A New Labour Leadership
In the aftermath of election defeat, Labour seems to be acting on at least some of the lessons of recent history. But there is little to suggest that any of the declared candidates for the leadership have fully grasped the changed situation that now confronts them.
The leadership contest this time, with multiple candidates and a four month-long campaign, shows that the party at least recognises this time that a period of reflection is essential. There is to be no repeat of the uncontested coronation of Gordon Brown. While the 2010 defeat was on a smaller scale than might have been expected, there is clearly a need for a clear-out of a leadership that led the party down a cul-de-sac and wasted the greatest opportunity offered to a potentially reforming government since the Attlee government at the end of the Second World War.
And that is precisely where most of the candidates are immediately seen to struggle. It is to be expected, perhaps even inevitable, that after thirteen years in government any candidate with the required experience and standing in the party will be irredeemably associated with the record of the Blair/Brown government. Yet making a decisive break with that past is what is now needed.
This is not just a matter of acknowledging the mistakes that in the end disqualified Labour from re-election, though those failures – the shocking invasion of Iraq, the sickening subservience to the City, the “intense relaxation” about widening inequality, the complicity in torture –must be repudiated. Some of the declared candidates have – somewhat belatedly – begun that process, particularly in relation to the Iraq invasion. But there is also the small matter of a failed economic policy which has resulted in a serious structural imbalance and a gaping hole in the national accounts.
It may be, too, that the voters have signalled a reaction against the continued pretension to a world role that marked the Blair premiership, and have decided that what they want instead of foreign adventures is an administration that focuses on the unexciting but important business of providing competent, fair and representative government to a medium-sized and mature democracy, perhaps more akin to the Scandinavian model.
It is not all bad news for Labour. The election result – with the Tory failure to secure a majority despite the most favourable circumstances imaginable – suggests strongly that the country did not wish to return to what Tory strategists must have hoped were their Conservative roots. On the contrary, the experience of the global financial crisis, the reality of global warming, and the sickening spectacle of the City’s greed and selfishness seem to have had their impact. In the broadest sense, the voters have understood that the era of “grab what you can” and the devil take the hindmost, whether that means one’s fellow citizens or the planet, is over. That almost subterranean shift in sentiment should work powerfully in Labour’s favour.
But a new leadership must grasp that the world has changed. The 2010 election showed that the voters are not in the mood for a “strong”, “winner-takes-all” government of the kind that New Labour was and aspired to be. The election has produced a government that will be quite different from its predecessors – less tribal, and more inclusive, responsive and consultative. Whatever their eventual judgment of this particular coalition, the voters may well like what they see in this new form of collaboration.
So the new political context will require a different kind of government, one that will more effectively represent ordinary people and the wider and longer-term interest, and pay less attention to the rich and powerful, or to the political parties’ own interests. Politicians will need to be more humble. With electoral reform, a “hung” parliament and minority-led or coalition government could well become the norm. Labour will have to show that it is better equipped to deliver this kind of human-sized and responsive government than would a reformed and more moderate Tory party under David Cameron or than Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems who will be pitching themselves as the progressive alternative to the Tories.
That will require a quite different mindset from that of New Labour. It seems doubtful at this early stage of the leadership context whether any of the candidates is ready or able to make the leap of vision and understanding that is needed. We need leaders who can see the shape of the future and can lift their eyes to longer horizons.
David Miliband and Ed Balls are too much prisoners of their respective Blairite or Brownite pasts, though Ed Miliband is at least starting to use some fresh language that might just herald fresh thinking as well. Andy Burnham has immediately struck the right note in signalling a break with “stage-managed” politics but has a long way to go if he is to show that that means better than just tightening controls on immigration.
The candidatures of Diane Abbott or John McDonnell, if they materialise, will be welcome in terms of widening the debate but their re-assertion of familiar values will be weakened by the long odds against their election. Jon Cruddas would have been a valuable addition to the lists. If Labour is to grasp the moment, the next four months will have to be put to good use. The party needs time for reflection; the candidates do as well. We can expect further movements in their positions.
Bryan Gould
21 May 2010.
This article was published in the online Guardian on 24 May.
The Election the Parties Lost But the Country Won
The general election of 2010 was the most complex, fascinating and important British election of modern times. In one sense, it was the election that no one won. In another – and perhaps more significantly – it may have been the first election of a new twenty-first century era in which Britain has at last come to terms with the end of empire and abandoned the pretension to a world role.
For Labour, it was undeniably a defeat, but a defeat on a smaller scale than might have been expected, and one that at least suggests that there is another day to live for. The result should certainly lead to a clear-out of a leadership that led the party down a cul-de-sac and wasted the greatest opportunity offered to a potentially reforming government since the end of the Second World War. The shocking invasion of Iraq, the obeisance to the excesses of the City, the tolerance of widening and damaging inequality in British society, the complicity in torture, were betrayals of principle that were not easily forgiven. A leadership that chose to identify itself by claiming “Newness” cannot complain if the passage of time exacts its toll. Nothing is now more past its sell-by date than “New” Labour.
For the Conservatives, the result was bitter-sweet. David Cameron is in Downing Street and heads a government in which Tories hold the great offices of state. But the failure to win a majority was a fatal blow to any belief that Britain was about to return to its Conservative roots. If the Tories could not command a majority after thirteen years of a discredited Labour government headed by a deeply unpopular leader and off the back of the most severe recession in seventy-five years, it is hard to see the new Tory-led government as anything more than a default option.
The election result suggests, in other words, that Conservative Britain is no more. Something less than a quarter of all those eligible to vote cast their vote for a Tory government. David Cameron cannot rely, as his predecessors have done for so long, on a substantial bedrock of conservative sentiment. Even the Sun and Lord Ashcroft’s millions could not swing it this time. We can no longer assume that Conservative government is the rule and other options are the exceptions.
This is not to say that the outlook for the Conservatives is necessarily bleak. All depends now on Cameron’s ability to construct a new Tory support base, and he does at least – in addressing that task – have the advantage of being in government. Apart from all the other difficulties faced by his government, however, the one most likely to undermine his efforts to re-build Conservative support will be the refusal of his colleagues to understand their true situation. Too many of them will mistake the electorate’s impatience to dismiss a discredited Labour administration as an enthusiasm for the return of a Tory government, and will blame Cameron’s reforming moderation for failing to deliver a Tory majority. They will not understand that the constraints placed by the voters on the new government are a reflection of Tory weakness which only an acknowledgment of that weakness can hope to remedy.
For the Liberal Democrats, though, these are heady days. They may not, however, last long. The euphoria following Nick Clegg’s revelatory contribution to the first leaders’ television debate was short-lived and did not translate into votes and even less into seats. The elevation of the Liberal leader to the role of kingmaker was a function of the failure of the two larger parties to secure a majority rather than of any sudden transformation of the Liberal Democrats’ electoral fortunes.
A Difficult Hand for the Lib Dems to Play
The Lib Dems, however, will prefer to look to the present and future, rather than to the immediate past. For once, the electoral system has worked to their advantage. They have been dealt an exciting but difficult hand. All will now depend on how well that hand is played.
The dangers are all too apparent. The relationship in government between two parties which have on the face of it little in common and one of which is six times bigger than the other, at least in terms of seats, will always be difficult. For the smaller party, there is a tricky line to walk between on the one hand pushing for too much and being slapped down by the larger partner, and on the other being so subservient as to lose any separate identity.
It is in the nature of the political struggle that both parties, however well-intentioned they may be at the outset of the coalition agreement, will have a careful eye on the end game. For the Conservatives, the aim will be to keep the Lib Dems on side for as long as possible, so that the new Tory-led government can establish a record of responsibility and achievement, before going to the country with the plea that the time has come to dispense with the exigencies and limitations of coalition politics and to provide the larger party with a full mandate.
The Lib Dems on the other hand will want to support the coalition arrangement for long enough to demonstrate their fitness of government while at the same time maintaining a sufficiently separate identity as to allow them eventually to appeal to the electorate as a viable alternative to their erstwhile partners. Whatever his current and no doubt genuine commitment to the newly struck deal, Nick Clegg will inevitably be looking for issues on which to strike a different posture from that of the Tories – and perhaps even an issue on which he would be able to end the agreement and ask the voters to say that he was right to do so.
The Lib Dems will not accept a future for themselves as permanently junior partners in a succession of coalition arrangements. They will inevitably aim to offer the principal progressive alternative to the Tories, even if the Tories succeed in presenting themselves as reformed and moderate. Their long-term game plan, in other words must be to supplant Labour as the main alternative to Conservatism. That is why a coalition with the Tories, quite apart from the fact that they had the most votes and seats, was a better option than doing a deal with Labour. It will be easier to establish a distinctive identity by breaking with the Tories than it would have been with Labour.
These differing pressures will of course be played out in a context determined not just by the two party leaders but by their supporters as well. Those hinterlands are populated by many who are nastier and tougher – more committed party warriors perhaps – than they are. Both leaders, in other words, will have to face in opposite directions at the same time – towards their coalition partners and to their own party ideologues. That Janus-like stance is sure to become more difficult as time goes by.
Policy Issues for the Coalition Government
All this is to say nothing of the genuine differences of principle and policy that induced Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to join different political parties in the first place. The coalition deal required both parties to abandon at the outset policy objectives and prescriptions that had been regarded in both cases as central to their differing stances. While many both within the Lib Dems and outside will welcome Nick Clegg’s abandonment of the anachronistic commitment to joining the euro-zone, those differences – over Europe, immigration, economic policy, tax and public services – will still be there.
They will have to be negotiated in a context that is as difficult as any faced by any post-war government. The over-riding priority has to be the recovery from recession and the re-structuring of a British economy in serious and long-term imbalance. The immediate policy issue to be resolved is the response to be made to the government deficit – itself, ironically, the consequence of the massive failures of the private sector.
The Conservatives will regard the size of that deficit as anathema and its reduction as the most urgent priority of the new government. There will be many Lib Dems, but perhaps not including Nick Clegg, who will want a more Keynesian approach, recognising the deficit not only as the price to be paid for past errors but as providing the essential breathing space to allow for a recovery that will be all the stronger if based on building rather than cutting; and the stronger the recovery, the quicker the deficit will come down. And the pain suffered mainly by the most vulnerable as a result of unnecessarily and ideologically driven deep and immediate cuts will not ease the path of either coalition partner to electoral success at the next election.
While building a stronger and fairer British economy may top the list, there is a second objective of scarcely less importance – the restoration of faith in democratic politics and of Britain’s reputation in the world. Riding shotgun to George Bush’s out-of-control sheriff did enormous damage to our standing. A return to something like Robin Cook’s “ethical foreign policy” is desperately needed, but is likely to commend itself more to the Lib Dems than to the Tories.
Electoral Reform – Is It Really A Game-Breaker?
Many Lib Dems, however, will be ready to accept almost anything as long as they secure delivery of their central goal – electoral reform, which they have persuaded themselves will transform their prospects. The commitment to a referendum on the Alternative Vote may not, though, deliver that to them. Quite apart from the need to secure the legislation for a referendum, the Alternative Vote is not the most obvious or effective form of proportional representation and there is no guarantee that the voters would support it. And even if PR is achieved, the consequences for the Lib Dems may not be quite what they expect.
The experience of New Zealand, which changed from first-past-the-post to a proportional system fourteen years ago, is that voters have a surprising ability to maintain the fundamental choice between a left-of-centre government and a right-of-centre government, even under a proportional system. PR may, in other words, mean that every vote gained because the Lib Dems are newly seen as serious contenders for power might be matched by the loss of a Lib Dem vote that had previously been cast as a form of protest. Fortunately for democracy, we know little about what determines the way people vote.
This is not to say that there is not a good case for electoral reform. The New Zealand experience is again informative. The real significance of abandoning single-party government is the change that it brings to the process of government. The New Zealand experience of minority-led government has been that Ministers are constantly engaged in a process of negotiation; each piece of legislation, each major policy decision, has to be preceded by discussions to ensure that a parliamentary majority exists to support that particular measure.
Curiously, this does not seem to have meant that the government’s programme is hopelessly delayed or frustrated. It has meant, at times of course, that legislation cannot be introduced until the necessary deals have been done, but the corollary is that the passage of more thoroughly prepared and carefully drafted legislation – once introduced – is smoother and takes less time. An even bigger plus is that the legislation – appealing as it must to a wider constituency than that represented by just one party – is often more soundly based and widely supported, with more of its contentious rough edges rounded off.
The psychological change is also important. There is less of Quintin Hogg’s “elective dictatorship”. There is less obsession with doing down the opposition parties at every opportunity, since their support might be needed on the next item in the government’s programme. Governments are not only freer, but are required, to think more about broad-based positions than about the immediate party battle. There is a greater understanding of the value of broad public support and keeping in touch with public opinion. And Parliament itself is more widely representative of the range of opinion, and its members have a greater interest in and understanding of the processes and responsibilities of government.
Welcome to the Twenty-First Century
Perhaps the most significant long-term consequence of the 2010 general election, however, is that it may herald the demise of a dominating aspect of British politics for 200 years or more, the sense that in electing a British government we are also electing an administration that will play a significant role in governing the world. The oft-repeated need for “strong” government is in many ways a hangover from an imperial past when British education, public service and government were directed at providing able administrators to run large parts of the globe. Certainty and authority in decision-making were everything.
But today, Britain’s role is as a medium-sized country which needs to focus on creating an effective, inclusive and prosperous democracy at home, rather than on wasting resources and energy on pretensions to a world role that is now beyond us. Other comparable countries, in Europe and elsewhere, have done very well without our particular obsession with “strong” (for which read “tribal”) single-party government and a winner-takes-all electoral system. A sustained experience of coalition government and a more representative Parliament, with all that that means in terms of inclusiveness, responsiveness and taking the wider view, might help us to that realisation.
Bryan Gould
15 May 2010.
This article was published on the Newnations website www.newnations.com on 18 May
The Real Story of the 2010 Election
Let us make some entirely plausible assumptions about the outcome of the general election. Let us assume that the Conservatives attract the largest share of votes, but fall short of a majority either of votes or of seats. Let us assume that Labour comes second or third in terms of the number of votes but might actually win the greatest number of seats, though still well short of a parliamentary majority. And finally let us assume that the Liberal Democrats score well – and perhaps substantially better than was expected at the outset of the campaign – in both votes and seats and, as a necessary consequence, hold the balance of power.
The first issue will be for the Queen and her advisers. In such circumstances, who does Her Majesty ask to form a government? Do her advisers stick to precedent and advise that Gordon Brown, as the incumbent and commanding the greatest number of seats, should get the nod? Or do they pay attention to the pre-election assertion by Nick Clegg that, as a proponent of proportional representation, he would support only the Party leader who had gained the biggest share of the vote?
I suspect that the advisers would initially stick to precedent and that Gordon Brown would be asked to give it a try. I further suspect that, unless he were prepared to give a guarantee of a referendum on electoral reform, his attempt would founder on Clegg’s determination to stick to his guns. The failed attempt could, however, take some time before the failure became definitive.
The Queen would then ask David Cameron to form a government. He would seem to have a better chance of success, being able to argue that he had won the greatest share of votes. Nick Clegg would again try to extract a major commitment on electoral reform, but Cameron would refuse to accommodate him. Clegg would, however, be compelled, for fear of being accused of irresponsibility and of forcing a second and unwanted election on the country, to do some sort of deal to allow Cameron to form a government.
That deal would probably fall short of a formal coalition but might take the form of an undertaking to support the new government on issues of confidence and supply. It might be time-limited, but whether or not the deal included any such formal provision, the issues of how long it might last and of the circumstances in which it might be brought to an end would constitute the real story of the 2010 general election.
The parties to the deal, both Cameron and Clegg, would have clear but conflicting strategic objectives. Both could imagine scenarios which would greatly advance their parties’ interests.
Cameron would hope to emulate the experience of other leaders of minority governments who had used the prestige of government to underpin their electoral appeal and to push on in a second election to achieve an overall majority. Harold Wilson pulled this trick off twice.
But it might not be so easy this time. Cameron has to grapple with urgent and desperate issues. He either begins to deal with them effectively and accepts the pain that will inevitably attend such an enterprise, or he ducks the issues and is easily attacked as failing to attack the country’s all too obvious problems. A year or two into a new Tory government, and the voters could be – one way or another – badly disappointed. The honeymoon this time might be a very short one.
For Nick Clegg, the issues are almost equally daunting. His task will be to pull the plug on the new government at a time when he won’t be accused of irresponsibility and of plunging the country into further electoral turmoil. He will want an issue which will, from both a position of principle and of prospective electoral advantage, allow him to go to the country as the alternative government. He will argue that while he had played his part in providing stable government he could no longer support a Tory-led administration that was heading down the wrong path. But his long-term objective would rest on the assertion that the Lib Dems were now the only party that could both defeat the Tories and form a stable majority government.
It is now 100 years since Labour began its push to supplant the Liberals as the alternative to the Tories. The Conservatives, like the poor, are always with us (and some would argue that there is a causal connection between the two propositions). The perennial question in British politics is as to who will constitute the alternative. Today’s Liberals have their sights on the real possibility of reversing 100 years of history.
Bryan Gould
4 May 2010
This article was published in the online Guardian on 5 May.
Don’t Be Frightened of a Hung Parliament
The phrase “a hung Parliament” invariably suggests an incapacitating weakness in the political process and a government that will be constitutionally incapable of taking decisive action. This, it is thought, is the last thing that is needed at a time of national crisis when hard decisions will have to be taken.
While, therefore, there will be many to welcome a strong general election showing from the Liberal Democrats, there will be many others who will worry that it would make it virtually certain that no one party will have a majority. How, it may be asked, can the necessarily tough action be taken by a government that cannot command the House?
We do not need to look far for the answer. Not only have we had our own relatively recent experience of a government functioning without a majority, in the form of Jim Callaghan’s 1976-79 government (which admittedly was rejected by the voters, though not because it failed to take hard decisions), but there are many instances from abroad of governments that have performed well in those circumstances.
One such instance is particularly instructive, since it comes from a country that operates a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy very much like our own. New Zealand consistently rates at or near the top in international assessments of the effectiveness of its democracy, yet no New Zealand government has enjoyed an overall parliamentary majority since 1996.
That was the year of the first election held under a new proportional representation electoral system. Since that date, no party has won a majority. Governments have been formed by the leader of the party that has been handed by the voters the best chance of putting together the necessary support from other parties. The arrangements negotiated on occasion by each of the major parties have depended on the relative size and political stance of the minor parties whose support is needed. They have varied from formal coalition agreements, to support arrangements – short of coalition – that have provided governmental posts for minor parties, to simple assurances of support on “confidence and supply” issues, to unspecific understandings that broad support can be relied upon.
But those immediate post-election negotiations about the formation of a government are only half the story. The real significance of non-majority government is the change that it brings to the process of government. The New Zealand experience has been that government Ministers are constantly engaged in a process of negotiation; each piece of legislation, each major policy decision, has to be preceded by discussions to ensure that a parliamentary majority exists to support that particular measure.
Curiously, this does not seem to have meant that the government’s programme is hopelessly delayed or frustrated. It has meant, at times of course, that legislation cannot be introduced until the necessary deals have been done, but the corollary is that the passage of more thoroughly prepared and carefully drafted legislation – once introduced – is smoother and takes less time. An even bigger plus is that the legislation – appealing as it must to a wider constituency than that represented by just one party – is often more soundly based and widely supported, with more of its contentious rough edges rounded off, than it would otherwise be.
The psychological change is also important. There is less of Quintin Hogg’s “elective dictatorship.” There is less obsession with doing down the opposition parties at every opportunity, since their support might be needed on the next item in the government’s programme. In other words, governments are not only freer to, but are required to, think more about broad-based positions than about the immediate party battle. There is a greater understanding of the value of broad public support and keeping in touch with public opinion. And Parliament itself is more widely representative of the range of opinion, and its members have a greater interest in and understanding of the processes of government.
It is not necessary to idealise these outcomes. Government is still a messy, difficult, at times bad-tempered, partisan business. But we should not be frightened of ghosts and shadows. If the voters on 6 May deliver a hung Parliament, that will not mean that we must kiss goodbye to effective government. The pluses of less confrontational governmental politics might well outweigh the minuses. A government that represents nearer a majority of voters, rather than the 25% we have become accustomed to, might actually do quite well. We might even get a government that was able to use the broad support it was able to command to deliver not only immediately essential corrective measures but also necessary and long overdue reform.
Bryan Gould
18 April 2010.
This article was published in the online Guardian on 19 April
Joy In Heaven – A Sinner Repents
When I left British politics in 1994, the Independent published a leading article in which, alongside some generous comments, they regretted my adherence to “Keynesian macroeconomics” and my “fervent Euro-scepticism”.
I imagine that support for Keynesian macroeconomics does not seem as anachronistic today as it apparently did then. And, I would argue, my “Euro-scepticism” (which was so easily and wrongly translated into anti-Europeanism) should now more readily be recognised as all of a piece with the Keynesian view that keeping control of one’s own macroeconomic policy, rather than handing it over to an unaccountable international central bank, was an important safeguard against recession.
I was reminded of all of this by last week’s Financial Times piece by the veteran economics commentator Sam Brittan. He argued that the introduction of the euro had been premature, and that the plight of Greece (and perhaps of other euro-zone states to follow) was a direct consequence of failing to recognise that a common currency could succeed only if there was a convergence of costs across the whole economy – and if the common currency helped towards, rather than hindered, that end.
Sam Brittan’s current view is of course in marked contrast to what he thought and wrote on many previous occasions. I recall that, in 1988, when Britain’s membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism – the euro’s precursor – was a live issue in the Labour Party, Sam Brittan spoke at a meeting of the party’s backbench economic affairs committee, and advised my colleagues to “put Bryan Gould on a slow boat to China” while the party changed its policy in favour of supporting ERM membership.
Since Keynes is now once again all the rage, Sam Brittan is entitled to quote the great man’s famous response that “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?” The problem here is that it is not the facts that have changed; it is the minds that were wrong. The arguments against a common currency across such a wide and diverse set of individual economies were as strong in 1988 as they apparently have now become.
The essence of the case for the euro (and of the EMS and the ERM before it) was always a political one. A common currency can only work and make sense if the whole economy is subject to one central monetary policy which must supplant other elements, such as a national fiscal policy, that would ordinarily constitute macro-economic policy. In a democracy, a power of this kind could only be properly exercised by a democratically accountable government. The unstated conviction of the proponents of a single European super-state was that this logic would mean that a common currency would inexorably lead to the creation of a single European government to provide at least the illusion of democratic control over what would otherwise be government by central bank..
The economic consequences of such an arrangement pointed to the same outcome. The improbability of the whole of such a diverse economy being appropriately served by a single monetary policy was so great that it could only be contemplated if a sort of Faustian bargain were struck by the participants.
The powerful advanced economies would inevitably dominate monetary policy which would be framed to suit their interests; and that would mean that weaker economies would have great difficulty in living with it. In the absence of the ability to deploy an independent fiscal policy or to devalue, their only recourse would be to deflate and accept unemployment. They could be persuaded to accept this only if the stronger countries would implicitly undertake to treat them as – in effect -social security claimants and recipients of regional aid, and that could be made palatable to the taxpayers of the richer countries only if they could be induced to see those in poorer countries as fellow-citizens.
That bargain has now – as evidenced by the difficulties that Greece and their euro-partners are facing and failing to resolve – broken down. The Greeks, having long struggled with an inappropriate monetary policy, are finding the required deflation extremely painful; while the Germans have reneged on their implicit undertaking to maintain the integrity of the euro by bailing out countries that find the going tough.
The collapse of that bargain may well signal the end of the euro-zone. But it should also sound an alarm. We ignore the importance of a broader-based, democratically accountable, properly focused macroeconomic policy at our peril. The economic interests of a wider European economy – to say nothing of small matters like a functioning democracy – will be best served, not by a forced but failed attempt at convergence through a single monetary policy, but by country-sized governments deploying all the instruments of macro policy to suit the needs and interests of the economies for which they are responsible. The European dimension should rest mainly on a high and growing level of co-ordination of policy and functional cooperation among separate and well-performing economies which see their future as developing together.
Keynesian macroeconomics and a scepticism about forcing the pace on creating a single European state and economy should be seen as going hand in hand. As we now know, a failure to learn the lessons threatens recession and drags down all parts of an artificially constructed single economy. Hopefully, that has now become clear; and it might have served us well if it had been recognised in 1994.
Bryan Gould
25 February 2010
This article was published in the online Guardian on 27 February.