I know where the dinosaurs are hiding

When the media and the press talk about impending battles between the Left and Right within parties, they really are resorting to their comfort zones.

For one thing, dividing politics up into Right and Left is a tad narrow-minded. There are three distinct political traditions (socialism; conservatism; liberalism; with the possible addition of environmentalism as a fourth), and if one must divide politics along a single axis, that between authoritarianism and freedom is as germane as that between a planned or a spontaneous market.

But accepting that the press will never manage to handle something as complex as three – let alone four – dimensions, there is another reason why talk about great battles between Left and Right ring hollow. There really isn’t much of the old Left left.

At least that’s what I thought until I went to the Trades Union Congress to discuss child poverty.

The recent TUC event on the theme of “A Minimum Social Wage” was like a throwback to the 1970s. There were at least two speakers who argued that poverty was an essential tool of capitalism, necessary to force the labourers to work for their capitalist masters. They clearly had not heard of the four hundred million Chinese who were condemned to subsistence farming and occasional starvation under Socialism but who are now rich enough to know that they will never go hungry again. For these relics of a time thankfully past, the replacement of the Capitalist system with a Socialist alternative was something that we should all strive. I wondered whether any minute Tony Benn was going to appear, waiving a copy of the 1983 Labour Party manifesto and calling for the collectivisation of the commanding heights of the economy.The highlight for me, however, was when the representative of the National Union of Journalists addressed the audience. He stood to make a point of such crass irrelevance that it would have been silenced by any other Chair. Only in the TUC, in fact, could a speaker get away with beginning his remarks by reminding the room that pointing “This week marks the 25th anniversary of the murder of Comrade Che”.

And your point is? How exactly is the death of Che Guevara relevant to child poverty in the UK in 2007? Perhaps, just as Guevara shot those whom he suspected of treachery in the Sierra Maestra, and later led President Castro’s death squads after they came to power, the TUC would like to line those whom they blame for child poverty up in Bedford Square and finish them off. I don’t doubt for a second that many of the representatives at this conference would have been inspired by his period as Minister for Industries, during which he expropriated all private business (down to the smallest farm; the last shop). There is undoubtedly also a parallel between his luring thousands of young Latin Americans to their deaths in pointless revolutions, and the continued siren song of the hard-line socialists.

Fortunately, we have largely learnt to ignore these bizarre throwbacks to a bygone age. But we must still be on our guard. While their most extreme cohorts are too rabid to be taken seriously, the underlying themes they espouse are shared with more moderate voices that still affect the political discourse. Statism; syndicalism; paternalism; prioritising the collective over the individual; a willingness to use coercion to achieve their ends; the priority of equality at the expense of freedom: these trends are still dominant in our society, and it is the poorest that suffer, and their children who suffer most.

If we really want to help impoverished children, that might be a good place to start.

Do the Lib Dems matter and does anybody care?

Tim Hames is not normally kind to the Liberal Democrats. So it was with some surprise that he devoted today’s op ed piece in The Times to an article explaining why the Liberal Democrats matter. Criticising his colleagues (“the cynical puditocracy”) for not taking them seriously, Hames argues that

The Liberal Party and its successors have held firm to similar principles
for about 150 years. Their credo includes a staunch belief in individual
liberty, a confidence in the capacity of man to improve the chances of all in
society, a determination that political individuals and institutions should be
constrained by written rules and a dedicated internationalism.

One can see that there are tensions between these… Yet only the most harsh
would not concede something to the consistency with which they have clung to
their cause for so long. It certainly compares well with a Labour [and]
Conservative Part[ies].

He goes on to note that the Liberals may not have won many elections in a century, but much of our political platform has been delivered. As to the future, Lib Dem poll ratings could very easily rebound to the low-to-mid 20s. “A year from here, the party could be in much better political shape.”

He concludes with a comment on the leadership election and our future as a party that is worth considering: “Bizarrely, Mr Clegg and Chris Huhne, his rival, have happily agreed to contend that there is not much of a difference between them. This is inaccurate in terms of strategy. Mr Clegg is more inclined to emphasise the libertarian trait in the Liberal tradition, while Mr Huhne is comfortable with the collectivist outlook. The two would appeal to quite different kinds of voters. This is not a decision about ‘presentation’ alone, as was plain from their first hustings held on Saturday.

The Liberal Democrats have to be less introspective to prosper. They should stick with their principles but, as Mr Clegg is insisting, also be prepared to acquire a more practical streak. There is no shame in being able to enact your own agenda directly. The party has to have a hunger for power, albeit, realistically, as a junior coalition partner. The two words they need to convince the country of are ‘we matter’.”

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Generally, the comments attached to news items are "rabid and stultifyingly ill informed" (to quote Chris Morris on Brasseye). However, that chap from London with the stats on voting numbers is clearly a genius and people should listen to him more.

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On a separate note, Times Online also seems to be having great difficulty coping with its fame. While the print version proudly notes that it increased its online traffic by a record 39.1 per cent to Guardian Unlimited’s 28.8 per cent (I suspect that it had less far to climb), the website has been failing to load do to this “extremely heavy traffic”. Maybe it’s time Mr. Murdoch bought a bigger server.

Nobody wants higher taxes

I met a Dane once who introduced me to a new salutation. Every time somebody called for a toast he would raise his glass and say “To world peace and lower taxes”.

Recently this had me thinking. There are people in the world who claim to want higher taxes, but nobody really does. That might seem an odd statement at first (especially if you are Dr. Evan Harris). People constantly call for increases in taxation. The Liberal Democrats themselves called for an extra penny in the pound to pay for education!

But this confuses means and ends. Nobody wants higher taxes, but plenty of people want more public spending (or really, better services) and other want less income inequality (though what they really want is an end to poverty).

Now, one could of course argue that nobody wants lower taxes either. What they want is more freedom; a greater ability to improve their own lives; more control over how they contribute to the common good. But this is not quite true.

There are two ways to skin a cat, as they say at the RSPCA. Better social welfare can be delivered, to use an old metaphor, by increasing the size of the slice or by increasing the size of the cake. So those who claim to want higher taxes could just as easily be satisfied with a bigger economy. By comparison, those who want lower taxes will not get what they really want from a smaller economy; they too would need a larger economy to give them more to spend were taxes stay the same.

Happily, both can be satisfied. Taxes crowd out private investment and spending, so they tend to have a negative impact on the economy. Consequently, whereas reducing taxes will in the long run give both parties what they want (more money for both individual consumption and public welfare), high taxes will in the long run help neither.

So do not be fooled when people say that they want higher taxes. They may say that they do – they may even genuinely believe it – but if you drill down to find what they truly want you will discover that they really are not half as bad as you thought.

A five year plan for fun and happiness

I’m organising a soiree, and it has unfortunately clashed with a rival event organised by one of my friends. He has asked that I check with him in future to ensure that his diary is free before I go casually booking events without a care in the world.

This has made me realise that there is something terribly lacking in our society. A huge amount of potential fun and merriment is being lost through the random, inefficient manner in which we enjoy ourselves. And, in the process, all sorts of unintended and harmful side-effects are resulting, that have negative effects on society.

Perhaps what we need is some universal social plan. Surely the world's social life would be significantly better if somebody just sat down and planned it all out. We could employ some clever boffins from university towork out in advance what the best way to achieve maximum merriment would be.

They could allocate the amount of drink that each party needed, what music should be laid on and the exact quantity of canapés required - thus avoiding the terrible waste of vol–au–vents that so comonly occurs. And these parties could be scheduled so that they all occurred at the optimum time to ensure that the maximum utility was gained by the revellers.

And publicans could lobby the officials to ensure that their profits were maximised. And employers could seek to influence them so that the events were never on a work nights.

Why, this planned society of ours would be perfect. I can’t imagine why we’ve never tried it before!

Chris Huhne: an unfair society; ruled by a scary computer

It is a good rule of thumb that if the complete opposite of a statement is complete garbage, the statement is not worth saying. So I’m somewhat disappointed by Chris Huhne’s campaign slogan: “a fairer society; people in charge”.

I mean, think about it. On the one hand, Nick Clegg is hardly arguing for a less fair society, and while that may be what the Conservatives and Labour have delivered, they would undoubtedly say that that was not their intention, or even that it was not true.

But it's the other hand (or rather, clause) that really irritates me. People in charge? As opposed to what? Dogs? An all powerful computer? A terrifying fatalism that allows us to abrogate all sense of responsibility?

I don’t mean to make this a partisan blog, so please don’t consider this to be the beginning of a series of anti-Huhne broadsides. But I do get annoyed when politicians state the bleeding obvious as though it was a vision for the future. If Nick Clegg says anything as pointless and vacuous I will happily jump on it.

Instead of “People in charge”, might I suggest to Chris two possible alternatives, either of which would have more meaning but which offer a very different solution to the problems we face. Both would appeal to liberals (I think) because they are significant shifts away from the current Statist, centralised status quo. Yet the solutions they offer are derived from very different strands of liberalism.

Chris Huhne: a fairer society; where people are free – indicating a society where government no longer provides monopoly services, but instead ensures that everybody has the resources necessary to provide themselves with the basic essentials of sustenance, shelter, medical care, education and welfare; and where there is far less legislation and regulation of people’s lives.

Chris Huhne: a fairer society, managed by the people – indicating a society where government monopoly services are controlled by tiers of government closer (and so more responsive) to citizens or by directly elected boards; and where the regulations and legislation that shape our lives are instigated and voted upon through more grass-roots mechanisms (e.g. citizen’s juries; plebiscites; mandatory petitions).

My regular reader will know which I prefer, but I hope that I have fairly presented the two sides. By choosing one (or offering an alternative – comments welcome) Chris would be doing that thing so rare among the political classes these days – telling us where he stands. I hope and trust that over the coming weeks he’ll do just that.

In the meantime, I expect and fear that this is the not last time such vacuous soundbites will be attached to a campaign.

It was the Press wot’ done it

Last night, as Simon Hughes and Vince Cable finished their announcement to the press on the doorsteps of the Liberal Democrats Cowley Street headquarters, a voice from amongst the serried ranks of journalists cried out “Who wielded the dagger?” For the answer to that question, the press might be better looking closer to home.

Sir Menzies Campbell has been dogged by a hostile press since his election to lead the party just 18 months ago. He had had an inauspicious start: the Conservatives had just elected their new leader only weeks before the Lib Dems only leadership crisis, in a competition that at the time was seen as very good for the Tories; the nature of Charles Kennedy’s departure left a bitter taste in the mouths of many voters and party activists (though not as bitter as the gin that was his downfall); and Ming’s early performances at Prime Minister’s Questions were not great.

Yet the story was far from simple. Within months of being elected leader, the Lib Dems scored to a brilliant by-election result in Bromley & Chislehurst: just 650 more votes and the future of both Sir Menzies and the Liberal Democrats might have been very different. The story at PMQs was far from one-sided and by all accounts he had been getting better. And his conference speech in Brighton last month was the best of his career.

And therein lies the truth of his demise. For all that success, the press were simply not interested. It was as if they did not want to hear that Sir Menzies, at 66 years of age, leading a Liberal Democratic Party, might actually have good, important points to make that the British people might want to hear. I thought it was an excellent speech, and so did many of my colleagues. But it had precisely no impact upon the media whatsoever.

For the press, the story had already been written: Ming was too old; the Young Turks were waiting in the wing’s; the Lib Dems were being squeezed (media-speak for our policies being stolen by the other parties); and if we did not dump our leaders soon we would crash to a defeat that would be worse than anything since the SDP merged with the Liberals in 1988. Forget the fact that in both this Summer’s parliamentary by-elections we came second and pushed “David Cameron’s Conservatives” into third place; or the fact that in the previous 15 council by-elections, we gained two seats and the Tories lost one, while Labour merely held their ground; or the fact that in my recent Council election, for example, we polled more votes than Labour and the Conservatives combined. For the press, the story was already written, because they had written it.

Now, the hypocrisy is in full swing. The media are variously saying that Sir Menzies was a nice chap but just overwhelmed by the negative press he’d received (from whom?); that he was getting better at his job but that the public were not listening (because the media weren’t conveying the message); and that he was assassinated (which, if true, may have been because every MP at every interview was asked when Ming would go).

If this dark episode has any silver lining, it is that the Lib Dems can look forward to some heightened media attention as Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne battle it out for the leadership (with, presumably, some others in the sidelines). However, it is unlikely that – when the dust settles – the press are going to be willing to give us the continuing coverage that we deserve, as a party that received a quarter of the votes in the last general election. Our future, with or without Sir Menzies, will be a tough battle in the face of a hostile media. Time to start writing those Focuses.

You don’t have to be mad to support the Tories, but it helps

A judge today called a man who left £8.7m to the Conservative Party in his will mad.

Handing down his judgement, Mr Justice Henderson, said Mr Kostic would not have left the money to the Tories if he had been "of sound mind".

He said the decision to leave the whole of the estate to the party was "in part the product of the state of his mind".

One wonders why it takes a court case to figure that out. I would have thought that wanting to bequeath your money to the Tories was in itself evidence that one was not of sound mind and thus automatically invalidated the will.