Lib Dems – Page 9 – thinking liberal

No health without mental health. The genius of Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.

What is the point of Britain’s Liberal Democrats? Most Lib Dems would point to the party’s liberal values. And yet these are shared by members of other parties. The same can be said for the party’s attachment to the political centre. Others will talk of community politics – but it is plain that many modern Lib Dems, including its leader Nick Clegg, aren’t really interested in this political strategy beyond a few local campaigns. Many outside the party would simply suggest that there is no point to the Lib Dems. The party is destined to be just a footnote in British politics.

But attending the party’s Spring conference in Liverpool in the run up to May’s General Election, the penny at last dropped. The party is the grit in the oyster of British politics, from which great pearls are produced. It is a serious political party that aspires to govern, not just to protest and complain. It stops Britain’s two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, from having that ground entirely to themselves. And so it can introduce new ideas to a debate that would otherwise be contrived and stale, confined to a few carefully selected issues, based on focus groups and private polling.

What has given me this insight? It is the party’s campaign on mental health. It is pure genius from a party that looked beaten and irrelevant. The party is demanding “parity of esteem” between mental and physical health, and is in the process of securing serious extra resources for mental health support. It is trying to persuade politicians and the public to talk about the issue more. It is an idea whose time has come.

Consider three things. First is that mental health has an important bearing on just about every aspect of public policy – starting with the NHS, but quickly moving on to crime, employment, social services and onwards – and even defence when we consider the state of veterans returning from active service. And yet almost nowhere is it being adequately addressed. It sums up the dysfunctional element of public service provision better than any other single problem. The failure to handle mental health properly causes untold misery and a huge waste of public resources.

Second: it touches people personally. Most of us will know of people who have had serious mental health problems – depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and so on. And increasingly we are aware that we ourselves are vulnerable, given the stresses of modern life. And people are readier and readier to talk about it.

And third: it’s hard. The reason why dealing with mental health is done so badly is because there are few quick fixes. it goes to the very heart of the centralised and functionalised way in which we organise our state (and much else), our tendency to standardise and dehumanise in the name of efficiency, and our reluctance to consider broader philosophical questions about how we manage ourselves. If politicians and the public now want to take the issue seriously, it is just the beginning of a long, long journey. And yet it is one that could transform the state and the way we live our lives. As an idea, it has huge potential.

This is not a particularly new idea for the Lib Dems. Mr Clegg claims to have brought the matter to Prime Ministers’ Questions very early in his leadership – to the bafflement of mainstream politicians. The policy initiative No Health Without Mental Health, which kicked matters off, came very early in the Coalition government, with Mr Clegg’s imprimatur clearly on it. But it is only recently that it has shot to serious prominence, promoted by the Lib Dem Care Minister, Norman Lamb. Mr Clegg has made it central to the party’s overall policy presentation, giving it a mjor place in his last two conference speeches.

The interesting thing about this is that there is nothing uniquely Lib Dem in the insight that mental health is central to public policy. The first prominent person to promote the idea was Richard Layard, the Labour peer and a close adviser to to Tony Blair. His efforts saw the promotion of talking therapies, like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Lord Layard’s journey is an interesting one. It started with the idea that the promotion of happiness and wellbeing should be the primary aim of public policy, in place of monetary income – he is an economist. Now promotion of mental health is his big idea. This is a journey that I too have followed. But Labour were unwilling to take on the wider policy implications. It is all very well rolling out yet another highly centralised initiative on CBT, but rethinking mental health education and provision from top to bottom would challenge too many vested interests. It wasn’t an issue that the public were bringing up in the polls and focus groups, after all.

For the Conservatives, David Cameron took the first steps on the journey, by taking on the idea of wellbeing as a direct policy goal, But he hasn’t followed the idea through. But, it must of course be recognised, he and his Tory colleagues could see enough merit in the idea to allow the Lib Dems to run with it in coalition. That is part of its genius. Its implications may be radical, but everybody can agree that something needs to be done.

Nick Clegg deserves enormous credit for promoting mental health. While the right obsesses about Europe, sovereignty and human rights, and the left with the demon of neoliberalism and the failures of capitalism, the Lib Dems have found an issue that is concrete, and yet whose implications are profound. It moves us on from the stale old debates.This is disruptive political innovation at its best – something that a mainstream third party is well-placed to do.

Whether or not it helps improve the party’s fortunes in a difficult General Election, it has given the party a meaningful mission in British politics. A political pearl indeed.

Why the soggy centre is a good place for the Lib Dems to be

The most recent issue of Liberator, the anti-establishment Liberal magazine, has more than its usual quota of groans about how the Lib Dems have failed to define clearly what they stand for. There is particular venom reserved for the idea that the party should be of the political centre, which implies a sort of rootlessness, allowing itself to be defined by others.

Much of this comes from seasoned campaigners, and there is much wisdom in what they say. But I also sense a rather wilful failure to address how politics really works.

For example, in his article, the veteran Kingston campaigner Roger Hayes says this:”And why do they think people are turning to UKIP and the Greens? Because they seem stand for something and aren’t afraid to say so.” And yet earlier in the same article he says this: “For all their noise and bluster Ukip are likely to take less than a handful [of] seats if they are lucky. The Greens will probably see their national vote soar….but in terms of seats they won’t do better than see Caroline Lucas returned…”. Which leads to the question: if the Lib Dems articulated themselves more clearly, like Ukip and the Greens, would they end up in the same frustrated but powerless place?

Or take another perspective, from talking to a party worker in one the Lib Dem held seats: she explained carefully that they aren’t looking for votes from just liberals. They needed a broad spectrum of people to vote for them. And that is real politics. Talking to diverse groups of people and trying to forge common ground. To be fair on Mr Hayes, he knows all about this – the Kingston Lib Dems are brilliant at it. But it is easy to see how parliamentary campaigners, when trying to move into a winning position, find sharp, clear messages on where the party stands not entirely helpful. For example, the party has some rather clear views on immigration that many candidates would like to soft-pedal.

And this reflects a wider truth about politics that often seems to be overlooked by people who craft political messages. If you want to say something to persuade voters that you are sincere, you need to say something that hurts; which means saying something that will lose you votes. Otherwise you are just uttering cheap words. Voters used to respect the integrity of politicians like Tony Benn and Enoch Powell, and say things like “their voices should be heard.” But they were politically toxic. And under the British electoral system if you don’t appeal to a broad spectrum of voters, you are unlikely to win any sort of representation. Both Benn and Powell needed to tap tribal loyalties or rank populism (Powell’s disingenuous statements on immigration were intended to stoke up racism) in order to maintain their political platform – and even then they were frozen out of actual power.

Politicians can have a sharp ideological edge and be successful. Margaret Thatcher is the obvious example. But that requires both strong political skills and a thirst for change among the electorate. When for Mrs Thatcher both of these ran out in her third term, she was soon gone, replaced by the un-ideological John Major. Today there is much discontent amongst the electorate, but none of the sense of direction that might support change. The electoral system, for example, is clearly failing, but there no strong political movement to change it. And I don’t think our current crop of political leaders and their “strategist” advisers (including, but not restricted to, the Lib Dems) have the political skills to pull off a platform for radical change. And if there is a clear case for strong, liberal political reforms (and there is…) it is far to late to make these part of a winning platform for the next election.

So sharp political clarity is a quick route to electoral failure. There’s something else though. There is a political gap in Britain’s political centre at the moment. Both Britain’s main parties are tempted by their ideological extremes, and by populism. This partly reflects the rise of the Ukip and Green insurgents, who are eating into both parties’ bases (especially Ukip and the Conservatives). But it is also reflects their own memberships, which are becoming more ideological. Increasingly these two main parties are not fighting each other. Instead they are fending off the insurgents and trying to persuade disgruntled non-voters to come out in their support. They are also trying to secure the votes of the Lib Dem supporters, or rather, their former supporters, some 15% of the electorate.

But because both Labour and the Conservatives are being pulled away by their extremes, the appeal of a party without such extremists, that seems to stand for sensible, pragmatic government, is surely growing. The Conservative Party is no longer trying to shake off its image as the Nasty Party, opposed to diversity and environmentalism. The Labour Party isn’t so openly tempted by the extremes, but its policies don’t look as if they are thought through, or fully accepted by their MPs. So amongst their ideas for regenerating the economy they put forward devolving powers to the cities of England. But as soon as the government suggests devolving powers on the NHS to Greater Manchester (negotiated by local Labour politicians, even), their leading spokesman comes out with the usual anti-devolution tropes. Likewise their policy on cutting student fees looks like gesture politics that doesn’t even convince its own side. A sensible, pragmatic government in waiting Labour is not.

Filling this gap in the centre, however uninspiring, is surely the best idea for the Lb Dems right now. There may be an ideological liberal vote out there to tap, but frankly the party is not in a good place to win it right now. There is too much anger over the party’s role in the coalition. But if the party can prove its worth as a party of the pragmatic centre – and shows its skill in winning parliamentary representation even when times are tough – then this is a platform from which liberals may be wooed in future elections. I don’t have a better idea.

Can any of Britain’s political parties break the deadlock?

The rise of fringe parties takes British politics into a whole new era. and yet the outcome of the election due on 7 May 2015 seems strangely predictable. The parties seem to be stuck in a deadlock where none can win. What are the chances of one of them breaking free?

Britain’s electoral system (misleadingly referred to as “first past the post”) is capable of producing dramatic swings in the balance between the parties. But a plethora of constituency polls allows pundits to make some quite stable predictions this time. The main features are these: the Liberal Democrats will lose up to 30 seats of their current 57. The Scottish Nationalists (the SNP) will pick up a similar number, or perhaps more, giving them 30-40 seats overall. The new insurgent parties, Ukip and the Greens, will only pick up a handful of seats, and the latter maybe none at all. Overall Labour will advance, and the Conservatives will fall back. The main debate is whether Labour will be able to overhaul the Conservatives to become the largest party. Interestingly, the fortunes of both major parties will be largely determined by how well they do against the smaller parties rather than each other. But neither party will win enough seats to form a government with one of the smaller parties; they will need to do a deal with each other to form a stable government. This is the outcome nobody (except the SNP perhaps) wants.

Can any of the parties break out of this stalemate? Sudden changes of fortune can happen. Two stand out in recent history. The first was in 1992, when John Major’s Conservative government suddenly overhauled Labour in the last week of the election campaign to win a comfortable majority, under the slogan “Labour’s Tax Bombshell”. The second was Cleggmania in 2010, when the Liberal Democrats surged forward after the performance of their leader, Nick Clegg, in the first of the television leadership debates. The surge faded, but the party avoided the drubbing they were heading for, defending their record result in 2005.

Such sudden surges are entirely possible this time. No political leader dominates the scene as Margaret Thatcher did in the elections of 1983 and 1987 or Tony Blair in 1997, 2001 and 2005. As in 1992 and 2010, political leadership is weak, and so things can be more fluid. Public frustration with politics is high.

To understand that we only have to look at Scotland, where the SNP have surged forward after last year’s referendum on independence (or, more precisely, they are consolidating their spectacular gains in the Scottish Parliament in 2011). Labour, who are defending 40-odd seats at the election are in serious trouble. That surge, however, is already built in to the forecasts. The surprise might be if the anti-SNP vote rallies and votes tactically. That’s a real possibility, though – and it would mainly benefit Labour (whose majorities are generally big), and might stem some of the Lib Dems’ anticipated losses. It would be particularly satisfying if the Lib Dem candidate Christine Jardine is able to hold off former SNP leader Alec Salmond.

What of the English insurgents, Ukip? They won the European Parliament elections as recently as last year. But their support has sunk to 15% (less than the Lib Dems achieved last time) and it is too thinly spread. Their novelty is wearing thin, and there is quite a strong anti-Ukip reaction, visible in their leader’s negative approval ratings in polls. The press, who often set the news agenda, found it convenient to boost them, but they are now poking fun at them. Yet they are well-funded and in some regions (along the south and east coasts especially) they might yet hit the zeitgeist, and pick up a few more seats than the pundits expect. There is a more remote possibility that they do well in northern urban Labour strongholds – but this looks too high a hurdle for them this year.

How about the other insurgents, the Greens? They have done well in the polls this year, catching up with the poor old Lib Dems quite often. They have picked up the “none of the above” vote that dislikes Ukip. They have the possibility of repeating Cleggmania and advancing into teens of %age of votes, if not better. But they could suffer if they come under scrutiny. They have a rather mad collection of policies and their leader, Natalie Bennett, struggles to break out of fringe appeal. There is a challenge for the party. If they could dump Ms Bennett as their figurehead and replace her with their only MP, the impressive Caroline Lucas, and if they ditch most of their silly policies as “aspirations”, with a more mainstream manifesto – then they might be in business. It would be a big moment of growing up – but, my sense is that they can’t. Too many activists would see such a move as a betrayal. A further difficulty is translating an advance in the polls into seats, as their vote is thinly based. They seem to do well where Labour are already strong – and they lack the time and organisation to marshal a stronger vote in particular seats.

Could the Conservatives repeat their feat of 1992, and break through to an overall majority? They have an impressively disciplined campaign. They could even repeat the tax bombshell line of 1992 line with some justice (Labour’s instincts are free-spending); and Labour’s leadership is seen as not up to it, again as in 1992. Their leader, David Cameron, may not as impressive as Mr Blair or Mrs Thatcher, but he is more convincing than John Major was. But. But. I just think that the Conservatives are on the wrong side of history and will find it impossible to extend their appeal enough. Back in the 1980s they were the party that broke the unions (which most people saw as a good thing) and made the country self-confident again. Mass affluence broke out – even if a lot of it was through the false wealth of rising property values. Now we seem stuck; the rich do well, but few others. Even increasing property values are seen as double-edged, forcing youngsters from even affluent families back onto “the bank of Mum and Dad”. In the 2000s the Tory brand became toxic; they haven’t done enough to reverse that. Tactically they are in a bind too. They need to win back Ukippers with sour policies on Britain’s international role and immigrants – while at the same time as appealing to more optimistic, liberal voters. I just can’t see a breakout. Their only hope of a breakthrough comes from the collective weakness of everybody else – which remains possible.

How about Labour? They have the opposite problem. They are much more in tune with the popular zeitgeist. They understand a lot of what people feel is wrong about society. But their narrative is chaotic. They look like a coalition of grumpy protest groups rather than a coherent government in waiting. I am reminded a little of Labour under Jim Callaghan in 1979: when they try to make a clear stand on a policy, one of their number undermines it. Tough on immigration? Protests from London MPs. Stop any serious reform of the NHS (which they call “saving” it) – yes one moment, no the next. The current awkwardness is on a promise to reduce university tuition fees. They want a headline policy to whack the coalition with (especially to consolidate former Lib Dem voters) – but how to do so without damaging universities or giving a gift just to the richer students? It seems as if the party has lost the discipline of the New Labour era. But the party does have some strengths – in particular an army of younger canvassers, especially in London, and probably the strongest central organisation of any UK political party.

Like the Tories, the main hope for Labour seems to be the weakness of others: the Lib Dems, the Greens, Ukip and the SNP. On the other hand, it is easier to foresee some sort of implosion by Labour than it is for the Tories. A public rift on economic policy could be the cause: the tension between their trade union backers and the more realistic parliamentarians is palpable. There is rather strange paradox here. Ed Miliband has kept the party together much better than expected over the last four years. But this has been achieved by placating rather than resolving the tensions within it. Which makes the unity and discipline less easy to achieve when it is most needed.

Which leaves the Lib Dems, in my review. Their fall has been dramatic. They commonly show up with a poll rating of just 7%, compared with the 23% they achieved in 2010. In many places they would do well to get 2-3%. But they have strongholds, and a strongly focused constituency-led campaign strategy is helping to limit the damage. They are helped by Ukip undermining the Conservative vote, though they seem to have fewer defences in the minority of seats where Labour is their main opponent. In terms of popular vote it is difficult to see the party falling much further – but there is a risk that their constituency-led strategy falls apart, and they are left with very few seats indeed. But they do have upside potential. Their hope is to be seen as a sensible, liberal party, with none of the extremist politics of Ukip or the Greens. The more Labour and the Conservatives move to the extremes to face the threat of Ukip in particular, the more appealing the Lib Dems might look. There is reason for them to hope that their poll ratings will rise – though this may make surprisingly little difference in terms of the number of seats that they lose. Indeed a surge in the polls might undermine the party discipline needed to make the constituency strategy work.

All of which leaves British politics in a predicament. An electoral system that used to practically guarantee a succession of stable single party governments, is now moving towards one that simultaneously disenfranchises most voters (by stranding them in seats where their vote makes no difference), while delivering a result from which it is hard to form a governing majority. And yet such is the conservatism of Britain’s politicians and public, that it is difficult to see any successful move to change it.

Danny Alexander is the Lib Dems most successful minister. Why does he not get the credit?

The Liberal Democrat Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander’s place in history is assured. He is a member of the “quad” that sets the coalition government’s agenda, along with the Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Prime Minister David Cameron and the Chancellor George Osborne (with whom he is pictured here). But recently there was a revealing kerfuffle, when the Lib Dems named their election “shadow cabinet” with him as the Treasury spokesman. Shouldn’t it be the more senior Vince Cable, people asked? Many Lib Dem activists fell for the bait and were suitably outraged. In fact this was a non-story – the shadow cabinet simply reflected current ministerial responsibilities with the gaps filled in. But if anybody had doubted Mr Alexander’s weak reputation, the response to the story proved it.

But more recently the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) published a study of the effects of government policies on tax and benefits on people of different income bands. For the rare few voters who are interested in the facts of the coalition’s record this 30 page report is a fascinating read. The core of it is contained in this graphic:

What this shows is that the burden of the changes has fallen hardest on the top decile, but that every other decile has benefited from a reduced tax burden (i.e. the solid green bars), mainly the increase in income tax allowances. That, of course was the Lib Dem manifesto promise in a nutshell. Reductions in tax credits and benefits, however, have hit the poorer, so that as a proportion of income the overall effect on the bottom decile has been greater than the top (about 4% to 3%). The lucky 7th decile have suffered a net effect of nil. Further analysis shows that households with children have been hit the hardest, while even the poorest pensioner households have been protected:

This represents a reversal of generous policies for families from the last government. If you take the whole sweep of policy since 1997 you get the following change:

Now this shows that the treatment of families overall lines up with that of pensioners – but that working age people without children have ended up with little net benefit. This may feel a bit harsh, but politicians have never suggested that their policies would do anything else. Pensioner and child poverty were the stated priorities.

And in case you are swept on by leftist rhetoric that these changes will be swamped by changes in income inequality before tax, a separate IFS study suggests that pre-tax income inequality has actually narrowed over the period of coalition. Put the two together and you get the picture of a government with a clear agenda to redress income imbalances. All this follows the policies Liberal Democrats advocated before the election.

The Treasury is also held responsible for managing the government’s overall finances, and Mr Alexander had a critical role in managing government expenditure. In 2010 the Conservatives promised to eliminate the structural government deficit in 5 years. Labour and the Liberal Democrats converged on about 8 years. Guess what? Though the coalition initially talked about the former target, it moderated when the economy struggled, and it is on course to follow the original Lib Dem (and Labour) target. Overall economic growth projections have disappointed the politicians, of course. But what, in Labour’s alternative strategy, could have led to a better overall outcome? They called for a softening of austerity and that’s exactly what the coalition did. Beyond some sound and fury over Keynesian stimulus, now irrelevant, Labour has had nothing to say about redressing weak productivity, the real reason for the lack of economic growth and real incomes. The scale of the deficit was such that it was always going to be hard going.

So Mr Alexander has, in spite of his position as junior to one of the most powerful men in the Conservative party, delivered a government record that is much more similar to what the Lib Dems had planned than the Tories had (they had planned to be much easier on the rich). Quite a record.

How does that compare with other Lib Dems? Poor old Mr Clegg’s political reforms have largely sunk without trace, and he also failed to spot the problematic NHS reforms quickly enough (as did Mr Cameron). Vince Cable was responsible for the reversal of Lib Dem policy on tuition fees, as well as the PR disaster of the Royal Mail flotation. Chris Huhne and Ed Davey battled valiantly at Energy but have had to give ground on nuclear power and fracking. Michael Moore and Alistair Carmichael at the Scottish Office have supervised a calamitous straining of the Union. All of these men, it should be added, have a string of positive achievements too, but they’ve been forced to compromise more than Mr Alexander has. There have been some impressive performers in the junior ranks (Steve Webb and Norman Lamb in particular), but their scope is inevitably narrow. Surely Mr Alexander is top of the heap?

So why are Lib Dem members reluctant to give him credit. First is a rather indifferent record on media interviews. He lacks a sense of ease and the ability to move away from pre-prepared sound-bites, unlike his Lib Dem cabinet colleagues. He doesn’t sound as if he is in command. He manages the detail rather than the big picture. And he sounds a bit Tory sometimes in the messages he gives.

But I don’t think that’s all. I don’t think that many Lib Dem members are at ease with the government’s record on tax and benefits. Those graphs in the IFS report show that the effects of increased tax allowances have not really helped the poorest, and that cuts to benefits and tax credits, especially to those with children, have squeezed the bottom half of the wealth distribution. There has been no offsetting increase in real incomes before tax. Labour have been energetically pointing all this out.

But given Lib Dem promises on tax allowances, on cutting the deficit, and on reforming pensions, cuts to benefits and tax credits were absolutely inevitable. The government has already gone after the richest 10% heavily, in increased taxes and, especially, a clampdown on tax avoidance (something with Mr Alexander has particularly championed). The only major budgets that haven’t been heavily squeezed are those for education and the NHS (foreign aid does not count as major), something Lib Dem members would support. Benefit cuts may not have been in flashing lights in the Lib Dems’ manifesto for 2010, but they might as well have been.

And this leads to a question that many Lib Dems would rather not think about. Just how much is it the state’s duty to top up low incomes with automatic entitlements to state benefits? And how much do such entitlements create dependency and a sense of victimhood from rich and poor alike? The great Liberal designer of the the welfare state, William Beveridge, was very worried about creating unconditional entitlements. Just what he would have made of the blank-cheque of the old Housing benefit we can only imagine. But modern leftist thinking takes such entitlements for granted, forever trying to raise the bar. But most of the public regards the idea of topping up incomes with taxpayers’ money with suspicion. It stinks of a freedom with other peoples’ money.

Personally, I think the expansion of automatic benefit entitlements is a blind alley. Instead we need much more intelligent and directed interventions to help people cope with poverty, and manage their way out of it, if they want to. This needs to be done in a person-centred way that to tackles the underlying problems (housing, mental health, addiction and so on) head on, instead of paying people money to go away and keep quiet.

But that’s just my view. Meanwhile Mr Alexander has implemented a liberal agenda at the Treasury and deserves more credit than he gets.

The SNP are on manoeuvres. Westminster politicians should be afraid.

Scottish politics is an exercise in asymmetric warfare. The Scottish National Party (SNP) are steeped in the nation’s own political culture, and focus on their objective of obtaining its independence. The unionist parties are more concerned with the politics of UK as a whole, and push their policies concerning Scotland and the Union into the “too difficult” pile until too late. This has been stark in the last few years. The SNP won their referendum on independence (i.e. holding the referendum, rather than the outcome, which they lost). At first Westminster politicians did not take the campaign seriously, relying on comforting opinion polls. Then, as the No campaign went awry and they woke up to the implications, they panicked. The main party leaders made an ill-thought through pledge (referred to as “The Vow”) on devolving more powers. When the referendum was over, the main party leaders could only see the issue in terms of their own struggles for supremacy in Westminster. The Conservative sought to embarrass Labour with a call for “English votes for English laws”. Labour called for a Constitutional Convention to head this off, but offered no vision of how the thought the union should be run. The SNP are now about to make both parties pay dearly for their negligence.

The SNP lost their referendum, but far from being depressed and demoralised, they have treated the affair as a sort of reconnaissance in force preliminary to a longer campaign. They have made a sharp change in strategy. First their long-standing leader, and Scottish First Minister, Alec Salmond stepped down, to be replaced by his very capable and popular deputy Nicola Sturgeon. Then Mr Salmond said that he would stand for the Westminster parliament in the May election, meaning that Westminster would have one of the party’s biggest hitters. Then yesterday Ms Sturgeon dropped a bombshell. She said that the SNP at Westminster would happily vote on the English NHS. Until now the SNP at Westminster have stayed clear on voting on matters, like the NHS, which have been devolved to the Scottish parliament. The reason offered is that Scotland’s funding formula (“the Barnett formula”) means that their funding might be affected by England’s health policies. There is practically no aspect of devolved policy that this argument could not be applied to. The SNP are now offering themselves as a fully fledged coalition partner to the Labour Party, should the latter fail to win an outright majority. The three main Westminster Parties hadn’t seen this coming, and they are in utter disarray.

For Labour this is unmitigated disaster. The SNP’s sudden interest in Westminster politics makes a large number of their MPs in Scottish seats vulnerable. The current polling is awful; the party could lose 30 seats. Labour has taken Scots voters for granted ever since the Conservatives’ Scottish presence collapsed under Mrs Thatcher. Their ineptitude was on full display during the No campaign. They have no idea how to construct a persuasive, coherent message and stick to it: their preferred method is just crude menace. Their campaign message so far is to threaten Scots voters with another Tory-led government. “Don’t worry,” say the SNP “if you vote for us instead we can stop the Tories too.” Labour are left with just emptiness in return. They have no vision of Scotland’s place in the union beyond panicky responses to nationalist pressure.

Intelligent Tories (there are some) should be troubled too. The purpose behind the “English votes for English laws” idea was simply to embarrass Labour in England by pointing out how much they depended on blocks of Scots and Welsh MPs. There is no coherent, workable model of a well-functioning UK constitution behind it. But it carries the risk of destabilising the Union by stoking up English resentment without offering an answer. The SNP have just made that much worse. What about the fate of England’s NHS being dictated by SNP MPs? Conservatives (mainly) support the Union. Scottish independence would be seen as national humiliation and a bitter blow. And yet they are playing into the nationalists’ hands.

Things aren’t much better for the Liberal Democrats. Their main problem is political weakness, resulting from a backlash for going into coalition with the Conservatives. This is at least as strong in Scotland as it is elsewhere in the UK. The party has thought through its vision of the UK constitution more than the other parties, and its solutions are much more robust. But its softly-softly approach to devolution within England, and rejection of the idea of an English Parliament and government, look constructed for a gentler pace of politics than is in prospect if the SNP do well. Still there are some silver linings to the very dark clouds. Labour are retreating from seats they were hoping to take from the Lib Dems, in order to face off the SNP in their own backyard. And Christine Jardine, their feisty candidate in Gordon, the seat Mr Salmond hopes to win, will be no pushover, as she rallies the anti-SNP vote.

But each of the main unionist parties need to take a step back, and form coherent ideas on how the constitution of the Union should look. It isn’t enough to call for a Constitutional Convention; each party must spell out a clear vision that looks sustainable in the face of mischief-making by the SNP. Even if such ideas have short-term political costs. The people of this United Kingdom deserve no less.

Good and bad news about the Lib Dems NHS funding pledge

Today the Liberal Democrats announced and eye catching policy to improve NHS funding by £8bn a year by 2020 (in England). This matches the figure asked for by NHS England chief Simon Stevens – so it isn’t plucked from thin air.

How is this to be paid for? First £2bn extra is already planned and accepted by the other parties (Labour want to add another £0.5bn). A further £1bn comes from more taxes on the wealthy. The rest will be gradually added as the economy grows. The Lib Dems say that public expenditure should keep pace with national income.

There are good and bad things about this new policy. First the good thing. The £8bn funding figure is entirely credible, given the direction of demographics. Mr Stevens is no lefty. He knows that the NHS can be more efficient and has plans to make it so. But that only gets you so far. Any party that promises to keep the NHS within its current scope and free has to address this gap. This moves, or should move, the debate on the NHS out of the area of gimmicks and into serious choices.

Except that it doesn’t. They’ve made the whole thing look to easy. Tax some other people a bit more and the rest comes from growth. If it’s that easy the other parties can do it too. This is not different in substance to what Labour are offering. It is more of a challenge to the Tories who want to use the proceeds of growth to fund tax cuts.

And growth cannot be guaranteed. There are severe economic headwinds, from demographics, from changes to technology, from changes to world trade – to name but three. To say nothing of the legacy of piles of household and state debt.

To be distinctive, the Lib Dems needed to make it look harder. Which in practice means raising taxes – income tax, national insurance or VAT. Remember Paddy Ashdown’s promise of 1p income tax for education? This would have made the promise more credible, and got a real debate going. It would then be Labour who would be forced to mutter promises about future growth, which the public are likely to discount.

Instead this looks like another politician’s promise that is less than it seems. What a pity.

The Lib dems – successful in government, unrewarded by the public

2015 is here at last. For British politicos this is the endgame – the year of the General Election and the verdict on the politicking of the current parliament, elected in 2010. That election remains very open, but for the Liberal Democrats it is fair to say that things have gone disastrously off script.

The party languishes at 5-10% in the polls, compared to the over 20% it achieved in 2010. This has shown no sign of improving as the election approaches, and there have been plenty of real life elections to show that such dismal ratings are not just inaccurate polling.

This follows the party’s entry into coalition government in 2010, a ground-breaking event both for the party and for British politics. This government has been pretty successful all told. It inherited an utterly unsustainable government deficit that demanded cuts to both public services and benefits – “austerity”. It struck a fairly prudent course between extreme austerity, and using the relative ease of government borrowing to postpone the pain. For all the political sound and fury over the sense or otherwise of such austerity, there has been little difference between the main political parties on its scale.

There have been failures. Benefits had to be cut, but many of the reforms to the benefits system were misconceived. The centrepiece reform of Universal Credit might be a nice idea in theory, but its dependence on unobtainable real-time data make its demise only a matter of time. Many attempts to sub-contract government services to the private sector have proved misconceived too. Reforms to the NHS were well-intentioned but it would surely have been more sensible to build on the previous government’s reforms incrementally. Reforms to immigration were popular but unhelpful to the nation’s economic and social health.

But there have been many sensible reforms along the way. A lot of bureaucratic over-engineering from the last government was dismantled. The management of schools is more sharply focused, with a welcome emphasis on the progress of pupils from more challenging backgrounds – and a search for performance measures that can be gamed less easily. Reforms to university finance have improved accountability and spread the financial burden more fairly. The burden of taxation has been shifted to a more progressive and redistributive pattern, not least with a spectacular crackdown on tax avoidance by the very rich. This has helped stem a rise in inequality – though I don’t think the statistics are conclusive as to whether inequality has actually been held in check. overall.

Many (or even most) of these sensible reforms have Liberal Democrat fingerprints on them. The party has proved good at the exigencies of being a governing party – including the discipline of its parliamentarians. A lot of small scale policies have been implemented that Lib Dems have spent years campaigning for (like being able to declare pubs as community assets). Previously characterised as being chaotic lightweights, Liberal Democrats have proved to be up to the job.

There have been major disappointments for Lib Dems in the area of political reform. A referendum on changing the voting system to the Alternative Vote just gave an opportunity for the rest of the political establishment to gang up on the party. Plans for an elected second chamber collapsed in the face of hostility and indifference from Conservative and Labour politicians. Ironically these disappointments may help the party’s fortunes. With the current state of public opinion AV might well have helped the Conservatives and Labour more than the Lib Dems, allowing them to scoop up Ukip and Green votes. And the strong presence of Lib Dems in the House of Lords immeasurably adds to the party’s heft in any negotiations in a hung parliament – something the SNP, for example, cannot offer. In the PR elections the party wanted for the Lords (or rather, its replacement), it would almost certainly have been nearly wiped out, and surely behind Ukip, the SNP and perhaps even the Greens.

But Lib Dems had expected better rewards from the electorate. It is commonplace for governing parties to lose popularity in the middle of a parliament, but then they are meant to recover. The Liberal Democrats hoped to present themselves to the electorate as a credible coalition party, firmly rooted in the political centre – having put to rest any doubts that it was incapable of achieving practical political power. Even as Labour and the Conservatives seem to be vacating the political centre, few centrist voters see the Lib Dems as a respectable alternative.

What went wrong? The first problem is that the party has disappointed many of its supporters. In 2010 (and earlier General Elections, come to that), the party set itself up as standing for a new brand of politics – and a break from the lies and cynicism of the other parties. But what the public saw was just another established party wheeler-dealing like the rest of them, and enjoying the prestige of ministerial office. Reforms to university finance may have been an elegant compromise in practice, but it involved reneging on a very categorical election pledge.

A further problem is that many of the party’s supporters were Labour defectors, who saw teaming up with the Conservatives as betrayal. The impact of austerity and reforms to the benefits system and the NHS hardly reassured these voters. That the party was in practice no worse than Labour wasn’t really the point; they hoped for better. The Tory brand remains as toxic as ever.

But all is not lost. The party has upped its game in the seats it holds, and constituency polls show that its candidates there are much more popular locally than the party itself. And their opponents are distracted by the need to keep Ukip, the SNP and the Greens at bay. The public may yet give the party more credit, especially if it gets its messaging right. The liberal centre is not close-fought territory – it is notable that activists have never found the alternative parties less appealing than now.

But a job needs to be done to define better what the party stands for, and communicate this to the public. The party is confident of its core liberal values, but these are not producing sharp, distinctive policies for the more practical issues that bother voters – the economy and the NHS in particular. That’s a shame because some interesting thinking has come up through the party’s policy making machinery – but these ideas need to be turned into something much sharper. This week has not been particularly encouraging. The party has joined in the excessively negative slagging off of other parties – as have all the other parties, mainstream and fringe. Wouldn’t it be better to set out a stall of distinctive policies, on the economy, taxation, the environment and public service – and damn the other parties with faint praise? The public get that small parties can make a difference in coalition – but they need a better idea of what that difference might be in the case of the Lib Dems.

The party has to go through the final act of its years in coalition, and endure the outcome. After that though, the party needs a period of deep reflection, whether or not it re-enters government. But the country does need a liberal party, and there are no others challenging for that space.

Polly Toynbee is right – we need more honest debate on tax and spend

I don’t approve of Polly Toynbee. She’s so deep in the Guardian bunker that she rarely has anything useful to say. She writes polemic that will entertain the left, but not persuade anybody else . So I wasn’t expecting much from her article last week Economic dishonesty is the deadliest deficit of all. I was expecting her to repeat the Labour myth that the economic crisis was somebody else’s fault, and that austerity policies have strangled the British economy. But she was making a point of value. It was that the Conservatives and Labour have very different views of the future government finance – but they were both concealing their differences. The Conservatives do not want to spell out the implications on services and benefits; Labour do not want to look irresponsible, or to be painted as the party of high taxes.

She wrote her article before the Autumn Statement delivered by the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. Ms Toynbee should be pleasantly surprised at how things turned out, though I doubt that she is. The British government’s future policies on taxation and public expenditure have taken centre stage, and important differences have emerged between the political parties.

It started with some rather excitable coverage on the BBC Radio Today programme, which pointed out that Tory party plans for future spending would take it back to being the lowest proportion of national income since the 1930s. The bare statistics were factual (inasmuch as future projections can be described as factual) – but a comparison with the 1930s is farcical. National income is incomparably bigger than then – so a similar ratio of spending to income will not produce destitution that is in any way comparable. For similar reasons, the economic crash of 2008-09 is no way comparable to that of the 1930s, in spite of some of the ratios to national income being similar. Mr Osborne rather publicly objected to the coverage, drawing attention to the whole issue. Up to that point Ms Toynbee’s forecast seemed to be coming true.

In turns out that though Labour and the Conservatives are aiming at the same date to eliminate the structural deficit in British spending (i.e. cyclically adjusted spending less taxes), beyond that the difference between Labour’s spending plans and the Conservatives’ is as high as £27bn per annum. Differences on this scale are significant.

The next act in this drama was an attack by Mr Osborne on his Liberal Democrat coalition partners that they had lost the plot on economic policy because their plans were closer to Labour’s than the Conservatives. Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Treasury minister, made a robust response about the impossibility of Conservative spending plans. Ms Toynbee, in typical Guardian bunker style, had painted the Lib Dems as indistinguishable from the Tories, so she would have been less than pleased about this – but not too upset since she no doubt thinks that the Lib Dems are a political irrelevance these days.

It is to be hoped that these spats are the beginning of a serious political debate. Up until now we have experienced manufactured political rows over the immigration, the European Union and the NHS. Admittedly the Tory preparedness to take big risks with Britain’s membership of the EU is a serious political issue – but the row is more about tactics and competence than strategy. On the other issues the politicians have very little of practical value to say. But the gap between left and right on state spending (I refuse to call it “economic policy” as most commentators do) foreshadows very different visions for how the British state should work.

The right has an economically liberal view of the state, with both state services and benefits being pared back, leaving more space for private enterprise and consumer choice. The left does not seem to have such a clear vision – much of its energy is being devoted to keeping public services and benefits as they are and avoiding serious questions about the future. That is a pity, because shifts in both demographics and the distribution of economic power point to a larger role for the state.

The problem with the debate, though, is that none of the political parties is being clear about what they want to do. It is good that we are talking about broad numbers on the size of the state – but this needs to be brought down to specifics. The Conservatives need to be clearer about what they plan to cut, and how they want to reshape benefits. Labour and the Liberal Democrats need to do this too – because their plans also involve big cuts. But they also need to talk about taxes. The Tories are quite right that the only tax raising idea that they will talk about, the Mansion Tax, is small beer.

Britain, along with most of the developed world, needs to rethink tax, state benefits and public services. I do not believe that they can be shrunk in the way the right suggests. But neither are they sustainable in their current form, as the left seems to think. That, not immigration, exactly who delivers health services, or even membership of the EU, is one of the critical issues of our time.

The more politicians debate these issues, the better. But if they obfuscate, then Polly Toynbee’s angry rhetoric will for once be justified.

The slow suicide of Britain’s two party system. Only AV might have saved it

Two-party politics used to be the norm for developed democracies. Most countries’ politics were divided between tribal blocks based on the urban working class and on the aspirant middle classes. But the dominance of these two blocks has faded in most countries. There are two interesting exceptions: the USA and Australia. Here in Britain two-party politics looked as if it would triumph with the demise of the Liberal Democrat,s and the No vote in the referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) in 2011. But now the system is its death throes.

It is worth considering the architecture of two party politics for a moment. Electoral politics is dominated by two political parties, each of which may govern on its own, without the need for support from smaller parties in coalitions or pacts. Each of these parties has a tribal character, defining themselves as much in opposition to the other as by their own core values. But there is an undeniable class base two. This divides the country into heartlands, where one or other of the parties dominates to the exclusion of all others, and marginal territory, contested by both parties, where elections are won and loss. Many, if not most, politicians build their own careers in the heartlands, where advancement depends on internal party politics, rather than winning over marginal voters. This leads to the system’s major flaw – the political classes are more worried about their own backyard and internal politics than in appealing to the electorate at large. Or they worry about marginal voters to the exclusion of the heartlands. Distance between voters and politicians grows.

The breakdown of this system follows the weakening of class loyalties from the 1960s onwards. New parties have emerged, from the liberal centre, from populist anti-political movements, from environmentalists, and from parties based on regional identity. In much of Europe coalitions became commonplace. Electoral systems played an important role. Those with proportional representation (PR) were the first to find that one party could not govern on its own. But in countries with single member constituencies one party could still aspire to win on its own. France’s two-round system promoted pacts and alliances between parties, and the major blocks split into separate parties – before the whole system started to be challenged by the populist Front National. Countries with First Past the Post (FPTP) systems have placed a greater role on party solidarity. But in New Zealand disillusion with two-party politics led to the introduction of PR; in Canada each of the two party blocks suffered existential crises that allowed more modern alternatives to replace them, at least in part. Australia’s AV system seems to have entrenched the two party system there, however. I will come back to that.

In the biggest and oldest developed-world democracy of them all, however, the two party system remains completely dominant. In the USA there is no alternative to the Republicans or Democrats, although the occasional challenge comes and goes – even as more and more voters self-describe as Independent. But the US system of democracy is unique. Apart from the widespread use of FPTP (some states use a two round system – which is why the Louisiana Senate race is not yet over after this month’s nationwide election), I think there are three, inter-related factors: primary elections, decentralised power, and direct executive elections. Each party’s candidates are selected using primary elections which include much more than official party members. Such elections are part of the formal, state electoral process. Voters may register as Democrat or Republican. This allows them to take part in publicly-run primaries; in some states primaries are open – any voter can take part. That makes heartland elections competitive – and not a matter of manipulating small groups of insiders to secure your party’s nomination. It helps that each party’s national leadership is weak – so wheeler-dealing in Washington will not help a political career by much. This is a function of a system where much of the power is wielded at state level. One of the factors that keeps party functionaries weak is the prominence of direct executive elections, notably for President and state governors. In these cases personality often matters more than tribal allegiance.

It is an interesting paradox – for the two party system to be robust, the party leaderships must not be too strong. This allows the primary system to flourish, and gives outsiders a chance to break into politics. But party solidarity is important enough for those in power to rig the system to provide incumbent politicians with electorally safe seats through the gerrymandering of boundaries. A diminishing proportion of seats in the House of Representatives are competitive between the two blocks. A large proportion of the important politics is now in the tribal heartlands, and not in marginal territory. As a result of this, it would not be right to describe the state of politics in the USA as healthy. There is increasing polarisation, which is causing deadlock and the prospect of extremist policies. Most Americans seem fed up with the state of politics in their country, though not necessarily with the system itself.

Another case study in the survival of two-party politics is Australia. Politics is divided between two long-standing political blocks: Labor and the Liberal party, though the latter is a coalition of state parties (some of which refer to themselves as National or Country). There have been challenges to this duopoly over the years, but these have not made headway. No doubt there a number of factors that have contributed to this – but I think one factor is critical. And this is the AV electoral system. The legislature comprises single-member constituencies, and there is a single election day. Voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference. If one candidate does not achieve more than 50% of the votes casts, the lower ranking candidates are eliminated and their votes redistributed. This is a bit like the French two round run-off system, except that with a single election day there is little scope for political deal making over second preferences. It is so important for candidates to maximise first preferences that it best not to talk too much about second preferences.

This makes it very hard for challengers to win seats. First their first preferences have to overhaul one or other of the two main parties. But to do so they cannot say “vote for me to keep the other guy out”, because that is an argument for second preference votes, not first. Second preference votes are useless without sufficient first preferences. And then, of course, you must have sufficient first and second preference votes to get a majority. In marginal seats challengers will be beaten by the lack of first preferences; in heartland seats there will be lack of second preference votes. As a result almost all seats go to one or other of the blocks. In 2013 in order to turn out a lacklustre Labor government, voters opted for a Liberal one that is now pushing forward a series of extremist policies on the environment and immigration.

So what of Britain? For a long time the main challenge to the two party system came from the Liberal Democrats, based in the liberal centre. It was skilful in winning seats under FPTP by establishing a local base, and then winning tactical votes from the weaker of the two blocks. This allowed it to win a substantial block of parliamentary seats in 1997, but not the balance of power until 2010. It then entered coalition with the Conservatives. And then disaster struck – the transition from a protest party to one of government was too much for the voters, and its poll ratings collapsed. Labour and Tory politicians breathed a sigh of relief – normal two-party politics could be resumed.

Ironically, in view of the Australian experience, the Lib Dems placed some hope by proposing to change Britain’s FPTP system to AV. This would have helped the party in the short term, where it had built up a sufficient local base to win second place in first preference votes. Both major parties agreed with the Lib Dem analysis, and for that reason opposed the change (Labour through faint praise rather than explicit opposition). In a referendum on the change in 2011 an overwhelming majority opposed AV. This seemed to secure the future of two-party politics.

But unlike the US, Britain’s politics is highly centralised. Party managers in Westminster like to keep a tight grip on their parties. And, again unlike the US, executives are elected indirectly, and candidates must master the internal politics of their own party in order to progress to high office. The idea of primary elections has not been allowed to gain traction. The Tories have moved small steps towards it, but without being able to harness state resources. The public has no way to channel its disillusion with politics than to vote for insurgent parties – since they are denied a role in the main party elections. And this they have been doing by supporting the populist Ukip in England and the SNP in Scotland.

Unlike the Lib Dem challenge, these insurgencies have affected the main parties’ heartland voters. They are creating unbearable pressures with both party blocks. The Conservative and Labour leaders try both to fend off the insurgent challenge, and to retain the political centre – and as a result both appear weak, driven by events rather than leading them. This is creating unbearable strains and it seems likely both will fracture, especially if they have to endure the pressures of being in government. Labour face calamity in Scotland, as the SNP overturn their heartlands. In England Labour are a fragile coalition of public sector unions, liberal centrists and heartland machine politicians; each’s expectations of the party seems completely incompatible. The Tories look likely to fracture over Europe.

Ironically, if both parties had embraced AV, they would have been in a stronger position to fend off the insurgents and maintain party solidarity. And yet this is just another face of a bigger problem that both party’s face. their obsession with winning the next election has meant a loss of strategic focus. The demise of the two party system looks alarming, as fringe parties gain prominence. But in the long term it is to be welcomed. As the USA and Australia shows, a two-party system is too easily captured by political extremes.

Sliced bread, beer and politics. We must embrace pluralism

Sometimes I still hear the expression “the best thing since sliced bread”. This refers to the 1960s revolution in bread production, whose leading brand was Mothers Pride (missing apostrophes were another aspect of 1960s modernity). This was not just a matter of slicing the bread, but the invention of new baking processes that made the bread last longer. What was not to like about the new, modern stuff? It lasted longer and you did not have the hassle of cutting it. Sandwiches and toast became a doddle; the daily trip to the baker was no longer needed. And it was much cheaper, being mass produced in big factories. The new bread swept all before it, and traditional high street bakers disappeared.

But my mother hated the stuff, which she referred to as “cotton wool”. Mothers Pride was banned from the Green household. Eventually we resorted to baking our own bread. But in this, as in so many other things, hers was a lonely voice, to be sniggered at behind her back. But she was right. Bread consumption started to fall, and then to collapse. The new invention had solved many problems, but it had compromised its core values – taste and texture. Bread became pointless. Eventually craft bakeries sprang up as the middle classes, at least, were prepared to pay extra for something like the old product.

This is a pattern that repeats in the modern world. Another example is beer. Traditional beer is tricky to produce. But our industrial behemoths succeeded in creating bland, gassy and cheaper products. And then they set their marketers and advertisers onto the task of selling the stuff (a process that also happened to bread). There was more resistance at first. But the advertisers won through with lager. Clever, funny advertisements, like those for Heineken (“refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”) hit the zeitgeist, and traditionally made beers fell into rapid decline. Advertisers loved lager. They regarded it is a pure marketing product. It sold only through the strength of marketing, which had nothing to do with how it tasted. Indeed, researchers found that the blander it tasted, the faster, and more, people drank. The brewers adjusted their products accordingly.

And now the brewers are in crisis, in developed markets anyway. Beer drinking is in decline. All the momentum is with craft brewers, who produce small quantities of the stuff using more traditional methods – and which taste of something.

And so to politics. Politics used to be a labour intensive business. Political party membership would run to millions, and it was an essential part of social fabric. You won elections by knocking on doors, putting on public meetings and other events. Election literature was mainly a local affair. But the professionals got hold of this. They wanted something much more productive, with a wider impact. They pulled apart campaign messages and reconstructed something better crafted to the process of winning elections, using mass media to promote it (mainly a politically aligned press in Britain). This strategy, in essence, was to demonise the opposition with negative campaigning, while toning down your own offer to cause minimum offence. And persuasive effort was focused on a minority of swing voters. The message to more reliable supporters was was simply: I know you aren’t keen on a lot of what we are saying, but please come out and vote to stop the other lot. This required lots of money, but fewer people. These modern techniques worked. No modern mainstream political party would be without its professional advisers, armed with polling, focus groups, target voter analysis, and an array of modern marketing techniques.

And sure enough, public engagement in politics has declined. Voter turnout has steadily fallen. This bothered the professionals little, apart from some token public handwringing. What mattered was winning elections, after all. But now the political equivalent of craft breweries are on the rise. Smaller, tightly focused but distinctly unprofessional political parties. In Britain the winning political party would usually get over 40% of the votes cast (and in the 1950s about 50%). Now polling shows both main parties bobbing along at about 30%, even as the third mainstream party, the Liberal Democrats, languishes at about 7% when it used to reach two to three times that level at this point in the cycle. At the European elections earlier this year, the only national elections held under proportional representation, voters were confronted with a bewildering array of political parties, many brand-new. Few of these make much headway, but three “craft brewer” parties are making seeing success: Ukip, who won that election, the Greens, who won more seats than the Lib Dems, and the SNP are sweeping all before them in Scotland (and who I would not accuse of being “distinctly unprofessional”).

This phenomenon is not unique to Britain. In America there are few in the way of craft parties – but there are distinct craft elements within the main parties, especially the Republican Tea Party groups. In Europe an array of fringe parties are doing well, as establishment parties take a diminishing share of the vote.

Can this decline of mainstream parties be reversed? Occasionally a charismatic leader can reverse the fortunes of mainstream parties. Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe in Japan; Tony Blair in Britain; Matteo Renzi, perhaps, in Italy. There is an interesting common feature in with all these politicians. They set themselves up as taking on their own party’s establishment, and picked fights with the conservatives on their own side. But the instincts of Britain’s current main party leaders, David Cameron and Ed Miliband, are to paper over the cracks in their parties and not to pick fights. Perhaps, unlike Japan and Italy, there is not enough wrong in the British establishment to make such a battle credible. Tony Blair’s fight with the Labour left was spectacular, but his electoral platform reached new heights in blandness.

What to do? Personally I think that the fragmentation of British politics is a good thing, and that our electoral systems should be changed to facilitate it. This would turn politics into a squabble between smaller parties. In due course something more coherent would emerge. The idea that a single political party can encompass enough of a national consensus to have a mandate to govern belongs to the past. The choice of bread and beer in Britain is steadily improving now that the big businesses have been pushed back. It is perhaps the best it has ever been. Pluralism is not failure.