tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18228919362933613702024-03-08T02:29:12.430-08:00Public Policy and the Pastthehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comBlogger633125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-72083771156923791192020-10-25T09:06:00.001-07:002020-10-25T12:56:37.086-07:00Good luck, and goodbye<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja5iSBQ7dbT8hXvs_xauGSRyxLChJikVEPzfS2uMO2jDiBVqPtRk8cjleTUQFyPwDGRDfADg3pjcETKCQ3xBZqS2w37KisVxUw_memkObJAq5hrL1xqj1D9iaa5SCfiQ3F3-G3Q5vvcV4/s2048/Sunset.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja5iSBQ7dbT8hXvs_xauGSRyxLChJikVEPzfS2uMO2jDiBVqPtRk8cjleTUQFyPwDGRDfADg3pjcETKCQ3xBZqS2w37KisVxUw_memkObJAq5hrL1xqj1D9iaa5SCfiQ3F3-G3Q5vvcV4/w400-h266/Sunset.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="clear: both; text-align: left;">All good things come to an end – and every blog must too, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">as personal sites become scarcer</a> and scarcer and professional or hosted blogs jostle them<span style="text-align: left;"> aside. So this is the last of hundreds of posts on this site. We
hope they’ve been illuminating, enlightening – and sometimes infuriating.</span></p><p></p><p>It’s <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2010/10/browne-report-worries-and-problems.html">exactly ten years today</a> since ‘Public Policy and the
Past’ started up, and this is as good a time as any to bring down the curtain –
because of a suitable anniversary if nothing else, but also because the
practice of readable, historical, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2012/10/statistics-constructed-as-well-as.html">data-heavy</a> and self-critical reflection is
even more common these days.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">You can read that <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers">in lots of places</a>: you don’t need some
amateur on Blogger filling up your day. That said, it’s been a real ride, we’ve
learned a lot, and we hope you have too. Today, ten years after the words
started to flow (or chafe), hopefully it’s a suitable summing up to look back
on what we said, what was right, what was wrong – and more importantly, why. Let’s
not waste your time too much – let’s keep it to four headings.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b>Getting it wrong.</b> First of all, the number one thing any
analyst must do is <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/12/getting-it-wrong-getting-it-right.html">highlight misses rather than bullseyes</a>. These tell you loads
more than the successes, because they allow you to pinpoint where each bit of machinery
is doing under the bonnet – and where. Exactly why did your prognostication
fail to stick? Isolate those precise points in the chain, and you’ve made
progress.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Here’s a couple of examples: we thought that Greece would
<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2011/07/greece-must-and-will-default.html">probably be forced to default</a> and abandon the Euro, suffering mightily as it was under its ‘structural
adjustment’ programmes, to the extent where neither the European ideal nor
economics itself made any sense any more. That didn’t happen. Its elites and
people were too committed to Europe; the leap in the dark (and the nightmare of
organising) embodied in a new Drachma was just too much. So far, so much learning.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Another example is university tuition fees. We <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2013/11/getting-it-wrong-and-getting-it-right.html">thought that very high fees</a> (of which more later) would put students off, particularly those
from low-income or non-traditional backgrounds. <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2018/06/labours-basic-presumptions-are-false.html">This just wasn’t right</a>,
and that tells us something again: the social revolution from below that is
swelling student numbers is perhaps unstoppable. Put that together with the
coming demographic bulge in the number of 18-year olds, and as you read people
moaning about how big universities have got you should know this: they are
likely to get much, much bigger in the years to come.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b>Elections. </b>Here we built up a fairly creditable record,
with one major blemish. As you’ll all know by now as you <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/">refresh Nate Silver’s 538</a>
again and again, if you aggregate polls and then apply them on a curve in
probabilistic manner, you’ll get quite close to the final answer – if there
isn’t a shock applied to that system from ‘outside’, and if the collection and
compilation of those numbers are right in the first place. Big ifs, but them’s
the breaks.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">So <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2013/05/labours-baby-steps-are-not-good-enough.html">again and again</a> and again we said that Ed Miliband’s
Labour Party <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2011/08/labour-should-still-be-doing-better-in.html">was just not doing well enough</a> on any historical metric –
by-elections, polling, leadership ratings – to win the next General Election.
We were vindicated in 2015, though that didn’t exactly take Nostradamus, did it?
We <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-myth-of-mittmentum.html">struck a good balance</a> about <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2012/11/calling-presidential-election.html">the 2012 Presidential election</a> in the US. We
<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-explains-age-of-rage.html">treated Trump seriously from the outset</a>, which was an important win,
and <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-brexit-storm-clouds-gather-once-more.html">we spotted the potential for a Hung Parliament</a> in the UK General Election
of 2017.
All very pleasing. It’s a B+ rather than an A-, because between late 2017 and
late 2019 we also thought Labour could win any new election. But more of that
below.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b>Universities. </b>This is where we started, really, all those
years ago, so it’s pleasing to loop back and look at what we said. What was
that? Analysis that now sounds wearyingly familiar: that the university funding
system set up by the Coalition in 2010 <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-university-funding-plans-complex.html">was a Doomsday machine</a> that could
eventually blow up the whole sector. Not particularly because of high fees
themselves, but because the Government was itself meeting the upfront cost of a
big-ticket item that now had all its wires exposed, and would become more and
more unpopular (as well as unsustainable) over time.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">As <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-next-for-higher-education-in.html">the cost of university education rose and rose</a> –
necessarily, as technology improved, resources got pricier and pricier, and a
generation of worn-out buildings had to be replaced – politicians began to
realise that they couldn’t let the fee go on ballooning outwards (it became
especially onerous once the Office for Budget Responsibility insisted the cost
be added to the Government’s debt).</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">So Theresa May froze the fee in 2017, and set the scene
for <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-are-englands-universities-in-trouble.html">an ongoing crisis</a> which will eventually see British Higher Education
implode like a bad soufflé. If more money doesn’t appear soon, an increasingly
toxic and unhappy sector will <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/09/end-of-line-for-universities.html">slide into mediocrity and worse</a> via the medium of
open industrial warfare, a brain drain and widespread redundancies even as
student numbers rise. Slow handclap, everybody.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b>Corbynism. </b>We got the impression everyone enjoyed our
writing about this benighted topic. We didn’t. It was horrible. A load of
screaming and shouting in a room that had never exactly been calm, but had not
for decades been full of such angry and exclusionary adulation either. ‘Behold
the man of peace!’ they shouted as they <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/labour-snubs-mp-luciana-berger-over-assault-threat-1.472234">hustled and jostled and lied</a> and failed. Anyway,
it’s all over now, as <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-corbyn-illusion.html">predicted here</a>, and as <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-on-earth-did-labour-sink-so-low.html">analysed here</a>. Exactly what we’d
warned and warned and warned about – an electoral asteroid hitting the planet –
did in the end make Earthfall. It wasn’t pretty.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Except, for a while, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/11/jeremy-corbyns-labour-is-now-likely-to.html">we did believe that Corbyn-Labour could make it into government</a> – for two reasons. Firstly, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/06/its-all-coming-up-roses-for-jeremy.html">the Conservatives were very divided</a>, and for a time in 2019 looked like they might split altogether. They
didn’t, as we should have known from a long history of their lack-of-principled
success in hanging onto power. The Tories do split – and they did in 1846 and
to a lesser extent 1904 – but usually they don’t. This time, they splintered
less than Labour, with inevitable consequences.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Secondly, we probably went far, far too easy on the
Corbyn experiment. This was not a matter of electoral expediency: of the fact that it was rather less than likely to win Labour an election. This was a moral question. Even as <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/07/jeremy-corbyn-cannot-lead-labour.html">we raised the red flags</a> (or perhaps the pink banners of social
democracy), we <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-wrongness-of-corbynism.html">excused Corbyn for his past associations</a>, his narrow-minded
prejudices, his self-indulgence. We <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2018/09/is-labour-party-institutionally-racist.html">held back from passing a judgement of institutional racism</a>, and probably we still would – cautious, and maybe too
tentative. As usual, the electorate knew better. The lesson, as so often, was
this: believe everyone when they show you, not tell you, who they really are.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">So that’s the end – but an end long prepared for. Perhaps
the thing to leave you with is the long view. You scroll through Twitter, you
look at people’s shock (and awe) on Facebook, <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/stop-doomscrolling/">it looks like a doomy world is falling to bits</a>. Right now, in the time of Covid, it really, really feels like
that – and perhaps <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-surge-winter-biden/">nothing will ever be the same</a> again.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">But in the macroscope beyond the individual pain and
tragedy of Covid or welfare ‘reform’ or endemic structural racism, things
<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/06/advance-britannia.html">probably will chunter on</a> – and <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/10/is-western-style-democracy-in-trouble.html">probably go on getting a little bit better</a>.
We’ve been here before, many times, in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, or the
polio terrors of the 1940s and 1950s, or the fascist attack on democracy that
lasted from the 1920s to 1945, or under the shadow of the bomb during the Cold War.
<a href="https://capx.co/the-history-of-crisis-and-what-it-tells-us-about-coronavirus/">We made it through then</a>, and we can make it through now – bolstered in tiny
part by greater reflection, more self-criticism, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-is-gross-domestic-product-anyway.html">better statistics</a>, cooler
heads, and most of all the exposure of <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-crookedness-of-crooked.html">the charlatans among us</a>.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">On that note, and those recommendations? Thank you so
much for reading, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCaBCdJWOyM">good luck</a>, and goodbye.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-82826852040029401812020-09-25T05:04:00.006-07:002020-09-27T04:59:07.962-07:00End of the line for universities? <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtHQfROre5NMvq-bw5WPdJea8kfWau_cQ_DH8uCWlFfa6YY-v3z9aK80bbo23i1BSNh5Z2PPfZv-SDpmbA1iGJLhtdDKC9ZV1WCE0whO0aN555Ztqbfu6NO7GiB3scbnFt9mdIUixTbE/s1200/University.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtHQfROre5NMvq-bw5WPdJea8kfWau_cQ_DH8uCWlFfa6YY-v3z9aK80bbo23i1BSNh5Z2PPfZv-SDpmbA1iGJLhtdDKC9ZV1WCE0whO0aN555Ztqbfu6NO7GiB3scbnFt9mdIUixTbE/w400-h240/University.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />When the bough breaks, it breaks big, and the fall of the
limb exposes all the weakness and the rot within. That’s what’s happening in
Britain’s universities at the moment, as they look on at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-54285720">the situation in Scottish Higher Education</a> in a state that hovers somewhere between worry and panic.<p></p><p>Thousands of students <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/24/thousands-of-students-in-isolation-at-20-uk-universities">are now isolating</a>, a small number
are sick, and both undergraduates and postgraduates in both Scotland and areas experiencing
chronic coronavirus outbreaks – in Manchester, for instance – are now subject
to draconian measures not previously known in peacetime.</p><p>In Scotland, students <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54292728">can’t socialise outside their household</a>, can’t go to the pub or a bar, can’t go back and visit their parents,
have very little face-to-face contact with their lecturers, and are being
threatened with harsh penalties if they dare to step out of line. There’s even
swivel-eyed talk that students might not be allowed to go back to the parental
home at Christmas. This despite everyone on Planet Earth (as opposed to Planet
University) could see this crisis coming a mile off, and said so.</p><p>But, in truth, some sort of reckoning has been coming <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/03/why-are-englands-universities-in-trouble.html">for a very, very long time</a>. Britain’s Higher Education system is experiencing
something close to an existential crisis, perhaps even a moral or spiritual meltdown,
because it no longer knows what it is for or where it should go. It’s not that
it can’t locate itself. It no longer even has a map.</p><p>You only have to listen to actual academics who work within
the system to hear the warning sirens that something has gone extremely awry. You
could read this piece by British-German academic Ulf Schmidt, in which he deploys
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/08/higher-education-in-the-uk-is-morally-bankrupt-im-taking-my-family-and-my-research-millions-and-im-off">quite bitter and emotional language</a> to describe his disenchantment with Britain’s
universities, and indeed his move ‘back’ to Germany. Just actually walk in
someone else’s shoes for a moment:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Britain’s cherished higher education sector, once the
envy of the world, is on the brink of collapse. The humanities were world
leading – and still are in many areas. Scholars in English literature, creative
writing, the arts, languages, history and philosophy were acclaimed across the
globe. But now the sector as a whole is bankrupt, not just financially, but
morally. It has lost its integrity and seems unwilling to engage in critical
reflection about the causes of this unprecedented malaise.</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Or you could open the pages of the <i><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/">London Review of Books</a></i>, and peruse Malcolm Gaskill’s long farewell to the academy he’s worked in
for most of his life. He’s recently taken early retirement, partly because of
the severance deal on offer, but he was worried about how his colleagues would
see his retreat from higher learning.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But what did they say? <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/malcolm-gaskill/diary">We all wish we could go too</a>, but
we feel we can’t – either because our professional identity is bound up with
the world of books and papers and conferences, or because we can’t afford it,
or because we just don’t know what else we’d do. The constant refrain? That was
predictable: ‘it’s no fun any more’. And indeed, a great deal of light seems to
have gone out of our Higher Education system.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There are many reasons why such a toxic situation has
developed, and some of them are hugely under-written. We talk a lot about ‘commercialisation’
and <a href="https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/06/14/neoliberal-universities-whos-to-blame/">the ‘neo-liberal university’</a>, rightly in some ways, but also in very
general terms that don’t help us really use the argumentative scalpel rather
than the sledgehammer.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The effect of high fees on universities has for instance
been far less than lifting the cap off the numbers they can all take. The
quasi-Graduate Tax brought in by the Coalition government in 2010 made much
less difference to the way universities operated than the crazed scramble to
grab hold of ever more students <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25236341">since the cap was lifted for the 2014/15 academic year</a>. So if you’re
blaming the ‘neoliberal university’, it depends what you mean.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It won’t have escaped your notice, either, that it’s the
Scottish system that the coronavirus debacle has hit first and hardest: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53354933">a sector without undergraduate fees</a>, and with far less competition than in
England, but also afflicted with that strange mix of conservatism and
commercialism which actually characterises Britain’s flagging universities.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There are plenty of culprits. The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-52105927">increased rent and fees</a>
that universities can bring in, in a highly financialised property market, has
turned their heads. Datafication and the reduction of students to single pages
of interrelated numbers is another silence we don’t address much.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Pretty random selection and promotion criteria for
management, inherited from a previously planned system and not made up under ‘neoliberalism’,
are also highly corrosive. Some university managers are superb: some of them,
well, they are <a href="https://twitter.com/AccidentalP/status/1306930294138769408?s=20">as crass as they are unheeding</a>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">This stuff matters, as it filters down or spreads out
from the university’s centre. One thing it does it raise <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100346712">the principal-agent problem</a>: the cracks and faultlines and perverse incentives that spring up in
the space between one set of actors (the ‘agents’, in this case heads of
universities and Ministers) and another (‘principals’, for our purposes here the
teaching infantry on the front line).</p><p style="text-align: left;">After a series of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50459152#:~:text=Students%20across%20the%20UK%20face,half%20of%20all%20UK%20universities.">long and bitter strikes</a>, many lecturers
have come to see the agent class as a problem: as a very highly paid caste of
individuals who are out for themselves, either in terms of hopping to a ‘better’
institution in a deeply hierarchical profession, or while topping up their
pension pots while the sector’s scheme is in crisis, or just in bashing the
staff for apparently no reason.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Coronavirus has made this worse, too, because <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/keep-teaching-online-only-until-christmas-says-uk-academic-union">many lecturers deeply resent</a> – and some are extremely anxious about – a return to
face-to-face teaching with the single biggest infected age group in the country
by far. This is especially the case when universities have a completely viable,
and indeed in an age of social distancing easily the most practicable, alternative
open to them: online teaching. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Another hard-to-negotiate maze looms into view here, and
it’s again familiar from game theory: <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/axelrod.pdf">the hard puzzles of co-operation</a>. It has not
escaped anyone in the sector’s notice that, faced with instructions to go in
and teach – even when people are in their sixties, or have chronic conditions,
or are rightly or wrongly petrified – many lecturers are voting with their
feet.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It’s easy: you just say you’ve got a cough and <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/08/people-cant-get-coronavirus-tests-because-of-a-huge-backlog-at-labs-13238519/">you can’t get a test</a>. Who’s going to check? Indeed, who can check, or has the time to
check? It’s easy: you just say you’re teaching the module online, and you
challenge Head of Teaching or Head of Department to say different, now it’s
started. It’s easy: you get your union rep or doctor or friendly lawyer to
write you a letter and watch your line manager fold.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Except, of course, that the more powerful you are, the
more likely those techniques are to be successful: another calculus that challenges
lecturers’ self-image that they work in a sector that has more moral heft and normative
grasp than <a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-uk-july-pmi-sharp-growth-economy-084343128.html">the private sector</a>. Reader, they don’t, and the realisation that they
don’t is administering hidden damage as it runs through the concealed wiring
between feeling and performance.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It is furthermore not a good place to be when institutions
that rely on social capital and goodwill need every ounce of those qualities now.
Still, after the push <a href="https://twitter.com/UCUNUbranch/status/1309114813554057219?s=20">has come the pull</a>. After being told to put on a smile and
welcome students back, the game theoretical defection of the agent is now being
followed by the class defection of the principal. What goes around… comes around.</p><p style="text-align: left;">None of this is actually most managers’ fault. Just as
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/britain-universities-covid-19-campuses">they have been abandoned to coronavirus</a> by a government that firstly couldn’t
care less whether most universities shut or expanded, and in fact might welcome
a tussle with unpopular educators, they have been put in an impossible
position. Without more money to navigate the crisis in front of us right now,
they had to open back up as best they could, or lose students to competitors
willing to tell better stories than they can.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As in the microscope, so the macroscope. Managers can’t
help it that Ministers have told them to get in the barrel and fight it out for
student numbers. They can’t change a world in which they are the punchbag for
<a href="https://reaction.life/its-time-to-cull-and-reform-our-sham-woke-universities/">populist campaigns against the ‘woke campus’</a> – whatever that is. They can’t walk
back the revolution in Public Relations or data or the New Public Management.
They’re stuck too.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Even so, what all this means is that the inside of a
university now looks like a particularly arcane M.C. Escher lithograph. They
are deeply unhappy places. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/23/higher-education-staff-suffer-epidemic-of-poor-mental-health">Many academics are now experiencing</a> a slow-motion
run into the sands which is very familiar to students of clinical depression,
and there’s an article to be written about that all on its own.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Academics tend to be rule-governed achievers. They’ve
jumped over hurdle after hurdle after hurdle. They can’t stop doing it, so when
a government or a manager asks them to leap yet another high jump, they say ‘how
high?’ and ‘how many?’ But that’s a wasting asset: <a href="https://www.physoc.org/magazine-articles/mental-health-in-academia-an-invisible-crisis/">there’s only so many years you can do that</a> before it degrades your mental health. Academics also tend to prize order and security over reward. Now
they can’t control coronavirus, or their own workload, they blame their
employer, the system – but most of all, they blame themselves.</p><p style="text-align: left;">‘Look after yourself’, says the faceless employer over
email: ‘take a break’, ‘do some cooking’, ‘go for a walk’. Then, just after
that vanilla-scented parcel of joy has been received, another twenty or thirty messages
arrive and another couple of overlapping Zoom meetings start. Many colleagues wonder: <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/01/17/professor-gives-advice-colleagues-starting-new-year-self-care-opinion">when am I supposed to look after myself</a>, and when am I meant to take all these breaks? As
they look out of the window and realise it’s already dark. A tiny and
unaccustomed voice starts up again, in the whisper that accompanied the withdrawal
of face-to-face co-operation: stop. Just stop.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Continuously, they just get a bland stream of emails as
if everything is fine – cheery missives about online seminars and conferences, exciting
initiatives, new hires and future plans. That makes everything worse again.
Because <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/21/local-lockdowns-begin-no-normal-advice-live-with-covid">everything is not fine</a>, it can’t be made to be fine, and it isn’t going
to be fine for some time to come. Being advised to do some yoga and some
breathing exercises won’t make it fine either. The tiny voice continues: you’re
not actually valued at all.</p><p style="text-align: left;">For many academics, and we’re talking impressionistically
and anecdotally here, the present crisis only brings the multiple facets of the
kaleidoscope together into one single picture. That picture says, in an
ever-louder tone: somewhere, somehow, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/07/should-university-really-prepare-you.html">the joy of teaching and learning</a> and
finding out got lost.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Watching the sector treat students like the spread of coronavirus
is somehow their fault is for many the last straw. Two or three decades of
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/academic-bureaucracy-rise-managers-higher-education">increasing bureaucratisation</a>, managerialism and jargonisation, all of it inculcated
and internalised via hierarchies, isolation, hoop-jumping and a simply unsupportable
culture of overwork are now coming home to roost. It’s an Emperor’s New Clothes
moment: the second that university staff and students realise that the stage of
empathy is empty.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Maybe the coronavirus situation on campus will be brought
under control. It’s certainly not too late to do that, and large swathes of the
country <a href="https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/covid-19-cluster-area-exeter-4546363">are still fairly Covid-free</a>. Maybe students who are locked down can be
protected and encouraged the way they would be in a ‘normal’ year.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But the gamble looks to be going really wrong, and it’s exposing
what everyone knew and has been trying to raise big red flags about for years:
something within the state of Higher Education is deeply, deeply rotten. That is
bruising lecturers, hurting students, and harming the country itself. It’s probably
too far gone now to be salvaged <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/20/john-henry-newman-idea-university-soul#:~:text=For%20Newman%2C%20the%20ideal%20university,as%20an%20end%20in%20itself.">for what it might have been</a> and what it still
could be, but we could at least try.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">PLEASE NOTE: This blog will be coming to an end in October. The very first entry was published on 25 October 2010, and exactly ten years later seems like the right time to bring down the curtain. There is so much to do, and other people are very kindly asking me to write for them. The blog will therefore cease, although it will stay up as a reference point - for its hyperlinks, if nothing else. So there is now only more monthly blog to come. Hopefully it will be a good one...</span></b></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-49976787310280186132020-08-15T03:54:00.007-07:002020-08-15T03:54:43.294-07:00The end (for now)... <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkqD8BnaFQfCavqMYNH_WJzGV7xhcx40Qzj79yFMaR97xVJMQIwwW6LkFD-WIsxe3uiqom0W-UIS8DkFl1f7CTgIoSXIXd8sDypJZoVkxzvjNxd9y8TEb1cbgF6LM3242llnrprv3kEY/s1280/Skye-Highlands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1280" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlkqD8BnaFQfCavqMYNH_WJzGV7xhcx40Qzj79yFMaR97xVJMQIwwW6LkFD-WIsxe3uiqom0W-UIS8DkFl1f7CTgIoSXIXd8sDypJZoVkxzvjNxd9y8TEb1cbgF6LM3242llnrprv3kEY/w400-h249/Skye-Highlands.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>That's it for now - there's no 'Public Policy and the Past' blog entry for August, because it's holiday time! Well, if one week away - with your laptop - is a 'holiday', though it probably does count given what everyone's gone through over the last few months. With the British government still facing its greatest crisis since the Second World War, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report into the Labour Party soon due, and <a href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14919">Higher Education on the precipice</a>, this blog will be back in September for just a little while yet. Hopefully that will help to make just a little bit of sense from it all, if indeed any can be made. Happy August! </p><p><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><font face="inherit">PLEASE NOTE: This blog will be coming to an end in October. The very first entry was published on 25 October 2010, and exactly ten years later seems like the right time to bring down the curtain. There is so much to do, and some other people are very kindly asking me to write for them. The blog will therefore cease, although it will stay up as a reference point - for its hyperlinks, if nothing else. So, given this traditional August break, there are only two more monthly blogs to come. Hopefully they will be good ones...</font></b></p>thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-38591633891275957712020-07-31T07:00:00.008-07:002020-07-31T10:36:49.951-07:00Should university really prepare you for a job? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObVR2rlIcM379dVn5MNWtI7YS8mQqBKcWQLKro60wAfRiTlHnamgbcbRxiHVjmU5e6quBJuHMeD6jYB-5_1OXpD8MLJrbIf_8i2i0dvoC564jBRXvcWRWRKrx28Aop10j0Ak0yt-sFE8/s800/Williamson.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhObVR2rlIcM379dVn5MNWtI7YS8mQqBKcWQLKro60wAfRiTlHnamgbcbRxiHVjmU5e6quBJuHMeD6jYB-5_1OXpD8MLJrbIf_8i2i0dvoC564jBRXvcWRWRKrx28Aop10j0Ak0yt-sFE8/w400-h225/Williamson.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Language matters. It reveals what you’re really thinking.
It displays some of the mechanics of how you’re thinking. It shows off to the
world not only what you want to say, but also quite a lot about what you're trying to leave unsaid. Imagine how depressing it is, therefore, if you work in
Higher Education and you have to listen to Ministers – actual Ministers of the
Crown – speak in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/09/what-kind-of-revolution-can-follow-the-tories-education-crisis">the most deadening, heavy-footed</a>, depressing way about a
sector they barely perceive as it is, let alone understand.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">To that end, let’s take a look at two significant recent speeches
about England’s universities from the Education Secretary (Gavin Williamson, <i>above</i>)
and the Higher Education Minister (Michelle Donelan). Take your eye off the ball of policy for a moment – lest you get
carsick at what we are supposed euphemistically to call <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/21/universities-brink-crisis-coronavirus-pandemic-tuition-fees">the challenges ahead</a> –
and look at the way they speak.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">First, Donelan, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/universities-minister-calls-for-true-social-mobility">whose speech</a> was surely much more
interesting for how it expressed disappointment and frustration than it was
about true opportunity: </p>
<blockquote><p class="MsoNoSpacing">Today I want to send a strong message – that social
mobility isn’t about getting more people into university. For decades we have
been recruiting too many young people on to courses that do nothing to improve
their life chances or help with their career goals. True social mobility is
about getting people to choose the path that will lead to their desired
destination and enabling them to complete that path.</p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">There you have it. University is all about ‘courses that…
improve… life chances or help with… career goals’. For Ministers, ‘social
mobility’ is about the ‘desired destination’: end-points defined in relation to
those self-same and critical ‘career goals’.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Next, Williamson, a man whose contact with reality is
tenuous at the best of times, but who surpassed himself recently <a href="https://feweek.co.uk/2020/07/09/gavin-williamsons-speech-on-fe-reform-the-full-text/">when he gave a ‘speech’</a> along the same lines:</p>
<blockquote><p class="MsoNoSpacing">I don’t accept this absurd mantra, that if you are not
part of the 50% of the young people who go to university that you’ve somehow
come up short. You have become one of the forgotten 50% who choose another path.
It exasperates me that there is still an inbuilt snobbishness about higher
being somehow better than further, when really, they are both just different
paths to fulfilling and skilled employment. Especially when the evidence
demonstrates that further education can open the doors to greater opportunity,
better prospects and transform lives.</p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The emphasis on the importance of Further Education is
absolutely right (though Williamson’s own government has done its own part in
gutting FE of meaning and purpose). But take a look again: FE and HE are just two ‘different
paths to fulfilling and skilled employment’. That’s what ‘greater opportunity’
and ‘better prospects’ mean.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Now, had we once been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126974">sacked by a Prime Minister</a> for endangering
national security, and were our chief claim to fame owning a pet spider, we would
keep quiet about ‘skilled employment’ and ‘better prospects’, but leave that to
one side for a moment. What’s really bothering you, and by the way us, when you read all that?</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Yes, it’s the soul-enervating, grey-tinged, narrow-horizoning
of the whole lot. It looks like a Paul Nash of the consciousness, and not one of
those uplifting ones from the 1940s about <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717">the ultimate victory of democracy</a>. Oh
no: it looks a lot more like a load of that crazy-paving mud and blasted treescape he started
with in 1914-18.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Let’s get this straight. University does not exist to get
you a job. It does not exist to smooth your path into the workforce. It does
not exist to give you some skills. It does not exist to help your employer. It
does not exist to ‘open up opportunities’. It does not exist to lift your salary.
It exists, only and ever, to learn with you - to experience with you the moment, as <a href="http://www.academic-diary.co.uk/">the Goldsmiths academic Les Back</a> puts it, where the 'luminous fragments' of your past experience and present knowledge fuse.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">We’ve recently been taking a look at some actual ideas
about, and voices from, Higher Education. Needless to say, the actual insights
involved (and <a href="https://styluspub.presswarehouse.com/browse/book/9781620367407/Straddling-Class-in-the-Academy">looked at a bit more theoretically here</a>) are by some way more heartening, and just a little more uplifting, than the
management gobbledygook Donelan and Williamson read out from the
teleprompter.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Let’s look at <i>Lowborn</i>, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lowborn-Growing-Getting-Returning-Britains/dp/1784742457">Kerry Hudson’s memoir</a> of
growing up poor across England and Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s. What does
she say about university, at the end? Inspired by an extraordinary teacher, she
decided to give it a go with her BTEC in Performing Arts. Check the different cadence,
tone, words, intent:</p>
<blockquote><p class="MsoNoSpacing">I decided I would achieve the highest grades I cold… My audition
speech was Lady Macbeth decrying the permanence of the stains of her mistakes
that could never be washed away. I got an unconditional offer to start
university in London. I finally made my way to the big city that seemed to
promise everything, but most of all a future with wide horizons and choices
that would be mine. From that moment onwards, I started running and didn’t look
back. Until this year, until I was ready.</p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Or we could check out <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motherwell-Deborah-Orr/dp/1474611451/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XRL8CV5EIGMT&dchild=1&keywords=motherwell+deborah+orr&qid=1596203675&s=books&sprefix=motherwell%2Cstripbooks%2C147&sr=1-1">Deborah Orr’s extraordinary autobiography</a>,
<i>Motherwell</i>, so lived and vivid that it makes you astonished that she isn’t
still with us. Orr had a difficult time at St Andrews, to say the least, struck
for one thing by (shall we say) the class divides of the place, but despite her
parents’ doubts she made it through and she got her degree. How did she become
one of the best writers of her generation? It wasn’t through the skills panel
in her module handbook. There was chance, experiment, serendipity, busking it,
wondering, hanging about. Listen:</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><blockquote>When I was at St Andrews I did two years of English, two
years of philosophy, one year of modern history, one year of medieval history,
one year of social anthropology and one year of Arabic culture. The last –
which I signed up for as everyone said it was really undemanding – has probably
been the most useful. Bizarrely, although I never went to lectures in my own
subjects, I’d slip into history of art lectures sometimes, because I could see
the point of those. Even St Andrews, so fantastically traditional when I was
there that it was compulsory for English literature students to learn
Anglo-Saxon, had embraced the Kodak Carousel… The loose crowd I eventually
ended up in [were]… some former students who’d never left, some ‘townies’
attracted in rebellion to student life – sex, drugs, rock and roll. Also –
Barleycup – a vile coffee substitute – plus macrobiotic food, the <i>I Ching</i> and
shiatsu massage.</blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">Lastly, because the point hopefully now looks pretty obvious, Tara Westover – now an academic and writer, but in the 1980s to
the early 2000s an emergent talent torn between two worlds. Her Mormon
background and faith, her tough and trying upbringing in conservative Idaho,
clashed with her university education (and eventual place at Cambridge) until
she had what might be thought of as an epiphany. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Educated-international-bestselling-Tara-Westover/dp/0099511029/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AJ4SX8DT01S2&dchild=1&keywords=tara+westover+s+educated&qid=1596203716&s=books&sprefix=tara+west%2Cstripbooks%2C176&sr=1-1">This is how she remembers</a>
meeting Jonathan Steinberg, eventually her Doctoral supervisor:</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><blockquote>I mumbled something about historiography. I had decided to
study not history, but historians. I suppose my interest came from the sense of
groundlessness I’d felt since learning about the Holocaust and the civil rights
movement – since realising that what a person knows about the past is limited,
and will always be limited, to what they are told by others. I knew what it was
to have a misconception corrected – a misconception of such magnitude that
shifting it shifted the world. Now I needed to understand how the great
gatekeepers of history had come to terms with their own ignorance and
partiality. I thought if I could accept that what they had written was not
absolute but was the result of a… process of conversation and revision, maybe I
could reconcile myself with the fact that the history most people agreed on was
not the history I had been taught… In knowing the ground was not ground at all,
I hoped I could stand on it.</blockquote><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">See the difference? On the one hand, the stifling constraints
of the instrumental, and therefore meaningless, demands of use and usefulness. A
managerial process that has deep roots: in Human Capital Theory's view that <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/european-policy-cooperation/education-and-investment-plan_en#:~:text=European%20language%20initiatives-,Investment%20in%20education%20and%20training%20is%20crucial%20to%20ensure%20people,the%20Investment%20Plan%20for%20Europe.&text=make%20smarter%20use%20of%20new%20and%20existing%20financial%20resources.">education is investment</a>, in just those economics of social capital, and in the needs of Departments of Education the
world over to get and keep their share of scarce budgets. It's <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2020/07/29/the-truth-about-education-policy-is-that-its-based-on-a-myth/">an argument likely to prove a diminishing asset</a>, even in its own terms, but it's still an argument. Still, on the other hand, it's challenged by a far greater contrast and enemy: actual life, real
life, the warmth of feeling hopeful, optimistic, sharing, world-shifting, outward-looking. The feeling of being changed, with and alongside others, and not just individually. Expressed in a language of being
changed that feels true, and not part of some tendentious simulacrum.</p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing">The university exists not to serve the one, but to give voice
and rise to the other: to the glorious risk of education, its grand adventure,
its sense of an opening, <a href="https://unbound.com/boundless/2019/07/12/prometheus-reborn-the-mythology-of-fire/">its stealing of a fire</a>, and – following Westover – its
moment of revelation. Government has forgotten that, if it ever knew it. You should
not.</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><font face="inherit">PLEASE NOTE: This blog will be coming to an end in October. The very first entry was published on 25 October 2010, and exactly ten years later seems like the right time to bring down the curtain. There is so much to do, and some other people are very kindly asking me to write for them. The blog will therefore cease, although it will stay up as a reference point - for its hyperlinks, if nothing else. So, given the traditional August break, there are only two more monthly blogs to come. Hopefully they will be good ones...</font></b></p>thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-51096401628514552442020-06-27T09:31:00.001-07:002020-06-27T10:01:22.902-07:00Where is Scotland going? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_o_5tkxxzzfFCAhDGoFWDR32gZ0OsVzZpBdduUQmDCXjCEDzmHUsTCv7RnOGpeG0LS9qADY7zJMy-W6SsmKDt2izY5Houa6fM0Gg1MK9TfWDMa_JItngabCioCGbtUCH7AL5yqFrplY/s1600/scottish-flag.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="1200" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_o_5tkxxzzfFCAhDGoFWDR32gZ0OsVzZpBdduUQmDCXjCEDzmHUsTCv7RnOGpeG0LS9qADY7zJMy-W6SsmKDt2izY5Houa6fM0Gg1MK9TfWDMa_JItngabCioCGbtUCH7AL5yqFrplY/s400/scottish-flag.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It may have escaped your notice, what with an ongoing,
world-encircling and panic-inducing pandemic, but the British state has not
escaped its many crises. Coronavirus can blot them out, accentuate them
sometimes, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/19/22-days-in-april-uk-darkest-hours-of-coronavirus-crisis">light them up</a> always: but it has not made them go away.<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The most immediate of these is of course Brexit, and the
extent to which the United Kingdom should or can pursue a deep and abiding deal
with the European Union – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53101542">not just on trade</a>, but on health, education, travel,
security and more. A deal is still quite possible, perhaps even likely, but it’s
not on the table yet. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Beyond that, the next and even more daunting mountains –
holding the state itself together. Most people have understandably got their
attention pointed away from constitutional matters at the moment, but prospects
for the cause of Scottish independence are looking <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/why-scottish-independence-supporters-should-be-feeling-optimistic-angus-robertson-2891655">brighter and brighter</a>. That
will cast a long pall over public affairs for some years to come. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Polling reveals the pro-independence camp to be at an
all-time high. Where they were toiling at the end of last year, posting results
of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_independence">between 38 and 46 per cent</a>, they now ride high, hitting 50 per cent in the
latest Panelbase poll – a lead of seven per cent over Scotland’s unionists. And
there’s more to it than the numbers: the cause of the union looks weaker, less
enduring, more threadbare as the months tick by.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It’s not just that the young favour independence, though
they do indeed feel like that – <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/cqi01wjj1n/Internal_ScotIndependence_200129.pdf">in huge numbers</a> that make the world ‘landslide’
look a bit puny. It’s that Scotland’s No campaigners are now leaderless,
rudderless, divided and just a bit punchdrunk. Increasingly, they just look
like they’ve had all the fight knocked out of them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The ruling Scottish National Party have colonised most of
the civic institutions that used to be Labour’s for the asking. The three
unionist parties hate each other almost as much as they do the Nationalists.
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49509275">Without Ruth Davidson</a>, the Conservatives’ energetic leader up until 2019, Scottish
Tories look colourless. No-one has so much as seen Scottish Labour’s leader for years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Most of all, the present context helps the SNP no end. They
basically have no opponents. A seemingly endless succession of Conservative
governments in London boosts their case that ‘progressive’ Scots ought to want
out of the Union. UK Labour’s unpleasant and unending civil war threatened, up
until early this year, to make Labour the quintessential nasty party. The
Liberal Democrats have just <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-liberal-democrat-leader-jo-swinson-loses-seat-11885130">missed another gilt-edged chance</a> to break into the really
big time, just as they did in 1974, 1983 and 2010. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Most pressingly, coronavirus itself has boosted the SNP’s
fortunes even further. Crass as it is to say this aloud – and the whole deadly
mess weighs on all of us – Scotland is perceived by its voters <a href="https://twitter.com/AngusRobertson/status/1265199191325839363?s=20">to have done better than ‘England’</a> in the fight against the virus. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
That’s <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/glen-o-hara-on-the-tories-labour-and-coronavirus-1-6695498">not always fair</a>. Scottish public policy has been
all over the place. Care homes were left unguarded. Testing has been chaotic.
Schools policy has veered all over the place. Scotland’s per capita deaths are
not all that far behind England’s. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But two factors have made the Scottish public’s ‘rally
round the flag’ focus on the Saltire in Edinburgh and not the Union Flag in
London. One: First Minster Nicola Sturgeon is quite simply a <a href="https://www.opinium.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Opinium-Political-Report-19th-June-2020.pdf">much more plausible figure</a> than Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Agree with her or disagree
with her – and this blog does not believe that secession would be in the best
interests of Scots – she somehow manages to be both more nimble and more weighty
than that bloviating try-hard in No. 10. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Then, point two: Scotland has deliberately emerged out of
lockdown <a href="https://www.gov.scot/news/route-map-for-moving-out-of-lockdown/">just that little bit slower</a> than England. It is not clear that this will
make much difference to the prevalence of Covid-19. Frankly, all the ‘facts’
are slewing about journal pre-prints right now. But what it does do is create some
bright yellow water between the SNP and the blue team in Downing Street. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As Johnson struggles to hold together a national consensus
around reactivating the British economy (and, let’s face it, four national
consensuses), his numbers sag back towards normal dislike: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52795997?fbclid=IwAR0-ZqB2ujuSb0OA1SlX3dpKqYMG1saaRkvcmghdeibXPTZFjaqrcqzdtno">Sturgeon’s, and her government’s, soar</a>. It’s not particularly fair, but hey. Nothing is, in the end. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And so the SNP <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election">will likely win an overall majority</a> again
when we get to next year’s Scottish Parliamentary elections, just as they did
in 2011 (but failed to in 2016). That’s not certain – nothing is, in the age of
the pandemic – but it looks pretty likely right now. That will set off yet
another existential crisis for British politics. Stop us if you’ve heard all
this before. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Holyrood will call for another referendum on
independence. It will not even have been seven years since the last one. Like
buses, referendums all seem to come bunched up together. But who can really say
that <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/scottish-independence-referendum-statement-by-the-prime-minister">the mandate won by David Cameron in 2014</a> has not run out, after everything
that’s happened? The prospectus for the Union now seems fundamentally altered,
not least because now it does not involve staying in the European Union. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Scottish Government will, even so, now run into a
problem. That’s because they can’t legally hold a referendum – not without a
so-called <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-50744526">Section 30 Order</a> under the devolution legislation gaining permission
for such a plebiscite from the UK’s central government. It will be at this
stage that the long-running and chronic nature of this likely crisis may become
apparent. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It will not be in Johnson’s interests to give way at this
point. As the economy <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52991913">drags itself out of the coronavirus slump</a> – if we’re
lucky – and as his own government reaches mid-term after eleven years of Tory
power, he is hardly likely to risk it all on a completely reckless gamble ‘north
of the border’ (as he no doubt thinks of it). <o:p></o:p></div>
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If he lost, he would have to resign. And there is
nothing, nothing in this world more important to Boris Johnson than Boris
Johnson. Not his dog. Not <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-model-buses-paint-make-london-bus-interview-talk-radio-true-306883">his cardboard buses</a>. Not his many indiscretions.
Being Boris Johnson, Prime Minister, is all there is to the whole puppet show. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Nor will his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/09jpSjVUpQ/dominic_cummings_battle_for_downing_street">small cadre of Vote Leave ideologues</a>
willingly give up the levers of power in Whitehall and Westminster for what
they must regard as a sideshow and a bore. Their mission is, firstly, to rewire
the British state to conduct single-shot missions of scientific and industrial
renewal, and secondly to push back against the long hegemony of left-liberal
ideas in the cultural and intellectual sphere. Who cares about Scotland when
you’ve got those pieces on the table? <o:p></o:p></div>
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So Johnson will just say ‘no’ – and keep on saying no, all the
way up to and including a General Election. What’s that, we hear you cry? That
would be a democratic outrage? Well, let us introduce you to: the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49810261">Prorogation of the last Parliament</a>; voter ID laws; attempts to diddle shielding Members of
Parliament out of their voting rights: and so on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There’s a second reason why you’d let the SNP keep calling
for a new referendum on independence. And that’s the way it gives you a wedge
issue in England. You can warn against a Labour government reliant on the ‘foreign’
SNP; you can turn English voters against the ‘feather-bedded’ Scots. Although
the evidence that the tactic worked in the 2015 General Election is sketchy and
limited, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/general-election-2015-the-snp-slur-that-was-too-much-for-miliband-to-shake-off-10234531.html">it certainly didn’t hurt</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/14/contents/enacted">Fixed-Term Parliaments Act</a> mandates the next General
Election be held in May 2024, but the legislation is likely soon to be
repealed, and it may be that the Tories will go to the country as soon as 2023.
That will make pressure from Edinburgh even easier to resist, in the run-up to
the next election. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What better cry in England could there be than keeping
the whole country together? What better toughness can be displayed than just
saying ‘no’, ‘no’ and ‘no’ again to the SNP? There is of course the risk to
both the Union and the Conservatives’ Scottish seats, but firstly no-one in the
midst of those radicals now running the country cares much about the Union, and
secondly the Tories <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/snp">only have six Scottish seats</a>, two of which look highly vulnerable
whatever happens. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So the gamble is all one way: the risk clusters very
thickly around granting a Section 30 Order. It can’t be ruled out. Johnson may
see <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21936681">the ball suddenly break out of the scrum</a>, and decide to run for it, pell-mell
towards another messy brawl. But it’s less than likely. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For these reasons, after coronavirus the British state
will face the arduous task of putting back together its place in the world –
and of staying together at all. A long-running battle will emerge, absorbing
and exhausting, over whether to draw <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/brexit-would-independent-scotland-face-hard-border-england-1424826">a new and hard border</a> near Carlisle and Berwick. The Tories will keep shaking their heads. Scottish public opinion could get angrier and angrier.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because of the frustrations and delays of what could well become a deliberate stalling strategy, the case for the Union may well then be lost. Johnson will deliberately be leaving the unexploded ordnance of a second independence
referendum to <a href="https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-backs-scottish-labour-22250389">a future Labour minority administration</a>. The Tories will thus
seek to hobble, and ultimately blow up, any left-wing government from the
start. They may well succeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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These strategies are not attractive. But they are
rational. And they could well work – setting the scene for another set of ructions
<a href="https://www.thedetail.tv/articles/a-majority-favour-a-border-poll-on-the-island-of-ireland-in-the-next-10-years">in Northern Ireland</a> and Wales. Institutions seek to defend and replicate themselves:
the continuity of government is all. But the continuity of British governance
is now deeply in doubt.<br />
<br />
<b>PLEASE NOTE: This blog will be coming to an end in October. The very first entry was published on 25 October 2010, and exactly ten years later seems like the right time to bring down the curtain. There is so much to do, and some other people are very kindly asking me to write for them. The blog will therefore cease, although it will stay up as a reference point - for its hyperlinks, if nothing else. So, given the traditional August break, there are only three more monthly blogs to come. Hopefully they will be good ones... </b></div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-33021869111152439802020-05-25T12:16:00.000-07:002020-05-27T08:53:52.530-07:00All the damage they can do<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1Oa0uPkyYSOQF3X1eZctPcIOGHQ5tYySF4fT0lNi0PWd_XGn3br8X-nRG0DintenIrIKCPLP7VHGbo8aBLRKparvG7JAhF1FwvwjSBiy8wSG2GSfI-RHDjHTg8qv0jWTs7akklxJ5xg/s1600/DC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1Oa0uPkyYSOQF3X1eZctPcIOGHQ5tYySF4fT0lNi0PWd_XGn3br8X-nRG0DintenIrIKCPLP7VHGbo8aBLRKparvG7JAhF1FwvwjSBiy8wSG2GSfI-RHDjHTg8qv0jWTs7akklxJ5xg/s400/DC.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This blog doesn’t think much of Boris Johnson or Dominic
Cummings (<i>above</i>). You may have noticed. Way back in 2016, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/02/counterfactual-history-is-controversial.html">we called Johnson</a> ‘a poor
man's Silvio Berlusconi, endlessly replaying his own triumphs and legends back
to himself’, and invited readers to boot him back into ‘the dustbin of history’.
Hey, take our advice, don’t take our advice. It’s up to you.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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As for Cummings, well. In February <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/02/">we labelled him</a> a ‘one-dimensional… symptom
of a much, much deeper rot – the gangrene that tells you where the worst of the
wounds reside’. Never let it be said that we’re behind the curve here. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Together, the two of them give full rein to the worst id of the toddler’s
instincts. I am strong. I can do as I like. You are nothing. You are stupid. I am powerful. Now you see where that gets them, you and everyone
else – starring and crowd roles in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52793960">a dark tragi-comedy</a> that couldn’t be bettered if
several skeletons and several lovers fell out of several wardrobes on several
stages. All at once. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Cummings’ lockdown <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/witness-i-saw-someone-who-looked-like-dominic-cummings-25-miles-from-durham-11993781">adventures in his native North of England</a> are now a thing of record (if not of beauty). Let’s give him the
benefit of the doubt, and believe his story (which doesn’t seem all that much less
believable than lots of other things in British politics these days). His wife
was sick. His son got sick. He was probably very scared. He wondered what on
Earth to do. That’s fine, and understandable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He took himself off to a site on his father’s property.
He isolated. He didn’t see anyone else. Now, that’s pretty much a violation of
the spirit of England’s lockdown rules at the time, and maybe, probably, of
its letter as well. He still knowingly took the virus to a new chunk of the
country, outside the capital that was its hotspot at the time. He still could
have introduced it into the hospital his son ended up in (though <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/dominic-cummings-reveals-son-was-hospitalised-as-he-says-he-acted-reasonably-and-legally-in-lockdown-visit-to-durham">he eventually tested negative</a>). <o:p></o:p></div>
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It was a reckless, stupid thing to do. And Cummings
should at least have given thought to how it would all look. Granted, no doubt
he was frightened for his family. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/25/i-think-i-behaved-reasonably-dominic-cummings-defends-actions-in-lockdown-row">He knew where to find a bolthole</a>. Maybe you’d
have done the same. Maybe you wouldn’t. It was human error, of a type that
perhaps the overconfident Cummings thinks he can build systems to guard against, though one - we should note - about which he has shown very little contrition.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then he went out again. In a car. With his son in it. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-statement-barnard-castle-durham-eyesight-press-briefing-speech-a9531766.html">To test his eyesight</a>. Yes, really. Now here’s where things get even more
difficult. Quite frankly, that’s such a bizarre and <i>Fawlty Towers</i>-style detail
that, like a ‘hard saying’ in Biblical studies, it probably did break down like
that. But it was another stupid, foolhardy, rash and dangerous thing to do. We’re
starting to maybe, sort-of, wonder about Cummings’ judgement. Are you? <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are a further series of dark undertones to consider.
The first, and right now the least: the implications for Cabinet – and indeed
all ordered – government. Can you imagine how the Health Secretary (and
<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cc540cfa-b966-4343-b871-11367529abf0">previously-designated fallguy</a>) Matt Hancock feels about all this? Perhaps he's a bit angry. And the civil servants,
at least one of whom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/25/rogue-civil-service-tweet-uk">let their true feelings out</a> on Twitter when Johnson first
came out to defend his man? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Governments must stick together, work together, speak
together – and elected politicians, rather than a rather absurd but always-on angry
Svengali, should in the last analysis make decisions. That’s how the chain of
responsibility <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/04/rise-and-fall-british-democracy">should work, and must work</a> if the House of Commons – and by
extension the voters – are to exert any influence at all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And then there’s the immediate consequences on the
ground. Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, although its immediate threat to life has
abated. Spikes and flareups <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/25/somerset-hospital-weston-general-hospital-closed-new-patients-halt-spread-coronavirus">are happening all the time</a>, and this government might
have to order another full lockdown if things get out of control in the autumn.
We don’t rate Boris Johnson. You probably don’t. But like it or not, he’s the
only leader we’re going to get for some time to come. At this moment above all,
we all need him to succeed - and to do that, people have to trust him, follow his advice, put some faith in him. Cummings just blew up loads of his credibility.
That matters. Right now that matters a great deal.<br />
<br /></div>
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The fight against Covid-19 has been put back by Cummings’
ridiculous odyssey, and then put back much more by his pallid semi-apology and thin attempts to brazen
things out. The British public have to this point stuck at the very difficult
changes to everyday life that they have been asked to bear. But consent comes
from the ‘bottom’, allied to co-operation and contract from the ‘top’ (or what
passes for the top these days). Take a hammer to that sense of community – <a href="https://twitter.com/ReicherStephen/status/1264606173212409857">to honesty, believability, transparency</a> – and you are gambling with the whole edifice of
compliance. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We can leave you with no more wisdom than that of that
much-missed (and vastly-underestimated) political fighter, Jim Callaghan. During
the 1979 General Election campaign, Jim was savvy enough <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/mar/28/labour.obituaries1">to feel the sea-change around him</a>. As he admitted to his driver at one point, sometimes politics is just buckled and transformed,
and there’s nothing you can do. That change of feeling, he detected, was for
Margaret Thatcher, and he was right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It’s possible to imagine – though this might turn out
completely wrong – that we are at a similar inflection point now. What do the
Conservatives’ new voters really, really hate? Unfairness. The people ‘at the
top’ – dare we say, the ‘elites’ – <a href="https://medium.com/@psurridge/values-voters-and-the-law-b9d22f48c7eb">getting away with it</a>. Well, this is them
getting away with it redux. Had Cummings been, ooh, let’s say a dispensable scientist
on an advisory body, he would have been out of a job. But because of who he is,
he isn’t. It’s as simple as that. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After Labour’s betrayal of national security and Britain’s
interests after the Russian chemical weapons attack on Salisbury – when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/14/jeremy-corbyn-under-fire-over-response-to-pms-russia-statement">they basically read out a Kremlin press release</a> in response – something palpably and definitively changed about voters’ estimates of them. Are we at
another one of those moments now? Could this be another of those periodic electoral shocks that change the landscape? It fees like it could be. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One of Callaghan’s other famous quotes came to him as he looked in the mirror one morning. Dragging Britain through yet another
crisis, even this famously patriotic (and ex-navy) leader lost a bit of heart. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5xKFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PP19&lpg=PP19&dq=jim+callaghan+young+man+emigrate&source=bl&ots=sNOgJpGm_L&sig=ACfU3U0HV5G1yG28K6-Sv7IJ0Goafs20sQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjaifmG1s_pAhVASxUIHU5VAT8Q6AEwCnoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=jim%20callaghan%20young%20man%20emigrate&f=false">‘If I were a young man, I would emigrate’</a>, he thought. If you take a quick look at
the emigration figures, lots and lots of people felt the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was hard, looking at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52795624/dominic-cummings-full-statement-on-lockdown-row">that sunny Downing Street garden</a> full
of press waiting for Cummings, not to feel something of Callaghan’s <i>ennui</i>. While
medics in visors and goggles literally battled to save people’s lives, the mind of the
British state, its core executive, its policy-making community, its lobby
journalists, was not on the crisis at all – but on one silly man and one stupid
trip. It was pathetic, it was ridiculous, and it was embarrassing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lots of people looking at Johnson and Cummings right now
can turn and look in the mirror too. And then they can turn again,
and see the enormous strides that <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/tony-holohan-community-transmission-5102798-May2020/">the Republic of Ireland</a>, Australia, New Zealand and Canada
have made against the virus. Many of them are young. Some of them are probably pretty restless. Perhaps they should, and
maybe they will, start to consider Callaghan’s challenge.<br />
<br />
<b>PLEASE NOTE: This blog will be coming to an end in October. The very first entry was published on 25 October 2010, and exactly ten years later seems like the right time to bring down the curtain. There is so much to do, and some other people are very kindly asking me to write for them. The blog will therefore cease, although it will stay up as a reference point - for its hyperlinks, if nothing else. So, given the traditional August break, there are only four more monthly blogs to come. Hopefully they will be good ones... </b></div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-51896771868550123332020-04-17T04:21:00.001-07:002020-04-29T02:42:43.284-07:00On coronavirus and conspiracies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5hV1UzlY34CPSbQP2cqrOD-rZlJg-4wzYQptndm3kNu3c7Z4nop3RMSCjlQXttx8ZYdL_4QTTYotLZtGBcSrUIawUlDrJAT2Z1qK7PopgPR2NzQV-HWBh9AvMgLLiCQoeVL0VpIsEgpE/s1600/Stop5G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="1292" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5hV1UzlY34CPSbQP2cqrOD-rZlJg-4wzYQptndm3kNu3c7Z4nop3RMSCjlQXttx8ZYdL_4QTTYotLZtGBcSrUIawUlDrJAT2Z1qK7PopgPR2NzQV-HWBh9AvMgLLiCQoeVL0VpIsEgpE/s400/Stop5G.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Age of
Coronavirus is also a Time of Conspiracy. Maybe the Chinese government made up
the deadly disease in a lab, and then covered up just how many people it
killed. <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1eeedb71-d9dc-4b13-9b45-fcb7898ae9e1?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6">Perhaps it’s those 5G mobile phone masts putting so many people in hospital</a>, and killing so many others.</div>
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There’s plenty of
WhatsApp messages hammering those messages home if you want to read them (and
you can get hold of them). <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/boxing/amir-khan-coronavirus-latest-news-5g-masts-conspiracy-theory-a9447951.html">There are even celebrity videos</a> backing these
apparently outlandish ideas if you want to watch them. Rather than tutting and
sighing, so often the reaction of the expert or the practitioner, it’s perhaps
best to ask: why is this happening? <o:p></o:p></div>
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First things
first: most people don’t believe the conspiracies. It’s a minority taste.
<a href="https://www.opinium.co.uk/public-opinion-on-coronavirus-7th-april/">According to polling by Opinium</a>, ‘only’ seven per cent of voters think that new
mobile phone technology caused the coronavirus outbreak. That’s fewer than
think Elvis lived on after his apparent death in 1977. Second and even more
important, that constrained conspiracism has policy implications. Most Britons
aren’t going around blaming China or 5G (<i>above</i>) – they’re following guidelines with
even more alacrity than the citizens of most other states, and for the most part
<a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2020/04/14/936c1/1?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_1">they trust their scientists</a> and their government. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Even so, a
significant swathe of the population do believe lots of the stories they scroll
through on their screens. That seven per cent of adults adds up to maybe four
million people. <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2020/04/12/most-brits-think-covid-19-originated-live-animal-m?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=covid_animal_markets">Nearly a quarter of respondents</a> have told YouGov that the novel
coronavirus either ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ came out of a lab. Some of them
have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52281315">gone out and vandalised 5G technology</a>. The Government obviously thinks it
can divert some of the blame onto China, or it wouldn’t brief newspapers that
China will face some sort of backlash when this is all over. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This is part of a pattern. The same short circuits are everywhere.
Trumpians and Eastern European authoritarians place the blame for the rule of
capital at the feet of one man: George Soros. Donald Trump’s closing political
broadcast during the 2016 campaign – his ‘<span style="background: white; color: #2d2d2d;">Argument for America’ – blamed ‘the establishment’ and
‘global special interests’ for everything, <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rolls-out-anti-semitic-closing-ad">a poisonous assertion played over footage of Soros</a> and other public figures who happened, just happened, to be
Jewish. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Liberals blame Russia and Putin for Trump and Brexit. Agents of
the ‘Deep State’ draw the ire of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/01/revealed-populists-more-likely-believe-conspiracy-theories-vaccines?CMP=share_btn_tw">the authoritarian Right and the populist Left</a>.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party protested again and again about BBC
‘bias’, a line they knew played well among their activists and distracted them
from Labour’s many sleights of hand over Brexit (they usually <a href="https://antisemitism.uk/labour-withdraws-ofcom-complaint-about-panorama-expose-of-partys-antisemitism/">dropped those complaints</a> once everything had gone quiet). Everything bad is laid at the door
of ‘them’: ‘the bankers’ and ‘the elites’, or perhaps ‘the immigrants’ or ‘the
foreigners’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is not, of course, an entirely new historical
conjuncture. Those radicals who opposed the British Empire’s South African War
at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often detected in its
prosecution the guiding hand of ‘the banks’, or diamond traders, or the
fantastical ‘Jewish interests’ <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/news-features/imperialism-jeremy-corbyn-david-feldman-1.485749">they imagined stood behind both</a>. Many literate
Edwardian citizens came to suspect the influence of the Kaiser and his spies behind
every shift in international politics. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Conspiracy theories have always interlaced themselves
around British politics and British public life. The ‘red scares’ of the
interwar years paralysed Labour and delegitimised socialist policies. Lots of
people always thought the moon landings were faked, and <a href="https://capx.co/50-years-on-do-people-really-still-believe-the-moon-landings-were-faked/">maybe between four and 16 per cent of British adults</a> still do. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Still, this present outbreak of one-size-fits-all
thinking does still seem rather different. It reaches across the political
spectrum; <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/covid-19-disinformation-briefing-no-1/">disinformation</a> from many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/02/why-we-are-addicted-to-conspiracy-theories">bad faith actors </a>and some states seem
prevalent; it binds together tribes beyond as well as across formal politics
(as anyone versed in <a href="https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/jznvnjmmvlm/index.html">the conspiracy theories of the anti-vaxxers</a> will tell
you); it involves outbreaks of sheer rage that are as remarkable for their
intensity as they are notable for the relatively small numbers through which
the wildfires run. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are, of course, off-the-peg answers to why this type
of thinking has become entrenched. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/jun/28/social-media-networks-filter-bubbles">Some writers look to social media</a>, which does seem <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-concern-after-facebook-groups-call-for-harassment-of-5g-engineers-11974088">to focus the anger</a> of deeply connected networks on specific targets. That’s a bit of a
reach. There’s <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2016/02/sometimes-social-media-can-change-minds.html">quite a bit of evidence</a> that social media actually makes you <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/15/14-of-americans-have-changed-their-mind-about-an-issue-because-of-something-they-saw-on-social-media/">more likely to change your mind</a>, not least in the UK’s 2017 General Election.
And who needs social media when you have Clunky Old Media, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-eamonn-holmes-criticised-for-untold-damage-with-5g-conspiracy-comments-11972840?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter">in the shape of TV presenter Eamon Holmes</a>, to spread your conspiracy theories for you? You shouldn't just generalise about How Twitter Makes People Mad when <i>The Washington Post</i> <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/us-intelligence-virus-started-chinese-lab/index.html">and CNN</a> put up stories about the Wuhan lab that some people think might just have caused all
this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Other analysts begin their own journey down the rabbit
hole with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/charles-duhigg-american-anger/576424/">the psychology of political rage</a> itself (<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-explains-age-of-rage.html">we've tried at our hands at this in the past</a>), always easier to direct and channel
against a single hated antagonist. Pop psychologists and psephologists alike
have prodded and poked the supposedly very angry older white male until there isn’t much left to
dissect. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/trump-polls-coronavirus-support-midwest-voters-why-popular">Coffee shops in Iowa</a> and pubs in Hull have never been so full of notetakers.
Yes, the psychology of older voters in ‘left behind’ places is interesting, and can be critical in electoral systems privileging their views: but this isn’t the full
story either.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Deeper trends can also be detected – and they certainly
have not been manipulated by any one actor. The Big McGuffin is, first and
foremost, a comforting heuristic in a world of noise. It springs out of <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/24/20908223/trump-russia-fake-news-propaganda-peter-pomerantsev">the politics of confusion, sometimes deliberate confusion</a> - not so much of rage as head-spinning dislocation. The postmodern
restlessness of the developed world in the twenty-first century can often be
experienced as sheer chaos: so many screens, so many streams, so many voices,
that Fake News is just one facet of the jittery, frameless, boundless
hyperreal. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That was a feature of the Edwardian world, too, when time
appeared to many observers to be ‘speeding up’ – now <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/future-trends/201808/is-time-speeding">an exponential line that seems so steep</a> that many citizens yearn to place their phones in a box and lock them away.
But if you’re not going to place your phone beyond reach, what better way to escape
the great gusher of events than pretending to yourself that it all has one
particular source? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our late (or perhaps post-) capitalist societies of
course celebrate the individual. Thatcherite economics dictate that you
yourself must pull yourself up by your bootstraps alone, rather than living and
coping within groups that accept and validate their shared understandings. The
last forty years have seen <a href="https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/oxford-economic-and-social-history-working-papers/why-has-the-public-sector-grown-so-large-in-market-societies-the-political-economy-of-prudence-in-the-uk-c-1870-2000">an inconsistent but overall absolutely clear demerging of risk</a> – in terms of the
benefits you’re entitled to, within the rules that govern your contracts of
work, encoded in the value of your shrinking pension (or lack of one). Why should that not be
paralleled by a kind of demerging of threat, that sees each citizen faced not
by structures and systems that are hard to grasp, but by the malevolence of a
personalised opponent? <o:p></o:p></div>
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There’s a genre effect in play here, too, which first
began as one example of that kaleidoscopic imaginary, and which is now probably
exerting its own feedback effects. The storytelling importance of the Big Bad
can now be observed in every onscreen drama’s serial or box set. The Doctor must come to understand <a href="http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2016/04/doctor-who-10-things-you-may-not-know-about-bad-wolf">the true (and self-referential) nature of the Bad Wolf</a>. The Netflix Daredevil would be as nothing without the
mesmeric Wilson Fisk. Don’t you want to know who ‘H’ is in <i>Line of Duty</i>? It is
a cultural phenomenon designed to keep you watching, but which predisposes
people to look for the shadow behind the curtain.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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The obverse of this insistence on the
personal-as-political is our search for leadership. You can see this in the
huge regard for President Obama in liberal circles, and the fierce adherence to
President Trump among much of his base: Trump still has <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/">an average approval rating of just over 44 per cent</a> (a low-40s rating has been pretty constant
throughout this Presidency), even after his disastrous attempt to downplay the
coronavirus crisis. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If one thinks of voters faced with a sequence of chaotic
or cold contracts between themselves and the world, a politics of a thousand
cable channels and the call centre, this search for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/white-nationalist-terrorists-need-inspiration/595561/">the warm, the personal, the charismatic</a>, becomes more understandable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This trend, too, gives itself over to a strange kind of
antonym. Just as the disintegration of old groups and the constant coalescing
of new ones can create a personal sense of threat to mirror our singular sense
of self, so our yearning for a leader casting heat and light has as its other
face our fear of anti-heroes acting as the agents of hidden forces. Hope and
fear interact. Some inside the European Left see the hand of Israel everywhere.
Some among the fiercest Trump activists believe that he pretended to be in
league with Russia <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/qanon-the-far-right-conspiracy-movement-gaining-prominence-in-donald-trumps-america-11789402">to recruit Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller</a> into an
anti-paedophile drive.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Political ideas are not just governed by formal ‘politics’
as we have come to understand them: the affairs of parliaments, politicians and
civil servants. They are shaped, also, in the way that we think about ourselves
– in our case, by <a href="https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/3/16/14935336/big-data-politics-donald-trump-2016-elections-polarization">the deluge of data</a>, our individualistic self-image, new modes
of entertainment and our attendant craving for something or someone better. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Big McGuffin isn’t really out there. China probably
didn’t mean to hurt you. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52168096">5G isn’t going to kill you</a>. But the reasons why some
of us think like this are full of clues to who we have become.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-63485534185402352882020-02-17T04:47:00.000-08:002020-04-07T03:04:03.027-07:00The crookedness of the crooked<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCbraylv9tGIC2uOn64zwd0W8qOCje-wz8x9d2-oIK-fbHf4e6-POyzBxIdBc8YnDob0MlrgElb7wH_5dQCs8cGIy8qktI13AqLpbscO92mxU5_eNNJTJUHJEoa95KhTM0_9WIxUb8bQ/s1600/dominiccummings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCbraylv9tGIC2uOn64zwd0W8qOCje-wz8x9d2-oIK-fbHf4e6-POyzBxIdBc8YnDob0MlrgElb7wH_5dQCs8cGIy8qktI13AqLpbscO92mxU5_eNNJTJUHJEoa95KhTM0_9WIxUb8bQ/s400/dominiccummings.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Dominic Cummings is out of control. Prime Minister Boris
Johnson’s right-hand boremonger is going around Whitehall sacking people as if
someone elected him, a process that’s bound to end in tears. First he told a
bunch of worried Special Advisers that <a href="https://twitter.com/mrharrycole/status/1225861663699668993">he was going to get rid of half of them</a>.
They thought he was half-joking, but he wasn’t. People that one-dimensional
never joke. Most of those anxious Spads got sacked all right, as Cummings (<i>above</i>) tightened his grip on the machinery of government far beyond what Alistair
Campbell managed in the high days of New Labour.<br />
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Not content with that rather unpleasant and unnecessary
show of strength, Cummings then turned on the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid
Javid, in recent months one of the few Cabinet Ministers to show a spark of at
least proximate autonomy and humanity. First he let it be known that the Treasury
were thinking about a pensions raid on the rich <a href="https://www.cityam.com/boris-johnson-and-sajid-javid-weighing-up-a-mansion-tax/">and a Mansion Tax</a> – the Tory
equivalent of attacking Windsor Castle with nukes – and then he said that
everything in last week’s reshuffle was going to just be a steady-as-she-goes
readjustment. Ah, clever, clever, dastardly stuff.</div>
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Subsequently, pow! <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-13/javid-quits-in-protest-at-being-run-by-cummings-writes-robert-peston/">The Chancellor was forced to resign</a>
after being told he had to replace all his advisers and row in behind a ‘joint
team’ that was joint only in the sense that it was located somewhere between
Cummings’ arse and his elbow. And Tories everywhere ate it up, because No. 11
was some sort of weird socialist hangout that wanted to raise taxes everywhere
and, er, stop Cummings’ dreams of a great big spending spree. Classic, indeed,
vintage Dom – manoeuvrings worthy of <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/dominic-cummings-pj-masks-cabinet-a4359666.html">a <i>PJ Masks</i>-style caper</a> in the night time
we’re living through. It’s all so impressive and unexpected. If, that is, you
live in a world where people talking about NASA control rooms is seriously
mooted as some kind of amazing analytical breakthrough.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s leave him aside for a moment, and consider the
pygmies whose shoulders he stands on. Because Cummings is just a symptom of a
much, much deeper rot – the gangrene that tells you where the worst of the
wounds reside. The crooked tree can only stand in a crooked forest. His masters should sit in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, and
in normal times the kind of treatment he has meted out to staff in what is (let’s
face it) a real place of work would be reined in by actual Secretaries of
State. Unfortunately, these no longer exist, since they have been replaced by <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-cabinet-tells-him-what-he-wants-to-hear_uk_5e46ca46c5b64433c6159f15">a mysterious group of Churchill nodding dogs</a> who collectively seem to constitute
a postmodern joke about how far you can push things. The sort of supervillain
team that even the most avaricious late-seventies sci-fi ripoff merchant would
have turned down as too tightly spandexed for its own good. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At their head is Boris Johnson – a man who would look away
with the sweats if you showed him a diagram of what facts look like in a
catalogue. An Attorney General in Suella Braverman who doesn’t much like the
law, insofar as it applies to the Government as well as all those silly little
people you can’t see from No. 10. Newly installed as International Development
Secretary? Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who… <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/13/development-secretary-trevelyan-sceptical-about-foreign-aid">doesn’t think much of overseas aid</a>. Also,
Grant Shapps. Dear Lord! Grant Shapps at Transport! A man who made up an idiot
to detract from his own personality. And then there’s Dominic Raab, Lord Rictus
of Grin. That’s it. That’s the joke.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To be charitable, Raab is just an arrogant
couldn’t-care-less slab of heartless Easter Island impassivity that serves as mere
accoutrement to an archipelago of evil ruled over by <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/senior-official-collapses-after-row-with-patel-gt0tvgcjr">its own Queen of Death</a>,
Priti Patel – a woman who cares so little about you that she would even let you
linger there, on the basis that extinction would be too easy. Oh no. On you
live, forced to endure that spew of utter garbage that comes out of her maw,
all the better to give in to all those stinking fish meats and piles of rotting
dog food that have cornered you in an ever-emptying trash compactor, crying at
the last that your imprisonment actually amounts to the sweet, sweet nectar of
freedom. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So that’s it. Those are the people who are supposed to
control the Pocket <i>Spaceballs </i>Darth Vadar that Cummings thinks he has become: a kind of cult Dark Helmet for politicos. An
evil <i>Blockbusters </i>team from the late 1980s who think of themselves as so darn edgy
that they even have a living mascot, Liz Truss serving along with their college
scarves as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LBC/videos/457614325186416/">some sort of irritating Tigger</a> that forces you to atomise your teeth
by grinding them together so hard they distintegrate. They had to retire Chris Grayling, a kind of overstuffed and
unloved Charity Shop Teddy – a toy so cursed that the Cats Protection League
outlet trying to sell him burned down two days after his bathos-laden arrival –
because even they have, well, standards. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Why is this happening? There’s a single reason the Legion
of Unlikely Spandex are winning everything they touch, and it’s a lack of
anyone to oppose them. The broadcast and print media, who once locked horns
with big beasts such as Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, Nigel Lawson and Normal
Tebbit, seem enfeebled somehow by the ludicrous spectacle before them – and
let’s face it, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/16/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/">that’s a Trumpian tactic</a> that works everywhere. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember when Johnson said <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-48766451/boris-johnson-i-make-models-of-buses">he liked to build model buses</a>
out of old wine crates? He doesn’t. He was just making the point that he could say anything he likes, whenever he likes. Life
continued as normal, so he did it some more. And some more. You remember that
he bought that dog? Look, hate to break it to you, but he probably doesn't like dogs. Johnson’s
an important signifier, a postmodern marker of just how decadent we
are, how decadent we know we are, and how decadent we are to laugh about it. Like
the flaccid spectacle of Sam Raimi’s <i>Spider-Man 3</i>, but without the action – a
lozenge of exhausted ennui that would have been past its best under Harold
Macmillan, but somehow lingers on in a blaze of reupholstered finery. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So while the Government looks at <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6ac426a6-4f55-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5">taking the judiciary and the legal system apart</a>, all the better to execute its own will, and considers
abolishing the BBC as we know it altogether, where is the official Opposition?
‘Who?’, we hear you ask, entirely justifiably, and to be honest we’re right
behind you with the disbelief that they could be so bad and just irrelevant at
one and the same time, but their startling absence from the battlefield since
2015 is so discombobulating and so important that we have to consider it
somewhere. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Look, it’s been a litany of failure, a hopscotch across
the political minefield aimed at stamping on every lurking detonation possible
in an all-out push to end the agony. Their one hope? Shadow Brexit Secretary
Keir Starmer, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/keir-starmer-profile">a patently decent and intelligent man</a> who will very likely have
the bad luck to inherit a rag-tag band of misfits and misfires who couldn’t
even get into that 1979 <i>Star Wars</i> warmover that the ‘Cabinet’ feels embarrassed
about. He faces a bit of, well, an endurance test.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Keir Starmer, the future monarch in the dungeon who can
see the watery light shining through the window far above him, but is so far
down beneath it that he can only touch the illuminated column of dust that it
lights up within his reach. Tragically, as he tries to pull on it, the illusion
of solidity will likely dissolve in front of his face as he stands there in the
Marianna Trench of political prisons that Seumas Milne and <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/02/assessing-defeat">Andrew Murray have dug for him</a>. Maybe they’ll make a Lego set of the scene as a whole, and kids can light
up different policies around Starmer’s feet like that diving bell that picks
out bits of the Titanic’s dining room.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Keir Starmer, a prince among <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-general-election-labour-alan-simpson-seamus-milne-karie-murphy-a9324066.html">the quarterwits who ram-packed the court of Bad King Lazy McTemper</a> by virtue of the one awful truth that he
must hide from them all, the long-feared revelation that he has recently read a
book. Keir Starmer, the man forced to tolerate The Leader Who Must Not Now Be
Named – a political bad guy so tedious that he was even more poorly sketched
than Voldemort (and twice as derivative). Keir Starmer, who turned into The
Human Sigh as he had to stand next to Nu-Voldemort in Brussels. He’d make a
good Victoria Wood song, but there’s not enough syllables in his name for a
really good rousing chorus along the lines of that much-loved classic, ‘Ann
Widdecombe’. At least no-one has to hear that Seven Nation Army chant again. Thank
God.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All this Carnival of Revelry is precisely why Dom can do
his vintage stuff – because there’s no-one to stop him, the press stultified by
the sheer stupidity of what they’re seeing, Labour having formed an
inward-facing firing squad straight out of Reservoir Dogs, most of the Liberal
Tories having been vanquished, and the Liberal Democrats having all but disappeared.
So he’ll push and push and push, until he is forced to up the ante once more by saying
stuff so poisonous that it’ll do for him. It’ll probably be his sad devotion to
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives">the long-discredited concept of IQ</a> and the pseudo-science of eugenics that spins
him off into furious renewed exile on a farm full of books. But the pretext
doesn’t matter. He’ll just have to cross the road, and cross it again, to pick a
fight – with himself. No-one else seems to want the hassle.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Reader, you are tethered to them – for now. But most of
this has happened before, and lots of this will happen again. Cummings will
overreach himself. He will be sacked soon. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but someday in the not-too-distant future. The Cabinet will blunder. Labour will eventually see the goal, and then start
shooting at it, hopefully before our Sun goes nova and swallows us all. Until
that day, remember: <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/never-despair/">never flinch, never weary</a>, and never despair.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-62444845452435278902020-01-19T06:44:00.004-08:002020-01-19T12:13:24.394-08:00So what should Labour do now? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Ir_1W03LcCO4iJayC5o74VRv2TOQo8rMcTiEPbzVUoKu2HqMuRyzHnUG1_LECQjBcTVlOkSfNBW0IeaUNJ9GYhyphenhyphenN6FUu9OcSK6NC5tK6S5UQ-9neO0Fl_xhi0VXj7lRPFIpBKGRCgXk/s1600/keir-starmer-one.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Ir_1W03LcCO4iJayC5o74VRv2TOQo8rMcTiEPbzVUoKu2HqMuRyzHnUG1_LECQjBcTVlOkSfNBW0IeaUNJ9GYhyphenhyphenN6FUu9OcSK6NC5tK6S5UQ-9neO0Fl_xhi0VXj7lRPFIpBKGRCgXk/s400/keir-starmer-one.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The UK’s Labour Party is starting to pick up the pieces after an epic defeat – leaderless, rudderless, and to be frank rather desperate. It must now winnow out the reasons for its historic reverse, and find a way forward that will prevent it ever being hammered in the same way again. We’ve been here before, of course, though history never quite repeats itself: Neil Kinnock said that <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/social-affairs/politics/house/72223/things-could-only-get-better">the 1983 election debacle could ‘never, ever’ happen again</a> when he took up the reins of Labour leadership later that year. Well, it has. And although the lessons must be somewhat different, the search for them is not. Here’s what we’ve taken away from the disaster of 2019: ten things that the party needs to think about, and to solve, before it can ever hold power again.
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<b>One. Get better leaders. </b>It was, without doubt, Labour’s top
team that <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/23/their-own-words-why-voters-abandoned-labour">turned a possible defeat into a rout</a>. You can’t go into an election
led by the most unpopular major party leader in the entirety of British polling
history and expect to get anywhere. But Labour members decided to stick with their
totem, come what may – fervent, for the most part, in their support for a
totally inappropriate Mr Grumpy with more baggage than British Airways. <a href="https://medium.com/@takooba/the-mounting-lies-of-jeremy-corbyn-56b0c5e739e3">He lied and he lied</a> and he lied, on issues big and small, outside <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2018-09-26/corbyn-there-is-no-threat-at-party-conference-as-jewish-mp-seeks-police-protection/">and inside the Labour Party</a>, and indeed at times it was possible to believe that he could not open
his mouth without an untruth escaping. We’d make a list, but to be honest it would probably
bust all those servers on which we’re relying. By 12 December it appeared that
he might turn up in a mask and call himself Ceremy Jorbyn. Well, it caught up
with him in the end.</div>
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But it wasn’t just Jeremy Corbyn that did Labour in. With
a few honourable exceptions, the rest of the Shadow Cabinet was composed of a
seriously strange group of oddballs from whom the electorate ran a mile. For
some devil-may-care reason known only to themselves, the Labour Party decided
to flood the airwaves with footage of Barry Gardiner, a caricature of black-and-white <i>Flash Gordon</i> villains lacking only the moustache-twirling
believability of the original, and Richard Burgon – Richard Burgon! – a man who
quite frankly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-leadership-nominations-richard-burgon-jeremy-corbyn-keir-starmer-a9282031.html">makes the Cookie Monster look plausible</a>. Although, on reflection,
that’s not really very fair to the Big C-Mon. Rule one: just put out some
spokes who aren’t complete whackjobs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Two. Stop talking complete nonsense.</b> If we put Brexit to
one side for a moment – and it is more than fair to say that on this biggest of
issues, Labour found itself impaled on a cruel dilemma – then the next most
important thing to say about their 2019 ‘campaign’ was that they should shred
their manifesto. Before dumping it in an unmarked lime pit. We have to say,
dear reader, that we have never seen such an unmitigated laundry list of
fantasies hit the printers. According to Labour, they were going to nationalise
all the utilities, while unbundling Openreach, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/15/how-feasible-is-labour-free-broadband-plan-and-part-nationalisation-of-bt">nationalising broadband and providing it for free</a>; they were going to take Universal Credit apart and put it back
together; they were going to organise a big council house drive while
insulating every new home in the country (and, eventually, every single house, however old); and they
were going to build a National Education Service and a National Care Service.
Not that anyone every really knew what they meant by either of those last
ideas. Oh, and expand High Speed Rail. In a country that has only ever managed
to build 68 miles of the stuff. All at the same time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The cost issues were similarly befuddling. Labour said
they’d issued a fully funded manifesto, but then said <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/12/revealed-why-labour-s-waspi-policy-wont-benefit-poorer-pensioners">they’d refund women who’d ‘lost’ their pensions</a> at the age of 60 (though they wouldn’t say how) – to the
tune of £58bn. They said that their nationalisations would cost nothing because
they’d own the assets on the credit side of the ledger, while saying that
they’d sweat and degrade those assets by slashing prices. They fibbed that tax
rises would be limited only to the top five per cent of earners, while pushing
up Capital Gains Tax for anyone with shares or property and cutting the tax
allowance for all married couples. They seriously underestimated <a href="https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1197480704289972225?s=20">the cost of abolishing university tuition fees</a> in England. And so on. By the end, <a href="https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/11/does-he-want-to-be-pm-really-it-was-worse-than-prince-andrew-she-has-bagpipes-playing-in-her-head-all-the-time-my-election-focus-groups-in-scotland/">voters actually laughed</a> as Labour offered them a free speedboat and a new swimming
pool. Maybe pare down the promises next time, guys.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Three. Your policies were not popular.</b> One of the most
depressing sights of recent days has been Labour people going around saying
‘our policies were popular’. Repeat these words, please: they were not popular.
Yes, if you ask people if they think certain things are a good idea, without attaching
costs to them, and without asking them if they believe they will hang together
as a whole, people might like to nationalise the trains (it might even be a
good idea). <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/12/labour-economic-policies-are-popular-so-why-arent-">But together? With this team?</a> Voters hated it - <a href="https://medium.com/@dijdowell/give-the-voters-credit-4d13350ee861">and with good reason</a>, before you go and start second guessing them. Even post-election,
the same pattern has been repeated again and again: if you ask voters whether
they want, say, energy nationalisation, or more spending on the National Health
Service, they’ll straight away put their hands up and say ‘yes, please’. But if
you associate those ideas with Labour, and most of all with Corbyn, <a href="https://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/bmg-independent-labour-policies-popular-but-many-want-change-in-direction/">they’ll put those hands right back down again</a>. Exactly the same thing happened with Michael Howard in
the run-up to the 2005 election, for exactly the same reasons: the Conservatives
did not have the credibility to speak out about anything, and they hadn’t put
the hard yards in to convince people that they might. The outcome was the same:
defeat. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Selling things to the electorate isn’t about publishing a
list of things they might like, and it isn’t even about getting out an essay
packed with stuff they agree with: it’s about creating an overall narrative, an
impression, mood or emotional bond, that they identify with, can believe and
which resonates both with them and with people they perceive as being like
them. That’s why the impression that Labour politicians and members still think
they put a good case to the people – <a href="https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1218251129353637890?s=20">that they ‘deserved’ to win</a> – is so
lethal. It threatens, <a href="https://diamonddavewonfor.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/the-god-that-failed-notes-on-the-death-of-the-left/">and in Labour’s case has nearly severed</a>, that bond of
emotional connectivity and trust. Many voters are still watching, you know.
Those that are will now say ‘okay, you didn’t listen to my beliefs and wishes
yet again, so I’m going to punish you one more time until you do’. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Four. Take your lessons.</b> Labour people are dazed. Many of
them put their heart and soul into a campaign that went so wrong it could be
hung up as a picture of wrongness. It’s no wonder that they don’t want to admit
fault. That’s natural, and understandable. But they’ve already wasted more than
a month refusing to admit the reality of their plight while Prime Minister
Boris Johnson has been on the beach laughing at them. They’d better start to
take their December lessons to heart, and in a big way, before they get labelled
for the purposes of the 2024 election – just as David Cameron was able to
define them as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/liam-byrne-apology-letter-there-is-no-money-labour-general-election">a bunch of big-spending wasters</a> between 2010 and 2015. This doesn’t mean
undertaking any particular intellectual exercise. Labour does too much thinking. Plenty of
people could come up with new or amended policy suggestions. What the party
doesn’t do enough of is that deep and truth-telling emotional reflection that
<a href="https://medium.com/@anthonypainter/labour-is-only-asking-itself-the-questions-it-is-willing-to-answer-2be35a991fb0">permits discourse rather than confrontation</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Admit it: you failed. See those people sleeping rough?
You failed them. See those people suffering on those hospital trolleys? You
failed them. See all those young people losing their European passports? You
failed them too. Because you were too self-centred to see yourselves as others
saw you. It’s like an alcoholic: before you can start to move forward, you have
to be honest with yourselves. You have to realise that you’ve hit rock bottom.
Those party members <a href="https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1218254537624117250?s=20">still coming out with that Seven Nation Army chant</a>, or
talking about how they got more votes than Tony Blair did in 2005, or <a href="https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/12/19/don-t-blame-the-media-for-corbyn-s-failure-blame-him">moaning about the press</a>? They’re never going to make it into recovery, because they’re
not being truthful. Make no mistake about it: there are lots and lots more Labour
seats vulnerable to exactly the same type of Tory surge that we’ve just witnessed:
on our count, <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative">about 40 of them</a>. Act now, and you can save the house: lie to
yourself about your true situation, and you’ll be out on the street with your
furniture arrayed around you. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Five. Why don’t you cheer up for a change?</b> One thing
Boris Johnson has is tiggerish enthusiasm. We can’t stand him, and like as not
neither can you – but he exudes (or at least pretends to exude) optimism.
Labour doesn’t. It’s always moaning on about how bad things are. About how
broken Britain is. About how there’s only 24 hours to ‘save the NHS’. Now
there’s a truth there, and a problem. The truth: Britain’s public services are
in a total mess. Accident and Emergency admissions are feeding back their worst
ever numbers. The public realm, or at least those bits of the public realm
cash-starved councils are responsible for, is falling to bits. Taxes are really
high (<a href="https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019/article/how-high-are-our-taxes-and-where-does-the-money-come-from">at their highest medium-term level since the 1940s</a>), but no-one has much to
show for them. It’s totally fair enough, and in our view correct, for the social
democratic party that Labour should be to make that case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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The problem is that most people don’t feel like that, for
good reason. Real wages were going up at the end of last year, which they
weren’t at the time of the 2017 election. Unemployment is low. Self-reported
happiness <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2018tomarch2019">has been rising</a>, and hasn’t been this high for a very long time – <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/reading_the_past/">most likely, in fact, since the 1950s</a>. Britain is a relatively open, liberal,
cosmopolitan, thoughtful, tolerant place, certainly in comparison to many other
European states – and despite Johnson’s successful appeal to some of its more
socially conservative and insular instincts. Most British people are living
ever more enriched and enriching lives, even as under-35s are finding it harder
and harder to start making their own way. They’re going to the football and the
theatre, reading more and buying more books; they’re doing their gardening; going
running and cycling; watching box sets at home; going to the pub; knitting, jam
making, birdwatching and rambling. Just as British people’s very dense and
associative lives insulated them psychologically from the Depression of the
1930s, hampering Labour’s progress then, the party’s basic emotive case just
makes no sense to most people. They don’t think Britain’s broken. Labour should
stop talking like it is.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Six. Get organised.</b> Labour could have saved some of those
seats that went blue. Not all of them, by a long way, but by marshalling their
ground forces more efficiently, and actually listening to experienced
campaigners, they could have held on to Bury North, for instance, and maybe a
dozen or more others. <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahalothman/labour-activists-marginal-seats">Instead, they went all out for a ’90 per cent strategy</a>’, attacking across a broad front in a hopeless and doomed full-on assault. ‘Forget the polls’, they said: ‘we know better’. ‘We’re going to go after every
seat in the country’. Yeah, well. Trying to win Wycombe <a href="https://twitter.com/MrsBurgin/status/1218639959843835904">and Altrincham</a> which,
yes, one day might fall to Labour… didn’t work out. 12 December 2019 wasn’t
that day, as anyone who can read a map and some charts could have told you beforehand.
Labour apparatchik Karie Murphy, however – at whose door some of the blame for
the disasters of the last few years must rest – knew better. And since she was
in charge of Labour’s campaign, that was that. The Tory majority ballooned out
to eighty, when it could have been cut pretty simply to maybe fifty or sixty.
That might prove to be important if Johnson’s Brexit deals ever run into
trouble.<o:p></o:p></div>
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More illuminating is the question of what Murphy was
doing running an election campaign in the first place. Since she has absolutely
no qualifications to be doing so, what on Earth was going on? One, she is close
to Len McCluskey, Labour’s number one power broker. Two, Shadow Chancellor John
McDonnell insisted on pushing her (and most of her team) out of Corbyn’s office
back in the autumn. McDonnell saw her as an obstacle to Labour’s new policy on
a second referendum, but couldn’t get rid of her entirely. So Labour HQ at
Southside was lumbered with her, to predictable effect. In the end, Corbynism
became such an insular and nepotistic phenomenon, of just a handful of mates
who’d known each other for decades, that most of the data and analytics team
were ignored. <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/108922/excl-jeremy-corbyn-allies-karie-murphy-and-jennie">They’ve just survived an attempt</a> by Murphy and General Secretary
Jennie Formby to abolish them altogether. Here’s a hint: don’t do that. Hire
more data people. It's the amateurs you need shot of.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Seven. Clean up your toxic culture. </b>Voters can see inside
parties. They do read the papers and search the web, you know. They can read. They
often draw lessons from how parties are run, as a way of imagining how they
might run the country if they get into Downing Street. And what they saw when
they looked at Labour was and is not pretty at all. Labour has quite simply
become <a href="https://medium.com/@stephane_ulrich/whats-going-on-in-witney-clp-in-oxfordshire-9035f43eff3c">an absolute sink of anger, hatred, rage and racism</a>. We must make clear
at this point that the vast majority of members are not like that at all. Most
of them are Soft Left devotees of a fairer society and a bit more socialism.
They’re <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/01/18/keir-starmer-beats-rebecca-long-bailey-63-37-secon">probably about to vote for Keir Starmer</a> (<i>above</i>) as leader. They’d have voted
for Andy Burnham in 2015 if Corbyn hadn’t made the ballot. They like Sadiq
Khan. But a minority of them have completely lost the plot. You can scroll
through plenty of Corbynite Facebook groups if you want to see what we mean.
Apparently all the leadership contenders this time are ‘Zionist stooges’ for
accepting the Board of Deputy’s ten-point plan for ridding the party of
antisemitism, a racist assertion which rather makes the Board’s point for it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The problem goes wider than antisemitism (though that
affliction is by far the most poisonous of Labour’s problems). Labour has been
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/22/kelvin-hopkins-ava-etemadzadeh-labour-mp-cross-examine-harassment-accuser">turning a blind eye</a> to a culture of bullying, abuse and sexual assault for a
long time. It’s been giving loads of leftie men – and of course the vast
majority of the offenders are men – a pass on their nasty old ways while
pretending to be all trendy about workplace rights, sex, gender and women’s
bodies. In with the clique? Why, sir, why don’t you have a free pass.
Ideological enemy? Out on your ear. It was ever thus of course in Westminster’s
many corridors, and there is no doubt that other parties have similar problems,
but when placed alongside Labour’s deep problem with online abuse, <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/labour-anti-semitism-bbc-panorama-jeremy-corbyn-iplayer-video-498779">the kickback against whistleblowing</a> and denialism reached across from the party’s antisemitism
crisis and spread out across the machinery’s upper echelons. Labour’s next
leader <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/labour-leadership-corbyn-election-keir-starmer-rebecca-long-bailey-a9279336.html">must crack down – hard</a>. On the rash of antisemitism that is disfiguring
the British Left wherever you look, but also on the wider atmosphere of
intolerance. If they do nothing, just on this one point, they’ll lose yet again,
and what’s more they’ll deserve to lose. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Eight. You’re not better than other people.</b> One of the
things that really gets up voters’ noses is that Labour members seem to think
that they’re a cut above. It’s taken for granted that Labour’s policies, and
even more so its ideas, are <a href="https://thebaffler.com/latest/necessary-anger-penny">better and on principle more <i>moral </i>than others</a> – as
if a bigger and more powerful state is <i>per se </i>more likely to lead to the better
life. That might be the case, and in our view given Britain’s dilapidated
infrastructure it is very likely so, but you don’t have to sound so smug about
it. Firstly because it makes you look like you’re walking round with your noses
in the air, and secondly because it makes you look ridiculous whenever you try to do some
real politics. The claim to be all principle, and no pragmatism, has been
made much worse by Corbynism and all the years in opposition, but it’s always
been there – the idea that the further Left you go, the more self-denying and
genuinely caring you are.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is nonsense. Politics is about choice. Every leader, everywhere, must choose between ends and means, and indeed between ends and between
means. It is in fact more moral to get through to the end of the day without
disaster – and without too many people getting hurt – than it is to blow up a
public policy catastrophe because you meant it and you thought you were right.
So you don’t ‘triangulate’ or compromise, is that it? <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-reveals-brexit-compromise-policy-in-bid-to-head-off-row-11812554">You triangulated on the biggest issue of the decade</a>, namely Brexit. You triangulated on the ultimate
question, talking out of both sides of your mouth about Trident. You triangulated
on the Union between England and Scotland. You triangulated on Universal Credit
and the benefits cap. You triangulated on immigration. You triangulated on
private schools. All well and good, because that’s politics, but don’t come out
and tell the voters that you’ve got some hotline to what’s good and right. In
the end, you know all those times you said that you hated everybody else - <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/laura-pidcock-i-dont-miss-being-in-the-same-room-as-tories/">especially those evil Tories</a>? Well,
the joke’s on you, because you got a third of the votes on a 67 per cent
turnout. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-poll-tory-majority-boris-johnson-brexit-remain-tactical-voting-a9236691.html">Nearly half Labour's Remain voters</a> said they would have voted for another and more pro-European party if they were best placed to win. So around 13 or 14 per cent of the
electorate loved what you were selling. Maybe it's not the Tories that everybody hates.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Nine. Enough of the Live Action Role Playing.</b> Labour’s present
leadership election has witnessed an outbreak of ‘prolier than thou’
game-playing that really has to be seen to be believed. Apparently, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/emily-thornberry-so-poor-as-a-child-cats-were-put-down-islington-south-labour-a7964846.html">you have to have grown up in a paper bag</a> if you want to lead Britain. This is all very
well, and like other entries in this ten-point list contains a valid truth: you
are only really likely to understand what poverty really feels like – truly,
deeply – if you’ve lived through it. But Labour are pushing this far too far
when they’re primarily a middle-class party made up of older graduates who live
in the South (the single biggest group are Londoners) and who’ve paid off their
mortgages – a flaw that feeds into policy, as well as presentation. The language in which <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2018-09-22/labour-plans-new-laws-to-put-workers-on-boards/">laudable appeals to ‘workers’ control’</a> and a big increase in
trade unions’ power was couched would have had a slightly ludicrous whiff about them in the
1990s, let alone the 2020s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The ‘prolier than thou’ crowd often make Labour look
absurd. No-one else says ‘comrade’. No-one else poses with clenched fists. Very few
Britons talk about ‘socialism’. Especially not when many of the adherents of
this politics of the Durham Miners’ gala had fairly comfortable upbringings which
in fact allowed them to get a foothold in the Labour Party in the first place
(yes, <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/10/its-time-to-talk-about-class">we’re talking about you, Laura Pidcock</a>). Labour is in danger of becoming,
not a political party, but a beleaguered subculture with a language and a
self-referential outlook all its own. Remember that rash of Corbynite wordplay,
in which everyone was a ‘melt’ or a ‘slug’ who had to be ‘salted’? No-one took
that seriously, even at the time, but Britain’s Left is at serious risk of
spinning off into its own lexicography: of <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ed-miliband-new-labour/">‘neoliberalism’ not cuts</a>, ‘resistance’
not power, ‘class’ and not culture. Get off Twitter, leave your meetings and
stop going to conferences. Just meet some workaday voters, like most MPs have
to – explaining, of course, their widespread horror at what’s been going on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Ten. Stop trashing your record. </b>The maiden speech made by
Coventry South’s new Member of Parliament certainly made a splash. In it, Zarah Sultana gave in part a good account of her generation’s worries: the
concentration of economic power, the threat of insecure work, the climate
crisis. But there was something else there, too, which won’t and can’t help
Labour: the characterisation of <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-mp-26-demands-end-21286565">the last forty years in British public life as ‘Thatcherism’</a>. Now it might have escaped your notice, but Labour was in office
and in power as well for thirteen years between 1997 and 2010. They had a big
majority. The Blair and Brown governments were hyperactive on the domestic
stage. Some of their policies leaned to the Right by present-day Labour
standards – on crime and justice, for instance, although Labour yet again tried
to have its cake and eat it in 2019 when it said <a href="https://labour.org.uk/page/tory-police-cuts/">it would recruit many more police officers</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But they also led radical and reforming governments that, and let’s check our notes, brought in a big windfall levy on the utilities to pay
for an attack on youth joblessness, <a href="https://institute.global/news/new-labours-domestic-policies-neoliberal-social-democratic-or-unique-blend">halved child poverty</a>, massively increased
Child Benefit, legislated for the National Minimum Wage and the Right to Roam
that the Left had been fighting for since the beginning of the twentieth
century, secured devolution across the United Kingdom and peace in Northern
Ireland, practically abolished cancer treating waiting lists, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rough-sleeping-homelessness-blair-government-labour-record-a8490436.html">virtually eliminated rough sleeping</a>… and so on. Voters know this. Once again, they are
not stupid. They know humbug when they hear it. And they’re not going to vote
Labour while you tell them both that the evidence of their own eyes is wrong,
and that the Coalition and Tory governments that have gutted many public services
are no different to others. Why should they? It’s fine and right to say that
Labour in office got plenty of things wrong, and that Labour today would do things
very differently: slagging your own party off? Not so much. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So there are ten ways we’d recommend that Labour change. Elect
and appoint more plausible leaders. Stop promising everything to everyone.
Admit that you got it wrong, and allow yourself <a href="https://www.thesocialreview.co.uk/2020/01/05/labour-isnt-reflecting/">a truly honest and affecting self-examination</a>. Speak optimistically. Get yourselves straight. Stop it with
the hate and the jibes. Stop walking around like you’re the big I am. Break out of your
bubble and take credit, not brickbats, for your achievements. Stuff like that. If this sounds
like Politics 101, it is – it amounts to just saying ‘sort yourselves out’.
It’s a mark of how far Labour has fallen that most of this needs to be said at
all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Labour’s malaise is deep-seated. It is a party that is
very unsure what it stands for, and even whether it wants to make its case in the media at all. It deploys outriders when it could put out MPs – <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613758/asteroid-mining-bubble-burst-history/?utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_share&utm_content=2019-07-25">asteroid mining</a>
enthusiast and boor Aaron Bastani, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/09/17/if-you-dont-understand-banks-dont-write-about-them/#3138bd5f2e69">technically-challenged ‘economist’</a> Grace Blakeley, social
media sensation and flat-track bully Owen Jones, ultra-partisan Lexiteer Lara
McNeill. Every time they appear on TV, Labour loses votes. It’s as simple as
that. The party could put out Lou Haigh, or Rachel Reeves, or Yvette Cooper, or even
Angela Rayner. Every time they appear, from most wings of the party by the way,
Labour probably gains votes – votes they desperately need, as they continue <a href="https://www.opinium.co.uk/political-polling-15th-january-2020/">to go backwards</a> and away from power.<br />
<br />
But does it have the will to get out there and
fight, or will it just continue to huddle together around the camp fires of its
own comfort, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-the-map-of-british-politics-has-been-redrawn-11885274">holed up in cities and university towns</a> when it could be
getting out into the wider country and winning arguments? Can it start to make
progress measured against the tough yardsticks above? The voters as a whole – who desperately need a
functioning Opposition, let alone an alternative government – must really hope that it does. If it doesn’t, very many long years in the wilderness lie ahead.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-18129242525874871672019-12-23T05:49:00.001-08:002019-12-23T07:19:09.534-08:00Getting it wrong, getting it right<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDd88pR5lEM4AqbCSDhCSFadzaDWkKzSefeIJH3R5DMfmMHI5tyLZQQ5J1raXFFrcjTXQKofmByc2E7luK2iMVbE1t9HzHvF7Ku3yR4Zy8Wc1SVhwCy_fitBROQRpqzC1GUCoXoJkSzJ0/s1600/UKelection2019_ElectionMap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1089" data-original-width="1600" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDd88pR5lEM4AqbCSDhCSFadzaDWkKzSefeIJH3R5DMfmMHI5tyLZQQ5J1raXFFrcjTXQKofmByc2E7luK2iMVbE1t9HzHvF7Ku3yR4Zy8Wc1SVhwCy_fitBROQRpqzC1GUCoXoJkSzJ0/s400/UKelection2019_ElectionMap.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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So it may not have escaped your notice that the UK has
just held <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/dec/12/uk-general-election-2019-full-results-live-labour-conservatives-tories">a decisive General Election</a> (<i>above</i>). The Conservatives triumphant; the
Scottish National Party celebrating; everyone else flatlining or crushed. The
age of English and Scottish Nationalism is upon us, and our next constitutional
battles are likely to see those two forces fight it out for the future of the
United Kingdom. Oh good.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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But where does that leave our predictions, here at Public
Policy and the Past? One of the main losers on 12 December was Britain’s main
Opposition, the Labour Party. <a href="https://capx.co/the-real-reasons-labour-lost/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-real-reasons-labour-lost">They got run out of town</a> in whole areas of the
country where they used to dominate – not just stereotypical ‘Northern
England’, where if you read some of the papers you’d think there was a whippet
and a pint of warm ale on every corner – but in parts of the Midlands and South
where they used to dominate. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s go to Harlow and Stevenage, shall we? Two New Towns
full of blue-collar workers where Labour held the historically-marginal seats
until 2010. Now it’s a sea of blue as far as the eye can see. What about
Cannock Chase, or Redditch in Worcestershire? They’re now so far out of
Labour’s reach that they would need arms like a Mr Man to get anywhere near.
There are simply not enough urban, young or studenty seats (hello, Edinburgh
South and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truro_and_Falmouth_(UK_Parliament_constituency)">Truro and Falmouth</a>) to make up for Labour’s historic collapse across
Deep England – North, South, East and West. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That presents us with a problem, because, er, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/11/jeremy-corbyns-labour-is-now-likely-to.html">we said Labour could win this</a> – not as a majority (without any real presence in
Scotland, that looks impossible), but as a minority governing with the say-so
of other parties – particularly the SNP and the Liberal Democrats. That was,
well, let’s not gloss this… wrong. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That’s okay in a way though, because <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/06/learning-from-general-election.html">as we’ve said before</a>
the job of speculating (let’s not call it forecasting, shall we?) is to learn –
to see clearly where you thought the pieces would fall, and the reasons why you
thought that, against how they actually broke down. So this election result is
a great opportunity to test our priors against reality. Why did we think Labour
could get so close to the Tories, and why didn’t they? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s what <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/06/its-all-coming-up-roses-for-jeremy.html">we thought back in the summer</a>: Labour was
deeply unpopular, but it still had three advantages over the Conservatives.
One, the Tories were imploding. Their Parliamentary Party was in the process of
what looked like a historic split between Liberal Conservatives and Tory
particularists (as in 1846). Two, Boris Johnson was a great leader for Labour,
deeply, deeply unpopular among all those swathes of liberal and Remain England
in which the red team had to get a hearing and win back Liberal Democrat and
Green defectors (and <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/12/so-where-are-dont-knows-now.html">those famous Don’t Knows</a>). Three, Labour had and has a
huge membership that could give them a big advantage in the ground game –
flooding marginal seats with activists that might not be able to convert people
to their cause, but sure could Get Out The Vote.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Turns out <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/13/labours-red-wall-demolished-by-tory-onslaught">this was really wrong</a>. But we’ve at least got three
categories in which to ask the question: why? Setting up opinions, and setting
yourselves up to get shot down or proved wrong, is a good thing for these
reasons. It allows self-reflection. It permits self-audit. It gives you the
colour-in boxes to fill in after the event, and maybe to ask better questions
and get it wrong more narrowly next time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So, category one. The Tories didn’t implode. Prime
Minister Johnson was able to expel the dissident pro-European wing from his
Parliamentary Party and lose almost no electoral support. Amidst all the talk
of Labour Leavers and their desertion from Labour, there’s been nowhere near
enough talk of Conservative Remainers. In the end, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election">a big majority of them stayed with the Tories</a>. Why? Well, they were simply afraid of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. On top of (and related to) that, the Liberal Democrats had a
torrid campaign in which yet again almost everything went wrong
for them, as in 2017 - though the experiences of the February 1974 and June 1983 elections ought to have alerted us earlier to the possibility that two unpleasant extremes might tear their voter base apart rather than glue it together. In any case, a more emollient Labour leader and a more humble, focused Liberal
Democrat advance might have rumbled the Tories. It didn’t happen. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On to category two. Johnson was indeed unpopular, but there
are two reasons why this didn’t matter in the end. He <a href="https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/labour-support-solidifies-as-expectations-grow-of-a-tory-win-my-final-election-dashboard/">wasn’t all that unpopular in Leave England</a> (or Leave Wales): and because his mission was to unite the Leave
vote around himself, and not around Nigel Farage’s upstart Brexit Party, that
was all fine and dandy for him. The Brexit Party crashed to almost nothing, and
despite having a couple of what amounted to good by-elections amidst the din
(in Barnsley and Hartlepool), the very darkly comic character known as ‘Boris’
in the end looked like the best bet for everyone who wanted to leave the
European Union. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The second reason why Johnson triumphed, despite being
one of the most unpopular PMs ever at this stage of his stay in No. 10, was
that <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/general-election-2019">he was pretty popular when set against Corbyn</a>. Johnson was the political
equivalent of a McDonald’s: divisive, likely to make you pretty unhealthy in
the end, but a fast and dirty meal. Corbyn was more like a Little Chef: much
talked about, never visited.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What about three, Labour’s ground game? Well, that didn’t
work that well. <a href="https://eyalclyne.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/reflections-on-our-defeat-and-the-challenge-ahead/?fbclid=IwAR24nMxm9ARxZe_Ce_PTseI0LxEJOv8DtlL37_dFE7N2EbWPEuXXp0ziofI">You can’t polish a turd</a>, of course – and Labour’s manifesto was
absolutely deadly in that it made people laugh, not read. But the interesting
points here go deeper. Activist turnout and effects were good in Putney, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-gain-putney-first-seat-21086993">Labour’s only gain of the night</a>,
where the party was able to put out hundreds and hundreds of activists. Anywhere
near a train station, on the Tube, at the end of a tram line? Great. Young
engaged activists could pour in and make a big difference. Anywhere else –
anywhere where you needed a car, say, oh… everywhere in Deep England? Much less
successful. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Labour’s targeting operation also sent those really fresh
and optimistic troops <a href="https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1208503645584666626">into dead-cert Tory seats</a>, thus throwing away one of their only advantages. They did that partly because
election supremo Karie Murphy doesn’t really know anything about elections, to some extent
because their reading of 2017 was that they weren’t aggressive enough to gain
more seats, and in places because they wanted to move people away from where
they might actually save Labour MPs who don’t like Corbyn. As so often, one of
the most tragic elements is just how much hope and goodwill has been squandered
by the Labour-haters who now occupy the Labour cockpit. <o:p></o:p></div>
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One last thing. As so often, the feeling from the gut,
and the first trigger movement, were right – and all the intellectualising and
post-hoc data were wrong. Here at Public Policy and the Past, our first
instinct was that Labour was <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/11/labour-could-be-staring-at-historic.html">heading for a terrible defeat</a> from the moment <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/07/jeremy-corbyn-cannot-lead-labour.html">it elected Corbyn</a>. That’s not a Left-Right point so much as a point about the
people around him, the long associations and ideas with which he was associated
and would by which he would become known, and the poisonous influence of the
super-union Unite – which has now taken over the Labour Party in all but name. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many Corbynite insights are right. Britain does need much
better public services, better organised public transport, more lifelong
education. But as we’ve said again and again, these weren’t the people, and
their presumptions weren’t the ideas, by which to carry that argument. Let’s
end this experiment <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-wrongness-of-corbynism.html">where we began</a>, in the autumn of 2015: <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There is a difference between inspiration and the
peddling of false hope. Because what will happen when Mr Corbyn is either
ousted by his Parliamentary colleagues, or – even worse for Labour – is
actually allowed to collide with the electorate, like a piece of space debris
burning up as it smashes into the atmosphere? The eye-popping but fake sugar
rush of this microwaved Tony Benn’s elevation having passed, the subsequent
crash will be terrible. There will be the blankest, darkest, most painful
despair you can imagine, followed by blame – of Blairites, the media, the
public themselves – who were not clever or far-sighted enough to accede to the
Corbyn revelation… And then what? Then what? The answer, you know in your hearts,
is this: decades of unbroken Conservative dominance. And a Britain that becomes
less fair, less equal, less open, less liberal, less European – and less
respected – with every passing day.</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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So there are three interesting academic lessons to be
learned from the 2019 General Election: about the nature of the Conservative
vote, now quite dependent on older, more socially conservative Britons who live
in towns; the importance of relative and not absolute popularity; and the
limits of a load of activists carrying a message that voters just don’t like.
But the most important lesson of all? Sometimes, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-corbyn-illusion.html">trust your instincts</a>.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-43314007365039233612019-12-02T08:51:00.002-08:002019-12-03T08:24:18.259-08:00So where are the don't knows now? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-2sCOC3aCFLu_gyOezWXpBHeX1bOhwPzxDuA5Uwm9vkr72PzD-nR_rdFYFDIYnWSfg8auJ3WZYI6WIkQ6PfA0o74IAZisjRbEyLaYBsPFtPj3lvGAGmNJza4djmnvJHvs3TX5wFfnIA/s1600/Voting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1121" data-original-width="1600" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-2sCOC3aCFLu_gyOezWXpBHeX1bOhwPzxDuA5Uwm9vkr72PzD-nR_rdFYFDIYnWSfg8auJ3WZYI6WIkQ6PfA0o74IAZisjRbEyLaYBsPFtPj3lvGAGmNJza4djmnvJHvs3TX5wFfnIA/s400/Voting.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Regular readers will know that Public Policy and the Past
is <a href="https://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/10/can-labour-surge-again.html">obsessed, absolutely obsessed</a>, with the ‘don’t knows’ that you don’t usually
read about when you scan the headline figures in voting intention polls. So - as we head towards the finishing line of yet another national election (thank the Lord), maybe
it’s time to have another look at them. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are three reasons for going back over this territory.
The first is a general point. The don’t knows form the background hum of where
the voters are coming in and out of each big camp – where the parties don’t
have to detach people from another tribe to rally them around their colours,
but only <a href="https://leftfootforward.org/2019/11/the-cynics-are-ignoring-a-whole-swathe-of-the-public-when-it-comes-to-corbyns-chances/">from a kind of weak attraction</a> or half-remembered past association. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The second reason we’re obsessed with this point is more
specific, and it’s, well, once bitten, twice shy. When then-Prime Minister
Theresa May called a snap General Election in 2017, Britain’s Labour Party looked
completely dead and buried. Opinion polls put them twenty points and more
behind. A couple even gave the Tories <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/04/20/voting-intention-conservatives-48-labour-24-18-19-">double Labour’s vote</a>. But then they zoomed up
and zoomed up in the polls. Eventually, they hit 40 per cent in the final vote.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Why? Well, partly because May ran the worst campaign in British
political history (at least since Labour’s in 1983), but also because there was
one key point most of us prognosticators had missed: the sheer number of people
who had voted Labour in 2015, but who were saying ‘don’t know’ at the start of
the 2017 campaign. <a href="https://medium.com/@psurridge/polling-labour-and-the-dont-knows-5dfff04a6b7c">They duly turned up and voted Labour</a> when the chips were
down. We’re not making the mistake of leaving them out of account again. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The third factor behind this latter-day voyage around the
don’t knows? Well, the 2019 General Election <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/#93130">is beginning to look a bit like the 2017 one</a>. Not exactly, not precisely, <a href="https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1201531471653228545?s=20">but quite a bit</a>. For one thing, both parties
are polling below the levels they reached during that campaign, and secondly,
Labour’s score doesn’t seem to be accelerating upwards as fast it did last
time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But Labour are all the same gaining ground now, cutting
the Conservatives’ lead in a number of surveys <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-election-poll-icm/pm-johnsons-conservatives-maintain-7-point-lead-over-labour-icm-poll-idUKKBN1Y61KA">to bare single figures</a>. Not a
single national Voting Intention poll has yet implied a Hung Parliament, but
one might well soon (and, given normal variation, probably will) – sparking that
panic in Conservative ranks that we saw in 1987 and 1992, before their polling woes
abated. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So where are we with the don’t knows this time? Could
they come to Labour’s aid again, cutting the Conservatives’ lead from – on average
– maybe nine points, pushing it below the all-important six points <a href="https://twitter.com/chriscurtis94/status/1201513224660750336?s=20">which means thatthe Conservatives lose their overall majority</a>? Well, the answer is the classic
academic’s cop-out: sort of, and sort of not. If we could chuck one of those
hands-in-the-air don’t know emojis at you, we would. Which is funny really. Okay,
maybe you had to be there. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s have a scoot around the figures. We’ve gone through
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election">the last eight pollsters to report</a> (and put out their tables), and excluded Deltapoll
and Kantar, who don’t provide a crossbreak for ‘don’t know’ now and party
allegiance in 2017. That leaves us with the data from six companies –
Survation, YouGov, Opinium, SavantaComRes, Panelbase and BMG. That should be
quite enough to get a general impression of where the don’t knows are right
now. There are lots of ways you could cut this data (by gender, for instance, which <a href="https://twitter.com/DrAlanWager/status/1201560771706204160?s=20">suggests that Labour probably will benefit from a late move</a>), but for brevity's sake here we'll focus on the 'past vote' category.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The answers aren't as encouraging for Labour (and for those
in search of a Hung Parliament) as they might be. There is a differential, in
that there are more ex-Labour don’t knows than Conservative, but it doesn’t
look like there are enough on their own to close that polling gap. <a href="https://www.survation.com/good-morning-britain-tables-week-3/">Survation will give Labour people the most hope</a>. That firm suggests that 7.6 per cent of Tory voters from 2017 are
now ‘undecided’, against a much bigger 13 per cent from the red team – though on
the other hand ‘refused’ amounts to 2.2 per cent of 2017 Tories and 0.6 per
cent of Labour voters from the last election, so we’re probably better off
saying 9.8 per cent Tory to 13.6 per cent Labour. If they all move back to their
prior teams, that’s worth maybe a point off the Conservatives’ lead.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Elsewhere, the news is less rosy for the Left. <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/3e6ngxeco2/TheSundayTimes_VI_Results_191129_w.pdf">The latest YouGov poll</a> has 10 per cent of 2017 Conservative voters saying ‘don’t know’, or
refusing to answer, and 13 per cent of Labour – with rounding, not much of a
better result than Survation’s for Jeremy Corbyn’s party, but still worse (for
reference, the split was 12 per cent to 18 per cent in the last YouGov poll
before the Commons voted for an early election). Opinium does have 16 per cent
of ex-Labour voters outside London saying ‘don’t know’, and only 9 per cent of
ex-Conservatives – a differential that might be worth a couple of points extra
to Labour – but with a pollster which shows than lagging 15 per cent behind
Boris Johnson’s party. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lastly, there are three pollsters which show only a one
point difference between the don’t knows among 2017 Labour and Conservative voters:
<a href="https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Savanta-ComRes_Sunday-Telegraph_Voting-Intention_29Nov2019.pdf">Savanta ComRes</a>, Panelbase and BMG. Those firms are showing 6 per cent of
Conservatives undecided against 7 per cent of Labour, 5 per cent and 7 per cent,
and lastly 9 per cent and 10 per cent. Not much comfort there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What does this mean? It means that Labour can’t rely on
the don’t knows. It will, in all likelihood, get a bit of uplift from that source,
but not <a href="https://britainelects.newstatesman.com/">the three or maybe four points extra</a> it needs to force Boris Johnson
into another round of Brexit hell – or even, perhaps, form a government
themselves. Labour will need to seek votes elsewhere. This will, of course, prove
a harder task. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Labour’s chances therefore now rest on <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/26/only-half-those-who-intend-vote-lib-dem-say-party-">squeezing the Liberal Democrats</a> and the Greens even harder, since the real battleground seems to be
across the English Midlands and North, where the Conservatives are hoping to
win a string of seats that have been traditionally (and culturally) Labour.
That will be hard. Not impossible given <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/conservatives-maintain-polling-lead-four-ten-say-they-may-change-their-minds">a very volatile and uncertain electorate</a>, but more difficult than convincing the don't knows. Labour have already pulled over a lot – and we mean a <i>lot </i>–
of those votes already (the Liberal Democrats are five or six points down from
their autumn peak). And those votes are unusual and sparse in many of
these areas – <a href="http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/11/21/new-constituency-poll-for-lab-held-great-grimsby-looks-dire-for-the-incumbent/">in Great Grimsby, for instance</a>, which at this point looks fairly doomed as a
Labour seat. Hoping to convert almost all of Grimsby's remaining Lib Dems seems like a long shot.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So we’ve got a fix on the don’t knows. There aren’t that
many of them left: very likely not enough on their own to force the Tories below 322 seats
and into an effective minority. But Labour have climbed two ladders. They’ve definitely relegated
the Liberal Democrats into second. They’ve powered up with ex-Labour
returnees. Now they’ve released those gravity-defying rockets, the third stage is the hardest: get back <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/key-findings-our-mrp">Labour voters going Tory in small town England</a>. Those
afterburners might fire. They might not. A lot hangs on what happens when
Labour presses that button.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-68146832510611986522019-10-07T02:57:00.000-07:002019-10-07T08:25:42.106-07:00Can Labour surge again? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjicrv3XPl76apEFqie3oqkpKQLMXFy3ohyphenhyphen2j7Y6ZSzpT7U2S3HUHKZ3b9KjekavWexQGrnyoB_I4BDO6AmE7xtDPRoFKbAECpv6t-rGZVZhkuNWS-hz0C5T4cvxluxQzX846saNQN2zd0/s1600/Ballot_Box.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjicrv3XPl76apEFqie3oqkpKQLMXFy3ohyphenhyphen2j7Y6ZSzpT7U2S3HUHKZ3b9KjekavWexQGrnyoB_I4BDO6AmE7xtDPRoFKbAECpv6t-rGZVZhkuNWS-hz0C5T4cvxluxQzX846saNQN2zd0/s400/Ballot_Box.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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So, first things first: welcome back after the summer
break! It’s been nice not to have to think about politics and public policy for
a while, hasn’t it? Though that brings us to second things second: the
<a href="https://www.cps.org.uk/research/popular-capitalism/">deadening pass-the-turd</a> that passes for political life in the United Kingdom these
days. Sorry, but it’s got to be done – and, given that you’re here, you might
as well come along for the ride.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Given the looming near-certainty of a General Election,
this month we thought we’d take a really close look at the likely prospects for
such a contest. Away from the rather tawdry prospect of what one might
laughably call the Government’s ‘ideas’, and its <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/brexit/boris-johnson-could-trigger-supreme-court-battle-no-deal-brexit-645193">hyperventilating throw-it-all-at-the-wall approach to Brexit</a>, the great standing fact in British
politics these days is just how unpopular the Opposition is. Will that last
all the way through a campaign? Let’s take a look. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Labour is very unpopular. In fact, both the party and
particularly its <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/jeremy-corbyn-sighs-and-rolls-eyes-as-he-is-asked-about-wreath-row-11472610">histrionic eye-rolling leader</a>, Jeremy Corbyn, are not so much
unpopular as extraordinarily, cosmically, stratospherically loathed. There’s
never been an Opposition this low in the polls just before a General Election
(of which, more in a moment), and there’s never been a Leader of the Opposition
who’s this unpopular. It’s hard to look beyond that to see them forming a new
government. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But Labour also plumbed the depths of public opprobrium
early in 2017, managing <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39064149">to lose a byelection that should never have been in doubt</a> and to take a fearful hammering <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7975">in that year’s local elections</a>. Just a
few weeks later, in early June, they got to 40 per cent in the popular vote –
some fifteen points above where they stood early in that year’s election
campaign. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We think there were four reasons for this. The first was
that Labour were able to bring their undecided or wavering ex-voters back,
whether it was from other parties, don’t know or wouldn’t vote. Secondly, Mr
Corbyn’s own ratings improved as he moved into campaign mode – since he’s
hopeless at running anything, but actually very good at rallies. Thirdly,
Labour <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-manifesto-poll-voters-back-policies-jeremy-corbyn-latest-a7731536.html">put out some really popular policies</a> that attracted the attention of an electorate weary of seven years of public
sector spending cuts. Fourth and last, the polls probably always undersold Labour,
since some pollsters were putting on ‘likely voter’ screens that turned out to
be based on inaccurate calls on turnout by age and outlook. So, can Labour
repeat the trick? Let’s look at each of those factors in turn. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>1. Don’t know and won’t vote.</b> When Labour reached its
polling nadir in the second half of April 2017, many of their voters were in a
funk. They had been put off Labour by its revolving door of rows and splits,
and frankly they thought Mr Corbyn a liability. In <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/04xxn42p3e/TimesResults_170419_VI_Trackers_GE_W.pdf">the YouGov poll of 18-19 April 2017</a>, 22 per cent of people who’d voted Labour in 2015 said that they
didn’t know who they’d vote for, or they wouldn’t vote. The figure for the
Conservatives? Just 11 per cent. Then something happened that very few
observers had taken nearly seriously enough: these voters started to return to their
previous colours. Under conditions of forced choice, what else could they do?
Vote Conservative? Many of them had cultural, familial and ideological
objections to that, whatever their doubts about the new model Labour Party. So
the squeeze was on – and in YouGov’s last pre-election poll, that figure for ex-Labour
don’t knows plus won’t votes was down to <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/d8zsb99eyd/TimesResults_FINAL%20CALL_GB_June2017_W.pdf">just seven per cent</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What’s the situation now? Well, there’s still that gap
between ex-Labour protestors that might come home and the same figure for the
Conservatives. Except this year, it’s somewhat smaller. The last three YouGov
polls have seen that weak disaffiliation run at between 17 <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/0g33aqxx5k/TheTimes_190925_VI_w.pdf">and 20 per cent</a> for
Labour, versus 13 to 14 per cent for the Tories – a smaller gap than in 2017,
but a gap nonetheless. So there’s less opportunity for a squeeze here, and of
course there’s also less room to power up from other parties’ numbers – because
the Liberal Democrat surge is allowing liberal Labourites and Remainers to
adhere to a new loyalty that often <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/new-report-reveals-brexit-identities-stronger-than-party-identities/">feels stronger and more pressing</a> than
their older view of the dichotomy between Left and Right. Labour can still put
the heat on these voters, especially because <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/07/18/brexit-party-supporters-confident-they-could-win-g">very few Liberal Democrats think they’re actually going to win</a> an election, but it looks like a less likely
source of votes than it once did. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>2. How high can Corbyn climb?</b> During the last election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn pushed his numbers up very quickly – even more quickly,
in fact, than Neil Kinnock managed during Labour’s well-managed and
glossily-packaged 1987 campaign. Alas, that still put him underwater by
polling day (at -11 with Ipsos-Mori), but just a few weeks before, <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/political-monitor-satisfaction-ratings-1997-present">in Mori’s March survey, he’d been at -41</a>. It was a phenomenal achievement, in part linked
to the popular policies he was espousing (such as the end of undergraduate
tuition fees in England), but also the fact that he just believed what he was
saying. He’s been opposing Tory austerity from one end of a megaphone all his
life. Small wonder he proved to be good at it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Gallingly for both his own best interests and Labour’s,
things went south again pretty quickly after that. Corbyn and his key allies
spent all their political capital in disappointing factional battle after
scarcely believable blunder after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-not-involved-munich-olympics-massacre-wreath-laying">badly handled falsehood</a>. Instead of reaching
out, they doubled down. And so Corbyn’s numbers fell again, so much so that now
they’re even worse than just before the 2017 campaign. His Ipsos-Mori rating is
now at -60 (the worst ever for an Opposition leader). <o:p></o:p></div>
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We should again be cautious here. Then, Corbyn’s ‘best
Prime Minister’ rating fell to 14 per cent with YouGov: <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/l9glxulr0i/YG%20Trackers%20-%20Best%20Prime%20Minister.pdf">in May 2019, he bottomed out at again</a> at about the same level – 15 per cent. Interestingly, too,
there’s just a few signs of life here. Some of Mr Corbyn’s approval and performance
ratings have begun to recover a
little, driven by Remainers warming to him just slightly. You can track the
numbers by <a href="https://twitter.com/james_bowley/status/1180946450261450758">checking in with this very interesting Twitter account</a>, which we
recommend. All this looks to us like Mr Corbyn can indeed recover again, just like Ed
Miliband did in 2017. But it’s a deeper hole than before. Are those real signs
of life? Or just the wiggling legs of an upturned Texan armadillo cooking in
the desert? It’s not entirely clear, but if we had to bet, we’d say it’s all
uphill from here.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>3. Labour’s new policies. </b>What a great big slice of the
public really wants is just some respite from the torture their political class
have been putting them through. Brexit: make it stop. Austerity: take it away. Public
services: get them working. You get the picture. So when Labour in 2017 came
out with a load of anti-austerity spending plans, albeit ones that were so fuzzily
funded they looked like a blurry shot of Bigfoot striding through the
mountains, people liked it. More police officers? Great. No more cuts to schools and hospitals? Super. Fighting the rising scourge of homelessness? Sign
us up. So far, so explicable - and right. More deeply, the understandable
feeling has risen and risen among the electorate that there’s much that’s not
fair and not right about British capitalism. That’s natural enough after nine
years of right-wing government. So a dash of nationalisation and a side order
of redistribution went down nicely. Polls show that a number of Labour’s flagship
policies <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/09/eurotrack-corbyns-policies-popular-europe-and-uk">were and are (more or less) popular</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, there’s more room for doubt. Both quantitative and
qualitative evidence shows that the more radical shores of Corbynism 2.0
unveiled or passed at Labour’s recent conference are not going to go down
nearly so smoothly. <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/opi/surveys/results?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=daily_agenda_23_sept_2019_3#/survey/07579420-dde5-11e9-8b4a-578fdf782d3e/question/ce19b06c-dde5-11e9-b218-471a79ab5a97/politics">Abolish private schools? The public don’t like that idea one bit</a>. Step in
to save the travel agent Thomas Cook? No – in widescreen. Big likely increases
in Inheritance Tax via a lifetime gift tax, possible land taxes, extra income
tax rises to fund all of Labour’s even bigger spending plans that time round, freer
movement of peoples, state pharma, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stoke-focus-group-offers-hint-that-boris-johnsons-brexit-strategy-is-working-6sx652qgg">even a four day week</a> – most voters are
unlikely to think of these as the radical, but still plausible and believable, plans they
heard in 2017. It’s not clear in what state any of this will make Labour’s
manifesto, of course, but if it sounds like that shopping list, fewer voters will go out and buy it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>4. Counting the voters. </b>One reason pollsters missed the
Conservative majority of 2015 was down to turnout. They were, quite simply,
sampling the wrong people. Their ‘frame’ was out. Older, conservative Britons were just more likely to actually turn up on the day. So some of the pollsters – notably
ComRes, which pointed out the discrepancy on the eve of poll in 2015 – <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/06/01/pollsters-experimental-election">started to weight all their numbers like that</a>. Young,
urban, renting? Your scores got marked down a bit. What this meant – when for
instance older Britons appalled by Theresa May’s proposed social care charges sat
out the 2017 election – was a set of polls out in the other direction,
scratching off some Labour numbers and puffing up the Tory score. That’s a
very, very crude description of what was going on, and we wince to write it.
But stay with us here. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This time, there’s a bit of feeling about that the polls
might be overstating Labour slightly. The party’s final polling average just before the
European Parliament elections <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom">was about 19 per cent</a>. They actually got 14 per
cent of the vote in Great Britain. The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand,
were registering at about 16 per cent in those same polls, but they managed to attract
20 per cent of the vote. Something kept the Labour numbers too high, and pegged
back the Liberal Democrats. What seems to be happening is that pollsters who
weight by recalled past vote – ComRes, for instance – are boosting the Labour
vote share. People are forgetting they voted Labour, and to beef up the ‘2017
Labour’ share of the sample, surveyors are pulling more Labourites in. That
inflates both the number of past Labour voters and the Labour score in the
final voting intention headlines, as work by <a href="file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Brexit+Barometer+Tables+August+2019%20(3).pdf">both Kantar</a> and <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/07/17/false-recall-and-how-it-affects-polling">YouGov has demonstrated</a> (both open as PDF).<o:p></o:p></div>
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So there we have it. Some of the context now looks like
2017. In particular, the number of ex-Labour voters wary of saying they’ll vote Labour next time is
not <i>vastly </i>lower than in 2017 – though there are indeed fewer of them. Jeremy
Corbyn’s numbers have already started to show a tiny bit of life, though on
some measures he’s starting from lower down this time. But other elements, both
in terms of Labour’s new and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/23/free-care-four-day-week-labour-big-bold-pricey-policies">more Corbynite stance</a> as well as geeky details
hidden deep within the polling methodology, militate somewhat in the other
direction. Can Labour climb again? Yes. Will they? Almost certainly. Will it be
as steep an upward curve as last time? It looks unlikely. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s the real kicker, though. The lift-off doesn’t have to be as vertiginous. Some – but only some – of the elements that made for Labour’s afterburners last time are there again. Some of them might not work as well this time, but they don’t have to. That's because the Tories are lower, and not so far ahead. If we look at <a href="http://britainelects.com/">the polling averages</a>, they’re about eight points in front of Labour, not the 16 per cent of April 2017. Boris Johnson is nowhere near as popular as Theresa May was then: <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-09/september-2019-pm-charts.pdf">his Ipsos-Mori score is -18</a> to Mrs May’s +13 just before the 2017 campaign. Yes, voters think of Mr Corbyn as an unpalatable mix of Wolfie Smith and <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/mike-leigh-nuts-may-alison-steadman">Keith from <i>Nuts in May</i></a> – but in Mr Johnson he faces a nasty old cross between Billy Bunter and <i>South Park</i>’s Cartman. Shilling shop Rasputin versus penny shop Disraeli: no wonder voters are uncertain.<div>
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To reiterate: can Labour surge once more? Yes. Can the
same forces behind their 2017 surprise work for them again? Not to the same
extent. Will they achieve critical velocity this time? No-one knows. <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/08/30/polls-dont-look-good-labour-there-still-path-elect">They can and might close the gap</a> enough to govern as a minority. That’s all we
know. Sorry, but them’s the facts. As we always say: it’s not nothing, but it
is something.</div>
</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-61724747501601580222019-07-11T06:59:00.000-07:002019-07-11T06:59:47.197-07:00It's all over... for now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxO4sXm0fREgnt33f8KIkS8FSJ3Z0KAlosJR6wlS1qm8EYB2-65rUJq6yytwLK4VwtRiFoppO0Scip1Q4_AcpT4xsipYNH04MDObnI-mqgZovMDYfV0fuxXKi7CLDq5FNIwIAFMMrL52I/s1600/Beach_Office.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="276" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxO4sXm0fREgnt33f8KIkS8FSJ3Z0KAlosJR6wlS1qm8EYB2-65rUJq6yytwLK4VwtRiFoppO0Scip1Q4_AcpT4xsipYNH04MDObnI-mqgZovMDYfV0fuxXKi7CLDq5FNIwIAFMMrL52I/s400/Beach_Office.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
So that's it. It's a wrap for the academic year 2018/19. It's been another pathetic and embarrassing year for British politics, with the fall of one Prime Minister and the rise of another who makes <a href="https://hanna-barbera.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_Caveman">Captain Caveman</a> look like Socrates. With the Government in chaos, and the official Opposition a disgusting rabble, there isn't much to cheer about. But what there is, while you're here, is the summer - with plenty of opportunities, whatever your fitness and abilities, to get out into Britain and beyond. Enjoy, recharge, and we'll see you back here in September. Then, the long crisis will resume, with potentially one or two more General Elections, and one, two or more referendums. You lucky people. Be well, be kind, and remember: we have <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2015-06-03/debates/15060324000002/DevolutionAndGrowthAcrossBritain#contribution-15060332000038">more in common</a> than that which divides us.thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-46940069227811124562019-06-27T09:36:00.000-07:002019-07-22T07:08:34.283-07:00Advance, Britannia! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7to3W5oj9EfkOQ68B9b_12cnpN02YBPRyzRfqtSuBweLoCWRKwQ0H3jLygwqfWCLJ8hi3kG287qJL7Pp015UJbesU2YXtliVTLTi_movZrH7sq-p6UVLKPG3jGkOCz1ICDHDzM-Jm83Q/s1600/63Up_Neil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1366" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7to3W5oj9EfkOQ68B9b_12cnpN02YBPRyzRfqtSuBweLoCWRKwQ0H3jLygwqfWCLJ8hi3kG287qJL7Pp015UJbesU2YXtliVTLTi_movZrH7sq-p6UVLKPG3jGkOCz1ICDHDzM-Jm83Q/s400/63Up_Neil.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It’s hard to maintain much optimism about British politics. The structural faultlines look too great to be surmounted.
Something’s going to have to give – probably in the midst of the <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/make-no-mistake-britain-is-on-the-cusp-of-a-constitutional-crisis-of-epic-proportions">huge constitutional crisis</a> we look to be heading into this autumn. One or more
General Elections, another referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union,
another Scottish independence referendum, a border poll in Northern Ireland –
they are all set to divide us in the years to come. Instead of getting on with
maybe making schools and hospitals better, Parliament will be tearing itself to
pieces over the constitution, just as it did in the 1880s and the 1910s. It’s depressing
stuff. Where once Prime Minister Winston Churchill <a href="http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndofWar.html">bellowed ‘advance,Britannia!’</a> at the moment of victory in 1945, our leaders now squeak out a
litany of retreats into the obscurity to which history will surely condemn
them. </div>
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But look out beyond the politics, and the country is not
actually on fire. That’s something important to remember when writing about the
apparent state of crisis in Westminster and Whitehall. Yes, growth is slowing,
but it’s still there. True, wage increases are only now taking us back to those
halcyon days of 2007 and 2008 when we thought that the economy might expand
forever – but there is wage growth. Yes, we face a climate emergency. But the
United Kingdom is doing its bit. It’s on target to meet its Copenhagen
commitments in the short-term, and it might be able to hit its targets in the
medium- to long-term as well. Indeed, the Government has just <a href="https://www.energylivenews.com/2019/06/25/net-zero-emissions-law-begins-passage-through-parliament/">legislated to take us to net zero carbon by 2050</a>. The planet is in trouble, but the UK is at
least trying to do something about it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We can in fact look back at lots of crises that seems
just as bad, at the time, if not worse. The summer of 1940 was an immeasurably
more acute crisis – not that it’s much relief that Britain's armed forces aren't now in full retreat from fascists who wanted to crush the country's entire way of life. Narrowing in a
bit more to the comparable disasters of the post-war age, <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-suez-crisis.html">the Suez Crisis of 1956</a> was an unmitigated catastrophe that saw Britain’s diplomatic position completely
obliterated in just a few short weeks – and which claimed the lives of 16
British servicemen. The country often seemed on the brink of ungovernability in
1972-73, especially given the chronic breakdown of civil order in Northern
Ireland. In 1976, the UK was forced into painful austerity by the
International Monetary Fund, while in 1981-82 Britain’s cities went up in
flames as unemployment and poverty soared. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our present crisis is in most respects nowhere near as
acute as it seemed during those previous disasters. Employment growth is
strong, indeed puzzlingly so, and it’s concentrated in full-time permanent
jobs. Inflation is very low, though it’s crept up a little as the pound has
been hit by Brexit uncertainty. Mortgage and interest rates remain in their
historic troughs. Things are very, very hard indeed if you rely on any element
of Britain’s fraying welfare state, and public services (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/world/europe/uk-austerity-preston-ashford-lancashire.html">particularly those run by local councils</a>) are beginning to run into the sands. But for most people, in
most places, things are just about okay. They go on living their lives, their rich,
dense, detailed, multi-hued, familial, variegated, fascinating, comforting,
challenging, infuriating lives – just as they did during the Depression and the long post-war boom alike. Life goes on, and seems to have been getting better,
at least in so far as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0d6e788a-7120-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5">long term trends in self-reported happiness</a> tell us
anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Consider the latest instalment of that magisterial text
of post-war social history, <i>63 Up</i>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)">Ever since 1964</a>, and for the most part
helmed by filmmaker Michael Apted, these documentaries have heralded the ups,
downs, sideways and diagonals of normal people from all walks of life. And what
have they been doing? Getting on with things. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LQZpiSfESE">You can watch one of the first episodes here</a> (it aired as <i>7-Up</i>), and ITV has recently shown the latest in the serial. If you want our advice, you should <a href="https://www.itv.com/hub/7-63-up-uk/2a1866a0001">go and watch these right now</a>, and maybe
catch up with the rest of the series, but the point we’re trying to make will
hopefully stand whether you’ve seen these programmes or not. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There’s <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/63-up-cast-now-7-up-line-up-what-happened-itv-when-time-episodes/">cabbie Tony, doing okay for himself</a>; Nick, who
became an academic in the United States, but who is now very, very ill; Bruce,
who used to teach in some pretty difficult schools, but who latterly moved into
the independent sector; Lynn, who held onto her job as a children’s librarian
through change after change at the council, but who’s sadly now died; Paul, long
troubled by being brought up in a children’s home, who’s since moved to
Australia; John the barrister, now doing good works in Bulgaria, his mother’s
native country; and the star of the show, Neil (<i>above</i>), once homeless in the Highlands,
but now serving <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/03/neil-hughes-seven-up-63-up-itv-documentary">as a lay preacher and a Liberal Democrat County Councillor</a> in
Cumbria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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They might not have been splitting the atom. They may not
have been storming the beaches on D-Day. They haven’t been living a glamorous
high life with the elite, like John Maynard Keynes, choosing to spend his
health on what he saw as <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Maynard-Keynes-1937-1946-Keynesian/dp/0333604563">his mission to save the British economy</a>. None of them
have won a gold medal. It’s not been that kind of heroism. But they have been living
heroic lives nonetheless: teaching kids from tough backgrounds, taking the
mobile library out, raising money for orphans in Eastern Europe, serving the
community as councillors, coming to terms with their own struggles with the
past and the present, building new lives in new nations, bringing up their
children. It is here, and not in what passes for the directing mind of the
political nation, where true leadership lies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We may well all have been let down by those fraudulent
pipsqueaks who have the temerity even to use the word ‘leader’ in the face of
such citizens. But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/09/63-up-michael-apted-television-series">their endeavours continue to inspire</a>, even all these years
after 1964 –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that year of Labour’s
re-election among hopeful talk of that ‘white heat’ which would reforge the nation itself. Our ‘leaders’ are in retreat. But Britannia? Well, Britannia advances.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-19938724228652005432019-06-27T02:42:00.001-07:002019-06-27T02:42:45.755-07:00Running the sliderule over 'Land for the many'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTB4D_S0rRUxM_Sul2f-el4giQmwCyQtoN53PvcEsgQAkbrnm7SBE7foIvlN3QgNnGELsR1pceKKTAcJGvw1d757ZWgSmmvc4o6OsU3ubyTT_Ll-f9jP53_xnDhxhifxFrdr_4fzicU8/s1600/Housing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1080" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTB4D_S0rRUxM_Sul2f-el4giQmwCyQtoN53PvcEsgQAkbrnm7SBE7foIvlN3QgNnGELsR1pceKKTAcJGvw1d757ZWgSmmvc4o6OsU3ubyTT_Ll-f9jP53_xnDhxhifxFrdr_4fzicU8/s400/Housing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Given that Labour now looks fairly likely to be in power
in the near future, it’s important to look at some of the Party’s policy
pronouncements – such as the recent report on land policy written for Labour by
environmentalist and campaigner George Monbiot. <a href="https://landforthemany.uk/download-pdf/">You can read the whole thing here if you want</a> (opens in PDF). Constraints of time and space mean that today
we’ll look really at the impact on the housing market, though the whole thing
is worth a read.</div>
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Some of the recommendations are strong ones, and no-one
should be in any doubt that the land and housing market is clearly
malfunctioning: at a time when housing capital costs in many cities are many
multiples even of joint incomes, and when rents have been increasing far more
quickly than earnings. There should be little controversy, for instance, about the
proposals in <i>Land for the Many</i> which would improve disclosure and
transparency. <a href="https://landforthemany.uk/2-making-land-visible-unlocking-information/">Chapter Two of the Report</a> contains welcome ideas for reducing
Britain’s reputation as a haven for dirty money. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Overall, there is also a very strong case for moving our
taxation structure relatively away from income and towards wealth – often
inherited wealth <a href="http://www.labourland.org/benefits-of-land-value-tax/">such as land</a>. In general, the proposals here would indeed mean more tax on
the intergenerational movement of that money, more progressive taxes on
property, and more of the profits of land ownership and landlordism being
returned to the community that has mandated the planning system in the first
place (and therefore produced a lot of that wealth in the first place). So far,
so interesting. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many elements here, however, do give us something more
than pause. Too many are based on a misreading of recent developments and
policy, some seem unrealistic on the timeframe suggested, and quite a lot of
them do not fit together at all well - together, a doleful list of what can go wrong with <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17530350.2018.1552610">today's (and yesterday's) simplistic policymaking</a>. Let us take these three elements in turn.
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There are to begin with some disputable minor to mid-range points about how we got here, which would not detain us too much were they not instructive about the Report’s wider problems. <i>Land for the Many</i> for instance says <a href="https://landforthemany.uk/3-for-the-many-not-the-few-a-fair-price-for-land/">at one and the same time</a> (in chapter four) that ‘the balance of demand and supply in the land and housing markets is not determined only by the ratio between the number of houses and the number of households seeking somewhere to live’, but also on the very same page that wider trends ‘have pushed demand for houses, and therefore residential land values, to unprecedented heights’. The extent of the role played by supply-and-demand factors as against ‘financialization’ (land property attracting value as a speculative asset) should surely be quantified somewhere, and at the moment the whole picture is left very vague indeed.<br />
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In the same chapter there’s a frankly mystifying
reference to ‘the lowering of the Bank of England base rate’ in ‘the 1980s and
1990s’, a reference which is later pared back so that it refers only to the
period after 1992. This will come as a surprise to all those who were hit by
<a href="https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/historical-interest-rates-uk/">sky-high interest rates not once by twice during the 1980s</a>, and who faced rates that were pretty high
by historic standards for many years thereafter. Interest rates have been
ultra-low since the crash of 2007-2008, but that has definitively not been the
period when landlords piled into the market – for obvious reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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This might be thought of as nit-picking, but arguments
that slide around like this are instructive of an intellectual case that is not
particularly sure of itself. Is supply and demand - <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/58017/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Hilber%2C%20C_Hilber_Impact_supply_constraints_2014_Hilber_Impact_supply_constraints_2014.pdf">and especially Britain's very restrictive planning system</a> - an important part of price
rises, or not? Is the level of real interest rates and the shape of the credit market – which has ebbed and flowed, rather than simply surging, in the recent past
– a key determinant in creating <a href="https://www.annpettifor.com/2018/02/the-financialisation-of-the-housing-market/">an asset price bubble in land</a>? If the
picture is mixed, to what extent is it mixed? The more important that first set
of causes is, the more we just build more houses; the more emphasis we place on
the second, the more there is at least a case for increased regulation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This slippery focus on the recent past is a feature in
some of the other areas under discussion. We are told there has been a ‘frenzy’
of buy-to-let landlordism preventing first-time buyers entering the market –
which is undoubtedly true over the longer term, <a href="https://www.financialreporter.co.uk/blogs/abours-land-of-the-many-report-is-based-on-a-market-that-no-longer-exists.html">but is hardly the case since the crash</a>, and under successive governments which have actually made
landlordism less and less financially attractive. The increase in Buy-to-Let
mortgaging is revealingly given via figures from the period 2000-2007, at the
height of that boom: but the stock owned by private landlords overall on a
rather different timescale, from 2002 to 2015. It is deeply open to doubt
whether Buy-to-Let has played the role in inflating house prices that this Report
says it has.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We could go on. The Report perfectly reasonably notes
just how much more of their income renters are paying for their housing than
are mortgaged owner-occupiers, without breaking out the extent to which this is
due to owner-occupiers being rather older and better paid than the renters (and
the difference being not so much due to the housing market). It quite rightly
demonstrates that there has been a rise in empty bedrooms even while house
prices have continued to rise, without mentioning that one reason for that is
<a href="https://foresightprojects.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/191/2017/05/04-HousingAndNeighbourhoods_AW.pdf">older Britons not wanting to move</a> once their children have left home (opens as PDF). Speaking
blandly about the tax structure encouraging turnover is all very well, but what
it means from this angle is encouraging voters to sell their houses – people
who have chosen not to do so as things stand. Our major concern is that <i>Land
for the Many </i>is more interested in getting to its recommendations than in
accepting that the situation is complex and multi-dimensional. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s when we get to the recommendations that the concerns
deepen. The Report recommends a big increase in social housing provision, which
is right and welcome. But there are over a million people on the waiting list
right now, and annual housing starts in England <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/house-building-new-build-dwellings-england-october-to-december-2018">that number only about 160,000</a>.
Lifting the numbers to anything like what we need to meet demand even now, let
alone get ahead of ourselves, will be a long haul indeed. The building industry
is over-stretched as it is, especially on the employment side, and productivity
increases are hard to come by and slow to emerge – as Labour discovered when it
tried big reforms and a huge building drive in the second half of the 1960s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And here we come to the crux of the matter. <i>Land for
the Many </i>also recommends rent controls at background inflation levels
within the period of any contract, while no-fault evictions should be outlawed
for the first three years of any tenancy. That’s better than ideas Labour has
previously toyed with, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/09/labour-would-force-uk-landlords-to-offer-indefinite-tenancies">such as lifetime tenancies</a> which would not allow the
owner out of any contract even if getting into financial trouble and which
would have extended the same rent control over twenty or thirty years. The
proposals floated here might move us towards a workable compromise between
giving tenants more security and landlords some incentive to stay in the game. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Other features do not, however, fit with this search for
a new balance. The Report also proposes a new property tax to replace Council
Tax, which would be paid by landlords and not tenants. Extra bands and therefore
more progressivity are projected, which is all to the good, but <i>Land for the
Many </i>is unattractively opaque about whether this will come in during or
after the new three-year tenancies are established. If after, landlords are
likely to be exposed to a big new tax at a time when they cannot pass on any of
that cost. That’s great for the tenants. But is there really going to be even
any capital profit left after that, let alone current incentive? Especially as
Labour is here also urged to increase the Capital Gains Tax charged on these
dwellings - <a href="https://shepwedd.com/knowledge/labour-party-s-land-many-report-what-might-it-mean-you">potentially doubling its rate</a> for Higher Rate income tax payers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This might sound like the smallest violin time beloved of
special pleaders, but it’s not our intention at all to stick up for landlords, rather
for the health of a dense, sensitive, interrelated and above all mixed economy
of housing – especially during any transition period. As the new tenancy, rent
control and tax laws approach, landlords are simply going to dump the lot –
especially if they are expected to swallow whole the new Property Tax during
the rent control and secured tenancy periods, and if CGT really is pushed up at
the same time. Such a landlords’ strike would be analogous, by the way, to the
housebuilders’ strike that scuppered Labour’s last attempt, in the late 1960s,
<a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/housing-land-commission.htm">to reform the way in which housing land was priced</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where will all those (ex-) tenants go? Well, some of them
will buy. <i>Land for the Many </i>also proposes abolishing <a href="https://www.gov.uk/stamp-duty-land-tax">Stamp Duty for owner occupiers</a>, which
will make that easier, and no doubt house prices will be ‘stabilised’ (for
which read: shoved downwards) if these ideas are handled badly. All well and
good for them. But lower income tenants, who still cannot buy, will hardly be
housed by councils or Housing Associations which are in no position right now (or
soon) to suddenly ramp up their output. More than likely, lower income tenants
will be pushed to the margins of a private rented sector that British
policymakers of all parties tried to revive for fifty years, and which these
proposals could (if handled clumsily) eviscerate. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Common Ground Trust that forms the basis of <a href="https://landforthemany.uk/4-stabilising-the-system-the-common-ground-trust/">the Report’s fourth chapter</a> fails to convince as a real way to underpin house
prices if landlords did exit the market very rapidly. The idea here is a
separation between the value of housing land and bricks and mortar, for those
who wished to allow for such a split. The former would be owned by a government-funded
Trust that would allow new buyers to simply purchase the physical dwelling.
This seems of doubtful utility, especially in the short run. Rather tellingly,
no really precise mechanism is proposed as to who would qualify, beyond the
extremely bland ‘membership of the Trust would be most obviously attractive for
people who want to enjoy a form of home ownership’. Nor are we told how the initial
land purchase from the for-profit or private sector seller would work, or how
much the plan would cost overall.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In terms of any immediate downwards house price
adjustment, this completely underestimates the tendency of our ‘animal spirits’
to overshoot and undershoot imagined values very quickly – so much so that
seeking to manage a rapid change in prices with a structural reform will likely
end in failure. And it sounds rather too much for comfort like the <a href="https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1966/jan/31/land-commission-bill">Labour Land Commission</a> that failed to get off the ground in the 1960s – though the latter, it
is true, focused on lowering land costs for builders, not directly for owner-occupiers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This also doesn’t really get round the distributional
problem. House price increases will slow. Absolute values may fall. Given these
proposals, owner-occupation will get cheaper because a non-profit, subsidised
by the Government, might own the land. That will be great for lower
middle-income Britons. But that will still all be beyond the range of the
poorest renters, who will live in a shrinking and poorly-resourced sector. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Labour will have done, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2018/06/labours-basic-presumptions-are-false.html">as across whole areas of its programme</a>, will have been to redistribute upwards: to finance
middle income Britons as the expense of less wealthy ones. More rail subsidies,
abolishing tuition fees, free NHS parking for those with cars while the poorest
Britons take buses, and so on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, the very wealthiest will pay more, via more <a href="http://moneyage.co.uk/Labour-ponders-replacing-IHT-with-a-lifetime-tax-to-raise-15bn.php">increased taxes on gifts throughout their lifetimes</a> (effectively increasing inheritance
taxes), a new and more progressive, Property Tax levied on landlords, higher
CGT and the like. But much of that squeeze would take a long time (in contrast
to the sharp shock it might administer to the private rented sector). It would
also be cold comfort to people who, for whatever reason, want to rent and not
to buy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We can do better than this, quantifying if possible much
more closely the extent to which rising land prices are about shortage of
supply rather than an influx of capital. Proceeding much more sensitively into
reform of the private rented market, providing support to tenants via reversing
many of the Housing Benefit cuts of recent years and giving us all breathing
space before more social housing can come on stream – because <i>Land for the
Many</i> looks more like a plan for a world in which we’ve built half a million
new council houses, not one where local authorities are on their knees. And we
do still need planning reform as part of the package. Building more houses, and
therefore releasing more housing land, exactly where we need them. Since
critics of the supply model have a point when they say that ‘build more’ is a hazy nostrum rather than a plan, that means many more dwellings at high density, in
the South East, <a href="https://citygeographics.org/2014/11/11/is-releasing-the-greenbelt-the-answer-to-londons-housing-crisis/">near train stations and bus routes</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the moment, these proposals are a mixed bag, the
hallmark of which are good intentions and strong ideas about transparency, but
which have been blended together with a high level of historical, temporal,
analytical and geographical confusion, and a naivete about delivery. Looking at
these ideas in the round, it’s impossible not to feel deep, deep foreboding
about their real effect. Which is a shame – not least for <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/892482/6430_04_9_Million_Renters_Policy_Report_Proof_10_opt.pdf">those Britons crying out</a> for better housing.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-42195871418468122232019-06-26T08:20:00.000-07:002019-06-27T03:23:59.943-07:00It's all coming up roses for Jeremy Corbyn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKhtxF0IpOY3xW59oaDwbFUXUGMz4vk9e3Uz30jxaqKq8eNB4bnkRVdIeRzsAfSVbQ2rjv5mh04nX-AJaReUql6QNukGpWD9fqmSoFb5Slx95OOEYdOnVfqDY_RsSVyuarnr5Clv9AVLw/s1600/Jeremy_Corbyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1400" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKhtxF0IpOY3xW59oaDwbFUXUGMz4vk9e3Uz30jxaqKq8eNB4bnkRVdIeRzsAfSVbQ2rjv5mh04nX-AJaReUql6QNukGpWD9fqmSoFb5Slx95OOEYdOnVfqDY_RsSVyuarnr5Clv9AVLw/s400/Jeremy_Corbyn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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With <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/britains-future-is-chaos/584863/">British politics in chaos</a>, it’s hard sometimes to step
back and divine the big winner. Everything seems in flux. The narrative (and
the polls) could shift tomorrow. Yet another crisis could intervene and change
the frame. Scandals could break. Brexit might be resolved – though it is much
more likely that it will not be. But overall, it is hard to resist the
temptation that the big winner in all the heat and light is… Jeremy Corbyn (<i>above</i>).</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘What’, you might splutter, ‘one of the most unpopular
people, let alone politicians, to ever walk the planet?’ The man who’s taken
Labour today into third place in <a href="https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1143781632001892353">one YouGov poll published today</a>, leading a
party regularly flirting with fourth place in opinion surveys and which
recently suffered its worst ever national result? You might well raise an
eyebrow at this particular (and counter-intuitive) Hot Take. But hear us out. It can’t hurt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are three main reasons why Mr Corbyn should be
laughing right now. He has achieved almost complete mastery over the Labour
Party machine. His main opponents, Britain’s governing Conservative Party, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/28/a-zombie-party-the-deepening-crisis-of-conservatism">are in a complete mess</a>, faced with a challenge from the Right that seems like an
existential threat to their existence. And the last reason? Well, those
self-same Conservatives are about to put Boris Johnson into Downing Street – a man
who is more divisive, and probably has a much shorter shelf life, than a jar of
marmite.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>In control of the Party.</b> Rarely can a Labour
leader ever have established such complete control over the machine. It’s hard
to say whether Tony Blair ever achieved such total mastery, though of course
the two cases are not comparable. Mr Blair was winning elections, riding high
in the polls and actually doing things at his peak between (say) 1996 and 2001.
Mr Corbyn has lost pretty much every election he’s fought. But even so, it’s
the latter figure who seems to rule unchallenged. It’s been an absolutely
admirable, if cynical, march through the institutions, as one would expect from
a cadre of Straight Left enthusiasts and trade union apparatchiks.
Their talk of member-led policy was a good and effective smokescreen for a
while, though now that even Corbynism’s bodged-up ‘social movement’ Momentum <a href="https://theclarionmag.org/2019/06/04/has-momentum-stopped-having-elections/">seems to be giving up on internal democracy</a>, the mask has slipped.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bit by bit, they have rightly put in their own people – Jennie
Formby as General Secretary, Karie Murphy in charge of the Leader of the Opposition’s
Office, Laura Murray as Head of Complaints. Not only that, but <a href="https://labourlist.org/2018/09/full-jc9-slate-elected-to-labours-nec/">they got the ‘JC9’ elected</a> to the Party’s National Executive Committee, ensuring that a single
line or case came out of each meeting, and that their friends could do as they pleased without fear of discipline. Veteran Left-wingers such as Ann Black,
as judicious as she was fair in her reporting, were replaced by advocates of
The Revolution. The most critical MPs have now deselected themselves by
retiring from politics, declining to run again, resigning the Whip, and joining
Change UK or the Liberal Democrats. Most social democratic members have walked away.
Win or lose, office or Opposition, the Left own the Labour Party for a decade
or more to come. That’s a big win. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Likely to govern.</b> Whenever the next General
Election comes – and right now the assumption in Westminster and Whitehall is
that it will be upon us this autumn or next spring – Labour is the most likely
to be the largest Party in the House of Commons. Regular readers will know that
this blog has made this argument <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/11/jeremy-corbyns-labour-is-now-likely-to.html">since at least the autumn of 2017</a>, and we see
no reason at all to change our mind. Labour is indeed about as popular as rotting
roadkill in your fridge. Its polling scores are mind-numbingly bad. Only Iain
Duncan Smith and Michael Foot have ever been as unpopular as Mr Corbyn. But
that doesn’t really matter – because the Conservatives’ support has collapsed even faster, and even further, than has Labour’s. Remember: in the event that
there isn’t an electoral cataclysm that makes the Brexit Party or the Liberal Democrats
the biggest Party, all that matters is the two-Party swing between Labour and
the Tories. At the moment, it’s towards Labour. Ergo, they govern. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember also that Labour don’t have to win outright.
Indeed, this seems very unlikely indeed right now. They only have to reduce the
Conservative, Brexit Party and Democratic Unionist ranks in the Commons to less
than around or about 322 MPs. There is no way on this planet that the Scottish
National Party or the Liberal Democrats will support the Conservatives
continuing in office. So as long as Labour plus SNP plus Liberal Democrat plus Plaid Cymru
plus Green adds up to 322, Mr Corbyn will go and live in Downing Street. Right
now, almost all the pollsters – Opinium, for instance, and Survation, the last
two elections’ most accurate pollster – think that this will indeed be the
case. So Labour wins. That’s not just a case we’d make from the overall
numbers, by the way. <a href="https://medium.com/@ianjohnwarren/labours-dilemma-yes-it-s-shite-fe6035a5f00c">Labour has the best ground game</a>. It knows where its voters
are, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/06/what-is-meaning-of-peterborough-by.html">as the Peterborough by-election demonstrated</a>. In a world where lots of
seats are going to be won by very tight margins and in three-, four- or even
five-way fights, that might matter most of all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Faced by the worst-best opponent. </b>The single most
stupid thing the Conservatives could do would be to elect Boris Johnson as
their leader. He unites all non-Conservatives in the entire country against the
Tories – and back behind Labour. Imagine a General Election fought by the
figurehead of the Leave campaign. All Remainers will want to get their revenge.
And the only, single, or at least by far the most likely way of turfing him out
of Downing Street? Voting Labour – as, indeed, voters in Mr Johnson’s own <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/boris-johnson/news/101813/excl-boris-johnson-seat-most">by-no-means-safe Uxbridge seat</a> will be invited to do. The atmosphere of energy, tension – even danger
– will help the Corbynites no end. Mr Johnson and Mr Corbyn are symbiotic
beings. They thrive on each others’ blatant disregard for the reality-based
community. What boosts ‘Boris’ causes ‘Jeremy’ to grow in the mind too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr Johnson is not the man who Londoners elected as their
Mayor in 2008. Then, he posed as a socially-liberal Tory that you could do
business with. Now, his record of appalling racist statements, untruths, recklessness,
under-prepared busking nonsense and frankly extremism has caught up with him
among that half of the country that is easily labelled Remainia, but actually
has far deeper roots as the outward-looking and cosmopolitan party of the
country that likes to think of itself as open-minded.
Reader, they absolutely loathe him, as you'll see if you click on <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/05/24/mays-resignation-has-sparked-long-awaited-tory-lea">the detailed data here</a>. He can’t introduce himself as someone new,
because to be honest he’s past his best and looking increasing shopworn – like a
deflated and faded Paddington Bear. He disrupts no narrative. He finds few
voters that the Conservatives haven’t discovered already. Voters might have
given a Sajid Javid or a Penny Mordaunt a little bit of space and time to set
out their stall. They will rightly give Mr Johnson under one tenth of one
second.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mr Corbyn often looks like a busted flush. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/05/labour-membership-falls-10-amid-unrest-over-brexit-stance">Labour membership is falling</a>. His own ratings are not so much in the gutter as the culvert
underneath it. Labour is in rapid retreat electorally, especially in Scotland and –
it seems – Wales. He is twisting and turning on the main issue of the day, to no-one’s
satisfaction and everyone’s irritation. And yet he controls the Labour Party
lock, stock and barrel. He is still in our view pretty likely to become Prime
Minister. And his ideas have a good chance of becoming hegemonic at a time when
the Conservative Party is imploding. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s when he gets into power that his real problems will
start. Firstly: power will ebb away from him. It won’t only be the SNP and the
Liberal Democrats that will have a major say over legislation. Labour MPs,
powerless at the moment, will have a veto over every single law their leader
wants to pass. Secondly: the leadership team’s analysis of how power works is
wrong. As befits the institutional and deterministic way of seeing the world
popular in the leader’s office, they think that seizing the commanding heights of
the state will allow them to transform the country. Well, not for nothing have
political scientists long seen capturing the core executive <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780333681947">as wearing a ‘hollow crown’</a>. It
isn’t just that the levers aren’t connected to anything: it’s that those levers
don’t even exist any more. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Three: all policies are choices, and Labour will have to
start to make some. If they abolish university fees, who will get the places under
any new numbers cap – the Russell Group or the others? If they want to accelerate
housebuilding, where on earth will the building labour come from? Where will
the houses go? If Ministers want to subsidise rail travel, do they help workers
in the rush hour or relatively lower-income older travellers in the daytime?<br />
<br />
If
they bring in new types of land tenure for first time property buyers, will those
owners be able to take those subsidised advantages with them? Do they allow
the SNP another Scottish independence referendum? Will the Bank of England be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/10/labour-considers-house-price-inflation-target-for-bank-of-england">directed to alter credit policy by region</a>, or to accelerate ‘Green’ investment, and
how? All the vague, opaque, contradictory things they have said will come home
to roost. Everything in Mr Corbyn’s allotment is coming up roses – for now. But
the flowers look pretty likely to be blighted things indeed.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-45597665404010402652019-06-25T06:19:00.003-07:002019-06-25T06:20:09.426-07:00British politics is now full of challengers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhinKAWS4lPRNW2CzDYMM68d_ULDU5ZzpA7VROv2NATdbvpl3XCU3wqfJrK3Y5DrCqOyiGaEhck0ItKXD6kB3DcjyBLSYXcdbwvpFLWnLqxZx-6MjjQOj_vgJ4q6WLXGs8DQY6oCACCugg/s1600/NS_2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="660" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhinKAWS4lPRNW2CzDYMM68d_ULDU5ZzpA7VROv2NATdbvpl3XCU3wqfJrK3Y5DrCqOyiGaEhck0ItKXD6kB3DcjyBLSYXcdbwvpFLWnLqxZx-6MjjQOj_vgJ4q6WLXGs8DQY6oCACCugg/s400/NS_2019.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This blog has already been very clear about <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/05/britains-electoral-upheaval-might-be.html">the struggles of the Big Two political parties</a> in Great Britain. They are in a deep hole, and
they show every sign of continuing their dig. Two challenger parties – one old,
one young – in the shape of the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party seem to
sit more naturally across the great divides in our politics today. And they’re
full of verve and a sense of momentum, while the blue and red teams trudge
glumly around in search of eye-catching and popular ideas.</div>
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But what about the insurgents fighting to get in from
outside this new and unfamiliar four-party system? Because one of the things
that was so noticeable about the recent local and European elections was the
rise of the Greens and the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, the continued
success of the Scottish National Party, and the success of Independents and
localists everywhere – while another new grouping, Change UK, seems so far to
have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48515505?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/czmwznml583t/the-independent-group-for-change&link_location=live-reporting-story">comprehensively failed to get off the ground</a>?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Today, on day two of our week-long blogging marathon,
we’re going to take a look at a political system that isn’t so much <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-brexit-deal-public-sentiment/">bifurcating between Leave and Remain</a> as crumbling in all directions – with concerns about
the environment, transport and housing apparently sitting across the
traditional divide of Right and Left just as strongly as Brexit does. Because
as the Big Two crumble, it’s not just the New Two that are pushing them around:
it’s the little battalions and the sharpshooters too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The Green surge.</b> We’ve been here before, of
course, since over the winter of 2014-15 and leading up to the 2015 General
Election the Green Party seemed to be going places – only to disappoint as the
date of the polls actually approached. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election">They actually hit 10 or 11 per cent</a> in
two polls conducted in January 2015, conducted by YouGov and Lord Ashcroft
respectively. But now there seems to be a more sustained upwards drift,
reflecting a second and more voluminous inrush of the green tide. The
Extinction Rebellion movement, and the publicity surrounding Swedish
environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, have become a <i>cause celebre</i> among
voters who might once have been attracted to Cleggmania and Corbynism:
increasing evidence of the warming planet is causing voters widespread unease. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Added to a great deal of local organising, on the model
that the Liberal Democrats once used to come back from the brink of extinction
in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the Greens have a great chance to establish
themselves as a permanent player in a multi-party system. Don’t believe us?
Well, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48091592">they put on 194 councillors in early May</a>, and they won 12.1 per cent of
the vote (and seven MEPs) at the European elections – coming in just two
percentage points behind Labour. The Britain Elects poll tracker <a href="http://britainelects.com/polling/westminster/">now has them on average at 5.4 per cent</a> for a Westminster election, only a little behind
their placing during the party’s much-heralded ‘surge’ last time. It will be
very, very hard for them to win any more Parliamentary seats, partly because
Labour is standing in their way in areas that are demographically and
ideologically fertile for the Greens: but it does not seem totally impossible in the medium
term. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The nationalist challenge. </b>Welsh and Scottish
nationalist parties also had much to cheer. Given constraints of time and
space, we’re going to treat their fortunes together here, though we do know
that these two countries are very, very different. Plaid Cymru first, because
their advance seems the most stunning. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-48417474">They beat Labour across Wales</a> in the
European elections for the first time ever, and they didn’t just squeeze out
what was once thought of as Wales’ dominant party: they beat them by 19.6 per
cent to 15.3 per cent, a swing of over nine per cent since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_(European_Parliament_constituency)">the last such election</a>. <a href="https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/electionsinwales/2019/05/21/the-may-welsh-political-barometer-poll-westminster-and-the-national-assembly/">Recent opinion polling in Wales</a>, which suggests that Plaid is indeed
benefiting from increasing support, confirm the picture. As with the Greens,
Plaid will struggle to win many more Westminster seats – maybe only two or
three look <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/plaid-cymru">remotely within reach</a> – but these days, we wouldn’t rule it out.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The SNP’s remarkable run of success continued, with
extraordinarily good results for a party which is now twelve years into
government at Holyrood. The only real way to put this is to say that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48417424">theyutterly crushed Scottish Labour in the European vote</a>, since Labour’s vote share
collapsed and who nearly came sixth in a country they used to govern without
question – as they have done Wales up until very recently. Labour lost its last
MEP in Scotland, while the Conservatives also went markedly backwards. Opinion polling (opens as PDF) <a href="https://www.drg.global/wp-content/uploads/ST-Tables-for-publication-200619.pdf">continues to indicate</a> that both the UK’s ‘main’ parties are going to get a
beating in Scotland next time around, with Labour perhaps retreating back to
the single seat it won in Edinburgh South in 2015 and the Tories ending up with
only two to four Scots MPs. They’ve both played right into the SNP’s hands in
so many ways. SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (<i>above</i>) probably cannot believe her
luck.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The independent insurgency. </b>One line of the local
government results that really made many people sit up and notice was the one
said ‘Others – Gains’. Because all round the country, particularist parties of
local people who liked to style themselves ‘independent’ of any party won ward
after ward after ward. In fact, they made 660 gains – nearly as many as the 705
net pickups that the Liberal Democrats managed. In three districts, for
instance Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the Independents <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/independents-surge-in-local-elections-1-6032700">now have overall control</a>. Now, these groups are necessarily drawn from all sorts of
people, and seem to represent almost all of the points on the ideological
spectrum. Many of them seem to be civic-minded individuals who have taken up
the baton of the 2011 Localism Act and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/12/how-to-take-over-your-town-the-inside-story-of-a-local-revolution">run small parish councils</a>, before (as
now) trading up into the much bigger world of district elections. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some Independent groups seemed to be <a href="https://www.sthelensreporter.co.uk/news/politics/the-rise-of-the-independents-in-st-helens-1-9764106">angry about new housing schemes</a>; others were committed to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/labour-loses-control-of-bolsover-for-first-time-in-its-40-year-history">breaking the hold of long-serving councillors</a> who seemed to have become complacent and presumptuous in a world of
First Past the Post elections in which they always won their wards. But it’s
not just disaffection with Westminster that we’re seeing: <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/local-elections-rise-independent-candidates-labour-conservatives-brexit">the phenomenon seems wider and deeper than that</a>, and to reflect something of a wish to, shall we say, take back
more control locally. In many parts of the country, information about for
instance the use and survival of bus routes is very controversial, but not
freely available; new housing plans are absolutely huge in scale and ambition,
<a href="https://adragonsbestfriend.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/local-elections-2019-reveal-a-need-for-an-overhaul-for-local-government-in-england/">but very vague and not really presented in a useable manner</a>; central government
funding cuts have often asked local people to step in and fill the void. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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How should we expect this all to turn out when we next go to the polls? Not just some Brexit Party MPs (if
that issue remains unresolved), and more – potentially many more – Liberal
Democrats. But also ever-sharper challenges to the four parties who now seem to be
rotating around the low 20s or high teens in the polls. A lower vote share for the Conservatives and Labour. More wins for the SNP.
Probably an increased number of MPs from Plaid Cymru. And a higher vote share,
if not any more MPs, for the Greens. And all the time, as the success of
Independents and localists demonstrates, a burgeoning sense that this time, the centralised two-party system really is under <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/local-elections-what-bruising-results-mean-for-labour-and-the-conservatives-11710446">the most existential threat it has ever faced</a>.
This chaotic Parliament may not be the last.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-25972783096966130992019-06-24T02:49:00.001-07:002019-06-24T02:49:56.179-07:00What is the meaning of the Peterborough by-election? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaqc0dpoGtCmCBKFDrswgV1pxk-KEy0QKyAthbo7p8y3sCTJtIlAfZWLpuxPoMTDQ6dnHT2Lq1AjNLk8sohjYxt6gQd8L5SmPsc1czuvJyWeTlafbSYHENHwEhdqyWIJwZb6SonyrL6o/s1600/Peterborough.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKaqc0dpoGtCmCBKFDrswgV1pxk-KEy0QKyAthbo7p8y3sCTJtIlAfZWLpuxPoMTDQ6dnHT2Lq1AjNLk8sohjYxt6gQd8L5SmPsc1czuvJyWeTlafbSYHENHwEhdqyWIJwZb6SonyrL6o/s400/Peterborough.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This week, to mark the end of the academic year and
therefore Public Policy and the Past’s <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-end-again.html">annual summer hibernation</a>, we thought
we’d do something different. So steel yourself for a full week of blogging –
each at only half the length we normally attempt, running to only a thousand
rather than two thousand words, but hopefully illuminating nonetheless.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s been an absolutely terrible year for British
politics, which appears now to be in vertiginous decline. Its ranks are
dissolving into nothing more than a chaotic rabble. That’s a paradox, because
the nation as a whole really <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0d6e788a-7120-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5">does not seem to be exhibiting</a> the same deep amber
or red warning signals. So it’s time to take stock. Why does the organised
party system in the United Kingdom look to be under such threat? Is the threat
real? What are the deeper roots of the crisis, if indeed there are any. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how the traditionally
‘smaller’ British parties are doing, having cast our eye last month over what
May’s local and European elections told us about the Conservatives, Labour and
<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1e7c8c2a-807f-11e9-b592-5fe435b57a3b">the apparently resurgent Liberal Democrats</a>. Then on Wednesday, we’ll examine
the likely balance of forces if there is a General Election this year –
specifically, the very strange prospect of a Labour government being elected
even as its popularity falls off a cliff. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On Thursday, this blog will examine <a href="https://www.citymetric.com/politics/how-could-labour-government-de-financialise-britain-s-housing-market-4630">Labour’s recent report on land policy</a>, all the more pressing since they appear to be on the
verge of power. We’ll round it all off on Friday with a survey of recent public
policy successes, not just to end the year on a slightly more optimistic note,
but to highlight again the odd sensation of watching politicians struggle so
tragi-comically while the country at large keeps its act together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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First, and today: what does the recent Peterborough
by-election tell us about the parties’ relative standings? Labour’s narrow
victory has launched all sorts of not-so-hot takes, usually from partisans
whose utterly naked self-interest and boring tribalism make their one-eyed
claims all the harder to take. One small part of the kingdom has been to the
polls yet again – and with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-48720176">the voter recall of Chris Davies</a>, the Conservative MP for
Brecon and Radnorshire, another seat will be up soon too. Can a by-election
tell us anything about national standings? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Peterborough might just tell us nothing at all. </b>On
one level, it’s important to note that all the hot takery in the world might
mean… zilch. We once thought that the Conservatives’ February 2017 <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39064149">victory in Copeland</a> showed that the Tories were on the march, likely to seize Labour seats
deep into red territory. Well, it didn’t work out like that, did it? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s go further back, too. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21625726">Eastleigh in 2013</a> told the Liberal
Democrats that they might be able to hang on to quite a few seats, despite the
deep unpopularity of their coalition with the Conservatives among many of their
voters. That turned out to be, well, optimistic. Labour’s narrow hold of Darlington
in 1983 convinced the party to keep Michael Foot. He then led that party to
electoral catastrophe just three months later. Keep in mind that single data
points do not make for a conclusive equation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The by-election told us that the polls are right. </b>One
intriguing and comforting point that leaps out from the Peterborough result is
that it to some extent confirms the national polling picture. The Brexit Party
<a href="http://britainelects.com/polling/westminster/">have hit the low- to mid-20s</a> in many of those surveys: here they got 29 per
cent. That party just failed to grab the seat from Labour. It’s not listed as a
Brexit Party gain on what is perhaps still the most famous seat predictor,
Electoral Calculus – even though that site projects nearly 200 Brexit Party
gains. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The polls are also telling us that support for the
Conservatives and Labour alike is falling like a stone. That’s exactly what
happened in Peterborough. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48532869">Labour’s vote fell by 17.2 per cent</a> (the fifth worst
byelection vote fall for that party in forty years), while the Conservative
vote went down by 25.5 per cent. So, very roughly speaking and in the real
world where British political polling has a mediocre record, pollsters should
be cheered: they don’t seem to be doing too badly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>This win told us that although Labour are suffering,
the Conservatives are in an even deeper hole. </b>Labour’s candidate Lisa
Forbes (<i>above</i>) got returned to Parliament not because she was particularly
popular, but because her party’s vote share fell less than did the
Conservatives’. Put very crudely, Labour were more successful in staunching
their bleeding to the Liberal Democrats than the Conservatives were to the
Brexit Party. Had just a few more Labour voters decided to give the revived and
Remain-focused Liberal Democrats a chance, Labour would have lost this seat.
And that tells us exactly what the European elections did: Labour’s coalition
is falling to bits, but the Conservatives’ alliance with the voters <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/05/britains-electoral-upheaval-might-be.html">could be completely disintegrating</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The vote totals hinted that there is still life in the
‘old’ parties.</b> Some voting surveys are suggesting that Labour and the
Conservatives have shed half their vote since the last General Election. That
isn’t quite what we saw here, since although the Tories’ vote did crater on
that scale, Labour’s didn’t. Labour seems still to be holding on among minority
communities and in diverse areas, a fact that caught our eye too in the
European election results. That fact caused <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nigel-farage-complains-about-peterborough-by-election-result-1-6109042">quite a lot of unpleasant racist dog whistling</a> from the Brexit Party immediately after this byelection, and a
not-so-whispered campaign against the legitimacy of this election focusing on
the postal vote. Far be it for us to suggest that Nigel Farage and his
supporters would do better to have a think about why non-white Britons loathe
them so much. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Meanwhile, one of the main reasons the Brexit Party did
not win this seat was that even though it clearly became a two-horse race, the
Conservative vote actually held up better than expected against a classic
protest vote ‘squeeze’. Mr Farage simply couldn’t persuade enough Conservatives
to back his new upstart party – which ended up at about the same nearly-nearly
threshold that United Kingdom Independence Party <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Heywood_and_Middleton_by-election">used to bang its head right up against</a>.
Close, but no cigar. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So Peterborough confirms lots of things that have been more
and more obvious in recent months. It’s only one result, but it makes the polls
look as if they are in the right ball park. It demonstrates that the Big Two of
red and blue are astonishingly unpopular given that they are supposed to be the
main and traditional homes for left- and right-leaning voters. But they are
still just about able to block the advance of new entrants such as the Brexit
Party. They have the data. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/07/labour-ground-game-peterborough-byelection-analysis">They know where their voters are</a>. They have money
and machinery. But their dominance is creaking and cracking alarmingly, and
they know it. For the rest of the week, we’ll try to suggest why that might be
– and why it matters.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-49990187428996269952019-05-29T14:22:00.002-07:002019-06-02T06:28:50.244-07:00Britain's electoral upheaval might be just beginning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWPC8U3Fx4FHrYwtTG9pqaaCq_QJ5wxYXRcY2YGg0yMxTXK5afE1UMoepPXc6s9gi-4yFTItkIJVh0VvrqVDDou-34rJ4SVhun-I8QIis7TymqUdjXbxul1mo3E6ZWR-ArdBcQdMJk3xg/s1600/Lib+Dems+2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWPC8U3Fx4FHrYwtTG9pqaaCq_QJ5wxYXRcY2YGg0yMxTXK5afE1UMoepPXc6s9gi-4yFTItkIJVh0VvrqVDDou-34rJ4SVhun-I8QIis7TymqUdjXbxul1mo3E6ZWR-ArdBcQdMJk3xg/s400/Lib+Dems+2019.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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For the United Kingdom, May has been a month of not one
but two elections – one in England and Northern Ireland for local councils, and
two across the whole UK for the European Parliament. We’ve been leaping for joy
here, of course, as the data has flooded in and each numerical lightning strike
has lit up the landscape a little more plainly. But the tsunami of results may
have left the (shall we say) less obsessive a bit… overfaced. As we come up for
air after this month of numbers, what do the local and European elections tell
us about the state of the parties? Enough of <a href="https://britainelects.com/category/council-by-elections/">council by-elections</a>, opinion
polls and party rumour: here’s some real ballot boxes to break open. Do try to
restrain yourselves. </div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Conservative Party is on a precipice.</b> First and
foremost, what these results tell us is that the governing Conservatives’
prospects are hanging by a thread. They are under attack from two sides. First,
in the local elections, they got absolutely shredded in England – particularly
Southern England – wherever there were wealthier ex-Tory Remainers. And then,
in the Euro-elections, they got battered by absolutely everybody, including
frustrated Brexiteers who defected en masse to Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party.
To be fair, the Conservatives’ share of the vote in early May (at perhaps
something between 28 and 31 per cent) was not too bad by historical standards.
Many governments have done much worse than that. Labour fell below that
national share of the vote in all the local elections held its entire third
term in office, gaining <a href="file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/CBP-8566.pdf">only between 22 per cent and 26 per cent</a> in local
elections between 2006 and 2009 (opens as PDF). And the Tories at least managed to match
Labour’s similarly poor performance (more of which later). So they weren’t
exactly wiped off the map.<br />
<br />
But the results were particularly bad for them
geographically, helping to explain why they lost quite so many councillors (over
1,300) when if you’d asked us on polling day, we’d have said they would maybe
lose 800 or a few more. Let’s take you to deep England, to <a href="http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/java/support/Main.jsp?MODULE=ElectionResultsWardList">the Vale of White Horse</a> in South Oxfordshire, where the Tories got sand kicked in their faces by
the resurgent Liberal Democrats; to East Cambridgeshire, where they also went
backwards; to Mid Suffolk, where they lost overall control; to Chelmsford
(where the Liberal Democrats <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelmsford_(UK_Parliament_constituency)">got pretty close in 2010</a>, before tumbling backwards at the end of the Coalition years), which saw the Tories wiped out in the city itself; and so on. Wherever there were
commuters, graduates, people moving out of London, relatively high income
strivers, the Tories got whacked. In a First Past the Post system that loses
you a lot of councillors, just as it loses you lots of MPs once one particular slice
of people turn on you. It’s for just this reason that the Tories should start to
worry just a little about even apparently safe seats like Ed Vaizey’s Wantage
(in Vale of White Horse) and even <a href="https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-local-election-results-2019-16224180">wealthy Guildford in Surrey</a>.<br />
<br />
Dazed by their misfortune in the face of their gold enemy
in the shape of the Remainery Liberal Democrats, the Tories then got slammed in
the back by the massed turquoise forces of Leavedom, in the shape of the Brexit
Party. They managed to come fifth in the elections to the European Parliament, and
to garner only nine per cent of the vote. The conventional thing to say here is
that this is ‘the Conservative Party’s worst result since 1832’, but actually
it’s much worse than that: this is their worst result by far since the dawn of
universal suffrage and the emergence of the modern party system. They got
beaten everywhere, and they failed to win a single council area, but their grip
on Remain Britain (which the locals showed was at best tenuous) was completely
broken. Their vote share was particularly <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48403131">pathetic in areas that voted more than 60% Remain</a>. Take a look at London, which they ran under Boris Johnson’s
Mayoralty until 2016 (and where Zac Goldsmith managed to get 35 per cent of the
first round of voting even then). Last Thursday, they managed… 7.9 per cent.
The Tories are in crisis in Brexitland, but they are struggling for bare
survival in Remainia.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Labour are in deep trouble too.</b> What, then, of Her
Majesty’s Official Opposition? The last time the Conservatives posted local
election results like these, Tony Blair was carrying all before him and Labour
were getting vote shares in the 40s. Well, not so much this time. Via some
unpleasant alchemy the chemistry of which is in part opaque, voters’ distaste
for the Government seems to be rubbing off on the alternative government too.
The Tories may have performed catastrophically, but Labour has performed
appallingly. There is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/04/local-elections-brexit-dithering-and-delay-hurts-the-main-parties">a mood of ‘plague on both your houses’</a> running in the
country, and an angry undertow of frustration about politics-as-usual. Labour
has been trying to ride that tiger, with Trumpian rhetoric and quicksilver
misdirection: this time, they ended up inside the animal they sought to tame.<br />
<br />
Labour’s local election performance was in many ways the
mirror image of the Conservatives’, and indeed they attracted the same pretty
low share of the vote. In what you once might have called their ‘heartlands’,
particularly the North East of England, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour offer went down
not so much like a lead balloon but an entire Zeppelin made of concrete. They
lost and they lost and they lost, which since early results were clustered there shaped the early narrative on a
night where they did not quite so badly in more urban, liberal, Remainery parts
of the country (they held off a strong attempted Liberal Democrat challenge in
Cambridge, for instance). Hartlepool, Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar and
Cleveland: <a href="https://britainelects.com/2019/05/05/reviewing-the-2019-local-elections/">Labour lost control of all of them</a>. Since they too are plunging in
the opinion polls, and their leader is probably the least popular Opposition
chief ever, that ought perhaps to be not so surprising: but it’s still a little
bit of a shock when we’re used to one of the Big Two being up when the other is
down. There are historical precedents, as when both Ted Heath as Conservative
Prime Minister and Harold Wilson as Labour leader were deeply unpopular in
1972-74, and when Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot were also phenomenally
disliked in 1981; but it still seems strange to see both red and blue teams in
the toilet at the same time.<br />
<br />
If Labour’s fortresses seemed to crumble at the beginning
of May, their remaining citadels got positively dynamited in the European
elections at the end of the month. Very crudely, their traditional and perhaps
more conservative voters turned their backs on the party in the local
elections: then their new, younger, city-dwelling and cosmopolitan backers
kicked them when they were down. Labour has been tip-toeing along a very fine
line in recent years, trying to attract new supporters as they shed them in
seats they’ve held for decades. For every <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000974">Stoke-on-Trent South</a> there must be a
Canterbury, for every Mansfield a Kensington, and so on. This time, they fell
off that tightrope. They got buried in North London, losing Islington, Camden
and Haringey to the Liberal Democrats. They got annihilated in Bristol, where
they managed to come fourth in a city where they hold all four Parliamentary
seats. They somehow managed to come third in the City of Oxford, where there
was a 23 per cent swing to the Liberal Democrats. That’s right: 23 per cent. Yes,
it was a fairly low turnout compared to a General Election, and yes, perhaps
lots of those voters were committed Euro-partisans on one side or the other.
But Labour, like the Tories, did worse than it has ever, ever done before –
without even including their risible fifth in Scotland, where Scottish Labour
increasingly looks like an irrelevance.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The Liberal Democrats are back in the big time.</b> The big
winners on both nights? Step forward, the orange team led by Vince Cable (<i>above</i>), who are now firmly
installed back in the mainstream of British politics. It’s an extraordinary
turnaround. Just a few months ago, perhaps only a few weeks back, we were still
scratching our heads, saying ‘why aren’t the Liberal Democrats doing better?’
Turns out they just needed the right circumstances, the right campaign theme,
and the right electoral battleground. They’ve never done as well <a href="https://election.news.sky.com/england-local-council-elections-26">in terms of gaining councillors</a> as they did in the local elections (though their actual
projected share of the vote was a relatively modest 17 to 18 per cent). And
they’ve never done as well as they did in the European elections, where they
managed to attract <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/may/26/european-election-latest-results-2019-uk-england-scotland-wales-ni-eu-parliament">20 per cent of the vote</a>. It’s also important to note that
their opinion poll ratings are also beginning to shoot up now, into at least
the mid-teens. In part, but only in part, this is explicable as the Revenge of the Remainers: high-income,
highly-educated voters who are unused to not getting their own way, and are
pretty angry about it, choosing to use the Lib Dems as their vehicle of
discontent.<br />
<br />
But there does seem to be more to the centre party’s
success than that. There are Remainers everywhere, of course (something lost in
the deeply stupid discourse of ‘Leave seats’ and ‘Remain seats’). But the
Liberal Democrats’ success in England’s North East and North West in early May,
as well as their frankly stunning march forward into deep blue areas in
Southern England, shows that they’re doing something right in general rather
than just in detail. It's true that most voters don't turn up at these contests: but the Liberal Democrats <a href="https://simonbriscoeblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/and-the-local-election-results-show/">were able to attract 'their' voters to the polls</a> even as others struggled to do so, which must be worth something. Take a look for instance at Hertfordshire, an area of
commuter-heavy Metroland where the party has been strong in the past. There the
Lib Dems managed to pick up <a href="https://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/hertfordshire-local-council-elections-2019-1-6031590">36 councillors across six councils</a>, catapulting
themselves for instance into first place in St Albans – a Westminster seat they
have hopes of winning, and indeed should win if they are to make the kind of
advances that the last month suggest (it’s the party’s eleventh target overall,
and their seventh potential gain now held by the Conservatives). Above all, it
seemed to us that the party looked professional, deploying good-looking
branding, insurgent phrases, eye-catching podiums, excited-looking candidates.
Perhaps that’s a little thing, and the actual shape of the playing field was
the main element here. But it can’t have hurt.<br />
<br />
In the European elections, the Liberal Democrats managed
to push Labour back into third, and by quite some way (outstripping them by
more than seven percentage points). <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-48417664">They won London</a>. They picked up 15 Members of the
European Parliament to add to their solitary one last time. Their storming
performance justified the confidence of pollsters who pushed them right up,
mainly on the basis of their sampling techniques rather than turnout
assumptions – which may be an optimistic sign for the yellow team as we move
forward towards the General Election. They seem to have been comprehensively
de-toxified, not via a slow, drip-by-drip purging, but in a single dose of
principle. Other parties should take note: if you say what you mean and mean
what you say, people listen. It’s not just in St Albans where the Lib Dems have
target Parliamentary seats in which they did well. They succeeded in both the
council and European elections in North Devon, overlapping with their seventh
target seat. And Remainer-heavy Richmond Park and Cheltenham should be fairly
easy gains for them in the next General Election, since they got <a href="https://www.richmond.gov.uk/media/17319/european_parliamentary_elections_2019_richmond_counting_area_result.pdf">more than half the vote in the former</a> (opens as PDF) and easily topped the poll in the latter - pushing the Conservatives back into fourth. Basically, the Lib Dems are back. In
terms of Westminster seats, they face an intimidating blue wall of <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat">huge Conservative majorities</a>, but they must surely be hoping for at least a modest
haul of new MPs next time.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The fixed points of reference have all gone. </b>There’s so much more to say. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/16/change-uk-is-dying-before-it-even-learned-to-walk">Change UK did not manage to get off the ground</a>, and they face an uncertain future in which they will
probably seek to strike an electoral deal with the Liberal Democrats – which is
probably what they should have done all along. The Scottish National Party and
the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru had fantastic nights, Plaid in particular exultant
because they beat Labour in Wales for the first time ever. What about the
Greens, who rode a wave of environmental concern across Europe to post really
strong results in both the locals and the European elections? What about the
huge numbers of Independents and Ratepayers elected in the local elections?
What’s happening in Northern Ireland, where two out of three MEPs are now from
parties in favour of both Remain and of the backstop that Tories hate so much? Analysis
of these trends will have to wait until next month.<br />
<br />
That brings us to our last point: the Big Two might be in
crisis, but the new and not-so-improved Big Four when we include Brexit and the
Lib Dems are also surrounded by insurgent forces – Nationalist, Green,
Localist. The system is in unprecedented flux, and in a First Past the Post
system (containing a large number of super-marginals) that means that a huge
range of General Election outcomes are in play. Just a medium-sized leakage of
left-wing voters out of Labour could cripple the party. Alternatively, just a
10-15 per cent vote share for the Brexit Party could put Mr Corbyn in Downing
Street with <a href="https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html">something approaching a majority</a>.<br />
<br />
The public no longer want to be labelled Red or Blue –
who can blame them? – but given Britain’s lop-sided electoral system it’s still
very likely they’ll have to accept a Red or Blue government. Combined with the
laughable and undeliverable pledges both teams now seem to issue on a daily
basis, voters' sense of frustration and alienation as people are expected to live
on as Little Labourites and Toryites is only going to grow – eventually, perhaps,
<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/local-elections-what-bruising-results-mean-for-labour-and-the-conservatives-11710446">blowing the lid off the system entirely</a>. It’s not just the steps in front of us that are shrouded in fog, but the road ahead and
the horizon too.thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-31218067731224004792019-04-07T14:47:00.001-07:002019-04-08T07:27:48.847-07:00Newport West in historical perspective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsiikL39UKrKlbM2Ee8mZPv8N7I6W7v9vMtAmAqjHiMIHw4yk0JGPkEpgjCASOwx6XWx_V-7ppwGM8Qx3aQv5y14pHxlfMjBp0PFF0EKnzU-3-_ZguzG6E9QhF5YKtHtT7X7r3lPwwEs/s1600/Newport+West+Ruth+Jones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="791" data-original-width="1408" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsiikL39UKrKlbM2Ee8mZPv8N7I6W7v9vMtAmAqjHiMIHw4yk0JGPkEpgjCASOwx6XWx_V-7ppwGM8Qx3aQv5y14pHxlfMjBp0PFF0EKnzU-3-_ZguzG6E9QhF5YKtHtT7X7r3lPwwEs/s400/Newport+West+Ruth+Jones.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It probably won’t have escaped your notice, amidst all of
the UK’s political chaos right now, that there’s just been a Westminster
by-election for a seat in South Wales. Or, at least, you won’t have missed that
if you’re the sort of person who reads this blog – in which case, read on,
because this month we’ve got an absolutely bumper load of data for you on
exactly how to judge last week’s electoral contest in Newport West. <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/newport-west-by-election-results-ruth-jones-wins-labour-majority/">It was a fairly easy Labour hold</a> for Labour's Ruth Jones (<i>above</i>), with a majority of nearly 2,000, and although
Labour’s vote fell quite a long way, so did that of the Conservatives in second
place. So: a dull night, then? Not so fast. Actually – and you’d expect to say
this, but bear with it – if we look at Newport West in historical context, it
tells us quite a lot.</div>
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How to see it? Well, we’ve crunched all the numbers on
equivalent contests in the modern era – since 1979. We’ve taken a look at every
byelection while the Conservatives were in office (between 1979 and 1997, and
then again since 2010), in which the Tories and Labour started the race in
first and second place. Just an arbitrary sample in a way, perhaps, but
necessary to look at Labour’s performance while out of power, and to screen out
all those byelections where either of the two big national parties were so far
behind that relative moves in their vote share didn’t mean very much. It turns
out that there have been 69 of these, so not just a tiny number, and two variables in particular seem of interest. First, how
far did Labour’s vote share rise or fall in relation to the seat’s result in
the previous General Election? And what was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-2017-guide-swing-what-is-it-how-calculate-important-electoral-expert-conservatives-labour-a7707321.html">the two-party ‘swing’</a> between
Labour and the Conservatives – that is, how much did Labour’s vote share fall
or rise in comparison to the increase or decrease of the Tories’ score? All
this just to gain a proper sense of how well or badly the two parties did in
Newport last Thursday. Which we hope is a useful public service.</div>
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Now, as election guru Matt Singh from Number Cruncher Politics has pointed out, <a href="https://twitter.com/MattSingh_/status/1113926626197352448">you would expect the main Opposition party to do well</a>
on these occasions, and for the governing party to do badly. Sending Ministers
a message – usually a rude one – never goes out of fashion. So when we’re
looking at these 69 byelections, it’s no surprise that almost all of them (57,
to be precise) saw Labour gain on the Conservatives. And just under half (33,
since you ask) saw Labour’s vote share at least stand still or increase – no
mean feat when voters often think they can have a free swing in these contests,
and vote for smaller parties to make a point rather than to form a government
or ‘keep the other lot out’. So, in a straight fight with the Conservatives, Labour
has usually done well in Parliamentary byelections.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They have even been doing well when we look at their
performance since the Conservatives returned to office in 2010. You can see
that from the chart you can see just below, and also from House of Commons reports on
both <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05833#fullreport">the 2010-15</a> and <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7417">2015-17 Parliaments</a>. Despite Labour’s many internal
arguments and their unpopular leaders, only three of the Labour-versus-Tories
byelections held since David Cameron entered Downing Street have seen Labour
fall back against the Conservatives. In one of these, they experienced one true
disaster – the loss of Copeland in Cumbria, which at the time appeared to
herald near-apocalypse for the party at the ballot box. The other two examples weren't nearly so bad. In the ultra-safe
Conservative seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham in 2016, they started off miles
behind and only just slipped behind UKIP and the Liberal Democrats; in Lewisham
East in 2018, there was a Lib Dem surge from third in Remainery London that
still gave Labour a huge majority of over 5,600. In every single one of the other contests, they
won – and often handsomely, as at Corby in 2012. They took a classic marginal
then on a good and chunky twelve per cent swing, and looked if not set fair for
power then at least very competitive and credible. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What springs out immediately from the data is that no
such positives were visible in Newport West. Take a look at the top twenty falls
in the Labour vote visible in the table that follows. In all of our sample of 69 seats,
Newport West saw the ninth biggest fall in the Labour vote. That’s, well,
sub-optimal, and it’s an even worse finding when you look at some of the
absolute drubbings in the list above the Newport contest. Bermondsey in 1983,
when Labour’s candidate Peter Tatchell was subjected to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/davehillblog/2013/feb/24/peter-tatchell-bermondsey-by-election-30th-anniversary">a horrendous and very personal campaign of vilification</a> in part based around his sexuality, and in
the last stages of which Conservative voters defected <i>en masse</i> to the Liberal
candidate, Simon Hughes, to defeat Mr Tatchell. The disaster of Mitcham and
Morden in 1982, a byelection held at the height of the Falklands War which saw
the Conservatives manage the very rare feat of taking a seat from the
Opposition as a sitting government. Crosby in 1981, in the first flush of the
Social Democratic Party’s first success and with one of its most popular
leaders, Shirley Williams, seizing the seat from nowhere. Warrington that same
year, where Roy Jenkins came within two thousand votes of unseating Labour. And
so on. Byelection catastrophes to make any Labour person wake in the middle of
the night – which are the only scores that are worse than the party’s vote
share tumble last week.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH76lQB1EB9XJcr_bkgwdwGjZHn5Fu70Gvoyzf2t8cD3vXJCC70zsiPD37oC-eDhKNh8oCun_szIz9gDTPvSjbDk7-YK1b0CNUHg2FhzcvRWQAlGdYUYt0nfrJYQAS1kZBn3dd640E0AA/s1600/Newport+West+Vote+Share.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="524" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH76lQB1EB9XJcr_bkgwdwGjZHn5Fu70Gvoyzf2t8cD3vXJCC70zsiPD37oC-eDhKNh8oCun_szIz9gDTPvSjbDk7-YK1b0CNUHg2FhzcvRWQAlGdYUYt0nfrJYQAS1kZBn3dd640E0AA/s400/Newport+West+Vote+Share.jpg" width="330" /></a></div>
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The story is similar if we look at the two-party swing,
as you can see from the next table: here we also have the ninth worst head-to-head
performance. Some of the same candidates for
‘worst Labour byelection of the modern era’ beat Newport West to the tape, including the aforementioned Copeland in early 2017, held at a time when Labour looked
about as popular as a stink bomb in a lift. And famous contests such as <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/how-posh-roy-jenkins-proved-himself-to-glasgow-1-3342674">Glasgow Hillhead in 1982</a>, when Jenkins as the SDP’s first leader finally made it back
to a Parliament as he surged past both Labour and the Conservatives. Oh, and
Beaconsfield, where a young Tony Blair was routed by both the Conservatives and
pushed back into third by the Liberals – again, as at Mitcham and Morden, during the Falklands War. Quite a list of debacles, and Newport West only
just lags behind them.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5QTxadfyXLfOsMM4YkX3cULYBa0po89ing9d8ZrJRc7slnaO9ZZeHsvmZazvJm7HKmzPXg4yMXlxaYWMa9SGKN43le5UKyYRcol3d9FexcC8gjmu7xUAwJspd0xOcJdGOEFSnMT_i0iA/s1600/Newport+West+Swing+to+Labour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="798" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5QTxadfyXLfOsMM4YkX3cULYBa0po89ing9d8ZrJRc7slnaO9ZZeHsvmZazvJm7HKmzPXg4yMXlxaYWMa9SGKN43le5UKyYRcol3d9FexcC8gjmu7xUAwJspd0xOcJdGOEFSnMT_i0iA/s400/Newport+West+Swing+to+Labour.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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What about contests in Wales, if we take them as a
separate and discrete list? Well among Welsh contests, as you can see from yet
another table ranking their performance by share of the vote (<i>below</i>), this is the worst Labour have done in the modern era in
terms of both the change in the Labour vote and two-party swing. There have been quite a
lot of falls in the party’s vote share here, actually reflecting in part
Labour’s dominant status in some of these seats (hello Neath, Islwyn and Pontypridd). When you basically have to weigh the
Labour votes rather than count them, it’s easy to fall a bit from a high perch.
But reflect also on some of the contests where Labour has done badly in the
past: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Gower_by-election">on the Gower in 1982</a>, there was an SDP surge, while the Welsh
Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, did exceptionally well at Neath and Pontypridd in 1991 and 1989 respectively. Never has
Labour done anything nearly this badly when the Tory vote held up, and indeed
closed in on them a little.</div>
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So there we have it: the historical context
of Newport West. We can argue about what it all means until we’re blue (or red)
in the face, but you can’t argue with the numbers. This was a very poor
performance by Labour. If we look only at Labour-versus-Conservative
byelections, out of 69 straight fights it was the party’s ninth most dismal
performance of the modern era in terms of both vote share and Labour-to-Conservative swing. Not much to write home
about if you’re on the Left, really – and quite encouraging if you support the
Conservatives, who despite being in almost complete chaos at Westminster are
doing sort-of-okay <a href="https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1114177560814993410">in local council byelections</a> as well. </div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">What seems to have happened this time
is that there’s been <a href="http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/electionsinwales/2019/04/05/about-last-night-2/">a fracturing of the Labour and Conservative votes</a> towards almost every other point on the electoral spectrum, with more liberally-minded
and pro-European Remainers moving away from Labour towards Plaid, the Liberal
Democrats and even the new Renew Party. Remember: even when seats are supposed
to be for ‘Leave’, like Newport West, most of the Labour voters there were
Remain in 2016. Given the movements of public opinion in general, there are also
likely to be even more Remain now. Rather unsurprisingly, they don’t seem
well-disposed towards Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s endless equivocations on
the subject (or, to be honest, in general). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">And Newport’s ex-Conservatives? They
seem a bit friendlier towards the United Kingdom Independence Party than they
were in 2016-18, a period during which the Conservatives’ leader, Theresa May,
could however implausibly pose as the leader and sponsor of Leave as a whole.
Now she’s had to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-does-theresa-may-compromise-offer-to-corbyn-mean-for-brexit-2019-4?r=US&IR=T">bend to reality and compromise</a> with the other 27 countries in
the EU, her more Eurosceptical supporters are peeling away. The two main
parties also seem to be tarred with the brush of the darkly comic imbroglio of
Meaningful and Indicative Votes unfolding at Westminster. Frankly, they look
ridiculous, and lots of voters are pretty angry about it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This isn’t new. As this month’s blog
has indicated again and again, byelections have often seen the big two’s
dominance challenged. The Liberals and SDP threatened to tear up the whole
rulebook in the early 1980s, and battered both the Conservatives and Labour at
Glasgow Hillhead and Bermondsey. MPs defecting from the Conservatives to UKIP
easily beat both the Tories and Labour in the late autumn of 2014, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29549414">winning both Clacton</a> and Rochester and Strood at a canter. So we’ve been here before, and we
can use this backdrop as a comparator and guide to scale at least.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It’s not so clear that Newport West can
serve as a signpost for the next General Election. As we noted <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-what-does-barnsley-really-tell-us.html">after the Barnsley by-election</a> all the way back in 2011, the way people vote in safe
seats and in localised conflicts doesn’t necessarily map onto who they want to
be Prime Minister. Oldham West in late 2015 indicated to many
sceptical observers that Labour’s vote under Mr Corbyn was <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2015/12/oldham-west-reality.html">likely to hold up rather better</a> than many experts thought – but Uxbridge in 1997, and Ipswich
in 2001, proved to be false dawns for the Conservatives in Opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">So what we’re not saying here is that
Labour is going to do particularly well or badly at the next General Election.
The indicators are mixed. The two main parties are pretty much neck-and-neck in the latest polls. Given
the potential for party splits over Brexit, almost anything could happen on the
national stage over the next few months. But what we are saying is that Newport
West was a bad, bad night for Labour when you look at the historical context.
Not really catastrophic like Bermondsey, Mitcham and Morden <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/copeland-by-election-vote-cumbria-labour-historic-defeat-trudy-harrison-gillian-troughton-jeremy-a7596766.html">or Copeland</a>, but pretty bad. A nasty flu, rather than pneumonia. But as we all know, if you don’t pay
attention when there’s something wrong, it can get worse pretty quickly. Behind
the celebrations in Newport West, Labour people must know that it was a very weak
performance in which victory hid more than it revealed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-33209744292699157452019-03-19T08:22:00.000-07:002019-03-19T09:48:20.789-07:00Why are England's universities in trouble? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyxG9c9YYD9O2WxcKMBzRsWuFLQUAFvtyF7VDFpsCU48rOanoW9PtXHOE04VKXC8eblIwPSzOol1Otp23aJNj-3Z4koLikPx8s2I7SCKQOGh6A1RZyZd4ePnxp8Q0MkMYTE3xfxaoTPQc/s1600/UCL_Picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1024" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyxG9c9YYD9O2WxcKMBzRsWuFLQUAFvtyF7VDFpsCU48rOanoW9PtXHOE04VKXC8eblIwPSzOol1Otp23aJNj-3Z4koLikPx8s2I7SCKQOGh6A1RZyZd4ePnxp8Q0MkMYTE3xfxaoTPQc/s400/UCL_Picture.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Under the radar, and away from the benighted question of
Brexit, Britain’s public sphere is in a terrible state. Hospital waiting lists
that miss targets for years on end. Schools that can’t open five days a week.
<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/sold-from-under-you-investigation_uk_5c7bee0fe4b0e5e313cb9eac?utm_hp_ref=uk-sold-from-under-you">Councils selling off whatever property they can</a> – and
closing libraries, public toilets and youth centres faster than ever before.
Hence, of course, the appeal of a more Left-wing politics these days – a
perfectly appropriate response to a crisis in our shared space and common ownership.<br />
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The situation in England’s universities is no different.
Away from the headlines – dominated of course by Britain’s disastrous and
chaotic retreat from the European Union – England’s Higher Education
Institutions are now struggling for cash. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/11/struggling-uk-universities-warn-staff-of-possible-job-cuts">Many of them are now laying off staff</a>, usually in a voluntary manner, but at some institutions in a widespread
and sometimes desperate cull designed to save institutions from bankruptcy. At
least one institution has had to be bailed out already. Rumours abound about
the numbers who will get seriously into trouble if the situation gets any
worse. It won’t just be a little handful, that’s for sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All of this has got drowned out for lots of reasons, not
least the easy answers that are often rolled out when you raise this issue.
‘Well’, people say, ‘<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/12/vice-chancellors-pay-universities-england-2017-18">Vice-Chancellors shouldn’t pay themselves so much</a>’.
‘Okay’, bystanders shout, ‘don’t build so many new shiny buildings then’. But
although there are examples of bad behaviour and bad practice in both those
spheres, that isn’t the real reason England’s universities are now struggling.
This month, ‘Public Policy and the Past’ is going to take a look at the true
causes of the cash crisis – a quiet but poisonous policy disaster in the
making. And as ever, the answers are more surprising and revealing than the
knee-jerk responses so popular on social media.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Demographics</b>. For all the expansion of postgraduate
taught and research student numbers, universities’ core business is still
undergraduate teaching. But there’s a problem here. This academic year and
next, <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2017">the number of eighteen-year olds will reach historic lows</a> that are far
below long-term trends. There simply are not enough young people to go around –
and since this government and the last have done their best to destroy the
part-time and second-degree provision that used to play such a positive role
across the board, that is acting as a structural drag on HEIs’ income. This
situation won’t last. If the share of each cohort going to university stays the
same, the rising birth rate from 2001 onwards will mean that the numbers of
eighteen-year olds will rise steadily (and by over twenty per cent) in the decade after 2019/20. But
universities have somehow got to bridge the gap between here and there. At the
moment, shedding staff and ambitions, they’re at risk of destroying teaching
provision and knowledge that will be desperately needed in the 2030s – one of
the problems of the largely unplanned system we have built ourselves. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>The free-for-all</b>. One problem English universities now
have is that they can’t plan ahead with any degree of certainty. Back when
George Osborne was Chancellor, which yes, does feel like about a thousand years
ago, <a href="https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Clean-copy-of-SNC-paper.pdf">he decided to take the cap-in-detail off student numbers entirely</a>. The
idea being that a ‘market’ could emerge, in which students could choose exactly
where they wanted to go. Universities can now sign up as many students as they
can manage. The predictable outcome: some universities went on an expansion
drive to end all expansion drives, delving ‘down’ the traditional hierarchy for
students if needs be. So a kind of malign Mexican Wave developed. The Russell
Group kicked the middle-ranking institutions. They kicked down. Newer
universities kicked new universities. New universities kicked themselves. But
as the absolute numbers of young people declined, a huge amount of instability
was injected into the system. Some ‘research’ universities which could rely on
prestige from the past basically became teaching factories. Some ‘teaching’
universities began to specialise in profitable research, consultancy and
spin-offs. No-one knew exactly how many students to expect every September. And
some institutions got really nasty shocks when far fewer students actually
turned up. University life took on more and more of the characteristics of
merry-go-round or tombola, rather than the hallmarks of education.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>The rising tide</b>. University income got a welcome
jump-start back in 2011. Tuition fees set by the incoming Coalition
administration were supposed to usually stop at £6,000 per annum, only rising
to £9,000 in certain circumstances. Well, of course universities set themselves
immediately to jump all the barriers to charging that higher figure, and almost
all of them did immediately apply the top price tag. So far, so good. But there
was a problem. The quid pro quo of a one-off funding boost – replacing more
than the Government was withdrawing in teaching grants – was <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/osborne-signals-rise-9k-fee-cap-tef">first a total freeze on incrases, and then an inflation-based formula</a> that in an age of subdued prices held back universities from raising
their prices more than one or two per cent every year. But in a sector like
education, where most costs are staff costs (or which are in a few fields
related to scientific and technological change), inflation at the sharp end is
actually much higher than the background number. So universities’ costs slowly
approached the £9,000 per student fee over the last decade, then overall
matched it, and have now overtopped it. Put simply, there simply is not enough
money in the system. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>The ageing professoriat</b>. One of the reasons those costs
move up higher than any increase in fees is the structure of the academic
profession. Once you’re on a scale as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate
Professor and the like, you get to move up one increment on the pay scale every
year until you reach the top salary point for that role. And of course you then
usually apply for promotion, and if you’ve been teaching, researching and
publishing as you should, likely you’ll eventually get that promotion. What
that means, and what that means especially in a world where there are fewer and
fewer permanent entry level posts, is that the professoriat is expensive. Add
to that the effects of vastly increased management surveillance and government
pressure on performance indicators – meaning that staff increasingly meet the
criteria for progression – and it’s an increasingly costly picture. You will
probably have heard about last year’s university strike, caused by a complex
mix of the pension scheme attempting to de-risk its investments and <a href="https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b15130txdnv7l0/the-story-of-the-uss-pension-fiasco">deeply questionable assumptions about yield and risk</a> – but for now the upshot is that
pensions, too, have become pricey. Add it all together, and universities
basically now cost more to run than students are being asked to pay. The
Government could easily make up that gap – for now – but the political drive
is, shall we say, conspicuous by its absence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>The building boom</b>. It won’t have escaped your notice that
<a href="https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/university-spending-boom-prompts-soar-in-building-starts/10029903.article">campuses look great these days</a> – if you like a lot of glass and steel. Now this
has mostly been a boon to Britain’s very competitive and very successful Higher
Education sector. Vice Chancellors were usually right to rebuild. Campuses from
the 1960s and 1970s were often, well, knackered: teaching needs and modes have
changed; environmental standards have moved on, making energy-hungry teaching
blocks seem like a throwback to the days of coal and lead; very low interest
rates have meant that governing bodies can lock in cheap borrowing for capital.
So far, so good. But the rush to build has also been rooted in the same helter-skelter
hyper-competitive race for student numbers that is making finances so hard to
plan. Prospective students and their parents are not the gullible consumers
that many critics imagine: they are of course impressed, not so much by the
buildings themselves, but by the care and investment in the future that they
represent. Still, there’s little doubt that the sector has overshot. Very low
interest rates won’t last forever; some institutions have borrowed too much,
and not always on the most advantageous terms; some prestigious universities
have imagined that their huge and rapid expansion can be maintained forever, in
terms of the level if not of the increase. Basing their capital plans (and
therefore their debt maintenance) on that model may turn out to be a huge
error.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Bad policymaking</b>. It will not have escaped your notice,
on the top of all this, that the UK’s policymaking community has been making
rather a hash of things of late. From Universal Credit to Chris Grayling’s
train timetables, the capacity to react to Brexit and the need to update
services, is just very low. It can’t be done at the same time as satisficing
with a much smaller and less experienced state apparatus. Consider the
situation from Vice Chancellors’ perspective. Will they be able to bid to the
European Research Fund? <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/erasmus-in-the-uk-if-theres-no-brexit-deal/erasmus-in-the-uk-if-theres-no-brexit-deal">Will they still have access to the Erasmus student programme</a>
that allows EU students to study across the continent? Will they still be able
to attract the best and the brightest EU staff? Will the Government allow them
to uncouple student visa numbers from their absurd overall immigration targets?
The answer being: right now, who knows? So they will draw in their horns until
the storm has passed – except, the way things are going, the storm may never
pass. The Conservatives in government look ready to slash tuition fees and make
universities absorb some of the cost – while preventing potential students from
lower grades accessing the student loan system at all. Labour, for their part,
want to abolish fees altogether. And if you think the Treasury will pay up for
that, we’ve got a really nice bridge here we can sell you. On top of Britain’s
longstanding research and development deficit, its ailing infrastructure, the
anti-intellectualism that passes for much of our collective life, the path
ahead looks more than steep and winding. It looks impassable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Here, then, are the six real reasons why England’s
universities are struggling. It’s not Vice-Chancellor’s pay and too many new
buildings. It’s a matter of student numbers, impossible planning, rising costs
and poor policymaking. All the signs are that things will continue to
deteriorate – perhaps quite rapidly – before they get better. If they get
better. The fantasymongers that pass for the two main parties are about to make
it worse, just like they poison everything else they touch. <a href="https://medium.com/uukspin/festive-redundancies-in-uk-higher-education-94709a92cba0">The current rash of redundancies</a> will
assuredly snowball, and a small number of perhaps very high-profile universities which have expanded furthest and fastest will threaten to go completely belly-up. What
will governments do then? In the case of redundancies, nothing, because
those job losses will make the sector cheaper. In terms of actual threatened bankruptcies,
though, things are trickier. Should central government bail the stragglers out,
or let the unlucky victims fail before reconstructing them later? That will be
the test for Whitehall and Westminster, who will yet again have set themselves
a challenge that should never have arisen in the first place.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-38760282722807268982019-02-10T11:50:00.002-08:002019-02-23T11:25:34.200-08:00UK polling: what's going on beneath the surface? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBnPDSVx2wT0r2oOvduFWS6XRiW5ibcYUt03M05caaXs_tFFABC7L33iiPghCNnymjgG7WaMH3VydlZpPo6i_DOIbv7h2vhaucEXwDbGvA9ObrXRfbV1U8kCGcYpwFIratRYaL06CbC4Y/s1600/Polling_Station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="968" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBnPDSVx2wT0r2oOvduFWS6XRiW5ibcYUt03M05caaXs_tFFABC7L33iiPghCNnymjgG7WaMH3VydlZpPo6i_DOIbv7h2vhaucEXwDbGvA9ObrXRfbV1U8kCGcYpwFIratRYaL06CbC4Y/s400/Polling_Station.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So one thing Polling Club would tell you, if there were such
a thing, would be to look beyond the headline Voting Intention numbers that the
hard-of-thinking throw around all the time. They’d also tell you not to talk
about Polling Club, so it might exist after all, but that’s another story.
Anyway. Since we took a perhaps ill-advised look at those very topline figures
last time, this month we thought ‘Public Policy and the Past’ would take a look
below the surface – at the numbers that might really determined who commands
the House of Commons after the next election. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/city-of-london-analysts-say-uk-general-election-this-year-is-likely-brexit-2019-1?r=US&IR=T">Hopefully, it’s imminent</a>, and thousands
of numbers will soon pour across screens that for now remain sad and empty. So
this is not a – shall we say – completely academic question.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The don’t knows –
where are they now?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
As you’ll also know <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2019/01/what-are-polls-telling-us-about-snap.html">if you were with us in January</a>, one
key to any election is the Don’t Knows, the Won’t Says and the Refused. Say one
in five survey respondents tells you that they’re not sure who they’re going to
vote for – even though they’ve clicked on the invite. Now imagine that they are
not a balanced or normal sample of voters – that they all actually favour one ‘side’
or the other. That means that your nice clean 50/50 split from the poll might
actually blow up into a lead of twenty points on polling day. We’ve actually
got a good recent example of this, because in the lead up to the 2017 General
Election a huge slice of ex-Labour voters had gone over to Don’t Know. And hey
presto, by polling day most of them were back, boosting Labour’s score higher
than even its surge in the polls guessed at. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Where are we at with this lot now? Well, the most recent
evidence shows that they are now more likely to be voters who chose the
Conservatives in the recent past, not Labourites disillusioned with the Party’s
recent, well, troubles. Take the most recent Ipsos-Mori Political Monitor. Only <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2019-02/pm_-_tables_-_feb19.pdf">five per cent of 2017 Labour voters are now completely unsure how they would vote</a>. Only three
per cent of ex-Conservatives say the same – though the numbers of ‘won’t vote’
pretty much even up the score of those who’ve shed supporters to ‘unsure’ or ‘won’t
turn up’. In the last Survation poll, which returned a slight Labour lead,
Conservative ‘not sures’ were 10.5 per cent to nine per cent. ComRes’ last poll
showed that Don’t Know and Won’t Vote were <a href="https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Sunday_Mirror_Sunday-Express_Jan_2019-.pdf">tied at five per cent</a> of their past
supporters. And so on. One of the causes of what polling fail there was in 2017
came from citizens who weren’t sure which way they’d jump – who turned up to be
Labour voters in disguise. That doesn’t seem to be holding this time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Leaders… and the
lack of them<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Leadership ratings are usually a good indication of
voting intention. When Neil Kinnock and John Major fought it out in 1992, one
indication of how well the Conservatives were actually going to do was the
Prime Minister’s leader on ‘best Prime Minister’. <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/04/23/best-pm-cameron-lead-14">When David Cameron was more popular than Ed Miliband</a>, the suspicion stuck that there was something ‘wrong’ with the
headline voting figures. And so on. So we need to look at these numbers too, to
test visceral reactions to the parties’ main personalities as figureheads and
lightning rods. And what we find here is very interesting – that Theresa May is
unpopular in a normal way, at about the level one would expect for a Prime
Minister who’s now nearly three years in power, while Jeremy Corbyn is very,
very, very unpopular – indeed spectacularly so, and probably more unpopular
than he has ever been. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Let’s take a look at this historically. After a long
period of slowly deflating, recent rows over Brexit and antisemitism appear to
have done further damage to Mr Corbyn’s already-tarnished brand. Ipsos-Mori’s
Political Monitor for January has just given him the highest Unfavourable rating
that any Leader of the Opposition since 1977 has ever recorded – bar none – and
the second-worse net result (of -55) <a href="https://twitter.com/benatipsosmori/status/1094280829088555009">after Michael Foot in August 1982</a>. Now in a world
of increasingly fluid political loyalties, it might not be particularly
surprising that these scores are less ‘sticky’ as it were, but that’s still an
absolutely dreadful result. Theresa May, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/jeremy-corbyns-satisfaction-ratings-fall-historic-low">has a net score of-25</a> (with 33 per cent satisfied). This is obviously pretty bad too: for
comparison, Donald Trump given some rather different questions has <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/">an overall rating of -15</a> (itself the second-worst in history). But Mrs May’s rating is
about the same as Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s at this point in their
Premierships, and better than John Major’s numbers at that point. So it’s not
particularly remarkable. Mr Corbyn’s favourables do now on the other hand
appear to be at an all-time low, since <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/30/brexit-indecisiveness-seriously-damaging-corbyn?nh=find-solutions,sectors,political">they have also reached the same trough</a> with YouGov.
Those statistics might recover – they did, after all, surge very rapidly during
the 2017 General Election campaign – but for now what we can say here is the
Prime Minister is unpopular, and the Leader of the Opposition is very, very,
very unpopular. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The extraordinary
longevity of the Scottish National Party<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
One of the main battlefields next time will be Scotland. Which
is one of the reasons why the next General is so unpredictable. Labour must
make progress here to govern with an overall majority. The Conservatives must try
to hang on to their impressive 2017 gains if they are to get anywhere near an
absolute advantage in the House of Commons. At the moment? They’re both falling
back - Labour slightly more than the Conservatives - in the face of a small but noticeable bump in
support for the Scottish National Party. Partly we suspect because they have
that vital political quality of clarity when they talk about Brexit, and partly
because the Conservatives’ main star Ruth Davidson has been absent on maternity
leave, the SNP have been clocking up some pretty impressive poll leaders –
which is extraordinary when you think they have been in power in Edinburgh for
over a decade. An average of the last two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Scotland">Scottish polls</a> puts them on 38.5 per
cent, up from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results/scotland">the 36.9 per cent they gained last time</a>. Labour has fallen back
rather, from 27.1 per cent to 23.5 per cent. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This matters a lot. <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour">Seven out of Labour’s top twenty targets are held by the SNP</a>, and all of them have majorities under 1,000 voters
which will fall on a swing of less than one per cent. Right now, polling says the SNP will hold them all. Yes, Labour can govern
without making a single gain in Scotland. But the more they win there, the less
they will have to rely on and listen to SNP leader Nichola Sturgeon, and the less
in government will they risk English voters’ ire by appearing to rest on
Scottish voters and Scottish MPs. Looking at the other side of the equation, the
Conservatives have eight seats <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/defence/conservative">vulnerable to the SNP on a swing of less than five per cent</a>. These are much less vulnerable on the whole than Labour’s vulnerable
Scottish outposts, but the small size of Scottish seats (and a fall in turnout
between 2015 and 2017) means that we’re not talking very many actual votes here
– perhaps three or four thousand at most. Lose just a few of those, or worse
face SNP voters who stayed home in 2017 coming back to the polls, and the
Tories could lose a scattering of absolutely vital seats. At the moment, the SNP
has advanced enough to put all but one of Labour’s seats in danger, but not far
enough to expose <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/snp">more than the Tories’ Stirling seat</a>. None of this changes the size of likely Commons coalitions. But if the SNP push forward any
more, the balance might start to change again as Conservative seats come within their range.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<b>The unbearable lightness of council by-elections</b><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Last but very much not least, we really should take a
look at local council by-elections – contests that go on round the country week
in, week out – and for the most part with very little fanfare. Sure, these are
low-turnout affairs, they often throw up eccentric results, and in various
parts of the country they are contested by local or regional parties that have
very little chance of winning a Parliamentary seat. Last Thursday night, <a href="https://britainelects.com/results/council-by-elections/#tab-1521317190-2-6">a Tower Hamlets-only party won a ward off Labour</a>, while an excellent and surprising
Labour win in <a href="https://britainelects.com/2019/02/06/previews-07-feb-2019/">deepest Buckinghamshire</a> was rather marred by the fact that their
candidate <a href="https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/17418399.suspended-labour-candidate-israr-rashid-wins-important-election-vote-despite-controversy/">had been suspended</a> from the Party before the polls had even opened.
So you can’t put a vast store by these results. You can, however, use them as a
broad-brush overall guide to exactly where the parties are. If one of them was
absolutely tanking or surging, you would expect to see it show up here. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Except that’s not what we see at all. In fact, the overall
stasis that we observe from the national Voting Intention headlines is borne
out here too. There has been a small swing from the Conservatives to Labour
since the 2017 General Election, though one that seems to have become a little
less powerful over time (for now disregarding the small number of results we’ve
had in 2019). The swing is <a href="https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1093893952548278272">a modest 2.3 per cent</a> since the last General Election,
and since the 2018 local elections it has been running at <a href="https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1093894219930976257">just under the two per cent mark</a>. It’s not exactly a King’s ransom for the Opposition, especially
when we note exactly when these wards were last fought. They were <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R_Kwtl0geiFQpDo5L4xb2rw-5fKirq_dU9n5qfQwStU/edit#gid=0">last up for election in the 2015-18 cycle</a>, four local elections in which <a href="https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8306">Labour certainly did not do very well</a>. They lost the National Equivalent Share of the Vote in
three out of the four, and only in one of them (2016) did they squeak ahead,
that time by a single point – 33 per cent to 32 per cent. So this two per cent
swing means that Labour might overall be on average there or there about with
the Tory score – exactly what we would expect from the opinion polls. It’s not
much of an insight, but as with ever confirming what you think you
already know isn’t nothing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<b>Inner mechanics and outward appearance</b><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So there we have it. Below the big-ticket numbers, there
are a number of very interesting things that we can say about any upcoming
General Election. What we know about the Don’t Knows tells us that they are not
so maldistributed as they were in 2016 and 2017. Labour is unlikely to be able
to draw on such a ready-made pool of sympathetic voters again. Another surge
might happen, but it will need a different source this time. Leadership ratings
are a bit trickier, because Mrs May <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-46555865/theresa-may-confirms-she-will-not-fight-another-general-election">has made clear that she will not fight any election</a>
held in the medium- to long-term. If there’s an election soon, though, her
numbers will matter. And they’re really bad – though not so bad as Mr Corbyn’s,
who is about as popular as video rental. Again, that might change, just like it
did in 2017, though to come back from these lows twice might be a harder ask
again. For now, amazingly, the Prime Minister has the edge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In Scotland, Labour face a greater challenge than do the Conservatives,
not that it will matter in terms of who will sit in Downing Street – the SNP
could not possibly do any sort of deal with the Conservatives. Even so, what
really matters there will be whether the Conservatives lose more than one or
two seats. If they don’t, so much the better are their prospects of retaining
power. Local by-elections tell us that we are probably are reading this all
aright – that the two major parties in England and Wales do seem to be <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2018/12/britain-s-unpopularity-contest-year-polling">locked together in a macabre political struggle</a> to bestride the realm of the unpopular. This time, the inner mechanics
of what we know seem to confirm the words up in lights. It might not always be
so: we’ll keep tracking the detailed churning of the data, and get right back
to you if things change.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Update, 12
February: YouGov tells us more<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No sooner had the blog above been posted, but pollsters
over at YouGov published an update of results from their famous <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/05/31/how-yougov-model-2017-general-election-works">Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification model</a> (or MRP for short). Now although this got things
pretty much spot on at the last election, we shouldn’t deify MRP as anything
more than an interesting new piece in the puzzle. But it is pretty much the
closest thing we have to the state of the art right now, and it’s where most polling
is going. Take an absolutely massive sample, and map it onto all sorts of
turnout and demographic data, and you can much more accurately project a
seat-by-seat analysis. And lo and behold, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/02/11/tories-unlikely-gain-enough-seats-solve-brexit-woe">what YouGov have found</a> is pretty much
in the ballpark as all the straws in the wind above told us. The
Conservatives do indeed have their noses in front, as their continuing hold
over their 2017 voters, their leadership ratings and council byelection results
have been indicating they might. Labour are as we suggested going backwards in
Scotland, with five of their seven seats there in deep danger, and none of the
Conservatives’ Scottish seats looking likely to fall to the SNP. So – it all
fits. We’ve got a good (if blurry) picture. Whether that scene withstands the
Brexit hurricane or an actual election campaign is another matter.</div>
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thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-73212884111662953902019-01-31T09:24:00.000-08:002019-02-04T06:06:10.145-08:00What are the polls telling us about a snap election?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBNZn0DMGUa38xGVFNZyBysDK0BTBe2y8xuHZItn8mOQtCkavyH4SF5eB50rCVsLmsXQx7TiyFK2gp6PIc7xM8vqq-E4cd35uAE61khokJIqHZBYUWWoAJ3Yw2YqkTYDPArC_LnTHhpkc/s1600/Election2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="660" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBNZn0DMGUa38xGVFNZyBysDK0BTBe2y8xuHZItn8mOQtCkavyH4SF5eB50rCVsLmsXQx7TiyFK2gp6PIc7xM8vqq-E4cd35uAE61khokJIqHZBYUWWoAJ3Yw2YqkTYDPArC_LnTHhpkc/s400/Election2019.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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There is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/22/george-osborne-2019-election-is-under-reported-likelihood">quite a lot of talk</a> at the moment about the
possibility of a snap election in the UK – of Prime Minister Theresa May trying
to break the Parliamentary stalemate over Brexit by changing the composition of
a Parliament that seems too confused about what it wants to make any decision
at all. So this month, we thought we’d take a look at the polling and ask: what
does it tell us about the standing of the parties right now?</div>
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First things first: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election">overall Voting Intention numbers</a>. If
we take an average of each pollster in the field’s January report, we get vote
totals that look rather like: Conservatives 38%, Labour 37.8%, Liberal
Democrats 9.4%. So the Tories would be down 5.5% on their 2017 performance;
Labour will have shed 3.2%; and the Liberal Democrats have advanced 1.8% since
the last national contest: but the swing from Conservative to Labour over this
Parliament would be only 1.15%: and that means the Government has actually made
a very small amount of progress over the last twelve months. A year ago, those
numbers actually reported a slender Labour advantage, rather than the tiny
Conservative lead that we see now: Labour were on 41.5% as against the
Conservatives 40.3% and the Liberal Democrats’ 7.3%. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So the ratings of both major parties <a href="https://britainelects.com/polling/westminster/">have taken a hit over the last year</a>, both drifting downwards a tad as the Liberal Democrats’
polling looks a couple of points healthier. But really, for a number of
reasons, there’s even less to that change than meets the eye. You win seats under
the First Past the Post, and how many votes you get regionally or nationally
don’t come into it. Here, the picture has moved perhaps even more glacially
than the overall numbers. So many seats are on a knife-edge that a really
decisive break in one direction or the other would pile up the numbers in the
Commons for whoever leads the charge; but at the moment, that just isn’t
happening. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If we take those overall averages and also factor in
sub-national polling from Scotland, Wales and London, in January 2018 we would
have expected a House of Commons that looks rather like this: Conservatives,
293; Labour, 283; Scottish National Party, 37; Liberal Democrats, 14; Plaid
Cymru, 4; Greens, 1. Right now, we’re looking at something more like
Conservatives, 301; Labour, 268; Scottish National Party, 42; Liberal
Democrats, 17; Plaid Cymru, 3; Greens, 1. So in a whole year of sound and fury,
the Conservatives have moved forward by less than ten seats, while Labour have
moved backwards a bit more, partly because of what looks like <a href="https://inews.co.uk/opinion/scottish-labour-brexit-nicola-sturgeon/">a deteriorating situation in Scotland</a>: they’ve gone backwards in our virtual election by
fifteen MPs, and forward on their unexpectedly good 2017 showing by just six
seats.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That means even less when we look at what those numbers
would mean in terms of forming a new government. In both situations, those seat
totals <a href="https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html">add up to a Hung Parliament</a> in which Labour would likely try to form a
minority government relying on the support of the SNP and the Liberal
Democrats. The only difference is the security and stability delivered by a
deal between those two parties. Labour plus SNP in January 2018 looked like 325
seats; just about enough on their own to govern for quite a while, with
vote-by-vote support from the minor parties. Now that picture looks slightly
less rosy for those two parties: they only add up to 310, not enough without
the Liberal Democrats (and probably Plaid and some liberal Tories) to do
anything much at all. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This is a strange kind of stasis. We appear to be living
in a period when the parties might fracture, or even break up. Their discipline
in the House of Commons seems almost shot. Frontbenchers on the Opposition side
are even allowed <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/645dc3ca-24b4-11e9-b329-c7e6ceb5ffdf">to rebel against a three-line whip and keep their jobs</a>. There
has been a chemical weapons attack on British soil, killing a British citizen.
Brexit is casting a pall over everything. Public services look increasingly
threadbare, and in some cases (for instance if we look at homelessness and
rough sleeping) appear to be failing altogether. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But the public are just not moving. The vote totals are
stuck. It is our contention that voters are so fed up – a fact that you can see
in almost all the qualitative and quantitative evidence – that they’ve <a href="http://britainthinks.com/news/britainthinks-breakfast-briefing-brexit-the-final-countdown">got into a 'plague on all your houses' mindset</a>, promising to vote for one team or the
other just because they hate the alternative. With both parties retiring into
their own increasingly bizarre and fantastical comfort zones, these wide but
thin coalitions might last for quite a long time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ah, Labour partisans say – but look at what happened in
the last election, where we surged from the mid-20s to more than 40% in just a
couple of months. Once reporting restrictions are introduced to give due
balance to the Opposition, and once Labour gets out in sunny rallies and
canvassing with its huge membership, then these numbers will be transformed.
<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/11/jeremy-corbyns-labour-is-now-likely-to.html">There’s probably something in that case</a>, too: strategically, the Conservatives
have very little to the public except ‘delivering Brexit’, which is likely to
consolidate their base without reaching out to any new voters. And Labour’s
domestic policies – nationalisation, higher taxes on the rich, more public
spending – <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/09/eurotrack-corbyns-policies-popular-europe-and-uk">are undoubtedly pretty popular</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is however possible to doubt that any Labour gains
during the campaign will be on anything like the scale that they managed last
time. For one thing, there is just much less of the vote to bite into. The
Liberal Democrats were polling higher than they are now at the start of the
2017 race, and the United Kingdom Independence Party have gone from polling in
the teens then to mid-single figures now. For another, the number of don’t
knows that were once Labour is far smaller than when Mrs May made her ill-fated
break for it in 2017. As the Bristol University academic Paula Surridge
<a href="https://medium.com/@psurridge/polling-labour-and-the-dont-knows-5dfff04a6b7c">explains here on her blog</a> (using YouGov figures) there were many more ex-Labour
undecideds from 2015 at the start of the 2017 campaign than there were
uncertain Conservatives. That allowed Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn to
squeeze voters who preferred Labour, but who weren’t sure about him and his
agenda, by urging to come home and ‘stop the Tories’. But that gap has now been
reversed or closed altogether. There aren’t the don’t knows to make the same
sort of progress.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Other pollsters confirm this picture. Take the first
ComRes poll of the 2017 campaign: <a href="https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Sunday-Mirror-Voting-Intention-and-Political-Poll-April-2017-Data-Tables.pdf">11% of 2015 Labour voters said ‘don’t know’at that point</a>, as against six per cent of Conservatives. The last ComRes poll
we have in 2018 records <a href="https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Daily-Express-Political-Poll-January-2019.pdf">15% of Conservatives as uncertain</a>, as against 13% of
previous Labour supporters. Labour might indeed do quite well in a campaign. But
they seem unlikely to jump upwards quite so vertiginously as they did in 2017. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What does this all mean in practice? Well, the exact
polling numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt. For one thing, UK polling
has a mediocre rather than a bullseye record of predicting General Election
results even just before the poll, let alone months or even years before it
happens. <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u-k-snap-election-is-riskier-than-it-seems/">As US polling guru Nate Silver noted in 2017</a>, the average error on UK
polls fifty days out from a vote is exactly six points on the margin between either
the two sides in a referendum or the first place and runner-up slots in a
‘normal’ election. That means that our tiny Conservative lead of 0.2% could
actually end up meaning anything between a 6.2% lead and a 5.8% deficit on any
polling day in March. Even poll numbers from the week before have a five-point
error margin. The biggest miss from the week before is 9.5% (at the 1992
General Election). That means that it should not completely and utterly shock
us if the Conservatives ended up either winning a snap election by 9.7% or
losing by 9.5% - not much of a guide to anything, you might think. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Secondly, the whole country is entering the white-water
phase of any political crisis, where the thrills and spills make you feel sick
rather than excited: it’s perfectly possible that one or both main parties will
splinter, with breakaway groups forming and recrimination spreading. There’s
even potential for <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8b425346-f329-11e8-9623-d7f9881e729f">a really unplanned or disorderly Brexit</a>, which will likely
bring about more disruption and therefore political upheaval than any emergency
since the miners’ strikes, the three-day week and the winter of discontent in
the 1970s. It is likely that if we do crash out of the European Union, the
Government will get much of the blame; but even that is unpredictable, were the
Conservatives to be led into a snap election by a Eurosceptical leader who
blamed everything on Eurocrats and foreigners.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Third and last, it’s important to note that everything
we’ve written above is based on averages – the safest, but by no means
foolproof, way of going about measuring any group of indicators churning so
dynamically. And the polling differs. One pollster, YouGov, is <a href="http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/10045">showing a consistent Conservative lead</a> – of <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/17/voting-intention-conservatives-39-labour-34-13-14-">five points at the last count</a>. The others
aren’t, and the last reports from pollsters Opinium and Kantar actually gave
Labour three-point leads. Relying on YouGov alone would give us a House of
Commons would look like: 331 Conservatives, 241 Labour, 37 SNP, 19 Liberal
Democrat, 3 Plaid Cymru, 1 Green. The Tories would gain a small absolute
majority that looked very much like David Cameron’s in 2015, though with a
rather different geographical spread of where their seats actually were. But if
we take YouGov out of the picture entirely, each party’s total of MPs would
likely look much more like the average, with perhaps a handful of seats going
over to Labour from Conservative. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Even so, the polling does tell us something, and that’s
why it’s better than nothing – just as it told us a lot during the 2017 General
Election campaign, during which both main campaigns whispered to anyone
listening that they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/27/tory-manifesto-disaster-labour-surge-polls-close-general-election">didn’t believe the surveys showing a Labour surge upwards</a>.
Well, the polls were right about that, and the canvassing data and human
intelligence was wrong. So it might prove again. The polling tells us that the
parties are running pretty much neck-and-neck, that the remarkable longevity of
the SNP’s popularity in Scotland looks to be still holding up, and that Labour
looks unlikely to make the same gains during the next campaign as it did during
the last one. In short: any General
Election would be a massive gamble for all concerned. Right in the middle of
the bell curve of probability is a Hung Parliament that produces nothing very
useful except the chaos that populists love so much: but at one end (with
YouGov) the Conservatives win a majority, and at another (with Opinium or
Kantar) Labour have enough MPs to govern, albeit without much comfort. That is
the heat map of where we would land if there were a General Election tomorrow –
which, of course, there won’t be.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now, that level of precision (or lack of it) might be a
poor return for all the work everyone is putting in. It isn’t a Rosetta Stone.
But it isn’t nothing either. Such is the world of known knowns and known
unknowns – and of <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2012/10/statistics-constructed-as-well-as.html">statistical art and practice, rather than science</a>. Experts,
in this case pollsters, do know things: it’s just that they don’t know everything.
They can map out the landing zone. The rest is up to you.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-33217274076103666112018-12-20T08:21:00.000-08:002018-12-20T08:37:40.342-08:00Five more days that made Corbynism inevitable<br />
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Despite all the alarms and excursions of recent months,
if most of the recent opinion polls are right, Britain’s Labour Party are still
<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2017/09/why-jeremy-corbyn-should-be-considered-favourite-next-election-0">heading for government</a>. Yes, maybe they’ll be in a minority. Yes, maybe they’ll
be reliant on the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats if they
want to actually pass any legislation. Yes, Britain might be back at the polls
(yet) again pretty quickly. But as Theresa May’s remarkable stickability shows,
and James Callaghan showed before her as Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979,
there’s a huge amount that even a minority government can do to cling on for
much longer than you’d think.</div>
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That’s why <a href="https://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-eight-days-that-gave-us-corbynism.html">we took a look, last month</a>, at eight of the
key dates that gave us ‘Corbynism’ – that strange amalgam of radical rhetoric,
conservative ideas and <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2881-economics-for-the-many">new-old economic thinking</a> that has captured the Left, if
not yet convinced the country. Those ranged from the big things – the privatisation
and financialisation of the economy – to the little things, including Labour MP
Eric Joyce’s famous punch that led to Labour’s One Member One Vote revolution
and ultimately Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour's leader. This
month, we thought it would be interesting to go further, perhaps deeper, and
look at some more of those structural or big picture reasons why Corbynism has
been able to take off. Here are five more dates that have made Britain’s Left
turn all but inevitable in some form. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The destruction of Allende’s Chile, 11 September 1973.</b>
The single most important thing about the Corbynite movement is its
anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism. That’s why the disastrous Second Gulf
War gave it such succour, and why the election of Donald Trump helps it too. For
the Labour Left, most things that pass in the world must be America’s fault, or
the fault of ‘the West’ in general. Sometimes that’s true, of course. There’s
certainly a lot of truth to that in the case of the military junta that
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/11/newsid_3199000/3199155.stm">overthrow Left-wing Salvador Allende’s Chilean government</a> in 1973, toppled
by a full-on military <i>coup </i>that led directly to the torture and murder of many
thousands of Chileans. It's one huge driving force behind the Left's suspicion of America, and its admiration for South America's anti-capitalist Left.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Richard Nixon’s government in Washington was deeply
implicated in the whole thing, fearing Soviet penetration of the Western
Hemisphere, and to this day the <i>coup </i>is a standing warning and inspiration to
the Left’s struggle everywhere. Mr Corbyn himself, who is now married to the
Mexican Laura Alvarez, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/may/16/theobserver.uknews">was married to a Chilean woman</a>
– Claudia Bracchitta – who was a refugee from the <i>putsch</i>, and with whom he
campaigned for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s extradition to Spain for
trial. You cannot understand Corbynism – its prior enthusiasm for the socialist
experiment in Venezuela, its current alliance with South American populists
such as Bolivia’s Evo Morales – without grasping the fundamental link between such world-historical events and the course of the domestic Left.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The invention of the World Wide Web, March 1989. </b>There
could be no Corbynism without the Web. It is there that his most fervent
adherents gather, pushing video after video and meme after meme, organising
campaigns, sharing Left and alt-Left stories, supporting each other on Facebook
pages, and on the nastier fringes of the movement dishing out abuse to the
insufficiently loyal. It was the Web that first allowed
them to see how powerful the Left could become in 2015. It was the Web that
helped them turn the tide during the 2016 leadership election and the 2017
General Election. It’s the Web that allows previously unheard-of activists to
become media stars. The Canary, Skwawkbox, Novara Media – they are all
<a href="https://www.politico.eu/blogs/on-media/2016/08/jeremy-corbyn-and-the-disruptive-canary-uk-politics-labour-leader/">creations of the online world</a> that could not possibly have broken through
without the aid of post-modern connectivity. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s here that you can read all about <i>Newsnight </i>putting
that 'Russian' hat on Mr Corbyn. Or where you can see his mouth and words slowed down so
that… well. Or that you can link Porton Down to the Salisbury chemical attack.
Whatever takes your (flight of) fancy, really. When Tim Berners-Lee got
frustrated at computers’ lack of a shared syntax from his CERN vantage-point in
1989, he <a href="https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/">saw the potential of the burgeoning Internet</a> if only it could only allow
all this IT to speak the same language. And lo, HyperText Markup Language was
born. Little could he know that HTML would change the political world, as well
as the scientific arena, absolutely and forever – for good or ill. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989.</b> There’s no
way Corbynism would have got anywhere under the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
Ex-spooks have come out to condemn the Jezziah. Faintly ludicrous accusations
of Cold War complicity have been levelled at him. Post-War Britain was always
on the lookout for infiltrators – often unsuccessfully, but at least with
energy. That created an ‘us and them’ atmosphere that permeated everything. The
idea that a movement so sympathetic to (say) <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jeremy-corbyn-germany/">the ex-Communist Die Linke in Germany</a> could emerge within the Labour Party would have been anathema to its
titanic Cold Warriors – men such as Ernie Bevin, Denis Healey and Jim
Callaghan. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The end of that Cold War heralded by <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-berlin-wall-and-how-did-it-fall">the opening of the Berlin Wall</a> (<i>above</i>) initially seemed as if it would
mean liberal democracy and free-market capitalism would rule the roost. It
hasn’t worked out like that, of course, and the rebirth of history in its all
nationalist, populist, racist, statist forms has surprised no-one with a History
degree. What the removal of the Red Threat has actually done over the medium
term is allow those who always saw themselves as equidistant between two Evil
Empires to reposition themselves as social justice warriors primarily
interested in domestic policy. Mr Corbyn’s entourage contains people <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereducation.historyandhistoryofart">happy to ‘contextualise’Stalin’s crimes</a> and play down the deeds of those who oppose the hated American
giant – whoever they are. You know what? Now that’s not a matter of pressing
diplomatic concern, no-one really cares.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The election of Donald Trump, 8 November 2016.</b> Now Donald
Trump is not the Corbynites’ favourite politician, and that’s putting it
mildly. But as it’s now a commonplace to note, both men share much, much more
than they’d like to admit. Wildly unlikely candidate? Check. Chequered past?
Check. Displacing a complacent party elite? Check. Social media rage? Check.
Fervid advocates who will defend their man, whatever he’s done? Check. Black is
white, and white is black? Check. But the link is actually more specific than a
mere list of similarities from the same era. Since politics is about image,
personality and mood as well as policy, it’s no surprise that you can draw
plenty of unlikely dot-to-dots between apparent enemies. The interesting thing
here is that Labour is actually <i>basing </i>its insurgency on Trump’s success. Cobrynite
supremo Seumas Milne <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/revealed-jeremy-corbyn-labour-plan-to-copy-donald-trump-playbook/">made that explicit</a> when he started to beef up Labour’s
media operation over the winter of 2016/17, and he got it bang on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The techniques involved on both sides of the Atlantic are
very similar. Attack, attack and attack again. Blame ‘the establishment’. <a href="https://twitter.com/danbloom1/status/1075763629629173763">Blame 'the media'</a>. Say
that everything is the fault of ‘the elites’. Offer simple solutions. Raise the
stakes. Be certain. If you’re in trouble, throw off chaff and distractions – and
deny the evidence of everyone’s eyes. Yes, maybe if you’re a policy purist,
you’ll put your hand up at the back and say ‘erm, aren’t these employee share
options just a tax the workers will never actually see?’ But by then, the
kaleidoscopic news agenda of our current politics-on-acid will be haring off again,
amidst a loud of shouting and screaming. Here’s what Trump knows: no-one has ever listened to people who know things. Now Labour know that too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Theresa May’s Lancaster House
speech, 17 January 2017. </b>There’s a good case to be made here for singling out
the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in February 1992 – for it was then that
the European Union, as it became, surged off down the supranational route that
the British disliked so much, threatening to split the Conservatives and ultimately
helping to cause Brexit. But <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-negotiating-objectives-for-exiting-the-eu-pm-speech">Mrs May’s speech outlining her ill-fated ‘red lines’</a> demonstrates, most of all, just how hard it is to keep the Conservative
show on the road. The Conservatives are now really two parties: English Nationalist
Eurosceptics who hark back to a closed world of cultural certainties, and
British Liberals who stress openness, social change and free markets. Never the
twain shall meet, and Mrs May attempted to stress the former while keeping the
latter on board. That balancing act now looks very, very uncertain indeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What were the red lines that have now turned slightly
pink? Well, Mrs May <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/what-prime-ministers-speech-means">aimed to take Britain completely and forever out of European Court of Justice jurisdiction</a>, and that’s potentially been blurred a bit. The entirety of
the UK was also supposed to leave the Single Market, which if nothing happens
on the Irish border question by 2021 (or 2023) won’t be achieved either – since
Northern Ireland will retain those elements of the Single Market regulatory
regime that are required to prevent any border with the Republic. In truth, the Prime Minister's not
got a bad deal given that her overriding intention was to leave the European
Economic Area and take back control of immigration policy. She’s probably got
the only deal she was ever going to get, given the trade-offs involved. But
even those compromises threaten to rip the Conservative Party apart, just as it
was blown to bits over tariffs and trade policy in 1846 and 1903. Mrs May overbid
and overclaimed, until what she did get looked mouselike: in return, her
government might collapse, allowing Labour just to walk into Downing Street.
Such are the wages of choice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a risk of over-determination here. If you list
too many causes, you end up suggesting that nothing else could ever have
happened – that everything in the whole world led up to the triumph of the
British Left. There were clearly lots of other moments when this could have
gone completely differently. What if Mr Corbyn’s backbench opponents had really
gone for broke and <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/01/micawber-syndrome-or-why-labour-mps-must-depose-jeremy-corbyn-now">resigned the Whip <i>en masse</i></a> in the summer of 2016? What if Labour had never sharpened up their
media operation between Christmas 2016 and Easter 2017? What if Theresa May had
not decided to burn down her own election campaign? Well, then things would be
different.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But they’re not different, and analysing why will
occupy many historians for a long time to come. Britain is potentially about to
be wrenched out of the course it’s been on since the mid-1970s. Most of the
utilities are going to be nationalised. Large-scale private industry is going
to be partially socialised via all sorts of binding agreements with workers,
customers and partners. The Thatcherite strike laws are going to be torn up. A
reborn Ministry of Labour is going to <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/workers-gig-economy-will-get-sick-pay-rights-labour-government-mcdonnell/">administer national pay bargaining</a>.
Tuition fees are going to be abolished, with unpredictable consequences for
England’s already-struggling universities. Taxes are going to go up (though actually
that just continues current trends). Capital and exchange controls might be
needed. In terms of foreign policy, Britain is going to shift away from the
Transatlantic alliance, and pivot Eastwards – towards Iran and Russia. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some people will like those changes. Many people won’t.
More likely, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/08/06/support-radical-left-and-right">voters will like some of them but reject others</a>. But whatever
happens, and whichever side of each of those arguments you take, unpicking what
has brought us to this point is a necessary and pressing task. That’s what the
disciplines of History and Political Science exist to do, and the sort of task
that blogs like this exist to make a start on. Britain’s national life is in a
fix. Its politics sometimes look like more a tragic-comic joke than a serious
attempt to unpick the problems before us. But that’s no reason, and this is no
time, to stop hoping that we can understand what’s happening.</div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822891936293361370.post-91725420172026050022018-11-22T11:35:00.001-08:002018-11-23T12:21:06.416-08:00The eight days that gave us Corbynism <div class="MsoNoSpacing">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj-PAZhqN8dtc8h62eO7B28UXi8dGp0qYFkpHGZ_6Qt1sOg9gb2qU_d5rMc2d6Z_zIjZLEx-kWkvrAP6nZ_mh11HY2JNBNcGA4HtNU0htgDF9lfP8Ao7hSKbs8pGB9XVGQ1xIUoUgIs5w/s1600/Coalition.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1048" data-original-width="1600" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj-PAZhqN8dtc8h62eO7B28UXi8dGp0qYFkpHGZ_6Qt1sOg9gb2qU_d5rMc2d6Z_zIjZLEx-kWkvrAP6nZ_mh11HY2JNBNcGA4HtNU0htgDF9lfP8Ao7hSKbs8pGB9XVGQ1xIUoUgIs5w/s400/Coalition.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Regular readers of this blog will know that we now regard
<a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2017/11/jeremy-corbyns-labour-is-now-likely-to.html">Labour’s victory at the next election as very likely</a> – not overwhelmingly
likely, and certainly not a done deal, but far north of fifty per cent if we’re talking
probabilities. There are lots of reasons for this. For one thing, they’re so,
so close to power that they can almost touch it. They need just <a href="http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour">a tiny swing of 0.5%</a> to take the seven or so Conservative seats that would lock the Tories out
of power and allow Labour to govern (albeit uncertainly) with the Scottish
National Party and the Liberal Democrats.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Labour are also riding a wave of <a href="https://unherd.com/2018/11/corbynomics-winning-britain/">deep concern about disorganised capitalism</a> and its unequal results. Nationalisation is popular,
and profit not so much – a phenomenon we see again and again in the British Election
Study data. When the Right have been in for a long time, the public swing Left,
and vice versa. All of this has happened before, and all of this has happened
again. And lastly, of course, the Government is preoccupied with, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-theresa-may-boris-johnson-dominic-raab-parliament-dup-conservatives-backstop-a8647041.html">and increasingly exhausted by</a>, Brexit – that great Schleswig-Holstein of a question
that no-one can even understand any more, and which Labour has tricksily and
artfully navigated better than anyone else. <o:p></o:p></div>
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For all these reasons, Labour is pretty likely to win the
next election. They are not in themselves particularly popular, and Jeremy
Corbyn as their leader <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/11/12/voting-intention-conservatives-41-labour-37-4-5-no">certainly is not</a>. But none of that really matters. If
the Conservatives tear themselves apart, at a time when the public are <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c8d95118-4a42-11e8-8c77-ff51caedcde6">tired of austerity</a>, then Mr Corbyn will walk into No. 10 unopposed. That outcome looks
more likely by the day. But these are proximate causes, located in the present
or the very recent past. The extraordinary ascension of Corbynism, to the point
where it looks likely to capture the commanding heights of the state, surely
needs deeper and more profound explanations than these. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So for this month’s blog, we’re going to look at eight
days that made Corbyn’s move into Downing Street so likely. We’ve done this
before, <a href="http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2016/04/eight-days-that-put-britain-near-brexit.html">when we looked at why Leave could win</a> the Brexit referendum – two
months before that happened. It’s hopefully a good way to lay bare the real
forces – deep and shallow, long- and short-term, policy-wise and political –
that have brought Britain to the verge of its first real Leftist government in
the mould of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/26/uk/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-conference-intl/index.html">Die Linke, Podemos or Syriza</a>. Without further ado, here are the
eight days that have put Jeremy Corbyn within a hair’s breadth of the Cabinet
room. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>4 February 1996.</b> This was the day that the first
privatised trains since the 1940s ran on Britain’s railways. Actually, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-railways-doing-well-despite-privatisation-a6843966.html">the first 'train' was a bus</a>, pootling along between Fishguard and Cardiff, but the
first real train was the suburban South Western Trains service between
Twickenham and Waterloo at just after five in the morning. But there was a problem
with the whole design of British Rail’s privatisation: the divide between track
and train, between Railtrack (as it was then) and the Train Operating
Companies, fragmented the railway and lost it some of that coherence,
engineering know-how and in-house organisation that had helped keep Britain’s
railways going. Now in some ways the railways are a victim of their own
(privatised) success: crowded, expensive and groaning under the weight of
demand, they are pushing lots of regular commuters towards Corbynism. But that doesn't matter politically. When they fail and struggle and flounder, as they often do, passengers blame privatisation - forgetting, for a moment, that all the infrastructure is owned by the state. Rail
nationalisation is one of Mr Corbyn's signature ideas, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/05/19/nationalisation-vs-privatisation-public-view">and it’s popular</a>. This is the
moment when Britain's political economy gradually, gradually began to go his way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>15 February 2003.</b> The Iraq War was a defining moment in
British politics. It provides meaning for so many people, across the spectrum
of British politics: a coherent part of the narrative about how ‘little
people’, outsiders, the principled, the unheard mainstream are never listened
to. It is one key reason why New Labour in power was not able to cement its
legacy, and why Tony Blair is still so unpopular. In February 2003, probably
about one million people <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm">marched against that war</a>: many also opposed the wider
strategy of military intervention that had taken hold after the 9/11 attacks in
the United States. The Stop the War Coalition was the directing mind behind
this demonstration, and it hated (and hates still) ‘centrists’ with a passion.
They are one of the most important parts of the Corbyn coalition, and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-35076944/corbyn-attends-stop-the-war-dinner-despite-criticism">stood with him in the crucial first days of his leadership</a>. Without
the Second Iraq War, the infrastructure behind Mr Corbyn simply would not have existed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>5 May 2005.</b> This was the moment at which Labour won its
historic third term under Blair: but little noticed amidst all the
toing-and-froing was that an obscure backbencher named Jeremy Corbyn had just
been re-elected in Islington North. At this stage, of course, Mr Corbyn was
little more than an irritant or a figure of fun at Westminster, having never
been involved in a single mainstream cause in his life (beyond <a href="https://medium.com/@twlldun/the-right-side-of-history-de2228da346f">stirring up trouble for the Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> and others). But Mr Corbyn had an
unseen friend: no lesser figure than Prime Minister Blair, who at some point in
the previous Parliament <a href="https://labourlist.org/2017/07/blair-saved-corbyn-from-de-selection/">had rejected some local activists’ calls</a> for Mr Corbyn
to be de-selected. Until and even after the Iraq War, the Blair government
attempted to build at least something of a broad church within Labour: Robin
Cook, Clare Short and Michael Meacher were all relatively successful Ministers.
The Corbynites will not make the same mistake Blair did, misled as he was by the mistaken assumption that his side of the party had won and could relax.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>14 September 2007.</b> As queues began to form outside high
street branches of the bank Northern Rock, it became clear that something was
very wrong with the financial system. <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/1563152/Northern-Rock-shares-crash-as-customers-queue.html">Thousands of ordinary people were in a panic</a>, racing to pull their savings out before Northern Rock collapsed
altogether. Its tellers were overwhelmed, its phone lines jammed. The lender
had ridden the wave of pumping more and more cash into an overheated property
market, whoever you were and whatever you could afford: now that ponzi scheme
of a model came crashing down. It was the first sign of the financial crash to
come. Now the epicentre of that disaster was in New York, not London, and in
the American, not the British, housing market: but the British had left
themselves too exposed to the US markets, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/28/markets-credit-crunch-banking-2008">the world economy threatened to go into a tailspin</a>. Years of economic attrition lay ahead – and the Great
Moderation, so beloved of the ‘centrists’ who stood in the Left’s way, was
over. Corbynites always blame capitalism for most of the world’s ills: after this, they
had a point.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>12 May 2010.</b> By this point, Britain’s Liberal Democrats
had been on the rise for years. They had opposed the Iraq War. They had
advanced a kind of more radical, and more Left-wing, Blairism. They had got
increasingly popular, and increasingly vocal, able via targeting particular
swing seats to grow and grow in the House of Commons. Now the quirks of
Britain’s First Past the Post voting system put them in a kingmaker position.
They chose to put the Conservatives, under David Cameron, into office. This
turned out to be a huge mistake, and the lovely mood music they emitted in the
Downing Street garden press conference held on this day in 2010 (<i>above</i>) <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameronclegg-rose-garden-love-in-was-sickening-says-lib-dem-adviser-julia-goldsworthy-9194832.html">was an even worse blunder</a>. Most of those radical voters who’d put their cross next to the
Liberal Democrat choice thought they were voting for a radical party that could
make Britain fairer, better, perhaps in some undefinable way newer: <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/nick-clegg-coalition-lib-dems-2010-labour-gordon-brown-conservative-david-cameron-a8586046.html">now they got the Tories back</a>. The Liberal Democrats have never recovered, and there
is now no rival to Labour on the Left, and no rival for pro-European Remain voters.
That absence has helped Corbynism to first survive, and then thrive. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>22 February 2012.</b> When the Labour MP Eric Joyce <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/04/brawl-mp-eric-joyce-don-t-blame-me-brexit-just-because-i-headbutted-tory">got drunk and got into a fight</a> in the House of Commons, no-one really thought much of it.
It’s not as if there’s never been a drunken disagreement in our politics
before. This particular bust-up turned out to be one of the most important
moments in modern British political history. Mr Joyce eventually had to give up
his seat in Falkirk, but the jiggery-pokery being pulled there by the huge
Unite union led to the then-Labour leader, Ed Miliband, suspending the process
by which the local party picked its Parliamentary candidate. In future, trade
unions were not to be allowed to pay the dues of people that it was signing up
to play a role in Labour Party selections. The whole debacle put huge pressure
on the link between the unions and the formal Party itself. Mr Miliband soon announced
a clean break with the unions, so that Labour’s three-part electoral college
was to be <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25946102">replaced by a One Member One Vote structure</a> for all elections –
including that of leader. That new system was to allow Mr Corbyn to be elected,
as he never would have been had MPs had one-third of the say (and unions
another third) over the choice. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>23 June 2016. </b>When Britain voted for Brexit, it looked as
if that decision might sweep away Mr Corbyn just as it did Prime Minister David
Cameron. Labour MPs and officials were furious that Mr Corbyn had basically
done less than nothing to make the case for Remain – unless you count turning
up at <a href="https://twitter.com/TimesCorbyn/status/1064098000706945024">a handful of pretty pitiful photo opportunities</a> as doing something. A
political riot ensued, in which almost the whole of Labour’s top team resigned
to try to force out their leader. That <i>putsch </i>failed, because the members
continued to support him – in part of course because they had only just chosen
him. But the Brexit vote secured for Labour that sense of chaos, thrill and opportunity
that any new movement needs to gain a hearing: it played, and is playing, <a href="https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103926">the role that the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent played for Mrs Thatcher</a> when she
said that Britain was broken. It is tearing apart the alliance of big business,
liberal-minded small-‘c’ conservatives and self-consciously English patriots
that allows the Conservatives to govern: justifying, all the while, New New
Labour’s case that something is deeply wrong with British state and society. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>22 May 2017.</b> Theresa May’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40001221">social care u-turn</a> was the
defining moment of the 2017 General Election campaign. Her Conservatives
trounced Labour in the local elections, held in early May. She enjoyed a
20-point lead in the opinion polls. Labour was a chaotic laughing stock that
made a bin fire look organised. But then the Conservatives
published their manifesto, and machine-gunned their own campaign. Its centrepiece was an
entirely reasonable and justifiable policy – that you (or your estate) would
keep more of your own money if you needed residential care in your old age. But
there was a catch: the value of your house would be included in the assessment, and
charged, if you needed care at home. Hitherto it had been left out of that
account. Reminding people that they might need care, and still more that they
are pretty soon going to get old and die, oh and by the way you’ll steal their
house on the way, is pretty much up there with the most moronic decisions
in all of political history. If we look at the best polling of that election, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2017/">it was at about this time that the Tories’ hopes of a majority tanked</a>, never to recover. Their
majority – indeed, their landslide – was gone. Mr Corbyn looked like a winner,
though actually Labour didn't even do all that well. He was well set on his march to power.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So there we have it. Labour is now likely to govern. You
could always pick out other reasons for that, of course, but when a historian
looks at this, they see a series of very deep-seated causes and some
butterflies flapping their wings. In the ‘deep’ end: what if privatisation had
never <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/90c0f8e8-17fd-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640">cut so deep into the British economy</a>? What if the US banking system
hadn’t got out of control? In the ‘medium’ category: what if the Iraq War had
never happened? What if the Liberal Democrats had tried to keep Labour in
power? What if voters had not chosen Brexit? What if the Conservatives had not
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/22/theresa-may-u-turn-on-dementia-tax-cap-social-care-conservative-manifesto">launched and then unlaunched a manifesto</a> that basically amounted to ‘we’ll take your mum’s house
away’? And then the little things. What if Mr Blair had left Mr Corbyn
to his fate in 2001-2005? What if Mr Joyce had not thrown his fists about? Well,
just take away one or two of these, and Britain would not be on the brink of
the most fundamental changes to her economic and social life since the early
1980s. But they did happen, and here we are. Whatever else it is, it’s quite a
story. <o:p></o:p></div>
thehistorianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02667424103783194367noreply@blogger.com