The Farage and Clegg Europe debates: when UKIP became "the unofficial opposition"

It's clear that when Nick Clegg offered to debate Farage on TV about the EU, he knew he had nothing to lose politically, and everything potentially to gain. If he had shown that he clearly had the better arguments and reasons for Britain's part in the EU, he reasonably thought this would burst some of the momentum for Farage's populism and UKIP's support, as well as boosting the LibDem's credibility and political support. With LibDem support so low, Clegg felt there was little to fear from his party's position becoming any worse.

Such a strategy was always very risky, and we saw that it backfired badly. We will only know how badly it has backfired when the European and local elections happen in May.

Clegg's strategy was always going to be very risky, but there was another factor that he maybe had forgotten about. Clegg and Farage represent parties that have directly opposite views on the EU. As these parties are neither of the "big two", the event had been cast as comparatively "safe" for both Labour and the Conservatives. But what was clear from Farage's stance was that he was casting UKIP (correctly) as the only "real" anti-establishment party on the issue of Europe. Both Labour and the Conservatives agree with the LibDems on the fundamental idea of Britain being in the EU; Labour and the LibDems point of view is essentially the same; the Conservatives' official view only differs on the detail, not the premise.
In this sense, Clegg's decision to call for the debates with Farage (and Clegg's two "defeats") was also calling for a show-down between the pro-EU (status quo) establishment of the "big three" against the anti-establishment UKIP. The "establishment" lost.

Losing the plot

The establishment lost the argument against Farage because they have lost the ability to see beyond the confines of Westminster. They no longer represent a point of view that matches closely with that of the ordinary voter; instead, they talk with other "politicos" and like-minded journalists who, like many of them, have been to public schools, lead a very cocooned lifestyle, and have no personal experience of what effect on the labour market the EU's free movement of labour has had on Britain.

The establishment's perspective of what effect the EU has had on the internal labour market is the same as what it is for many employers. The free movement of labour is great for employers because it means they can hire East Europeans, thus bringing down their overheads. As Farage pointed out, it is a disaster for the white working class, who are undercut by East Europeans. As I wrote in an article late last year:

"The rise of UKIP in recent times has been a result of the (correct) perception that the mass influx of East Europeans to The UK has brought about a labour crisis for some parts of the "native" population.
The government has blamed the freedom of movement around the EU for this, which is accurate, but fails to mention that it is also part of the government's intention. Much of UK PLC's "shareholders" (British and foreign investors) are strongly pro-EU because it helps them to lower wages by using workers from elsewhere in the EU (from Southern Europe as well as Eastern Europe).
At the same time, however, British people are far less likely to have linguistic ability compared to foreigners. Lulled into a false sense of security by the government, the electorate were led to believe that their economic stability would last forever because English is "the world's language". Now the UK government blames their own electorate for not taking advantage of the EU's freedom of labour mobility by not bothering to learn foreign languages.

It is not surprising that some people are left feeling "betrayed" by their own government"

 The white working class have felt abandoned in recent years, since the financial crisis and the influx of EU workers from Eastern and Southern Europe. On paper, a Briton has the same freedom of movement (to get a job) as any other EU worker, but because the government has never seriously encouraged Britons of the utility of learning other European languages, comparatively few of them can take advantage of the right to look for work elsewhere in the EU. You can blame Brits themselves for this, but the government also has a large hand to play in this, and has fed Britons with a feeling of complacency about the stability and security of the home-grown labour market against the threat of a "foreign invasion".

Due to this inadvertent "linguistic handicap", the British worker cannot look for jobs across the EU in the same way. Back in the 'eighties, many manual workers left Britain to work in Germany (the "Auf Weidersehn, Pet" effect). but that opportunity has now been taken up by East Europeans. In this way, a British worker therefore is unable to have as much labour mobility within the EU as many other Europeans; everyone in Europe knows of the utility of speaking English, but this is only really useful within the British Isles. Europeans in general are also far more motivated to learn another European language, be it German, or French, or whatever. Britons aren't, partly due to government education policy.

So what does the average British employee get out of being in the EU, compared with his mainland European counterparts? On this evidence, very little.

A detached elite

The rise of nationalism in Europe is the most noticeable effect of the financial crisis within the EU; nationalism is now at its greatest resurgence since the 1930s. Britain in no different. Like many other Europeans, Britons now also see that many powers have been transferred to an unaccountable elite in Brussels, and that the main beneficiaries of the EU seem to be employers and large corporations, not ordinary people. I've mentioned in a recent article the curious historical comparison of the modern EU and the former European power, Austria-Hungary: both multi-lingual political projects that seemed to work well for a while, before a combination of factors brought the house crashing down.

In the debate with Nigel Farage, Nick Clegg predicted that ten years from now the EU will probably be the same as it is now. In April 1914, the Austro-Hungarians probably felt the same way. While it is absurd to make direct comparisons with a hundred years ago, the Ukraine Crisis is in some ways a sign of the foolish hubris of the European elite, as Nigel Farage rightly said. His words may have been better-chosen, but many Britons would agree with him that the EU walked into the Ukraine Crisis with its eyes closed. Putin is simply reacting according to his (sovereign) interests, and considers the Ukraine to be "his backyard". That is simply political reality. It is pure foolishness for European politicians to think that the EU could really extend from the Atlantic to the Urals, as Cameron has advocated in the past. But Cameron for one has a long history of behaving like a political fool. 

Nick Clegg seems like all the other members of the EU establishment, and those in Westminster that support it: out of touch with the everyday reality of life, and an unconvincing advocate of his own ideas brought about by years of complacent consensus of Europe. When put up against someone like Nigel Farage, they fall back on old stereotypes about the perils of "xenophobia" and "extremism"; ideas that seemed convincing before the financial crisis, but now look hopelessly out-of-date. When that fails, they talk about the apocalyptic consequences of not being in the EU, which also look frantically over-done. 

This is why Nigel Farage is winning the argument. This is why the political establishment, of all three main parties, have right to be very worried. The chances of the UK really leaving the EU may be over-estimated, but the damage that UKIP is doing to their credibility, is not.

The Eastleigh by-election: what the LibDems and UKIP learned

I wrote earlier about the Eastleigh by-election, and how it may well signify a turning-point for UKIP.

UKIP's popularity comes from finding a clever niche that has developed in Britain's political spectrum from the effects of David Cameron's "modernisation" project of the Conservatives. Cameron's strategy since being leader has been to de-toxify the Tory brand by adapting it to the new social consensus that developed during the tenure of "New Labour". The direct effect of that was to alienate his core vote in the same way that Blair alienated his core voters.
Nigel Farage therefore saw "a gap in the market": in effect he is re-branding a "Thatcherite" vision for the 21st century: traditional Tory values for traditional Tory voters on one hand, and a more populist "core issue" stance (immigration, Europe, jobs etc.) to appeal to the aspiring working classes that Thatcher appealed to. In this way he appeals to a mixed demographic of disillusioned Conservatives and working-class Labour voters.

Farage is a populist demagogue, but a charming and charismatic one that makes UKIP a potential game-changer. The rise of UKIP, which seems irreversible due to the clever positioning of Farage's party, points to a new four party system in England. Scotland and Wales already have had their own versions with nationalists competing with the other three major parties; UKIP completes this trend now in England. I wrote in my previous article about UKIP that for them to make a significant breakthrough they would need to find a way of getting the system to work for them.
The surprising resilience of the LibDems is Eastleigh was a sign to UKIP of the way forward to their success.    Eastleigh has shown that the LibDems' success in parliament comes from localism. They have steadily built up their base over the last twenty years, using the FPTP system to their advantage. By making each constituency a LibDem bastion of local support and focus on local concerns, they have ensured loyalty to the sitting LibDem MP, and expanded gradually using the same approach. In effect, they have turned the disadvantage of the constituency-based British system for smaller parties to an advantage to create an electoral system based on local support rather than national issues. They are using the FPTP system for the purpose that it was actually intended, turning the system on its head against the top-down approach from Westminster.

This is the route that UKIP would be wise to take, and there are many indications that they have already learned that valuable lesson even before Eastleigh's near-breakthrough. The local council of Ramsey in Cambridgeshire is UKIP-ran, and UKIP makes a visible effort to show that they care deeply about the locality.
The Lib Dems are still likely to lose a fair number of their seats come 2015, but it is also likely that there will still remain a solid "core" of LibDem constituencies (say twenty to thirty) due to the focus on local issues that has bred a resilient loyalty to the party. A similar point is made here by Johnathon Freedland. This has given the LibDems a "teflon" quality that UKIP will want to replicate; a permanent feature in Westminster, and a force for the "big two" need to contend with.

Even the most optimistic UKIP activist cannot expect UKIP to gain more than a handful of seats come the 2015 election. But the LibDems were in a similar position twenty-five years ago; barely registering in the polls, with a handful of Westmister MPs. But that soon changed, and may well be the same for UKIP; using each election to improve on their previous result, as more and more people look to UKIP a serious party - not just as a "protest", but representing a serious voice in the political spectrum.

Changes in the British constitutional system may also play in their favour. Although Scots are unlikely to vote for independence (and the effective end to the UK), they are still likely to get their wish for more powers as a semi-detached part of the UK. And this will have an effect on the rest of the UK, in particular England and Westminster, as there will be more demands for greater powers to be passed down to the "big cities" and regions. This effect on localism may well also work in UKIP's favour, as it has done for the LibDems.

Then there is the "promised" EU referendum. But I suspect that UKIP will have a role to play even if this goes ahead, just as Cameron foolishly thought he had "killed the UKIP beast" with his promise of a referendum. Farage is rightly making the point that people are voting for UKIP not as a one-issue, anti-European party, but for a variety of reasons: the main one being that they are the only national party that stands against the "social democratic consensus".
As Farage justly points out, Cameron's "modernisation" of the Conservatives has had the effect of making the three major parties' stance very similar on many social issues. For those of the "non-PC club", UKIP is the only party that represents their views.

The UK in 2020 may be politically very different from the UK of twenty years before, especially for the Conservatives and Labour.  

Donkeys, wolves and headless chickens, supported by lambs: the personalities of the Coalition

I've almost lost track of the number of negative stories and negative characteristics that can be used to describe the personalities that make up the UK government, but I'll try and do the best I can.

From what I can tell, the two people who seem to have the most integrity (compared to the rest), interestingly also happen to be the "elder statesmen" representing their respective parties in government: the LibDem Business Secretary, Vince Cable, and the Conservative Justice Minister, Ken Clarke. Since holding their respective positions, they have carried out their duties more-or-less ably, and honestly, as far as I can tell.

As for the rest, their personalities can be roughly divided into a few categories: ineptitude ("the donkeys"), psychological weakness ("the headless chickens"), chilling ruthlessness ("the wolves"), and mind-boggling levels of masochism ("the lambs"). The first three apply to the various personalities of Conservative ministers; the last, to the personalities of LibDem ministers.

Some of the Conservative ministers seem to vacillate between being inept one moment, and weak the next: into this category, we can probably place the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. In other words, their way of dealing with decisions is either to make a decision without properly thinking it through ("analytical thinking" not being their strong point), and then when their decision is shown to be wrong, they either cave-in (after a period of showing mule-like stubbornness to change their opinion, despite their obvious mistake), or stick their head in sand like ostriches and hope the problem will go away.

Then there are people like Thesera May and Jeremy Hunt, the Home and Culture Secretary respectively. These are ministers who, like donkeys, clearly don't know what they are doing, and often seem like rabbits frozen in the headlights whenever a problem appears. Then when a problem does happen, they plead ignorance or blame someone else. This explains why Mrs May has little idea about how to deal with immigration and border control, and why Mr Hunt is utterly clueless about what represents improper conduct by a minister. When put in front of a lawyer in the Leveson inquiry, Mr Hunt appears genuinely surprised at the how his behaviour is seen as dishonest and prejudiced. This simply tells us how little he understands about the responsibilities of his position; the same goes for the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and the Conservative co-chair, Baroness Warsi.

There are people like the Education and Health ministers, who have the chilling characteristics of wolves; Mr Gove, the Education minister, most of all. These two ministers are the ones responsible for carrying out controversial, wide-scale reforms in the institutions they represent. These two characters have complete conviction and determination in their role, in the face of massive protest from the hundreds of thousands of public servants they are supposed to represent. They have little sympathy for the plight and chaos they are causing their industries; in fact, they seem to even welcome it, chaos being a sign that what they are doing must be right. In their mind, as no omelette can be made without breaking a few eggs, they discredit and dismiss discontent like a pair of Soviet Commissars, there to implement the dead hand of government reform, sweeping away the anachronistic regime of their predecessors. They show disturbing characteristics of psychopathy, Mr Gove most of all.

Supporting this disastrous and unparalleled combination of personalities, are the LibDems in government. It has to be remembered that it is the LibDems that allow these personalities mentioned the right to govern; and it is these above personalities that have repeatedly done what they could to discredit and damage their LibDem partners in government. Because the Conservatives know that the LibDems would be politically destroyed if they abruptly pull out of the Coalition and call a fresh election, it seems the Conservatives have few limits to how they can demean the LibDems in government in the meantime. Forced to accept Conservative policies that most LibDems abhor, while at the same time metaphorically being kicked in the teeth by their Coalition "partners", the LibDems have become lambs; too weak to stand up against their weekly humiliation in government because they are too terrified of the alternative of facing the electorate. Their credibility shot to pieces, the LibDems can only cling to their abusive relationship to their Conservative masters, in the vain hope that their loyalty and patience will be somehow rewarded later.

So this is what is called the UK government: in the worst economic crisis and prolonged slump that British people have seen for a century, the electorate is rewarded with perhaps the worst set of government personalities known in living memory.

This whole shambles of government personalities saps the morale of the public in general, feeding the impression that politics in Britain is utterly disreputable, full of people who are so clueless they have no idea about how to behave with integrity; people who are so ruthless and blind that they have no idea how to behave with humanity; and people who are psychologically so weak they have no idea how to defend their own decency.
Gordon Brown's government suffered from this reputation for much of the time; however, the personalities in the Coalition have managed to sink to even further depths, surpassing the Brown administration's often calamitous failings with its own unique meld of governmental incompetence and inhumanity.

It is no wonder that public confidence and trust in politicians is at a low point, and fringe parties see an upswing. With the abysmal quality of those who run the current government, it is hardly surprising.

Mid-term Blues or Long-term Denial?

It's the night after the day of the morning after the night before.

The 2012 local elections are done and dusted, and it's time to take stock. The basic story is this: Labour have regained pretty much all of the ground lost in the disastrous local elections during Gordon Brown's premiership, and are now back where they were during Tony Blair's tenure. The Conservatives have had their artificially-high water-mark of Brown's time brought back down to earth with a thump. And the LibDems just keep on reaching new lows of despair.

That's the broader picture, but there are many sub-plots. The turnout was low (as is often the case), but the local elections are a barometer of where Cameron's government, his party and his personality stand with the public after two years.
Baroness Warsi, the Tory chairperson, said (rashly, as it turned out) that Labour would be doing well if they won more than 700 council seats. In fact, they gained more than 800. It's true that Labour were starting from a low base, but what's also noticeable and significant is the breadth of their success: stealing councils from the LibDems in the north and midlands, and the same from the Tories in the midlands and south. These are exactly the places they need win councillors in to be in a good position for a national election.

In terms of the popular vote, Labour scored about seven percent higher than the Tories, 38% to the Conservatives 31%. Political experts point out that this not a significant advantage for an opposition be in mid-term: during Blair's tenure as PM, the Tories were often as far ahead, but failed to win the national election later, and the same was said of Kinnock against Thatcher in the eighties. That may be true, but they're also forgetting something important: the Conservatives are not in a majority government. Also, Blair and Thatcher presided over a boom; the Coalition is in a sustained period of economic stagnation.
In other words, this local election is taking place in a situation that hasn't existed in living memory. If the Conservatives are in government now, and their high watermark is as sharing government as a minority party, then Conservatism as a political force in the UK is effectively moribund.

This is not just "mid-term blues" for the Conservatives; it would be a long-term denial to think of themselves any more as the "natural party of government".

No-one in the UK seriously expects the economy to fully recover by 2015, except those fantasising in George Osborne's Treasury. As the vast majority of the cuts have yet to take place, the only way that the economy could possibly have a chance to recover in time for the next national election would be if the Coalition made a complete about-turn on its policy of cuts and adopted Labour's own economic strategy - investing in jobs and growth and having a more long-term deficit reduction plan. But that would be a political humiliation for the Cameron, and give even more ammunition to Labour, to add the the growing amount of political open goals from the government already.

So the local election results effectively give Labour a large advantage over the government for the future national election.
The Conservatives' position in government is complicated, first of all, because the local elections saw a rise in the vote of UKIP. In some cases, Labour gained councils from the Conservatives because disaffected Tory voters chose UKIP instead, therefore reducing the Conservative vote by a margin high enough to swing council seats the other way to Labour. This is a small-scale version of what is likely to happen in the French elections this weekend - far-right supporters abstaining instead of supporting Sarkozy in the run-off, giving the Socialist, Hollande, the presidency. In the aftermath of the local elections, Tory politicians are arguing that Cameron must be more supportive of traditional Conservative values and causes in order to re-capture the trust of those migrating ultra-Conservative voters.
But then there is a second problem: the personality of Boris Johnson, who narrowly retained the Conservative hold on the London mayoralty, while Conservatives around the country were being punished hard by Labour. Some Tories are saying that Cameron has to be more like Boris in style and thinking in order to win over the affections of the people. With Boris being effectively the second most powerful Tory in the country, and certainly with more popular support with his eligible voters than Cameron, it puts the Prime Minister in a further fix. Because Boris is something of a maverick (whose ideology seems as incoherent as some of his sentences), "learning lessons" from Boris is something Cameron would likely be reluctant to do. Nevertheless, some Tories would be calling more something to change from Cameron's way of doing business. But what?
Cameron's last (and potentially biggest) headache is his Coalition partners, the LibDems. Having lost, in two years of successive local elections, a vast number of council seats, the LibDem leadership in government would be pressed to make significant changes in their approach to Coalition - more independent of the Conservatives, and more obviously left-wing and progressive. This means that, like after last year's local elections, Cameron may feel obliged to cut the LibDems some slack over policy. But when looking at the two points already mentioned, we see the obvious problem.

With both the Conservatives and LibDems under pressure from their party base and MPs for respective "red meat" policies, there is now the serious danger of the Coalition being put under intense pressure in the coming weeks, months and years till the next election.
Nick Clegg seems the most likely of the two Coalition's party leaders to compromise, and support the government come what may. Clegg has now trapped himself in what looks like a self-defeating vicious circle: in spite of whatever damage is done to his party at the grass-roots, he feels obliged to see the Coalition through to the end, in the belief that voters will eventually give them the benefit of the doubt once the economy improves. But for the last eighteen months, that belief has looked more and more like a daydream. So he manages to stay as leader till 2015, his party will be hammered. If he pulls out of the Coalition early and forces an early election, his party is still likely to be hammered. If his party de-select him as their leader and their new leader pulls out of the Coalition early, the party may still be hammered. The LibDems are trapped in a burning building with no safe exits: they know it, and Cameron knows it.
If, however, Cameron repeats his compromises of last year for the benefit of the LibDems (though it seems politically more difficult now he's been punished at the polls), the murmurings within the Tories will increase. Already with a question over Cameron's judgement, more appeasement to the LibDems may well lead to a rebellion and a leadership challenge from a more right-wing candidate. The consequences of that on the Coalition are obvious.

So from now on, things are going to get even stickier within the Coalition, while Labour look on and reap the rewards. Politics is a funny old game. Two years ago, the Two Eds, Milliband and Balls were tarred with the brush of Brown, and were all punished at the polls. Their message on growth versus cuts was seen as discredited.
But now, with the experience of the Eurozone in the news every week, the arguments that the Conservatives made for cuts in 2010 look old hat. Brown and his disciples are vindicated. Their message hasn't changed; they are largely repeating Brown's response to the financial crisis - an Obama-style stimulus, inspired by FDR's strategy to tackle the Depression. In 2012, the man who "saved the world" in 2008 isn't looking quite so out-of-touch. Not compared to "arrogant posh boy" Dave Cameron.

Come back Gordon - all is forgiven!