Rape, politics and populism

It is fair to say that nobody is going to feel much sympathy for the poor rapists, whom the Tories targeted in yesterday’s announcement. They plan a review of sentencing – “review” being political code for “lengthening”.

There may very well be grounds for a review. If Theresa May is correct, sentences have been falling over the past three years; if this is due to changes in, or poor application of, the law then a review is warranted. Similarly, if Mr. Cameron is correct that “as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex” then there is an urgent need to tackle the causes.

I have two reasons for feeling uncomfortable, however.

The fist reason for concern is that being tough on criminals is to politics what a steep gully is to water; it is the path of least resistance. Few people have any sympathy for criminals, and rapists in particular engender very strong feelings of anger among large numbers of people. It is thus all-too-easy to achieve what political analysts call “valancy”, a sense among people that a politician thinks like they do, by taking a tough line on crime.

We have seen the upshot of this after ten years of Blairism (which if it exists as a philosophy at all is the belief that the primary goal is to remain in power, from which good must eventually follow). On average a new crime was created every day during the Blair years; there are 170,000 new pages of law; and our gaols are now bursting at the seems because of longer minimum sentences. Yet there is no evidence that we feel safer.

Which brings me on to my second reason for hesitancy: that one cannot change attitudes through legislation. I agree with Mr. Cameron that it is appalling (and indeed shocking) that up to half of young men think that a circumstance could exist where it would be acceptable to force somebody to have sex. However, I think the point is both a wider and an older one; that there are still many people in society who think that it is acceptable to use force to compel others to do anything. Rape is a particularly unpleasant example, but there are plenty of other instances where people are forced or bullied into obeying others. It is this general attitude that we should be addressing; rape is merely one symptom of a more prevalent disease.

Yet, as I have argued before, the law is not the solution (though we must in the meantime criminalise such behaviour so as to protect citizens both through incarcerating the abusers and deterring those who might abuse). People do not change their attitudes because something becomes illegal; indeed, legislation is only necessary because people have not been persuaded. What is necessary is to address the root causes – the beliefs of those who believe that force is justified in getting what they want. Unsurprisingly, the coercive power of the state will not achieve that goal.

So while I agree with Mr. Cameron that school is a perfect environment to address these attitudes, I would hope that our education establishments would go beyond focusing on sex education, and instead address the whole issue of freedom from compulsion, to instil in our children an understanding of why it is wrong to force people to do things against their will.

In the meantime, by all means address low conviction rates or inadequate sentences that result from failures in the system. But do not make political capital out of seeking to be seen to be “tough on crime”. Toughness may win the brief adulation of voters, but in the long run what they want is to be safe and secure. That would be popular without being populist.

Cameron: Tosh on the telly

As a committed Liberal Democrat I have no natural affinity for David Cameron, and tonight's Dispatches on Channel 4 hardly elicited great sympathy. But it did not trigger much righteous indignation either. This is partly because it has all been said before, but also partly because it was a rather unnecessary hatchet job. I was unimpressed.

Cameron: Toff at the Top always threatened to be predictable. Peter Hitchens, the presenter, has form as a right-wing Cameron hater. However, I found the early part of his televised character assassination both distasteful and bemusing. On the one hand, I have little interest in David Cameron’s background. Though hardly likely to be invited to join the Bullingdon Set, I find the efforts of some to revise the tawdry class politics of the twentieth century both irritating and facile. Some of our better Prime Ministers attended Eton, and still more Oxford. If we do not expect prejudice against any one class, we should not encourage it against another. There are many things about David Cameron that one might criticise, but the fact that he is distantly related to the queen or that he went to public school should not be among them.

On the other hand, it seemed a rather strange line of attack for a man who openly described himself as a traditional conservative (with or without a capital C remained ambiguous). Peter Hitchens will do the Conservative Party no good by adding fuel to the fire of class division. One of John Major’s better aspirations was to create a classless society – understandable for a Brixton schoolboy. It may have contributed to the Conservative victory two years later, and it is certainly true that social mobility has declined under Labour. By dredging up this class-war nonsense, Peter Hitchens is undoubtedly doing great harm to the Conservatives, as well as cheapening the level of political debate in this country. One might expect better from a journalist on the Mail on Sunday!

It may be, of course, that this is his plan: either that it will require drastic surgery to get the party back on track; or that he feels that the party has betrayed its supporters so badly that it must be destroyed. Either way, this focus on class deserves little but contempt.

Other attacks in the programme at least had some substance. The antics of the Burlington Club (sic.) do sound distasteful, though the tone of high-minded disgust that Hitchens affects makes one wonder whether he spent his university years in the chapel choir. That Cameron used charm and contacts to climb to the top is hardly new in the Conservative Party, and other parties have probably witnessed such methods too. Cameron’s rise may have been undeserved, but this is not a concern because it is unfair so much as because it suggests he lacks the talent one would hope for in a future prime minister.

As for his ability to cut his cloth to fit the present mood of whomever he is addressing, it is an open goal for his opponents, and we will certainly use our boots to best effect.There is little doubt in my mind that David Cameron would be a sorry excuse for a Prime Minister. Peter Hitchens clearly agrees. Nonetheless his broadcast tonight added little that was new to a debate – and a British political landscape – that is in desperate need of more substance. It may not have done much for Cameron’s reputation, but neither did it do much for Hitchens’.

Cameron allies denigrate Conservative Home and Tory activists in general

A couple of interesting comments from David Cameron’s camp in Monday’s Times.

[T]hose close to Mr Cameron [pointed] out that the Conservative membership was not representative of the country as a whole. “A quarter of a million people are members of the Tory party. The important point is that’s less than one per cent of the electorate,” said a party source.

I seem to remember another party leader building his career by riding roughshod over his party. I agree that governments should answer to and respond to the electorate rather than just their activists. But leaders should not assume that they are more in tune with the masses than tens of thousands of party members. Otherwise we get policy-making by polling-agent and government by focus-group. That is where that other party leader ended up. Is there no end to how much Cameron will emulate Blair?

Then, for good measure, a spokesman decided to slag off Conservative Home (for which I have some sympathy!).

A senior Tory close to Mr Cameron said: “It’s 30 people talking to 30 people. People sometimes assume it represents a bigger slice of the party. But it represents a specific strand of thinking.”
True, but I would caution against attacking your own base too often!

Who really represents the working class

Having posted a couple of criticisms of fellow bloggars’ postings recently (hating the sin and not the sinner, I hasten to add!), it is a pleasure to be able to cite an excellent entry by Tristan about David Cameron’s recently announced aspiration to make the Conservatives the party of the working class.

Much as we may want to ridicule this, Tristan is right to note that for a long time the Tories appealed to the naturally conservative tendency within a big proportion of the population, while Labour’s intellectually-driven egalitarianism only appealed to the working class when it was combined with cynical class-war populism.

Where I would question Tristan (there’s no point in just agreeing meekly with him, after all!) is where he writes that “Neither party could ever truly claim to be the party of the working class, and no party can today…” This overlooks the very interventionist sentiment that suffuses much of the working class (though if his point is that interventionism isn’t a class issue I would have to agree, for the middle classes seem equally convinced in the merits of paternalism).

One thing that Margaret Thatcher did brilliantly (better than we ever did, sadly) was to convince large swathes of the population that it was in their interests to vote for a party that espoused economically liberal doctrines. For the past decade the majority of voters in the UK have been of the opinion that their interests are best served by paternal government – so much so that the Conservatives have now jettisoned their economically liberal beliefs and are returning to the Conservative-Interventionist position that they occupied in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

My first reaction to this is to shake my head sadly as these auxiliaries abandon their association with liberty as soon is it no longer advances their real aims. But in fact there is an opportunity here, if we have the courage to seize it. I believe that David Cameron is making a mistake in shifting his party back towards the interventionist axis just as people are beginning to tire of Brown’s “nanny state.

With less and less discernable policy-space between the Conservatives and New Labour, the Liberal Democrats alone can argue the case for a society based on individual autonomy and limited government. Rather than appealing to any one class, we should appeal to that part of every voter that recognises that they are best placed to make decisions about their own lives.

I am frankly tired of being associated with the Conservatives just because they have on occasion shared with us an opposition to socialism. Too often when we champion the market or question state monopolies we are accused of being Thatcherites. The fact that the Tories arrogated our beliefs in a free economy has created a daft situation in which economic liberalism is seen as Conservative philosophy while the Liberal Democrats are left with only the social aspects of liberty. This perception is widespread in the media and even some within our own party are afraid of liberal economics because of its association with the old enemy.

So let David Cameron try to win the working class by stripping them of autonomy and expropriating their assets. Let us empower them and offer them freedom. It may seem at present that intervention and the large state dominates, but the tide will turn. The voters, be they the over-taxed middle class or working class playthings of bureaucracy, want freedom.

David Cameron blue-rinse update

For the truly wonkish among you, MP3 downloads of the entire Economist/Stockholm Network debate David Cameron is just a blue-rinse Tony Blair? are now available here.

A synopsis of the event (their's, not mine) reads:

What is David Cameron for? He downplays tax cuts, is socially liberal and believes in a muscular foreign policy (and voted for the Iraq war). He would like to reform public services to give consumers more choice, and to involve private companies and charities in providing them. Sound familiar? And if so, is that a bad thing? After all, policies like these have just won three elections in a row. Will the new Cameron era be a break with the past or a return to true-blue values? Is Mr Cameron just a softer, pre-Thatcher Tory with a dollop of belief in the possibility of progress added? Can he create a vision for the future which his entire party can support, or will he only serve to divide the party further? And would Britain governed by a Cameron-led Conservative Party feel very different to Britain today?

Speakers: Prof. Dennis Kavanagh
Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday
Dr Ian Kearns, Deputy Director, ippr
Jesse Norman, Senior Fellow, Policy Exchange
Chaired by Johnny Grimond, Writer-at-large,The Economist
Polling from Andrew Cooper, Populus

Is David Cameron just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair?

Last night I attended a public debate hosted by the Economist and the Stockholm Network on the subject of whether David Cameron is just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair. Speakers included Professor Dennis Kavanagh (University of Liverpool), Dr Ian Kearns (IPPR), Peter Hitchens (Mail on Sunday) and Jesse Norman. It was excellently chaired by the Economist's Johnny Grimond.

Strangely, Peter Hitchens was most brutal not about Cameron (whom he predicted would not win the next election) or Blair but about the Conservatives in general. He described the Conservative Party as both a ‘ghost brand’, like loose razorblades and Capstan full-strength cigarettes that only continue to exist because a few old people continue to buy them out of habit, and a ‘poisoned brand’, too damaged to survive. “No re-branding can rescue this hopeless party”, he said, adding that “Cameron is a blue-rinsed Blair, it is a bad thing and it will fail”.

Ian Kearns agreed that it would fail, but mainly because Cameron was linked to the 2005 manifesto. Kavanagh disagreed, arguing that Cameron was only really the editor that drew together the policy ideas of the 2005 Shadow Cabinet. Kearns did note that there were genuine differences between the two, however: Cameron is no egalitarian, does not believe in redistribution, and (perhaps cynically) has repositioned himself on foreign policy. Kearns also called for compulsory voting as a means of filling the democratic deficit.

Jesse Norman argued that the difference was that whereas Blair was “a zealot” who had “Convictions on everything; ideas on nothing” (Hitchens objected to the description of Blair as having conviction) Cameron “had at least read a book”. He claimed – between plugs of several of his books, which are at least available to download for free from his website – that Cameron was aiming to redefine conservatism as neither paternalistic nor libertarian but based more upon the thinking of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, which he (not originally) has defined as Compassionate Conservatism. He alone predicted that Cameron would win the next election.

Kavanagh lamented the rise of a permanent, professional political class, and noted an unhealthy closeness between journalists and politicians: that it is possible to talk about journalists being in the Blair camp or the Brown camp is damaging for both journalism and democracy. He also lamented the focus on the five to eight per cent of the population in less than a hundred constituencies upon which elections turn.

Among the audience, just over half agreed that David Cameron is just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair.