are-no-different manoeuvre:

True legitimacy resides in a coalition of principle between the parties that stood for election on the most closely shared values. Their voters are the ones that confer legitimacy.

Lib Dems have opposed Labour for 13 years, but when it comes to the crunch, Polly says they have no choice.  That’s democracy?

Oh, how existential risks focus the mind

At several points in the last few months it has seemed ‘obvious’ to armchair politicians like me that, post election:

  • Labour would indulge in lunatic blood-letting;
  • lose the mantle of CentreLeft-ness to the Lib Dems;
  • do something daft like elect Ismizing Cruddas or not-awfully-popular Balls as leader

and that, from a Lib Dem perspective it would all be jolly good fun, and a tremendous opportunity to squat in their territory.  A school of influential thinkers started to reckon that the LibDems could have prospered left of the Labour party.*

A couple of prominent writers are still of the view that this election is another step towards the eradication of Labour.  Guido thinks that Tory-LibDem arrangements are

“an historic opportunity to realign politics along a liberal-conservative axis.  It is the chance to destroy the Labour Party as a party of government forever.”

Matthew Parris’ writes an interesting article today (read it while it’s free), and there is no doubt some sense when he writes “Mr Clegg should make no mistake: bound to Labour he would find that when Labour goes, it would take him and his party with it.”  But I would replace WHEN with IF.  The statement that Labour is ‘dying’ just doesn’t fit with what has happened in the last 48 hours.  They look rather difficult to kill. Consider these facts:

  • their strength in the recent council elections
  • the fact that (read UK Polling Report) Labour increased their share of the vote in 80 seats, and just 29 seats had a swing from Labour to LibDem
  • that David Milliband is heavy favourite to be next leader (see Betfair; he’s at 50% right now, and the only others better than 10% are Johnson and Harman).

Parris is assuming – or hoping – that Labour will kill itself. Maybe.  But there is no sign that the others can easily do it.

Just because being linked to Labour in government might be like swimming upcurrent with a half dead shark strapped to your back, does not mean that Labour is doomed if it is in opposition. Donald on LibCon argues that a LibCon alliance could be good for Labour, and joins people like Polly Toynbee in suggesting that a Labour failure is not such a terrible thing for them.**

I would like to add these opinions:

  • Conservatives probably seem more united to their opponents than they are. Nick Robinson writes

The Tories are surprised by Labour’s electoral resilience and do not fancy getting to grips with the deficit whilst constantly looking over their shoulders at the electorate. Oh, and one other thing. Lib Dem votes in Parliament may prove more reliable for David Cameron than restless Tory backbenchers.

  • and this theme repeated in no less a place than Tory Diary. The backbenchers  want the sort of consultation that is hardcoded into the LibDem constitution. This means it is by no means obvious that a collapse of some deal will necessarily come from the Lib Dems kicking up.  It might originate in some furious right-of-centre Conservative revolt.   Remember, LibDems cooperate like grown ups all over the country with Conservatives
  • Perhaps it is not as easy as some think to just ‘put electoral reform on the table’. Read Alex Barker of the FT about this. The slips ‘twixt cup and lip are massive, particularly if the parties proposing it are in substantial minority.
  • I personally think the blogosophere overstates the importance of tribal issues (‘if you work with Tories I’ll never vote for you again’) and understates the value of looking professional and serious.  That is what I think helped propel Cleggmania – the first mass-exposure of the fact that the LD leader is just as intelligent, articulate and electable as the others, and not a sandalwearing wisecracking liberal caricature.  Watching Laws address the cameras this afternoon, it struck me how this might be the first time ever that this hugely intelligent man has observed so closely.  The next four years might bring plenty of that.
  • Both the biggest parties appear to have been faced with an existential risk at this election.  The Tories were just a couple of percentage points from facing a combined Labour-LD seat share of >335 seats, and the prospect of electoral reform, a permanent minority perhaps, a split even.  Labour appeared to be heading for a serious disaster – 24% of the vote before their leader started abusing the core voters.   If the Tories had had a large majority, they might have been able to gerrymander Labour into relative oblivion.
  • These risks must have changed the frame within which they each judge acceptable outcomes. I can’t begin to work out how this makes them strategise, but it seems to have propelled electoral reform into the middle of Labour’s agenda for ever

The Lib Dems poor showing suggests that they too may be justifiably worried about serious setbacks.  A parliamentary period in which things go badly, and then a quick election while they are still depleted, is not a pleasant matter to contemplate.  Their cause of electoral reform might get permanently dented.

This leads to a weird conclusion.  If Labour remain sensible, they might enjoy opposition while the others cut. (conventional wisdom).  If they do, the other two both have serious existential reasons to fear another swift election.  As a result, some sort of LibCon cooperation might have what we economists call equilibriating forces from all sides driving it together.  Perhaps we are about to have stable government?

(NOTE: I AM NOT CALLING FOR THIS, JUST QUESTIONING SOME OF THE STANDARD ASSUMPTIONS OUT THERE!)

—————

*At the launch of the Kampfner pamphlet ‘Lost Labours’, ostensibly about this,  Clegg disabuses this view that ‘we are really on the same side’ (watch video from 3 minutes in); as if the policies of John Reid were an abberration rather than intrinsic feature of arrogant statist thinking. ‘These are not just blemishes’

** I personally expect#goodelectiontolose to become a trending topic on Twitter amongst Labour types – if only they can lose their  crazed power-at-all-costs approach

I used to be furious at the voting system; now I’m a bit scared of it

I mean, check out the actual results.

Conservatives: increased vote share by about 12% of their previous total (32.2-> 36).  Increased seats by over 45% (from 209 to 306).

Labour: reduced vote share by about 17% of their previous total, lost 25% of their seats.

Liberal Democrats: increased their vote share by 4-5% of previous total (22->23); lost about 8% of their seats.

Given all this, what worries me is what Deb Orr says here

Yet, the Lib Dems are the party least able to survive or thrive in the event of another election too. So it is in their own interest as well as the national interest to support some form of stable government in the wake of this election. They have no other option but to accept that while the Conservatives did not win the election, they did come first.

Amidst the welter of commentary advice and so on from the papers, I found Jonathan Freedland’s piece standing out, describing Clegg’s ‘excruciating dilemma’.  Of the Conservative offer, despite its temptations:

the drawbacks are glaring. Too many Lib Dems – including big names such as Lords Ashdown and Steel – hint that they could not swallow an alliance with the old Tory enemy, so far apart on Europe, immigration and Trident.

And of the Labour alternative?

A Lib-Lab government would be branded a coalition of losers, one that vindicated the Tory slogan “Vote Clegg, get Brown”. However desperate Brown is, he might struggle to give Clegg full-blown PR: too many Labour MPs will say no. Clegg worries too that, even if agreement were possible, the electorate would be unforgiving: they want to see their politicians focusing on jobs, not the electoral rules of the Westminster club.

The Tories are castigating themselves like nuts over the conduct of the campaign.  Quite rightly: they went from 38-40 down to 34 till 36 was a recovery.  They lost this lead to the Lib Dems, remember, who went from 19 to 23.   No wonder as the Times reports, “The decision to give Nick Clegg a platform was a grave blunder, as even Mr Cameron has come close to acknowledging.”

The Economist draws attention to how much any whiff of compromise to the Lib Dems would irk the Tory backbenchers:

Any substantial concessions he offers to the Lib Dems will rile them even more. Even his vague flirtation with electoral-system tinkering is already being cursed in a party dead set against anything that sniffs of proportional representation, which they think could shut their party out of government indefinitely. The notion of Lib Dems taking ministerial positions earmarked for Conservatives is hugely provocative to his own side

One question I just don’t know the answer to: how serious a threat to Cameron is Tory disaffection, the return of old Right thinking* and disunity?  I tend to agree with Ben Macintyre: Cameron can be hugely impressive.  He is clearly cool in a crisis.  Looking at the front bench of alternatives – odd but clever Gove and Letwin, Pickles Hague and the rest – one part of me is amazed that more Conservatives are not throwing up daily prayers for Cameron’s arrival 5 years ago.

But the other half wonders, again and again, at how a Conservative party blessed with the advantages of facing Gordon Brown, a deep recession and 13 years to sort itself out, with a huge war chest and an electoral system that suits it to a painful degree, has got itself into this weak position.  Maybe they are right to be angry?

I think there is a growing consensus that Labour have had a great week – ‘serene’ is one description.  They have shown amazing resilience. LibDems are understandably nervous about more elections, after the way the potty system kicked them in the nuts yet again. But so, too, should the Conservatives be.  What if this is as good as it gets?

* read Gray’s interesting column on the return of the Tory Bigoted Tendency

Several more reasons that I am voting LibDem

Let’s cut to the chase

Economics

No doubt Gordon Brown feels aggreived – he did the right things over the financial crisis, and was right in allowing the deficit to rise to accommodate private sector dissaving. LeftOutside has a collection of quotes from leading US economists wondering aloud about why we would ditch a premier, when ‘the Tories have managed to get pretty much every important call of this financial crisis and recession wrong.’

So why ditch him on this issue? Because circumstances have changed, and Brown’s instincts – which took the right measures in the crisis – might be exactly wrong for a period of fiscal austerity, as his repeated denial of fiscal arithmetic sadly proved.   Consider a comparison very flattering to Brown.  Churchill’s instincts for fighting the War were perfect.  But the moment the peace was upon us, it was right to get him out.  His love of an unaffordable Empire, which motivated so much of his stubborn bravery in the 1930s and onwards, was precisely wrong for the new era.

Why not the Tories?  After all, they could hardly be accused of having unaffordable big state instincts.  Well, no, but neither have they shown exceptional judgment.  The economic circumstances are changing rapidly, and Conservative economic pronouncements have illustrated an addiction to the 1980s playbook, no matter what is going on in the economy.  IF (big IF) we needed further fiscal support, or imaginative use of monetary policy, would they be able to do it?  With their entrenched savers’ lobby, it is difficult to see them being bold and imaginative with the Bank.

They possibly have an edge over the Liberal Democrats in terms of having a pro-enterprise stance.  But I see no proof that, for all their vaunted ‘instincts’, they have a better plan for cutting the deficit.  Their ratio of spending cuts to tax rises is so high as to probably be unrealistic.  How will they manage what Mrs T and John Major both failed to achieve?  They won’t tell us.

On the subject of those instincts

You can’t have it both ways – reward for strong instincts, without a harsh light thrown on the other parts of Conservative DNA.  And I don’t like them, and certainly don’t think they add up to ‘liberal’.  Consider how low reducing the carbon footprint is on their list of important issues – or how little Affordable Housing is cared for.  Consider how they think a higher inheritance tax threshold motivates enterprise!! Consider, too, their furious Euro-scepticism; nobody should think Europe is perfect, but we need to reform it from the inside, surely – particular as we go into an era where global issues need global solutions more than ever (financial regulation and greenhouse gas control the clearest priorities).

I also dislike their populism on prisons, and the ineffectual gesture politics of their immigration cap.  Will we see mass deportations under the Conservatives?  Is that what makes them proud to be British?  Neither are liberal postures, and neither make much sense.

Labour’s approach on these issues is a mixture of in-government pragmatism, and triangulation of Tory policies on hotbutton tabloid issues.  The latter is particularly unattractive, and helps explain why Left-Liberals have migrated across.

————————-

Anyone reading this blog should know I am critical of various Lib Dem policies – on tuition fees, on going overboard on the banks, perhaps, some of the more atavistic ‘nefish’ communal stuff.   But their basic orientation is right for this era.  Progressive, for a time when inequality continues to cause large social and economic problems.  Internationalist, for a time when so many issues transcend national borders.  Respecting of civil liberties. And liberal rather than statist, reflecting the practical and fiscal impossibility of solving everything through the government.  Finally, above all, suspicious of concentrated, undislodgeable political power.

Liberalism is about dissolving power

Reason number two for my support of the Lib Dems is their abiding concern with concentrated power.  In Vince’s policies it is about dissolving the power of banks and other monopolies.  In education it is about moving power down to where headteachers and local authorities can make decisions.  In electoral reform it is about ensuring that a small clique within one party that itself commands barely a third of popular support cannot just take the reins of the government, dressing it up as ‘leadership and gumption‘.

This is not just about Conservatives and their stubborn addiction to unfair politics.  Clegg explains it well in his foreword to ‘A Liberal moment’ (Demos pdf):

Labour’s basic approach to governance – to social, political, economic and environmental progress – is fundamentally flawed. Its starting point is central state activism, its defining characteristic is the hoarding of power at the centre, and its method of delivery is top-down government. These reflexes once had their day … But the situation today, almost exactly a century later, is almost exactly the reverse: state-centred, top-down solutions are wholly out of step with the demands of our age. We live in a more atomised society where people are no longer rigidly defined by class or place. Our society is no longer trapped by a culture of diffidence and hierarchy. The capacity of the nation state to act for its citizens has been dramatically diluted as globalisation has undermined its powers.

Eavesdropping on blogs and speeches, the Labour mentality is always to hoard and disburse resources from the centre, and then boast about what ‘we’ did for ‘you’.  Once this was merely jarring – post crisis it is unaffordable.

The Keynesian moment cannot last forever

I was thinking about this when skimming through the Times’ endorsement for Cameron.  Its basic premise is similar to that of the Economist (see last post): reform of an overmighty and just-too-large State is the essential challenge of the era, and the Conservatives are best for this:

Amid the sound and fury, a fundamental philosophical difference has emerged: the Conservatives want to reduce excessive public expenditure, the Labour Party wants to keep on ratcheting up benefits, tax credits and other forms of state spending. One party recognises the benefits of individual independence. The other keeps fostering a state of benefit dependency.

The Times praises Labour at times – for the urban renewal palpable in some cities, for an increased presence on the world stage – and some of its praise for Cameron quite justified, although the modernisation project still has ‘jury out’ all over it. There is also much that is contradictory; not many of us can believe quite so wholeheartedly in the ‘optimism’ at the heart of a Conservativism still addicted to miserabilism, and wonder why so much is wasted on inheritors and the wealthy married.  Above all, this sentence is strangely unjustified:

The economy is broken and so is politics. It is time for a change

when the Times say almost nothing about the politics, and are implicitly cheering on the election of a couple of hundred unsackable MPs on a disproportionate basis.

Some of the attacks on the Liberal Democrats are wounding – anti business populism, perhaps, and an uncertain strategy on the Euro.

But in this post I want to focus on an attack on the Tories that just cannot work forever. I read on this blog and elsewhere comments along the lines of ‘how can anyone support the Tories when they are all for cutting like mad?’ I hear the same said about Vince Cable – not to be trusted, because he wants to cut.

Here is my view.

The financial crisis and deflationary slump led to an extraordinary ‘Keynesian moment’; a period of 2-4 years during which a shattered financial system and zero base rates meant that the government’s balance sheet became critical for keeping demand high.  We may still be in that moment. Conservative misunderstanding or poor judgement about the need for support was an egregious error, indeed.

But it did NOT usher in a permanent new Keynesian reality, one in which monetary policy became permanently subordinate to fiscal policy.   If it had, then leftish claims that the Tories just don’t get it would have real merit.

If we grow reasonably over the next few years, we will be left much closer to our economic capacity, and should quite rightly worry about our productivity, and the place an overweening government plays.  Sure, in some regards that government can help in useful reforms – of finance above all.   But stopping the debt becoming unsustainable without rising inflation will be a major part of the challenge. We will need to make spending/revenues more like 1.02, not 1.25, at some point, or there will be huge consequences.

The 1976 crisis tells me that the worst moments for government solvency often come years after the worst of the recession.  That is when you can judge what they would choose to do.  Paying down debt is about taking tough choices in the good times.  I share the profound scepticism of many others that if we had a year or two of good growth, the Labour party would be unwilling to upset its public sector friends and supporters, and would – not in 2010-11, but perhaps 2013-15 – undermine confidence in this country. Particularly if Ed Balls has influence.

I support all sorts of radical policies when this economy is far beneath its potential.  Keynes was so right – in 1933-9.  But naive extraopolation of that thinking for 1968-79 was greviously ill-judged.  Given their genetically-bred need to see government as the answer to everything, I see this as an error that Labour could easily repeat, if given the chance, and the Conservatives much more likely avoid – if they could only be trusted to do the right things for just a couple of years.

Two contrasting endorsements

You’ll know this – the Economist has backed David Cameron, though in a surprisingly reticent way: I can’t remember their New Labour endorsements being so coy as to leave a picture of an invisible man on the front cover.

For the first time I can recall, the Economist is forced to explain why they are NOT supporting the Lib Dems.  That is a huge, implicit positive. They correctly acknowledge Clegg’s fine liberalism on immigration and civil rights, as well as electoral reform, of course.

But on the negative side some of their reasons are telling, for those of us who see themselves as Classical Liberals more than Social Democrats.  You know my views on the tuition fees pledge, and I too am uneasy about rejecting nuclear power when the bigger threat is clearly climate change.  I have also been open with my concern about their sometimes hostility to business – allowing a social justice agenda to foreever trump the needs of wealth creation is better electioneering than policy.  I don’t think the right place to be is the Left of Labour on economics, no matter what outrages were thrown up in the financial crisis.  The Lib Dems need to get rid of the impression that this is where they are.

But if the Economist is a little harsh on Lib Dem policies, it is way too forgiving of Conservative ones.  Their basic premise is that the biggest problem is a ‘liberty destroying Leviathan’ that is now 50% of the economy.  The Economist is right to identify the Conservatives as the party most determined to reform the public sector, and reform is what it needs. But as I have argued all over this blog, this ratio is a misleading measure of how ‘government dominated’ we are.

They are also right to give cautious praise to David Cameron’s attempt to make the Conservatives more socially liberal and environmental, although they could have asked how far this has extended below the Notting Hill set.*

The Economist notes many Conservative failings – the Europhobic fringe, their exaggerations about broken Britain – and are too kind about their monumental failure to understand Keynesian economics at a rather crucial time.  This is not a minor caveat, and if it spells too much dogmatism in the near future, could turn into a monumental risk.

All in all, if you took the evidence from their column, the Economist should have endorsed a Hung Parliament.  Each party’s policy failings (in the eyes of the Economist) might have been improved by contact with the other.  But given Tory hysteria about that result, it would have looked like a vote for the Lib Dems.

I find the Economist’s survey of the years under New Labour interesting too.  There have been great achievements in social legislation, the changing constitution (remember all those peers?), peace in Northern Ireland.  The piece is interesting in how it reminds us that most revolutionary social changes are nothing to do with governments: Asian manufacturing, the budget airline, the internet, all these things are more significant to the long view of history.

They mention Labour’s sustained attempts to redistribute society into less inequality – a Brownian effort.  But what I found most telling is that those unambiguous achievements of New Labour in social and constitutional policy are not mentioned by Brown very often.  I can’t help thinking that his jealousy of his more charismatic predecessor has held him back from a fuller defence of Labour’s record, one that would make an even bigger nonsense of Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ claim.

More predictably, though still with historical significance, the Guardian has backed the Liberal Democrats:

The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country’s destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform.

You will notice that Labour is scarcely mentioned in this post.  That, alas, is where things have got to with them.  Who knows – they might well come second in both popular vote and number of seats.  But they appear irrelevant (almost as irrelevant, it seems, as George Osborne is to his own chief of staff)

UPDATE:  A third endorsement from Sunny is even more remarkable than the Guardian’s:

We have over 500,000 people in this country who are non-citizens; living in the shadows of society; living hand-to-mouth, on the breadline; open to exploitation because they have no legal status; earning less than minimum wage for shitty jobs because they can’t complain; and mostly no money even to leave the country. If the Labour Party can’t even have compassion for them, then it cannot claim to be a party of compassion and for the marginalised.

Superbly put: if it just the party of its own special interest that happens to be largely poor, it loses this mantle.

*The notorious ConHome poll of candidates is a curate’s egg in this regard: carbon counts for nothing, and reducing welfare bills quite high given we have a recession. But note too that Europe and marriage are not such obsessions as you might think.

#bigotgate distracts from important message: IFS very +ve for LibDems

Prior to #bigotgate, I had hoped that the world would tune in, agog, to my take on the IFS’s take on the fiscal situation.  Fat chance now. (I think the best observation comes from my favourite tweeter.)

Anyway, back to business.  You will have read commentary such as this from the Guardian which tends to gather round one point: none of the parties have revealed anything like the scale of the cuts that are needed.  True, but realpolitik makes this impossible.  The first to reveal how many Sure Starts they will close/nurses they will fire/tax credits they will freeze will be victim to the other parties’ leaflets – and people don’t look at leaflets like they do an IFS report on all the parties plans, reading between the lines.

As Westminster Blog observes, parties can make spending pledges worth billions in just a matter of minutes; but eking from them a fraction of this in spending cuts is sheer murder, even when it is a mere dent. Staying shtumm is a no-brainer, politically.

The IFS is playing a blinder.  It cannot be ‘bought’ or leant on.  It still leaves me a bit mystified about what the Conservatives’ OBR would do.  Robert Chote’s remarks are all that most of us need to read. They have some very LibDem friendly highlights, or points of general interest:

On the overall shape of plans

  • [Conservative plans] would not make an enormous difference to the long term outlook for the public finances. The Conservatives would still end up borrowing £604 billion over the next seven years, just 6% less than Labour and the Lib Dems.

On its composition

  • Labour favours a ratio of 2 to 1 between spending cuts and tax increases, the Lib Dems 2½ to 1 and the Conservatives 4 to 1.

BUT

  • it is worth noting that when the last Conservative government faced the need for a big fiscal tightening in the early 1990s, we estimate that the ratio of tax to spending cuts was roughly 1 to 1 [so this surely makes the Conservative plans the least credible in terms of 'doability' (rather than attractiveness)]
  • When David Cameron said of the Liberal Democrat income tax cut in the first debate “It’s a beautiful idea. It’s a nice idea. We cannot afford it” that is a slightly odd accusation for a party advocating a net tax cut to make of one advocating a net tax increase.

On the scale of cuts

  • Labour and the Liberal Democrats would need to deliver the deepest sustained cuts to spending on public services since the late 1970s. While, starting this year, the Conservatives would need to deliver cuts to spending on public services that have not been delivered over any five-year period since the Second World War.

On Taxation

  • The Conservatives would make the pattern less progressive, reducing the losses of households at the top of the income distribution proportionately more than those at the bottom.
  • The Liberal Democrats would make the pattern more progressive, redistributing resources from the wealthy to middle-income households (though not the poorest).
  • Conservative plans would strength the incentive for many people to be in paid work at all, but would do almost nothing to encourage most existing workers to earn a bit more.
  • The Liberal Democrats would probably strengthen the incentive to be in paid work for more people than the Conservatives, as well as increasing the incentive for those earning less than £10,000 to earn more. But they would do more than the other two parties to harm incentives to work and save among richer households.

On complexity

  • The Conservatives would not improve matters. They would partially reverse what is probably Labour’s least bad tax increase and add new complexities and distortions of their own.
  • The Liberal Dem package would remove some undesirable distortions and inconsistencies of treatment. But their plan to restrict pension contribution relief is misguided.

Overall verdict: LibDem plans are more realistic and progressive than Conservative ones, leave the debt position roughly the same, distort the tax system less, involve deep spending cuts but unlike the Conservatives don’t involve breaking an all-time record.

I hope Nick reads this carefully before the Economy debate.  ‘I agree with the IFS’ …

What are the major Lib Dem weaknesses? (Gosh I am honest).  One is their double-taxation of higher rate pension contributions, which are called ‘fundamentally misguided’ here. But I am slightly more worried about their capital gains tax proposal.  Yes, I know Nigel Lawson did it first.  But a 50% rate for entrepreneurs is surely very damaging.  Does Luke Johnson go over the top in today’s column:

their Treasury spokesman Vince Cable, who claims to be an expert in finance and business, (although he has never actually dealt with a payroll in his life) expects entrepreneurs to take all the risk, and the government to take half the reward. At a stroke they would kill initiative, and send a massive signal to wealth-creators: do not invest here.

I take some small comfort from the fact that the Federation for Small Businesses does not mention it in today’s press release – nor in their manifesto.  But it would put me off being a risk-taker.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 32 other followers