British elections may never be the same again

And so the beast was slain, the News of the World, dead.

The Labour Party is rejoicing, and rightly so, in many ways this is their best week since the election last year. Ed Miliband killed at PMQs this week, their MPs Chris Bryant and Tom Watson have led on this since the start, and Cameron is reeling. A Survation poll in association with Channel 4 News shows that only 9% think David Cameron is handling the controversy ‘well’, and the Liberal Democrats, despite the party’s general hatred for News Corp have been largely absent from the debate due to being tied into the coalition. Labour have an opportunity to lead, and they have taken it.

This is good for Labour. For the first time in years they are able to paint themselves out as the champions of morality against a corrupt elite, they can launch a moral crusade, what’s more it is one that binds the whole party together and which reaches right across the political spectrum. Almost no one, of any political persuasion, would disagree that the allegations surrounding News of the World activities are horrifying. New Labour made it clear it was comfortable with elites and they proliferated around the party and its leadership, but Ed Miliband has nothing to lose, only the Mirror backed Labour in the last election and the media environment has got barely friendlier since then. He has nothing to lose by attacking them. I do not believe that the Labour Party can win an election on this but it has, temporarily at least, given them a sense of unity and purpose, a mission all of their own, and something to whack the government with.

What’s more this story has the potential to run and run. The News of the World may be deceased but Rebekah Brooks, who has achieved almost pantomime level of villainy in all this, remains at News International, and in any case, these revelations from the News of the World may be just the tip of the iceberg. Other newspapers are noticeably quiet, which suggests that they may have something to hide, and the timing is also bad for the News of the World. It is summer, Parliament will soon be on recess, and there will be almost no news. Here there are parallels to the expenses crisis, as an apparently corrupt elite has its crimes drawn out before the general public. That happened over a summer too, and one of the reasons it lasted so long as there were always new revelations to reveal, the full scale only became apparent in drips and drabs.

If this indeed proves to be the case it will be a deeply uncomfortable summer for David Cameron, who has worked hard to establish close links with News International. To be fair, he is not alone. Every Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher has made it a priority to woo Rupert Murdoch. You can see why; he owns a massive amount of the news media and his tabloids, at least, are not newspapers which mess around when they want something. He has the appearance of power, and his newspapers have always gloried in that appearance. The headline from the day after the 1992 election is the famous cliché: ‘It was the Sun wot won it’.

Such claims of media power are overblown. Academic research does not support the claim that newspapers define political preferences; rather they are more closely affected by things like the views of your friends. Newspapers, it seems, do tend to affect what political issues you think are most important, but not your actual view on them. Now there are those who read papers and believe everything they say, but those are mostly a sort of feedback situation. People who already believe something, may read a choice of newspaper which simply backs up their own views. Nor do readers necessarily appreciate the political slant of the newspapers they read. Chris Patten, former Tory party Chair, reveals in his book Not Quite the Diplomat that research by the Conservative Research Department after the 1992 election showed that most Sun readers thought it was a left-leaning paper.

Rupert Murdoch does not define who wins elections. Rather he uses his deft political nous to predict who will win elections and then back them. In conjunction with this he uses the myth of his own power and standing to strike deals with politicians who either believe the myth is true or don’t want to test the theory that it is false. What does Murdoch want in return?

Murdoch is very right-wing, no one denies this, but he is, first and foremost, a businessman before all else. I would highly recommend Nick Davies revealing book Flat Earth News to anyone interested in these issues. It is an investigation by Davies which has been throwing up these revelations and Flat Earth News covered phone hacking and other ‘dark arts’ years before they entered mainstream consciousness. It is not a perfect book, I think it sells journalists too short, Davies’ left-wing biases are made quite clear and it can get ranty but it is well worth a read, especially now.

One thing Davies covers is the business practices of Murdoch, and a clear pattern emerges. Over and over again Murdoch has made deals with politicians in exchange for changes in laws and rules to benefit his businesses. There is an excerpt from the book here.

We can see this behaviour now. Murdoch was reticent to back Cameron for a long time, despite lobbying from Cameron’s friend Brooks. He eventually relented in late 2009, and News International began to back the Conservatives strongly. When the debates happened and the Clegg bounce occurred his papers visibly panicked. On the one hand there was a risk of a government including Lib Dem figures who owed him no favours, but perhaps even more dangerously the myth would have been blown. In short, Murdoch’s power would have gone and he would not have been able to secure the political favours he wants to expand his business, first and foremost is to take total control of BSkyB.

Fortunately for Murdoch the Conservatives came close enough to a majority that they could have said to have won.

Yet what politician will cosy up to Murdoch now? The dangers of the historic closeness between media and political elites have now been exposed in a visceral and extremely visible way. Ultimately this could be a true shift in the way elections are fought in this country. No politician will want to get as close to someone like Rebekah Brooks every again for fear of getting burned as a result.

How Blairite is the Coalition?

Back in the heady days of 2002 when Tony Blair had just won a second term in office and life was good for the New Labour project Peter Mandelson, that chief ideologue and behind the scenes man of the New Labour project made a somewhat provocative statement: “We are all Thatcherites now”. Indeed, there was something to his case. For Labour had come to accept much of the Thatcherite policy settlement. Indeed, in 2002 Margaret Thatcher herself declared that her greatest achievement was “Tony Blair and New Labour.”

The government of Margaret Thatcher, whether you love it or hate it, changed Britain for good. Never again would British life ever be the same again. Undoubtedly a keen mind Thatcher did not just change government policy but our very culture. For example, one of her most famous moves was ‘right to buy’, which allowed council house tenants the right to buy their own homes at knock down prices. This not only gave into Thatcherite sentiments of social mobility, and self-reliance but also created a new class of capitalists. For property is but a form of capital, and so once the poor council house tenants owned their new homes they had something to protect from redistributive policies.

Of course Blair never fully accepted the full Thatcherite policy agenda. He was a Thatcherite with a small t, not a large one. While yes, he accepted much of Thatcher’s agenda he also crafted his own ideology, Blairism. Free markets were tied into a framework designed to create socially just outcomes. What Blair did, in doing so, was change our society again. Tax credits, and expanded public services, but public services were also reformed along pro-market lines.

The Conservatives tried, for a long time, to counter this with traditional Thatcherite policies, but what they did not realise was that the general public backed Thatcherism because it improved their lives, not because they were foaming at the mouth converts. Blair, by accepting the Thatcherite consensus but explaining how, in combination, he could create social justice, created a new appeal. It was only with Cameron’s election in 2005 that the Tories bounced back, but in doing so they appeared to accept Blairism. It was put around at the time of Cameron’s election that he was “the heir to Blair” and it showed. While Cameron is undoubtedly a Conservative, he has talked about social justice and the environment and sought to explain a vision for how Conservatism can create these things. Amongst Cameron’s group of backers was Michael Gove, a former journalist turned Conservative MP who in his former role wrote in 2003 “I can’t fight my feelings anymore: I love Tony.” It is often commented that the top Conservative strategists are all ‘students of Blair’ learning from his successes, and his failures. Cameron is even said to have read his autobiography on his summer holiday this year.

At the same time the Orange Book Liberals were taking power in the Liberal Democrats. Many, both inside and out of the Lib Dems have sought to misrepresent the Orange Book as a centre-right book. Yes the Orange Book talks about free-market solutions, a lot, but throughout it also talks about social justice, about how free markets and social justice can be combined. Rather than a nascent right-wing takeover of the Liberal Democrats it is perhaps better to describe the Orange Book Liberals as “More Blairite than Blair”. Rather than a classical or market liberal takeover of a social liberal party it is perhaps more accurate to describe Orange Book Liberalism as Social Liberal ends by Market Liberal means.

We are all Blairites now, it might be said; for all three parties have sought to identify themselves as the party of social justice, while maintaining a consensus around a post-Thatcherite agenda of flexibility, free markets and moderate-to-low taxation. No policy is put into place, no idea deployed without an argument about how ‘fair’ it is, how ‘progressive’. The Institute for Fiscal Studies runs the numbers and we all sit back to see whether they declare a policy as ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’ and then boo or cheer suitably. The Coalition does not accept every single part of Blair’s legacy of course. On the Conservative side his pro-Europeanism and relatively liberal views on immigration are particularly controversial. Mr. Blair would not be found happy here. On the Liberal Democrat side his views on crime and particularly his foreign policy legacy are particularly hated. Uniting both parties together is a mutual dislike of his civil liberties policies and his tendency to centralise power.

Those who question me on this would perhaps best listen to Tony himself: “In my view” he wrote in his 2010 autobiography My Journey. “we should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct tax rates competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform.” Quite frankly that sounds a lot to me like what the Coalition is already doing.

Blair will always be a controversial figure thanks to the whole fallout from Iraq, but he changed our society and changed us. In doing so he changed the way we do politics and our political culture. After Mrs. Thatcher no party would be elected again that did not accept the basic tenets of economic liberalism. After Blair no one will be elected again who does not explain how their government will increase social justice. If Thatcher’s greatest legacy is New Labour, Blair’s greatest legacy is the Coalition.

And just to close, just because I kind of love this video:

Brown versus Cameron or One thing Labour are definitely not doing right (3/3)

Nick Clegg and the Clegg-mania rapidly engulfed all of the press and the blogoshere, for reasons we've already seen. But what about the two horses in the old two-and a pony horse race? (N.B. Polls show the pony has now grown up. We'll have to see if it's for real or not, or whether it just need to be fed some proper PR.)

The same thing we've seen in Nick Clegg is happening with David Cameron, the same projection of hope, like Change and the Big Society, give his speeches the sense of chasing a dream, dream realisable if they get elected. And even as the Lib Dems seem to have stolen the Change slogan for their own use, it still resonates with people who think this is (still) a two horse race between Labour and the Conservatives or with those undecided who may be leaning towards Clegg, but realise the chance of their vote being wasted. Summing up, Cameron may have better circumstances to present himself as a believable agent of Change, which he did throughout the debate. One ideal that the Tories can achieve (or at least that's what they say), thus one point for them.

Then, the Big Society (the meaning of which we still don't understand, but maybe that's the whole reason why it may be successful). Apparently, this concept has failed on the door step (I wouldn't know, no one had the courage to try and convince me). But there may be an explanation for that. I genuinely consider each party that does canvassing (N.B. not all countries do this to the extent to which it is done in the UK) need two types of discourse: firstly, the one they present to people in a tete-a-tete situation, when they can talk about policy and details on the economy, because at any point the person can stop them and say: Ok, that's all good, but what does that mean for me/for my salary/etc? This doesn't work very well in a televised debate, where the public cannot intervene, as if you talk only about policy details, it is extremely likely that most of the electorate will not understand everything you say or will just get bored as the can't truly relate. Going back to the initial example, people don't know that the UK cannot say no to a great percent of its immigrants, as they come from the EU and, thus, people won't blame the Prime Ministerial candidate who will choose to ignore that question. Let's be honest, the economy is quite hard to understand (my luck on the immigration is issue is the fact that I am an Eastern European immigrant who's done European Studies as her major), while also being terribly boring. Which is why, for such an event you have to bring out the philosophical issues, the fancy concepts, the ideals that guide you party... the Big Society. As I was saying, this concept didn't work very well on the doorstep, as just as it is rather problematic to define, it's hard to actually convince one of its direct benefits to one's persona. But it worked as an ideal, attempting to inspire people, in the debate. Another point for the Blue corner.

Hence, people need to aspire to something, they need to be told that things are going to be better and this needs to be done through this type of ideal, be it Change, Fairness or the Big Society, that can be easily remembered, because these are the first things that an undecided voter will remember regarding the parties and the candidates when he is in the polling booth, choosing where to put his cross. And it is here that Labour's gone wrong , in using the 'fairness' slogan just on their posters/leaflets and not linking to it in the debates, where they focused on policy detail ... and policy detail. Truth be told the only specific thing I remember from what Brown said is that, apparently, the Tories will take 6 billion out of the economy. Not inspiring. At all.

Indeed, many argue that not waffling about ideals and talking directly about policies is the way to go. (Explains why I liked him.) But even as that may be true for some of the electorate, the polls seem to disagree and argue that maybe a campaign based on a good 'ideal' is better. Concluding, it's Tory: Lib Dem: Labour = 2:2:0. Though, keep in mind, the lack of a good theme/dream is just one of the many factors that may have led to the failure of Labour's campaign ... while also accepting that when you're the governing party it's quite hard to find a new 'ideal' to strive for, especially when you're being accused of ruining the country for the past 13 years.

(Last post on the debates and 'How to win/lose' an election. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here).

Summing up the last debate (1/3)

NICK CLEGG: Why don't we save time? Instead of making endlessly misleading comments, let's assume every time you talk about our policy, it's just wrong. What I'm saying is, there is a layer of illegal immigrants. We have to deal with it. We have to get them out of the hands of criminals. You say numbers. Can you now tell me - am I right or wrong that 80% of people who come here come from the European Union, and your cap would make no difference to that? Is that right? Yes or no.

DAVID CAMERON: We have said new EU countries should have transitional controls. We all remember what happened when Poland joined the European Union. We were told 13,000 people would come, and in fact it was closer to a million. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats cannot wriggle on this. They have spoken about 600,000 people. If that's the number, they should come clean about that.

NICK CLEGG: We're not wriggling, I just want a response. Yes or no, do 80% of immigrants come from the European Union, which wouldn't be affected by your cap? Yes or no?

DAVID CAMERON: It's affected by having transitional controls. I've answered your question. You should answer mine.

DAVID DIMBLEBY: I think we should perhaps bring Mr Brown in. Third Debate Transcript

It was a brilliant moment, an awesome comeback and, more importantly, true: most immigrants are from inside the EU and, hence, cannot be stopped in any way from coming and working in the UK, cap or no cap. It may be frustrating for the British people, but this is it: it’s one of the advantages and the drawbacks of being a member of the Union.

But more importantly, it was the moment in which, in my eyes, David Cameron lost the third and last Prime Ministerial debate. I thought Gordon Brown was good, argumental, answering questions and giving us all the needed details on Labour’s policies. Also, he was shaking his head rather dramatically every time one of his opponents spoke, which in my opinion could have one of two effects on the public: they were either convinced of the failures of the policies belonging to the Tories/Lib Dems or they were rolling on the floor in peels of laughter at a prime minister who looked like a broken doll.

At the same time I saw Nick Clegg as waffling about ideals and fairness and only half talking about reality. And that’s not a figure of speech as every time he spoke, regardless of what those before him were saying, he would start by arguing for fairness and change and all that and only then go into detail on his party’s policies. Good plan, aurea mediocritas is called that way for a good reason, but dead obvious for the public, who were probably going mad over how the whole debate seemed to be at a standstill/take a publicity break every time he started talking or just the sheer density of the word ‘fairness’ per sentence. Well, at least he tried, one has to give him some credit for that. Then, David Cameron was not responding to attacks coming from either of his opponents, but, thank God, he was not reminding us of the black man he met in Plymouth either. He was coherent, though a bit patronising at times and overall quite good. But, let’s be honest about it, none of them actually answered the questions, Dimbleby had to repeat them more than twice and, more importantly given the event of a hung parliament, not at one point did we see them agreeing on anything, trying to bridge their positions. Long lost are the days in which the economist wrote about Nick Clegg ‘Who the devil?’ or those in which we all agreed with Nick. There is no sense of cooperation, not only with those who will be the alleged king-makers, the Liberal Democrats, its a proper cat fight and it’s on...

So, if I were to judge it wasn’t a great success for either of them, but overall Brown was good, Clegg was reasonable and Cameron was, well, holding a monologue. But it would seem that I’ve seen a different debate from the rest of the world, as not many share my views, the polls showing the Tory leader as the winner of this last debate. Yet, why have Cameron and Clegg done so good, while Labour is going down in the polls?

TBC

(Well, this is just the first of a series of 3 posts on, basically, how to win an election.)

Who are the Conservatives?

Last night I watched the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary 'Cameron Uncovered'. The main question of the show was 'Who is David Cameron?' With interviews from Mandelson to Cameron himself the documentary was good viewing. Yet, I feel it answered a question I already knew the answer to. Who is Cameron? He is a not particularly ideological Conservative with good PR skills, whose primary concern is to return the Tories to power. This is hardly news.

Yet in a sense, I think a bigger question is 'Who are the Conservatives?' We all have a certain idea of what a Conservative is in our heads. Yet our vision of the Conservative Party is shaped by the Thatcher years when the Conservatives have, perhaps, returned to an older tradition.

The Conservative Party is the oldest political party in the world, and one of its most successful election winning machines .The Conservatives spent 75 years of the Twentieth Century in power alone or with allies. For most of that time it has been dominated by 'One Nation' Conservatives. One Nation Conservatism is concerned with national unity. The fear is that an unhappy populace could threaten all that was good about the status quo. In a sense the One Nationers were first and foremost concerned with the defence of the traditional and of the status quo. The institution of monarchy, the political system, the Church of England, all were to be defended, but when the public mood turned against anything it was to be changed just enough to keep the public happy. Later on the desire for unity lead many One Nationers to become pro-European. Perhaps an archetypal One Nation Conservative was Harold Macmillan, PM from 1957 until 1963. Macmillan's time in office can hardly be described as radical, but he is responsible for several achievements. He presided over a successful economy, he is responsible for building more council houses than any other Prime Minister, he presided over Britain's first attempt to gain entry to the European Union, and he made the famous 'Winds of Change' speech that signalled that Britain was willing to give up its African colonies. Each of these acts was aimed at maintaining unity.

By the 1970s the post-war model was on its knees. One Nation Conservatism, with its embrace of the post-war orthodoxy and opposition to radical change was unable to deal with the challenges facing Britain. The One Nationers were challenged by the New Right, the new economic orthodoxy which embraced a low tax, low regulation, flexible economy. The One Nationers were pushed aside, and the New Right found its champion in Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher was different to all the Conservatives who had come before her. She embraced theory, believing in the New Right economics of Hayek and Friedman. Yet all the time she was always tactically aware. Chris Patten, a cabinet member of Thatcher's says in his book Not Quite the Diplomat "Privatising the railways was described as a 'Thatcherite' policy. But I doubt whether she would have pursued it – too messy and too likely to be too unpopular. She favoured big ideas, but invariably (until near the end) pursued them pretty cautiously, carefully testing and preparing the ground." When the Conservatives jettisoned Thatcher her supporters forgot this important part of Thatcher's leadership style, leading to their years in the wilderness.

In a sense then Cameron is taking the Conservative Party back to its origins. Cameron was elected on a 'modernist' ticket, but modernism is, in truth, a subjective term. In a sense, what is less interesting than Cameron's own thought process is the ideals of those who back him.

Behind Cameron are essentially two groups. First, the libertarian Conservatives who simply oppose the state from top to bottom. For example Alan Duncan is in favour of radically lower taxes and also favours the legalisation of drugs. A chapter from his book, outlining his views on the subject is available on his website. Or Daniel Hannan, the radical Tory MEP, famous for decrying the NHS as a "Sixty-year mistake" who also calls for radical democratic reform in his book 'The Plan'. It is my personal suspicion that Cameron's personal views lie close to this group, having previously calling for drugs legalisation. Though of course, it is unlikely that Cameron will do this. It is this group that is pushing for radical cuts in the state budget.

The other group that backs Cameron is a socially conservative group who prioritise social justice. This group is culturally Conservative, opposing consumerism. Take Phillip Blond's 'Red Tories'. Blond argues against both the welfare state and Thatcherism. Blond argues for a 're-capitalisation of the poor' by, for example, expansion of the post office banking service into something designed to help the poor invest, and 'markets built on morals'. Similar is Iain Duncan Smith, whose 'centre for social justice' has become greatly influential, with a big idea being that marriage needs to be strengthened as an institution for the sake of the poor. IDS will receive a social justice cabinet portfolio if Cameron wins the election.

There is a tension within Cameron's backers between the libertarian and the communitarian. Those who focus on the individual and who are against the state, and those who envision a role for the state, if a different one to before. In a sense this is useful to Cameron, as it gives him a type of political centre from which to work within. In a sense this division between cultural and economic conservatism has always been there. Yet, perhaps the big problem of the Cameron project is that it does not have a vision, it has competing visions. You cannot simply follow public opinion to reach power. Nor can you simply harp on at an unpopular government because sooner or later scrutiny will fall on you. You need a vision, a view of what kind of society you want to create. Blair for example sold the country a view of a meritocratic society, with opportunity, world class public services and economic affluence for all. Cameron's big idea is said to be to withdraw the state and allow charities and grassroots action to replace it. This idea is in keeping with both libertarian and communitarian viewpoints, but it has yet to provide any cohesive policy ideas. As the election closes the polls are getting worse for the Conservatives. Their inability to provide a simple narrative of what life under a Tory government would look like is damaging them. The worst reaction a party can have from an electorate is one of fear and uncertainty. Electorates generally go with the theory of 'The devil you know...' and as the polls close the electorate may be increasingly asking themselves 'Who are the Conservatives?'

Everyone Hates Brown because he is Badly Dressed

GQ magazine have just published their best and worst dressed man list. Not something I’d usually read, but interestingly, a panel of “experts” has declared our beloved PM the worst dressed gentleman in the country.

No idea who these experts are mind you, though their rankings all seem pretty accurate. Brown is accompanied by Russell Brand, Boris Johnson and Peter Stringfellow. Hardly men associated with a good-fashion sense!

Anyway, there’s a much more serious issue here; is Brown’s lack of popularity a result of his poor presentation? None of his entourage of advisors appears to have advised him upon presentation. Though admittedly those advisors of his do appear to have had little impact in other areas so far…

I thought it was just me, but Harvard Business Review did publish an article a few years back… It claimed that interview success and promotion at work was found to be quite strongly associated with looks. Following a lengthy research project, they proposed that the symmetry of one’s face could be measured and used to predict success in the workplace.

Brown is a bit of a stark contrast to Cameron, who ended up eighth on the best-dressed list. Furthermore, there does seem to be some lingering perception of Brown as badly presented and badly dressed. Let’s face it; he’s not the best-looking chap in the world is he? So perhaps this does override our perception of his individual appearances. Therefore, if Harvard’s research is to be believed, Brown has no chance against the more attractive Cameron.