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Should Ed turn his guns on UKIP?

Feb 26

Posted by James in Elections, Parties, Westminster | 6 Comments

farageflagPolitics is a strange game. It’s also definitely treated as a game by the participants, albeit a serious one, and the players’ moves regularly have hidden objectives and curious consequences. Right now one smart thing, in a cynical gamesmanship sense, that Labour could do at a UK level is to unleash their fire against UKIP.

As discussed here before, Bonnie Meguid has made a compelling argument about the impact of larger, established parties’ three main tactics when dealing with arriviste parties like the Greens, the hard right, and what she calls the “ethno-territorials” (nationalist or regionalist parties).

First, the big parties can choose to ignore the upstarts, which can help, she argues, if you want them to go away, because silence on “their” issue reduces the perceived salience of that issue in the public mind.

Second, the established parties can attempt to steal the newcomers’ political ideas, another move which can depress their support. This tactic was on grisly display when Nick Griffin went on Question Time and the representatives of the three largest Westminster parties queued up to spout disgraceful versions of “of course there’s a problem with immigration, but..”.

Third, broadsides can be unleashed. This what might be seen as counter-intuitive, but nothing boosts a new party like getting brickbats from the establishment, provided their response to it is relatively temperate.

Meguid’s key example here is from France, where the Socialists attacked Le Pen and simultaneously constructed situations to exaggerate the Front National’s victimhood. Their logic, which worked up to a point, was that the FN would take votes from both sides, sure, but they’d take disproportionately more from the established right, giving the Socialists an edge. Of course, the culmination of this folly was a Presidential runoff between Chirac and Le Pen in 2002, and the blame for this crisis was rarely laid at the correct door.

Over the last few years the nature of the hard right in British politics, or at least the right-of-the-Tories, has changed. Support for the BNP curved high enough to give them a mini electoral hey-day, starting in 2002, the year they picked up their first three councillors, through to 2009 when Griffin and Brons were elected to the European Parliament and 57 BNP councillors were returned.

From that point onwards, perhaps as a result of the fallout between those two MEPs (amusing YouTube here), it was downhill all the way, with just three BNP councillors remaining after the 2012 locals, plus Griffin in Europe – Brons having left the party that year.

Pulling the French Socialists’ trick with the BNP would have been hard for Labour to do, and besides, the BNP primarily took votes from white working-class ex-Labour voters.

But UKIP are a different matter altogether, despite the shared obsession with immigration and a range of other hard-right policy crossovers with the BNP. UKIP are largely seen as more respectable, not least because they definitely attract a different class of voter, and now they’re regularly polling in third place above the Lib Dems.

If Miliband were to focus a bit of fire on them, to use Labour’s current pro-European credentials as a base from which to bash Farage and his party, the rewards could be substantial. Cameron’s delayed referendum (and declaration that he wants a settlement with the EU that he can campaign in favour for) will never go far enough for UKIP, the Tory headbangers, or indeed most of the voters who swither between the two.

It’s win-win for Labour, strategically. Either the Tories move further right on the issue and cede the centre ground, or they don’t and UKIP keep chipping away at their right flank. It’s cynical, of course, and if conducted with enough vigour it would probably consolidate UKIP in third place across England. But it would be defensible, given it would look like a defence of internationalism and solidarity. The fact that Farage would be seen to sport an ever-broader Pooterish grin would hardly be laid at Miliband’s door.

And imagine a situation where UKIP get into any pre-2015 leaders’ debates. If the polls hold, a case could be made for it. Labour could even argue for that, high-risk though it would be in terms of future precedent, and in doing so they could hope to be seen to be on the side of democratic values rather than opportunism.

It’d still be unlikely to happen, not least because it’d be grossly unfair on those parties who already have MPs but who would still be excluded, but the media love a process argument, and the debate about the debates will certainly make quite a splash next time whatever happens.

If UKIP were to take even half the vote share they currently score in the national polls, a Labour victory would be almost guaranteed, and, ironically, Britain’s (or the rUK’s) place in Europe protected for another cycle.

Walk The Solidarity Talk

Feb 21

Posted by Natalie in Constitution, Democracy, Equality, Europe, Governance, Holyrood, Westminster | 5 Comments

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At Glasgow City Council Full Council today one of the issues debated- and finding a rare moment of relative harmony between bitter Labour and SNP factions – was that of the Bedroom Tax;  with the Labour Party and the SNP agreeing to an amendment asking Nicola Sturgeon to consider using Scottish Government powers to offset the worst effects of it.

All admirable sentiments, and worthwhile doing – after all it is the role of the Scottish Government to act in the best interests of the Scottish people – but can the Scottish Government always be expected to legislate to mitigate the worst effects of policy decisions taken at Westminster?

Evidently I am absolutely in favour of the Scottish Government intervening to protect the most vulnerable in Scottish society, and in fact I have some suggestions based on a huge amount of research I have been taking on the Bedroom Tax in my employed capacity. There are actions that the Scottish Government can take, and I am sure that all SNP MSPs and councillors will be pressing them to explore any and all suggested options.

In the first instance, Govan Law Centre has made suggestions about the reclassification of housing debt as a civil debt and treated as such in the same manner as any other civil debt; like council tax arrears, or utilities debt meaning that courts will not be forced to evict for non-payment as a first option. There are a number of problems with this suggestion; indeed as there are with many others, not least the fact that the most vulnerable in society will still be accumulating unmanageable debts, and that Housing Associations, and Councils as Social Landlords will be subject to huge gaps in funding and revenue stream. It is simply unacceptable to pass the problem on to Housing Associations and Councils without trying too to mitigate their funding gaps too.

That said, it is a mitigation which requires due consideration. Perhaps there are ways in which to make it workable with agreement between the Scottish Government, Councils and Housing Associations. It is only one of a few suggested options.

So whilst I fundamentally agree and urge the Scottish Government to do all it can, and further, I am not averse to utilising some existing but unused powers to do so, I have my concerns about the expectation that the Scottish Government is the line of last defence when the UK Government takes decisions which we deem unpopular, socially unjust or morally reprehensible.

That the Welfare Reform Act fits all of the above descriptions, and more, does not offset the fact that the Westminster Government is a democratically elected beast. We can quibble about the Tories going in to coalition with the Liberal Democrats not being the settled will of the United Kingdom voters until the cows come home, but, in my opinion, that is wholly disingenuous. Allow me the right to despise the Liberal Democrats the choice to enter a coalition which contravenes so many values which Liberal Democrats should hold dear whilst respecting their right to do so.

I support a reform of the First Past the Post system, and by dint, support a form of proportional representation. By their very definition, PR elections create the need for parties to negotiate coalitions.  This means compromise; and yes, if chosen, some parties will sell their souls to do so.  The Liberal Democrats did in the first Scottish Parliament where they abandoned their principles on free tuition fees – sound familiar? – To enter coalition with the Labour Party. However, many of those same voices clamouring for the same electoral change that I desire are prepared to criticise a coalition formed to govern because they dislike the hue of the parties who entered it. That, to me, is hypocrisy at best.  We either support coalition government as a compromise which is more inclusive of societal views, or we don’t. Perhaps I over simplify, but there it is.  This is a blog post, not a thesis.

The UK government has taken on the mantle of welfare reform which began under the previous Labour administration and is taking the decision to implement changes which, again in my opinion, undermine enshrined ECHR Article 8 on right to family life. Clearly by implementing the Bedroom Tax, the state is interfering with this right by preventing respite for carers, overnight access for parents with shared custody rights etc. But The United Kingdom electorate gave them the power to do so.

I have been to a number of the University of Glasgow Independence debates, and I obviously pay attention to social media and messaging which is coming from the “Better Together” camp and its partners in the Labour Party. A now constant refrain seems to be that asserting the right to independence is a betrayal of solidarity with fellow Brits in Salford, or Brixton, or Bradford who are also suffering from austerity measures. Indeed, as I sit here typing at the last of the University of Glasgow independence debates, I am listening to Willie Bain attempt to articulate the same point – very confusedly, as it happens.

It is beyond me that a constitutional settlement means that we cannot share solidarity with fellow human beings across the United Kingdom as we do those fellow world citizens across the globe. A point was made by a member of the audience last night that solidarity respects no borders. Choosing independence is asserting the right to self-determination; it is not an abandonment of humanity.

Another argument seems to be predicated on the basis that by choosing independence we consign England and Wales to eternal Conservative domination. This is as ridiculous as certain factions of the Yes campaign who believe that voting Yes means no more Tories.  It could be argued that a small c conservative party would have a small renaissance in an independent country, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, as the state, and the Left, needs to have checks and balance.

These shouldn’t be arguments which are made by either side. They are lazy and crass and entirely without empirical evidence. Blair’s landslide Labour Governments would have been elected regardless of the Scottish block voting. It England wants to vote Labour, it can and will. If England wants to vote Conservative, it can and will and we do not have the right to usurp their will. Staying in a union to subvert the voting will of the English people is entirely nonsensical and presumptuous and fundamentally undemocratic.

That the Labour party is simultaneously using the issue of solidarity with fellow Brits as a reason to vote no in the referendum whilst urging the Scottish Government to act in mitigation of the choices of the United Kingdom Government to offset a degree of the worst effects for the Scottish people only, smacks of double standards. That the powers retained by the United Kingdom include all legislative powers over Welfare should not be forgotten, and whilst the Calman Commission was an opportunity for the pro-Union parties to make suggestions about this, they failed to make any substantive points which would change the impact of Welfare Reform.  That they also failed to advocate a second question on the ballot paper with powers over welfare is again indicative of their inability to practice what they preach.

The “Better Together” Campaign has made no concrete suggestions which would entrust power of welfare to the Scottish Parliament, yet they want and expect the Scottish Government to mitigate any decisions made under that retained power when they disagree with them. Surely the UK under their premise, which retains the power, should make UK wide welfare decisions, or they shouldn’t. The only way they shouldn’t or couldn’t is if welfare is devolved. And whilst the pro-Union parties hid from any concrete proposals for a second question on the Independence Referendum ballot paper, there is only one option on the table whereby Scottish voters have the opportunity to help build a welfare system that they believe in and shares their values of fairness. And that isn’t the status quo.

So, yes, the Scottish Government should take any and all actions it can to help the Scottish people it serves, but we should remember, by choosing to remain in the UK, we choose to retain UK wide welfare reform, and long-term, it is not feasible, practical or affordable for a parliament which survives on a set, and shrinking, block grant to continue to play the role of mitigator. And consequently ,Scottish tax payers taking on the burden of reduced public expenditure on other vital public services to correct the folly of the coalition.

 

 

 

Lib Dem let-downs: too cheap to meter

Feb 19

Posted by James in Energy, Environment, Westminster | 7 Comments

atomictreeYou can set your watch by the Lib Dems. Every promise they make is worthless, and each one will be broken precisely at the moment at which it is tested (apart from on increased tax allowances, which are more regressive than might be thought). The latest is on nukes, predictably enough. In opposition they were against nuclear power altogether, but coalition changed that: the new line was yes to nukes, but without subsidies.

Even Cameron had been firmly set against subsidies: “We’ve taken the very clear view that there shouldn’t be subsidies, so if nuclear power stations can make their case in the market and be built, then they should be able to go ahead. That’s been our view for a long time. Our view has always been no subsidies, but if they can come forward as part of the energy mix then that’s fine.”

As the industry gradually retreated from the idea of new plants, with one eye on the chaos in Finland, the coalition clearly started to panic (can you hear Sir Humphrey warning about the lights going out?), and today we find out that, as predicted, the taxpayer will indeed be forced to pay for these white elephants.

The apparent aim is to keep the cost of nuclear power stable just below £100 per megawatt hour by concealing the fact that the cost is above that. It must seem quite cunning to divide the cost between energy consumers and taxpayers, who are, after all, largely the same people. Worse, that same piece confirms we’ll be locked into this absurd subsidy for up to 40 years. If the actual price of nuclear generation falls, as the enthusiasts think and the industry claims, this move would mean we’d just be handing over even more money to EDF. This isn’t a market. A true free market would never build nuclear plants: the entire economic justification of these new stations to shareholders will be based on our money.

To be fair, a true free market wouldn’t be building offshore wind just now either: it currently costs around £140 per megawatt hour. But then generating from renewables has another purpose: decarbonising our power system, and the costs of offshore wind are falling. The Crown Estate looked at the numbers, and by 2020, which ain’t far away, the costs of offshore will come below £100 per megawatt hour, and it doesn’t come with the massive decommissioning and waste disposal costs that a new nuclear fleet would bring (costs that would be borne by the taxpayer, natch).

The scale’s comparable too: offshore wind isn’t niche. That same paper notes that licences for 10GW-worth have already been granted, just in Scottish waters. That’s a ninth of the UK’s energy requirements (and about 100% of Scotland’s needs).

This decision, therefore, is pure ideology, not anything approaching rational either on economic or environmental grounds. Yet again, anyone who expects principled consistency or even pragmatic flexibility from the Lib Dems has just been disappointed. The only two things they’re consistent on are a love of Ministerial office at all costs and an ability to abandon principle the moment it comes under pressure.

Love without borders

Feb 6

Posted by James in Equality, Holyrood, Westminster | 10 Comments

YESPRIDEPleasing as it is to see last night’s vote in favour of equal marriage at Westminster, and to know that the Scottish Government’s parallel process will surely bring fruit, the SNP’s Westminster group’s decision not to vote still perplexes me. Kate’s got a fantastic post up about the implications of the Westminster proposals for Scots law, the roll-call of shame, and concerns about the SNP’s reasoning: I agree with all of that, and there’s no point replicating her arguments here.

There are other concerns, though, about the SNP abstention. The UK is, unless and until the referendum is won, a single nation-state. Until that point it’s extremely hard to identify what does not affect Scotland, and the question of whether England and Wales deliver marriage equality certainly does matter to Scots.

People live, work and love across the border largely without thinking about it. If two Coldstream residents want to marry in Berwick-upon-Tweed, should SNP MPs not speak up for their right to do so irrespective of gender? What if one partner is from Gretna and the other from Carlisle? If the vote had been narrowly lost last night, the effect of the SNP group’s decision would have been to tell that couple they could only tie the knot in Gretna, an idea which admittedly has some historic resonance.

So what if English MPs can’t vote on the equivalent Scottish proposals? It’s not the SNP’s fault that we have this halfway house which institutionalises the West Lothian Question. Equality isn’t a dull managerial England-and-Wales-only issue of the sort Scots MPs might well be justified in avoiding. It’s a question entirely of principle. As such, a supportive position from the SNP would have helped to offset the reputational downside for Scotland of hearing Labour’s west coast dinosaurs braying in their swamp of pseudo-religious bigotry.

Getting a vote on affairs in the rest of the UK is one of the few compensations for the Union. Until independence, if you have a vote, it should be used wherever there’s a point of serious principle at stake. Independence offers a trade-off I’ll be glad to take: losing the influence Scots MPs have at Westminster will be more than outweighed by shedding the influence Westminster has on Scotland.

SNP MPs voted against the Coalition’s hike in tuition fees: good. Scots students wishing to get an education in England and Wales would have been righteously angry had they not. But when the Coalition’s assault on the English and Welsh NHS came forward they sat on their hands. When those students get to university, or indeed any other Scot moves down south, do the SNP not wish them to have a decent NHS to rely upon? Is a publicly-run free universal healthcare system a point of principle or not?

Like it or not, SNP votes at Westminster matter. They may sometimes be decisive, but what’s more, when they’re not, they will be read as a statement of the Scottish Government’s intentions and position. Last night was a missed opportunity to be consistent and to support the idea that the principle of equality knows no borders, just as love does not.

Hollow lies the head that wears a weightless Crown

Jan 21

Posted by Aidan in Constitution, Democracy, Governance, Holyrood, Ideology, Westminster | 17 Comments

One of the long standing arguments against British Republicanism (and, by extension, Scottish Republicanism in a post-Independence Scotland on the current prospectus) is that the monarch has no actual power.

To quickly deal with a few other arguments:

  • Nobody actually comes to the UK to see the Queen, she isn’t publicly accessible at Buckingham Palace. We could use it for other things, like housing the homeless.
  • Yes, it will mean that we need to come to an accommodation about the current Crown estates and other assets. That’s ok. They didn’t earn them. Those assets were acquired illegitimately through violently undemocratic means. There’s a national debt somebody mentioned we have to deal with and surely it’s better to appropriate unearned wealth that should be held for the nation from the ultra-rich rather than punish the least well off and ruin the economy?
  • The head of state being head of an established national church  is clearly problematic in a multi-religious nation, never mind the rise of secularism, agnosticism and atheism .
  • Yes, the Queen is very old and does a lot of public engagements. So what?

Leaving aside those and other arguments against a constitutional monarchy, such as the inherent injustice and preservation of unearned privilege, the absence of real power has always been one of the central arguments on the pro-monarchy side. It is an argument which is now demonstrably false. A series of stories in the Guardian have exposed that, far from the legally inert and ceremonial role the Queen and her heirs and successors are said to enjoy since  the mid 70’s (between the Australian constitutional crisis and the rather murky goings on around Alec Douglas-Home she played a role in appointing the executive up until then), the monarchy has clearly continued to play some sort of active part in government legislation and policy up until… errr… now.

The “oh, but they don’t really do anything, it’s purely ceremonial” argument prioritises the admittedly useful political and legal fiction of the dignified part of government over the varied and often unclear, vague and nebulous alternatives presented. Admittedly most of the alternatives have drawbacks: an effective President either elected or selected by lot undermines the supposed legitimacy of the Prime Minister (those of an avowedly Nationalist bent can substitute First there and carry on regardless);  a Prime/First Minister accountable to no one save the legislature they control by definition may grow over mighty; a ceremonial President changes little in practice except the abolition of the hereditary principle although I’d argue that this would be worth the candle in and of itself.

The fact the monarchy does do things, and apparently does so with notable frequency and vigour, rather torpedoes that argument for inertia.

However, the current situation has by and large served us well. An elected President, on either the Franco-American or German-Italian models, would fundamentally change the way the country works. One selected by lot, while appealing to my Erisian sensibilities, doesn’t really change much. And it is actually quite useful to have a Crown which, in the idealistic conception advanced by constitutional monarchists, acts as a proxy for the best interests of the people.

Those who protect us from threats mundanely domestic and exotically foreign do so in the name of Her Majesty. The civil servants and elected members who write the laws and the police officers, tax inspectors, lawyers, judges and prison officers who enforce them serve the Crown. They do these things not in the name of the government of the day, although obviously they are accountable to them to a greater or lesser extent.

One of the things that being a programmer has taught me is that when you have a functioning system, and you don’t want to disrupt your existing users unnecessarily, small incremental improvements are better than rewriting from scratch. Given that the Royalist argument that the monarchy doesn’t actually play a role in the government is clearly untrue (and disregarding the counter argument that who cares, they theoretically could and that’s not ok) but removing them would mean unpicking some fairly useful conventions a simple solution occurs to me.

Keep the crown, dispense with the wearer.

If the monarchy doesn’t play a (fundamentally undemocratic) part in government that won’t affect things. If she does play an undemocratic part in government removing her is a clear win. She does, her heirs and successors will. Time to be rid.