Lumping, packing and rigging: AV and boundary changes

As the House of Lords filibuster on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill continues, Sky News’s Glen O’Glaza asks:

Here, briefly, is my take on that question.

The Lib Dems want a referendum on AV, because that’s the nearest they think they can get to PR in the near future. The Tories want a reduction in seats in the Commons, because (a) they think it will weaken Labour, and (b) it will weaken the House of Commons and strengthen the executive’s grip on Parliament. Frankly, I suspect (b) is the more important reason.

(As for the professed desire to “make the system cheaper”: this is hard to reconcile, to put it politely, with packing the Lords at the same time. Not to mention being a deeply unworthy reason for such a significant constitutional change – as if the composition of the House of Commons were merely a matter of budgeting and administration. The “cost-cutting” argument is just an expedient to secure public support at a time when the Commons’ reputation is at its lowest ebb for centuries.)

So why are AV and seat reductions lumped together? Because the Tories know the referendum on AV is going to fail, but that will not affect the reduction in seats (which is not subject to a referendum). At the same time, linking the two reduces attention on the reduction in MPs’ numbers and allows the government to paint Labour as hypocritical blockers of electoral reform when they oppose the Bill.

Does that sound cynical? Maybe it is, but not as cynical as this exercise in lumping (together), packing (the Lords) and rigging (Parliament) in the first place.

Chinese education: the flip-side

There’s been a lot of coverage recently of Michael Gove’s Daily Telegraph article praising the Chinese educational system. Much of this has been critical (including this post by the Telegraph’s Shanghai correspondent) , not least because of Gove’s historically-ignorant use of the phrase “Cultural Revolution” to describe the changes he’d like to make to the UK educational system.

Sonny Leong, chair of Chinese for Labour, has written an excellent post on LabourList giving the flip side to China’s apparent high performance in maths and science education. Quite apart from the immense pressure that students are put under, leading to “high suicide rates”, this test-oriented system leads to weaknesses in other areas of educational development:

[Chinese students] are taught to memorise – parrot fashion – and regurgitate what they have studied for exams. Any analysis, discussion or exploration of other concepts or ideals are alien to their learning processes.

These students fail abysmally at non-standardised tests – open-book; open-notes; Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs); and True/False assessments. Why? Because they do not know how to pass exams that they have not practised for. Their incapability to apply knowledge acquired in a classroom to real life or non-standardised exams is a cause of concern for many parents and educators.

Students grow up lacking social interaction, interpersonal, teamwork and communicating skills because they have not been allowed to acquire or develop them. All their waking hours are spent on memorising and more memorising.

Leong continues:

As a Chinese father, I would not be happy at all in schooling my four year old daughter in Singapore or Shanghai. I wouldn’t want my child to go through the ‘pressure cooker’ educational system where she is taught just to pass exams and incapable of any further comprehension.

I’m not saying the current state of UK education is perfect, but we shouldn’t fetishise the Chinese system. Sadly, I suspect a Gradgrindian system of rote learning which crushes any “analysis, discussion or exploration of other concepts or ideals” is precisely the educational model to which many Tories aspire – for other people’s children. I’d have hoped that Michael Gove would know better, though.

Selfishness and socialism

Excellent post by Chris Dillow giving some home truths to the left on the major obstacle confronting it. As he puts it (after quoting Socrates in his support):

…a just society requires a just people. Which we don’t have.

Or to be more specific:

The brute fact is that there is no public demand for liberal socialist policies. Voters don’t want worker ownership, a citizens’ basic income, a liberal immigration policy, steeper inheritance taxes or many other items on the left’s wish list. I’ll grant that there is some demand for higher taxes on the rich, but I fear this is arises less from socialist ideals than from the same motive as hostility towards paedophiles and immigrants – a hatred of people who are different.

Of course, some reading this will disagree vehemently that Dillow’s “wish list” would represent a “just society”, but his point still stands: it’s impossible to build a society like that unless the people in it want a society like that. And, by and large, people in western societies don’t want a society like that.

As Dillow goes on to point out, it’s no use telling people that they are stupid and blinded by the capitalist media, either. So if we want to build “a significantly better world” from “the crooked timber of our own humanity”, how can we go about it? As Dillow asks:

are there any social institutions which can use people’s imperfections – their selfishness, greed and stupidity – for beneficial purposes?

Because that’s what’s needed. And the answer is not a comfortable one for the left:

[H]erein lies yet another embarrassment for much of the left. There is indeed one such institution. It’s called the market. The left – so far – has not found anything to match it.

This is similar to the late G.A. Cohen’s argument, in his book Why Not Socialism?, that socialism is unachievable (at least at present) because of the lack of mechanisms as effective as the market – though Cohen sought mechanisms that would harness people’s instincts for community and altruism rather than (as does the market) harnessing their selfish desires for public benefits.

Vince’s dance of death

Well, Vince Cable may technically still be Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, but there’s no doubt what we’ve seen today is the first stage in what promises to be the most grisly, protracted and unedifying resignation in British politics since Clare Short “wrestled with her conscience” over the Iraq invasion.

Many observers have already noted the irony of Jeremy Hunt – scourge of the BBC and advocate for “cross-media ownership” – being appointed to exercise the “quasi-judicial impartiality” required in deciding whether to allow Murdoch to take 100% ownership of BSkyB. Gosh, I wonder what decision he’ll reach, eh, kids?

But there is a difference between Hunt’s bias and that of Cable. Yes, Hunt comes to this decision with a completely biased and politically-loaded perspective, one which makes it almost inevitable he will allow Murdoch to take over BSkyB. Just as it was inevitable that he would squeeze (and will continue to squeeze) the BBC – ideally, one suspects, into non-existence.

But the point is that these are matters of political judgment and political opinion – in other words, precisely why we have elected ministers making these decisions, however much of a “quasi-judicial” element there may also be. Any such decision is a mixture of objective assessment and subjective discretion. That discretion is often very wide.

However much it sticks in our throat to see Murdoch win yet another battle, if Hunt can show that the BSkyB takeover meets the appropriate objective criteria, it is then legitimate for him to exercise his discretion as a minister according to the political convictions on which he was elected.

What it’s not legitimate for a minister to do is to start (or give the impression of starting) a personal vendetta against a particular individual or organisation. That’s why Jeremy Hunt won’t openly put the boot into the BBC per se, but will instead call for “financial responsibility” (i.e. cutting the licence fee) and “freeing up the market” (i.e. giving BSkyB free rein). And that’s why Cable was stupid and vain for expressing his agenda in personal terms, and has set back the anti-Murdoch cause irrevocably by doing so.

What Cable should have said – and what he would no doubt say he meant by what he did say – was that he had declared war on vested interests that accumulate power in a way that threatens fair competition and consumer rights within the broadcasting and media markets. Then, upon exercising his discretion, he may well – who knows? 😉 – have determined that Rupert Murdoch’s empire represented just such a vested interest whose power needed to be restricted.

Still, easy for me to say that. I don’t have two pretty Telegraph journalists sweet-talking me into saying something stupid to impress them, do I…?

Michael Gove, class warrior

Much is (rightly) being made of a revealing column Michael Gove wrote in his op-ed days arguing in favour of higher tuition fees. What has attracted most attention is his statement that:

anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of [a £21,000] debt doesn’t deserve to be at any university in the first place.

However, of far more importance in helping understand the mentality of those now running our country is this observation a couple of paragraphs later:

Those of us who are net contributors to the State, graduates or not, are getting a terrible deal for our money. We could guarantee far superior healthcare and schooling for our families if only the Government gave us back the money which it confiscates from us in taxes and then spends on the schools and hospitals which it runs so badly.

This shows a far more radically right-wing mindset than the present government is prepared to own up to publicly, but which surely informs many of its actions.

First, the mentality of being the “us” who are “net contributors” to the State, versus (by implication) the “them” whom “we” are “subsidising”.

Second, the view that taxation to fund public services is “confiscation” from those “net contributors”.

Third, the clear desire for the “far superior healthcare and schooling” which “we” could guarantee for “our” families if the government gave that money back and let “us” spend it ourselves – no mention of what implications this might have for “them”. But then, if “they” are afraid of a little debt, then they don’t deserve an education anyway, do “they”?

This is naked class-war politics. So much for “we’re all in this together”.

The left’s Tea Party politics

David Aaronovitch’s column today on “the Tea Party of the Left” (marooned behind the Times paywall, so no link, alas) is a healthy splash of cold water in the face for Labour supporters.

He begins with “the sense that the great Labour hinterland, largely quiet on the domestic front for half a generation, is now up for a bit of upheaval”:

Up for a bit of indulging in nostalgia for the great Maggie Out years when you knew where you stood, before Labour victory and compromises made things so complicated.

This can be seen in the apologetics from some Labour supporters on the subject of last week’s Millbank rioting – “when you’re really cross, what’s a bit of plate glass?” – not to mention former ministers “unblushingly” ditching “half a decade’s presumed consent” to policies such as student tuition fees. Aaronovitch continues:

Hitherto rational folk are having Get Out of Jail Free fantasies about how the coalition could just raise taxes (“for the rich”, naturally), cancel Trident and then none of these fee hikes, job losses, cuts in benefits, and the zillion other government outrages, need happen. But the Bastards won’t do it.

As Aaronovitch observes, all this is a matter of atmospherics rather than of open argument:

You might describe it as a Tea-Partyism of the Left, in which the idea of what you are against is in the mental and cultural foreground, brightly lit, very specific and deeply felt – whereas the idea of what you yourself would do recesses into the unexplored shadows.

The result is that even those policies which show some promise, such as increased use of mutualisation and social enterprises, are subject to furious attack rather than a desire to see them go further and be improved.

As Aaronovitch points out, we shouldn’t be assuming that anger at the coalition will translate into success for Labour at the next election. People were angry at Tory recklessness and divisiveness in the 1980s, and yet Mrs Thatcher won two successive landslides. Which brings us to the Labour party, where Aaronovitch puts into words the uneasiness I’ve been feeling about Ed Miliband recently:

People have begun wondering whether the word Miliband is Yiddish for “a long gap between things happening”. The period of unexpected contemplation by the new leader is set to end next week with a policy relaunch. This is important, not because Ed M should tell us details of policies that he can’t implement, but because it can set out a rough plan for the foundering, foolish, fond centre-left masses to coalesce around.

Let’s be blunt: if the economy recovers then the Tories (with or without the Lib Dems) will probably win the next election handsomely, however divisive and damaging their policies may be for the bottom 30% or so of households by income, and whatever Ed Miliband and Labour do (or don’t do) between then and now. But unless Labour can begin to establish a coherent narrative to its opposition – a narrative that is currently completely absent, or at least undetectable to the naked eye – then we are looking at a decade or more of Tory devastation.

When losing is winning

At first I thought William Saletan’s latest column in Slate, Pelosi’s Triumph, was going to be yet another piece of post-election straw-clutching denial. You know the sort of thing: “It could have been worse!”, “We’ve still got the Senate!”, and so on.

Instead, it turned into a thoughtful and persuasive argument that what matters in politics isn’t winning and losing elections, but what happens between elections. Health care is being blamed for the Democrats’ defeat, but as Saletan points out:

…if health care did cost the party its majority, so what? The bill was more important than the election.

He quotes David Frum, who wrote back in March:

Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever.

As Saletan observes:

Politicians have tried and failed for decades to enact universal health care. This time, they succeeded. In 2008, Democrats won the presidency and both houses of Congress, and by the thinnest of margins, they rammed a bill through. They weren’t going to get another opportunity for a very long time. It cost them their majority, and it was worth it.

This made me consider two Labour governments: the New Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Attlee government.

New Labour took as fundamental the need to win and retain power, and it did so with great success, resulting in easily the longest continuous period of Labour government in history. However, it is undoubtedly the case that New Labour’s focus on the retention of power – that is, winning elections – distorted and constrained its actions in office, leading to a familiar sequence of lurches between populist “eye-catching initiatives” and cautious hedging aimed at keeping Middle England (and the Daily Mail and Murdoch press) on board as far as possible.

As a result, while New Labour achieved far more in office than many of its critics outside and inside the party often acknowledge, it has become painfully apparent in recent months how easy it will be for the Conservatives to obliterate vast areas of Labour achievement from 1997 to 2010. By 2015, one wonders how much of the New Labour legacy will survive at all.

By contrast, the Attlee government only achieved 6 years in office, and in particular failed to win re-election for even one further full term after the 1945 landslide. On the Blairite template this makes Attlee a failure. However, Clement Attlee and his colleagues spent their time from 1945 to 1950 concentrating more on what they did with power than on how they would retain it. As a result, they reshaped and transformed British life in ways that survive to this day, and to which even the Tories still have to pay lip-service.

In short, the Attlee government achieved (and, I’d have to say, New Labour did not) the outcome that William Saletan ascribes to the healthcare bill:

a huge structural change in the relationship between the public, the economy, and the government.

It’s tempting after this year’s election defeat, and especially as we look in horror at what is happening under the new government, to think in terms of how Labour can secure another long period in office. Perhaps, though, we should take a leaf out of Clement Attlee’s book (and, William Saletan might argue, Nancy Pelosi’s), and realise that a single term of radical transformation may be better than three or four terms of cautious hedging and managerialism.

Over the cliff-edge

“Look and learn from across the Irish Sea.” – George Osborne, February 2006.

I wasn’t planning to add to the deluge of comment on the Comprehensive Spending Review, but I thought it worth linking to Johann Hari’s superb assault on the ideologically-driven cruelty and irrationality of Cameron’s and Osborne’s plans for this country.

The whole article deserves to be read, but here is a summary of some of the key ways in which “beneath the statistics, there was a swathe of human tragedies that will now unnecessarily unfold across Britain”:

  • PricewaterhouseCoopers – “nobody’s idea of a Trotskyite cell” – predicts that a million people will now lose their jobs as a direct result of the cuts.
  • The poorest 16-year olds lose the £30 a week intended to help them afford to stay in school.
  • Care services for the elderly cut by 30 per cent.
  • Every family living on benefits set to lose an average of £1,000 a year.
  • One of the most jaw-dropping stats in Haris’ article: “There will be on average one new home built per week in the whole of London and the south-east.” (This when 4.5m people are on housing waiting lists, and the average age of a first-time buyer is 37 – and their deposit, as a colleague told me last week, needs to be £70,000.)
  • Housing benefit changes will drive 83,000 Londoners from their homes, with 1.3 million ending up in more debt. (That’s just Londoners, never mind elsewhere in the country.)

Meanwhile Vodafone is let off £6bn in tax, the bankers who caused the crash help themselves to another £7bn in bonuses (the same as the amount of cuts in welfare announced yesterday) – and the whole country is forced to follow the Tories as they drive “a disproven ideology over a cliff”, quite possibly taking the economy with it.

In all this, we shouldn’t just focus our ire on Osborne or Clegg (who tend to get the most invective directed towards them from opposition supporters). Opinion polls are already highlighting the risk that Cameron is being seen as a “presidential” figure, above the political fray and insulated from the effects of unpopular decisions taken by those below him. But these are Cameron’s plans as much as Osborne’s, and we shouldn’t forget how he lied about them before the election:

On the eve of the general election, Cameron told us: “There’ll be no cuts to frontline services,” “we’re not talking about swingeing cuts,” and “all cuts will be fair”.

Well, now we know.

Child benefit: hitting the middle, not just the rich

One point that has been made in relation to the child benefit changes is that earning £44,000 is not “average”, but puts you in the top 10% of earners in the country. (Indeed, I made it in my own previous post.)

Before we get too carried away with that idea, however, we should bear in mind this is about household income rather than individuals. To see what type of households this change will affect, I went over to the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ excellent “Where do you fit in?” site and entered the following details:

  • Family of four: two adults, single earner, two children aged 0-13.
  • Household income after tax: £32,860 (equating to £45,000 gross for a single earner, according to this calculator).
  • Council tax: £1,200 a year.

According to the IFS, a family fitting that profile is on the 57th percentile of household incomes:

In other words, more or less slap bang in the middle – and with plenty of people only just below that level, whose aspirations to a higher income will be discouraged (to put it mildly) by the prospect of an instant loss of child benefit.