Looking at the Liberal Conservatives from an Anarchist Point of View…

Some people might see a dissonance on this blog between my professing to be an anarchist on the one hand, and my engaging uncritically in the mainstream discourse of statist politics on the other.  I don’t see that as a problem at all – the kind of anarchism that I believe in (authentic democracy) is one which will take generations to make viable.  It will never exist in my lifetime and will require an entire paradigm shift in public thinking and political education over a number of years to make possible.  It is an aspiration – a goal; a political system which I feel is most in line with our true nature and species-needs and interests – but it is not the world we live in right now.  I therefore think it would be stupid not to engage meaningfully in the world as it is at the same time as I long for a different one.  That said, I was recently asked for an “anarchist reading” of what was happening here in the UK with the Liberal-Conservative Coalition.  The following is my take on the situation from an anarchist point-of-view:

The anarchist reading of what’s happening in Britain with Cleggameron is this: we had an election where the central narrative given by the politicians and the media was that the British public were fed up with Labour after 13 years in power.  That sense of fed-upness was not particularly clarified other than to make vague allusions to the war in Iraq and the economic meltdown – the fact that Labour had ideologically betrayed its supporters by following essentially Tory economic and foreign policies for 13 years was not mentioned and, in fact, the Tory Party themselves were now painted as the only people who could save us from disaster.

The seeming fly in the ointment came when, during the first ever UK televised debate between the three competing party leaders, Liberal Democrat, Nick Clegg, was allowed to speak for the first time and the British public actually heard him.  Offering a slight alternative to the dominant two-party parameters that had been the norm of discourse for so long, his words were heralded as radical, even though nothing that he said hadn’t already been published in the Liberal Democrat manifesto earlier that week.  The media and public fawned over him and he was able to get a lot of traction out of several key ideas: not renewing the UK’s “independent nuclear deterrent”, Trident; introducing Proportional Representation into our voting system instead of the unfair “first-past-the-post” system; giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the country, etc…all of which were genuine alternatives to what the Conservatives and Labour were offering, making Liberal Democrat’s polling numbers suddenly go through the roof.

Of course, this was all done in the context of safely knowing that the first-past-the-post system we have in place meant it was absolutely impossible for the Liberal Democrats to actually win an election outright, so there was no danger of any of these radical promises actually being fulfilled.  And alongside the pages and pages of publicity for Nick Clegg there then came the very serious discussion of the likelihood of a “hung parliament”: no one party winning a commanding majority of seats in the House of Commons.  This was put over to the public as being either a) a good thing or b) the end of Britain as we know it, but in all cases it was always put over, for good or for bad, as being a fundamental change in politics.  Importantly, it planted an important seed in the public’s mind at a time when faith in our political system was absolutely battered in the wake of the MP expenses scandal, economic catastrophe and two illegal and unjustified wars: there is still a left-wing alternative to Labour, so you don’t need to go off and form any new and radical parties that actually represent something new, and at the very worst, if there is a hung parliament, it will be a chance for “radical” reform of our system which will wipe away all those bad memories of what happened under Labour and let us start again.

Chomsky calls this kind of thing “change of course”.  We last saw it in the UK in 1997: after eighteen years of the Tories, New Labour were voted in on a promise of change and renewal only to continue doing exactly the same things that the Conservative government had done, but in a slightly different way, while throwing enough bones to the working classes to keep them happy.

Unsurprisingly then, after the huge propaganda campaign for it across the media, come election day we had a hung parliament.  Logically, the Liberal Democrats then had two options as to whom they could form a coalition government with: an ideologically linked coalition with Labour (the two parties had very similar platforms on certain key issues throughout the election and are both, allegedly, parties of the left), or a numerically strong one with the Tories, supposedly their sworn enemies on the right.  Now, there are many reasons why the Lib-Dems ultimately chose to do a deal with the Tories, but all that matters to us anarchists in terms of the state protecting itself and the interests of power taking precedent over the interests of people is that, now that they have done this deal with the Tories and the dust has settled, we have seen the real uniformity and similarity of vision between supposed political opponents and a brand new narrative has been established: this is a “new politics” and it is the “change” we all voted for.  All those bad things that happened in the past – they were the doing of people like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.  They were not systemic problems.  There is nothing wrong with our system.  They were problems caused by individuals and now those individuals have gone.  We can start again.  This is a new era.  Everything will be different now.  Sure – all those nice and radical proposals in the Liberal Democrat manifesto that so appealed to the electorate and gained them all that press coverage have been scrapped in the name of “compromise”, and the policy areas on which the Conservatives stood alone, such as making drastic and immediate cuts in the budget right away and allowing public money to be spent on essentially privatizing education, which the business world adored – the policy areas that 52% of the public specifically voted against – have somehow made it through…but that shouldn’t make one assume for one moment that the notion of a hung parliament and a coalition government has simply allowed our leaders to pull a bait and switch with their manifestos, turn democracy into a pantomime, and cherry-pick out only those polices which best serve the needs of the elite while discarding all the rest and calling it compromise.

There are lots of interesting things to say about what has happened if you want to jump on board the dominant mainstream narrative of the situation and discuss the three parties involved as if they really do represent three different and unique constituencies and ideologies and as if the new coalition government really is a major change in UK politics (which is exactly what I have hitherto done on this blog), but in terms of an anarchist reading I think it’s pretty straightforward: the political elites have saved themselves once again.  They have taken the public’s threatening disillusionment with a crumbling political and economic system and directed its rage and calls for change into something safe and manageable: not revolution, not radical reform, not addressing the systemic problems which are causing our continued despair…but by putting two new faces at the top and letting them perform the same old politics of yesterday in a way that makes it look different. 

"Change of course."  Like how Obama saved America and undid everything bad that Bush did :-)

 

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,UK Election,General Election 2010,General Election,Liberal Conservatives,Anarchism,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Cleggameron,Anarchist

Coping With Cameron

So the Liberal Democrats have made their choice, betraying their progressive roots, their progressive membership and the progressive mandate given to them by 52% of the voting population, and have decided to get into bed with the Tories.  David Cameron is now our Prime Minister.

But this is not all as terrible as it seems.

First: the obvious.  Instead of May 12th, 2010, being Day One of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, we must never forget that, had the election gone differently, May 12th, 2010, could have been Day Six of a majority Cameron government. 

Let no-one tell you any different: the Conservatives did not get a mandate in the General Election and the country has not shifted rightwards in response to their disillusionment with Labour.  The country – 52% of them – voted for a distinctly un-Tory flavour of change, maintaining the progressive values that saved this country after the ravages of Thatcherism.  David Cameron as our new Prime Minister is a pretty scary thought – but it would have been even scarier had he done it on his own instead of with the help of the Quisling Liberal Democrats.

Which brings me to my next point…

While it is easy (and comforting) to call the Lib-Dems traitors for doing a deal with the Conservatives instead of Labour (and certainly, if you were foolish enough to vote for them, they have taken your anti-Tory vote and shat on it), there is actually nothing at all traitorous about it.  As long-time proponents of Proportional Representation, the Liberal Democrats are a political party inherently at ease with the concept of coalition governments with strange and uneasy bedfellows.  If PR were introduced to the country by the next General Election, parties like the Tories would not magically disappear, and if you are committed to the notion of proportionality in political representation then that means understanding that you must work with all parties in order to govern.  There will always be a right-wing in any country, and there will always be those with whom you are diametrically opposed ideologically; but the cooperative spirit of the kind of coalition governments usually yielded by PR means that their actual political power is kept in line with their true level of public support.  If 36% of the population want a Tory government, then there should be some proportional share of representation of those views in government.  Importantly though, PR and coalition government is about compromise and tempering the extremes.  It is about finding common ground and working through party differences for the good of the country instead of clinging to myopic tribalism, and it ensures a more rational and reasonable political dialogue than the black/white, yes/no, left/right dichotomy of our current first-past-the-post system.

On May 6th, we were offered a false choice: are we fed up with Labour?  If so, then we must vote for a party, the Conservatives, who are so fundamentally different ideologically that they see the world in a completely backwards way to our every political instinct.

What about those of us, like me, who were fed up with Labour not because they weren’t right-wing enough, but because they weren’t as left-wing as I would have liked?  Because their taxes on the rich were too low, because they were too in bed with the bankers and the businesses who robbed our country dry? 

That sort of nuance is incapable of being articulated in a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system.  My disappointment in Labour could not be expressed effectively by anything other than voting for Labour in opposition to the more extreme right-wing alternative.

The Liberal Democrats have long been aware of the inefficiencies and unfairness of our current voting system and have campaigned against it for years.  Part of that desire for a “new kind of politics”, however, does involve working with other parties, even parties who you are not naturally inclined to work with.  Proportional Representation means coalition governments, and coalition governments mean compromise and give-and-take.  The Lib-Dems siding with the Tories over Labour does not mean that the Liberal Democrats are now duty-bound to support every insane Conservative policy that comes along; it means engaging in conversation with their Conservative Cabinet colleagues and limiting their excesses whilst making small progressive inroads of their own.

That they ultimately opted for a Conservative coalition instead of a Labour one is disappointing, yes, and it will certainly stop me from ever voting Liberal Democrat in the future, but in the long-term it was the best thing that they could do if they are serious about bringing this “new kind of politics” to Britain.

First of all – by choosing to form a government with the most difficult and unlikely of the two courting parties, the Liberal Democrats will show, if the coalition works, that coalition and compromise is possible and desirable within the UK.  If political enemies like the Lib-Dems and the Tories can work effectively side by side and the country does not fall apart, then when the referendum for a new voting system occurs they already have a fantastic body of evidence to point to in its favour.

Related to this was the question of legitimacy.  Although intellectually and ethically it is quite clear to me that a Lib/Lab deal would have been absolutely legitimate on paper (a majority coalition representing the 52% of the country who voted against a shift to the right), legitimacy ultimately rests on public perception.  From the moment the idea was seriously broached, the media were all over it and denouncing it as a possible “coalition of the losers”.  Furthermore, with Gordon Brown resigning, there would be no possible way of carrying out the Lib/Lab coalition with an elected Prime Minister.  Again – although that is intellectually and ethically acceptable, and there is no constitutional or legal requirement for the direct election of a Prime Minister in our Parliamentary (not Presidential) democracy, public opinion – shaped and twisted by the media – was that one of the central failings of Labour over the past few years was the unelected nature of Gordon Brown’s ascent to power.  That opinion was, in my view, wrong, and even irrelevant, but it is what it is: the public were fed up with a man in Downing Street that they did not have a say in voting and to replace one unelected Prime Minister with another would have been both a Public Relations and a Proportional Representation disaster.  Public Relations because it would look like the Lib-Dems were propping up an unpopular and rejected Labour government (even if, in actual fact, that wasn’t what was happening at all; the slavish Conservative media would be sure to promote that narrative regardless) and Proportional Representation because when the inevitable referendum occurred the Conservative argument against it would be clear: unelected leaders, unpopular governments propped up by minority losers…this is what PR would mean for the country.

We must remember – a referendum on PR is not a vote for the House of Commons to make, and it doesn’t matter how much political support it can muster.  It is a public vote, and how the public perceives the issue will be crucial.  On this point, I believe that the Liberal Democrats have been quite savvy.  They will lead by example: show that they are capable of compromise and that PR and coalition does not mean that we can’t have strong and stable government.  By doing this, they will take away from their main political opponents on the issue – the Conservatives – the validity of much of their opposition; when the referendum comes their argument will look flimsy and out-dated. 

The final reason why the Liberal Democrats’ decision is not an absolute disaster is this: it gives the Labour Party time to regroup.  They can listen to their base, build on the support that they received on May 6th, woo former Liberal Democrat supporters disgusted with their party for the deal they have done with the Conservatives, elect a new and electable leader, clean off the stench of the last thirteen years, and generally sort themselves out to come out fighting by 2015 – or sooner if the coalition breaks down.

Certainly the lesson they must learn from this election is that progressive politics has not died out in this country, despite Tony Blair’s best attempts to assimilate the party into the right.  Labour made two major mistakes: illegal and unjustified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and not regulating banks and businesses sufficiently to stop them from playing roulette with our money.  Their downfall came from their own flirtation with the policies of the right and their revival must come from recognising the appeal of the left, capitalizing on the exodus of Liberal Democrats angry at their party for selling them out, and then offering a genuine leftist alternative to the Conservatives and the soiled Liberal Democrats by the time election day comes.

Had they not been offered this opportunity; had they clung on to power against media and public opinion and been demonized for their actions, tarred with their record and attacked by Conservatives at every turn, you could be sure that the postponement of their demise by a Liberal Democrat deal would have led to a much greater death down the line, and a possible banishment to the political wilderness from which they might have never recovered.  As it is, they have managed to bow out of the government just in time to not be burdened by the unpopularity sure to come once “savage cuts” in public spending occur, and they have allowed the country to be reminded, over the next five years, why it was that we ejected the Tories so unceremoniously back in 1997.

Theoretically – a five year recharge and revitalization of the party, helped along by continuing demonstrable evidence of the paucity of the Conservative vision – could leave Labour primed to reclaim power in 2015 and fix the inevitable mess.  And if the Lib-Dems play it right, and that election is fought under rules of Proportional Representation, we could see the next five years become nothing more than a Conservative swan-song.

Of course I’m angry that we now have a Conservative Prime Minister.  If you voted Liberal Democrat on May 6th then you must feel incredibly cheated and let down.  But this is no ordinary Conservative Prime Minister – this is a Conservative Prime Minister kept in line by a Liberal Democrat Deputy, leading a Cabinet watered down by a handful of Liberal Democrats.  I don’t believe Nick Clegg’s decision was the right one, but I do think it was the best one he could make under the circumstances.  Whatever happens over the next five years, I’m fairly certain that British politics will never be the same again, and whilst this may look like a disaster in the short-term, in the long-term this could be the greatest gift the progressive left have ever received.

 

Technorati Tags: General Election 2010,General Election,UK Election,Politics,UK Politics,David Cameron,Nick Clegg,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Progressive Majority

Democracy: It’s More Than Just Numbers

Right now the central question in British politics is what the next government will look like.  Will Nick Clegg choose to align his Liberal Democrat party with David Cameron’s Conservative Party (who got 36.1% of the overall UK vote), or with Gordon Brown’s Labour Party (who only got 29%).  Despite the substantial ideological differences between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, there are those who believe that forming a government with the defeated Labour Party would be a betrayal of democracy: a “coalition of the losers”, unfairly placed to rule above the clearly victorious Tories.  There are others, however, and I am one of them, who believe that, far from being a “coalition of the losers”, a coalition Labour/Liberal Democrat government is exactly what democracy requires.

Looking at the election results, although it benefits the Conservatives immensely to view their numerical majority of 306 MPs and their net gain of ninety-eight seats as a decisive victory and rejection of the incumbent Labour government, in reality it is hardly that.  Though Labour did indeed lose ninety-two seats on May 6th, and only returned 258 MPs compared with the Tories’ 306, their loss was hardly a resounding rejection.  Indeed, considering the appalling low polling numbers in support of Labour over the past eighteen months, one could even argue that support for the party had increased across the country throughout the election campaign.  On election day, Labour remained strong in many parts of the country where the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats hoped to make a gain, and though they undoubtedly suffered a loss and part-rejection of their last thirteen years in power (sometimes where it was justified, such as anger over the illegal and unjustified wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; sometimes merely as a scapegoat, such as over the cross-party expenses scandal, or the current global economic crisis that is more a failure of unregulated globalised capitalism than it is of any specifically Labour policy) that loss and part-rejection did not translate into a massive swing rightwards towards the Conservatives.  The Tories got some gains, but not enough, and though there may indeed be disillusionment with Labour after thirteen disappointing years, what was made clear at this election was that the alternative to Labour which the voting public sought was not a Conservative one. 

While 36% of the public did vote Conservative; 52% of the public did not.  29% chose to continue with the present Labour government rather than pursue the Conservative agenda on offer, and a further 23% voted for the Liberal Democrats who, on all central areas of key policy and ideology, were in direct opposition to the Conservative Party and had much more in common, ideologically, with Labour.

I think it is fair to say that the central concern of this entire election, underlying all other questions of policy, was this: how are we going to deal with the economic crisis?  How will we secure recovery and get the country’s finances in order?  Are we going to raise taxes or cut taxes?  Invest or make cuts?  Are we going to protect frontline services or put them at risk?  Basically: how can we propose to do anything about crime, education, health, immigration, defence, etc, if we don’t know first where the money’s coming from and how we are going to tackle the deficit?  And on this central issue, the split between the Conservative Party and both Labour and the Liberal Democrats was clear: the Conservatives were alone in advocating making massive cuts in public spending immediately, whereas both Labour and Liberal Democrats believed that such measures could be risky for a fragile economy right now and, instead, proposed not making cuts until 2011.

From the three party manifestos:

CONSERVATIVE:  “Labour will not take action to cut waste in government. They have identified £11 billion pounds of waste, but they do not plan to start dealing with it until April 2011. So Labour will continue wasting money while putting up taxes on working people. We will act immediately to cut government waste…we will take immediate action to cut a net £6 billion of wasteful departmental spending in the financial year 2010/11, with further savings in future years.”

LABOUR: “We will continue to support the economy while growth is still fragile, sticking with our targeted increase in public spending over the next year to sustain the recovery…Once the recovery is secure, we will rapidly reduce the budget deficit.  We have set out a clear, balanced and fair plan to more than halve the deficit over the next four years and we will stick to it.  We will achieve this through a combination of: fair tax increases; a firm grip on public spending including cuts in lower-priority areas; and strategies for growth that increase tax revenues and reduce spending on benefits.”

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: “We have already identified over £15 billion of savings in government spending per year, vastly in excess of the £5 billion per year that we have set aside for additional spending commitments…If spending is cut too soon, it would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs.  We will base the timing of cuts on an objective assessment of economic conditions, not political dogma.  Our working assumption is that the economy will be in a stable enough condition to bear cuts from the beginning of 2011-12.”

On this vital and immediate question, therefore, the British public have spoken: 52% of them do not want the fragile recovery jeopardized by making cuts in public spending too soon.  Despite this, David Cameron made it clear in his “big, open and comprehensive offer” to Nick Clegg: “We remain completely convinced that starting to deal with the deficit this year is essential.”

The second important issue at the forefront of the election now is the question of electoral reform.  As soon as it became likely that this election might result in a hung Parliament, a major discussion throughout the country began around the prospects, likelihood and desirability of changing the voting system to some form of proportional representation.  The importance of this issue became amplified by the election results themselves: the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes, yet returned only fifty-seven Parliamentary seats, whereas Labour, who only had 6% more votes than the Lib Dems, received 31% more seats.  Meanwhile, back in first-past-the-post-land, we were left confused and unimpressed with a Conservative majority that was not majority enough to govern.

There came a complex and subtle message from the electorate on May 6th that our clumsy and outdated electoral system is structurally incapable of deciphering: we are unhappy with Labour, but we are equally unhappy with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat alternative.  Who, therefore, should govern our country?

Returning to this question of whether or not the General Election was a massive rejection of thirteen years of Labour government, the answer was clearly: no.  It was a rebuke, certainly, but a rejection?  Hardly.  A truly responsive democracy must allow for more than black or white options: in a complex and diverse world there will always be shades of grey.  Labour have let a lot of people down and have made a lot of mistakes over their thirteen years in power, but in certain areas, and on certain questions, they have done great and popular things.  Why must it be that, for the handful of mistakes, an entire programme is rejected, or that, for a few bad apples, we must expel the entire bunch?

Similarly – the surge in Liberal Democrat numbers before the election did not translate into votes on polling day.  Why?  Well, likely because voters were all-too aware of the stacked deck against their vote in a flawed, first-past-the-post system.  No one wants to waste their vote, so they voted cautiously instead: for Labour, if they didn’t want the Tories to get in, or for the Conservatives if they were sick of Gordon Brown. 

Certainly in this election we can read a disappointment in what Labour have done – but that disappointment was clearly not enough for people to reject them from government entirely, nor were the alternative agendas proposed by the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats popular enough to gain mass support.  True democracy, therefore, must be more than YES or NO – in a representative democracy there must be a mechanism in place for nuanced representation: not simply YES or NO, but a qualified YES or NO – something that tells the party you support that you are not going to abandon them entirely and switch your allegiances across the political spectrum, but that you are dissatisfied with certain aspects of their record and that they must change or it will cost them votes.  

It is clear that, to do this, electoral reform is needed.  For Liberal Democrats, such reform has been at the forefront of their agenda since their inception, and if they are to remain a party of their principles, then a demand for electoral reform must be the price they ask of any potential partner in coalition.

In their 2010 manifesto, they make it clear: “Liberal Democrats will change politics and abolish safe seats by introducing a fair, more proportional voting system for MPs.  Our preferred Single Transferable Vote system gives people the choice between candidates as well as parties.” 

Similarly, Labour – though late to the party – were not afraid to acknowledge this need for electoral reform in their own 2010 manifesto, weeks before a hung Parliament became a reality and it became politically useful to hold such a view: “People want a greater say in how the country is governed and for politicians to be more accountable to those they serve.  So while we are proud of our record of devolving power and reforming the constitution, we believe that further and more radical reform is imperative if we are to renew our democratic public life.  Britain needs a new constitutional and political settlement for a new era.  To begin the task of building a new politics, we will let the British people decide on whether to make Parliament more democratic and accountable in referenda on reform of the House of Commons and House of Lords, to be held on the same day, by October 2011.  To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.”

The Conservatives, meanwhile, on this vital matter of national interest, yet again do not share the opinion of the 52% majority.  As they put it in their manifesto: “We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with.”

And that is precisely the problem.

As the results of May 6th show – the country did not necessarily want to kick the government out.  Or at least: they did not want to kick the government out and replace them with a distinctly Conservative one.  Only 7.1% more voters specifically chose the right-wing Conservative agenda on offer than chose the existing Labour government, and, taken as an ideological whole – those opposing a shift to the right and sharing a progressive vision of the future – 52% of the voters rejected the Conservative programme.      

Now, numerically it could be argued that, similarly, 59.1% of voters rejected the Labour programme, or that 65.1% of voters rejected the Liberal Democrats’, but when we look beyond the numerical results and to what the three individual parties were actually offering, I think there can be no argument at all that ideologically the Conservative party stood alone and were rejected by the majority.  They were the only explicitly right-wing party on the ballot out of the three, and stood at significant odds from Labour and Liberal Democrats on the two main issues of the day – making immediate cuts to public spending instead of waiting until 2011, and opposing proportional representation – and so the 52% who voted against this lone platform is therefore a much more significant figure than any other combination of Lib/Con or  Lab/Con.  It represents a 52% shared progressive mandate against the Conservatives’ meagre 36% of support.

We have been taught by first-past-the-post politics to think of winners and losers, but real democracy is more than just a number of arbitrarily distributed seats.  Although with 306 seats to Labour’s 258, it seems like the Conservatives are the “winners” of this election, when we actually consider what our votes mean, and what it was that 52% of the electorate actually voted for on May 6th, then it is clear the direction that this country needs to go.  Whilst certainly sense and decency suggest that Nick Clegg, as apparent kingmaker in this scenario, ought to hear out what the Conservatives have to offer in the face of their numerical victory, he should feel no shame in joining the majority of the population in rejecting a Conservative proposal if it does not concede important ground.  To form a coalition with Labour instead would not only make much more sense ideologically, but democratically too.  An expression not of the “coalition of the losers” but of the combined progressive majority in this country who opposed the Conservative programme.

Democracy is more than just numbers.  It is about translating mechanical votes into meaningful representation.  The first step, therefore, is in forming a government reflective of the nation’s true feelings; the second is in introducing proportional representation so that in future those votes can speak clearer.  Neither of these things can be done with a Tory government, and I hope that Nick Clegg looks beyond the misleading numbers and makes the right decision for democracy.

 

Technorati Tags: General Election 2010,General Election,UK Politics,Politics,Hung Parliament,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Labour Party,Nick Clegg,Democracy

The Anti-Conservative Majority

This bears repeating from yesterday, because the false argument against the idea of an alleged “anti-Conservative majority” continues to be spun.  From The Tone of Our Oppression yesterday:

 

There is a distinctively anti-Tory majority in this country that is not the same as the arguable anti-Labour or anti-Lib Dem majority one could extrapolate from the exact same polls, because both Labour and Liberal Democrat support comes from a place of shared progressive values, no matter how different the proposals of each individual party as to how best to manifest those progressive left-leaning values in practice, whereas the Tories are alone in popular support for regressive, right-wing thinking.

 

As I said this morning: on investing in the economy and securing the recovery now, and holding off cuts until 2011, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are in agreement and opposed to Conservative plans. Both parties are also in agreement for the need for electoral reform, whereas the Conservatives oppose it.  On that basis, the two parties – Labour and Lib Dem – absolutely do form an “anti-Conservative majority”.

Indeed, right now, the vote share is like this:

Conservatives – 36.2%

Labour/Lib Dem combined – 52%

Combined with the commonality of shared progressive policy and opposition to key Tory platforms, I’d call this a distinctive and morally authoritative anti-Conservative majority formed by a Lib/Lab pact.

 

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election 2010,General Election,Hung Parliament,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party

After the Debate…

If ever David Cameron was exposed it was last night, and boy did he look worried under the bright lights and scrutiny of the first ever UK election debate between the three contending Prime Ministerial candidates.  The format was perfect for perforating through all the Conservative sound-bites and exposing the hollowness of their “Big Society” programme, and both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown, in my opinion, demolished the Tory candidate at every turn.  If it isn’t clear to you now that the Conservative programme is nothing more than empty and unworkable promises, arbitrary and compassionless punishments and stale and outdated rhetoric masquerading as something new, then you can’t have been paying attention.  There is nothing new here in David Cameron’s Conservative Party that hasn’t been tried and discredited already in the 80s and 90s, and the entire 2010 Tory campaign just a shameless grab for power based on a manipulative and dishonest platform of old wine in new bottles.  That said, there were some very sage words from Tom Clark in The Guardian today: "Amid the renewed excitement about breaking the mould, progressives would do well to remember that they will pay a high price if they forget the psephology of their own seat. They are desperate to smash an electoral system that forces them to choose between their heart and their head. But they will not succeed if they forget to follow their head in the meantime."

Along with what seems to be the majority of the country right now, I left the big debate last night thinking how nice it would be if Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats could actually win the General Election in three weeks time, and as someone who has voted Lib Dem in every General Election since I was old enough to vote, I began to ponder the possibility of actually voting with my heart on May 6th here in Selly Oak instead of holding my nose and voting tactically for Labour.

“I agree with Nick” is clearly the “I Like Ike” of our generation (at least until some hideous BNP supporter co-opts the phrase for the wrong Nick and puts it on a racist tee-shirt), and it amazes me that by simply being given some air-time in which to lay out the policies already available in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, the British public are finally waking up to the realization that this election is a legitimate three-horse race.  The media last night were quick to say things like “in many ways the debate served to introduce Nick Clegg to the British people for the very first time” and the question I kept asking myself was: why?  Why had the media done such a bad job up until now in portraying a central political party in our supposedly democratic country as somehow being outside the scope of electability despite their rising poll numbers each and every year?  As recently as Monday, I watched Jeremy Paxman interviewing Clegg for the BBC, and he was basically ridiculing him for daring to believe he might actually become Prime Minister.  It was disgusting, and I’m glad that this watershed moment has seemingly sky-rocketed the Liberal Democrats into contention and made the derisive and mocking commentators out there finally listen up.

However, as much as I would love to vote Lib Dem on May 6th, the fact of the matter remains that, in my local constituency, historically the Liberal Democrats have never even come close to winning a seat here.  Indeed, whilst the leaflets and letters from Conservative, Nigel Dawkins are endless, and Labour’s Steve McCabe is sending out mail-outs and pressing the flesh all over town, our Lib Dem candidate has been highly conspicuous by his absence.

If I thought he had a hope in hell of winning here, I would vote for him, but right now it seems highly unlikely, no matter how well Nick Clegg did on TV last night, and this is an important point to remember for whatever constituency you may be voting in.

For a political party to win a General Election, they do not need to win every seat – they just have to win a majority of seats.  If you think your local Lib Dem candidate could actually win the seat in your area, then you should do everything you can to make that happen if that is the outcome you wish for.  But if you are living in a seat, like me, where a Lib Dem victory seems improbable, then there is absolutely no shame in voting Labour to keep the Tories out.  Indeed, by keeping the eye on the prize – if either Labour or Liberal Democrats get in, they have both promised massive electoral reform; if both get a lot of votes but there is no clear majority, it is highly likely they will work together to form a coalition government – you make sure you avoid the worst of all scenarios: another George Bush moment.

For those who don’t remember, America in the year 2000 wasn’t a particularly inspiring place.  Eight years of Bill Clinton hadn’t really given the country the massive social reform that had been hoped for on the left, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.  Meanwhile, on the right, some clown named George W Bush was seeking to fill the shoes vacated by his daddy just eight years before.  Ralph Nader and the Green Party, therefore, thought it was high time to step in and try to force the issue of third party politics and offer the voting public a real alternative to political business as usual.

It was an admirable effort, and if I were registered to vote that year the chances are, I would have voted for them too.  The problem was though, that with an uninspiring Democratic Party to vote for, many of those who would have voted Democrat voted Green instead because they were so disillusioned with the party, whilst those who would have voted Republican continued to vote for George Bush.  What that meant in real terms was that the Greens still didn’t get enough votes for serious Presidential contention (because not enough new or swing voters signed up alongside the disillusioned Democrats), but as a result of the exodus towards the Greens, the Democrats lost a lot of their support.  We all know what happened next: the Supreme Court made George W Bush President, and one of the key reasons this travesty occurred was because the difference in votes between the Republicans and Democrats was so slim.

Now, this isn’t to blame Ralph Nader, as many have done, as some kind of “spoiler” in that election – if the Democrats had wanted their Green Party votes back they shouldn’t have sold their supporters down the river and conceded so much to the Republicans during the Clinton years (sound familiar?)  But it is a warning about voting with your heart instead of your head: if people like me on May 6th vote Liberal Democrat without being cognizant of the specific circumstances of the constituency in which they are voting, instead of shocking the world and getting the Lib Dem MP that they want, it is much more likely that they will split the Labour vote and return an unwanted Conservative to the seat.  And that would be a terrible thing in our first-past-the-post, majority-take-all, electoral system.

This needn’t be seen as cynicism, nor as the claim that a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a wasted vote.  It isn’t.  I expect a lot of people to vote Lib Dem on May 6th and in a perfect world, they would even win.  But it is an endorsement of voting smartly instead of stupidly.  I agree with Nick as much as the next guy…but I agree with Gordon a hell of a lot more than I agree with David Cameron, and if it comes to a choice of risking a Cameron victory by taking an unwise gamble on Clegg, I think it’s far safer to stick every time.

 

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Before The Debate…Some Thoughts on the Manifestos…

I have spent much of this week reading the complete 2010 manifestos of the three main UK political parties – Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative.  I will never get that time back. 

The most important phrase I read in any of these three documents has got to be this: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.”  That phrase is to be found near the start of the Conservative Party’s so-called “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”, following a fairy-tale passage about how “the Party has remoulded itself for the modern era, applying its deepest values and beliefs to the urgent problems of the hour” after “a journey that began four and a half years ago, when the Conservative Party itself voted for change by electing David Cameron as its leader.” 

Once you debunk the fact from the fantasy – and once you have trawled through the massive 131 page manifesto – the paucity of this opening salvo becomes apparent.  A more truthful statement would read: we are the exact same party we always have been, “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent”, but after losing three consecutive elections, four and a half years ago we decided to cynically manipulate public opinion with the appearance of change by voting in the seemingly young and vibrant, David Cameron, to reboot the party’s image for the 21st Century.  The only real change we stand for though is changing things back to how they were the last time we were in charge.

The big idea at the heart of the Tories’ manifesto in 2010 is the notion of their so-called “Big Society”.  The very use of the phrase “Big Society” here is a deliberate piece of theatre: how best to re-introduce many of the same selfish and individualist ideas of the discredited Thatcher government to a political audience who remember only the failings of Thatcherism and the unpleasantness of the “nasty party” of the 80s and 90s?  Why, you deliberately distance yourself from the most defining statement Thatcher ever made about Tory-style individualism and fend-for-yourself governmental abandon – that there is “no such thing” as society – and appear to embrace exactly the opposite idea. 

Don’t be fooled though – appearance is all that it is – and as you read exactly what Mr. Cameron means by creating his “Big Society”, you discover that, in the ideas within: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.” 

The apparent push for “people power” and “we’re all in this together” sloganeering is, in reality, the same old Conservative shtick in a brand new 2010 window-dressing: deregulate everything, cut centralized government power and devolve the running of nearly everything to private enterprise under the facade of empowering local communities, give more tax cuts to the rich, take more benefits away from the poor, and make sure the City remains doing big business for the few, no matter how bad the unemployment gets for the many… 

“We will increase the private sector’s share of the economy in all regions of the country”

Yawn.

“We will improve Britain’s international rankings for tax competitiveness”

Yawn again.

“Anyone on Jobseeker’s Allowance who refuses to join the Work Programme will lose the right to claim out-of-work benefits until they do, while people who refuse to accept reasonable job offers could forfeit their benefits for up to three years.”

Yawn times three.

“We are proud of the last Conservative government’s industrial relations reforms, which helped bring about our economic revival in the 1980s, and we will always be prepared to build on them if necessary”

Yawn to the power of – what?  They’re actually proud of that horror?  Shit – this is worse than I thought!

“A Conservative government will reduce the amount of paperwork that the police have to deal with, starting by scrapping the stop form entirely and reducing the burden of stop and search procedures.”

And they want to go back to the stop-and-search prejudices of before?  “Our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent” indeed. 

Whilst the Tory manifesto has clearly attempted to appeal to the people of Britain with this seemingly radical idea of reclaiming government from Westminster and running the country for ourselves, throughout the document only one thing was made clear: “we’re all in this together” and “the Big Society” means, essentially, that once again under a Conservative government you will be entirely on your own.

Private businesses will run rampant, with no regulation and ever-more weakened unions, government protections and government services will be sold off to the highest bidder, or scrapped completely to pay for more tax cuts, civil liberties and basic human rights will be repealed once again in the name of “cutting red tape” and “reducing the amount of paperwork” for police, unemployment will rise up at the same time that benefits will be plummeting right down, education will become polarized, and citizen will compete against citizen for an ever-depleting pool of public resources whilst the wealthy will accrue more and more.

As an avowed anarchist, I actually found it quiet insulting to see how much the language of radical decentralizing and the self-empowerment of local communities was co-opted by the Conservatives to paint a picture so very far removed from what real self-governance would look like, and if ever my argument about the importance of tone in our inevitable oppression at the hands of external governments held true, it was in the reading of the Conservative manifesto. 

When it comes to the actual actions each party is proposing in this election, there is a vast similarity of objectives.  Everybody wants to cut public spending, balance the budget, fix our schools, protect the NHS, improve the environment, continue the war in Afghanistan, re-link state pensions with earnings, commit to an 0.7% budget for aid, support the Millennium Development Goals, etc, but the importance here is in the underlying philosophy which is guiding each party and the way in which this philosophy informs the spirit by which those objectives are intended to be met.

For instance – the Labour party intend to throw a lot of people off their benefits too if they are elected in on May 6th (for the record: I don’t condone this, but am working within the parameters of the given debate).  Like the Tories, Labour will similarly be implementing a new policy if elected in the new Parliament: after two years on benefits, unemployed people will be given a job that they have to take or risk having their benefits cut off.  But the difference here is the tone.  Whereas the Conservatives’ plan places sole responsibility on the unemployed, painting them in the traditional Tory light as work-shy shirkers and scammers and enforcing claimants to take whatever job they are given or risk being barred from collecting benefits for three whole years (a completely arbitrary policy which gives no guarantees of financial security to the claimant and could literally condemn a person to life-threatening poverty if they refuse to take a poorly compensated job), the Labour plan is made in tandem with two very important and co-related policies: an increase in the minimum wage, at least in line with average UK earnings, and the “£40-a-week Better-Off-In-Work Guarantee”.  What this means, in theory, is that when you are forced into taking that job at the end of two years of benefits, the job – whatever it is – will pay you at least the minimum wage, and that higher minimum wage will ensure that by working for a living instead of collecting benefits, you will actually take home £40 a week more than you do on Jobseeker’s allowance.  Instead of the cruel and stupid Conservative notion of just kicking people out of the system and leaving them to rot, the tone of Labour’s nearly identical plan is massively different, and with that tone comes a much more humane proposal.

All political parties running for government this year have put the environment high on their list of priorities, but whereas both Liberal Democrat and Labour manifestos make the moral case for tackling climate change alongside pointing out the business and job-creation opportunities that a green economy would bring, the Tories’ emphasis is purely on the business side of global warming: “We have a vision of a greener Britain,” they tell us.  “It is a country that leads the world in the market for green goods and services…Instead of pulling bureaucratic levers from above telling people what they can’t do, we will provide people with the information they need to make more responsible choices. Instead of holding businesses back by imposing unfair retrospective stealth taxes, we will unleash the power of green enterprise and promote resource efficiency to generate thousands of green jobs”     

Again: it’s all in the tone, but it is clear to me that the Conservatives don’t care about the environment, they care about capitalizing on the environmental markets, and the emphasis on “responsible choices” and not “holding businesses back” means an ineffective voluntary transformation to a green economy instead of making real legislative changes to enforce the urgent environmental changes that we need.  And whilst we’re on the subject of the Conservatives’ pro-business/anti-public stance, it should be pointed out that the Conservative manifesto – which repeatedly endorses private solutions for public problems in all areas of British life, and the underlying mantra that “the markets” will sort everything out – is the only manifesto out of the three main parties to not mention the BBC.  Whereas both Labour and Liberal Democrat documents pledge to protect and maintain the BBC as a vital public service broadcaster, the Tories – who have, of course, been endorsed by Rupert Murdoch, a long-time opponent of the BBC’s publically subsidized competition to his commercial media empire – remain worryingly silent on the subject.  Indeed, on the Arts and Culture in general, the Conservative manifesto is strangely mute.

It is the little things like this which show you that no matter how much the Tories may talk a good game, and say all the right things to appeal to people disgusted with the state of politics in this post-Iraq, post-expenses scandal, post-economic disaster world, fundamentally little has changed in the party that got us all here in the first place. 

I encourage all of you with sufficient time and stamina to read all the party manifestos, and I hope, like me, you’re looking forward to watching the first of the three live debates tonight.  Just make sure though that when you do, you keep this one vital thought in your mind at all times; repeating it over and over like a mantra that will protect you from harm; a mantra that might just save your lives: “our core values have not altered and our core beliefs remain consistent.”   

Don’t believe the smoke and mirrors: Same Old Tories, Same Old Dangers…

 

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A No Horse Race

As the Liberal Democrats begin their conference today in Bournemouth, you can’t help but feel sorry for them.

When it turned out that a Labour leadership was no better than the previous eighteen years of Tory rule, you might have thought the fed-up British public would at least give the Lib Dems a go.  I mean, collectively, the other guys have had thirty years between them to get things right and have done nothing but fuck everything up for three whole decades now.  Surely a Liberal Democrat government couldn’t be any worse?

Yet here we are, nearing the end of New Labour’s twelve disappointing years in power, and instead of thinking the obvious – wow, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party suck; let’s try something different – all you ever hear about in this idiot country is the inevitability of another Tory win at the next General Election!

How lame-duck must the Liberal Democrat party be, when they can’t even promise the vaguest prospect of a victory under such seemingly favourable circumstances?  And how stupid must the majority of British citizens be if they think the same Conservative Party who started destroying this country thirty years ago, are going to be our saviours now? 

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