And they’re off!

Some academic colleagues are even making pro-Tory noises on the grounds that David Willetts “understands what universities are”.

Which is an odd reason to give, since the current prime minister actually is a former university lecturer, and David Willetts isn’t.

My ‘unfair’ comment was a response to i). Ajay’s comment is odder — in my experience lots of people who have never been university lecturers understand what universities are better than lots who are, let alone who were for a short period while trying to become an MP.

4: that’s a bit dismissive. Ceteris paribus, you’d expect the guy who was a full-time lecturer for four years to know a bit more about it, no? Willetts is a Treasury type with a background in monetary and fiscal policy. He’s been a visiting lecturer for a few years while actually being an MP.

Here’s Tory David Cameron talking about the Next Age of Government at TED:
http://www.youtube.com/v/3ELnyoso6vI&hl

Interesting that he’s all about community and transparency and his favorite speeches of the last 50 years are by JFK and RFK. Good thing that Maggie Thatcher has no short term memory left.

I don’t doubt that Cameron and his leadership are, really, very different from what the Tories offered before on social (compassionate conservative) issues, whereas GWB was, well, different in the other direction. In that way the frequently made comparison between his leadership team and the Blairite group is a fair comparison (they both really are different from what came before, and are not much different from each other). The difference, it seems to me, is that the Kinnock/Mandelson/Clarke/Blair/Brown group genuinely changed the character of their party, right down to the roots, and for a very long time (maybe for good). I think that because I watched the whole thing pretty closely, knowing a fair number of party members who genuinely moved quite quickly to the right, not insincerely and not particularly self-consciously. The question is, has the same thing happened to the Tories? I doubt it, myself, though I can’t have access to the kind of information that would give me confidence in my judgment (Peter Briffa, since you’re here, what do you think??). If I’m right, and the Tories win with a small majority or have to strike a deal with the LibDems, life will not be much fun for Cameron and his team.

If Labour wins, David Miliband is going to be feeling a bit of a chump, I suspect.

Brown was a lecturer at a Polytechnic in the 70’s, if I’m not mistaken. That does fit with Labour’s approach to higher education. (And no, I’m not being a snob: I teach at a new University).

@ Harry

The British electorate have lost their chance to give Labour a bloody nose over Iraq. This election can only be almost exclusively about popular perceptions of the economy.

The REF, and particularly the “impact agenda,” will without doubt seriously distort and mediocritise academic research in the UK for no good reason, and could not have been proposed by anyone who understands what a university is (by which I mean, what a university is supposed to be). Willets has expressed opposition to both; this is pro tanto evidence that he knows what a university is. Nothing follows about whether one should vote Tory, or whether the Tories will cut the UK HE sector (they probably will, savagely).

Willets has expressed opposition to both; this is pro tanto evidence that he knows what a university is. Nothing follows about whether one should vote Tory, or whether the Tories will cut the UK HE sector (they probably will, savagely).

quite: the proverb “money talks and bullshit walks” comes to mind.

I’ll rephrase that.

Some academic colleagues are even making pro-Tory noises

Guilty as charged, on the grounds stated by Darius, although on mature reflection I agree with his conclusion.

Neil @21, see also US 2000. I can’t believe that after eight years of GWB, anyone on the left can even *possibly consider* suggesting that the two sides are indistinguishable.

Or, specifically, suggesting that in a tightly-fought centrist vs far-right-in-centrist-clothes battle won on FPTP, there’s some kind of merit or moral purity in voting for further-left-leaning candidates with no hope of winning.

If you live in a Labour/Tory marginal seat in the UK, and you don’t vote Labour, you are not left-wing. You’re supporting and contributing to every nasty, repressive thing that Chris Grayling believes. Ditto if you live in a LD/Tory marginal and you don’t vote LD.

(obviously, if you live in any other kind of marginal seat, or in a seat you’re confident will remain safely incumbent-held, you’re free to vote for whoever you like and still class yourself as left-wing…)

johnb, I am sympathetic to you, but…

I can’t believe that after eight years of GWB, anyone on the left can even possibly consider suggesting that the two sides are indistinguishable… If you live in a Labour/Tory marginal seat in the UK, and you don’t vote Labour, you are not left-wing.

…This part of your comment would make a lot more sense if Labour under Blair hadn’t supported the War in Iraq. I guess you can assert that Labour didn’t start the Iraq War — that’s… something? — but would the Tories have started it, either?

Iraq’s an area where Labour did something morally wrong for a stupid reason (ie “maintaining our Special Relationship with the US”) that the Tories would absolutely, definitely and unequivocally also have followed. So yes, if Iraq’s the sole issue that floats your vote, then there’s no point in voting for either the Tories or Labour, because they had the same policy and it was wrong.

But if you’re actually left-wing (rather than, say, George Galloway), and base your vote on a range of things rather than just on the attitude the party had two Parliaments ago to a war that’s now all-but over, and you live in a constituency where the winner will either be from a right-wing party that was wrong on Iraq or a centrist party that was wrong on Iraq, then you’re still morally obliged to vote for the latter.

It’s also worth remembering the very limited harm that was done by Tony Blair’s decision to get involved in Iraq. The net result was that:

a) a lot of people internationally thought the British were slightly more wankerish than they previously thought us, at least until they forgot about it again.

b) the risk of Islamist terrorism against UK nationals rose from imperceptibly low to still imperceptibly low but slightly higher than before.

(also, some of the military casualties of the war became people with British passports instead of people with American passports. As far as I can see, that doesn’t affect the total harm done…)

john b, Blair provided extremely useful cover for Bush’s decision to go to war. In my opinion it is highly questionable the Iraq war would have happened without British support. As for the other issues someone left wing might care about, Blair consciously continued Thatcherite policies. There’s absolutely nothing left wing about New Labour – it’s simply not quite as horribly right wing as the Tories are.

Phil — its all much too hard to decide in particular cases, but some Tory MPs are to the left of some LibDems, and maybe some Labour MPs, at least on issues where they might have some impact. It could only matter in a hung, or very narrowly held, parliament, in which parties will have great difficulty controlling their fringes. But that is the hoped-for outcome, and if the election goes solidly Tory it doesn’t matter much who wins your seat.

Salient is right about the US, which is mostly different from the UK.

Brown was the Rector at Edinburgh while still a student (1), so `four years as a lecturer while trying to become an MP’ is a bit of an understatement.

(1) Yes this was a bit of an odd occurrence.

john b: Oh dear, really? By absolutely every serious commentator on the war? I’m not sure what “political hues” you consider to be “serious” – although I can guess Nick Cohen is the extreme left of the spectrum – but in any event I’d be careful with the use of words like “every”. Let alone “absolutely every”, emphasized by italics.

It’s nice you think I’m entitled to my opinion. I won’t return the favour. Your defence of war criminals and murderers is, frankly, despicable. But then, you are a self-identified liberal, so I guess it’s par for the course.

I’m just glad the whole carnival lasts only a month in the UK.

*Forgotten footnote:

Interesting slip: I wrote “New Labour has done some really awful things in the last 13 years” but originally wrote “11 years”. Which is the period from 1979 to 1990 – two and a half terms of a popular and charismatic reactionary, whose successor was widely believed not to have a hope of winning an election in his own right…

Also raises the question of why academia should be the only group of society that gets given money by the government and allowed to do pretty much what they want with it. Should, for example, military procurement be run entirely by the armed forces with no input from the MoD? Should the national curriculum and the entire education department be abolished, in favour of a small office that simply writes a capitation cheque for every school in the country?

I’m not saying that these are necessarily ridiculous ideas, but they seem to be analogous.

43: I hope you’ve read Bruce Sterling’s “Distraction” in which a hyperactive political consultant starts brainstorming about how to save a lab whose funding has been cut: “Maybe we could say you’re all insane and research is your group therapy!” And he goes on to suggest that another way would be to set up a protection racket: getting paid by established industries not to research the disruptive technologies that would undermine their entire business models.

Should, for example, military procurement be run entirely by the armed forces with no input from the MoD?

As opposed to the current state of affairs (ie, largely run by the aerospace industry), I can see some points in favour of this idea.

getting paid by established industries not to research the disruptive technologies that would undermine their entire business models.

Joining think tanks is already a viable way of getting paid for academics.

Agree with 32: people like Donald Rumsfeld were looking for reasons to go to war with Iraq while the dust was still rising in New York …

Even in a completely undemocratic country like the US, decisions to go to war aren’t made by a couple people. They are the result of various pressures being brought to bear. A clear anti-war line by the UK would have tipped the balance. There’s a big difference between dismissing “old Europe” and going to war with one ally, and dismissing the Anglo-Saxon brother nation that never capitulated to fascism etc. I am frankly stunned at this attempt to make excuses for Blair and New Labour.

Check inequality and child poverty statistics since 1997 and then get back to us.

Inequality increased steadily. How’s that a sign for left politics? I’m baffled. Or maybe you fell for deliberately misleading graphs claiming to present “income inequality” statistics when they really only present income tax data?

To repeat myself, there’s something left about Labour – namely its roots in the Labour movement. There’s nothing left about New Labour, though.

Re inequality, this might be of interest.
http://www.ifs.org.uk/projects/323

Even in a completely undemocratic country like the US

That suggests a paucity of adverbs to describe the relative democratic status of North Korea or the People’s Republic of China.

… But what I meant to ask was, for the benefit of American readers, is there any realistic prospect that the Lib Dems might cut a deal with the Tories if no party secures an absolute majority? Or are they pretty much stuck riding shotgun with Labour?

Thanks Ajay!

Ajay isn’t quite right.

The Queen doesn’t pick the party with the largest number of votes. She appoints as govt the party who can gain the confidence of the House of Commons. This could be the second largest party–for instance, Labour–if Labour could show that it had the support of the Lib Dems or some other party or parties, and together the number of seats outnumbered the Conservatives. Moreover, the incumbent PM (Brown) has the right to remain on and face Parliament if there is a hung parliament–so if there were a hung parliament Brown has that option open (politically–that’s a different matter).

Minority govts can work quite well because a minority govt doesn’t necessarily equate to a majority opposition–often opposition parties don’t want to be seen as the party which caused a fresh election. But certainly point 1 is more likely.

William, it’s happened in Canada, hasn’t it?

In September 1925, King requested dissolution of Parliament to call an election, which Lord Byng granted. In the election Arthur Meighen’s Conservative Party won 116 seats to 99 for King’s Liberals. Counting on the support of the Progressive Party (which had 24 seats) to overcome the Conservative plurality, King (who had lost his seat in the election) did not resign and remained in office with the support of Progressive Party, as a minority government. Strictly speaking, this was not a coalition government, as the Progressives were not given any cabinet seats and were thus not a part of the government.

If I’m not mistaken, some of the opposition to a Liberal/NDP/Bloc government in Canada stemmed from the lack of precedent for a coalition that excluded the largest party.

Given the fluid nature of Westminster conventions, I suspect there would have been little formal trouble with a minority government that failed a confidence vote being replaced by a majority coalition. The practical issue hinged more on the optics of forming said majority coalition without an election intervening. Regardless, Harper Imperator didn’t want to put it to the test, which is why he dissolved Parliament the first time and spent the resulting downtime demagoging the notion of majority rule and a governing coalition that included the BQ, aka his minority government’s previous primary source of support.

I’m not aware of anyone in a position to know in the US saying “British support was vital; without it we wouldn’t have gone ahead.” In fact, Rumsfeld for one said exactly the opposite: that allied support was nice to have but not essential, and that the US would go ahead without them if necessary.

And again this is utterly irrelevant. Of course people who wanted war would say that, and make it appear inevitable – it’s a marketing technique. There was no reason for the question “do we go to war without UK support” to come up since Blair was such an enthusiastic supporter of the enterprise. Do you seriously believe that politics in any country – even North Korea, say – is just a game played by a handful of people who happen to have executive authority, without any regard for what everybody else thinks, or how everybody else acts? Because that’s just bollocks.

And note that the “old Europe” description doesn’t pre-date the Iraq War buildup – it was a post hoc justification for why not having French and German support didn’t matter. France wasn’t “old Europe” when it was sending its troops into Afghanistan.

I’m not sure if you are missing the point on purpose, or just missing the point. The war faction in the US considered it necessary to dismiss French, German and Russian concerns in the public discussion (weird too, if you’re right that nothing anyone did could have changed the outcome). It would have been much harder for them to do so had the UK been opposed to war.

Saying that the war would have happened anyway is not making excuses for Blair.

john b precisely introduced the subject in order to make excuses for Blair, as in, the Iraq war should not be taken as a reason not to vote Labour, since what Blair did made no difference (according to john b, you, and “absolutely every serious commentator” which I suppose means “Eustonites”).

@64 ITYF that Eustonites are among the few people not to take that line on the war, because they believe both that the war was Excellent and that Blair was Excellent.

@65 agreed, but at that stage the US government didn’t need the support of liberals and independents – the US public was 63% in favour of the war in Jan 2003, with another 15% fence-sitting. Bush’s personal public rating at the time of the war buildup varied between 60-70%.

In general – no, Washington isn’t a North Korea-like fiefdom – but in the US political system, if you have a combination of an angry nation, a highly popular president who wants a war, and a group of advisers to the highly popular president who also want a war and are happy to use their media influence to spread absolute lies about how their plan for war is directly connected to the source of the nation’s anger, then a war isn’t going to be avoided just because the leader of a borderline-relevant former imperial power and usual ally doesn’t approve of it.

(Vietnam’s a good example: unlike Iraq, that one was massively unpopular domestically, the US’s only allies were SK, Aus and NZ, the UK not only didn’t participate but actively opposed it – but it still happened and continued happening because that’s what the American system tends to lead to…)

Christian, I’m curious to know why you think not only that UK support was vital to the war, but that this is so obviously true that anyone who disagrees with you must be a fool or a lying apologist for aggression?
Labour won’t be getting my vote this year for the first time, solely because of the decision to invade Iraq – so I’m hardly an apologist for Blair.
As I’ve explained: there were many other US allies who demurred from the Iraq war; their refusal did not derail the process. Many of them had considerably more strategic importance. Previous UK refusals to join US wars did not stop those wars (eg. Vietnam). You’ll need to explain why the UK is different from all other allies, and why Iraq was different from all other wars.

One way I suggest you approach this question is through falsifiability. You believe that UK support was crucial. Imagine a counterfactual in which UK support was irrelevant. How would that have looked different from the reality?

What’s this about the UK opposing the US in Vietnam? I was under the impression that the UK gave the US political support over Vietnam, but not military suppport. In other words, Wilson’s position was “We think that it’s good for the Americans to be doing what they are doing, but we’re not going to join in.” Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Compare: I’m offered a sum of money to carry out a contract killing. If I don’t take the money I know someone else will. Does that mean I won’t be responsible for the murder, or that it doesn’t really matter what I do?

70: it’s a bit more complex than that.
Wilson tried to negotiate peace and opposed the bombing of Hanoi, but his predecessor Macmillan sent Robert Thompson and the BRIAM team to Saigon in 1961. It certainly wasn’t unfettered Israel-in-Gaza type support, or out-and-out opposition; probably closest to the German or Canadian attitude towards the Iraq war, actually.

71: It doesn’t, of course. This was addressing two points: christian’s assertion that “Blair provided extremely useful cover for Bush’s decision to go to war. In my opinion it is highly questionable the Iraq war would have happened without British support” and john b’s point that “It’s also worth remembering the very limited harm that was done by Tony Blair’s decision to get involved in Iraq”. Guilt and responsibility are a separate issue – both those points are looking at outcomes.

73: OK, I misspoke. I was unexpectedly unable to vote in 2005 (out of the country without time to set up a postal vote). I should have said “I will be voting for someone other than Labour for the first time this year.” Had I been able to do so, I would have voted for someone other than Labour in 2005 too, for the same reason.

The debate about whether, counterfactually, Blair’s support was necessary for the Iraq war. Obviously it’s a tricky one, but:

i) it’s correct to say (I think) that Blair’s support played a major part in building the US consensus for war. People unsure about Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, but supportive of the Clintonite wing of the Democratic party trusted Blair’s judgement, I think; 67 is correct about the use of Blair’s “eloquence” in American political discourse at the time. I was in DC for a bit of this period and was just shocked by the extent to which Blair, the British parliamentary debate just before the war, etc etc, were a part of ordinary political discussion. (I was, repeatedly, congratulated for having Blair as a prime minister – by shop assistants and hotel receptionists and etc etc.)

ii) the fact that American debate dismissed the complaints of usual allies (France, Germany) only made the British more important. The support of the British government left the pro-war people ascribing French and German opposition to the particular perfidy of those peoples, because, look, the British can see the points we’re making.

So I think the argument could go like this: the Iraq war could have been a hugely divisive, more strictly partisan, proposal. Instead of this, it was generally consensual at an elite level: about 2/5 of House Dems, and a majority of Senate Dems, voted in favour of the AUMF, and of course a lot of “respectable” liberal opinion went in favour of the war. I think British support had a surprising amount to do with the latter outcome – specifically, that it legitimised Atlanticist, moderate-leftish, support for the war.

There might have been other ways in which liberal support would have coalesced (not as much, though?) around the war plan. But, supposing it hadn’t, the question comes down to this: would the Bushies have been willing to go to war on a narrowly partisan basis, with a much more divided/opposed media, with perhaps just enough support from a couple of hawkish Dems in the Senate to narrowly pass an AUMF? I’m not sure they would (though it’s clearly debatable).

But, supposing it hadn’t, the question comes down to this: would the Bushies have been willing to go to war on a narrowly partisan basis, with a much more divided/opposed media, with perhaps just enough support from a couple of hawkish Dems in the Senate to narrowly pass an AUMF?

Yes. This isn’t even actually a particularly debatable hypothetical. The Bush administration definition of “mandate” demonstrably wasn’t the same as yours or mine. Combine that with an inner circle full of people who spent the nineties agitating for another war with Iraq, an inner circle whose first thought on 9/11 was “Now we can take out Saddam,” and it’s a foregone conclusion. The Onion put it best: “Bush on North Korea: We Must Invade Iraq.”

And no, this doesn’t excuse Blair’s obsequiousness and rhetorical support for a war under false pretenses. The Downing Street minutes made it clear that the Bush administration was falsifying intelligence. Even if the US had gone ahead regardless, the right thing to do would be to come out against it. Instead, Tony parroted the lines even after he knew they were false. On the other hand, he probably thought it was worth it. Why, look at all the help he got in return from the Bush administration on Israel / Palestine.

I don’t think Blair’s support of Bush made one bit of difference out in general public land, USA. But as others have suggested, there’s a big Anglophilic streak in the upper-middle-class and professional class stratum that fancies itself liberal Beltway in outlook. Blair brought acceptable manner to the thuggish desire for war, and so provided cover for all the American elites wanting not to be too overtly bloodthirsty in their savagery (including lying to themselves about it, of course). I suspect from the vantage point of 2010 that they’d have found a domestic voice to do it if Blair had refused, but he sure helped out.

Are engels’s posts invisible? Or is he unanswerable?

I’m not a professional ethicist, but I’d take a punt on ‘unanswerable’.

I’m with Lizardbreath (again) — I had numerous discussions with left-leaning Americans who were shaky or whatever in opposition to the war and who were being influenced in exactly the way LB describes by Blair (I thought that he was sincerely a liberal imperialist, and utterly naive about what a war would be like especially one led by the Americans, and I said so — I also said that I believed this meant that the WMD evidence played not much role for him, and remember explaining to about 10 people who Robin Cook was and why his resignation would have been decisive for me if I’d had any doubts at that point). This must have happened all over.

It’s very interesting to hear how much of a difference Blair personally seems to have made to the debate in the US. It sounds like it was more than I thought. However, see 80: I’m not sure how much difference it would have made if Bush had realised in January 2003 “oh no, we’re losing the educated upper-middle class Anglophile elite vote with this war thing!”

Comment 87 is pretty low quality. I wasn’t aware that john b was under some sort of obligation to the blog to hang around indefinitely and be called an apologist for genocide or whatever christian h. comes up with next.

Well ajay, I’m still not sure if you are deliberately misreading me. I never claimed, as you assert, that only “fools or lying apologists” could think the Iraq war would have happened without Blair’s support. It was john b who claimed serious people can have only one opinion on the matter. I happen to think, for example, that mds is anything but an apologist for Blair, or a fool. He makes good points in 78, although I believe he also misjudges – as in overly personalizes – the way decisions are made in any political system, including the American one.

john b also claimed (and repeated that claim on his blog now) that Blair’s decision caused “very limited harm”, and he did so in the context of arguing for a Labour vote over a vote for a left alternative. How this can be interpreted as anything but making excuses is beyond me. (And I of course agree with engels on the “very limited harm” point.)

89 et prev: the political risks the Republicans took would have been much, much greater without the bipartisan/internationalist cover that Blair helped provide; conceivably elements of the party would have balked sufficiently to create serious division within the administration and thus inaction. Compare that they did, in the end, take a UN route, as Blair and Democrats wanted & as the administration hardliners did not want. Compare that they did not, in the end, bomb Iran, despite apparently yearning to do so quite as much as they had previously yearned to do in Saddam.

I would be really interested to read a proper study of these questions involving actual facts & reasoned interpretation, btw.

Well that blockquote failed. I’ll repeat with quotes this time, just to be clear:

“It’s also worth remembering the very limited harm that was done by Tony Blair’s decision to get involved in Iraq. The net result was that:

a) a lot of people internationally thought the British were slightly more wankerish than they previously thought us, at least until they forgot about it again.

b) the risk of Islamist terrorism against UK nationals rose from imperceptibly low to still imperceptibly low but slightly higher than before.”

The London bombings were justified by pointing to the war in Iraq.

And you forgot c) hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died.

But they’re not “UK nationals” so who gives shit about them, right?

A vociferously defiant Tony Blair could have let to Colin Powell being unwilling to lie to the U.N., and/or greater U.N. resistance, which might have changed the tone of media reporting on the buildup to war — more talk of daring world-defying actions, perhaps. And maybe the scales would have tipped to Kerry in Ohio in 2004, or maybe Bush would’ve won by a larger margin.

But don’t forget just how many people were protesting the war in 2003-2004. The war was not terribly popular when first publicly proposed and it took a hard, crude sell of ‘they will kill you with imminent doom weapons’ to bring a majority on board, and that hard sell was made all the easier by the ability to point to an “international coalition” which apparently all acknowledged the threat (goodness, just thinking of the number of times I had that phrase thrown in my face in 2003… brings back memories).

Like, does everyone remember the part where they were like ‘doooom weapons!’ and we were like ‘wha? feh’ and they were like ANTHRAX IN YOUR MAIL and we were like WAIT WUT and they were like ANTHRAX IN YOUR SENATOR’S MAIL and we were like …… oh crap and they were like YEAH AND NEXT IS WMD and we were like …… you’ve got to be shitting us and they were like EVEN THE U.N. AGREES and we were like …… wow, way to go U.N. ya basterds and they were like WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and we were like ok, this is total b.s. and they were like CHEMICAL WEAPONS NUCULAR WEAPONS and we were like, wait don’t we have inspectors? and they were like INSPECTIONS FAIL SADDAM KICKS THEM OUT PLANS IMMINENT ASSAULT and we were like …… imminent? and they were like NUCLEAR SUNRISE IS GOING TO HAPPEN ANY DAY NOW and we were like …… and then some of us were like man this is b.s. they just want oil and some folks who used to be with us were like what, do you think it’s an international conspiracy to fight for oil? and we were like …… well uh …… yeah way to go U.N.

unquantifiable amounts

Well, he did get *that* right. In some sense of the adjective.