As many people have noticed, the Tories' economic plan isn't really working. Well, there's a "recovery" of sorts, but it's the weakest so-called "recovery" known in living memory, including the Depression.
The recovery centres on several economic factors (more about them here).
First of all, there is a dysfunctional jobs market, meaning that there is a dearth of skilled work. The result is that skilled workers are having to settle for low-skilled (or non-skilled) work in areas like retail and the service sector, meaning that in order to get a job at Aldi, school-leavers are competing with graduates and European migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. This naturally gives more leverage to employers, meaning they can cut overheads on wages and workers' benefits, explaining the explosion in "zero hours" contracts. Oh, employers now love the Conservatives for this, I'm sure...as they have now created a workers' version of living hell.
You don't have to be out-of-work to live in poverty - most people in poverty (and receiving most of the benefits!) - are those already in employment. So most of the so-called "scroungers" on benefits are in fact the selfsame "hard-working" people that the Conservatives claim to be fighting for. Instead, the Tories are kicking them while they're already down. So what, then, is the point of being in work for these despairing, blighted souls?
Apart from that, the other main factor driving the "recovery" is uncontrolled inflation in property prices - sorry, I mean the "boost" in house prices - which George Osborne was famously quoted as helping "Middle England" feel a little bit richer nearer the election.(At this point, the intention to "make people feel richer" should be emphasized. The chancellor's scheme is another of his many machiavellian plans to deceive while sneering at those worse-off than him) Osborne fueled this further by creating a government subsidy that effectively funds selectively-targeted, state-sponsored inflation, known as "help to buy". The recurring theme here is a tendency to deal with the problem by making it worse.
Are they psychos, or just plain stupid?
"Dealing with the problem by making it worse" is something you either do by intention or by lack of foresight. And if you keep on doing this again and again, you can logically only reach one conclusion: either you are doing this on purpose, or you're doing it because you haven't got a brain. This has been the ongoing scenario that successive Conservative (and Labour) governments have overseen for the past thirty-five years.
The current Conservative government is wedded to the "paying off the debt" through a course of austerity. As Cameron is keen to say, they are fulfilling their promise to put Britain's finances in order.
Except, they aren't: the deficit is getting worse, not better. Year-on-year, George Osborne is missing his targets by a mile, and meanwhile, the economic circumstances of everyday people are getting worse, as they are stuck in low-pay jobs, rising household debt they are funding through easy credit. Debt is rising, and the Tories must at least privately) understand that their economic plan was always intellectually-bankrupt.
The Tories' telling of the financial crisis was a novel explanation of events, that conveniently re-spun the argument to suit their own psychology. In their eyes, the financial crisis was primarily a result of a) government overspending on welfare, and b) not much else, really. Stood up against the hard truth of economics, the reason that the Labour government went into financial free-fall was in large part a result of rapidly-falling tax revenues as a consequence of the global crisis creating a slump. This is the same thing that the current government are suffering now.
There was also the massive injection of the bailout to prop up the broken banking system, but let's not get into that massive issue here (where the Tories don't have a moral leg to stand on).
In spite of this, in spite of being shown that their plan isn't working but in fact making public finances worse, and that they are destroying the labour market, and creating yet another speculative housing bubble potentially worse than the last one, George Osborne insists on cutting public spending much further after the election.
Is this man actually sane? Given the circumstances, it is hard not to question the "rationalism" of some of the decision-making happening in Whitehall.
An "institutionalised" establishment?
The decision-making process of Cameron, Osborne, and the many other "establishment" progeny running the government is worth thinking about. The "establishment" is a master at one thing: self-preservation.
As one of the long-living elites in the developed world, Britain's ruling elite has for centuries perfected a private education system (which they quaintly call "public school" - clever, that!) which churns out generation after generation of young men who have the skills necessary to run the country in the way it has been run for generations: by drumming in to them strict ideological orthodoxy, good manners, and a wily tongue. It is this combination of characteristics that has kept the establishment where it is, in spite of the many revolutions and upheavals across the rest of Europe over the centuries. The key for Britain's elite is to be one step ahead of the game, otherwise the whole stack of cards come crashing down - as they did in France in 1789, and Russia in 1917.
The establishment of the welfare state after the Second World War was a severe test to the establishment, forcing it on the back foot. The "One Nation" Toryism of Harold MacMillan was the establishment's compromise, which held things at bay for some time. The inflationary crises of the 1970s - a result of a consumer boom and unprecedented oil price rises, and NOT due to unreasonable demands from the trades unions - forced a re-think. People like Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher were advocates for a completely new economic model.
Ever since then, Thatcherism has been the economic orthodoxy of the government, including Labour. The establishment thus found a new orthodoxy that they found fit neatly into their own self-preservation. Greed was now good, and there was no longer such a thing as "society" (so we no longer had to care about the "social good"). Inequality was to be celebrated by Tories as a sign of the "natural order". In other words, it was as though feudalism had never gone out of fashion.
The new orthodoxy had several major effects: the gap between rich and poor skyrocketed; council houses were sold off, and the remaining council estate effectively became dumping grounds for the poor and "socially disadvantaged" who could afford nothing else (thus the "sink estate" was born, and the Tories neatly created a new scapegoat for society's ills); the economy was "redesigned" by Thatcherites so that industrial towns became unemployment and low-skill hotspots; and successive housing bubbles were created, making people "feel rich".
The "establishment" is not evil in itself, but by its very nature, it is designed to house, incubate and protect individuals who commit evil, thus perpetuating the problem. It is no wonder that the child abuse scandal rocking the UK in recent times uncovers more horrific revelations with each passing month.
It may be safe so assume that when the horrific truth comes out, the perpetrators will be long dead, thus protecting the integrity of those who hid the truth in the name of "self-preservation"...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Saturday, November 22, 2014
ISIS and Islamofascism: are they the modern-day Nazis of the Middle East?
The "caliphate" that de facto controls a huge swathe of territory across Eastern Syria and the West and North-west of Iraq is the "new normal" in the Middle East.
The rise of ISIS/ ISIL/ the "Islamic State" was due to a number of factors. I've talked about these factors before, when ISIS spectacularly came onto the radar nearly six months ago: the main one being the collapse of central power and authority/ legitimacy in both Iraq and Syria. As nature abhors a vacuum, so it is the case with humanity.
The "Nazis" on the Euphrates
In many ways, it could be said that ISIS are to the modern Middle East what the Nazis were to Europe in the 1930s and '40s. The rise of fascism that began in the '20s was a result of perceived "humiliation", economic deprivation, and loss of cultural identity: a violent counter-reaction to the modern Western values and socio-economic orthodoxy that was commonplace after the First World War.
In the search for simple answers, the Nazis in Germany took the ideas of Italian fascism, and applied them to their own circumstances. Adolf Hitler wanted to create a "thousand-year reich" that would extend from the Atlantic to the Urals. As he saw it, Germans were historically the "master race" of Europe, so they should take what was rightfully theirs: subdue the nations of the "lesser" Europeans, and cleanse Europe of Jews, who he saw as behind a worldwide conspiracy against Germany.
Change some of the names, and the ideology of ISIS is little different: Modern-day "Islamofascists" have created a brutal, despotic, anti-Western de facto state in the heart of the Middle East, and will use any means at its disposal to expand across the entire region; in the same way that fascism in Europe once brutally expanded across the entire continent, Islamofascism has the same aims today in the Middle East. Islamofascism is a reality, not a point of view: Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the forerunners of ISIS, and ISIS are simply a more updated, tech-savvy offshoot of the same ideology. The only difference is that ISIS are applying their selfsame ideology with greater efficiency on the ground, and have honed to brutal near-perfection their methods of recruitment, warfare, and the iron fist of how to govern conquered territory, with a combination of "charity" and the ruthless application of power. Also, having lots of money to pass around - through oil revenues and the product of mass larceny - doesn't do any harm, either.
The irony here is that Al-Qaeda - once the most-feared terror group in the world - are now looking somewhat irrelevant compared to ISIS (as brilliantly summarized by John Oliver here); in the same way that Hitler's brutal form of fascism made Mussolini's earlier ideas seem "quaint" by comparison?
Here to stay?
No-one in the West has a real plan of how to defeat ISIS. Part of the problem is that ISIS appeals to disaffected Sunnis in Iraq and Syria in the same way that the Nazis held an appeal to large segments of German society in the 1930s. This is not to say that masses of Sunnis have suddenly become Islamic extremists: like the Germans in the thirties, they simply have little alternative on the ground, and would rather hold their noses to the reality rather than choose the chaotic alternative. They are not going to rise up against ISIS, because there is no-one who can rise to fill the hole that ISIS have filled in the Middle East.
For foreseeable future, ISIS and their "Islamic State" look to be a semi-permanent feature of the new
Middle East. As the Nazis filled the hole left by the weak authority of Weimar Germany left by Versailles, modern-day ISIS claim their legitimacy comes from the injustice of the Sykes-Picot Treaty that divided up the Sunnis of the Levant and Mesopotamia between Iraq and Syria. This is the core of their claim to be the representatives of Sunni Islamic values (whatever they may be).
The campaign to defeat ISIS isn't helped by the politics and rivalries of the Middle East. Turkey, a key member of NATO, seems to be turning a blind eye to ISIS: Ankara's policy seems to be a case of live-and-let-live; allowing recruits from Europe pass almost without hindrance across Turkey's border with Syria, and meanwhile seeming to give ISIS a free rein for its adherents to operate in the south of Turkey, moving against Syrian exiles that oppose them. While it many be too much of a stretch to say that this is because of shared Sunni Islamic values, it is more likely the case that the Turkish authorities (rightly) fear the consequences of going against ISIS: the thought of terrorist outrages in Turkish resorts would fill the government with dread. In this very real sense, Turkey's hands are tied. It is partly for this reason why they did so little to help the beseiged Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, just across its border.
The Arab Spring has spawned many conflicts: from Syria, to Libya, and now to Iraq once more, thanks to the summer blitzkrieg by ISIS. The road to Kobani, the looting of Mosul, the uprisings in Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia were all partly inspired by the renaissance of political Islam that first happened by the ballot box in Turkey twelve years ago.
Turkey is now the main player in much of what happens in the Middle East, and is as much a victim of its own success. As the progenitor of the ideology that led to the Arab Spring, having ISIS as Turkey's southern neighbours is partly a consequence of that: by stirring Sunni Arabs to do the same that devout Sunnis in Turkey did democratically in 2002. Except that there were no democracies in the Middle East, so how else to achieve it? The result in Syria was a civil war, that could only benefit the extremists.
ISIS is now the wolf at the door of many Middle Eastern governments, a monster that few know how to tame. People would do well to read the history books again.
The rise of ISIS/ ISIL/ the "Islamic State" was due to a number of factors. I've talked about these factors before, when ISIS spectacularly came onto the radar nearly six months ago: the main one being the collapse of central power and authority/ legitimacy in both Iraq and Syria. As nature abhors a vacuum, so it is the case with humanity.
The "Nazis" on the Euphrates
In many ways, it could be said that ISIS are to the modern Middle East what the Nazis were to Europe in the 1930s and '40s. The rise of fascism that began in the '20s was a result of perceived "humiliation", economic deprivation, and loss of cultural identity: a violent counter-reaction to the modern Western values and socio-economic orthodoxy that was commonplace after the First World War.
In the search for simple answers, the Nazis in Germany took the ideas of Italian fascism, and applied them to their own circumstances. Adolf Hitler wanted to create a "thousand-year reich" that would extend from the Atlantic to the Urals. As he saw it, Germans were historically the "master race" of Europe, so they should take what was rightfully theirs: subdue the nations of the "lesser" Europeans, and cleanse Europe of Jews, who he saw as behind a worldwide conspiracy against Germany.
Change some of the names, and the ideology of ISIS is little different: Modern-day "Islamofascists" have created a brutal, despotic, anti-Western de facto state in the heart of the Middle East, and will use any means at its disposal to expand across the entire region; in the same way that fascism in Europe once brutally expanded across the entire continent, Islamofascism has the same aims today in the Middle East. Islamofascism is a reality, not a point of view: Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the forerunners of ISIS, and ISIS are simply a more updated, tech-savvy offshoot of the same ideology. The only difference is that ISIS are applying their selfsame ideology with greater efficiency on the ground, and have honed to brutal near-perfection their methods of recruitment, warfare, and the iron fist of how to govern conquered territory, with a combination of "charity" and the ruthless application of power. Also, having lots of money to pass around - through oil revenues and the product of mass larceny - doesn't do any harm, either.
The irony here is that Al-Qaeda - once the most-feared terror group in the world - are now looking somewhat irrelevant compared to ISIS (as brilliantly summarized by John Oliver here); in the same way that Hitler's brutal form of fascism made Mussolini's earlier ideas seem "quaint" by comparison?
Here to stay?
No-one in the West has a real plan of how to defeat ISIS. Part of the problem is that ISIS appeals to disaffected Sunnis in Iraq and Syria in the same way that the Nazis held an appeal to large segments of German society in the 1930s. This is not to say that masses of Sunnis have suddenly become Islamic extremists: like the Germans in the thirties, they simply have little alternative on the ground, and would rather hold their noses to the reality rather than choose the chaotic alternative. They are not going to rise up against ISIS, because there is no-one who can rise to fill the hole that ISIS have filled in the Middle East.
For foreseeable future, ISIS and their "Islamic State" look to be a semi-permanent feature of the new
Middle East. As the Nazis filled the hole left by the weak authority of Weimar Germany left by Versailles, modern-day ISIS claim their legitimacy comes from the injustice of the Sykes-Picot Treaty that divided up the Sunnis of the Levant and Mesopotamia between Iraq and Syria. This is the core of their claim to be the representatives of Sunni Islamic values (whatever they may be).
The campaign to defeat ISIS isn't helped by the politics and rivalries of the Middle East. Turkey, a key member of NATO, seems to be turning a blind eye to ISIS: Ankara's policy seems to be a case of live-and-let-live; allowing recruits from Europe pass almost without hindrance across Turkey's border with Syria, and meanwhile seeming to give ISIS a free rein for its adherents to operate in the south of Turkey, moving against Syrian exiles that oppose them. While it many be too much of a stretch to say that this is because of shared Sunni Islamic values, it is more likely the case that the Turkish authorities (rightly) fear the consequences of going against ISIS: the thought of terrorist outrages in Turkish resorts would fill the government with dread. In this very real sense, Turkey's hands are tied. It is partly for this reason why they did so little to help the beseiged Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, just across its border.
The Arab Spring has spawned many conflicts: from Syria, to Libya, and now to Iraq once more, thanks to the summer blitzkrieg by ISIS. The road to Kobani, the looting of Mosul, the uprisings in Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia were all partly inspired by the renaissance of political Islam that first happened by the ballot box in Turkey twelve years ago.
Turkey is now the main player in much of what happens in the Middle East, and is as much a victim of its own success. As the progenitor of the ideology that led to the Arab Spring, having ISIS as Turkey's southern neighbours is partly a consequence of that: by stirring Sunni Arabs to do the same that devout Sunnis in Turkey did democratically in 2002. Except that there were no democracies in the Middle East, so how else to achieve it? The result in Syria was a civil war, that could only benefit the extremists.
ISIS is now the wolf at the door of many Middle Eastern governments, a monster that few know how to tame. People would do well to read the history books again.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Four reasons for the UK's "economic recovery": low-skill work, zero-hour contracts, internships, and "self-employment"
The Conservatives are magicians: managing to create an economic recovery with more jobs that still leaves people worse-off than before. How on earth do they do it?
The answer is simple, and boils down to the changes that have happened in the UK's labour market since the Conservatives took office in 2010. In short, Britain doesn't have a smart labour market, or a very efficient workforce; it has a "stupid" labour market, and a "useless" workforce.
Work smart, not long?
When I say "stupid" and "useless", I'm not criticising employees; on the contrary, they are doing the best they can in an employment situation designed to frustrate and degrade them. My beef is with how the government and British employers have created a hollowing-out the labour market in the middle: the number of semi-skilled jobs is disappearing quickly, often being replaced by technology; and the number of low-skilled jobs is on the rise to compensate for this.
Britain has some of the lowest work productivity rates in the Western world. Along from the mass of low-skilled jobs that are proliferating (Aldi expansion coming your way?), semi-skilled jobs are disappearing (Lloyds recently announcing mass layoffs, as did Rolls-Royce's aviation wing - ha-ha).
The low productivity comes from the long-hours culture that has been around for decades, and seems to be getting worse; with fewer jobs and more competition for work places, employers hold the whip hand ever more, obliging workers in offices and elsewhere to work overtime in order to keep their masters' happy. This is a disaster in the long-run, and simply becomes a race to the bottom, declaring that Britain is on a fast-track to being ran like a developing country.
For the UK to put this right looks like it would require a whole paradigm-shift, and a near-rejection of the established orthodoxy of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. In short, nothing would appear to be changing soon, and may be worse if people like Ukip have their way.
"Employee rights"? What are they?
One stark fact that has gone habitually under-reported is the slow destruction of employee rights. While the minimum wage is a legal working requirement, how many times has is been seriously enforced?
Especially with the crowded labour market for low-skill jobs, and more and more people looking for jobs that offer worse conditions - it is this power that employers have that explains much of the rise of zero-hour contracts (which legally bind you to an employer that has no obligation to give you fixed hours of work). Those jobs that are in the more skilled sectors now like to offer internships as a way to give graduates "opportunities" (we are awash with euphemisms these days!), but are more simply unpaid work that only people from wealthier families can really afford to "invest" the time in. The irony here is that many of these so-called internship "opportunities" are used by employers to get graduates to do dull errands and menial tasks for a few months for free, then hire another sucker to replace them. Ah, what a life!
Lastly, there is the quiet rise of the self-employed - in, put in other terms, a rise of those in the utterly desperate, last-chance saloon. These poor people are often reduced to debt-filled penury, after bravely trying-out a venture that doesn't work out (thanks to George Osborne's "Wonga" economy).
This is the future that the Conservatives promise Britain: more of the same, failed ideas with the same intellectual pygmies that have no qualifications to run the economy: turning it into a glorified PLC, lapping-up the many migrant workers from Eastern Europe that can swamp the growing low-skill economy, bringing wages down further, and encouraging companies to offer worse and worse working conditions. In this economy, the only things growing will be inefficiency, food banks. and wealth disparity.
If you like the sound of that, though, then you should probably vote Conservative.
The answer is simple, and boils down to the changes that have happened in the UK's labour market since the Conservatives took office in 2010. In short, Britain doesn't have a smart labour market, or a very efficient workforce; it has a "stupid" labour market, and a "useless" workforce.
Work smart, not long?
When I say "stupid" and "useless", I'm not criticising employees; on the contrary, they are doing the best they can in an employment situation designed to frustrate and degrade them. My beef is with how the government and British employers have created a hollowing-out the labour market in the middle: the number of semi-skilled jobs is disappearing quickly, often being replaced by technology; and the number of low-skilled jobs is on the rise to compensate for this.
Britain has some of the lowest work productivity rates in the Western world. Along from the mass of low-skilled jobs that are proliferating (Aldi expansion coming your way?), semi-skilled jobs are disappearing (Lloyds recently announcing mass layoffs, as did Rolls-Royce's aviation wing - ha-ha).
The low productivity comes from the long-hours culture that has been around for decades, and seems to be getting worse; with fewer jobs and more competition for work places, employers hold the whip hand ever more, obliging workers in offices and elsewhere to work overtime in order to keep their masters' happy. This is a disaster in the long-run, and simply becomes a race to the bottom, declaring that Britain is on a fast-track to being ran like a developing country.
For the UK to put this right looks like it would require a whole paradigm-shift, and a near-rejection of the established orthodoxy of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. In short, nothing would appear to be changing soon, and may be worse if people like Ukip have their way.
"Employee rights"? What are they?
One stark fact that has gone habitually under-reported is the slow destruction of employee rights. While the minimum wage is a legal working requirement, how many times has is been seriously enforced?
Especially with the crowded labour market for low-skill jobs, and more and more people looking for jobs that offer worse conditions - it is this power that employers have that explains much of the rise of zero-hour contracts (which legally bind you to an employer that has no obligation to give you fixed hours of work). Those jobs that are in the more skilled sectors now like to offer internships as a way to give graduates "opportunities" (we are awash with euphemisms these days!), but are more simply unpaid work that only people from wealthier families can really afford to "invest" the time in. The irony here is that many of these so-called internship "opportunities" are used by employers to get graduates to do dull errands and menial tasks for a few months for free, then hire another sucker to replace them. Ah, what a life!
Lastly, there is the quiet rise of the self-employed - in, put in other terms, a rise of those in the utterly desperate, last-chance saloon. These poor people are often reduced to debt-filled penury, after bravely trying-out a venture that doesn't work out (thanks to George Osborne's "Wonga" economy).
This is the future that the Conservatives promise Britain: more of the same, failed ideas with the same intellectual pygmies that have no qualifications to run the economy: turning it into a glorified PLC, lapping-up the many migrant workers from Eastern Europe that can swamp the growing low-skill economy, bringing wages down further, and encouraging companies to offer worse and worse working conditions. In this economy, the only things growing will be inefficiency, food banks. and wealth disparity.
If you like the sound of that, though, then you should probably vote Conservative.
Monday, October 27, 2014
The 2015 General Election: time to break the mould of "LibLabCon" for good?
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
The Scottish referendum, home rule and the West Lothian Question
Scotland voted against becoming an independent country, by 55% to 45%. While the result was not quite as close as the polls predicted, many pollsters suggested this may well happen due to the "shy noes", which is indeed what happened.
That all being said, put in other terms, for every twenty voters, 9 were for separation - which suggests a very divided electorate. And now a few days on from the vote, Scotland feels like a different country psychologically and politically from a few months ago; perhaps permanently so.
Having energised the population like never before in living memory, the SNP look to be the political beneficiaries of the "Yes" campaign: many Labour voters voted for independence on the back of an attitude of complacency and seeming distant indifference from Westminster. One example of this was the surreal moments when Scottish Labour MPs came to their constituencies north of the border to campaign (and where many of them indeed hailed from), to be told by one-time Scottish Labour supporters to "eff off back to Westminster".
The referendum had the effect of making many Scottish Labour voters swing over to the "Yes" campaign and firmly into the SNP camp. That change may well be irreversible, with large implications for some of their seats in the Scottish (post) industrial heartlands. In other words, the SNP have turned overnight into a "Ukip north of the wall".
I'm alright, jock
A closer analysis of the referendum shows us that the vote was based on economic interests above all. The areas that voted yes were the (post) industrial heartland around Glasgow, and Scotland's fourth city, Dundee. Aberdeen (already wealthy from oil), and Edinburgh (wealthy from a vibrant economy), as well as the Scottish countryside regions and islands, all voted no.
This makes cold economic sense, if not being politically or psychologically heart-warming.
Those people who voted "yes" did so because they saw that they had nothing to lose and were more than willing to risk what little they had gained from the union with England (well, London). Glasgow and Dundee have never recovered from the (London-inspired) economic malaise brought on by the disappearance of the industries thirty years ago; in this sense, a vote for "yes" is a vote of desperation as well as aspiration.
(At this point, a wag might suggest that Glasgow and Dundee be given independence from the rest of "no" Scotland and the UK, seeing as that's what they voted for)
Those who voted "no" did so because of a simple attitude of "I'm alright, jack" - they were doing fine (or at least, not badly enough to want to risk something) from the union with London. To these people, independence meant change and uncertainty, and like any conservative cautionary individual, would prefer the devil they knew than the devil they didn't.
Another angle was the "age gap": the comparison of generational attitudes. Alex Salmond gave the vote to sixteen year olds with the transparent view that they would be more inclined to vote for independence. Not enough research has been done yet to show if this was truly proved to be the case. It follows some logic to suggest that older people (e.g. over fifty) may well look to their pensions and be terrified of the thought of what would happen to them come independence; on the other hand, younger people have the rest of their lives to look forward to aspiration rather than the caution and worry of an approaching mortality.
"What's your problem, Scotland?"
One last thought is comparing the independence movement and referendum in Scotland to contemporary and recent referendums in other parts of Europe. Catalonia is planning a referendum of its own in the coming weeks and months; Flanders in Belgium has had similar ideas for years. Even Italy has some (rudimentary) independence movements, such as the Veneto (Venice region), and others.
Since the end of the Cold War, Slovakia has split from the Czechs, the Baltic states have split (or re-detached themselves) from Russia, and Yugoslavia has fracturing into half a dozen pieces. Most recently, Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
A more comparable example to that of Scotland and the UK, is the case of Montenegro. This nation became joined with Serbia after the First World War (and also involved a union of crowns, as both Montenegro and Serbia were independent monarchies in 1914); Serbia also had other Slavic parts of the former Austria-Hungary as its reward for starting the First World War. The resulting nation became known as Yugoslavia, though it was in effect a "Greater Serbia", given its much larger population. When Yugoslavia fractured in the 1990s, Montenegro (apart from Kosovo) remained the only "partner" in this union of states with Serbia.
Finally, around ten years ago, Montenegro had its own independence referendum, which was won by only one percent of the vote (if that). That vote cast the last part of "Yugoslavia" into oblivion and history. Serbs and Montegrins are linguistically and culturally as alike as Scots and English. The question many "yes" voters in Scotland (and in other successful independence movements in Europe) ask other Scots is "why would you not want to be a free and independent country?" In short, what is your problem?
Many people in Glasgow and Dundee this weekend may feel they are living in a nation of scared sheep. While this is an unfair insult to many "no" voters, the anger from the "yes" camp is understandable: if places like Montenegro or Slovakia - neither of which have many recognisable resources - would be independent countries, then why not Scotland, with its oil, industry and educated population?
However this question may soon become academic, thanks to the "cunning plan" of David Cameron...
"I have a cunning plan..."
A week is a long time in politics, so they say, this this past week is certainly following that rule.
This time last week, panicked by the close opinion polls. Cameron, Milliband and Clegg agreed to a "vow" to grant Scotland extensive new powers - as explained by their spokesperson, the former PM Gordon Brown.
This was the "devo-max" option that Alex Salmond originally wanted on the referendum vote; Westminster was now offering a vote for either a Salmond-inspired "indy-lite", or a Westminster-panicked "devo-max". Salmond had been playing a poker game with Westminster for the last few years over Scotland's future, and Westminster had blinked.
Or so it seemed. Another analysis of the situation reveals that David Cameron saw a ruthless opportunity in what looked like another flapping episode at Downing Street. Cameron has plenty of form for both being at times a hopeless strategist and also a ruthless opportunist: it is for this reason why he has so many enemies in his own party as well as in general. It also explains why many view him as being a disaster on so many levels for the country. His current "cunning plan" is possibly the most dastardly of all, in terms of its huge implications.
In short, Cameron is happy to give "home rule" to Scotland, provided there is a quid pro quo for England (and Wales and NI, in theory).
Cameron's vision for preserving the UK in a modernised form is to give tax and law-giving powers to Scotland, provided Scottish MPs have no rights to vote on equivalent bills in England. In this way, Scottish MPs would be emasculated to having a right a sit in Westminster, but in effect do little else (and have no right to sit in a Westminster government either).
If Cameron's vision rings true, the same could also be true for Wales and NI, eventually leaving Westminster as an English-only parliament at some way down the line, with Downing Street effectively as an English-only government. In this scenario, while the Westminster government would represent (and formulate) foreign policy and British interests abroad, almost all other major internal decisions would be left to the devolved governments in London (Westminster), Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.
The "Balkanisation" of Britain?
The political ramifications for Labour are massive.
Cameron has clearly calculated that as the Tories are now an English-only party, this leaves Labour (and to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems) as the only truly "British" party in the country. Therefore, the best way to screw Labour electorally and politically is to give them what they had been asking for all these years - full devolution! This would leave the Tories at a natural advantage in an English-only Westminster, and make it more difficult for Labour to form a government.
Labour have dodged the bullet of Salmond's referendum only to be hit in the solar plexus by Cameron's "devo-max" plan.
Cameron has therefore gone from nearly breaking apart the UK by accident to now having a plan to effectively break up the UK on purpose.
The next seven months will prove to be pivotal and seismic in Westminster, With the Tories now keen to embrace some kind of "fast-track" devolution package before the general election in May (which they would ordinarily expect to lose), they see this plan as killing two birds with one stone: turning the tables on Labour by putting them in an impossible position - to accept their plan would be electoral suicide, but to reject it would be not much better.
The "England first" strategy also seems to be with Ukip in mind - though its easy to suspect that may also backfire, as Cameron has been trying to "out do Ukip" for the last eighteen months, with disastrous results.
These are truly crazy times, when you have a Conservative Prime Minister whose plan is to effectively break up the union in order to hold on to power.
That all being said, put in other terms, for every twenty voters, 9 were for separation - which suggests a very divided electorate. And now a few days on from the vote, Scotland feels like a different country psychologically and politically from a few months ago; perhaps permanently so.
Having energised the population like never before in living memory, the SNP look to be the political beneficiaries of the "Yes" campaign: many Labour voters voted for independence on the back of an attitude of complacency and seeming distant indifference from Westminster. One example of this was the surreal moments when Scottish Labour MPs came to their constituencies north of the border to campaign (and where many of them indeed hailed from), to be told by one-time Scottish Labour supporters to "eff off back to Westminster".
The referendum had the effect of making many Scottish Labour voters swing over to the "Yes" campaign and firmly into the SNP camp. That change may well be irreversible, with large implications for some of their seats in the Scottish (post) industrial heartlands. In other words, the SNP have turned overnight into a "Ukip north of the wall".
I'm alright, jock
A closer analysis of the referendum shows us that the vote was based on economic interests above all. The areas that voted yes were the (post) industrial heartland around Glasgow, and Scotland's fourth city, Dundee. Aberdeen (already wealthy from oil), and Edinburgh (wealthy from a vibrant economy), as well as the Scottish countryside regions and islands, all voted no.
This makes cold economic sense, if not being politically or psychologically heart-warming.
Those people who voted "yes" did so because they saw that they had nothing to lose and were more than willing to risk what little they had gained from the union with England (well, London). Glasgow and Dundee have never recovered from the (London-inspired) economic malaise brought on by the disappearance of the industries thirty years ago; in this sense, a vote for "yes" is a vote of desperation as well as aspiration.
(At this point, a wag might suggest that Glasgow and Dundee be given independence from the rest of "no" Scotland and the UK, seeing as that's what they voted for)
Those who voted "no" did so because of a simple attitude of "I'm alright, jack" - they were doing fine (or at least, not badly enough to want to risk something) from the union with London. To these people, independence meant change and uncertainty, and like any conservative cautionary individual, would prefer the devil they knew than the devil they didn't.
Another angle was the "age gap": the comparison of generational attitudes. Alex Salmond gave the vote to sixteen year olds with the transparent view that they would be more inclined to vote for independence. Not enough research has been done yet to show if this was truly proved to be the case. It follows some logic to suggest that older people (e.g. over fifty) may well look to their pensions and be terrified of the thought of what would happen to them come independence; on the other hand, younger people have the rest of their lives to look forward to aspiration rather than the caution and worry of an approaching mortality.
"What's your problem, Scotland?"
One last thought is comparing the independence movement and referendum in Scotland to contemporary and recent referendums in other parts of Europe. Catalonia is planning a referendum of its own in the coming weeks and months; Flanders in Belgium has had similar ideas for years. Even Italy has some (rudimentary) independence movements, such as the Veneto (Venice region), and others.
Since the end of the Cold War, Slovakia has split from the Czechs, the Baltic states have split (or re-detached themselves) from Russia, and Yugoslavia has fracturing into half a dozen pieces. Most recently, Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
A more comparable example to that of Scotland and the UK, is the case of Montenegro. This nation became joined with Serbia after the First World War (and also involved a union of crowns, as both Montenegro and Serbia were independent monarchies in 1914); Serbia also had other Slavic parts of the former Austria-Hungary as its reward for starting the First World War. The resulting nation became known as Yugoslavia, though it was in effect a "Greater Serbia", given its much larger population. When Yugoslavia fractured in the 1990s, Montenegro (apart from Kosovo) remained the only "partner" in this union of states with Serbia.
Finally, around ten years ago, Montenegro had its own independence referendum, which was won by only one percent of the vote (if that). That vote cast the last part of "Yugoslavia" into oblivion and history. Serbs and Montegrins are linguistically and culturally as alike as Scots and English. The question many "yes" voters in Scotland (and in other successful independence movements in Europe) ask other Scots is "why would you not want to be a free and independent country?" In short, what is your problem?
Many people in Glasgow and Dundee this weekend may feel they are living in a nation of scared sheep. While this is an unfair insult to many "no" voters, the anger from the "yes" camp is understandable: if places like Montenegro or Slovakia - neither of which have many recognisable resources - would be independent countries, then why not Scotland, with its oil, industry and educated population?
However this question may soon become academic, thanks to the "cunning plan" of David Cameron...
"I have a cunning plan..."
A week is a long time in politics, so they say, this this past week is certainly following that rule.
This time last week, panicked by the close opinion polls. Cameron, Milliband and Clegg agreed to a "vow" to grant Scotland extensive new powers - as explained by their spokesperson, the former PM Gordon Brown.
This was the "devo-max" option that Alex Salmond originally wanted on the referendum vote; Westminster was now offering a vote for either a Salmond-inspired "indy-lite", or a Westminster-panicked "devo-max". Salmond had been playing a poker game with Westminster for the last few years over Scotland's future, and Westminster had blinked.
Or so it seemed. Another analysis of the situation reveals that David Cameron saw a ruthless opportunity in what looked like another flapping episode at Downing Street. Cameron has plenty of form for both being at times a hopeless strategist and also a ruthless opportunist: it is for this reason why he has so many enemies in his own party as well as in general. It also explains why many view him as being a disaster on so many levels for the country. His current "cunning plan" is possibly the most dastardly of all, in terms of its huge implications.
In short, Cameron is happy to give "home rule" to Scotland, provided there is a quid pro quo for England (and Wales and NI, in theory).
Cameron's vision for preserving the UK in a modernised form is to give tax and law-giving powers to Scotland, provided Scottish MPs have no rights to vote on equivalent bills in England. In this way, Scottish MPs would be emasculated to having a right a sit in Westminster, but in effect do little else (and have no right to sit in a Westminster government either).
If Cameron's vision rings true, the same could also be true for Wales and NI, eventually leaving Westminster as an English-only parliament at some way down the line, with Downing Street effectively as an English-only government. In this scenario, while the Westminster government would represent (and formulate) foreign policy and British interests abroad, almost all other major internal decisions would be left to the devolved governments in London (Westminster), Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.
The "Balkanisation" of Britain?
The political ramifications for Labour are massive.
Cameron has clearly calculated that as the Tories are now an English-only party, this leaves Labour (and to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems) as the only truly "British" party in the country. Therefore, the best way to screw Labour electorally and politically is to give them what they had been asking for all these years - full devolution! This would leave the Tories at a natural advantage in an English-only Westminster, and make it more difficult for Labour to form a government.
Labour have dodged the bullet of Salmond's referendum only to be hit in the solar plexus by Cameron's "devo-max" plan.
Cameron has therefore gone from nearly breaking apart the UK by accident to now having a plan to effectively break up the UK on purpose.
The next seven months will prove to be pivotal and seismic in Westminster, With the Tories now keen to embrace some kind of "fast-track" devolution package before the general election in May (which they would ordinarily expect to lose), they see this plan as killing two birds with one stone: turning the tables on Labour by putting them in an impossible position - to accept their plan would be electoral suicide, but to reject it would be not much better.
The "England first" strategy also seems to be with Ukip in mind - though its easy to suspect that may also backfire, as Cameron has been trying to "out do Ukip" for the last eighteen months, with disastrous results.
These are truly crazy times, when you have a Conservative Prime Minister whose plan is to effectively break up the union in order to hold on to power.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)