David Cameron – Page 3 – thinking liberal

Scotland: the problem is English complacency

The temperature is steadily rising in the debate over Scottish independence on 18 September this year. Today the three main Westminster parties will say no to a currency union between an independent Scotland and rump Britain. Last week the UK Prime Minister David Cameron made an emotional appeal for the union. But still not enough searching questions are being asked by the English on what this all means for them.

At least Mr Cameron’s remarks were directed towards the English, though the British media ignored this and only sought reaction from Scottish politicians and voters. He urged the English to support the union and tell their Scottish contacts that they did not want them to go. Unlike Mr Cameron, I have no Scottish family heritage. But I love Scotland and, like him, feel that if it went its own way an important part of my national identity would be diminished. But if such sentiments are to cut any ice north of the border, we English have to ask some searching questions as to how it has come to all this.

The problem is that Mr Cameron’s (and my) feelings don’t seem to be shared by many of our fellow English. Many seem to have a rather sour attitude towards the Scots, who should be less hostile and more grateful. This is all of a piece with hostility towards the European Union. Many English want to blame foreigners for their problems, and to inhabit a world where the English can ignore them except to the extent that they provide beach holidays (not something that Scotland scores on…). This reveals a paradox at the heart of the English identity. We see ourselves as an island nation, who should be control of our own destiny. And yet any greatness that the nation has aspired to has been achieved by the country playing a full part in the wider world.

We might ponder this as we approach the centenary of the 1914-18 war. There was a definite view in 1914 that we should just let the “Continentals” fight it out amongst themselves. And yet most people understood that German domination of Europe would imply German domination of Britain too. And so this country played a full part in a European continental war for the first time since the days of Marlborough 300 years ago (if you discount the largely naval and economic contribution o the Napoleonic wars), with results that can be seen in war memorials in practically every village in the country.

What has this got to do with the Scots? The Scots have always shown a better understanding of their place in the wider world – a sensitivity that comes from being a smaller nation, no doubt. They have contributed to the British nation as a whole, and still do. Can a lesser Britain, without Scotland, aspire to be treated as equals with France and Germany? Or will we take our place with the next tier, Spain and Poland? Or just be lame duck major power like Italy? It would not just be a loss of resources that would diminish the country, but a loss of prestige.

And yet Scotland is a very different place to England, with a separate identity that far outweighs that of any region of England, and which is more coherent than that of other parts of the Union: Wales and Northern Ireland. (Even if some Scots nationalists exaggerate these differences and their own coherence). The English nevertheless have a tendency to treat the place as a simple extension of England. This was at its most egregious under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and 1990s, when she used Scotland to pilot her pet Poll Tax idea. This problem persists, as we see from the imposition of the Coalition government’s benefit reforms (aka benefit cuts), to which Scots feel they have not consented.

Devolution has not a stable answer to this tension, though it has helped. The problem is that it is not symmetrical. There is no equivalent devolution of power to England, which is run directly by the UK government. Scottish (and Welsh) politicians aspire to run parts of the English government, like health and education, and they are thus drawn into English domestic politics rather than their own. This simply feeds English confusion and resentment as well as diminishing Scottish and Welsh domestic politics.

A new constitutional settlement is needed for the United Kingdom. I have already described what I think this should be (Time to Think of England: an English government and parliament meeting somewhere other than London). It is depressing that such ideas are not getting an airing. The biggest threat to our union is English complacency and conservatism.

One cheer for Ed Miliband

The focus of British politics is now clear. The prospects of the different parties at the General Election due in May 2015 dominates everything. No doubt it is with relief that the political elite and their coterie of journalists and commentators focus on this question, rather than the much more difficult one of how to make this country a better place for its citizens. The defining event of this year’s conference season so far has been Labour leader Ed Miliband’s speech. For good or ill, he seems to have set the political agenda. But does this tell us anything about whether Labour really would do a good job of running the country?

To read the commentaries, Mr Miliband has made a decisive shift to the left. He did this by focusing his ire on big business, and threatening them with government action. There were two signature policies. One was forcing energy companies to freeze their prices while the government reconfigured the regulatory regime to squeeze them more permanently. The second was forcing private sector developers to “use or lose” their land banks to build houses. All this in an attempt to reverse the decline in living standards that the bulk of the population has suffered since the economic downturn started in 2008.

Commentators of the right and centre, such as the Economist’s Bagehot column, interpret this as Labour vacating the decisive “centre ground” of politics, where elections are won and lost. This is the ground which the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg is trying to push his party into, in spite of grumbles by older activists. The Conservatives’ David Cameron is likely to stake his claim there too, and ignore the voices of his party urging him to adopt right wing populism to fend off the threat from Ukip. They will attack Labour’s policies as unworkable, and part of a failed socialist outlook. Mr Cameron will offer tax cuts as a surer route to improving living standards; Mr Clegg will offer tax cuts too, though rather narrower ones, and something about tackling barriers to social mobility (affordable child care, better schools, etc.).

Commentators of the left, like the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, do not deny Mr Miliband’s leftward lurch and seem quite content. His new policies are popular with the public, and have lifted Labour’s poll ratings; there may be many more populist left wing policies, bashing bankers and big business that will go down well electorally. With a large chunk of the previous Lib Dem vote going to Labour, and the Conservatives struggling with Ukip, the next election is Labour’s to lose.

But rather than evaluate these calculations at face value, let’s pause and step back for a minute. All this looks like the narcissism of small differences. All three parties remain firmly embedded in much same policy space. Mr Miliband would have made a decisive step to the left if he had outlined a policy of increased public spending, funded by extra taxes. In this way he might be able to halt and even reverse the relentless squeeze on benefits and public services. But he has decided not to; instead his party will have to make something in the region of £26 billion of cuts in the next parliament (a number I have culled from this perceptive article by the Resolution Foundation’s Gavin Kelly in the paywalled FT). He has said nothing about where these cuts, or increased taxes, will fall. The Conservatives would be making a radical shift to the right if they were proposing to make deeper cuts to the state, which they can only do if they cut the NHS (or rather make the public pay for more of its services) and old age pensions. There is no sign of that.

And there is something else. None of the parties is embracing more than gradual or token decentralisation of power from Westminster. Instead they argue over this, that or the other centralised tax, subsidy or regulatory regime. This can be seen in the season’s signature policy ideas. Mr Clegg has announced free school meals for English school infants; all of them, everywhere, because it looks like a clever idea based on a couple of pilot schemes. Mr Miliband wants to bash energy companies through central regulation: but how does this help solve the country’s slow path to reducing carbon emissions? And what on earth is the point of the Conservatives’ tax break for married couples?

But Mr Miliband deserves credit for one thing. He, alone amongst the three party leaders that I can see, has pointed out one of the two central challenges of the British political economy. That is that the benefits of economic growth are bypassing most people. This is nothing new, but economic stagnation is making it hard to gloss over. It arises primarily from technological change, and its effect on manufacturing industry and office work, helped along by the rise of globalisation. The problem isn’t that our tax and benefit system is failing to redistribute wealth, it is that increasingly wages are too low in the first place.

But there Mr Miliband’s insight seems to end. He seems content to blame big “predator” corporations, and offer the hope that better regulation will help. He didn’t even mention the second great challenge, which is that real terms funding for public services and benefits will fall rather than rise in the years ahead. He offers palliatives rather than solutions. Britain’s right and centre are no better.

What is the solution? In my view there are three interrelated elements. Improve the education system so that skills better balance where the jobs are in future. Redesign public services and benefits so that they can be tailored to individual and community needs. Strengthen local networks to counterbalance the effect of the rise of centralised, winner takes all networks. These three require a radical decentralisation of power. How long will it take before our political classes start to realise this?

The battle for Britain’s political centre

The idea of a centre ground in politics, where elections are won and lost, is a persistent one, especially here in Britain (and England in particular) and in the United States. Winning politicians are said to “triangulate” a political position in this centre ground; notable exemplars of this idea were Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. David Cameron is supposed to have rescued the Conservative Party from oblivion using this strategy in 2010 to turning it into the UK’s largest party, if not outright victory. Now, in Britain, there is a lot of talk about it, and what political strategy each of the three established main parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) should be; take this article, Both the Tory and Labour leaders need lessons in politcal geometry by Andrew Rawnsley. What to make of this?

This all starts with the idea that political views can be placed on a spectrum with the left at one end, the right at the other, and ground, the centre or middle, in between. Over the years I have repeatedly heard people claim that this idea is no longer a helpful analysis of modern politics. But it is remarkably persistent, and it appears to have been helpful to Messrs Clinton, Blair and Cameron. What seems to define the left-right spectrum is attitudes to social solidarity and the state. On the right there is a strong view that individuals are responsible for their own wellbeing, and that the state should do the minimum to help them, because such help is counterproductive. This view unites social conservatives, distrusting socialist values, and economic liberals. On the left there is a feeling that most people have little influence on their social outcomes, especially poorer people, and that they should band together, organised by the state to tilt the odds back in their favour.

And for all the talk about the differences between the political parties disappearing, it is very easy to see this fault-line separating the core followers and activists in the Conservative and Labour parties. Think of the last Labour government’s attempt to get state supervision, through Primary Care Trusts, local authorities and other agencies to take a broader role in achieving social outcomes, like reducing “health inequalities”. Compare this to Tory ministers who delight in dismantling this infrastructure in the name of austerity.

But elections are clearly won and lost by floating voters, who aren’t convinced by the true believers of either party. Appealing to these voters makes the two main parties look very similar in terms of their election promises at least. Strange then that both parties seem currently more concerned to shore up their core votes and activists, rather than make a play for the centre. By this stage before Mr Blair’s victory in 1997, he and Gordon Brown were challenging the party’s core supporters by, for example, signing up to the Conservative austerity policies and promising not to raise income tax. Similarly Mr Cameron was doing photo ops in the Arctic with huskies to show his concern for global warming well before the 2010 election.

But the political priorities have changed. Neither party has made its activists so desperate for power by being out of office for a decade that they will sign up for anything. Labour needs to nurture the anger felt its supporter by the current government’s austerity policies, especially amongst those claiming benefits and those employed, or formerly employed, in the public sector. The Conservatives are shaken by the rise of the distinctly right wing Ukip, who are stealing away its core activists, even if they are also pulling in actual votes from elsewhere too. Both parties will need its foot-soldiers when the next general election arises in 2015.

But there may also be a bit of a problem for those chasing votes in the centre: the centre itself is fragmenting. This is suggested by some survey work reported in The Economist a couple of weeks ago, here. On the one side are those whose living standards are being squeezed (one definition of the “squeezed middle” of which much has been talked). These people are not just those in the direct line of fire of cuts, but those who were not particularly well off, and are now finding that their income is frozen while prices keep going up. These voters are open to Labour’s rhetoric about the government’s failed economic policies, and ideas for kick-starting it with things such as a temporary cut in VAT. A second group of centrist voters are not badly affected in their personal living standards, and are much more convinced by the government’s line that austerity is a necessary evil, following the irresponsible profligacy (by both government and individuals) that occurred under the last government. Each side seems to be doing a reasonable job of appealing to one of these two groups, but not headway in appealing to both. This does not add up to a winning majority for either party.

The big unknown is how the economy will be faring in 2015, as this could influence the balance between these groups. The Conservatives hope that the current fragile recovery continues, inflation falls and people feel that things are getting better; they will then be less willing to risk any change in economic policy. If economic stagnation predominates, Labour narrative might get stronger, though. No doubt both parties are keeping their powder dry to see how things shape up. The Conservative fall back will probably be to persuade the squeezed middle that Labour’s policies will mean higher taxes for them. Labour might do a Blair and say that they will adopt the government’s current spending plans except for some carefully chosen minor exceptions, and so reassure the better off middle. Of these I think the Conservatives will be the more credible, and combined with Mr Cameron’s politically well crafted policy on Europe, the party will do much better than people currently expect.

And what of the Liberal Democrats? They do not have a heartland in either left or right, but it is wrong to suggest, as Nick Clegg is prone to, that it has an ideological affinity to centrist voters, as the centre is not a coherent ideological group. The big problem for them is that they are very much on the government side of the economic debate, and will struggle to appeal to the squeezed middle, though banging on about raised income tax thresholds is meant to neutralise this. But the collateral damage that the Labour and Conservative party’s do to each other in the campaign could help them. They can try to develop the idea that centre voters are better off backing a centre party, which moderates the left or right through coalition, rather than trusting the main party ideologues to stick to their manifestos. So far though, that line of argument seems to be getting little traction.

Will Labour let the Tories win the 2015 election?

Margaret Thatcher’s death on Monday has distracted attention at rather an interesting moment in British politics. There is a vigorous debate about how Labour should fight the next General Election, which should be in 2015 (one of the very few Lib Dem inspired constitutional changes to get through was one on fixed term parliaments). I have picked this up from two articles. First was an article by Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland last Saturday: Labour must draw the sting from welfare, or lose in 2015. Mr Freedland is nominally an independent journalist, but this article seemed to be very well coordinated with material coming out from the Labour leadership, including a TV interview with deputy leader Harriet Harman. It sounds their leader’s, Ed Miliband’s, party line. Then came former leader and prime minister Tony Blair in a widely reported article in New Statesman: Labour must search for answers and not merely aspire to be a repository for people’s anger. The link is to a summary, which is all I have read; the full article is in a special Centenary print issue. I don’t think either have identified the right strategy for 2015, though Mr Blair is closer.

Both writers attack a complacent view which seems quite popular in Labour circles, and which is often associated with another Guardian writer, Polly Toynbee (though not by either author, and possibly not fairly). This is that the Conservative led coalition is in a mess, having picked the wrong economic strategy, and heartlessly cut important parts of the British system, such as working age welfare. The Conservatives are very unpopular; public anger is raging. They even face a challenge from the far right, Ukip, which is causing panic and leading them to revive their reputation for being the nasty party. Meanwhile Labour have already dealt a mortal blow to their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, who face a private battle with oblivion in a few dozen constituencies across the country, and are reduced to irrelevance everywhere else. On this reading, all Labour have to do is to ride the anger and say as little as possible about what they would do in government, beyond the implicit or explicit promise to roll back the Tory cuts. The coalition parties will lose the election without Labour having to try very hard to win it.

But both authors suggest that the middle ground of British politics has shifted, to something much sourer than it was before the crisis. Before Mrs Thatcher’s death, the left had been stoking up the anger over the government’s welfare reforms, and especially some changes on housing benefit that they dubbed “the bedroom tax”. But into this maelstrom stepped the novelist A.N. Wilson and The Daily Mail who suggested that odious killer Mick Philpott was a product of the British benefit system, showing that cuts were needed. And then Chancellor George Osborne joined them, to apoplexy of the left. Labour’s anger is genuine, but it does not seem to be hurting the Conservatives. Opinion polls put Labour on about 40% to the Tories’ 30%. Add in more than 10% for Ukip and the right is level pegging with the left before the fight has really started. Labour are appealing to people who already vote for them, or who live in Northern urban constituencies where their votes are not needed.

The threat to Labour is quite clear, with a parallel in 1992, another election in difficult economic time. The weak economy is causing hardship across the board, and not just amongst those on benefits. If the economy picks up in the next two years, the government will get credit. If, as most people expect, things stay grim, then that sour mood will continue. People don’t buy the argument, popular amongst trade union leaders, that bit of extra government spending will stimulate the economy into a virtuous circle of growth. As in 1992 the Tories will claim that Labour’s plans to restore the cuts will simply make things worse by raising taxes. This will be very hard for Labour to fight if they follow the Polly Toynbee strategy, and they might lose rather than gain seats. A Lib Dem meltdown, predicted gleefully by Labour activists, will simply deliver a full working majority to David Cameron.

What to do? Mr Freedland suggests a programme of radical reforms to welfare, which will inspire the public with fresh thinking against Coalition incompetence. Ideas include moving towards the contributory principle for benefits (linking benefits more tightly to contributions, as many other European countries do), increased support for childcare, guaranteed jobs after a year of unemployment, and so on. These reforms will tackle the crisis of legitimacy that Mr Freedland highlights as the problem with the benefits system. This seemed to chime with what Ms Harman was saying on the television, and which I had read elsewhere from another Shadow Cabinet member.

What Mr Blair is suggesting is not clear, certainly from the article summary. He asks questions rather than provides answers. He does not seem to be going down the radical reform line, though. He suggests things like building more houses (in his case probably by building private sector houses on green belts), more computerisation of government services, and using DNA databases to tackle crime more effectively. Overall this is much closer to what the Coalition is already suggesting. On the economy, he does suggest industrial strategy, but not re-balancing. He even suggests rebuilding the finance sector. But then he does not accept that the British economy was more vulnerable than others to the financial crisis. More pleasing to liberals, he suggests challenging the right on Europe and immigration – though this can be read as justifying his policies when he was last in power.

Mr Freedland’s approach would be a serious mistake. If the Coalition has shown anything, it has shown just how difficult reform is, especially in hard economic times. All reforms create winners and losers. Politically the winners keep quiet, but the losers shout like mad. And reform ideas put together quickly tend to fall apart quickly. Any programe of radical welfare reform would fall apart under the full weight of attack, led by a press pack that still tends to set the political agenda. They will be portrayed as expensive and muddled; and any areas where savings are suggested will be attacked vigorously so that the losers’ voice is heard. It is simply too late to be radical. The country has reform fatigue. Remember the referendum on reforming the electoral system? An idea that seemed quite popular at first fell apart under concerted attack from the right.

Mr Blair is closer to the mark only because he seems to be less radical. But his central idea of trying to restore the reputation of the last Labour government is surely a dead letter. What Labour should be doing is learning from the way he secured a landslide at the 1997 election. He did this by signing up to 95% of the Conservative government’s policies, with a few carefully chosen and well publicised exceptions, while appearing more cohesive and inclusive than his opponents.

Likewise Mr Miliband needs to sign up to the bulk of the welfare reforms, with some token exceptions. Unfortunately reversing the “bedroom tax” would be a poor choice: the change only applies to social housing tenants, so private sector tenants either have to be included at great expense, or else they will protest as to why they are being left out. Personally I would would focus mainly on reducing the costs of childcare at the expense of some pensioner benefits – though the coalition parties might jump on this bandwagon.

But Labour needs to act now if he is to do something like this. The activists will hate it: so they need enough time for the fuss to die down, before they return to their visceral hatred of the Tories for motivation. But I don’t think Mr Miliband will go down that road, though.

David Cameron is not a particularly effective Prime Minister. But he is the most skilled politician amongst the party leaders. He has an excellent instinct for the political middle ground, and he is slowly but surely manoeuvring Labour into a cul-de-sac. Whether he will win a majority in the 2015 election is open to doubt: but I would bet good money on the Tories being the largest party.

Lib Dems hope for a turning point

The Lib Dem conference at Brighton last weekend was a low key affair. There was enough space in the Metropole hotel to hold the whole thing, including the very limited fringe. All this is in contrast to the last spring conference I attended in 2011 in Sheffield, amid a huge police presence and shouting demonstrators. In 2011 the party was already over the edge of an abyss, though it took that year’s disastrous local elections for many to realise it. This year conference goers thought the outlook was better.

The immediate cause is not hard to see: the party’s victory in the Eastleigh by-election. Most of those there had helped in this election one way or another. The win may not look all that convincing to an outsider, but activists talked it up, as if it was a landslide. This was a reflection of solidarity under assault, from not just the usual suspects, but from the liberal media too, including the BBC. To have overcome those odds, people felt, was a triumph. Also it was a reflection that the campaign was impressively organised, and did not shy away from the party’s role in government, or Nick Clegg’s leadership – issues that many considered to be toxic.

Rather bizarrely the BBC, in its coverage on Friday and on Saturday morning, expected the activists to be a bit grumpy, full of questions about who knew what and when in the Rennard and Huhne affairs. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Eastleigh would overshadow all. In fact a nasty row over secret courts was the second story of the conference: the parliamentary party had backed the government’s plans, in spite of a passionate debate and motion against them at the Autumn conference. There were resignations. But this is not the sort of row the media feel comfortable about reporting, so it didn’t get much coverage. Huhne and Rennard hardly featured, though there were a regular compliments to Mr Huhne’s work on policy and as a minister, and not all from men (Shirley Williams started it). The party leadership chose to confront the Rennard affair frontally at a women’s day rally on Friday evening: and that was all that most people wanted to hear on that topic. There was a second row about government economic policy: an emergency motion on the topic wasn’t taken, as the result of a manoeuvre that most representatives thought was a bit dubious. But cabinet minister Vince Cable’s stirrings on the economy were some compensation: he gave a speech at one of the fringe meetings. The official business was low key. Uncontroversial motions and speeches by junior ministers. An emergency motion on secret courts was a bit of an exception.

The main point of the conference, if there was one, was to lay groundwork for the 2015 General Election. There was a stirring speech by Paddy Ashdown, who is chairing the campaign, as well as Mr Clegg’s leadership speech. There was also a rather low key consultative session on the manifesto. In each these, and on other occasions, the party aired its campaign theme: “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” (“enabling everyone to get on in life” if you have space to pad it out a bit). The plan is to keep repeating this line ad nauseam for the next two and a bit years.

The slogan has its critics. Its direct message is not distinctive: every other political party stands for the same things, even if they define the terms a bit differently. It makes no reference to liberal values. Both criticisms miss the point. The party must win by attracting mainstream voters, who are not particularly liberal, though not anti-liberal either. The slogan is meant to draw people in to two further messages: you can’t trust the Conservatives on “fairness”, and you can’t trust Labour on the economy. The calculation is that each of the two main parties has a severe weakness which the party can exploit, as the only sensible, mainstream party left standing.

Will this work? It might. The Conservatives really do seem to have a problem. David Cameron was never able to mould his party in the way that Tony Blair moulded Labour. Many of the party’s MPs are right wing fanatics, as are their grass roots supporters. Such people are convinced that they have caught the public mood, because their views are reflected in much of the press. But most voters are put off. Mr Cameron has a good instinct for the “centre ground”, or the public mainstream – but his party looks divided. The very bendable word “fairness” is a good as any word bring attention to this Conservative weakness. In policy terms it is cover for taxing the rich and preserving social insurance, such as social security and the health service.

And Labour has a problem too. Their situation is not unlike the one that they faced in the early 1990s under Neil Kinnock, which led them to lose the 1992 election against a lacklustre Conservative government under John Major. They were riding high in the opinion polls, and the economy was in a mess. But they were inclined to make promises to spend more public funds, and their leader wasn’t trusted. Right now Labour are drawing a lot of energy from activists (many of them public sector workers) who feel that government cuts are motivated by ideology rather than economics. They grasp at a Keynesian critique of current government policy to think that sorting the economy out is as easy as boosting public spending, which will sort the public finances out through the multiplier effect. But polling shows that the public does not share this view: they feel that public expenditure should be cut back. That leaves Ed Miliband with an unenviable choice. If he pushes ahead with a publicly credible economic policy, and says he will match the government’s public expenditure plans, subject one of two populist tweaks, he will anger his activists and trade union donors. If he fudges, his campaign is likely to break apart under pressure, as Neil Kinnock’s did in 1992. It doesn’t help that his economic spokesman, Ed Balls, is closely associated with Gordon Brown’s economic policies, which are widely viewed as disastrous. Mr Miliband’s own public standing is weak, as was Mr Kinnock’s, though for different reasons.

This could give the Lib Dems an opening, especially in seats where the party has plenty of activists to deliver the message, tack in local issues, and get out the vote. With fifty or so seats the party may be able to win a place in another coalition government. Buoyed up by Eastleigh, Lib Dem activists think they can do it, and that an important turning point has been reached.

Eastleigh: a blow for the Westminster bubble

My first reaction to the overnight result of the Eastleigh parliamentary by election was, as a loyal Lib Dem, relief. For once the party isn’t having to explain away a lost deposit. A more considered reaction is that it shows just how out of touch with ordinary people the Westminster bubble is – I nearly wrote “has become”, but I think it has always been thus. Will they will be chastened by the experience? Alas, there is no chance of that.

By “the Westminster bubble” I mean that community of London-based politicians, journalists, lobbyists and their hangers-on, who control the main levers of political power, but who talk chiefly amongst themselves. There are plenty of enthusiastic Lib Dem bubble-types, but the Lib Dems are better grounded than most. They mainly responded to the Eastleigh challenge by actually going there and talking to the voters, rather than just trying to influence the media coverage in classic bubble fashion. The by election has been a sobering experience for the party, along with the joy of victory. First the Lib Dem vote share fell sharply, and the voters showed no great enthusiasm for the party. Second, the experience has shown just how much the party is disliked by most inhabitants of the bubble. This is hardly a surprise when it comes to Labour and Conservative politicians – but that it includes most supposedly objective news journalists, including at the BBC, is a little disappointing.

Exhibit A in this case is the Chris Rennard sexual harassment scandal. Almost all the news media have been giving huge prominence to some rather old accusations about sexual harassment by the former Lib Dem chief executive. I can do no better than refer readers to the Guardian’s fair-minded Michael White on this. The media coverage has everything to do with trying to influence the Eastleigh result against the Lib Dems, and little to do with the merits of the story. I will give a partial exemption to the BBC’s Martha Kearney on the World at One on this. She has given the story very heavy coverage – but does seem to have been genuinely interested in exploring the social issues the story raises about the behaviour of men to women. For all its flaws it sounded like good journalism to me. But the glee shown by BBC’s Today presenters about the possible effect of the story on the election was entirely another matter. The BBC should be ashamed of itself.

But the voters of Eastleigh just weren’t interested. Mild and old accusations of sexual harassment against somebody that has never held elected office was not the same thing as MPs overclaiming expenses. Neither did the other Lib Dem scandal, that of Chris Huhne’s confession of getting his wife to take his speeding points, seem to have played all that heavily. That issue was at least a legitimate issue for the by election, since Mr Huhne had been their MP, and his resignation is what triggered it. The Westminster bubble’s inhabitants seem incapable of understanding the voters’ lack of interest.

Meanwhile the bubble seems equally incapable of comprehending the extraordinary performance of Ukip, who stormed from nowhere into second place, and came close to winning the seat. This seems to vindicate the stand of some right-wing bubblies, exemplified by Daily Mail journalists, on Europe and other issues, but Ukip themselves are complete outsiders – more so than even the Lib Dems. They have been trying to link the party’s rise to Westminster’s own obsession with the country’s relationship to the EU, and whether or not to hold a referendum. But it seems highly implausible that this had much to do with it. It seems much more likely their rise is a reflection of an anti-politics mood: a bit like the success of Beppo Grillo in Italy. Of course the journalists in the bubble are doing much to stoke the anti-politics mood, in order to help their own standing within the bubble. But this is turning out to be a highly destructive game. No doubt the journalists calculate that what they have built up, in the rise of Ukip, they can just as easily destroy when it presents a real threat. But politics as a whole is being degraded.

Instead of reflecting on this, the bubble journalists are emphasising the humiliation to the Conservative and Labour parties and their respective leaders. But for these parties the election should be seen as a useful reality check, and no more.

My politically objective advice to David Cameron is: don’t panic. The election says nothing about his recent policy move on an EU renegotiation and referendum. I think this is a brilliant move: but it is part of the groundwork for the 2015 General Election, and will show few benefits before then. The election also shows that the Lib Dems will be no pushover, even though many bubblies think the party will vanish without trace in 2015. Ukip are a challenge, but their weaknesses are poor organisation and lack of media friends. There is plenty of time for them to burn out, and the time for pricking their bubble is after the 2014 European Parliament elections, and not before. Tories might reflect that if the by election had been held under the Alternative Vote (the system that they so vehemently rejected in 2011), they they might well have won. Though, to be fair, Ukip would have been more likely victors on this occasion.

For Labour, the result is pretty unsurprising, but it may help their more enthusiastic supporters to confront reality. The public does not share their view of the economy: that austerity policies are laying criminal waste to the British economy. And it will be hard work for them to make progress outside their diminishing working class heartlands. The leadership probably realise this already, even if Polly Toynbee followers don’t. But the time to fix this is not necessarily now.

And for the Lib Dems? It’s difficult not to see this as a small, but positive step forward. The party is earning a place as part of the political establishment: a party that is capable of progressing even when the media is against it. The party can’t pretend, as it liked to, that they are super-clean, and new kids on the block. The public see all the human frailties they see in other parties. But Labour and the Conservatives have succeeded in spite this. In the end people like to vote for respectable, establishment parties when the stakes are high. Instead of trying to promote themselves as a new kind of political force, they need to focus on promoting policies and competence. For all the noise, that is happening.

Britain’s ungovernable Conservatives

I can remember when Britain’s Conservative Party was thought to be the country’s natural party of government. This feeling reached a peak after John Major’s shock win in 1992, when the party looked all but unelectable. The journalist Will Hutton wrote a best-seller “The State We’re In” which explained why. The party was deeply embedded into the country’s establishment. The discipline of its membership was legendary. Its hunger for power also made it adept at judicious compromise. It was a well oiled machine to keep an elite in power. The brief intervals of post-war Labour government in 1945, 1964 and 1974 seemed like awkward aberrations. Now, as the party wrestles with today’s vote on same-sex marriage, many observers of the British political scene wonder whether the party will ever secure a majority in the House of Commons after that win in 1992. What went wrong?

The party’s troubles are clearly deep. When David Cameron took over, after the party’s third successive defeat in 2005 it was clear that the party’s image with the public was toxic. Polling showed, the story went, that if the party came out in favour of a particular policy then that was reason enough to turn people against the policy. Mr Cameron’s mission was to re-brand and de-toxify the party, much as Tony Blair did with the Labour Party after that defeat in 1992. It seemed to be working. Mr Cameron embraced liberal causes like environmentalism and the inclusion of gays, while putting the party’s obsessions with Europe into the background. In doing so Mr Cameron put the party’s official position in a place where most Britons would not disagree with it. The party’s enthusiasm for the privatisation of public services was, and is, the only major exception.

He failed to win a majority in 2010, but by embracing coalition with the Liberal Democrats, he seemed burnish the party’s liberal credentials. While the Lib Dems were thrown into existential crisis, it seemed that the Tories were on a stepping stone towards power in their own right. But then people started to discover what the new Conservatives were really like. The problem wasn’t so much the Coalition’s programme of austerity and public service reform – “The Cuts”. These have produced a deafening whining sound from the left of the political spectrum. But these mainly originate from a complacent Labour establishment who had got used to a way of doing things, and it is not resonating with a majority of the British public. It is more of a problem for the Lib Dem element of the coalition than the Conservatives, though the NHS reforms remain a danger to both parties.

The real problem for the Tories comes on just those symbolic issues where Mr Cameron had tried to change the mood music. An obsession with the European Union and calls for a referendum on it have come to the fore. Reform to the House of Lords was firmly squashed, notwithstanding a seeming commitment to it in the party’s 2010 election manifesto. And now same-sex marriage (“equal marriage” to its supporters, “redefinition of marriage” to its opponents, “gay marriage” to the BBC). I must admit that this is an issue I struggle to get worked up about. But most of my friends are for it (though at least one is a passionate opponent), and it fits with my generally progressive outlook on life. Our understanding of what marriage is has changed over the years. But to many people in the country the reform is the last straw in a constant process of the undermining of traditional values. Such people feel that the political system tramples over them regardless, and their frustration makes them angry. They are in a minority, but not a voiceless one. They are particulalry well represented in the ranks of the Conservative Party, and many Tory MPs are taking up their cause.

This leaves three problems for Mr Cameron and his modernising allies. First is that it exposes divisions in his party, and that makes it look less credible as a governing party. Second it shows that whatever Mr Cameron may promise, even if it is in the election manifesto (same-sex marriage wasn’t in the main manifesto, it has to be said, but in separate party publications for the gay community), he cannot deliver on liberal, reforming policies that do not involve privatisation. Third is that there is a risk of defection from the traditional wing of his party in protest, reducing the party’s potential in the electoral ground war, and potentially helping UKIP, which is positioning itself as a vehicle for just such traditionalists. Under the country’s electoral system it is tough enough for the Tories to win outright. Surely it is now impossible?

Of course Mr Blair faced major challenges from Labour traditionalists, but still forged a highly effective political machine that still looks in good shape, even after its heavy defeat in 2010. But Mr Cameron does not command anything like the same loyalty amongst party apparatchics, and above all MPs, that Mr Blair commanded at the equivalent stage in his government. Mr Cameron never attempted Mr Blair’s “Clause 4 moment”, of a deliberately engineered confrontation with his critics to show he was boss.

Is it all lost for Mr Cameron? Not quite. There is always the example of 1992. Then the Tories were able to demonise the Labour Party and its leader sufficiently to scare first the press, and then voters into voting for it in large numbers. Ed Miliband, like Neil Kinnock, Labour’s leader in 1992, does not cut a particularly prime ministerial figure. There may well be an opportunity to stoke fears about tax rises under Labour too. As the General Election approaches Mr Cameron could rally the dissidents. He can still call on rich donors and much of the press will still rally to their cause.

But the Conservatives are no longer the party of the establishment. Their hidden advantages, so strong in the 20th Century, are eroding away. The 2015 election looks like another stalemate.

That speech: just a ripple on the surface of British politics?

Last week I commented on David Cameron’s speech on Britain and the EU, where he promised an in-out referendum, following a “renegotiation” if the Conservatives win the next General Election in 2015. For some days after I though this was a decisive moment in British politics, in which Mr Cameron seized the initiative, and the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, lost his chance to win the next election. A week on, the dust has settled and the news is dominated by other stories. Was is such a decisive moment, or a mere ripple, a failing prime minister making a promise he can’t deliver?

The weekend polls show no decisive shift, with the coalition parties trending up a tad, but Labour still comfortably ahead, following a trend already evident before the speech. One poll seemed to show a big advance by the Conservatives at the expense of UKIP – but on further examination it looks as if this has more to do with polling methodology than people changing their voting preferences. Mr Miliband’s calculation appears to be that the main issue for British politics is the economy, and so the best thing to do is to change the subject back to this issue. His line that the speech hurts the economy because it creates uncertainty, that old argument against any form of decisive leadership, seems to be carrying weight with the British public, according to a further poll published by The Independent – though this also showed Tory support rising. And in the ephemeral world of British political commentary that should be enough to say that this is just a small tactical victory for Mr Cameron, making his party less vulnerable to UKIP, and not much more. But I think two big things have changed, and a big problem has opened up.

Firstly, Mr Miliband has made a serious strategic error, even if its significance will not show up much before 2015. His strategy should be to focus the political debate onto a small number of subjects and overwhelm the opposition there. This is a strategy I have called “the same, only different” following a 20th Century advertising campaign for a product I have long forgotten. It was used by Tony Blair’s New Labour to devastating effect in 1997. Basically you shadow your opponent’s policies in almost every detail except for a small number carefully chosen issues, plus a big investment in mood music to make your party appear more caring and more competent. I remember the exasperation of Tories; whenever they came up with a new policy to try and get an edge on Labour, Labour promptly adopted it as their own. It prevented the other side from changing the agenda. This seems to have been what Mr Miliband is trying to do, albeit without actually committing to any policies just yet (again following Mr Blair’s example). He is not creating sharp policy differences with the government, and making the main focus of his attack the economy. He is trying to create the right mood music by painting the government as by turns gratuitously nasty, and shambolic and incompetant. This strategy was slowly paying off.

But Mr Cameron has hit Labour below the waterline. He has created a clear area of policy difference, where he is probably more in tune with the British public than Mr Miliband, and one in which he can guarantee coverage from Britain’s still-important press. But also the issue makes Mr Miliband look weak, indecisive and un-prime ministerial. That could be fatal. What Mr Miliband actually should have done was welcomed Mr Cameron’s speech and adopted his policies as his own. That would have taken the wind totally out of the Tory sails.

The second way that Mr Cameron’s move may be decisive is that it may have turned the advancing tide of British Euroscepticism, while at the same time unifying his bitterly Eurosceptic party. I have read Mr Cameron’s speech, and the most striking thing about it is how Europhile it is. He has well understood the arguments for Britain staying in, and put them forward. Britons are a suspicious, conservative bunch as the 2011 AV referendum showed. Leaving the EU would be a big step into the unknown, and the more people think about it, the more nervous they are likely to become. And yet the sceptics are happy because they have their precious in-out referendum.

Mr Cameron’s speech was a genuine act of decisive political leadership. There are risks, but there always are. There is also a risk that the EU needs to take forward a treaty change that we are forced to put to a referendum that is then lost. This risk has now been sidestepped, because we now have the opportunity to package it up with more popular changes and put it too an in-out referendum.

But there is a big problem with Mr Cameron’s speech, which I did not pick up last week. Aside from its tactical genius, it is intellectually vacuous. Its economics is based on a fatuous understanding of international competition and the fear of Europe falling behind the developing economies. Its analysis of how the EU needs to be changed is hot air with no concrete proposals. A single market without harmonised rules may sound good, but what does it mean in practice? I really don’t understand how this wishful vision breaks down into nitty-gritty negotiating points. Mr Cameron badly need somebody with intellectual heft to lead the negotiation – the job the Lord Cockfield did for Mrs Thatcher in developing the original European Single Market in 1992. The risk is that he will make no headway in the negotiations, and waste an opportunity to improve both Britain’s role with the EU, and the stability of the EU itself. That’s the big problem the speech opens up.

Cameron may yet win his gamble on the EU

This morning the British Prime Minister David Cameron gave his long awaited speech on the European Union. I didn’t listen to it, or read it, so you won’t get any light on the nuances of his argument here. I’m interested in the political dynamics, which, as usual, do not depend on exactly what he said. From the BBC report his speech was fairly much as the last two weeks’ briefing had suggested. We wants to “renegotiate” Britain’s terms of membership, and then offer the British public an in/out referendum, after the next General Election, by the end of 2017. Mr Cameron’s political reputation is mixed. He showed brilliant footwork when he first took over leadership of the Conservative Party, but rather fluffed the 2010 General Election with his incomprehensible idea of the “the Big Society”. He restored his reputation with the assured manner in which he put together the Coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. After that he seemed lack vision and grasp. Will today’s move restore his reputation? It might.

A couple of weeks ago I thought he was onto a hiding to nothing, and in the process of leading his party to defeat at the next election, set for 2015. Various shades of Euroscepticism seem to define the rank and file of the Conservative Party, right up to Parliamentary level. It seems impossible to satisfy them. On the other hand assorted Europhiles (in deed rather than word in most cases) amongst the deeply conservative British establishment don’t want to rock the boat. He risks isolation and an almighty mess. His own view seems to be that the UK is better off inside the EU, but it would be really nice if its institutions were less intrusive.

But Mr Cameron has two things going for him. First is that his personal view on the matter probably represents what most of the British public thinks: a very grumpy “well yes I suppose so” to the EU. From this he should be able to build a bond of trust, unlike other participants in the debate, whose firm views one way or the other are not shared by the public. And second, Mr Cameron is a vital swing voter in the debate. It is highly unlikely that either side can win a referendum without his support. The smart thing for the various players here and abroad is to build bridges with him, rather than try to isolate and vilify him. This could put him into the driving seat.

Things are now starting to get very interesting. In spite of the very long time they have been given to develop a party line, the Labour opposition is completely at sea. They are trying to paint a picture of a PM beholden to his backbenchers, and who, by creating uncertainty, is making things worse for the national interest. This is desperately unconvincing. The British public probably rather agree with what their PM is saying, while Labour are merely offering obfuscation and procrastination. Uncertainty over Britain’s future in the EU is already a fact of life.

Meanwhile, those who are in favour of the UK staying in the EU are at long last starting to stir. Their silence to date has been one of the main frustrations of the public discussion so far. The Eurosceptics have had the field pretty much to themselves, unchallenged. What these EU supporters – from outside and inside the country – have to say is pretty ugly, it has to be said. They aren’t trying to sell the EU as a positive vision. They are stoking fears about what life would be like outside. Real Europhiles, like me, really dislike this negative stuff, a lot of which is intellectually unconvincing. But elections are won on the ugly stuff – just look at the 2011 referendum on a fairly minor tweak to Britian’s electoral system, which was portrayed as the end to life as we know it. The Eurosceptic arguments are being given much greater scrutiny, and many will wilt.

The big problem for Mr Cameron is how the “renegotiation” will work out. I use quotation marks because ever since Harold Wilson used it in the 1970s (in my formative political years) I have felt it to be an sham concept, used by armchair commentators. Either you enter into an honest negotiation about matters that need fixing, or you are going back on your promises; you should be honest about which it is. The difficulty is that our existing treaty terms are a carefully balanced whole, and if you change one bit it unbalances others. The favourite Eurosceptic idea of opting out of the social standards bits we don’t like, and then use this to give British businesses a competitive edge over their foreign rivals, has a rather obvious flaw as a negotiating stance. What’s in it for them? The country’s European partners would mainly rather have us in than out, and we do have a trade deficit with them, but this does not add up to a strong negotiating position. Mr Cameron might simply do what Mr Wilson did: get a few token concessions and try to big them up. That would be risky for Mr Cameron’s reputation, though he might still win.

But Mr Cameron has set quite a long time frame for his negotiation. In that time it is quite likely that the EU will want to alter its treaties to make the Eurozone more stable. Under Britain’s “referendum lock” legislation this could trigger the need for approval by referendum in the UK anyway. If Mr Cameron can tie these treaty changes into his “renegotiation”, and then use his in/out referendum to endorse it as a package, then he does have something to negotiate with – and can paint himself as doing the EU a favour. The transfer of powers between EU institutions and the UK might actually be two-way traffic. If he pulls that stunt off, his political legacy will be secure, in my book anyway.

Leveson: the messy truth about regulating the press

The big story in Britian’s media this week has been the publication of the Leveson Report into the press. This comes from Lord Justice Leveson’s extensive inquiries into abuses perpetrated by Britain’s newspapers. The newspapers, of course, have been anxious to get their answer in, starting days before the report was actually published. But bloggers have been diving in as well. I have neither read the report, nor all this commentary in detail. But stepping back, I find something rather striking. Mostly the arguments are made on grounds of high principle. If only life were that easy.

Critics focus on the report’s recommendation that a new regulatory regime for the press should have “statutory underpinning”. This is taken to mean state regulation, and even state licensing of news publications. And this in turn runs against the sacred principle of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So supporters of the report’s recommendations are attacking a free press. This argument is pushed by the usual suspects in the press itself. But not just them. There is Lib Dem blogger Stephen Tall, for example, supported by the Facebook site Vote Clegg Get Clegg.

Most Lib Dems, though, support their leader Nick Clegg’s backing of the report. For them the sacred liberal principle is the protection of the weak against the unaccountable power of the press. Pres self-regulation has been tried so many times and found wanting that something stronger is required, they say. “Do it for Milly Dowler,” they say referring to one of the most egregious episodes of press abuse. They think the promise by newspapers that this time it will different is just a cynical ploy, so that they drift back to their old ways when the dust settles. They have form after all.

I was planning to take sides in this debate – and in support of the report’s full recommendations. Most of the arguments against are pretty specious. I don’t think freedom of the press is being attacked in any meaningful way. The accountability of the press to its readers, who may always refuse to buy newspapers, doesn’t work either. Unfortunately the readers are part of the problem. And the idea that we shouldn’t attempt to regulate the press because the scheme ignores the internet is a classic red herring. Behind this lies my intense dislike of the baleful influence of many newspaper publishers on political debate, to say nothing of the cynical disregard they have members for the public.

The fact is that running a liberal society is a balancing act, much though we like to think of it as being the upholding of high principle. Freedom leads to abuse: people will always try to use it for the purposes of harming others. There have to be laws and regulations to limit the damage – but it is rarely clear exactly where the line should be drawn. But it is clear that we all have to put up with a certain amount of abuse if the regulatory framework is to do more good than harm.

This is painful. I find this especially so in the case of politics. The British press consistently puts about lies and half-truths in order to further their sponsors’ own political agendas – or simply because it encourages people to buy papers. This overwhelmingly favours political conservatives. But there really isn’t much that can be done about this. Regulation of broadcast media is quite successful – but the press is quite a different matter. Regulation, if we have it, must focus on the rights and privacy of ordinary members of the public – and not politics.

It follows that any regulatory solution has to be a messy compromise, whose effectiveness turns on tiresome details. Trying to derive your views by basing them on high principles doesn’t work. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, opposes the “statutory underpinning”. This is no doubt a political calculation, as the Conservative Party depends heavily on the press to do a lot of its dirty work – the sort of negative campaigning that would be done by paid advertising in the US. But one point he made did strike a chord. He said that any law to implement the recommendations would be highly complicated, and probably not worth the trouble.

He may be right. The power of the press is fading. Newspaper circulations are falling. Old fashioned press barons are slowly being replaced by faceless, calculating corporate types. People rely on newspapers less and less. They are being replaced by a combination of broadcast media and internet outlets. That brings its own problems. No doubt the press’s behaviour has helped to hasten its demise. What is good for short term sales can damage long term results, like sliced bread or lager.

That’s probably for the best. But please, liberals, don’t pretend that this debate is all about sacred principles.