Waterloo and all that

There will be much triumphalism today, the anniversary of Waterloo, and in the days to come. Of course the French have a very different perspective on these events and quite understandably so. Napoleon may have made an attempt to conquer the continent and, in the process, put members of his family on the thrones of Europe, but they will see this as little different to Britain conquering its Empire and placing members of her aristocracy in charge. Furthermore they see Napoleon as a progressive leader, seeking to spread the ideals of the revolution to countries which were decidedly backward in terms of democratic development, albeit by force of armies. The reason why Britain resented this so much was because we were already on our own road to modern democracy without the need for revolutions or conquest. In other words Napoleon was seeking to do to Europe by force what we were managing to do relatively peacefully at home, so he had to be stopped. There is a modern parallel, of course, which is the attempt by the USA, Britain and their allies to imprint their own concept of democratic rule in the Middle East. Like Napoleon's project this has become corrupted because we (Britain, the USA and others) have attempted to impose our own puppet leaders on such countries, with disastrous results. Incidentally, Wellington received £700,000 for his victory, a sort of gigantic banker’s bonus. It was an enormous sum by 1815 standards, and at a time when the country was in so much war debt it had to invent a new tax – income tax - to pay off the deficit. Sound familiar?

What is Labour For? (2)

Further to my posting yesterday (What is Labour For?) I had a glimpse of the first candidate hustings yesterday. I couldn’t face the whole thing. It confirmed everything I said. One additional thing did occur to me, however. There was a distinct feeling I got that three of the candidates – all bar Corbyn that is – were really more interested in how Labour can win back power than how they can improve the state of Britain. Other than tribal Labour supporters, people don’t care who wins really, they just want things that distress or annoy or worry them put right or they want politicians to improve their own life circumstances. Burnham’s slip about putting the party first, corrected by Kendall, was a case in point. To put this another way, the Conservative party CAN be elected for its own sake because it stands for stability and continuity. Labour cannot make such a claim because Labour invariably stands for change. There is no point voting for Labour if it stands for the same as the Conservative Party (other than to teach an incompetent Conservative administration a lesson, i.e. make it accountable, rather like changing gas supplier. The gas is the same but have they sent you the correct bill?). Voting Labour is voting for some kind of change. None of the candidates, other than the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn, explained last night what they stood for in terms of change. As for passion, I have some sympathy. You can only be genuinely passionate about something you believe in but I do not know what the three electable candidates believe in, other than getting Labour elected.

What iis Labour For?

If we ask the question, what is a political party in Britain for, what is its purpose a Conservative will have no difficulty answering. The Conservative Party exists to win and then retain power. Why? In order to bring and retain stability. What is stability? It is a lack of instability. And how i it to be achieved? That depends on current circumstances. The current Conservative party sees stability in terms of financial balance and economic growth. Al other good things flow from that. In the 1980s stability was seen in terms of curbing the power of the state and the trade unions and replacing them with free markets. Sometimes stability even consists of doing nothing at all other than control money supply as was sometimes the case between the two world war. The three great conservative values are power, pragmatism and empiricism. Simple. But ask a Labour supporter what hsi or her party is for and the answere will no lomger come easily. For much of the twentieth century Labour did know what it was for – to defend working class interests, to create social justice, to harness the collective wealth of the country for the common good and to use the state to control capitalism. Since the 1980s, however things have been less clear and never more so than today. As the Labour Party seeks a new leader it seems a good time to re-define the aims of Labour. There seem to be three alternatives: to keep the Tories out of power (echoing Nicola Sturgeon’s clarion call to the Scots), to govern Britain very much as the Conservatives wish to, but with more compassion, or to promote a leftist agenda to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, curb the excesses of business and defend the principles and the income of the welfare state. Two of the candidates will be eliminated in the first two ballots – Kendall who represents the second option, and Corbyn who represents the third – leaving Cooper and Burnham to fight it out for the privilege of being the leader who fails to achieve the first option, for fail he or she will do as things stand. Both seem to be campaigning on the basis of a plan to win the next election by not repeating Labour’s faults in the last. This leaves us with a huge vacuum. What is Labour really for? Simply defeating the Conservatives may appeal to 30% of the voters but no one else. So Labour is getting its priorities in the wrong order. It first needs to define what its purpose is and then, having done so, find a leader who can carry that out. This means Alastair Campbell’s plan to get rid of the leader after three years if he or she cannot hack it looks rather attractive. It does give the party some breathing space to re-define itself BEFORE ir goes into the next election with the wrong leader and no plan.

Labour: Arranging the deckcahirs on the Titanic

While the Conservative Party is doing what it was put on Earth to do – fix things when they go wrong and not worry too much any kind of vision of the future. ‘Steady as she goes’, you might say to extend the metaphor used by the great Conservative philosopher of the 1950s, Michael Oakeshott, that the state is a ship sailing on a boundless sea with no port of origin and no destination but which needs to be kept on an even keel by the captain and crew, what is Labour doing? There is every sign that they are engaged in re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, the Titanic being not the state but themselves, the Labour Party. In particular they are discussing amongst themselves (not us, the punters) the fine details of whether they should have opposed or supported this policy or that one and whether it was a matter of poor leadership or ‘not getting the message across’ or being a bit too left or a bit too right. What they are missing is the fundamental problem that Labour now faces and possibly has no answer for. Why does this matter? Well, it matters if you stand on the centre-left of politics and therefore oppose a centre-right government, but more generally it matters because it is vital that we have an effective, united opposition to keep government accountable and it matters because we will need a genuine choice at the next election. David Davis, that strange hybrid of rights campaigner but also social conservative on the Conservative backbenches, expressed this well last Question Time on the BBC. He is as worried as anybody about some tendencies toward authoritarianism from the Home Office and Department of Justice at the moment. Labour faces some fundamental problems. The first, perhaps most serious is the fracturing of the centre-left in British politics. This is composed of Labour of course, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the rump of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. In the recent election this group won a total of 47.4% of the popular vote and was ranged against the Centre-Right duo of Conservatives and UKIP of 49.5% (the rest being others and Northern Ireland parties). Looks familiar? Well, students of American politics will recognise this kind of divide and the USA is indeed often described as the 50-50 political system. If we assume that UKIP will decline after the EIU referendum, whatever the outcome, but especially if there is a decisive yes vote, the fragmented centre-left will be faced by a virtually monolithic opponent on the centre-right. To add to this problem, Labour is trying to solve a riddle that has no answer. Move to the right and the party loses Scotland for ever, move to the Left and it will win no seats in the South and probably the Midlands. This left-right condundrum must be abandoned. The second is the party’s lack of vision. Not, I emphasise, several competing visions, but no vision at all. What kind of Britain does the party want to see? They have to make a better fist of articulating what a socially just, business-friendly, worker (and trade union) friendly, tolerant, open society where opportunities and the rewards of economic growth are evenly spread, will look like. Reading or re-reading John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ would be a good start It needs the kind of vision shown in past by Wilson, Thatcher and Blair; different visions to what is needed now of course, but at least a clear view. The third is poor leadership. It is beginning to appear that the field for the leadership is weak, good at arranging deckchairs perhaps, but with no idea of how to mend the damaged hull. There are a few impressive people on the centre-left, such as Dan Jarvis, Tristram Hunt and Stephen Kinnock, but they look too inexperienced. The prescription? Easier said than done to be sure, but Labour needs to set up a commission of its younger leaders to develop a vision that can capture people’s imagination, a vision with a name and clear principles (leave the deckchairs for now), it probably needs to sever its formal connections with the trade unions which are now pretty toxic, and create a new accord with them which does not involve money or internal party votes, it may need to consider an amalgamation with the Liberal Democrats and maybe a working relationship with the SNP and Plaid to stop the fragmentation of the centre-left and then it will just have to wait until a new leader, untainted by past disasters (Iraq and the debt crisis), emerges from the ashes.

PR? Be careful of what you wish for.

Understandably enough the clamour for electoral reform in the UK is growing after the election. Why would it not after what the Electoral Reform Society has described as probably the most disproportionate election result in British history? Certainly the electorate looks to have fragmented and the party system with it, so it seems clear that the electoral system should reflect this change. Of course it isn’t going to happen in the near future with a Conservative majority government placed in office by FPTP. The irony has not escaped me and others that it is proposed in the Trade Union Bill that strikes will only be legitimate if 40% of the union membership supports it. So, what price the Conservative 36.9% ‘win’? If we take the 65% turnout into account I think that is 24% of the total electorate so...well work it out for yourself. But wait a minute. If we were to adopt PR we do need a plan to deal with the probable outcome. The Electoral Reform Society published yesterday some notional results had either the d’Hondt List system or STV been used on May 7th. In both cases it would have been impossible to form a stable coalition with two parties. Any majority would need three parties participating. Even the lucid Cabinet Manual by Gus O’Donnell would have difficulty legislating for that. So what to do? It looks a real mess however ‘democratic’ it might be. I suppose that, if AMS were used (AMS has to be the favourite, given its preservation of one member constituencies), we might have more coherence, but it seems to me that only the German model looks acceptable, i.e. a two party system with a smaller party sharing power with one or the other. But this does not pertain currently in the UK, especially with the Liberal Democrat collapse. A closer look at what has happened reveals, however, that we do not really have a multi party system at all. What we do have is three regions of the UK where there is one party dominance. The SNP in Scotland, Labour in the North and the Conservatives in the South. The only places where there is true two or more party competition are London, Wales and the Midlands. Most of the country lives in a one party system. That brings a whole new set of problems, whatever electoral system we use. The main problem concerns legitimacy. Can a government whose representation is concentrated almost exclusively in the South and the Midlands of England be said to be the legitimate government of the North, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? There seems to be only one answer. It’s called federalism.