Tag Archives: Coalition

Cameron’s Conference Speech: One Nation Misdirection

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My reaction to Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 2015, for Independent Voices.

Independent Voices

In case the link expires, text below.

David Cameron, in his first conference as leader of a majority Tory government, just gave a speech which could have been delivered by Tony Blair.

He launched “an all-out assault on poverty”. He bemoaned the impossibility of “true opportunity” without meaningful equality. He berated our woeful record on social mobility. The incapacity of our justice system to rehabilitate. And of course the inability of a whole generation to get on the property ladder.

The BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, took to the airwaves excitedly to report that Cameron had driven the Tory tanks right across Labour’s lawn.

Twitter went all a-giddy with #HeirToBlair hashtags and reminders that Cameron’s exit song, Don’t Stop Thinking About The Future, was Clinton’s in ’92.

But there is no chance of Cameron delivering on his rhetoric. The imminent removal of tax credits (not remotely compensated for by a ‘living wage’ down the line) is an assault not on poverty, but on the working poor.

Judging from her chilling, old-school speech to Conference yesterday, Theresa May’s new Immigration Bill will not be a pretty sight. The chances of Blairite centrism there, if you’ll forgive the paraphrasing, are “at best, close to zero”.

Ian Duncan Smith “welcomes” food banks, which is just as well because his government has presided over a dramatic rise in their use. Nothing Blairite there, either. And as for the heartlessness of Atos and incapacity benefit, it would have been funny if it hadn’t so often been tragic. Atos staff had to be equipped with panic buttons, so dreadful was their work. Is the new Atos, American outfit Maximus, suddenly going to go all cuddly under a Tory majority government? Don’t hold your breath.

And the idea that this administration, with its out-of-the-ark ideas like Right To Buy 2.0, will succeed where every recent government has failed, and actually make headway on housebuilding, is, frankly, laughable.

No. These are politicians who may talk centre, or even centre-left, but who deliver right, or even far-right.

So what’s going on? When Cameron talks his One Nation talk, is he deluding himself, or is he dissembling?

His delivery is such that the former explanation is credible. To hear him is to believe him. He seems really to think he’s a One Nation “modern” Tory. The guy who, for example, pushed through gay marriage. It is tempting to think of Cameron as a decent chap struggling to wrangle – and front – an unruly and hard-hearted right. Heroically dragging them into the centre for their own and our country’s good. One Twitter commentator felt that Cameron’s speech was as much a sell to his own right wing as it was to centrist voters. On this reading, Cameron is not so much lying about moving his party into the “common” ground, as hoping.

Could be. But step away from the charming, plausible delivery – mute the speech and just think about the big picture, just see the man talking – and the well-meaning interpretation seems the less likely of the two.

Cameron is a smart man, a First-in-PPE man. He is a consummate politician. And just because his government no longer enjoys the fig-leaf of the LibDems, it doesn’t mean that he and Osborne have not learnt the political lessons forced on them by coalition.

What they did in the last Parliament was genius. Squeezing the pips out of the working poor? Confuse debate with a promise to raise the tax threshold to £10k “benefiting everyone” (but not, in fact, the poorest 10%). Whacking up tuition fees? Confuse debate with an improved deal for the very poorest students. In this Parliament, it continues. Hammering the tax credits of the working poor? Confuse debate with a living wage which in no way plugs the gap.

In this sense, the One Nation rhetoric serves a purpose once achieved by sops (apparent or real) to the Tories’ coalition partners. It diverts attention away from harsh truths. It dilutes headlines and ruins sound-bites. It drowns regressive policy in progressive noise. It is a magician’s hand, waving here, waving here – so that we don’t look there.

It doesn’t just impair clear-sightedness about the actual policies. The Blairite rhetoric hurts Labour by pushing it further to the left as it seeks to differentiate itself. We know that it has been a favourite ploy of Cameron and Osborne for a while now to try and force Labour to choose between endorsing Conservative policy, and opposing it and shifting further and further left; the Tories win in either event. (The recent failure of Labour under Harriet Harman to oppose welfare reforms being a classic example.) These modern Tories are nothing if not master tacticians.

Better still, the rhetoric of compassion gives the Tory heartland something to feel good about. If their fiscal and social instincts are hard-nosed, they are nevertheless people who want to feel their underlying motivations are just. Their medicine may be bitter, but it is because (sometimes at least) they genuinely think that a smaller state, and the individualism that goes alongside it, will produce a happier, wealthier society. A Prime Minister who can help them to feel good about their faith, who can help them to rebrand mean-spiritedness as greater-good generosity… that’s a Prime Minister who deserves a two-minute standing ovation.

As the curtain closes on #CPC15, delegates can go home safe in the knowledge that the policies which their leader’s rhetoric entails are never going to transpire. There is nothing but steel in the men and women standing behind Cameron. There will be no woolly-minded Blairism from May or Duncan Smith or Gove or Nicky Morgan – and certainly not from Osborne.

The true legislative agenda – and the in-government track record – is protected behind smoke and mirrors. Labour is pushed into a corner. And Conference’s conscience is absolved by the soft, centrist, hug-a-gay-British-muslim words of their front man.

The Prime Minister would have us believe the future is a great British take-off. Others may fear his rhetorical stroll in the centre ground is nothing but One Nation Misdirection.

Either way, the party faithful will sleep well in their beds tonight.

Reality Bites

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7th January, 2013

Reality bites…

… but if Labour is hoping that the cuts kicking in will change the game, it is mistaken.

Writing in this week’s Observer, Andrew Rawnsley argues that the Tories’ overtly political attempt to put Labour on the spot over the proposed welfare caps could backfire badly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/05/labour-party-bill

The Tories are proposing a 1% cap on increases in most state benefits for three years. They are bringing their plan to the Commons for a vote – even though a vote is probably unnecessary – so that they can put Labour in the position of having either to support it (contrary to its core values) or reject it (and risk looking like the party of “unlimited welfare”).

Andrew Rawnsley’s analysis of this cynical strategic motivation is widely accepted.

George Osborne

But Rawnsley thinks it won’t work out the way Chancellor Osborne expects.

Rawnsley argues that once the “strivers” – those in work but also to some degree dependent on state benefits – realise that they too are going to be adversely affected by the squeeze (and by a raft of other measures which will kick in this year) then they will turn against the Tories.

It’s an argument I would like to be true.

It is a version of the argument going round Labour circles in the spring of 2010. The idea was that, since nasty cuts were inevitable after the election, it would be no bad thing for Labour to accept defeat, let the Tories take the helm for the bumpy ride, and regroup in time for the next election, when surely people would have had enough of austerity.

Again, I hope this line of thought will turn out to be true.

But I fear that it lacks psychological insight.

Rawnsley suggests that when blue-collar voters realise that the cuts are hurting them just as much as they are hurting the scroungers, then, far from punishing Labour for opposing the cuts, they will turn back to them. Biting reality will reverse the “C2 meltdown” of 2010.

I can’t see it.

Because, as Rawnsley himself points out, the Tory spin doctors have done such a wonderful job of dividing the nation, and painting the picture of the closed-curtain layabout getting fat on his couch while the rest of us struggle into work. (In reality, only 3% of the welfare budget goes to unemployed people, and fraud accounts for less than 1% of that 3%. Yet 47% of us think the government is “not tough enough on benefit” and should do more to force people into work. – YouGov)

Because the Tory spin doctors have done such an overwhelming job of pinning the blame for their cuts on Labour.

Because – although Labour (and indeed many right-wing) politicos are at pains to point out that the cuts have yet properly to kick in – the perception of austerity has been with us for two and a half years. We already think we are suffering. We’re already tightening our belts. We feel the pain already. And yet there are no signs of a dramatic shift in mood. The C2s are not flocking to Labour.

Will it be different when the perception of pain is matched in reality? I don’t think so. If I think there’s only £20 in my wallet, and it then turns out there is indeed only £20 in my wallet, I am in no worse a mood.

Even if I did feel worse off when the cuts actually bite, would I need a new scapegoat? If I already thought that scroungers or foreigners or bankers or Labour were the cause of my paltry purse, why would I suddenly change my mind and blame the Tories?

So if Labour is hoping that the imminent reality of austerity will, on its own, clear the path for a return to power in 2015, it is mistaken.

Labour can’t wait for the Tories’ economic strategy to be deemed wrong by dint of time or pain or miraculously changed perception. It must make the argument that the strategy is wrong.

Further, Labour must ensure that the blame for the attack on the state is correctly apportioned.

And above all, Labour needs to understand what the Tories so effortlessly tap into: the psychology of mean-spiritedness. People who are scared, who are feeling the pinch, and who, because of those anxieties, are inclined to believe daft, demonising stories about benefits millionaires need an alternative narrative. A narrative which enables them to feel better about compassion than about righteousness.

That narrative needs crafting, and selling, by Labour. The reality of austerity, on its own, will not do the job for them.

For now, George Osborne has nothing to worry about.

The Urgent Truth

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5th August, 2010



On Monday 7th June (see here) Prime Minister Cameron argued that his actions were necessary and unavoidable.  We don’t like what we’re doing, but someone’s gotta clear up the mess. He said:


“We are not doing this because we want to. We are not driven by some theory or some ideology. We are doing this as a government because we have to, driven by the urgent truth…”



David Cameron answering questions from the public in Birmingham on 3 August 2010.


Yesterday, 4th August, the Prime Minister addressed a “PM Direct” event in Birmingham.  He was asked by a local fire brigade worker:


“Will you give me a pledge today that when these austere times are over, and you have the money back in the bank or you’re balancing your books, that you will look at anything that is cut during this period and go back and get those fire engines back in the places they are needed to support the public?”


Mr Cameron did not give the pledge.

 

“The direct answer to your question – should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them later?  – I think we should be trying to avoid that approach.”


Surprise, surprise, Cameron doesn’t intend to restore public services when the deficit has been repaid.


He is not cutting public services because the money isn’t currently in the bank.  He’s not clearing up a mess.  He is not, as he claimed on 7th June, driven by an “urgent truth”.  He is not doing it “because he has to”.


He is doing it because he wants to.



Crowding Out: The nub of the NotMeGov credo

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14th July, 2010

Interesting to hear the Work and Pensions minister, Chris Grayling, on Radio 5 Live this morning, sympathising with the unemployed.  He recognised things were tough out there and would be tougher, but he reckoned the private sector would, eventually, provide.

This is the absolute nub of the ConDem experiment, the sharp end of the debate about small versus big state.

The old Tory idea (which is what it is) that the state needs to be small in order for the private sector to thrive is based on two thoughts.

First, business doesn’t like bureaucracy.  Sausages have to be a certain shape!  Europe is bossing us about!  Get rid of this red tape!  Then business can thrive.  That’s a crowd-pleaser.   Not so much an economic argument, more a libertarian reflex.

The second thought is the posh one.  It’s the idea that when the state spends, it borrows money.  As it borrows “more and more” it needs to pay a better rate for its money, i.e. interest rates rise.  That affects mortgages and, crucially, the price of money for business.  Business cannot borrow, cannot invest, cannot hire.  This is known as the crowding out argument.

(Hard-line subscribers even call private sector jobs “real” to distinguish them from [presumably unreal] public sector jobs; I noticed Chris Grayling slipping in a “real”, psychologically to upgrade these new jobs he’s hoping will materialise.   Honestly!   Perhaps we should all go round town with a badge to show whether we’re doing a real job or a phoney, state-sponsored one.)

When asked where the vital new jobs would come from, Chris Grayling replied, “I’m not a crystal ball-gazer.”  He doesn’t know, and you can’t help feeling he’s happy with that; perhaps because the ‘real’ jobs are somehow only real when the minister for jobs has had nothing to do with creating them.  Not knowing becomes almost a badge of honour – yet another articulation of the government’s deft, cheerful retreat from responsibility for anything or anyone.

Chris Grayling may not know where the jobs are coming from, but he has listened to reliable institutions like our friend the OBR and they say it’ll be all right.  He went on to explain the crowding out argument.  And that, pretty much was that.  It’s hard for interviewers to argue against the crowding out argument.  It’s capital E economics and it shuts people up.

But you don’t have to know your monetarism from your Keynesianism to know that we’re running a massive deficit in this country.  And yet interest rates are virtually zero.  Whatever is holding business back, it can’t be the rate of interest.

What really motivates business to invest is the whiff of profit.  Sure, costs matter, and the cost of money matters.  But it couldn’t be lower.  What matters is sales.  Are punters going to buy our product?  Will they be spending?  Will they have pounds in their pockets?

If punters are unemployed, or fiscally squeezed, or saving for a rainy day in the light of dire government warnings about broken Britain, they aren’t going to buy your product.  No point investing, no matter how cheaply you can borrow money.  If government, at the same time, is slashing its spending like it has never slashed before, there’ll be no public sector demand either.  Time, you might decide, to pack up and go home.

That, in essence, is the debate.  Of course it is much more sophisticated than that, and I don’t profess to be an economist.  But I do know that the private sector is about people like you and me who spot the chance to make a buck  – who see a market they can sell into.  We are driven by opportunity.  We do not notice that the price of money is low and then ask ourselves what business we might want to set up in order to take advantage of those nice low interest rates.

Forget the intellectual argument and ask yourself if you would invest in a new business in the UK at the moment.  I know I would not.

I doubt Chris Grayling would either; when I listened to him trotting out the crowding out argument today, I didn’t think for a minute that he believed it.

The only crowding out that’s going on these days is the crowding out of reason and the shameless, cynical, oh-so-slick crowding out of responsibility.