Against Suella Braverman's Ideas

 

Suella Braverman recently gave two speeches, one in Washington and one at the Conservative Party conference.

In these speeches and elsewhere she put forward several ideas I disagree with.

There is no such thing as a simple homogenous British identity. What constitutes ‘Britishness’ or ‘British values’ are subjects of permanent dispute, and are evolving, not fixed. There is a British national character, as every nation has a character, but it is complex, multifaceted and difficult to define: perhaps a national character is best described as a cluster of competing and complementary ideas, some more prominent than others, like a word cloud. Whatever Britishness may be, the Home Secretary does not get to define it and insist that the rest of us comply with that definition. That is overreach, & that is the power she is trying to assume. She unfortunately has the power while in office as Home Secretary to oversee who is and is not British when it comes to people applying for citizenship, but she emphatically does not have the power to decide who is and is not British over we who are already citizens.

Suella Braverman may disapprove of my way of life or my opinions. As long as I am not breaking the law, these matters are none of her business, and the same applies to all other British citizens in the UK, of every religion and ethnicity. A key British value which Suella Braverman is transgressing is our saying “Live and let live”.

I am a proud Briton, and a patriot. I dispute the right of Suella Braverman to decide who is or is not properly British – the absurdity is evident as soon as you write it down – and who is or is not patriotic. It contradicts our most basic British traditions of freedom to claim that the government can decide what Britishness is, and enforce that decision on the populace. The National Conservatives and others on the Right are trying to co-opt the terms ‘British’, ‘Britishness’, ‘British values’, ‘patriotism’, and co-opt the ideas behind the terms. We should not let them. They are trying to appropriate these very important ideas, which are held in common by all British people, to increase their own political power. We should dispute and fight this. We should not abandon those terms to them.

It is only a brittle and incomplete sort of patriot who cannot stand to hear anything bad about their country. If I research, think and write about the bad things the rulers and people of this country have done in the past – like, to take one example, the centuries of our misrule in Ireland – this does not mean that I ‘hate Britain’. It means that I am sufficiently adult to understand that a nation or group of nations with a long history will have done in that time both good and bad things. This is a blindingly obvious point, and a true patriot understands and embraces it. On the contrary, the National Conservatives seem to hate Britain because they are constantly promulgating a highly negative, distorted caricature of it.

Suella Braverman and others on the Right refer negatively over and over again to people living parallel lives in our society. It is a favourite theme. But all sorts of groups lead parallel lives in our society, perhaps it is an inherent feature of any society. The very rich lead parallel lives to the rest of us, but Suella Braverman is not proposing to confiscate their wealth to end this. The very poor lead parallel lives, but she is not proposing to increase their income. The homeless lead parallel lives, but she is not proposing to house them. It is only the alleged parallel lives of some immigrants which she is against, making sweeping assertions about them and offering little to no evidence. The logic that whole communities are a threat to the rest of us and must be monitored, integrated, controlled and re-educated leads to what the Chinese government is doing to the Uighurs.

In practical terms, what is ‘integration’ ? How much integration is enough ? Who is integrated in the first place i.e. what is it exactly that the people who it is claimed need to integrate need to integrate with ? Do different people or groups need to integrate more, or less ? Who decides all these things? ‘Integration’ and ‘integrate’ are words Suella Braverman is throwing about as if they are clear and clearly understood. They are not.

We should not cede the right to define Britishness to a tiny, paranoid, power mad fringe of the Right, which nevertheless has a considerable foothold in our current governing Party and in our national media. They are very noisy and claim on the basis of no evidence to speak for the majority of us. This is false. We must resist.

To the Bulk of Tory MPs Regarding Boris Johnson

 

Boris Johnson giving his Statement on the Sue Gray report in the HoC, 25.5.22

On Wednesday 25th May 2022, the Sue Gray report was finally published. Boris Johnson's defence in the House of Commons that afternoon amounted to -

When I said repeatedly to the House at the despatch box that there were no parties and no covid rules were broken, I did not mislead the House because the parties it has now been proved beyond dispute I attended were not parties during the time I attended them, but only became parties - each and every one - after I had left.

This is preposterous, at once labyrinthine and flimsy. That Johnson has misled the House repeatedly is a fact for anyone who wants to see it. This is attested to by the brave Tory MPs who have publicly called for the Prime Minister to resign and/or submitted letters of no confidence to Sir Graham Brady. At the time of writing I think there are 23 of them, including Tobias Ellwood, David Davis, Sir Roger Gale, Nick Gibb, Steve Baker, John Baron, Sir Bob Neill - all highly experienced parliamentarians. These 23 are courageous souls who can see that lying to the House is an absolute red line, and that the House must enforce its rules to stop our democracy being debased. In our system - whether it is a good or a bad thing - it is not the job of the Met Police to remove the Prime Minister, it is not the job of a civil servant such as Sue Gray, it is the responsibility of Tory MPs and the bulk of them are avoiding their duty in this matter.

This bulk of Tory MPs are postponing their point of final judgement again and again. Before, it was after the Council elections, then after the Sue Gray report is published: now, it is after the upcoming by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton on 23rd of June, after the Committee of Privileges reports . . . There is probably a psychological term for what they are doing, but I don't know it: however, what they are doing is because they don't want to take the action that the fact requires, they are refusing to admit the fact i.e. that Johnson misled the House, and therefore has to resign, and if he won't resign he has to be voted out, and they have to do the voting. All other considerations, such as the claim that there is no obvious alternative, are irrelevant and are rationalisations for inaction.

In his review of Hallam's Constitutional History, Macaulay wrote the following about Henry VIII:

"A King, whose character may be best described by saying that he was despotism itself personified ..."

I often think of that quote in relation to Boris Johnson, except for 'despotism' I substitute 'effrontery'.

To illustrate that, here is Johnson's press conference in full from the 25th May, if you can stand it:

Labour: Jeremy Corbyn versus Owen Smith

Jeremy Corbyn

Owen Smith

Is Owen Smith the person to save the Labour Party ? He might be: he could give Labour what it needs above all - time in which to start sorting itself out, to recover.

On 28th June, Labour MPs voted 172-40 that they had no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn as leader: the fact that he remained and remains as leader despite this is unprecedented and morally incomprehensible. I say morally to compare the situation to that of the Brexit vote. Neither the UK Government nor the House of Commons nor Parliament as a whole are bound by the result of the EU referendum legally or technically. The referendum is purely advisory. The House of Commons is sovereign, it can do what it likes. (A curious aspect of the referendum is that the electorate insisted on giving back full power to the House of Commons, power the House didn't want since it has a majority for Remain at the moment.) In fact though the referendum result is absolutely binding in a moral and political sense.

Similarly, a no confidence motion of that size ought to have caused Jeremy Corbyn to resign by all usual expectation in party politics as it has been practiced in the UK hitherto. As an example, consider Mrs Thatcher's resignation in 1990. Mrs Thatcher it need hardly be said was a figure of vastly more political weight and significance than Jeremy Corbyn. When she was challenged for the leadership by Michael Heseltine, she won the first ballot but not by enough to win outright and prevent a second ballot. The voting rules were complicated. There were 372 Tory MPs. She had to secure a 15% lead over her challenger in the first ballot to prevent a second ballot. The results were 204 to her versus 152 for Heseltine with 16 abstentions. In percentages this was 54.8% for her versus 40.9% for Heseltine: thus she was just short of winning outright. Her first response was to fight on. However, senior colleagues persuaded her she couldn't win the next round and so she resigned. She became very bitter about this as time went on: she famously said regarding that advice from her subordinates "It was treachery - with a smile on its face." A more disinterested observer might say that, in the cycle of politics, she was pulled down as she had pulled Ted Heath down in 1975. The point here is that Mrs Thatcher resigned after she had actually won the first vote, but not by enough to win entirely. Her parliamentary colleagues regarded that first round as in effect a vote of confidence. The contrast with Jeremy Corbyn's response to losing the confidence of more than 80% of his MPs is astounding.

The reply of Corbyn and the group around him to the no-confidence vote is that he has an overwhelming mandate from the leadership election in 2015, and this is true. He won among all categories of voters as you can see here in the results on the Labour Party's website: http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/results-of-the-labour-leadership-and-deputy-leadership-election
The night before the no-confidence vote, 27th June, as the Parliamentary Labour Party were meeting to decide whether to have the vote, Momentum held a rally outside the Houses of Parliament. John McDonnell addressed the rally and said the following:

"The protests will be peaceful, but the reason the protests are taking place is because we will not allow the democracy of our movement to be subverted by a handful of MPs who refuse to accept Jeremy's mandate."°

Granted this was said the night before the actual vote, but 80% is hardly a handful, and he must think the principle still applies since he and the Corbyn group continue to fight to retain the leadership.

How does Corbyn manage to continue in the face of such hostility and opprobrium from his colleagues ? Partly, he is used to being beleaguered, his entire experience of politics has been in that position: the more your opponents attack you, the more evidence it is of your own righteousness. Partly, he has achieved almost magically and certainly unexpectedly a position in the Labour Party that his group have been dreaming of since at least when he was involved in Tony Benn's campaign for deputy leader of the Labour Party in 1981. Newsnight unearthed some great footage from that time:

Thanks to Ed Miliband's new rules for the Labour leadership election - of which more later - and nominations from colleagues who neither agreed with him or thought he stood a chance "so that the Left will be represented in the leadership debate", Corbyn leapfrogged even Benn's ambitious goal and became leader. This outcome would have seemed extremely unlikely at the start of the contest. Having got the leadership, Corbyn and his group will go to almost any length not to lose it. There is also the consolation of bathing in his supporters' adoration at rallies across the country during this leadership campaign.

I think the anti-Corbyn Labour MPs are under few illusions as to Owen Smith's wonderfulness. They have to use the means to hand. They face the same set of choices as Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon in January 49 BCE. The context of this decisive move was a crisis in a sustained dispute Caesar was having with his enemies in the Senate. As long as he retained his command in Gaul, he was immune from prosecution: being Consul also had this status. Therefore Caesar wanted to become Consul without any interval from laying down his command: conversely his enemies wanted just such an interval so that they could attack him through the courts: they wanted to prosecute him for what they regarded as illegalities committed while he was Consul ten years earlier. In late 50, Caesar's enemies in the Senate finally got that body to insist that he lay down his command while his great rival and former partner Pompey retained his: Pompey was now allied with the group in the Senate who were determined to preserve the Republic and regarded Caesar and his ambition as fundamentally inimical to it. Caesar now had two choices with three possible outcomes. His first choice was to do nothing, to acquiesce, to obey the Senate: then he would inevitably be destroyed. His second choice was to fight, that is to invade Rome illegally. If he lost the civil war which would definitely follow, again he would be destroyed. But he also might win that war, in which case he won all. From his own point of view, his eventual choice was obvious, and he took it: he invaded. The Rubicon was the border between Caesar's province of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy as the Romans understood it. By crossing it with troops Caesar was committing an irreversible act of insubordination and defiance against the Roman state. Given Caesar's character - which they knew far better than we do - his enemies must have known he would fight, and therefore they must have either wanted a war which presumably they expected to win, led by Pompey, or at least been prepared to accept one.

Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE)

Gnaeus Pompeius (106-48 BCE)

The anti-Corbyn MPs are in a similar position to Caesar in January 49. They can do nothing, acquiesce, leave Corbyn in place, in which case they will probably go down to a disastrous defeat in the next General Election whenever it is and many of them will lost their seats. There is the possibility also that before or after that General Election many MPs could face deselection by hostile constituency Labour parties (CLPs) dominated by Corbyn supporters. (Some Labour MPs also face reselection when their constituencies merge or disappear when the current boundary review for parliamentary constituencies reports its final proposals in 2018. Fifty seats in the House of Commons are due to be abolished, lowering the total from 650 to 600.) If the anti-Corbyn Labour MPs challenge him and lose, all of these consequences still obtain. But in challenging him, the possibility exists - however remote - of removing him and thus perhaps making the outcome of a General Election less bad, and reducing the threat from Corbyn supporters in their CLPs. The boundary changes will take place regardless. As I said above, I don't think many of the MPs think Owen Smith is the answer to all their problems. But the key point for them about the election of Smith is it would buy time in which who knows what might happen. They are fighting to create the space for the Micawber option, to see what turns up, and in their difficult situation this is an entirely reasonable approach, indeed the only one. It's not capitalism in this case but the Labour Party that really might collapse from its internal contradictions.

I think the memory of sticking with Ed Miliband in spite of their misgivings and then the defeat in 2015 has also hardened many Labour MPs' attitude now. Similarly, the threat as it seemed at the time they made their move of Theresa May calling an early General Election. That threat seems to have receded at the time of writing, but we don't really know when it will take place, it could still be soon. Finally, many of the MPs as committed Remainers were fed up at what they regarded as Corbyn's lacklustre and half-hearted performance during the EU Referendum campaign.

Speaking of Ed Miliband, we can see clearly now how utterly disastrous his leadership was. It culminated as we have already seen in the election defeat of 2015. He also instituted the leadership election system under which Corbyn got elected and is almost impossible to remove. The intent of this system's promoters was that if you widen the franchise, you would inevitably get more centrist victors. You can see this argument in full in this piece from March 2014 by John Rentoul, one of the few people who really is a Blairite: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ed-miliband-s-labour-party-reforms-are-good-news-for-all-9162681.html *. Reading it now in the light of events is a striking witness of just how wrong someone can be.

To some of Corbyn's supporters - though they wouldn't put it like this - it is as if his very uselessness at modern politics is the clearest guarantee of his authenticity: he is not 'spun'. And isn't Corbyn the most unlikely focus of a personality cult ? Not even his most crazed worshipper could honestly call his colourless and Pooterish personality charismatic. Here he is on 12 July welcoming his automatic inclusion on the ballot paper for the leadership election:

Jeremy Corbyn resembles Tony Blair in this respect: he doesn't care what short or long-term damage he does to the Labour Party as long as he and his faction come out on top.




°From Steve Richards' 'The Corbyn Story' on Radio4, episode 3.
*I picked up this article from Owen Jones on Twitter.

An Encounter with Denis Healey

Denis Healey  30.8.1917 - 3.10.2015

Tributes are quite rightly being paid today to Denis Healey, who has died at the age of 98. Everyone agrees he was a Giant of post-war UK politics, which objectively he was. He was famous among other things for his caustic & ready wit; for instance when he described an attack on him by Geoffrey Howe in 1978 as "like being savaged by a dead sheep". You can hear that here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/historic_moments/newsid_8185000/8185778.stm

As my own small tribute, I want to record an encounter I had with him when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer - that's the finance minister in the UK - & I was a 9-year-old schoolboy.

It was in 1979 during the General Election campaign, so it must have been in April, & in York, where I live, then & now. The crucial detail to bear in mind here is that I went to a prep school at the time, & we had a ludicrous uniform - it was fantasy Edwardian - which consisted of grey shorts, grey socks with red stripes at the top, a red cap and a bright red blazer. Denis Healey was campaigning at the factory gate at Rowntrees Chocolate factory. My family lived five minutes round the corner at the time - what is now a cycle lane was then a railway line on which cocoa beans were delivered to the factory: I used to hear the trains rocking & grinding in the early mornings, it was an oddly comforting sound - & I suppose I & my friend Robin must have been walking to my house, seen the crowd & gone to see what it was all about. Denis Healey was addressing the crowd, & for some reason - arrogance probably - I started heckling him. When I was done, he just turned around & said -

"Well, at least your jacket's the right colour"

at which the crowd collapsed in laughter, & I was absolutely mortified, crushed. Robin & I must have slunk away, because there was no recovering from that. 

I remember this encounter vividly & with affection for Mr Healey: I remember it  as a brief, real interaction with a great man, & the sharpness, readiness & effectiveness of his wit, excercised on a cocky little oick as I was then who had no understanding yet at all of who Denis Healey really was. May he rest in peace.

Marcus on Being Straightforward

The party conference season has just ended in the UK, & the race for the Presidency is in full swing in the US. In this context, when we have seen & heard so many protestations by leaders & their would-be replacements, you may well imagine how forcibly I was struck by the following passage by Marcus Aurelius [Meditations , Bk.11.]:

Barack Obama

Mitt Romney

Joe Biden & Paul Ryan in debate.

David Cameron

Ed Miliband

Nick Clegg

"15. How hollow & insincere it sounds when someone says, 'I am determined to be perfectly straightforward with you.' Why, man, what is all this ? The thing needs no prologue; it will declare itself. It should be written on your forehead, it should echo in the tones of your voice, it should shine out in a moment from your eyes, just as a single glance from the beloved tells all to the lover. Sincerity & goodness ought to have their own unmistakable odour, so that one who encounters this becomes straightway aware of it despite himself. A candour affected is a dagger concealed. The feigned friendship of the wolf is the most contemptible of all, & to be shunned beyond everything. A man who is truly good & sincere & well-meaning will show it by his looks, & no one can fail to see it."

Nick Clegg & 'The Birthday Party'

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter is, in my opinion at least, a symbolic drama. The place & time it is situated in are apparently concrete - its setting is a parody of the kitchen sink dramas which were so fashionable when it was written - but still seem remarkably contemporary as a description of English life. The exchange between Meg & Petey at the opening of Act 1 has been had innumerable times I would suggest in real English life in the 50 years or so since it was written, though in the less crafted form actual conversation takes. Although what people do during the play, what happens in front of our eyes, is clear, the characters' motives & reasons for why they are doing what they are doing are left deliberately obscure. One important effect of this is that what happens applies & alludes to a much larger range of potential situations than if it was more specific. This is what I mean by saying it is a symbolic drama.


One situation The Birthday Party fits surprisingly well is Nick Clegg's recent difficulties over House of Lords reform. Nick Clegg works beautifully as Stanley Webber. I see Steve Richards & Andrew Rawnsley as Goldberg & McCann respectively, or David Cameron & George Osborne.


Consider the following exchange between Goldberg & Stanley at the start of the interrogation scene in Act 2:



GOLDBERG. Clegg, what were you doing yesterday ?

NICK. Yesterday ?

GOLDBERG. And the day before. What did you do the day before that ?

NICK. What do you mean ?

GOLDBERG. Why are you wasting everybody's time, Clegg ? Why are you getting in everybody's way ?

NICK. Me ? What are you -

GOLDBERG. I'm telling you, Clegg. You're a washout. Why are you getting on everybody's wick ?



That last question is surely the operative one for the Tories in relation to (not 'in respect of' !) Nick Clegg at the moment, & perhaps for the whole of the electorate as well, or large parts of it.


Consider also Stanley's long speech to Meg in Act 1 about the concert he once played. A few alterations, & it fits Nick Clegg to a T:



NICK. Politics ? I've done politics all over the world. All over the country. (Pause.) I once formed a Coalition.

MEG: A Coalition ?

NICK (reflectively). Yes. It was a good one, too. They were all there that night. Every single one of them. It was a great success. Yes. A Coalition. At Westminster.

MEG. What did you wear ?

NICK (to himself ). I had unique negotiating powers. Absolutely unique. They came up to me. They came up to me & said they were grateful. Champagne we had that night, the lot. (Pause.) Yes. Westminster. Then after that, you know what they did ? They carved me up. Carved me up. It was all arranged, it was all worked out. Lords reform. I introduced proposals for Lords reform. Good ones too. But the Tories voted them down. A fast one. They pulled a fast one. I'd like to know who was responsible for that. (Bitterly.) All right, Jack, I can take a tip. They want me to crawl down on my bended knees. Well I can take a tip ... any day of the week.

Why are UK Government Communications such a shambles ?

Who is in charge of UK Government communications at the moment ? Either nobody is, or whoever is in charge is entirely incompetent. The Government's communications are a shambles; their policy announcements seem completely random & uncoordinated; & the Government itself is creating problems for itself over and over again which are foreseeable & avoidable. An instance of the last was Francis Maude's advice to "keep a jerry can of petrol in the garage" in case the tanker drivers go on strike: in fact it is illegal to store more than 30 litres of fuel in such a way, & that has to be stored in a very specific manner, because of the obvious fire risk. Why didn't he check his facts before speaking ? Or someone check them for him. I verified this information in 5 seconds with one visit to the HSE website. I'm not running the country.

It is a mark of the weakness of the Opposition at this time that they are not exploiting the muddle that the Government is in more effectively. In terms of communications, both the Conservatives & Labour are hopeless right now.

I don't want us to return to the days of Alastair Campbell: but on the other hand all of this makes me realise what it was Alastair Campbell actually DID, before he became too visible & had to go. It also makes me reflect how formidable, for good or ill, the team of Blair/Brown/Campbell/Mandelson was, by contrast with the present shower in both main parties.

Why Ed Miliband Should Resign Immediately

I write this as a long-term Labour supporter & voter, & as a friend of the Party who wants to see it succeed.

I would say to people who support Ed Miliband, don't confuse loyalty to the Party with loyalty to its current leader, they are not the same thing. Ed M was elected leader on 25th September, 2010, & this is quite long enough to get the measure of him in that role. He is useless. Many Labour supporters I speak to think he is rubbish. He is unable to galvanise his own core support: never mind reach out to trade unionists, disillusioned LibDems, the Occupy people, laid-off public sector workers, & other opponents of the Coalition who don't know where to go [thanks to @fauxpaschick for this thought.] There's a vast reservoir of anti-Coalition sentiment in the UK right now; Ed M is unable to tap it.

I grant you that the state of the Labour Party is not entirely Ed M's fault. The Party is still in shock, paralyzed after Tony Blair took it to places it never thought it would go, especially involvement in the invasion of Iraq. Too close a similarity to Tony Blair is a reason for suspicion of David Miliband within the Party. Another source of its paralysis is the trauma of the long economic boom of the Noughties turning to shit in their hands.

The Labour Party still doesn't know what it is or what it wants to do post-Blair & Brown, & Ed M & his team have so far been unable to help it with either of these questions.

At the moment, the Labour Party is treading the road of failure, led by pygmies. It remains to be seen whether it can pull itself together & get on a better road.

It doesn't matter whether in private life Ed M is a nice guy - a claim that was often advanced for Gordon Brown. It doesn't matter if his heart is in the right place - which, judging by his Conference speech during which he gave benefit claimants a thorough kicking, I doubt [for more on this, see my post of 1st October, 2011]. What matters is - is he an effective politician ? & the answer to that is - no. Ed M is a professional politician to his fingertips, but he is not an effective one.

In a democratic system, it doesn't matter how wonderful your ideas or personality are if you can't win a majority. Only if you get elected into power will you have a chance to implement your policies & maybe make a bit of difference to people's lives.

Ed M will never lead the Labour Party to getting a majority at a General Election. You may disagree with me about this. Time will tell which of us is right.

We should learn from the ruthlessness of the Tories with regard to their leaders & ditch Ed before it is too late & the next Election is lost.


Addendum: I had a text conversation with my friend Stu about this post. I said to him: "Labour I think are sleepwalking to defeat, & letting the Tories run riot in the meantime." To which Stu responded: "I think they can't really be bothered to take on running the country again. It's the only reason I can think of, why they're so lacklustre about it."

I realise that the system for deposing a current Labour leader & electing a new one is complex & difficult. But none of that was a problem when they were crowning Gordon Brown. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Ed Miliband Gives Benefit Claimants a Thorough Kicking

Last Tuesday (27th Sept 2011) Ed Miliband delivered his speech as Leader to the Labour Party Conference. You can read the full text here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15081234

I have excerpted 4 passages which are the context of what I am going to say.

Ed on Business:

1. You've been told all growth is the same, all ways of doing business are the same. But it's not. You've been told that the choice in politics is whether parties are pro-business or anti-business. But all parties must be pro-business today. If it ever was, that's not the real choice any more. Let me tell you what the 21st century choice is:

Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers?

The producers or the predators?

Producers train, invest, invent, sell. Things Britain does brilliantly. Predators are just interested in the fast buck, taking what they can out of the business. This isn't about one industry that's good and another that isn't. Or one firm always destined to be a predator and another to be a producer. It's about different ways of doing business, ways that the rules of our economy can favour or discourage.

Ed on Benefit Claimants:

2. The something for nothing of celebrity culture. The take what you can of the gangs. And in parts of some of our communities, a life on benefits. You know what your values are. But they are not the values being rewarded in our benefits system. We must never excuse people who cheat the welfare system. The reason I talk about this is not because I don't believe in a welfare state but because I do. We can never protect and renew it if people believe it's just not fair. If it's too easy not to work. And there are people taking something for nothing. And if at the same time people who have paid into the system all their lives find the safety net full of holes. No wonder people are angry.

3. So we need a new bargain at the top of society, and in our benefits system too. So it rewards the right people with the right values. But it isn't delivering that. And we've got to fix it. If you think putting it right means just stripping away welfare then you are better off with Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron. But at the same time we have to face the truth. Even after reforms of recent years, we still have a system where reward for work is not high enough. Where benefits are too easy to come by for those who don't deserve them and too low for those who do. So if what you want is a welfare system that works for working people then I'm prepared to take the tough decisions to make that a reality.

4. I believe in a benefits system with values. And I believe in the value of work.

Both people in business & Benefit Claimants felt demeaned & caricatured by Ed Miliband in his speech. Ed's message on both of these sections of our society was reinforced by interviews given by Sadiq Khan (Shadow Justice Secretary, who ran Ed's campaign for the leadership) & Andy Burnham (Shadow Education Secretary) subsequent to the speech. The idea they are touting is of replacing what they call the something for nothing culture with a something for something culture.

The difference between people in business & Benefit Claimants is in their ability to respond to these attacks. Successful businessmen & leaders of business organisations were all over the News rebutting Ed's swipe at them; they are perfectly well able to defend themselves.

Not so Benefit Claimants. None of them were asked for their view on Ed's claims that it's too easy not to work, how much reality that depiction contains. As a description of the Benefits System, Ed's is about 10 years out of date. Ed either knows this, in which case he is consciously lying, or he doesn't, & therefore doesn't know what he's on about. Either is bad, the first possibly worse.

This is what makes Ed's attack on Benefit Claimants all the more disgusting. He is kicking a group who can't kick back, & who don't form a large enough bloc of voters for it to matter what they think. Ed is playing to the prejudices of the crucial swing-voters whose votes he seeks. It's cost-free for him, but not for the actual Benefit Claimants he is merrily joining in stigmatising.

If pressed, Ed would say that he only means some Benefit Claimants.

Imagine if he got up & said, "Some Black people are alright, but as for those dirty Niggers ..."

(It's worth comparing what Ed M had to say about Welfare reform with what Iain Duncan Smith said subsequently at the Tory Conference: http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/10/Iain_Duncan_Smith_Our_contract_with_the_country_for_21st_Century_Welfare.aspx

As far as I'm concerned, they are interchangeable. IDS just says it at greater length.)

ADDENDUM: I predict that Ed Miliband will not make it as Leader of the Labour Party to the 2015 election. He will be unseated because his personal ratings & those of the Party in the opinion polls will remain too low. Ed Balls will also not be Shadow Chancellor by 2015.

Steve Richards Bang On the Money

This is transcribed from television, specifically The Daily Politics Conference Special, 27.9.11. I wanted to preserve it because Steve Richards makes a point which is absolutely spot on.

The context: Andrew Neil, Danny Finkelstein & Steve Richards are discussing the Labour Party Conference so far, just before Ed M was going to give his Leader's speech; the pre-match build up. At the end of their discussion they start talking about the fact that up to now, as far as they are aware, neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown has been mentioned in any of the major speeches.

Steve Richards then says the following (when he says they're he means the current leadership of the Labour Party) -

Steve Richards: The Blair & Brown absence I think explains partly why they're all so bewildered. There were these two figures who dominated everthing in this Party for more than a decade ....

Andrew Neil: Since 1994 onwards !

Steve Richards: Since '94 onwards. And so what we're seeing really are sort of half-formed politicians stifled by that duopoly having to learn Politics in the full glare of scrutiny now.

Prospects for the LibDems

"Macbeth: They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course ..."

- 'Macbeth' 5.7.1-2

(The difference between Macbeth and the LibDems at the moment though being that the latter have tied themselves to the stake; otherwise the logic is the same.)

The LibDems have nowhere to go, they have to stick with the Coalition. Their calculation - one born of despair, really - is that if the economy comes good by 2015, the planned time of the next General Election, that will justify their entering the Coalition (their narrative of acting in The National Interest), and they will benefit electorally from it.

At the moment their support has at least halved from what it was at the last General Election, from 26% then to in the range 11-13% now.

I think their calculation is wrong. If the economy does come right, or at least improve, by 2015, then the Tories will benefit and win outright. If it does not, Labour will win outright.

I make this prediction barring unforeseen political earthquakes (which is of course a complete get-out clause for me !)

I also present this with a caveat about my record as a political forecaster. I didn't foresee the Coalition. What I was expecting & predicting would happen at the last Election was as follows: I thought that the Tories would get more votes than anyone else, but not enough for an outright majority (I got that right at least). What I expected to happen next though was that they would form a minority Government which would last 6 months, be unable to enact its Budget, and fall on a no-confidence vote in the Autumn. In the meantime, Gordon Brown would have resigned and David Miliband would have become Labour leader. There would be another General Election in November, after which the LibDems would go into coalition with Labour.

So that shows how much my predictions are to be relied on. It should be noted that what I anticipated would happen was also what I wanted to happen.

One final thought, prompted by watching the LibDem Conference and thinking about their future: Politics is a blood sport.

Why do the Unions go on funding Labour when the Party doesn't do exactly what they want ?

Tories love to taunt the Labour Party by saying that it is in hock to the Trade Unions. A more complicated version of this is to say that Labour is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Unions. But the people making these taunts know that they are not true. It is true that about 87% of Labour's funding does come from the Trade Unions (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/labour-party-donors-unions). But Ed Miliband refused to back the strike action taken by four Unions in June this year, and reiterated that refusal in his speech to the TUC Congress yesterday, a position that was greeted by boos and heckling.

So given that the Unions are overwhelmingly Labour's main source of funding, why won't the leader of that party do exactly what they want, and why do they put up with it and go on funding the Party ?

The answers come if you consider their alternative. They are free to withdraw funding and therefore bankrupt and destroy Labour, and set up their own new Party whose policies would be under their complete control. The problem is, no one would vote for it, and they know this. Labour may not give the Unions everything they want, but they are a viable political party with a network of activists, historical roots and a base of support in the country, which can and have been translated into becoming the Government. Ed Miliband, or any Labour leader, may appear to hold a weak hand because of Labour's financial dependence on the Unions; but on the other hand he knows, and the Union leaders know, that the Labour Party is the best offer they are ever going to get in terms of meaningful access to power, and that effectively the Unions have nowhere else to go.

This explains what is otherwise a puzzle: why the Unions would go on supporting a Labour leader they were primarily responsible for installing who does not support them on strikes over what they regard as critical issues for their membership; and why they would go on funding the Party of which he is a head.

Come Back, David Miliband !

I have been extremely critical of David Miliband in the past, when he was a front-line politician in the last Brown Government, and widely regarded as the most likely next Labour leader. There was no question of his ability, either as a Minister or as a politician, but I found him far too smooth. He seemed to me the most successful of all the aspiring imitators of Tony Blair - Nick Clegg & David Cameron being among the others - with everything sinister that implies; for instance very powerful and infectious self-belief, the ability to persuade colleagues & voters to back highly dubious proposals. I found his ambition disturbing because it was so naked. Again like Tony Blair, he seemed to have a lust for power, a lust that if fulfilled would provide external confirmation of what he knew inside already all along, that he was right.

Now though I find my opinion of David Miliband has modified, and for the following reason: what he has not done since losing the Labour leadership election. Now, a majority of voters in the Labour leadership contest did what members of Parties often do when they have just suffered a bruising defeat and been turfed out of office after a long spell in it. They elect a leader who suits them, who they feel comfortable with (in this case Ed M), not the one who would most effectively make their case to the wider electorate (here, David M). This is because the latter kind of leader is necessarily suspect to them; because that leader by definition has a wider view of things than the majority of his party members; in the case of the Labour Party, he or she would be 'too right-wing'. Remember how the Tories elected that succession of no-hopers after John Major, their very own Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko sequence. I've had to look up what exact order they came in to make sure, but in a sense it doesn't really matter: William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith for heaven's sake !, Michael Howard. This is the same process at work. These leaders were sufficiently right-wing to suit the taste of the Party and activists, but too right-wing for the electorate at large.

Now Ed Miliband, after a stumbling start, is turning out to be a better leader of Labour than I had anticipated. I think he still has great difficulty coming over naturally in tv interviews. But it is not Ed I am concerned with here, it is David.

Think what has not happened since the outcome of the leadership election. There have been no stories of splits or tension or disagreement over policy between David and Ed. There has been no sniping at Ed, no critical running commentary, no secret hostile briefing to journalists from himself or from 'friends'. David retired from the front-line with the professed aim of avoiding stories of splits, and as it turns out has really done so. He has kept his own counsel, and been prepared to let Ed make his own way unhindered. Now - think of the amount of mischief David could have caused if he had wanted to, the civil war he could at least have tried to ignite, based on pique and wounded vanity; motives common in political disputes. That he has not done so is to me testament to his restraint. I infer that he has not done so from the absence of stories of conflict he could have generated had he wished, in a media only too eager to receive and amplify them.

Which all leads me to a position I never thought I would hold. What I would like to see is David Miliband returning to front-line politics. Why ? Because he knows what he's on about when it comes to foreign affairs. At this time of great turmoil abroad, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, where our interests and sympathies are involved and we face all sorts of choices and temptations over if and how to intervene (or put negatively to meddle), we need his voice, his expertise, his advice.

I think the recent check in his career has done David M good. It is in times of adversity and enforced silence that true character is both developed and shown. Think of Teddy Roosevelt in the Dakota Territory after his wife and mother died, or Churchill in his wilderness years. Lofty comparisons perhaps, but something akin to what David is undergoing now; his forty days and nights in the Desert.

One thing David may wish to contemplate during this time is his alleged complicity in Extraordinary Rendition while he was Foreign Secretary, one thing that remains a permanent stain on his reputation (http://bigthink.com/ideas/40079 via Graham Linehan, @Glinner on Twitter). Nothing could furnish stronger material for reflections on the responsibilities and morality of power. If it's true, it is a mistake he can learn from, learn not to repeat, even in another form. Not in any way to excuse him if he was complicit in Rendition, but the exercise of Foreign Policy always involves those doing it in dubious transactions. To take an obvious example, everyone is obliged to deal with the Chinese Government, because the potential market is so huge, and their influence on world affairs ever on the rise. This despite their human rights record, about which they are completely unapologetic and have no intention of changing. Indeed, their continued existence as a Government relies partly precisely on that abuse of human rights. Robin Cook's 'Ethical Foreign Policy' was a dream, or more accurately an only partly realisable aspiration. The thing in Foreign Policy is not whether you are engaged in actions that are wrong, but how do you limit the extent of that engagement. This is not a cynical excuse for unfettered participation in any and all abuses. It is a recognition of reality and a call for restraint. Even having the most severely limited foreign policy ('Splendid Isolation') does not free you from contamination, for several reasons. The first is that you end up commiting sins of omission, as John Major and Douglas Hurd did over former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early '90s. President Clinton has acknowledged his sorrow and shame over failing to act in the latter. The second is that States or foreign terrorists attack you anyway, regardless of your desire to keep well out of it. Think of the Axis Powers in the last '30s.

Aside from mulling over all that, going forward David M retains his skill as a communicator, but has a chance to discover his own more authentic voice, and his own true political identity to communicate. Again, an extremely extravagant comparison, but think of the political journey of Bobby Kennedy, another one of a set of brothers prominent in public life, over his lifetime. Because of where RFK ended up, we can forgive his origins as a hawkish Cold War warrior, among other things attacking Eisenhower during the 1960 presidential election for allowing the growth of the supposed 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union.

In sum what I am saying is, come back David, we need you !

Though whether our political-media system is mature enough to permit his re-emergence in the near future is another matter.

However any of the foregoing may be, one thing I can say with certainty is that we definitely have not heard the last of David Miliband.