The last six weeks have demonstrated the inherent weaknesses and complacency in the two-party system in the UK.
In different ways, both Ukip in England and the SNP in Scotland are showing what happens when the two main parties take things for granted. The rise of Ukip in England has taken both the Conservatives and Labour unawares, like the proverbial frog slowly and blissfully boiling to death as the water gets ever hotter around him.
Not much more that six months from the next election, and the two major parties are both struggling with the twin demons of internal strife and an insurgency from a nationalist party in their back-yard - albeit in different countries. Things are looking very messy.
The last Englishman standing
Ukip has come a long way in two years: since they first appeared on the by-election radar in late 2012 (as noticeable runners-up) they have gone from strength to strength. Two years ago they were polling well under ten per cent of the vote (around 5% on average); that average has been relentlessly climbing, creeping up like a lethal vine, ever since. For the past six months it's rarely been below 15%, and sometimes higher than 20%.
There are many different reasons for this: but one of the main factors is also the unusual set of circumstances that occurred as a result of this current parliament. With Labour unable to fully capitalise on the government's struggle with the economy whilst in power due to the electorate's recent memory of their last few, miserable years in power under Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, the LibDems, the party that the electorate have usually turned two as the main "protest party" for the last twenty years, are tarnished by the mill-stone of incumbency as the Tories. Their vote share has tumbled from more than a fifth at the last election, to less than a tenth barely six months from the next election.
And where have those "lost" LibDem voters gone? More on that later.
So apart from everything else, Ukip and Nigel Farage are in some ways blessed by being in the right place at the right time. If Ukip didn't exist, it may well have been necessary to invent them, given the peculiar political situation Britain finds itself in after 2010. With all three major political parties considered "damaged goods" in different ways, Ukip have the advantage of clearly standing for values so catagorically at odds with those held by the three main parties: by which I mean immigration and Europe, which Ukip have (successfully) linked to the issue of the economy. By finding "cleavage issues" that give Ukip a very easily-definable "brand", this marks them out from the "drive to the middle ground" that has occupied the minds of the political classes for the last fifteen years.
Add to that Nigel Farage's natural ability to "sound human" compared to the out-of-touch lifestyles of the political establishment in Westminster, and Ukip now look to be a decent bet on grabbing up to ten seats (or more) at the general election. Bear in mind that the last time a fourth party appeared (the SDP in the 1980s), they won less than half a dozen seats. If, as expected, Ukip win the Rochester by-election, other Tories may also (not unreasonably) assess that their chances of holding on to their seats would be improved by changing to Ukip.
This would be the nightmare scenario for Cameron, and would cement the apparent fragmentation of British politics. It would also effectively undo any chance of the Tories winning a majority for the foreseeable future.
But he's not the only one facing sleepless nights. Apart from a potential Ukip insurgency in the north of England (which the Tories are already written off an unwinnable), Ed Milliband has even more serious problems north of the wall...
Our friends in the north
Labour may have won the battle of the Scottish referendum, but they look to be losing the war for Scotland. The recent resignation of the leader of Scottish Labour, Johann Lamont has demonstrated the problem that Labour have fighting off the rise of the SNP in places like Glasgow and Dundee (which both voted "yes" in the referendum).
The SNP now look much like the "real" Labour party in Scotland (in the same way that Ukip look like the "real" Conservative party in England). Psephologists say that there are few real seats where the SNP have a real chance of unseating Labour, but these are strange times. If Ukip can win a seat with a more than 10,000 majority, then it's difficult to say how complacent Labour can deserve to be in places like east Glasgow and Inverclyde. Judging from Johann Lamont's comments, she thinks the Labour party in Scotland has bee treated very badly by its Westminster masters, more or less calling for a separation for the sake of Scottish politics.
More worrying still is the potential fate of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. Many of their sitting Scottish MPs have the SNP as their main rivals (there are more than ten Lib Dem Westminster MPs in Scotland), and some experts are predicting that most of them will lose their seats to the SNP. If that happens, then not only will it make the Lib Dems a much-reduced force in parliament after the election, but that the SNP may well come from having only a handful of MPs, to potentially a dozen or even more.
And in a hung parliament, the SNP's expanded cohort of parliamentarians could hold sway on some key votes. Well, that's before the issue of EVEL has been factored in. Anglo-Scottish relations may about to become very messy indeed...
A few Green sprouts
The rise in popularity of the Greens is another of the "silent growth" stories in the last year. While not to the same extent as that of Ukip, the Greens look to have, like Ukip, been the beneficiaries of not being one of the "damaged goods" parties. Like Ukip, they have learned that the best way to beat the FPTP system is to copy the model the Lib Dems used twenty years ago: get a good foothold set up in favourable local environments.
The collapse of the Lib Dem vote since the election seems to have benefitted partly Labour, but also partly the Greens, who to some ex-Lib Dem voters look more faithful to some of the tenets of "liberalism" and localism than the Lib Dems themselves.
Due to this, there are now half a dozen seats that the Greens are targeting, with a decent chance of winning some of them.
While not on the scale of Ukip in England nationally, or the sudden spike in SNP potential fortunes, the "Green surge" would be another sign of the fragmentation of the old "two party" model: in 2015, there is now a reasonable chance of there being five parties in England that have more just a few seats in parliament. In the Scottish parliament in Holyrood, this is already the case.
With the way that the electorate are becoming more discerning and articulate in expressing their political whims, Westminster politics may be seeing the beginning of a permanent fragmentation.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Why UKIP are the "real" Conservative Party
There are two conservative parties in British national politics today: the Conservative Party, and UKIP. One of them represents the views of the Thatcherite, Euro-sceptic, neo-liberal right, and the other is the "Conservative Party".
Nigel Farage is the leader of UKIP, and was one of its first members, joining in the early nineties after leaving the Conservative Party in disgust over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned the EU from a looser, free trade zone into a much more concrete political and legal institution, with the aim of perpetual "ever closer union".
"We'll always have Maastricht"
It's worth remembering that Margaret Thatcher was always of the view that the old EEC was good for Britain because it was a free trade zone; she supported it because it was in Britain's interests. She was pro-European in many ways; but she was also ideologically anti-EU, as it took away sovereignty from Britain over various areas of government.
The crunch came in 1989 when her chancellor and foreign secretary (Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe) had pressured Thatcher into agreeing to join the ERM, thus harmonising the comparative values of various European currencies, including the pound. Over this key issue, amongst others, Thatcher fired Howe that summer, replacing him with the little-known (harmless? malleable?) John Major. Barely a few months later, and in October Lawson quit, forcing Thatcher to promote the hitherto unknown Major into the second biggest job in the government, that of chancellor. And little over a year later, in November 1990, Thatcher herself was gone. It was surely the most tempestuous eighteen months of British peacetime politics ever known in the modern Conservative Party. And Europe had played a key part of it.
Major came to power by accident and chance circumstance; an archetypal mediocrity, in every way like the fictitious Jim Hacker from the political satire series, "Yes (Prime) Minister".
Thatcher seemed to trust him as a safe bet in 1989, seemingly channelling her own prejudices into the empty jar that was John Major; assuming he was another of the younger generation of "Thatcher clones", raised to worship at Thatcher's altar, and had already replaced many of the older "wets". But once in power under his own steam, it was clear to the Thatcherites that Major was just like the old-style "wets".
His support for the Maastricht Treaty caused a significant number of Conservatives to rebel, coming close to forcing a vote of confidence that could have brought down the government itself. The rest of the story is well-known.
The heir to Thatcher?
Reviewing this period of Conservative history is key to understanding UKIP. Because Nigel Farage's politics and ideology are shaped by those events, and by the ideology of Thatcher. While the modern leaders of the Conservatives claim to be "neo-Thatcherites", they know the words but not the real psychology; Cameron and Osborne are too distanced from that time and Thatcher's unique sense of mission. Besides, Cameron claimed he was the "heir to Blair" before saying he was heir to anyone else; in this sense, the Conservative Party are simply an extension of Cameron's psychology and ideology (whatever that is), and "Thatcherism" is only a superficial part of it.
It was Thatcher who transformed the Conservative Party into a fearsome electoral machine under her tutelage; it was Thatcher who comfortably won three elections in a row. UKIP are criticised as a "populist" party, but it is Thatcher who is the real role model to follow in creating a "populist" political party: Thatcher was herself an outsider, a non-establishment figure - a grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire who was a convert to the neoliberalism expounded by Ayn Rand.
With her own force of will she became leader of the Conservative Party, and turned it into a neo-liberal party, forcing it to reject the "post-war consensus". Likewise, she also made the Conservative Party seem a less "establishment" party, and appeal again to ordinary people; the aspiring working classes. Norman Tebbitt is a witness to that.
It was this approach that made Thatcher the most successful Prime Minister of the modern age - a non-establishment, egalitarian political outfit that believes in promoting self-worth and economic freedom. Now, Thatcher was a divisive figure - there can be no denying that - and that was as much down to her difficult (detached?) personality as much as her view on society. What Farage has in his favour is a genuine and irrepressible personality that explains ideas in ways people can simply understand.
It is Nigel Farage who has the best claim today to be a real "heir to Thatcher". Farage made his career in the "Thatcher Eighties" in the London Metals Exchange, and doing so without even going to university. His views are those that Thatcher espoused thirty years ago, almost without exception.
What UKIP and Farage represent is, put simply, the politics of Thatcher and the Conservative Party circa 1987. There are many in the Conservative Party who look to the events of 1989-90 as a black time, when the real principles of Conservatism were betrayed and the politics of Thatcher (and the woman herself) were abandoned. The Conservatives have never truly recovered from that.
Farage and UKIP are, in many ways, an opportunity to put things back in some order. Of the Maastricht rebels and the Eurosceptics of the '90s, few are still around or in active politics. A glorius exception to that is John Redwood, who famously put up a leadership challenge to Major in 1995. The question to ask is: with two MPs already having gone to UKIP, why should others not follow? Clearly, those who admire the politics of Thatcher have more in common with UKIP than with the modern Conservative Party. Cameron's views on Europe are little different from those that John major held twenty years ago, and by being part of UKIP those Conservative MPs can at least not worry about having to toe a "party line" clearly so far from their own heart. Under Cameron, the Conservative Party has lost all real sense of purpose beyond its own, aimless, survival.
They should join a "real" Conservative Party...
Nigel Farage is the leader of UKIP, and was one of its first members, joining in the early nineties after leaving the Conservative Party in disgust over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned the EU from a looser, free trade zone into a much more concrete political and legal institution, with the aim of perpetual "ever closer union".
"We'll always have Maastricht"
It's worth remembering that Margaret Thatcher was always of the view that the old EEC was good for Britain because it was a free trade zone; she supported it because it was in Britain's interests. She was pro-European in many ways; but she was also ideologically anti-EU, as it took away sovereignty from Britain over various areas of government.
The crunch came in 1989 when her chancellor and foreign secretary (Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe) had pressured Thatcher into agreeing to join the ERM, thus harmonising the comparative values of various European currencies, including the pound. Over this key issue, amongst others, Thatcher fired Howe that summer, replacing him with the little-known (harmless? malleable?) John Major. Barely a few months later, and in October Lawson quit, forcing Thatcher to promote the hitherto unknown Major into the second biggest job in the government, that of chancellor. And little over a year later, in November 1990, Thatcher herself was gone. It was surely the most tempestuous eighteen months of British peacetime politics ever known in the modern Conservative Party. And Europe had played a key part of it.
Major came to power by accident and chance circumstance; an archetypal mediocrity, in every way like the fictitious Jim Hacker from the political satire series, "Yes (Prime) Minister".
Thatcher seemed to trust him as a safe bet in 1989, seemingly channelling her own prejudices into the empty jar that was John Major; assuming he was another of the younger generation of "Thatcher clones", raised to worship at Thatcher's altar, and had already replaced many of the older "wets". But once in power under his own steam, it was clear to the Thatcherites that Major was just like the old-style "wets".
His support for the Maastricht Treaty caused a significant number of Conservatives to rebel, coming close to forcing a vote of confidence that could have brought down the government itself. The rest of the story is well-known.
The heir to Thatcher?
Reviewing this period of Conservative history is key to understanding UKIP. Because Nigel Farage's politics and ideology are shaped by those events, and by the ideology of Thatcher. While the modern leaders of the Conservatives claim to be "neo-Thatcherites", they know the words but not the real psychology; Cameron and Osborne are too distanced from that time and Thatcher's unique sense of mission. Besides, Cameron claimed he was the "heir to Blair" before saying he was heir to anyone else; in this sense, the Conservative Party are simply an extension of Cameron's psychology and ideology (whatever that is), and "Thatcherism" is only a superficial part of it.
It was Thatcher who transformed the Conservative Party into a fearsome electoral machine under her tutelage; it was Thatcher who comfortably won three elections in a row. UKIP are criticised as a "populist" party, but it is Thatcher who is the real role model to follow in creating a "populist" political party: Thatcher was herself an outsider, a non-establishment figure - a grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire who was a convert to the neoliberalism expounded by Ayn Rand.
With her own force of will she became leader of the Conservative Party, and turned it into a neo-liberal party, forcing it to reject the "post-war consensus". Likewise, she also made the Conservative Party seem a less "establishment" party, and appeal again to ordinary people; the aspiring working classes. Norman Tebbitt is a witness to that.
It was this approach that made Thatcher the most successful Prime Minister of the modern age - a non-establishment, egalitarian political outfit that believes in promoting self-worth and economic freedom. Now, Thatcher was a divisive figure - there can be no denying that - and that was as much down to her difficult (detached?) personality as much as her view on society. What Farage has in his favour is a genuine and irrepressible personality that explains ideas in ways people can simply understand.
It is Nigel Farage who has the best claim today to be a real "heir to Thatcher". Farage made his career in the "Thatcher Eighties" in the London Metals Exchange, and doing so without even going to university. His views are those that Thatcher espoused thirty years ago, almost without exception.
What UKIP and Farage represent is, put simply, the politics of Thatcher and the Conservative Party circa 1987. There are many in the Conservative Party who look to the events of 1989-90 as a black time, when the real principles of Conservatism were betrayed and the politics of Thatcher (and the woman herself) were abandoned. The Conservatives have never truly recovered from that.
Farage and UKIP are, in many ways, an opportunity to put things back in some order. Of the Maastricht rebels and the Eurosceptics of the '90s, few are still around or in active politics. A glorius exception to that is John Redwood, who famously put up a leadership challenge to Major in 1995. The question to ask is: with two MPs already having gone to UKIP, why should others not follow? Clearly, those who admire the politics of Thatcher have more in common with UKIP than with the modern Conservative Party. Cameron's views on Europe are little different from those that John major held twenty years ago, and by being part of UKIP those Conservative MPs can at least not worry about having to toe a "party line" clearly so far from their own heart. Under Cameron, the Conservative Party has lost all real sense of purpose beyond its own, aimless, survival.
They should join a "real" Conservative Party...
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
UKIP, the Conservatives and David Cameron: does the future belong to Farage?
The defection of Douglas Carswell and his (re)election as a Ukip MP in Clacton is a defining moment in modern British political history. His defection hit the Conservatives for six; then not long after, when another Tory, Mark Reckless, defected to Ukip at the start of the conference season, it just seemed to add insult to injury.
Now Reckless' by-election at Rochester and Strood on 20 November has been deemed a "must win" for Cameron; the message is that everyone who can spare the time is meant to do what they can to stem the threat of losing another "safe" Tory seat to a turncoat Faragist. The problem with this is that the polls locally are giving Reckless a decent lead. It looks likely that the Conservatives will then lose this seat as well.
Don't feed the crocodile
This fiasco can be laid at Cameron's door. The rise of Ukip in the last two years may have took everyone by surprise, but Cameron's strategy has been as transparently ham-fisted as it is self-defeating.
Eighteen months ago, Ukip was brought onto the serious political radar by their spectacular second-place at the Eastleigh by-election (they had had some similar - though less spectacular - results late in 2012). It was around this time that Cameron pledged to have an in-out referendum on the EU if Brussels refused to give in to his wishes for a renegotiation. This had no effect on stemming the leakage of voters to Ukip; if anything, their vote only increased with each sign of Cameron's desperation. With each passing phase of Ukip's growing appeal, Cameron is pressured into making more concessions to the Eurosceptic right of his party. Not for the first time, he shows himself to be a follower and not a leader.
The latest twist in this story became truly dramatic, when Cameron seemed to suggest a plan to limit the number of European migrants allowed into the UK. With exquisite timing, Manuel Barroso, the retiring EU bureaucrat rapidly smacked down any suggestion of Cameron's idea getting any leeway in Europe: simply, this idea broke one of the fundamental tenets of the EU, the free movement of labour.
Gleefully, Farage posted a twitter"thankyou" to Barroso for this helpful clarification, thus confirming everything that Farage has been saying all this time: that the only way to control Britain's borders was to leave the EU. There were no half-measures.
In fact, apart from all the other factors, the rise of Ukip must also be partly down to the fact that people know that Cameron's claims of being the only person able to reform the EU and give Britain a real choice are complete nonsense. Farage may also be one of the few leading politicians who can "talk human", but his words are also a lot more likely to be taken at face value.
Et tu, Brutus?
Now, after Cameron had a private meeting with MPs, Ken Clarke, the sole remaining moderate of the "old guard" still in parliament (and still respected), seems to have "gone rogue". Saying what probably many Tories think privately, he has suggested those Tory MPs with views more similar to those of Ukip would be better simply defecting outright and making things clearer for the "real" Conservatives - "Cameron's Conservatives".
Only a moment's thought about what this would mean in reality doesn't bear thinking about for Cameron. Some insiders have said that if (when?) the Tories lose the Rochester by-election to Ukip, it would encourage others to follow. Ken Clarke's words can only have added fuel to the fire. The last thing Cameron wants would be a civil war in the governing party little more than six months from a general election - but that looks a lot like what he's got.
We've been here before, and this is where Cameron's failings really start to show. John Major's seven-year premiership (1990-1997) was dogged by political in-fighting about Europe, culminating in the leadership challenge of John Redwood in 1995 (which resolved nothing). Major's premiership was characterised by his weak leadership, with him pleading in the weeks leading up to the general election with mischief-making Eurosceptic MPs not to "bind his hands" over Europe. But what Major faced then looks like a minor tiff compared to the naked schism on display today.
While Cameron's personality may have many differences to Major's, Cameron shares the same aimless, bland ideology of the "moderate" Conservative, and also shares the same tendency to let others lead the way on discourse and argument. What does Cameron truly believe in? Apart from his own self-confidence, few people can really say.
So Ken Clarke's "suggestion" looks like turning the Tories into little more than a vehicle for Cameron's facile and nameless "ideology" (something I alluded to last year), and a recipe for electoral disaster. This is ironic, given that people have in the past called Ukip little more than a bandwagon for Nigel Farage's omnipresent personality - Ken Clarke would do something similar to the old Conservative and Unionist Party, leaving the "real" Conservatives to join Ukip.
Now Reckless' by-election at Rochester and Strood on 20 November has been deemed a "must win" for Cameron; the message is that everyone who can spare the time is meant to do what they can to stem the threat of losing another "safe" Tory seat to a turncoat Faragist. The problem with this is that the polls locally are giving Reckless a decent lead. It looks likely that the Conservatives will then lose this seat as well.
Don't feed the crocodile
This fiasco can be laid at Cameron's door. The rise of Ukip in the last two years may have took everyone by surprise, but Cameron's strategy has been as transparently ham-fisted as it is self-defeating.
Eighteen months ago, Ukip was brought onto the serious political radar by their spectacular second-place at the Eastleigh by-election (they had had some similar - though less spectacular - results late in 2012). It was around this time that Cameron pledged to have an in-out referendum on the EU if Brussels refused to give in to his wishes for a renegotiation. This had no effect on stemming the leakage of voters to Ukip; if anything, their vote only increased with each sign of Cameron's desperation. With each passing phase of Ukip's growing appeal, Cameron is pressured into making more concessions to the Eurosceptic right of his party. Not for the first time, he shows himself to be a follower and not a leader.
The latest twist in this story became truly dramatic, when Cameron seemed to suggest a plan to limit the number of European migrants allowed into the UK. With exquisite timing, Manuel Barroso, the retiring EU bureaucrat rapidly smacked down any suggestion of Cameron's idea getting any leeway in Europe: simply, this idea broke one of the fundamental tenets of the EU, the free movement of labour.
Gleefully, Farage posted a twitter"thankyou" to Barroso for this helpful clarification, thus confirming everything that Farage has been saying all this time: that the only way to control Britain's borders was to leave the EU. There were no half-measures.
In fact, apart from all the other factors, the rise of Ukip must also be partly down to the fact that people know that Cameron's claims of being the only person able to reform the EU and give Britain a real choice are complete nonsense. Farage may also be one of the few leading politicians who can "talk human", but his words are also a lot more likely to be taken at face value.
Et tu, Brutus?
Now, after Cameron had a private meeting with MPs, Ken Clarke, the sole remaining moderate of the "old guard" still in parliament (and still respected), seems to have "gone rogue". Saying what probably many Tories think privately, he has suggested those Tory MPs with views more similar to those of Ukip would be better simply defecting outright and making things clearer for the "real" Conservatives - "Cameron's Conservatives".
Only a moment's thought about what this would mean in reality doesn't bear thinking about for Cameron. Some insiders have said that if (when?) the Tories lose the Rochester by-election to Ukip, it would encourage others to follow. Ken Clarke's words can only have added fuel to the fire. The last thing Cameron wants would be a civil war in the governing party little more than six months from a general election - but that looks a lot like what he's got.
We've been here before, and this is where Cameron's failings really start to show. John Major's seven-year premiership (1990-1997) was dogged by political in-fighting about Europe, culminating in the leadership challenge of John Redwood in 1995 (which resolved nothing). Major's premiership was characterised by his weak leadership, with him pleading in the weeks leading up to the general election with mischief-making Eurosceptic MPs not to "bind his hands" over Europe. But what Major faced then looks like a minor tiff compared to the naked schism on display today.
While Cameron's personality may have many differences to Major's, Cameron shares the same aimless, bland ideology of the "moderate" Conservative, and also shares the same tendency to let others lead the way on discourse and argument. What does Cameron truly believe in? Apart from his own self-confidence, few people can really say.
So Ken Clarke's "suggestion" looks like turning the Tories into little more than a vehicle for Cameron's facile and nameless "ideology" (something I alluded to last year), and a recipe for electoral disaster. This is ironic, given that people have in the past called Ukip little more than a bandwagon for Nigel Farage's omnipresent personality - Ken Clarke would do something similar to the old Conservative and Unionist Party, leaving the "real" Conservatives to join Ukip.
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