My Political Review of the Year – And predictions

Conservatives:

2015 Summary: Started worried about forming another coalition, ended in dreamland with close to absolute power because just over one in three voters voted for them. Opposing all constitutional change unless it will increase this majority. Cutting funding to opposition while appointing as many croneys as SPADS as possible. Key players shaping up for leadership contest.

Leader Review: As polished as ever (literally). Attempting with limited success to forge an international reputation by cosying up to China and trying to work on cosmetic changes to EU. Legacy will be defined by EU referendum – either “blair-lite” who improved Tory PR to the point they were electable, or man who isolated UK in order to forge unholy alliance with repressive regimes instead.

Predictions for 2016: Massive fallout over Europe is inevitable which will harm party unity at least in short term – but lust for power will hold them together long term. Good marketing and weak opposition will mean their anti-green, anti-democratic, anti-enterprise policies will continue to be ignored, unless economy becomes sufficiently dear they can’t cover it up with clever accounting. We will probably have a fairly good idea by the end of the year who the next leader will be – my money is on Gideon.

Labour:

2015 Summary: Started the year with an uninspiring and unpopular leader who is seen by many as too left wing, and a party on the brink of crisis. Ended the year with an uninspiring, unpopular and unelectable leader who is seen by nearly everyone as too left wing, and a party in the middle of a crisis. And a disastrous election in between.

Leader: Came across as nice, well-meaning but stuck in the past during the campaign. Only change since election has been an unwillingness to reign in his nasty supporters which make you worry about his integrity. The fact that he has a beard, doesn’t dress well, is a republican, doesn’t support bombing foreign countries, and is against greedy big business doesn’t make him unelectable. Quite the opposite in some ways. But his past support for the IRA, his total support for Stop the War, his supporters’ total contempt for political opposition and his lack of economic credibility do.

Predictions for 2016: There is definitely a full-blown civil war on the horizon, Corbyn against most of the rest of his parliamentary party. If he wins, he will stay as leader, the next round of MP selections will deselect large numbers of moderate MPs (due to boundary changes), and scores of moderates will leave Labour for a combination of the Tories (a lot I suspect), the Lib Dems (probably a small number) or give up and leave politics all together (the majority). If he loses, he will leave and Labour will have a new leadership contest. Then who knows what will happen.

Sadiq Khan will narrowly win mayoral election.

SNP:

2015 Summary: Hard to imagine how it could have gone better following referendum defeat. Soaring in the polls, able to present itself as the voice of the whole of Scotland owing to the vagaries of the electoral system.

Leader: Appears to combine the political savvy of Alec Salmond, the PR smoothness of David Cameron/Tony Blair and the popularity of [Insert popular politician as I’m struggling to think of any]. It’s early days yet, and sooner or later the strains of government are bound to begin to burst this bubble.

Predictions for 2016: Solid performance but with a slightly reduced majority in Holyrood, and popularity will wane towards the end of the year as the inadequate Scottish NHS and inevitable cuts come to bite. EU referendum could present them with a golden opportunity for the independence they crave.

Liberal Democrats:

2015 Summary: A disaster. Not unexpected but nethertheless a disaster. Long long road to recovery. Increase in membership following election, some positive by-election results and the election of an outstanding campaigner as Leader give some hope, but this is not yet reflected in national polls.

Leader: Recent polling suggests that Tim Farron is the most popular party leader. Or to put it more accurately the least unpopular. Solid enough start, although the impression remains that he is better on a podium than on TV, which isn’t good for national coverage. Understandably annoyed at not being able to quiz PM at Question Time on the government’s flood defence cuts, but reflects difficulties he will face for at least 4 more years. Could do with finding, as Paddy Ashdown did with Bosnia, a minority issue to campaign for to help the party gain coverage. But, as with Paddy, this must be chosen out of sincerity and conviction not the desire to gain attention.

Predictions for 2016: Council results will improve as voters continue to return to the party’s excellent local members, but national popularity will continue to remain low. Will remain a marginal voice in the referendum debate. Slow rebuild not remotely achievable in a year.

UKIP:

2015 Summary: Very mixed. National polling very stable, continue to gain support from Labour in the North and to a lesser extent from Tories in the south but appear to have hit a ceiling. Internal squabbles amuse us opponents but won’t damage their poll ratings.

Leader: Continues to be the ‘larger than life’ character that is most associated with the party and which is one reason for its support. Pre-planned non-resignation suggests he is becoming accustomed to the culture of spin.

Predictions for 2016: More of the same. Farage will be here there and everywhere given extra coverage by all and sundry as the de facto leader of the OUT campaign. Will lose the argument as always but might just win the referendum, in spite of rather than because of him. Poll ratings to remain steady either way.

Greens:

2015 Summary: Will be pleased that Caroline Lucas was re-elected and that she continues to be an excellent advocate in the House of Commons. Consolodation in May rather than drastic improvement.

Leader: Incompetent election campaign will undermine Natalie Bennett and she continues to be outshone by Caroline Lucas. At least seems to be in control of the party. Needs more solid electoral results to prove progress.

Predictions for 2016: Support will grow slowly but no rapid progress. Party will need to try to join forces with other opposition parties to oppose government’s anti-green plans to have a big impact. But as always, that could lead to the big guns (i.e. Labour) taking the limelight.

It’s not all doom and gloom…

Just realised how wearied, cynical and depressed this sounds – from a Liberal of all people this isn’t our style. But it reflects the fact that opposition parties have a long slog on their hands to oppose this arrogant, right-wing government that is making the housing crisis worse, harming the environment, kowtowing  to unsavoury dictatorships and trying to permanently ingrain the economic hierachy that favours them. They will still be there at the end of 2016 – but with any luck (and the doom above not withstanding) there will be more organised and effective opposition so that the Cameron/Osborne spin does not go unrevealed.

Why the Liberal Democrats shouldn’t back bombing Syria

With the crushing of Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to whip his MPs against war in Syria it seems as though it is inevitable that the UK will become embroiled in a conflict against Daesh which has barely begun and which is unlikely to end any time soon. In a sense therefore, what the Liberal Democrats do won’t change anything, but it is vital to the party’s future that it makes the right call on this. And below is why I believe that in backing Cameron they are making the wrong choice.

The Prime Minister claims that if we do not bomb Syria we will be simply “outsourcing our security” to other countries (though apparently this is ok when it comes to everything else including our energy security). This is a false argument. The only questions for us as a nation are: will we make a difference, we have a plan that will achieve our aims and is there any danger of making this worse?

 

• The threat of terrorism WILL increase

Ken Livingstone’s comments on Question Time were controversial because he blamed the actions of Tony Blair in invading Iraq for the bombing of London. While this is an oversimplistic statement, there is little doubt that any UK interference in the Middle East will increase the motivation of terrorist groups to attack us. This is in part a hangover from our colonial past, which means many in the region do not trust our motives in doing so. It is inevitable that any bombing campaign would lead to civilian casualties, no matter how well targeted. This will only give more fuel to the fire of Daesh propaganda.

Let us be clear, the UK is under threat from terrorists now. This will be true whatever we do. It is impossible to know whether the increase in threat which bombing will precipitate will be mitigated by the disruption the bombing campaign. It might be, but in the absence of compelling evidence it surely makes sense to stay out until a clear strategy for destroying Daesh emerges.

And can we get away from the ridiculous view that any attempt (by Ken Livingstone or anyone else) to explain how UK foreign policy impacts on the terrorist threat, is tantamount to excusing the behaviour of terrorists and murderers. This is simplistic, insulting and innacurate.

 

• This action will not come close to destroying Daesh

In Iraq, we have been launching a bombing campaign similar to that proposed in Syria, in support of an organised national army. It has had some successes and some failures. It may have stopped the spread of Daesh further into Iraq. But it has not got even close to getting them out of the country. So any impact the small amount of UK bombing in Syria proposed is likely to be similarly marginal. And in Syria, there is no organised national army fighting Daesh. The situation is much more murky and fluid. There are no credible groundtroops to take back bombing.

Given all of this, it is clear that the proposed bombing will have minimal effect on the overall conflict. Until there is a clear plan that will enable Daesh to go, we should remain with as little involvement as possible. When there is however, we should be the first on board.

 

• Even if the action actually succeeds, it could still lead to disaster

In his statement, the Prime Minister allocated a billion pounds to reconstruction in Syria. We have no idea whether this is enough because he gave no indication of how he proposed using the money to ensure that Syria survives the peace. Who will run Syria? Will another group emerge? It is hard to imagine one emerging as bad as Daesh, but it would have been hard imagining the growth of Daesh not long ago. And if it does, we will be back where we started with a situation just as complicated and dangerous.

 

This is not an Iraq 2003 situation – we are fighting an enemy that is a much clearer threat than Saddam ever was. There is international support for action against Daesh. There is even a UN resolution that can be used to justify action far more credibly than was the case in 2003. Given the events in Paris, it is inevitable that reasonable people will want to support France in their fight and to stand with them. I will not personally hold it against anyone that supports action. It is also true that no matter what happens, it is unlikely that Tim Farron will get the blame for whatever happens. But he must stick to the evidence-based principles the Liberal Democrats adopt. And there is no evidence that suggests that the bombing campaign will do more good than harm. So he, and the Liberal Democrats, must vote against the motion tomorrow.

 

To strike or not to strike

So, Jeremy Hunt is doing at the Department of Health exactly what he managed at the Department of Culture – somehow avoid getting the sack (as of Friday 13th – here’s hoping). Having created the fiction of a “five-day” NHS in order to gain the glory of creating a “seven-day” NHS, the Tories are now doing what they do best – falling out with working people.

Now we since the 1970s have been profoundly anti-union in large sections of society. Hence the Iron Lady’s success and the inevitable response to any threat of strike action of “oh no the bloody working class again”. This applies to miners, tube drivers and teachers (who, while not necessarily working class, are obviously ALWAYS left wing whingers to the Tory mind). The problem is that these hard-working people are junior doctors who work extraordinary long hours for a reward which most people in the UK would bite their hand off for – but which given the hours of study and the huge cost of training is generally considered reasonable. So when working hours increase without any discernible compensation (despite the attempts to spin a 11% pay increase out of thin air), most people are surely likely to side with them.

In other words, people will start thinking. If the Tories have fallen out with miners, tube drivers, teachers, lawyers and now doctors, there is surely a possibility it isn’t always the workers’ fault. Maybe its the governments.

So the dilemma for the doctors, and indeed for those of us liberal enough to be on their side, is whether they should strike or not. The Shakespearean dilemma is a difficult one – it seems highly likely that with the clown faced Hunt on the warpath the doors of negotiation are closed. So how else can they get want they want.

The problem for them is threefold:

1) They provide what is generally seen as an indispensable, and is certainly a life-saving service. They therefore most certainly won’t want to strike.

2) They therefore risk losing public support from those in the public who see a strike as something akin to the raising of the red flag above Buck House.

3) They risk losing public support from people who are sympathetic and reasonable, but who remember the country being torn apart in the 1970s by overzealous unions.

So what should they do? And what should the Lib Dems and Labour do? They will want to back them to the hilt, but will also be wary of accusations of supporting the endangering of lives and militarism. It is rather a no win scenario for them. This was evidenced clearly by Chuka Umunna’s ambivalent answers on Question Time. They are guilty either of Marxism and endangering lives or of allowing the government to run roughshod over doctors’ right to work reasonable hours for a good reward and not to have their lives endangered by exhausted and overworked junior doctors.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats must fight the government on this. It is not the doctors who are choosing to escalate this, it is the egregious Hunt. At the risk of ripping off a great liberal of the past, they must fight them at the pickets, they must fight them in the House of Commons, they must fight them in the Lords and in the streets. They may not succeed but they must not surrender. Political parties cannot always make a difference in an unfair system, but they must at least try – or else what are they for?

Why the Conservative Party get away with it

Tax Credits

The claim by  John McDonnell in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-mcdonnell/tax-credits-john-mcdonnell_b_8336368.html), that David Cameron lied to the electorate concerning the cuts in tax credits is, you would think, a highly toxic one that the Tory party will immediately seek to rebuff or refute. Or just possibly, as it awaits the arrival of President Xi, the PR machine is fully taken up with presenting the Dear Leader as a friend of Britain.

Of course many of us in the Liberal world will not be surprised at any leader going back on his word – what is most frustrating is that, despite McDonnell’s hopeful suggestion, he and the Tories will suffer nothing like the same infamy allotted to Nick Clegg on his tuition fees fiasco.

Why is this? It could be because people vote Lib Dem out of principle, whereas they vote Conservative out of pragmatism, and pragmatism sometimes means promises must be broken. It could be because no-one really believed Cameron in the first place when he made the begrudging statement on Question Time anyway. Or if one believes in conspiracy theories about the right-wing press and the timid BBC with a licence fee to protect you could highlight that too.

But perhaps it is also because Gideon Osborne, in the cynical rebranding of the inadequate minimum wage as “compensation”, managed at least to forestall the initial reaction enough that many people initially missed the concealed u-turn. People are angry now, but they would have been a whole lot angrier without the Tory spin – reaction is always stronger when it is immediate, and backed up with roaring editorial comments.

Of course with hindsight, it’s obvious Cameron should have dodged the question and made no promises (from a Tory point of view) when he clearly wasn’t sure whether his Chancellor would amend tax credits or not. However one must remember the QT appearance came when the election was supposedly on a knife edge, and the man was afraid any hint that he would punish the low paid might have lost him a few key votes. So a Tory Prime Minister  deceives the electorate to get a majority, then covers his backside with some clever spin from his Chancellor? Not surprising perhaps – but to some voters it seems like betrayal: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06jhk93/question-time-15102015

So to sum, up the Conservative party, and the Prime Minister have deceived the electorate and will get away with it. Plus ca change!

Lord Ashcroft and [Insert pig-related pun]

Lord Ashcroft claimed in his book that:

1. David Cameron promised him a job in the cabinet as reward for his work for the Tory party (which consisted largely of giving it about £8 million), then didn’t and blamed the Lib Dems.
2. David Cameron knew about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status in 2009, a year before he later claimed he had.
3. David Cameron ***** *** **** **** * **** PIG’* *****

Which should we care about more? Which is most damaging to his credibility? I trust I have it in the right order?

Of course the third salacious (and almost certainly false) allegation along with some other stuff about drugs and the Chipping Norton set, means that Cameron’s lot can simply ‘not dignify the book with a response’. However ‘Call me Dave’ has yet to reply to the more concerning allegations about Lord Ashcroft, his tax status, how he makes appointments to Cabinet, and £8 million. Just think, if it wasn’t for that damn pig, we might be better able to demand a straight answer from our Prime Minister!

So to sum, up the Conservative party, and the Prime Minister have deceived the electorate and will get away with it. Plus ca change!

Does the Privy Council matter?

Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to skip a Privy Council meeting in order to avoid the arcane ritual of kissing the Queen’s hand (or to attend vitally important meetings which he couldn’t rearrange, depending on your level of cynicism) is one which will inevitably encourage the notion that Mr Corbyn is an unpatriotic pinko (or some other phrase associated with McCarthyist witch-hunting) unfit to run the country. Perhaps rather than simply lambast the man, people like Alan Duncan should actually engage in a proper discussion about the place and role of the Privy Council in the twenty-first century.

To Republicans, it is not just the symbolic supplication to Her Majesty that is problematic, it is the whole notion of a body which meets to (supposedly) discuss matters of state which the general public has no real understanding of. The Council evolved out of a private council of close confidantes of the monarch (who may or may not have had access to the monarch’s private toilet facilities) whose role was in essence to fulfil the functions of the modern cabinet in helping make decisions.

Now however we live in a democratic age, if you can all the present electoral system democratic, and decisions are made very differently. So why does the Council matter? It is because nothing of interest is discussed. ‘In practice, the largely ceremonial body made up of 600 senior figures, including politicians, meets very rarely and not to transact any serious business.’ (http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/08/jeremy-corbyn-rejects-formal-privy-council-induction-by-queen). The Privy Council therefore is little more than an exercise in wasting money on silly clothes – so why on earth should Corbyn need to go? 

However it is actually not a bad idea for a council to meet which is composed of both government and non-governmental figures, as well as other senior people in the country to discuss affairs of state in a more sane environment than the House of Commons. Opposition leaders surely have the right to access input from soldiers, sailors, judges and other knowledgeable people with expertise in public affairs, especially if it enables the opposition to receive information which it wouldn’t otherwise. Maybe if the Council took itself a bit more seriously, Jeremy Corbyn would be a lot more keen to keep his diary clear for it.

2 Liberal Principles and why they matter

1) Poverty is not a choice

How many times have we heard Cameron, Duncan Smith and Osborne say that it is wrong that those who “choose” not to work should be propped up by the state? The statement implies that poverty and unemployment are a choice – an idea exploded in the late Victorian era by organisations such as the Rowntree Foundation among others (whose work in part led to the Liberal reforms in the 1900s). But if this IS the case, why pay jobseeker’s allowance at all? Surely if people don’t have jobs due to their own indolence, this is the logical way to eradicate poverty.

I apologise for the lapse into reductio ad absurdum, but as soon as one accepts the notion that people are unemployed or underemployed out of choice, one is on very dangerous ground. This is why the cuts to benefits must be fought at all costs. The way to a lower welfare bill is to create jobs, rather than the way to create jobs being to cut welfare.

Poverty does not just come from unemployment it comes from the acute housing crisis. It is not the fault of private individuals that every government since Thatcher has not built enough council houses. Cameron and co must stop stigmatising poverty and sort the problem out.

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2)  Policy must be based on hard facts, not hard language

Is it racist to point out the damage that immigration causes the UK? Who knows, but it’s certainly wrong. Politicians from UKIP, Tories and even some from Labour, have spoken about the harmful effects of immigration on housing, welfare and society. Not one that I have found has found any convincing statistics to back up this assertion. Theresa May’s egregious and opportunistic use of a report stating that the effect of migration on the economy was “negligible” in a speech so riddled with misleading information even the Telegraph noticed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11913927/Theresa-Mays-immigration-speech-is-dangerous-and-factually-wrong.html

Ms May even made an assertion that directly contradicted a report from her own department that said that ‘There is relatively little evidence that migration has caused statistically significant displacement of UK natives from the labour market in periods when the economy is strong’. But lets face it, the Tory party doesn’t want to hear that from a Home Secretary does it?

It’s possible that May’s blunders are so large that she won’t quite get away with it in public opinion and the popular press. But her attitude reveals a worrying trend in British politics – to allow political expediency to override the truth. This is made worse by the fact that the expediency in question is to placate those who will use immigrants as a scapegoat for society’s and government’s failure to create an economy of benefit to all. For example, many assert that the housing crisis has been caused by immigration – rather than by the consistent failure of government to build enough houses. This is dangerous not just because it obscures the real solution, but because it encourages the culture of blame.