Capital Punishment and the Electorate

There’s been something of a campaign on death penalty proceeding over the last couple of weeks, headed by Guido Fawkes. A Mail On Sunday/Survation poll has now looked into the British public’s views on the subject.

• 53.1% of respondents said they were in favour of the reintroduction of the death penalty, 33.7% said they were against and the rest said they didn’t know.
• 62.9% of Males were in favour compared to 43.6% of females.
• Support was linked to age with elder respondents typically being more in favour (61.9% in favour to 28.4% against in the 60+ age group compared to 44.9% in favour to 45.8% against amongst 18-24s).
• Only 2010 Lib Dem supporters tended to be against with 43% against to 41.3% in favour. Labour supporters from that election were slightly in favour (45.3% to 38.8%) and Conservative (64.6% to 27.8%) and UKIP voters (77.4% to 11.3% albeit on a low base, so with a high margin of error) tended to be heavily in favour.
• Absolute majorities were in favour of the death penalty in cases of mass murder and murder of a child, and large minorities were in favour of cases of terrorism, and repeat murder offences.
• 48.5% of respondents thought that the death penalty would reduce the murder-rate.

None of these results are particularly surprising, polls have consistently shown voters as being in favour of the death penalty since time immemorial.

Given these views it may seem strange that no major British party advocates the death penalty. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the polling also shows that better educated respondents tend to be more against and similarly political and media elites and political party activists tend to be more against than the public at large. The death penalty is a quintessential populist policy which is more popular amongst the less political educated (that is not to say that everyone who supports the death penalty is stupid, I have met Guido Fawkes, and he is many things, but thick is not one of them).

Another issue is that the European Commission on Human Rights bans it. You need to be in the ECHR to be in the EU and so bringing in the death penalty would bring in a whole raft of divisive and problematic issues for any party or government.

Lastly and probably most importantly, is that while support for the death penalty polls high it is a divisive and polarising issue. It is likely to lose votes for a party as well as gain them. Meanwhile because no party backs the death penalty there is no need to out-manoeuvre other parties on the issue. In other words, the public may be in favour, but as no major party is in favour supporters have no choice of party to support and therefore it does not exist as a factor of party competition.

Full data tables can be downloaded from http://survation.com/2011/08/survation-crime-capital-punishment-survey-for-the-mail-on-sunday/

A Story of Two Lefts

Once upon a time life was simple. There was the left, and the right, and that was that. In the 1960s something a bit odd happened, a ‘New Left’ arose. The new left embraced so-called ‘post-material’ concerns. That is to say traditionally politics was entirely about economics. Either you believed in the free-market, in which case you were right-wing, or you believed in redistribution of wealth in which case you were left-wing. The New Left brought a new series of political concerns and baggage with them, which weren’t about economics at all, but about values, and opposing the rigid social order and conservative social values of the immediate post-war years. They were anti-war, anti-nuclear, and anti-elite. They believed in gay rights, smashing the political system, in feminism, anti-racism and in environmentalism. Not only were they beliefs different but so were their tactics, rather than forming or joining political parties they set up civil society groups, and charities. They marched in the streets against Vietnam and racism. They fought with the police. We all know of Martin Luther King Jr, some of you will be aware of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK, or of the May 1968 riots in France.

These groups were the result of several connected societal changes. On the one hand there was increased post-war prosperity as the post-war economy boomed. For the first time only a minimal number of Westerners had to worry about where their next meal was coming from or how they’d pay their bills. The politics of want and need were largely drawing to an end. At the same time a more educated, knowledgeable, connected population had new awareness of the world around them. The New Left was particularly popular amongst students and academics, and in the new intellectual middle classes. This education also largely led people to shed previous identities and divisions – class or religion in favour of the new values politics.

Across the West politicians had to find ways to deal with the new movement. In the US the Democratic Party essentially split between an intellectual liberal side and a more populist, white working class side. In 1972 they ran George McGovern for the Presidency, largely on an anti-Vietnam ticket. He supported abortion and there were rumours about his views on drugs. He lost in a landslide. Yet there is often discussion in the United States of a so-called ‘culture war’ between these cultural liberals and those with an altogether more traditional view. The split in the Democratic Party remains too. During the 2008 Presidential primaries Barack Obama was typically seen as representing liberal intellectuals and ethnic minorities, whereas Hillary Clinton was supported more by the trade unions (still predominantly white and working class).

In Europe new political formations started to appear, but the most notable was the ‘Green Party’. There are often said to be four ‘pillars’ of the Green movement: ‘ecological wisdom’, ‘social justice’, ‘grassroots democracy’ and ‘nonviolence’. Green parties are essentially the ideological descendants of the New Left.

Yet they posed a challenge to the older, more established, centre-left parties in Europe, and they all took on some form of the new ideals. In Britain both the Labour Party and the Liberals immediately took on some of the ideals. The Liberal Party moved from a party which had only 2.7% of the vote and six MPs in 1956 to a party capable of winning 19.3% and fourteen MPs by 1974. The return to power of Labour in 1964 under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, after thirteen years of opposition, did not lead to the expected outburst of socialism. Wilson nationalised little and pursued an economic policy that was vaguely centrist for the day. Yet meanwhile he allowed the action of backbench MPs, Liberals and cabinet ministers to lead to a mini-social revolution, liberalising laws on censorship, divorce, homosexuality, abortion and immigration, as well as abolishing the death penalty.

In defeat Labour continued to embrace New Left concerns. Not only did its infamous 1983 manifesto (‘the longest suicide note in history’) contain sections of traditional socialism (nationalising huge numbers of industries, raising taxes and increasing the size of the welfare state) but it also embraced unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from NATO and gay rights. The Lib Dems too embraced post-materialism. Indeed I would argue that the Lib Dems are, at their core, a post-material party. For if one wishes to redistribute wealth one still joins Labour, if one wishes for low taxes and a free market economy one joins the Tories. The majority of Lib Dems I have met, however, would describe their priorities as civil liberties, political reform and Internationalism.

When Labour came back to power it embraced the ‘Third Way’ as so many other large centre-left parties had. A simplistic reading of this strategy and thinking is to say it simply moves to the centre, but in reality the Third Way attempted to combine three contesting discourses, a traditional socialist one defending the welfare state, state regulation and equality, a more conservative, neoliberal discourse and finally a post-materialist discourse. Labour’s post-materialism was more apparent early on – initially it largely favoured political reform, transparency and increased civil liberties. Political reformers, civil liberties campaigners and Liberal Democrats will question me on this, but I would point to the Freedom of Information Act, the Human Rights Act, and the Hunting Act as post-materialist legislation. I would also point to civil partnerships, foreign aid, and multiculturalism as areas where Labour embraced New Left concerns. Discourse wise it was also fond of talking about the environment, and Robin Cook’s declaration of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ in 1997 may raise guffaws amongst some readers now, but there was at least an attempt there to appeal to internationalist concerns. It is sometimes said that while the right has won on economics, it is the left that has won on culture. This is a gross simplification, but like all good simplifications there is a ring of truth to it.

The three competing discourses are all present in Labour still – they need to be if it is to win re-election. Labour must, at one and the same time, appeal to the working class, the culturally liberal middle classes and to the political centre ground. Failure to appeal to all three at the same time will result in huge strategic problems. Yet there is a clash between the three. For an example take an issue like immigration. Typically it is the working classes who are most anti-immigration, but at the same time it is the culturally liberal middle classes (and ethnic minorities) who are most likely to be pro-immigration. Research from the last election tends to indicate the majority of the general public and a vast swathe of Labour’s support indicating a preference for a more restrictive immigration policy, often favouring Conservative Party policy on the subject, but amongst those who did not favour Conservative Party policy Labour Party policy was often seen as too restrictive. In many countries a polarisation is going on with those supporters of centre-left parties who like liberal immigration policies heading towards green and left-liberal parties whereas those who prefer a more restrictive policy head towards conservatives and the far-right. There is evidence of this here – with the increased vote for the Lib Dems on the one hand and a strong BNP vote in many working class traditional Labour safe seats. Indeed with the rise of the New Left there is the countermovement – that of the far-right. For the BNP and their brethren are not far-right in the economic sense but far-right in their rejection of the universalist, and egalitarian principles of the modern left. They are anti-multiculturalism, anti-feminism, and anti-environmentalism. Perhaps inevitably then, a move to a politics based on new culturally liberal values has resulted in a movement that rejects those values.

All over Europe, not just in Britain, the reality is that left-wing parties are being booted out of government, often in startling style. The reason is simple – no one has found the correct blending of the three discourses of classical socialism, neoliberalism and postmaterialism. To embrace neoliberalism too much is to be accused of compromising beliefs, of being the same as the centre-right and to lose votes to the left. Embracing postmaterialism too much will result in a growth of the far-right. To embrace traditional socialism too much is to leave that space open to the centre-right. To worry traditional left-wing parties more postmaterialist parties are more and more willing to accommodate with the right. In Finland and Ireland Green parties have willingly entered coalition with the centre-right. The same can be said here of the arguably post-materialist Lib Dems. In the Netherlands and Germany Greens are willing to deal with the right too. The opportunity for the development of a right which embraces new left values threatens to be a serious crisis for parties like Labour.

The London Mayoralty: A recipe for disloyalty

This past month we have enjoyed the spectre of both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson causing trouble for their parties. First Ken got himself into trouble by appearing to endorse the Independent mayoral candidate for Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman the bizarre spectre of which Tom has already covered here and here. Theoretically Ken’s actions should lead to him being automatically expelled from the Labour Party but he remains in the party and the mayoral candidate. At the same time current mayor Boris Johnson has described the Coalition government’s housing benefits changes as likely to result in ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’. Boris had already told the Greater London Assembly that he wanted London to be spared from the cuts back in July.

London Mayors and Mayoral candidates have developed a maverick streak it seems, but why, and why can’t parties do anything to prevent these types of outbursts? Firstly, it is only inevitable that parties at local level will take different positions to national level parties. Different areas have different needs, different demographics and different cultures to the nation as a whole. We can see this in the Welsh and Scottish Assembly and Parliament most clearly. Welsh and Scottish Labour have taken positions notably and proudly to the left of the national party. These are not just a function of the coalitions it has wound up in, but also as a part of its political strategy and the make-up of local parties. Former Welsh First Minister proudly proclaimed his left wing credentials. Yet no member of a devolved parliament would ever behave in a way as ‘maverick’ as Boris or Ken.

The reality is that its part and parcel of the London mayoral system itself. Unlike the vast majority of political leaders in the UK the London mayor is elected on an individual mandate. It’s essentially a Presidential system – the Mayor is elected directly and has a vast swathe of powers all of his own. The Greater London Authority is supposed to keep the Mayor to account but its powers are fairly weak, the balance of power is clearly slanted towards the Mayor. This means several things. Firstly, when someone votes for a Mayoral candidate they vote for a person – not for a party. This encourages parties to select maverick, well-known, likeable individuals to be Mayoral candidates. Both Mayors of London have so far matched this description. What’s more, in order to win the Mayoralty a candidate does not necessarily need a party or pre-existing structure behind them, as winning seats on the GLA has no impact on whether you win. This has been demonstrated by Ken winning the mayoralty as an independent in 2000. At the same time parties have far fewer mechanisms for keeping them in line than MPs - mayors are not whipped and being booted out of the party is far less a threat as they will continue to be mayor anyway, and enjoy all the power associated.

I have no idea why Ken Livingstone apparently endorsed Rahman in Tower Hamlets. He may have wanted to re-enforce his ‘maverick’ image, he may have genuinely thought him the best candidate, he may have hoped to re-enforce his ties with an area of London that has always voted strongly for him, or it may have been none of these things, or all of these things, but I do know one thing – whatever happened Ken Livingstone would have been on the ballot paper in May 2012. If Labour had ejected him he’d have simply run as an Independent, and in boroughs like Tower Hamlets ‘Livingstone’ carries a lot more respect and loyalty than ‘Labour’ – the effect would have likely been to have him run as an Independent, and push Labour into an embarrassing third place. At least with him in the party the party has some modicum of influence over him, however small.

Boris, on the other hand, appears to just be dealing with political reality. London is naturally a centre-left city. Labour won London in the 2010 election – winning 36.6% of the vote and 38 seats compared to 34.5% and 28 for the Conservatives and 22.1% and 7 for the Liberal Democrats. What’s more the Mayoral election is in 2012. By this point the cuts are likely to be truly biting, and the coalition government may well be particularly unpopular. What’s more opposition voters tend to see elections like this as a chance to stick two fingers up at the government – in other words Labour voters may be more enthusiastic about voting than Conservative ones. While Boris is polling encouragingly it is not enough to make him certain of victory. Picking fights with the government allows him to distance itself from it, and by echoing the attack points of Labour MPs he appeals to centre-left voters. If the Coalition takes a hit for Boris Johnson then that is acceptable – it is about winning. Some wish to perceive this as part of an attempt by Boris to become Conservative Party leader – I wholeheartedly disagree. The Mayoralty is a poor place to jump to leader from, Boris is distant from the MPs he would need the support of and would need to be a MP himself. What’s more attacking a Conservative government from the left is hardly a way to make yourself popular with Conservatives. This is purely about the Mayoralty.

In creating a quasi-Presidential London politics Tony Blair created a system that encouraged personality over party. Mavericks and oddballs are the recipe du jour. It has to say something that the current favourite for the Lib Dem nod is Lembit Opik, with the spectre of Boris vs. Ken vs. Lembit likely to secure a Mayoral race that is at least interesting. The system weakens political parties with regard to London local governance. Mayors and mayoral candidates will always be out of party control, and parties should not be surprised when they embarrass them. In fact they should come to expect it.

Should Labour approach the coalition with its Balls or its Darling?

The reality facing all British political parties is that the next election, currently scheduled for 2015 will come down to the economy. Indeed, if there is an iron law of electoral politics it is the oft-quoted statement of Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.” While economics is not the end all and be all of winning elections it is still by far and away the most important factor, and that goes double for countries in recession. The Coalition has made the centrepiece of its time in office an ambitious programme of cuts to public spending, such cuts are inevitably unpopular, at least in the short-term, yet, there is a potent economic argument for them. Now, I am not an economist, but my reading of the situation is that different economists have differing attitudes and that the cuts may or not work, but that, in general most back the cuts. That said, economists have been wrong before, and we’ll not know who was right for many years now. Yet I’m not an economist, I’m a political scientist, so today I want to talk about cuts from a strategic POV.

All this given, the Labour Party’s most important tactical decision of the next four and a half years will be their long-term strategy on the cuts. Labour has two basic strategies that have been proposed for the economy, which are:

The Darling Strategy

The Darling Strategy, proposed by former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, is the strategy that Labour ran on in 2010. It is for immediate deficit reduction but is much more cautious than the coalition’s strategy. While the coalition proposes eliminating the deficit by 2015, Darling proposed cutting the deficit in half. He would have been slightly more reliant upon tax rises than the coalition, but cuts still would have been high.

The Balls Strategy

Ed Ball’s argument is that any cuts to the public sector risk slowing economic growth, and that the best way to deal with the deficit is to grow the economy to recovery AND then deal with it.

I will leave the economics of these two stances to actual economists. What I want to discuss is the strategy of these stances.

Let’s say Labour adopts the Balls strategy. This means doing several things. Firstly it must explain why cutting the deficit is wrong. It will be constantly attacked by the Coalition as economically irresponsible. Terms like ‘deficit deniers’ will be thrown at them, but if they succeed in convincing people that this is a viable economic strategy then they will enjoy some great success as the cuts begin to bite. It is likely that the cuts will lead to an immediate slowing of the economy and a rise in unemployment, both things which will help Labour. Fuelled by anti-cuts anger Labour would likely gain activists and donations, vital for its cash strapped infrastructure and local councillors, but the important prize is the 2015 election. If the cuts succeed, or are perceived to have succeeded by 2015, it will be easy for the coalition parties to blast Labour as economically illiterate, the previous four and a half years won’t matter, and it is very difficult to see Labour winning in such circumstances. In fact if Labour were to pursue the Balls strategy and the economy recovers by 2015 I would bet on them losing seats If on the other hand the economy is still in the doldrums come 2015 the electorate will be crying out for a radical alternative and Labour will be well-placed for a big majority, and with the economy in such dire straits Labour may well be positioned in such a way that it can do something that has only happened twice since 1945: remodelling the entire economic system. Therefore this is a high risk strategy, which essentially requires Labour to bet against coalition economic policy succeeding.

Now let’s say Labour adopts Darling’s strategy, advocating cuts, albeit slower and less virulently. The coalition will demand to know the details of said cuts, and so will the public. Yet it is much easier to decide what to cut in government – where you have available much more economic information and the full body of civil servants. There is also the risk that in outlining an alternative cuts strategy Labour may make itself unpopular in other ways. They may find that the public takes against their programme, a certain tax rise or a certain cut may be surprisingly unpopular. The government, with the civil service at its disposal will also be better placed to judge whether Labour’s sums add up, putting it in a bind where it advocates cuts but cannot say exactly where. There is also the danger of being too close to the government having their voice deemed irrelevant as both government and opposition advocate cuts. ‘Why vote for cuts-lite?’ the electorate may ask. Yet if they can pull it off they’d have a much better chance if the cuts are deemed to create growth. It will still be an uphill struggle no doubt, but the possibility remains that Labour could still win on platform of ‘there was a fairer way to cut the deficit’. If on the other hand the cuts are seen to have failed Labour will be favourite by virtue of not being the government, and will be able to claim some authority from suggesting a more modest approach, yet they will not gain the benefits potential in a win under the Balls strategy.

Labour has to be very careful in its economic policy strategically. The party should remember that twice in its 20^th century history (1955 and 1983) Labour has been outmanoeuvred on economic policy by elected Conservative governments and lost yet more seats to the Conservatives during their first re-election after having being booted out of power following poor economic growth. There is a lot of risk here, and Labour will need to be deft either way. Personally I would take the, more cautious, Darling strategy, but there are no guarantees here. Labour’s economic policy is going to require an extremely safe pair of hands.

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?'