The Eighties Revivial aka Thatcherism Redux

No, this is not what you think. It won't be a nostalgic trail through puffball dresses, piano ties, wedge haircuts and misty-eyed reminiscence about Durran Duran. for those of us who were there, there was another, far more serious 1980's, and today's news seems to rather starkly highlight it.

Plastered all over the news this morning is the story that certain parts of the country will be less resilient to cuts when the spending review finally happens this autumn. Can you guess which bits of the country they might be? So much for sharing the pain. So, if you live in poor, Labour-voting Middlesbrough or Mansfield you are far more likely to feel the effects of the ConDem axe than if you live in Harrogate or St Albans. At this stage, I might say that this was always likely to be something of a 'No Shit Sherlock' moment, but the barefacedness of it all is just breathtaking. Anyone who says the North-South divide is closing is, frankly, living in a dream world. And Nick Clegg's mewlings about how, as a Sheffield MP, he understands the concern being shown, is little better. Prattling about 'difflicult choices' does nothing to acknowledge that those who are going to be asked to suffer the most are likely to be the ones who can least afford to suffer at all. All of his attempts to ameliorate the anxiety that is being felt are ham-fisted and ineffectual, all of which seem to be rapidly becoming his leit motif. To those of us who were around in the North during the Thatcher years, this is all starting to sound depressingly familiar.

And the results of all of this are fairly obvious to predict. Yet more damage will be done to those places least able to sustain it. So they will be left to rot further, and will then be berated by the government for doing so. Then, in years to come (and not a for fair while yet), the mistakes of now will be lamented over as regeneration money will be allocated to solve problems that have lain unresolved for the best part of thirty years already. Current actions are storing up huge structural problems for the next generation, but no one in the coalition seems to either want to listen or care.

Clegg must also see the writing on the wall. The support the LibDems have spent years building up has been pissed away. Already, party supporters and the wider electorate are starting to ask questions about the LibDems, and more particularly their leader. He may be convinced that the coalition will hold, but will he manage to hold his own position? It may seem fanciful to ass this question now, just four moths into the coalition; but come next May, especially if the AV referendum is lost, and the LibDems do badly in local elections, what then?

And what if we have a bad winter? If we have another severe winter, against the backdrop of swingeing government cuts and worsening public services, the distinct possiblity of civil unrest, strikes and protest rears its head again.

Of course, the background to this is painting a picture of blitzing those making a, "lifestyle choice to just sit on out-of-work benefits" (in an interview with Nick Robinson, reported by BBC News) and ramping up the rhetoric on 'benefit cheats'. This is, once again, the language of the 1980's, with its return to the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor. I notice, however, very little being said on the far more expensive problem of tax evasion and avoidance. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, the previously sensible Vince Cable appears to have totally lost the plot (see this BBC story from yesterday), in announcing that Science funding would face significant cuts. This was defended by Science Minister David Willetts, echoing Cable's promise to 'screen out mediocrity'. What was more worrying was the push for concentrating funding on 'impact' research, which generates immediate outputs. The president of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, was rightly deeply concerned about such moves and, in an opinion piece in the Financial Times lambasted the goevernment's approach.

We are in grave danger, by cutting in this way, of leaving vast swathes of our economy so fundamentally weakened that any potential recovery will take years, perhaps even decades to happen. And when recovery does happen (if it happens), then some regions will be left even further behind to wither and die. Coiicidentally, few of the areas suffering most are represented by LibDem MP's, fewer still by Conservatives. How very strange.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the beief that much of this is being done with an ideological zeal that borders on the insane. And that the Liberal Democrats are actually abetting this madness is nauseating. A generation in the wilderness awaits them.

God help the rest of us.

Mixed Blessings and Mixed Feelings

It's just before 10am on Friday morning and, as I sit here, the Conservatives have 291 seats, Labour 247 and the LibDems a mere 51. It's been a mixed night, with all the parties taking some comfort and some pain. What has happened?

Labour
have no mandate. Gordon's main source of comfort is that there has not been the anticipated meltdown. Labour are still the main party of opposition, at least in terms of voes cast. However, the warning signs are still there: the reasons for some of those votes are more worrying, if only because the party's ABC strategy seems to have (just) worked. This is one reason why Labour can claim some sort of victory: they haven't won, but the have prevented the Conservatives from gaining one. Many potential Lib Dem voters did switch, and many waverers still saw Labour as the best means of preventing a Conservative victory under the current system. And Ed Balls held his seat, but Charles Clarke didn't; this was quite amusing.

Conservatives
are the largest party, but they have no mandate either. Because over 60% of those who voted didn't want a Cameron-led Conservative government. Given the buy-in from the right-wing press and the power of the party's marketing machine this time round, that must be a worry for them. Cameron said today that the people want change. This may true, but people clearly don't seem to have much of an appetite for the kind of change that they are offering. After investing so much in David Cameron' presidential posturing that must ring some alarm bells in Conservative Central Office. If they can't deliver a knock-out punch in the current circumstance will they ever manage one?

Liberal Democrats
are, of all the parties, the most disappointed of all. One voter in 4 liked what they were offering, but they'll end with barely 10% of the seats available. It's hard to see how this is in any way equitable. They certainly suffered from the Brown pincer movement, with many potential supporters going to Labour at the last minute to prevent Conservative wins. This certainly seems to have happened in some marginals that were key targets for the Cameron team. With the system as it is now, this is a persistent danger for them. And Evan Harris didn't make it in Oxford; a real shame. Lembit Opik lost his seat too.

Others
The Greens finally have an MP (in Brighton). The BNP has trebled its share of the vote, with half a million people gifting them their mandate. These numbers are [relatively] small, but still a source of major concern to anyone further up the evloutionary chain than a tree shrew. UKIP managed to perform respectably, though not spectacularly, which suggests they have a core vote but little else.. And Esther Rantzen didn't win in Luton; thank God.

What does it all mean?
Your guess is as good as mine. After all the hype, the turnout was still only 65%. This is very worrying. Engagement with the electorate hasn't really got any better, in spite of the media's attempts to portray this election as a game changer. Weirdly, everything and nothing has changed overnight. It looks like Cameron may get his coveted keys to Downing Street, but it also looks like he's going to be seriously constrained in what he'll might be able to get through Parliament. Even with Unionist support he's still going to fall short of a majority. And his refusal to countenance electoral reform may yet come back to bite him hard. The problems with polling have also shown that something needs to change there too, and there may yet be legal challenges to results.

Another source of depression is that the media have fallen into the Presidential trap, predicating the campaign's coverage on the public personas of the party leaders. It has given them a nice, tidy narrative to package and run with but other campaigning and, more importantly, many of the issues, have been hidden in the perfect storm of the cult of personality. It's only going to get worse now the debate genie has been unleashed, when the focus isn't on what was said, only who won the debates. Then there was last night. The TV coverage was awful, with the Beeb using a hailstorm of hyperactive graphics in the style that were presaged back in the 1990's by The Day Today. It was still funny seeing Teresa May extrapolating a Tory victory fomr the swing in Sunderland South just before 11 o'clock though; this is the reason why coverage like that is rapidly become a one-note joke. Channel 4 had a brave stab at something different but I'm not convinced it really worked, more's the pity.

Meanwhile, in Whitby and Scarborough, the sitting Conservative was returned with an increased majority, though it was heartening that the Lib Dem candidate (even though finishing third) was pretty close to a deeply uninspiring Labour candidate. The BNP managed to poll 1445 votes but still lost their deposit, thankfully.

What this election has shown is the public's dissatisfaction with the current system. In spite of the much-trumpeted importance of this plebicite, a third of those eligible still didn't think it important enough to register a vote. The anger is clear to see, but the political classes seem to be either oblivious or indifferent to it. Something does have to change and this election is perhaps only the first sign that some sort of shift is coming, however slow and painful.

Eve Of Destruction

Well, here we are. It's the day before the election and, as yet, no one seems to have a clue how things are going to work out. The campaigning is getting pretty frantic now, with Cameron running the night shift and Brown working into the early hours too.

Reports are saying that anything upto 40% of voters are still not decided who to vote for tomorrow. The campaign hasn't helped though. The Presidential, ahem, sorry Prime Ministerial Debates have sucked the oxygen out of the campaign, with the focus being entirely on the leaders. For the Conservatives this has been interesting, with the man who wants to run the economy, George Osborne, keeping a lower profile than a convicted pædophile out on licence. For the LibDems, it means Vince Cable, a positive asset, has had a peripheral role. And for Labour has been that the focus has been on Brown, who is simply not a TV era politician, however able he might be (and I think he is very able). It also seems, unfortunately, that the debate format will be here to stay; they are easy for the media to package and analyse, concentrating not on the policy questions, but only on who won, when the 'victory' can be gained in such superficial ways.

The most worried must be Cameron's Conservatives. Form such a dominant position a year ago, they are in severe danger of not even being able to form a government, if polls are to be believed. Why? Personally I think it's because there's no enthusiasm for the amorphous 'vote for change' ticket his party have adopted. There is nothing there, like pulling the curtain in Oz to find the charlatan behind it. In a traditional setup, the Conservatives should be at least 10 points up in the polls now. But they're not. From a marketing point of view it's very interesting what has happened. They have run with making Dave look all presidential, like Barrack Obama, bashed us over the head repeatedly with the 'change' theme, the rolled-up shirt sleeves sand the stage-managed plackards and posters that try to make things look like the momentum of the Obama campaign exists here. They so want him to appear like Obama it hurts.

But he doesn't. Charlie Brooker's description of him as an avatar is all too accurate.

On Radio 4's Today programme this morning, John Humphrys mused that the election has turned out to be less 'cynical' than commenttors were expecting. But I don't think that's true either, and it links to the relative coolness with which Cameron has been greeted by the voters. We, as an electorate, are deeply mistrustful of the whole political process. The slickness of the Cameron campiagn is obvious to us all and, after a decade of the tricksy Blair, we are rightly on our guard when we see such things. And then the governemnt are deeply unpopular, with a leader who doesn't do the flesh-pressing that Cameron does and looks terrible in front of thecameras but is forced to do it, looking increasingly grim and desperate. No wonder Clegg's Liberal Democrats have made people look again, which is the single good thing about the debates as far as I can see.

For all the Cameron talk of Broken Britain it's not Britain that's broken (bad as things are), it's Britain's politics. And people are rightly and righteously angry about it. Perhaps this election is the tipping point where people become tired of what has gone before. I hope that this is the case, but experience suggests that will really happen is a flurry of sound and fury before things settle into the same dead pattern as they did before, with the increasingly professionalised, careerist political class moving further away from those they seek to govern. It will be sad for us if this is the case, but, if we are not prepared to do anything about it when the chance comes, it is all we deserve.

Hail The New Puritanism

It's not often that I find myself disagreeing with Stephen Fry quite so vehemently, but on this occasion I really can't understand why he claims that the current row over MPs' expenses is 'not important'. It is important. Very important. Why? Well, here are some reasons:

1. For years, Parliament have tried to presuade the public that most of our longest established professions, like medicine, teaching, academe and the law are not capable of regulating their own behaviour. One by one, each of them has been given an external and 'independent' body to which they must be accountable. The one seeming exception to this is, oddly enough, Parliament.
2. As a result, seeing honourable members on our TV screens constantly using the excuse that these claims were within the rules are a bit rich considering they themselves wrote them. Where's the outside scrutiny? Quis custodiet custodies? And even then, some MP's are stretching these rules well beyond the point where Hooke's Law might break down.
3. Seeing footage like George Foulkes attempting to throw a smokescreen over the whole sorry business was an attempted (and wholly unsuccessful) act of sophistry. OK, so BBC newsreader/journalist Carrie Gracie arens £92000 a year. And yes, this is about 50% more than a basic backbencher's salary. But any expenses she might claim are certainly not as generous as those doled out to MP's, nor are they so laxly waved through on a misplaced assumption that they are reasonable. The audit trail is more rigorous and accountable. Apparently, the Fees Office warned the Speaker about this issue some time ago. What did he do? Diddly-friggin'-squat, that's what.
4. On Saturday, Margaret Moran, the MP for Luton was questioned about her arrangements regarding second home allowances and spending on a house in Southampton. One of the justifications she gave was this:
   

   "Any MP has to have a proper family life, they have to have the support of their partner.
   
   "It is all within the claims policy and that's why I'm angry about this because not only has it been very stressful for me and my family, it gives the incredibly misleading impression that somehow we've been dodgy, that we've been fraudulent or we've been corrupt. Nothing is further from the truth."
   

   What precisely makes her any different from the many people who spend long periods working away from home? They don't get the chance to claim for multiple homes, or flip between them for convenience. In fact, if she was so bothered about her family in Southampton, why the fuck did she want to be an MP in Luton in the first place? Just a thought.
5. And now of course we have the wholly unedifying spectacle, as the BBC's Nick Robinson calls it, of My Shirt's Hairier Than Yours. Part of Cameron's insane rush to appear utterly moral is caused by his politican's finely tuned and innate sense of crass opportunism, part of it caused by the knowledge that his own party are really no better because it is a cross-party problem with the entire culture of Westminster itself.
6. But now we get to the meat; all through this, it has been claimed that Parliament 'understands the public anger on the issue' Well, clearly they don't, judging by both actions and words. And the reason is the major problem: our political class has become so distanced from the people they represent that they are no longer even aware that what they are doing is somehow, at best, hugely insensitive during a recession where some people are struggling to even keep one roof over their heads, at worst large scale fraud of the sort which they have spent a deal of time piously berating the banking sector (though not undeservedly as it happens). MP's may complain that £64000 a year is not enough. Indeed, compared to many in higher-powered London jobs it isn't. But you know what? It's still at least twice what most of their constituents earn each year, and more in many cases. And those constituents don't have the lovely expenses cushion to break their fall either. Most people understand that MP's do have some reasonble expenses, but there is a difference between making reasonable claims and what too many are doing now: taking the piss. It has to stop.
   

Mr Pot, Please Make Yourself Acquainted With Mr Kettle

David Cameron reckons that BBC senior management are being overpaid, according to a BBC News story today.

At this point I would just like to say:

People. In. Glass. Houses. Should. Not. Throw. Stones.

I do hope I emphasised that enough.

PS: Charlie Brooker's Guardian column was today, as usual, a work of genius. We'll miss him when he's been fired by the BBC for being 'insensitive' to someone on the forthcoming new series of Screen Wipe (Yay!)

"Rivers of Black Pudding"

Well, here we are, silly season once again. And, as a result, we have the wondrous report that was farted from the bowels of Conservative-leaning policy unit Policy Exchange yesterday (link here to a BBC story about this). To call it idiotic would be to do a great disservice to idiots everywhere. If even the moon-faced poltroon Cameron is even calling it insane, then things are looking bad for the dunderheads at th ePE...

So, a bunch of Tory policy wonks who mostly think the north starts at the North Circular Road and beyond that there be dragons have come up with what, even for them, is a crassly and comically piss-poor piece of work. Why is it bad? Well, all you have to do is imagine what would happen if there were a mass migration from the north. The consequences for the beautiful south would be truly dreadful:

The language: Northerners all speak Northern, not English, you see. They say things like "Ay Up", and "Sithee' (whatever that means) and similar. They split their infinitives, drop their aitches and can't say 'bath' properly. Think of the expense of translating public service documents and providing interpreters for interviews because they'll spend most of their time in the council and benefit offices, sponging off hard-working Daily Mail readers; most of these Northern types don't want work, you know.

Housing: Where will all the whippets go? Northerners all have whippets don't they? Or pigeons. Or Bull Mastiffs And they're all drug dealers. Of course, worst of all, when one Northerner moves into your street, soon he’ll bring all his relations to live with him. Then before you know it the street is full of tracksuited neanderthals with moustaches from Barnsley (though it's not just the moustaches that are from Barnsley of course). At that point the price of your house has dropped through the floor. You’ll never sell it. Not that you can now of course. Ha ha.

Economy: For those few who are not workshy, what will northerners contribute to the economy? Of course, any money they earn will either be sent home to the barren north, or used to pay to bring a herd of evil-smelling proletarian filth in ill-fitting clothes to our green and pleasant land. Of course, we can use them for all the nasty jobs that no one in their right mind would do, like being the continuity announcer on Big Brother, or being Lauren Laverne, for example.

Culture: When Northerners get to the south, the fact that they have different customs and speak a different language means they are likely to form ghettoes of their own where they can speak northern and do their northern customs and wear northern national costume - the flat cap, muffler and braces. They won't drink real beer, they'll insist on drinking that northern muck. And they all smell of chip fat and northern food, you know. Schools will have to spend a fortune on teaching Northern children to speak proper English, innit? And teach them proper rugger instead of that league game.

But northerners won't want to integrate. They'll cling on to their old way and bring down areas. They'll insist on intermarrying with other northern families. There are all those fundamentalist Yorshiremen too. That's when the trouble will start, because we will be accused of not respecting their northern culture and ways. No, we'll be accused of discrimination against them. We won't be safe in our own communities. The Thames will foam with black pudding...

An exaggeration, perhaps, but it does point up a couple of worrying things if one happens to live in the North. There is still an ingrained metropolitan snobbery in some sections of the Conservative Party (and in the Labour Party come to that). And those sections have the ear of the leadership. The other is that the north, even in Labour circles is seen as a “problem”. While the north undoubtedly has issues connected to economic development it is lazy and short-sighted to characterise the whole place in such a blinkered fashion. One example given was to get people moving from Sunderland to the south. Comparing like with like, Nissan has been a great boon to Sunderland (and the North in general). Can the same be said of Cowley in Oxford, one of the shining examples held up in the report? Hardly a ringing endorsement of the city. Indeed, beyond Arnold’s 'Dreaming Spires' Oxford has just as much social deprivation as some parts of the North. But this report doesn’t really talk about that, does it?

The depressing vision here is one of an unacceptable social and geographic Darwinism: if the south is relatively more prosperous, don't let's address the gap in the poorer communities. Or try to improve the transport links into the South East. Heaven forbid that we should make it easier for companies to do business in other parts of the country. Does anyone remember that at some time there was supposed to be a high speed Channel link from the North? No, I didn't think so...

No, let's just let those communities die on their arses. Idiocy hardly seems sufficient to describe this, especially when you consider who was responsible for most of the destruction of those places in the first instance.

The real problem once again is one of control. There seems to be a desire to "roll up" that funding and "allocate according to need". But this would more than likely be controlled from the centre. And we know all too well that the centre knows little and cares even less about outlying regions, especially if there is no electoral gain to be made from doing anything.

Actually reading the report (and yes, I have) is a depressing experience. In fact, what's even more amazing is that in a rush to concentrate economic resources they are trying to solve the wrong problem. The economy is concentrating in the south. So let's make it even worse! Let's take an already overcrowded region and build more houses on flood plains! Let's make water shortages even worse! Let's further overload already overstretched public transport systems! Let's overload local authorities even more!

The idea of encouraging people to move south in this way has faint echoes to me of Powell’s 'Rivers of Blood' speech forty years ago. It’s a speech that, as a left-wing libertarian I find unsettling but oddly prescient. and this report seems hell-bent on further ingraining a 'them and us' mentality between north and south. People laughed at it this summer, but it might not be long before som eactually begin to take som eof the ideas within seriously.