Kieran’s posts below, and the various discussions I’ve seen in the papers, and heard on the radio, have got my wondering: isn’t it rational for the Labour Party to split, now, before it saddles itself with a new leader?
Why should it do so? Well as many people have said, it is too right wing to defeat the SNP, given the SNP’s savvy (and in my view largely cynical) adoption of left-social democratic political positions that appeal to the Scottish electorate. But to have any chance of restoring its hold Scotland in the short term, it needs to become more obviously left wing than it dares to be, for fear of losing antsy English voters. Two, quite separate, parties (preferably with identifiably different names) might have a better chance of becoming a governing coalition. As it is, all three of the major English parties refrain from fielding candidates in one part of the Union — Northern Ireland. An amicable divorce might help, not hurt, the Labour Party’s prospects. And, simultaneously, help save the Union by giving Scots a prospect for an actual voice and real influence in government (eventually).
{ 137 comments }
Tabasco 05.10.15 at 11:27 pm
The premise here is that Scottish voters would be stupid enough to be fooled by a leftish-sounding Scots Labour Party whose members in the Commons would in fact support the rightish English Labour Party.
Harry 05.10.15 at 11:50 pm
Oh no. I’m assuming that once they split they would, genuinely, be different parties (I think that’s a fair assumption). It just follows the logic of devolution (which the Labour Party has responsibility for). Nobody would be fooling anyone — they’d both be members of the second international (as, I assume though I have never checked, the SDLP is), and would have a common history, but they really would otherwise be completely separate. Otherwise, obviously, it would be stupid (unless Scottish voters are stupid, which they’re not).
Val 05.11.15 at 12:08 am
Hi Harry, continuing the discussion from before (but all sweetness and light this time:) )-
I think that the Labour Party (also Labor here) should not divide geographically, but on political philosophy grounds. So you would have a centrist party, which is the new labour people, and the labour left, which would be like the ALP Left faction here, and probably a lot of labour people on CT.
I think the danger (for Labour) is they’d both get absorbed – new Labour would have continuing problems of policy incoherence and would probably collapse in the medium term, with some being absorbed into the Tories, while Labour left would probably end up in some kind of coalition with other left parties. I don’t think those are bad outcomes but I can see Labour people might be saddened by the prospect – loss of a great tradition.
(Particularly as a historian, I’m not unsympathetic to the tradition, I just think Labour/Labor has now betrayed it too many times.)
Tabasco 05.11.15 at 12:08 am
Presumably, as a point of differentiation, this Scots Labour Party would be Unionist (otherwise what would be the point)? Why would anyone vote for it?
Val 05.11.15 at 12:11 am
Also I see here a glimpse of why you don’t like the SNP, which has mystified me previously – you think they’re cynical, pretending to be left-social democrat. But why?
Roger Gathmann 05.11.15 at 12:46 am
I imagine that voters would see such a split as very cynical. What are they getting that they can’t get better with the SNP? The death of Labour in Scotland is, in my opinion, a done deal. There will eventually be a split, perhaps, in the SNP, but for the next decade or two, do you really see them losing in Scotland? I don’t see on what possible platform a separate Scots Labour party could run on, really.
harry b 05.11.15 at 1:25 am
The initiative would have to come from Scotland, but all indications are that Scottish members of the Labour Party feel pretty alienated from the London party, and they have already developed a fairly separate identity thanks to Holyrood. My answer to tabasco is that a large plurality, if not a majority, of Scots are, actually, unionist, and the vote for the SNP reflects, in part, a (rational) perception that if Labour came to power the SNP could exert more pressure on it than Scottish Labour. I don’t believe (and I’m pretty sure that Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t believe) that Thursday’s vote is a mandate for independence. As it is, because Labour failed in England and Wales, the the SNP will have influence on constitutional, but not fiscal or welfare, issues.
In fact I doubt the SNP will hold more than half their seats next time round, but still, half is a lot.
Hi Val! Well — I believe that Nicola Sturgeon really is a social democrat, but the SNP is what it has always been, a secessionist party which contains a broad swathe of political opinions. (Salmond, for example, is not a social democrat, but a cynic, and he’s very far from alone). It has, and will continue to, sway with — and, of course, reflect — the political wind in Scotland, and at the moment that is certainly leftward. I SO wish that the Militant Tendency had been able to hold itself together well enough to present a flank to the left of Labour. Ironically, that might have helped Labour in Scotland keep its bearings. But, like all left groups, it was overly dependent on particular individuals, who screwed up (under lots of pressure, I’m NOT allocating blame here!).
js. 05.11.15 at 2:07 am
Val @5:
I don’t have a link handy, but the SNP was pretty neoliberal friendly until recently, like even a decade ago or so. It can make one a little suspicious that they’ve suddenly found religion re social democracy—esp. when there’s a more consistent explanation in terms of nationalism. I’m not saying I buy this argument; at the end of the day, I don’t think I do. But it certainly makes sense.
js. 05.11.15 at 2:10 am
Sorry, hadn’t seen Harry’s @7 (was sitting on my @8 for a while because of internet issues). Anyway, Harry’s comment is more informative than mine, so feel free to disregard mine.
Mitch Guthman 05.11.15 at 3:14 am
The proposal has the virtue of being amazingly complicated. On the other hand, if Labour had been capable or desirous of campaigning in Scotland as a unionist party of the center-left with roughly the same anti-austerity agenda as the SDP they probably would’ve won in Scotland and everywhere else, too. It was a very popular agenda and without the baggage of a possible coalition with the SDP, Labour would very likely have kept it Scottish stronghold and done much better in the marginals, too.
Unfortunately, Labour doesn’t want to be a party of the center left in Scotland and New Labour in England. It wants to be New Labour, and only New Labour, everywhere, always and forever. The consensus that seems to be developing within the leadership of the Labour Party is that they strayed too far from the principles of being Thatcherites in red clothing and need to embrace neoliberalism far more closely in the future. they certainly aren’t going to split into a party of the center left in Scotland because New Labour doesn’t want any center left MP’s in Scotland or anyplace else. That was the whole point of this election we just suffered through.
You might want to remember that pretty much from the day David Cameron took office, up until maybe the last couple of months of the campaign, Labour went out of its way to tell everybody that austerity was a great idea that they could do better at the margins. Even in the last two weeks of the campaign, Ed Miliband was very clear that he wasn’t going to move an inch further to the left even if it meant losing the election and all the Labour mucky-mucks thought that was just the bravest, most wonderful thing said during the entire election..
The whole thing seems like an overelaborate face saving gesture. If they reorganize themselves as a party of the center-left with a strong defense of both trade unionism and the social welfare state they will win. They will win in Scotland. They will win in England. Otherwise, they will disintegrate and the party membership will go elsewhere as was the case with the Lib Dems.
Val 05.11.15 at 3:32 am
Thanks js and harry, both really informative. Your comments reinforce for me that although I have a keen interest in UK politics (especially since my young friend started campaigning for the Greens), I lack a lot of detailed knowledge.
I guess I should back and watch what happens in this discussion for a while, just throwing in the odd question etc.
I think part of the reason lefty people like me in oz were very disappointed in this UK election is that we are pinning our hopes on a change of government next election here, and it would have been a good sign if it had happened there.
TM 05.11.15 at 3:42 am
I get it that Scotland and the SNP are fascinating topics, but Labour lost the election in England. Perhaps something needs to be done about that?
robinm 05.11.15 at 4:18 am
I don’t expect the Labour Party to do anything rational at the moment, Harry. It certainly hasn’t shown much capacity for that sort of thing for some time. And from the sudden post-Election outpourings of the Blairites in the Guardian and elsewhere, it’s pretty evident that there’s going to be very little serious reflection within the Labour Party anywhere in the UK concerning how to come to grips with a changed and changing world that will answer to the needs and aspirations of those they purport to speak for (see, e.g., James Meek’s recent piece in the London Review of Books on Grimsby). Besides splitting wouldn’t do them any good in Scotland or in England. In Scotland, they’ve done a very good job of destroying themselves. (See, e.g., Paul Hutcheon’s piece in Sunday’s (Glasgow) Herald, “Scottish Labour: Inside the campaign from hell.â€) And should Labour split and should at some future time it looked like the Scottish Labour Party might ally with the other Labour Party to form a government, can’t you just see a future “Cameron†playing the anti-Scottish card again?
As to wishing the Militant Tendency was still around to present a position to the left of Labour, in some respects it is still around, I think, in the form of the Radical Independence movement in Scotland which did so much to get Labour’s base in Glasgow, Dundee and elsewhere to, first, support the Yes for independence and which, second. played a major part in getting these people in these same parts of Scotland to vote out all their Labour MPs and replace them with SNP ones. But how that part of the Scottish independence movement will conduct itself in Holyrood elections remains to be seen. I imagine many of them see an opportunity to construct a significant place for themselves in urban Scotland and in the Scottish Parliament.
But there’s also, it seems to me, a tendency on the part of some of those responding to you here to assume that the SNP now occupies some kind of monolithic hegemonic place in Scotland. There’s no denying voting for the SNP became, partly because of the way the Referendum was fought and partly because Cameron began trying to whip up English nationalism on the day after the Referendum and partly because the General Election in England was so clearly Scotophobic (something Miliband did nothing to counter), something more than just an expression of partisan political preference. But it has to be remembered that almost half the Scottish voters voted for non-SNP candidates—though for any party in Britain to get more than 50 percent of the national vote in any recent General Election is actually remarkable. However, there will be another election coming up in about a year for the Scottish Parliament. And it will be decided according to a system of proportional representation. So it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.
And finally, a confession: I’m not a supporter of the SNP and had I been able to do so I would have voted against independence in the Referendum, but I have been discovering in myself some pride that so many of my fellow Scots have so notably upset a system that so many people throughout Britain perceive to have become unrepentantly rotten. I certainly regret that the Tories will feel free to impose injury on so many people. But at the same time, I am deriving a certain satisfaction from seeing so many Labour careerist heads roll. I only wish I could believe that that would inspire the Party to come up with new ways of thinking and new ways of behaving that would connect with the impulses and the values that gave rise to Labour in the first place. But as I said at the outset, I don’t see that as likely.
js. 05.11.15 at 4:38 am
If one were clutching at straws, one might think this’ll be like 2004 in the US. More disasters this term, and next time around, Labour wins, and whoever the PM is will very much disappoint everyone on the left (me included!), but still be far, far better than what preceded. Any takers?
That said, I agree with robinm @12 that the chorus of “embrace new labour now now now“, very evident in the Guardian, is more than a little depressing.
Colin 05.11.15 at 4:55 am
Doesn’t the Scottish Socialist Party already exist? I can imagine Scottish Labour (current name is fine) separating from the UK Labour party though. There’s no reason you can’t have regional parties that are nevertheless solidly unionist, as shown by the CSU in Germany (whose independence from the CDU allows them to be more overtly Catholic in their ideology, which seems to go down very well with Bavarian voters) or the various Canadian and Australian provincial/state parties. Certainly for Holyrood purposes, there’s no reason for Scottish Labour to be taking orders from UK Labour Party HQ.
The Tories in Scotland have an obvious name they could adopt: the ‘(Scottish) Unionist Party’. Indeed, the Unionist Party did exist as a separate Scottish party until they merged with the Conservatives in the 60s. It was far more successful before the merger than after.
John Quiggin 05.11.15 at 7:06 am
“Australian provincial/state parties”
This is a misconception, maybe reflecting the fact that, with a federal structure, the same party can have different names in different states. Australia has no provincial/state parties in the usual sense of the term. There are, however, two national conservative parties, one rural and one urban, which have merged at the state level in some states.
reason 05.11.15 at 7:15 am
Val,
you do realize that England has first past the post voting, and splitting parties are committing electoral suicide. First you need to change the electoral system.
Phil 05.11.15 at 7:23 am
Labour supports Irish reunification in the longer term – actually standing UK Labour candidates in NI would be a Unionist step too far. Alliance and SDLP are sister parties of the Lib Dems and Labour respectively. The Conservatives have started standing candidates in NI – under their own name this time and through a short-lived lash-up with the Official Unionist Party in 2010 (this is why Sylvia Hermon sits as an Independent – she left the OUP rather than ally with the Tories).
As for the OP, a Scottish Labour Party that supported independence would (and ultimately will) be worth having, but on the face of it that would only take a slice of the SNP’s half of the electorate. (And as others have pointed out, there already is a Scottish Socialist Party.) About 25% of Scotland voted for a unionist Labour Party. An independent unionist Labour Party – what would be the point? You could argue that the problem with the Scottish Labour Party in this campaign is that they were too independent – Jim Murphy is way to the Right of Miliband, and he was running that idiotic and counter-productive “every vote for the SNP is a vote for a Conservative government” line long before London started echoing it.
Haftime 05.11.15 at 7:44 am
Militant exists, just about (Socialist Party). Val, your right wing split has happened once before, and now it’s heading the way of Militant, too (as part of the Lib Dems). And as reason says, rump Labour didn’t exactly have a brilliant decade of electoral success.
reason 05.11.15 at 8:09 am
Actually,
a further thought here. Maybe the result will herald in the beginning of the end of first in the UK. My reasoning, the future of labour (as with the social democrat parties in much of continental Europe) is in coalition with the Greens. The fall in the size of manufacturing employment has left labour with a crisis of identity, it is not clear whether it is a party of center left intellectuals, or a working class party. It is hard to see how it continue to be a coherent single party. Hence, the labour party will be as much disadvantaged in the future by first past the post as the greens are or the liberals (or for that matter UKIP) are.
reason 05.11.15 at 8:09 am
oops – bad error – “the beginning of the end of first PAST THE POST in the UK….”
reason 05.11.15 at 8:14 am
(P.S. I was moved to thinking in this direction by this comment on another thread:
https://crookedtimber.org/2015/05/09/who-came-second-in-the-uk-election/#comment-628307 )
It made me think that a splintering of the left forces, would probably result in an anti-Tory coalition in favour of electoral reform.
Salem 05.11.15 at 8:44 am
Some of this discussion is amazing to me.
1. Labour already did split between far-left (Labour) and centre-left (SDP) factions. The result was the Conservatives won every election. It was only when the Labour Party shifted back to the centre-ground to pick up the former SDP voters that they could win again.
2. If the Labour Party wants to win elections, they need to pick up lots more votes in England and Wales. Even if they won back all the seats they lost to the SNP (which they won’t) they would still be well short of a majority. Well, who won the non-Labour votes in England? The voters they need to persuade are Conservatives, or UKIPpers, or those Lib Dems happy to stick with the party through the Coalition. They will not be won over by a shift to the left.
3. Labour moved left between 2005 and 2010, and did worse as a result. Labour moved left between 2010 and 2015, and did worse as a result. But hey, third time’s a charm, right?
There may be many people here who would ideologically prefer a more socialist Labour Party. But that doesn’t mean it’s electorally viable. Labour could shift left, and cross their fingers that the government completely melts down, and that they’ll win by default. But this is not much of a strategy.
ajay 05.11.15 at 9:09 am
Labour supports Irish reunification in the longer term – actually standing UK Labour candidates in NI would be a Unionist step too far.
This is an interesting statement. If this is still true, the party’s been pretty quiet about it for the last few years. My impression was that they were taking a basically soft-Unionist stance; if the citizens of NI vote for reunification, they get it, otherwise not.
Sasha Clakson 05.11.15 at 9:16 am
There already are separate Welsh and Scots parties. But the Scots party machine was at the centre of the New Labour project, and damaging for the party everywhere. While the UK has not split up yet, one advantage of Labour being a confederation of regional parties, is that all the members and associate members can vote for the UK leader, rather than it being left to MPs.
The assumption that Labour lost England because it was too left wing is very dubious, given that what was on offer was the very uninspiring “austerity lite”.
FPTP hides parties’ failings. The myth of Mandelson and Blair the vote winners is just that – a myth. Both main parties are in long term decline, in both members and votes, but at the moment FPTP allows a party to form a majority government with more than 60% of the voting public voting against them. FPTP makes it difficult for smaller parties to get a foot in the door, but once they do they can become a force out of proportion to their support: as the SNP has done in Scotland, and as the Labour party did in the first years of the last century.
Let’s compare the post war year election with those of the naughties:
(Sorry in advance if the formatting doesn’t work)
Year Party % of vote Seats Won/Lost Turnout (%)
1945 Lab 47.7 393 won 72.8
Con 36.2 197 lost
1950 Lab 46.1 315 won 83.9
Con 40.0 282 lost
1951 Lab 48.8 295 lost 82.8
Con 44.3 321 won
..
..
2001 Lab 40.7 413 won 59.4
Con 31.7 166 lost
2005 Lab 35.2 355 won 61.4
Con 32.4 198 lost
Note that Clem Atlee was the most successful vote winner Labour has ever had, not Tony Blair. Also, immediately after the 1945 election, 12 MPs elected as “Independent Labour” took the Labour whip. And of course, Labour barely featured in the Northern Ireland poll.
Bearing in mind the higher turnouts then, Harold Wilson did rather better in the ’60s than Blair in the naughties. Also, winning vote percentages after 1970, would have been losing ones in the ’40s and ’50s.
Note also that Churchill, even with his National Liberal allies, never won the national vote in a General Election.
To repeat myself, there is no evidence for the theory promoted by chatterati pundits like the Beeb’s Landale, that Blair and Mandelson were formidable vote winners. It’s merely that with more parties in the running, FPTP gives a very great advantage to the least unpopular party. Ignoring the underlying voting trends can lead to disaster, as it did for Labour in Scotland. And it is the collapse of the Lib-Dem vote in England, and the rise of UKIP, which has given the Tories a Parliamentary victory, despite a very modest increase in their voting share.
Sasha Clarkson 05.11.15 at 9:31 am
Damn – I’m in the moderation queue because I misspelled my own name! Doh!
lurker 05.11.15 at 9:34 am
@Salem, 23
1) Why would an English Conservative vote Labour when there’s a Conservative party doing conservatism much better?
2) Left-wing voters have nowhere to go and can be safely ignored while pursuing swing voters. How did this assumption work out for Labour in Scotland?
reason 05.11.15 at 9:49 am
Sasha @25
Do we have to guess what you wrote?
Pete 05.11.15 at 10:03 am
I agree with most of robinm’s points. Labour have collapsed from the inside, and much of the remaining exterior is surprisingly nasty. They never did quite deal with the pro-war and social-authoritarian side. They also resorted to hollow Blairite noun-phrase politics which they proceeded to “carve in stone” but not flesh out. The EdStone top policy was “A strong economic foundation”. Clearly this was to be the bullet point that would win over middleclass floating voters. But what is this foundation built on? What is the Labour vision for how the economy should work? We’ve just had an election campaign and I have no idea.
Then there’s “Controls on Immigration”. Non-EU immigration is very heavily controlled already and EU immigration cannot be controlled. So what were they actually proposing to do? No idea. It was there simply to appeal to UKIP Man, just as Emily Thornberry was fired in a panic. The party needs a post-Gillian Duffy strategy for talking to voters about immigration that isn’t either appeasement or insult. They just ended up alienating both sides.
Labour need to be more social democrat, not socialist. The few remaining actual Marx-and-Lenin socialists are incredibly offputting to everyone else. More Bevin, some Benn, no Tommy Sheridan or George Galloway.
Jim Murphy was involved in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_and_Regulatory_Reform_Act_2006 – a very New Labour piece of seemingly illiberal constitutional change that seems to have simply vanished without trace. I’d like to know if it’s ever been invoked.
Fergus 05.11.15 at 10:10 am
Salem @23 is obviously right that Labour needs to do better in England/Wales if it’s going to win. But there’s not currently any good reason to think that moving back to the centre is the solution there. In fact his (3) is wrong – Labour moved left between 2010 and 2015, and did better in England/Wales. Not *hugely* better, but ~10 seats net gain is an improvement. And really you shouldn’t expect that much more – the last one-term government in Britain was the 1974 Labour government that held a three-seat majority amid economic crisis.
Modest gains is basically consistent with what you’d expect from a party that recently had 13 years in government and presided over the crash. It doesn’t make a load of sense, but, that’s politics. Of course Blairite figures like Chuka Umunna have every reason to blame the defeat on shifting too far away from the centre, but it doesn’t really check out as an explanation.
Pete 05.11.15 at 10:15 am
On pledges, compare the vagueness of the EdStone with the specificness and deliverability of Blair’s 97 pledge card: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour,_New_Life_For_Britain
Zamfir 05.11.15 at 10:26 am
@Lurker, if you don’t think there are much labour-tory swing voters, then where do you want to get the votes or the seats?
Salem 05.11.15 at 10:53 am
@Lurker:
Most voters aren’t categorically attached to one party. They agree with a party on some but not all of the issues. In other words English people voting Conservative aren’t necessarily English Conservatives. They can be won over, which is how Labour won in 1997 and 2001, and kinda sorta how they won in 2005. But if I’m wrong, and the voters to the right of Labour are categorically attached, then Labour is even more screwed – because that’s where all the voters are.
@Fergus:
I meant Labour did worse overall in 2015 than 2010. But yes, they did a little better in England (and a little worse in Wales). However, the Lib Dems completely collapsed at the same time (and not because of anything Labour did). The Labour result has to be seen in that context. It is nothing short of a disaster for Labour that the Lib Dems lost 39 seats in England and Wales, and yet Labour only picked up 14 seats (net).
kidneystones 05.11.15 at 10:54 am
This is getting tediously repetitive. So, I’ll make it short. 23 is right. 13 is right. 28 is also right. UKIP voters want an in/out referendum. UKIP forced immigration out of the closet and into the national conversation. Sensible people on this thread act as if this issue does not exist. Ummuna and the New Blairites sided with Cameron and the Lib-Dems in branding all discussion of immigration and a referendum as bigotry and racism. Only Cameron had the sense to read the writing on the wall. One of the last polls prior to the May vote confirmed that UK voters preferred UKIP’s policies on immigration to those of Labour by a margin of 48-12. When I pointed this out, one of the luminaries here pronounced that this statistic confirmed the bigotry of the working classes. Announce that Labour recognizes that many Labour voters would like to vote to stay in the EU and that others may wish to leave. Let Labour voters have their say. Re: lack of policy, guts, vision, etc. – agreed, agreed, agreed. Why not abolish tuition for universities, whilst reducing the number of places and raising standards for admission, progression, and graduation? That’s an idea that will appeal to both left and right, and is effectively in practice in Scotland already. Sending half the nation’s young people to university was loopy Blairism at it’s worst. Lots of happy and successful people don’t go to university, although that may be impossible for some here to believe.
Labour need only try to do the right thing, rather than rebrand, split, or fight yesterday’s battles. Matthew Norman’s column in the Independent today is so good on the paucity of talent among Labour’s ‘leaders’ that I just might go back to reading the paper regularly. But even he steers clear of the EU behemoth. The Independent is still so dense that the editors believe the EU referendum is a monster stalking the Conservatives. The irony is frankly shocking.
John 05.11.15 at 12:01 pm
Why not abolish tuition for universities, whilst reducing the number of places and raising standards for admission, progression, and graduation? That’s an idea that will appeal to both left and right, and is effectively in practice in Scotland already. Sending half the nation’s young people to university was loopy Blairism at it’s worst.
Scotland sends more than 55% of its young people into higher education. The most recently published HEIPR rate, covering 16 – 30 year olds, was 56.1%. ( http://www.sfc.ac.uk/statistics/Participation/participation.aspx ).
But hey, maybe English and Welsh people are just more stupid than Scottish people.
faustusnotes 05.11.15 at 12:58 pm
This seems like a recipe for electoral suicide to me. Unless the Scottish party can drag back a sizable number of electorates in Scotland, the New Labour-ish party in England is going to have to get 40-50 more seats than Labour currently has now, while fighting UKIP on its right and giving its left flank more reason to defect to Greens – which is disaster in marginal seats under the UK’s electoral system.
If Labour want to ever come back into power again they need to find a way to neutralize the attacks on the idea of an SNP/Labour coalition. Refusing to enter a coalition with them is a very stupid start.
Or, Labour could make electoral reform and a proper Senate its main focus over the next five years. Get rid of a system that rewards regional parties and the SNP will disappear; introduce a proper democratically elected senate instead of the unrepresentative swill you have now, and the small parties will represent the couple of million people who are currently disenfranchised by the system.
Or, remain a rump political party being squeezed by regional parties on the left, and racist parties on the right, while the Tories retain the assurance of their rural strongholds.
engels 05.11.15 at 1:25 pm
The few remaining actual Marx-and-Lenin socialists are incredibly offputting to everyone else. More Bevin, some Benn, no Tommy Sheridan or George Galloway.
Er not to spoil the red-baiting but Galloway was expelled in 2003 and Sheridan in 1989. (Also if anyone finds (eg.) this incredibly off-putting, I’d like to meet them.)
kidneystones 05.11.15 at 1:37 pm
Hi John,
Thanks for this. 55 percent to university is about 35 percent too many, imho. Trades training and direct routes into professional schools from high school make more sense to me. An uncle completed his MA in a social sciences discipline at Glasgow and then his doctorate at Berkeley some decades ago. He had, I think, two languages in addition to English. A recent MA English lit. grad claimed he could do his doctorate with just English. I just checked the website and couldn’t easily find the language requirements. The degrees aren’t worthless, but a very large percentage of the students I teach couldn’t care less about reading books, and they may tell you the same thing, if they trust you enough. Universities are emphatically not the only place to get an education. Thank god. Loved the snippy bit about the English and Welsh being stupid. Nice! Keep digging!
dsquared 05.11.15 at 2:23 pm
Why not abolish tuition for universities, whilst reducing the number of places and raising standards for admission, progression, and graduation? That’s an idea that will appeal to both left and right
Or neither.
Glen Tomkins 05.11.15 at 2:37 pm
Whatever the other merits this idea of a split might have, reassuring those antsy voters will absolutely not work. It would be well-known to these antsy voters that Labour and the SNP would have to be in coalition to form a govt. If they’re antsy about English socialists running the govt, is there any chance that the prospect of Scottish socialists running the govt won’t make them even more antsy?
The country already has one perfectly good conservative party. It doesn’t need a second, as the Lib Dems have discovered. If Labour is to survive, it has to figure out a way to at least stand up for Keynesian economics, even if socialism leaves too many voters antsy. Baby steps. But those baby steps are necessary, because a supposedly socialist party that can’t even find its way clear to opposing austerity is perfectly useless.
engels 05.11.15 at 3:56 pm
OpenDemoxcrcy: Blairism killed Labour, it cannot revive it
https://www.opendemocracy.net/jen-izaakson-ross-speer/blairism-killed-labour-it-cannot-revive-it
Pete 05.11.15 at 4:14 pm
I didn’t mean to imply that Galloway and Sheridan were part of Labour, that was merely in response to those talking about wanting a Militant to the left of Labour. Again, I think the Radical Independence people have done better at providing a space to the left of the SNP (despite Sheridan).
Trying to redesign Labour into an economically conservative party is a doomed enterprise. It needs ideas, and it needs a means of injecting those ideas into public discussion. The latter is against the headwind of the rightwing press.
Phil 05.11.15 at 4:21 pm
My impression was that they were taking a basically soft-Unionist stance; if the citizens of NI vote for reunification, they get it, otherwise not.
Mmmyeah. You could also call that a soft-Nationalist stance, and some would – if a bare majority of the citizens of NI happens to vote for reunification on a single occasion, the UK government will repudiate its century-old commitments to the province… Given the demographics, ‘soft-Unionist’ is probably about right. But very soft – having a unionist LP(NI) would be tilting too far.
ajay 05.11.15 at 4:27 pm
43: also true. But I don’t know that it’s true to say that Labour therefore supports Irish reunification. Or that running Labour candidates in NI constituencies would somehow be too Unionist for them.
VeeLow 05.11.15 at 6:36 pm
38–“An uncle completed his MA in a social sciences discipline at Glasgow and then his doctorate at Berkeley some decades ago. He had, I think, two languages in addition to English. A recent MA English lit. grad claimed he could do his doctorate with just English. I just checked the website and couldn’t easily find the language requirements. ”
Such rigor! So analysis!
Neville Morley 05.11.15 at 6:54 pm
The CDU/CSU example shows that this can work, more or less – CSU not only much more Catholic but also generally more small-c conservative, as this is what has appealed to many Bavarians, but still taken for granted that the two will hang together at national level. But there can be significant tensions: ambitious CSU politicians who feel that *they* are the best candidate for Kanzler but find themselves outnumbered by northerners, horse-trading over distribution of ministerial posts, and arguments about how far new government will have to accept crazy CSU wheezes as policy commitments (see the ongoing carcrash of their insistence on having a motorway toll for foreign visitors). It’s a bit like a coalition agreement where neither side can ever actually walk away.
Phil 05.11.15 at 7:49 pm
Well, the Northern Ireland Labour Party was a unionist organisation, and since it was wound up the LP has shown no interest in organising in NI. I think part of the reason for this is that opening an official branch of the UK party in the province would seem like a commitment to the province remaining part of the UK, and the LP doesn’t now want to make such a commitment.
Agog 05.11.15 at 8:26 pm
I’m curious about this ‘Blairite’ tag being stuck on Umunna. What are the grounds exactly except for seeming-approval from Peter Mandelson?
For someone who was associated with the Compass group (explicitly anti-Blairite) and who backed Ed Miliband in 2010 it seems odd. Did I miss some recent change of direction?
Sasha Clarkson 05.11.15 at 9:17 pm
Agog @48
He’s moved to the right as shadow Business Secretary, and preaches about the deficit without displaying any understanding of Macroeconomics. His background is as a lawyer, which Blair regards as a “real job”, and Blair is backing him, allegedly.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-wants-chuka-umunna-to-be-the-next-labour-leader-9908489.html
Here’s a lefter view:
http://www.leftfutures.org/2014/09/chuka-umunna-takes-on-the-blair-mantle/
Sasha Clarkson 05.11.15 at 9:28 pm
BTW I’m not quite sure which thread to post this on, but here is Tom Clark’s brutal analysis of the failure of both the Lib-Dems and the Labour Party.
http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/labour-lib-dems-strategic-ineptitude.html
Agog 05.11.15 at 9:32 pm
Thanks Sasha – right now that would seem to be an astute change of strategy. Let’s see how it plays out.
Abbe Faria 05.11.15 at 10:28 pm
GB Labour doesn’t stand in NI mostly because the (republican) SDLP are a sister party who informally take the Labour whip in Westminster. The concerns have been that it would destroy a productive relationship with the SDLP, damage the peace process if a Labour government was a direct participant in NI politics, and vote split and aid SF.
There’s also a respectful standoff with the Irish Labour Party – which also has pressure from members to enter NI politics – the worry is a move from either party into NI would force the other to enter too, resulting in a three way clusterfuck. There is a proposal for both Irish and GB Labour to organise and stand candidates jointly as NI Labour, with members having with full membership of both parties, but you can see why they need to tread carefully.
Phil 05.11.15 at 11:24 pm
AF – wow. It’s Unionist and Nationalist! It’s also pretty much the approach to the border that Militant and BICO always advocated – and I suspect in this context BICO may be the more relevant of the two.
Looking back at some old UK general election data, I was quite surprised to realise that the standard “not including NI” caveats didn’t apply until 1974 – as late as 1970, NI returned ten MPs, but eight of them took the Conservative whip (and one of the other two was Ian Paisley). For much of the twentieth century the political system in NI was pretty solidly built on the exclusion of Nationalism. It was also built on a link with the Conservative (and Unionist) Party, which must have made some Labour politicians think that they – and the NI working class – ought to get a look in. But breaking the hold of Unionism turned out to be much more of a popular cause than breaking the hold of Conservatism within Unionism – and the latter followed anyway.
Tabasco 05.11.15 at 11:36 pm
All this handwringing ignores the lessens of recent history.
After the Foot and Kinnock losses Labour was supposedly finished. They’d never get back into power, apparently. But they did.
After their string of losses the Tories were supposedly finished. They’d never get back into power, apparently. But they did.
Politics goes in cycles. While there is little reason to believe that Labour will ever become a party that makes Britain a better place, much less a social democratic place, much much less a socialist place, there is every reason to believe that sooner or later they will win an election. For starters, the coming EU referendum is likely to see the Tories adopt their natural position of fighting viciously among themselves. 2015-2020 could be 1992-1997 all over again, but with much higher stakes.
ckc (not kc) 05.12.15 at 12:38 am
…the lessens of recent history… apt
js. 05.12.15 at 12:56 am
I was going to say more or less exactly what Tabasco said @54, and he or she seems more informed than me re UK politics—so take it from them.
Also, maybe the UK is different, but at least for the US, this:
is totally backwards. Most voters almost never change party allegiance. There are sea-change type moments where large numbers of people might change voting habits, but these are few and far between. Basically, parties are fighting over a small number of voters (without always having a very good idea of who these voters are), and for the rest, elections are affected by turnout, etc. (So, e.g. in the US, the higher the overall turnout, the better the chances of a Democrat winning.)
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 05.12.15 at 4:12 am
Ironically, there was a visionary who proposed a similar idea to Harry’s.
Alas, it was Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives who argued for a Scottish breakaway party during the 2011 Scottish Conservative leadership election, to try and detoxify the Tory brand in Scotland.
harry b 05.12.15 at 5:11 am
Well, the Tories are no doubt delighted that they rejected Murdo Fraser’s proposal! But I don’t see that the Scottish conservatives have a lot to be glad about…
Val 05.12.15 at 5:31 am
@50
Incisive analysis on that blog! thanks for the link.
reason 05.12.15 at 7:32 am
Faustusnotes @36
didn’t I already say essentially the same thing?
Phil 05.12.15 at 8:04 am
#58 – Scottish Labour have retained only 2.5% of the seats they held before the election, and the Scottish Lib Dems only 9%. But the Scottish Tories have retained 100% of theirs! What’s their secret?
Oh. Never mind.
Fergus 05.12.15 at 9:37 am
I really think Tabasco @54 nails it. I can’t believe that losing to a first-term government with your 13-year period of dominance still in very recent memory is being taken as a catastrophe requiring vast change to the programme Miliband ran on.
The Scotland result, however, is a disaster, which if not fixed and combined with Tory redistricting will make Labour government incredibly difficult in the foreseeable future. So the focus should be on detoxifying Scottish Labour and pulling voters back from the SNP, but all the debate is about overhauling and tacking right in England and Wales instead.
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 9:45 am
The history of the Tories last century is complex. Because of previous splits in the Liberal party over Irish Home Rule, many Tories, even in England, called themselves “Unionist” or “Liberal Unionist” rather than Conservative, but still took the Tory whip in the Commons. There were further splits prompted by the formation of the National Government in 1931. By the 1940s, candidates were standing not only as Conservatives and Unionists, but also National Liberals, but all took the Tory whip in Parliament.
In 1955, the Conservative parties in Scotland achieved 36/71 seats in 1955 and over 50% of the vote. The main Scottish Tories, officially the Unionist Party, were an independent Scottish party between 1912 and 1965, which took the Tory whip at Westminster. The merger of this party with the English Conservatives and (in 1968) the National Liberals, formed the modern Conservative and Unionist party.
The long decline of the Tory support in Scotland might be argued to have begun with this merger, and, as many Scots see it, the contempt with which Scotland was subsequently treated by the centralised party. If the privatisation of Scottish utilities under the Thatcher government was a big nail in the Scottish Tory Coffin, the Poll Tax (officially Community Charge) was the stake through the heart of the undead Conservative cadaver.
ajay 05.12.15 at 10:33 am
Sasha: His background is as a lawyer, which Blair regards as a “real jobâ€
I must say that for those of us who are mere rootless effete metropolitan types, it would be terribly useful to have a definitive list of what jobs are and are not “real jobs” for the purposes of conveying respectability on politicians.
Clearly being a politician at any level doesn’t count as being ‘real’, neither does thinktankery, and apparently the law doesn’t either now. I suspect that academia and journalism are similarly ‘unreal’, as is the bulk of the charity/NGO sector. Most public sector jobs are probably not ‘real’, though there might be an exception for the armed forces and medicine. Low-paid temp jobs definitely aren’t real. I suspect most of the entertainment industry isn’t ‘real’.
ajay 05.12.15 at 10:35 am
Abbe Faria: many thanks. That makes sense.
david 05.12.15 at 10:45 am
Politics does move in cycles; presumably the Liberal Party may not have empowered Irish Home Rule if it envisioned said Irish promptly breaking away and therefore not supporting it in Westminster. Its leaders may not have engaged in WW1 – over the heads of an anti-war base soured by the Boer Wars – if it knew it would be both abandoned by intellectuals and then attacked from the left by the then-new Labour Party.
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 11:28 am
ajay – to me, so far as politicians are concerned, a “real job” should be one which rubs one’s nose in the unpleasant realities of life, and make one work with people at the bottom of the heap. Tony Blair certainly never did one of those, nor did he have any family background which would give him suitable experience. His only pre-parliamentary paid employment was as a pupil barrister. His most high-profile case was Nethermere (St Neots) Ltd v Gardiner where he, unsuccessfully, represented employers in an attempt to deny female factory workers their holiday pay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nethermere_(St_Neots)_Ltd_v_Gardiner
Even more than political lawyers, my personal prejudice/dislike is for Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) graduates. From what I’ve seen, it’s not so much an academic course but an initiation into the priesthood of the ruling class, for those who want to boss other people about without acquiring any useful skill themselves. At least Ed Miliband took an M.Sc in Economics from LSE afterwards. Otherwise I haven’t seen any evidence that recent PPE graduates have any kind of clue about economics, or much more about the real world!
Consumatopia 05.12.15 at 12:03 pm
“Labour could shift left, and cross their fingers that the government completely melts down, and that they’ll win by default. But this is not much of a strategy.”
It might not be the worst one, though. What if they shifted right and successfully took back power, but centrist policies don’t address the country’s problems and when the system inevitably fails again, Labour again takes the blame?
dsquared 05.12.15 at 12:23 pm
Even more than political lawyers, my personal prejudice/dislike is for Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) graduates.
Like Harold Wilson? Or like Michael Foot?
Salem 05.12.15 at 12:37 pm
Yes, if you believe that only far-left policies can address the country’s problems, and that any government that doesn’t pursue far-left policies will inevitably fail, then you will think that the Labour Party should stick to its guns, or shift even further left. I predict that this will work out just as well as it did for Michael Foot.
Daragh McDowell 05.12.15 at 12:46 pm
@dsquared –
Now now Daniel. If Thursday has taught us anything, it’s that the left needs a rigorous new round of ideological policing and identity politics. I think Sasha’s suggestion that we select leaders based on our perceptions of their degree course, or some form of ‘real jobs vs. unworthy professions’ is an excellent idea, as is judging barristers based on the clients their firms represent. Victory is just around the corner… I can smell it.
ajay 05.12.15 at 12:46 pm
a “real job†should be one which rubs one’s nose in the unpleasant realities of life, and make one work with people at the bottom of the heap. Tony Blair certainly never did one of those
I love the idea that one can be the Labour MP for a mining constituency in County Durham in 1983 and never come into contact with any of the unpleasant realities of life or work with people at the bottom of the heap.
harry b 05.12.15 at 12:50 pm
I think the claim that politicians should have had a ‘proper’ job is really that they should have had a job unrelated to politics, which is, in some way, involved in producing something. I’m a skeptic. A successful politician (that is, one who actually does worthwhile things) needs a number of skills that in fact have to be developed over time. Prescott, Skinner, et al developed those skills in the union movement; Straw, Heath, et al developed them within student politics; they can be developed within a party, they can be developed in parliament. I want politicians who actually know how to serve their constituents, make policy, and make deals (and, if they are roughly on the same side as me, win elections). PPE is no worse than any other degree in this respect, and being a think-tanker or a political adviser, or a party functionary, is no worse than any other job, as preparation for this. With one exception: I’m surprised there aren’t more ex-primary school teachers in parliament, since that really seems the ideal preparation, especially for certain positions (there’s only one Speaker, so where does he/she get their continuing professional development? — presumably by with Reception and Year One teachers).
harry b 05.12.15 at 12:51 pm
Oh — and why do people like Clegg and Miliband who, presumably, care a lot about their parties, throw them into leadership contests the day after an election, thus enduring that there will be no careful, thoughtful, reflection on the previous several years?
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 12:54 pm
@69 Indeed – or Ted Heath. But most of that generation had the “realest” experience possible, on the battlefields of WWII and Tory or Labour, a much greater understanding and sympathy with their fellow humans. Ted Heath also came from a fairly humble background. Also, in those days you didn’t get elected, certainly not in a working class constituency, without tramping the streets and seeing a thing or two.
Daragh McDowell 05.12.15 at 12:56 pm
Harry B @74 – Because politics still goes on in the midst of a leadership selection, and its hard to see a defeated leader being able to be a credible figure for holding the government to account. I can think of one leader in my life time (Michael Howard) who stayed on to oversee proceedings, but then he had generated a significant increase in seats (if not votes). For the Lib Dems it’s largely irrelevant as no-one will be paying attention to us for the next six months (if ever again) but for Labour its a decision that the public made a call not to listen to Ed Miliband, so best to sub in Harriet Harman to keep the score down while they find someone else.
Salem 05.12.15 at 1:09 pm
Callaghan stayed on for over a year, because he wanted to change the procedures by which the next leader was selected. I believe that is also why Howard stayed on.
harry b 05.12.15 at 1:17 pm
In those days, actually, most seats were safe seats, so you could certainly get away without too much campaigning — if anything, they have to do more of that now than they used to because they get deployed to marginals. A good constituency MP sees plenty of real life, anyway, whatever constituency they are in.
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 1:19 pm
I had a nice upper working class upbringing in 1960s Middlesbrough. My Grandad had been a shop-steward in the 1926 strike, and poverty was never further away than a street or two, but I got a good education and went into teaching. I thought I had a fairly realistic view of the world until I got a job, and a council flat, in a new town in Co Durham in a soon to be ex-mining area. What I saw, and what I experienced was a total culture shock and reality check, but it helped make me into a proper human being.
One thing which happened, as my flat was on the edge of the school catchment area, in a very grim neighbourhood, is that I was targeted for harassment by some of the local feral youth. Not ones I taught personally, but people whose background was so dysfunctional that the poor bastards didn’t have much hope of a decent life. Reporting the problems to the police made things worse: amongst other things, my windows were smashed, I was threatened, so, after 6 long weeks, the council moved me to another flat 10 minutes walk away across a main road, outside the territory of my “persecutors”, where I had no more trouble.
The support from the rest of the kids and my colleagues was what got me through. The area was rough, but most of the people were warm-hearted and decent. I look upon my two years there as amongst the happiest of my life, but I was a very different person leaving, to the innocent young man I’d been when I arrived. Another thing was that several colleagues of mine had also worked in the mines, and listening to their stories gave me a new perspective too. My experiences in that community certainly solidified my politics, and no-doubt gave me some of my predjudices.
ajay 05.12.15 at 1:20 pm
With one exception: I’m surprised there aren’t more ex-primary school teachers in parliament, since that really seems the ideal preparation
OK, that raised a smile. Reminds me of Jo Brand explaining how valuable it was for a stand-up comedian to have previously worked as a psychiatric nurse.
I think the claim that politicians should have had a ‘proper’ job is really that they should have had a job unrelated to politics, which is, in some way, involved in producing something. I’m a skeptic.
As am I. Apart from anything else, this rules out Clem Attlee (public school, Oxford, pupil barrister, couple of years with an NGO, then straight into Labour politics). And if your recipe for producing great politicians, especially great Labour politicians, rules out Attlee, then there is something wrong with it.
engels 05.12.15 at 1:28 pm
‘A successful politician… needs a number of skills that in fact have to be developed over time’
Or as Plato put it: “a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft, if he’s really to be the ruler of a ship”
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 1:46 pm
Ajay @80. But Atlee didn’t go straight into Labour Party politics.
“From 1906 to 1909, Attlee worked as manager of Haileybury House, a charitable club for working-class boys in Stepney in the East End of London run by his old school. Prior to this, his political views had largely been Conservative. … However, after his shock at the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with the slum children, he came to the view that private charity would never be sufficient to alleviate poverty … etc “
Attlee also saw action in WWI. My objection is to people who have little experience of the hard edge of life, or of those whom they are supposedly championing, being fast-tracked through the corridors of power. In a way, I’m echoing Oliver Cromwell 350 years down the line: “I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that you call a Gentleman and is nothing else.”
engels 05.12.15 at 2:07 pm
If you view politics in a ‘democracy’ as a skilled profession, like computer programming or public relations, then of course Sasha’s objection makes no sense (except perhaps as a problem of ‘diversity’ in one sector of the workforce), but I confess I hadn’t realised we’d sunk to quite this level.
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 2:20 pm
One final point about Attlee, and very many other Labour politicians of his era. Before going into Parliament, he had significant experience of local government, becoming mayor of Stepney in 1919. The links between local and national government were closer in those days. It was understood that involvement in local politics increased party membership, built a network of loyalties in which MPs and constituency parties worked together, and also strong local base upon which to build national success.
These days an aspirant party leader is more likely to take a year at Harvard than to soil his/her hands with local council politics. The result is a greater disconnect between national and local government. This has surely contributed to the declining turnout in general elections: from a high of 83.% in 1950, to a miserable low of 61.2% in 2005, and not much better since.
Bah!
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 2:23 pm
PPPS Yes Engels, they’re so “skilled” that a third of the electorate can’t be bothered!
I’m off for a walk to cool my brain! ;)
Consumatopia 05.12.15 at 2:34 pm
“Yes, if you believe that only far-left policies can address the country’s problems, and that any government that doesn’t pursue far-left policies will inevitably fail, then you will think that the Labour Party should stick to its guns, or shift even further left.”
Where the solution sits on the ideological spectrum, or how popular it is in the present, doesn’t really matter. If a popular policy leads to a crisis, the spectrum will shift and the popularity with change. If the people are demanding a doomed policy, it’s better to wait out the failure in opposition then join the majority.
Not all policy dilemmas have the potential to erupt into an election-losing crisis or war at a later date, and therefore it might make sense to move to the center on the ones that don’t. Or, of course, if the centrist policy is the best way to avoid the crisis then you should shift towards it.
TM 05.12.15 at 2:47 pm
73: Surely successful politicians need certain politician skills but their class background and life experience determines to some extent to whose benefit they will employ their skills.
Out of curiosity, are there statistics as to how many MPs are lawyers?
Daragh McDowell 05.12.15 at 2:51 pm
“If the people are demanding a doomed policy, it’s better to wait out the failure in opposition then join the majority.”
Translation: Those contradictions aren’t gonna heighten themselves!
ajay 05.12.15 at 2:57 pm
. But Atlee didn’t go straight into Labour Party politics.
No, as I said, he had a few years with an NGO first (an NGO run by his old public school no less). My point is that this is exactly the kind of thing that would be dismissed as “not a proper job”. And it now seems that going straight into politics is still “having a proper job” as long as it’s local politics. Or at least local politics in a poor area. But not being the MP for a poor area. Or something.
ajay 05.12.15 at 3:04 pm
Out of curiosity, are there statistics as to how many MPs are lawyers?
There are indeed! About 10-15% since 1979. It varies from election to election.
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01528.pdf
Last time it was 35% professions (of which 14% law), 25% business, 4% manual workers, 36% “miscellaneous” (mostly white-collar jobs and the media).
TM 05.12.15 at 3:28 pm
I would have guessed much higher.
TM 05.12.15 at 3:44 pm
88 et al: I ‘m not so sure (cough cough) that austerity was enacted because voters were clamoring for it. I still haven’t heard any good reason why Labour couldn’t have run successfully on a clear-cut anti-austerity platform, as SNP did (and that would have been far from “radical”). What is really being claimed here? Who are the pro-austerity voters that Labour so urgently needed to pander to? Isn’t the real argument that Labour needs to pander to the plutocracy because they control the gates to power, in other words it has nothing whatsoever to do with democratic electoral politics?
There is this debate whether the Murdoch media exert actual power or whether they just reflect where the political wind blows (e. g. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jan/08/how-murdoch-gang-got-away/). I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this conundrum but I tend to take the power of propaganda seriously. Goebbels did and Murdoch does and Ailes does and they are the experts.
Salem 05.12.15 at 4:17 pm
harry b 05.12.15 at 4:22 pm
In a democracy its up to voters (well, depending on how nutty the electoral system is) who they elect — the job is for whoever gets elected. But in so far as you have a set of political goals, that you want to be enacted, in a democracy (and, even in a non-democracy) you want elected officials to be skillful — especially if, like me, your political goals involve considerable changes that go against the interests of wealthy, powerful, people, who have an army of skilled obstructors at their disposal. Those skills don’t come out of nowhere. I don’t have them, and at this point in my life, won’t develop them. Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, David Miliband, Clem Attlee, Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Ted Heath, Eric Heffer… they all had those skills, and developed them in dramatically various circumstances, but I don’t think any of them developed them in non-political day jobs (it was in the union, not working down the pit, that Skinner developed his; it was in politics, not while editing the Church Times, that Heath developed his; etc)
Ronan(rf) 05.12.15 at 4:48 pm
“they all had those skills, and developed them in dramatically various circumstances, but I don’t think any of them developed them in non-political day jobs”
But isn’t that part of what sasha’s getting at (sorry sasha if I’m misunderstanding) the decline in those “dramatically various circumstances” where people can acquire those skills?
TM 05.12.15 at 5:39 pm
Salem 93: I don’t think this poll is terribly convincing. First thing that stands out is that a majority disapprove of the government’s record and think Cameron is doing a bad job. Milliband is judged even worse (ditto Clegg), which might give us a hint as to the outcome. To the question, “Do you think this coalition government is good or
bad for people like you?”, only 21% answered good. Do you really think the voters meant to indicate their support for more austerity?
When asked about fiscal priorities, 44% wanted more services and investment spending and only 20% cared about reducing the deficit. Majorities supported limits on certain benefits while strongly opposing cuts to NHS and education. I would point out that some of the questions are borderline manipulative, for example “which of the following areas do you think the government should cut spending in the MOST?”
I don’t think the poll supports the contention that austerity is popular. What it does indicate is that the political debate is framed in a way that austerity is presented as inevitable, and for that I would contend Labour must bear some of the blame.
engels 05.12.15 at 5:59 pm
Harry, I agree that politicians need certain soft skills but your exclusive focus on this (#73) as criteria for judging the appropriateness of their backgrounds seems deeply technocratic and elitist. Representative democracy requires that citizens are entitled to vote and stand for office, but since you view politics as a role with qualifications which are out of reach of ordinary people I’m not sure the second right is more than merely formal for you
magistra 05.12.15 at 6:18 pm
Salem@93: as for the benefits cuts being “obviously just”, a housing expert reckons they’ll cost billions of pounds extra, as well as wrecking children’s lives, because families with more than two children will be evicted from the social housing they’re currently in and then have to be rehoused in expensive but unsuitable temporary accomodation.
harry b 05.12.15 at 6:33 pm
engels — you’re misinterpreting. I am certainly not saying that those occupations etc are necessary for developing those skills, just that they are sufficient, so we shouldn’t bang on about politicians ‘not having had a proper job’, just judge them on their skills, commitments, character, etc, all things that can be acquired, or not, in all sorts of jobs and activities, not only in the so-called real world.
I do think it is a real loss that so few Labour politicians come from working class backgrounds and have had little experience in the trades union movement, but the latter, at least, has been inevitable since the beginning of the decline of the trades union movement.
I wouldn’t be opposed to — in fact I have advocated — an upper house being selected by lottery — ie, genuinely being representative of the population. But I do think the Commons should be an elected chamber, and it is unrealistic to suppose that most elected politicians will be ‘ordinary people’ in times of normal politics.
harry b 05.12.15 at 6:36 pm
And although I definitely own up to technocratic tendencies, part of the case for politicians being experienced and skilled in the ways I suggest is anti-technocratic. I want a strong, competent, civil service (I have seen what government is like in a country without that) but I don’t want the civil service ruling, which is what it does without highly capable political oversight. (One of the reasons US public education is so crap, eg, is that school boards are ineffective overseers of civil servants),
Philip 05.12.15 at 6:51 pm
The proposal in the OP would be awful here in the Northeast of England. Politically the Northeast and Scotland have similar views and reasons for voting for Labour (or not). If the Labour part cut-off their Scottish membership to woo Middle England there would be even less of an audience for the views of people in the Northeast.
People have been confused how people could switch their vote from LibDem to UKIP, well I can see it quite easily. People won’t vote tory because a) Margaret Thatcher and b) their parents would turn in their grave, they won’t vote Labour because Tony Blair moved the party away from their views and they don’t think Ed Milliband has moved it back. Since the Conservatives will never win and Labour will never lose people feel they are ignored by the political class, many voted LibDem last time as a way out of the dilemma, but they went into coalition with the tories. They feel they should still vote but have been let down by all of the main parties and UKIP is the other party getting a lot of media attention and they like how Farage is upsetting the established parties, they might not want them to actually win but that’s not a problem as Labour will win anyway. A similar process led me to vote green and I think even the SNP would have done quite well here as a protest vote. Of course some of the UKIP voters will blame the problems in the NE on immigration but I don’t think many of those will have voted LibDem in the last election.
If the LP did split as the OP suggests people would not really be joking when they say if Scotland goes independent can we join them?
Mitch Guthman 05.12.15 at 7:19 pm
Philip @ 101
Stephen 05.12.15 at 7:26 pm
Ajay@89: Attlee “had a few years with an NGO first (an NGO run by his old public school no less). My point is that this is exactly the kind of thing that would be dismissed as “not a proper jobâ€.
According to Wiki: he also in 1909 worked briefly as a secretary for Beatrice Webb, before becoming a secretary for Toynbee Hall (oh, the irony). In 1911, he was employed by the UK Government as an “official explainer”, touring the country to explain Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act. He spent the summer of that year touring Essex and Somerset on a bicycle, explaining the Act at public meetings.
More to the point, he also fought in an infantry regiment at Gallipoli, and was the last man but one to be evacuated from his position at the end of that campaign (which he always maintained was a brilliant idea, bungled in execution). He then fought in Iraq, where he was badly wounded in an attack on a Turkish position, recovered, and ended the war as an infantry major on the western front.
I reckon that is more of a proper job, with real-life experience, than serving as a SPAD.
Mind you, the idea of Blair and his supporters fighting and being badly wounded in Iraq does have a certain appeal. Dream on …
dsquared 05.12.15 at 7:34 pm
But most of that generation had the “realest†experience possible, on the battlefields of WWII
In an all male environment, in a war zone, with a guaranteed job in an organisation that provides all your food and accommodation but reserves the right to jail or kill you for poor performance? I genuinely can’t think of anything less relevant to understanding the concerns of ordinary Britons thirty years later. Being in the Army is so unlike being in normal civilian life that they actually give you training on how to adjust to it when you leave, don’t they?
I’m now trying to think of the least relevant “real job” possible. Serving on a nuclear submarine? Perhaps Senator John Glenn could represent ordinary working astronauts.
dsquared 05.12.15 at 7:36 pm
There it is again in #103! Being the last man on the beach at Gallipoli isn’t a “real life experience”, it’s an absolutely extraordinary experience which is interesting precisely because it’s completely different from normal life.
Phil 05.12.15 at 7:40 pm
Toynbee Hall (oh, the irony)
More a case of “oh, the small world”. Toynbee Hall was named after Arnold Toynbee (the elder), who had a nephew also called Arnold Toynbee (he of the tiles), who had a granddaughter named Polly.
Phil 05.12.15 at 8:00 pm
There’s ‘real’ meaning ‘typical (and hence productive of empathy with constituents)’, and there’s ‘real’ meaning ‘difficult or extreme (and hence productive of Character and Resolution, either directly or through Overcoming Trauma and Defeat)’. The latter is a bit weird when you look at it. It might make sense in a society where most men did fight, or face difficult and dangerous conditions in the workplace, but in our society it sounds more like holding out for a Coriolanus.
I still don’t think the NUS fulltimer-SpAd-MP career path (these days the intern-intern-SpAd-intern-SpAd-MP career path) is very real – or rather typical, or productive of empathy with hard-pressed constituents.
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 8:32 pm
Harry – you might not get ordinary “ordinary people”, but you might get the “taller poppies”.
In some ways I regret using the term a “real job”, but it was attributed to Tony Blair in praise of Chuka Umunna as compared with Ed Miliband. One must remember that Miliband was raised up and encouraged by Gordon Brown, for example to take his M.Sc in Economics, and that the Blair-Brown rift is still one of many which poisons the Labour Party.
I am not actually against technocrats, but I feel that as well as heads in the clouds, politicians should have feet on the ground, or rather solid roots in the movement. This is what people like Attlee undoubtedly did have. Given that so many pseudo lefties have used the Labour Party for their own ends, and then stabbed it in the back, I feel that all would-be Labour politicians should be proven to have got their hands dirty for at least a couple of years to know, empathise and build relationships with the roots of the party. Having been a party activist for 25 years until 2002, and constituency press officer as well as local branch chairman and secretary, I believe I have the right to say that this is vital for a party to function effectively. Many of Ed’s shadow cabinet spent more time insulting members and potential supporters who were at least as intelligent as they were, and more in tune with both party activists and the communities in which they live. After all, who are the ones who knock the doors, talk in the pubs, choirs, Community Councils, Citizens Advice Bureaux, LOCAL social networks etc?
Philip @101 – Dead right! Anything north of Thirsk is nearer to Edinburg than it is to London. There’s lots of Scottish history in the North-East, from the Balliols of Barnard Castle, to the Bruces of Guisborough and Acklam (where I went to school). The Earls of Bothwell originated from Hepburn on the Wall, etc etc.
Parties might not need real roots to get a majority in the Commons, but they need them to have any legitimacy. When 25% of the electorate, many voting tactically, gets an overall majority, this is a sign of system d failure.
Stephen @103, Ronan @95, Phil @107, I agree absolutely – especially about empathy! :)
Sasha Clarkson 05.12.15 at 8:37 pm
dsquared @105
When officers and men share the experience of soiling themselves in fear of imminent death, that builds empathy and solidarity. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the post-war Butskellite consensus?
engels 05.12.15 at 8:57 pm
‘just judge them on their skills, commitments, character, etc’
I’m glad you’ve added commitments and character into the specification (#73 considered skills exclusively iirc) but this still sounds to me like you’re evaluating job applications, a very narrow and technocratic. conception of what politics is about imho and why people vote (or don’t vote). Shared material interests and experiences, fellow feeling and personal ties to the people they’re ostensibly representing might be a good starting point for what’s missing…
john c. halasz 05.12.15 at 9:06 pm
The U.K. parliament, the House of Commons, has 650 seats and the Tories won 331 seats, yet the press reports call that a 12 seat majority. Could some native interpreter explain that to me?
Ronan(rf) 05.12.15 at 9:10 pm
Sinn Fein don’t take their (5 I think) seats
JanieM 05.12.15 at 9:20 pm
650 – 331 = 319
331 – 319 = 12
(I’m not a native, but that seems a plausible interpretation.)
Ronan(rf) 05.12.15 at 9:24 pm
Yeah, makes more sense
Consumatopia 05.12.15 at 9:38 pm
“Translation: Those contradictions aren’t gonna heighten themselves!”
No, that’s the opposite of my position. If you wanted to heighten the contradictions to encourage people to join leftist and rightist radical parties, then you should bring the center left and center right party as close together as possible, so that the only choice people have is either the status quo or to tear the whole system down.
Suppose that Labour won on an austerity platform, but Keynesians turn out to be correct and UK growth stagnates. Next election time, where are people going to go for an alternative? Probably back to Tories who will in the meantime have shifted even further to the right.
You can’t count on your opponent’s policies failing, but embracing your opponent’s policies bears the risk that you will get the blame if those policies fail, and your opponent will get the chance to implement something even worse.
john c. halasz 05.12.15 at 9:41 pm
Thanks, JanieM, though I would consider 50% the threshold for majority. (IOW were the Tories to lose 6 seats for whatever reason, that would end the majority).
Ronan (rf), I’d thought that Sinn Fein still maintaining their boycott might be part of the answer, but they won just 4 seats, so the math still didn’t add up.
Phil 05.12.15 at 10:39 pm
SF have four seats which they don’t use; there’s also the Speaker (an MP who by convention never votes; currently a Tory). So in practical terms the Tories have 330 out of 645 seats, for a majority of 15. But it’s a notional distinction; if the Tories’ majority ever did fall to a level where they were effectively being kept in office – or, what’s the phrase, ‘propped up’ – by SF abstentionism or the Speaker’s neutrality, it would really not look good.
Phil 05.12.15 at 10:50 pm
Philip @101 – I suspect the LDs’ abandonment of their position on the centre-left has had some curious effects on British political geography, changing the sense of what it means to be the third party in a two-party system. 2010 LD voters getting off the bus in 2015 would have travelled a long way to the right in the mean time; UKIP might look a lot more available to a former Clegg supporter than they would have to an ex-Kennedyist or Ashdownite.
But I really just wanted to relay a doorstep comment passed on by a canvasser friend. How will you be voting, sir? “Well, I’m a racist, so I’ll be voting Liberal Democrat.” You can’t argue with that.
harry b 05.12.15 at 11:32 pm
Tony Blair said that being a mere headmaster like Harold Wilson’s son wasn’t good enough for his kids.
engels — as I said, a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. I was responding to a particular claim, and said what was relevant to that claim, not everything I think.
js. 05.13.15 at 3:00 am
Yes. This is totally right I think, esp. the part I’ve emphasized. But I do think the focus on “real jobs” is misleading, and a misdiagnosis. The kind of concern you’re raising, which I think is a real problem, makes me think of these weird but awesome diagrams Colin Crouch has in Post-Democracy, illustrating how parties and office-holders are much more disconnected from their constituents now than they were a generation or two ago. How they’re now more closely connected with various sorts of auxiliary social organizations than they are with the people who elected them and whom they ostensibly serve. And how this is a very serious, almost fatal, problem for democracy.
So yes, all this is spot on. But again, the focus on what what other jobs someone has held or where exactly they learnt their political skills seems like a distraction (even if not totally unrelated).
js. 05.13.15 at 3:16 am
ps. Everything Salem is saying makes total sense when read alongside Krugman and Wren-Lewis. Or at least, one can make sense of what s/he is saying.
ajay 05.13.15 at 8:59 am
I am not actually against technocrats, but I feel that as well as heads in the clouds, politicians should have feet on the ground, or rather solid roots in the movement.
But, according to you, you could be working for the Labour Party for your entire adult life since leaving university (or even before) and still not have “solid roots in the movement”. In fact you’re actually arguing that always having been a full-time Labour politician (like Ed Miliband, for example) somehow precludes you having “solid roots in the movement”.
Frankly I think this is an aesthetic approach to politics. You’re after politicians who feel Labour-y.
When officers and men share the experience of soiling themselves in fear of imminent death, that builds empathy and solidarity. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the post-war Butskellite consensus?
Wait, this sounds like you’re arguing that army officers with combat experience are more likely than average to favour left-wing policies, social solidarity etc. To which: seriously?
dsquared’s point at 104 is a good one too. I think we should be very careful of equating “this person has achieved great deeds in war” with “this person would make an awesome politician”. Shakespeare made a career out of writing plays about how this really wasn’t true at all, not to mention all the many other recent examples.
engels 05.13.15 at 12:39 pm
Harry, you said you were sceptical of the idea that politicians should have had a ‘proper’ job before politics, because
and
You then clarified that you were
But I wasn’t disagreeing with an imagined claim that ‘those occupations are necessary’ for developing those skills but with what I thought was your assumption that the possession or lack of such skills determines whether or not someone is a ‘good’ MP and whether people should vote for her (which as I’ve said presupposes a conception of representative politics which I think is technocratic and elitist).
And it still seems to me that your comments do make this assumption. If they don’t, then I don’t see how they are response to Sasha’s point? Arguing that politicans can acquire politician skills in all kinds of jobs, so the fact that the never held a ‘proper’ job doesn’t matter, presupposes that the only (or most important thing) that matters when choosing an MP is her politician skills, doesn’t it? If you weren’t saying that I’m not sure what you were saying.
If this is my misunderstanding then apologies for dragging this out.
engels 05.13.15 at 12:45 pm
(Sorry, the penultimate paragraph is badly written. I’m aware you don’t hold the crazy view that political skills are the only criteria for deciding who to vote for, but it seems to me that your argument in #73 must presuppose that it is important and the other things people have mentioned aren’t, otherwise I can’t see how it is an argument against Sasha’s initial claim.)
Stephen 05.13.15 at 12:58 pm
ajay@122: please distinguish between “This person has achieved great deeds in war, and would therefore make an awesome politician” and “Experience of war may give a politician useful insights that are not likely to be acquired by working as a SPAD, and so forth, in the modern political-career pattern”.
The former is obviously untrue, and I don’t think anyone is proposing it. The latter is often true: look at the effects of WW1 on Macmillan, for example.
TM 05.13.15 at 1:31 pm
Well, look at the effects of WWI on Hitler, for example. It is probably true that war does give men “insights” that are very different from those they could get in civilian life. What they make of them depends on the person I guess.
dsquared 05.13.15 at 1:36 pm
When officers and men share the experience of soiling themselves in fear of imminent death, that builds empathy and solidarity. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the post-war Butskellite consensus?
I am trying to think how Vietnam and Reaganism might be pushed into this template and confessing I can’t.
reason 05.13.15 at 2:52 pm
me @20
Seems somebody with a bigger megaphone thinks the same thoughts:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/labour-attack-tories-austerity-tackle-electoral-reform
ajay 05.13.15 at 4:18 pm
“Experience of war may give a politician useful insights that are not likely to be acquired by working as a SPAD, and so forth, in the modern political-career patternâ€.
Oh, no doubt. But the reverse is also true. And, I would argue, more likely to be true.
Who is more likely to have useful insights into politics: the person who spends their working hours thinking and writing about politics, or the person who spends their working hours thinking about and practising deliberate company attacks?
And knowing how to conduct a deliberate company attack is a useful skill, and doing it well is laudable and a service to the republic that should be recognised and rewarded, but I don’t see how it necessarily translates into insights on public policy any more than it does into having insights on archaeology, compared to someone who spends their life actually doing it. For every TE Lawrence or Harold Macmillan, there are thousands of mute inglorious Colonel Blimps.
But you might be arguing, not that army officers are better at the technocratic stuff (“aha! but we could emulate the Swedish system of regional non-profit insurance boards providing healthcare to the population under scrutiny from a parliamentary oversight body empowered to subsidise poorer areas! this has been shown to have a measurable impact on healthcare inequality if matched by a significant commitment to preventive care in the under-3s!”) but that they’re more likely to care about social solidarity and income equality and so on. They’re better in terms of motivation.
In which case you haven’t met many army officers. They aren’t known for being generally leftier than the population as a whole.
Stephen 05.13.15 at 4:26 pm
TM: agreed.Hitler – WW1 + employment as Austro-Hungarian equivalent of SPAD would have been very different. (Though – WW1, so many things would have been different.) What one makes of experience depends on who one is. Very few politicians are potential Hitlers.
Stephen 05.13.15 at 4:37 pm
Ajay: depends on what you mean by “insights into politics” and “insights into public policy”. In modern SPADdery, I fear it means “insights into how to make sure my party’s policies, whatever they may be, are best presented to the despised electorate”. Gonflez-ca pour une alouette, as the French say.
As for the opinions of amy officers: actually, I have known a fair few of them (though not being one myself). Caring about social solidarity: why, I would say they rate very highly on that. Caring about income equality, no they don’t, nor me neither. Caring about justifiable and unjustifiable inequalities in income: do you think that anybody nowadays applies for a commission in the belief that they will make a pile of money?
TM 05.14.15 at 4:23 pm
On topic:
“Labour’s problem is not that the people who run the party have spent their entire careers in politics. It’s that they have spent their entire careers in the kind of politics that washes its hands if ever it has the misfortune of touching a voter. A lifetime’s study of tactics and manouevres within the Westminster bubble might work for a party supported by the corporate media, and that can mobilise fear to push people to the right; it does not work for a party that requires genuine public enthusiasm to succeed. It’s not people with experience in banking or business that Labour desperately needs, but people who know how to build a political movement from the bottom up.”
And: “Revitalising communities is not just an election strategy. It is a programme for change in its own right; even without a sympathetic government. If it takes root, it will outlast the vicissitudes of politics. But it will also make success more likely. If Labour wants to reconnect, it must be the change it wants to see.”
George Monbiot, http://www.monbiot.com/2015/05/13/ground-control/
Bruce Wilder 05.14.15 at 4:59 pm
dsquared @ 127
LBJ altered the plan of conscription with deferments that exacerbated class divisions and resentments. That might have something to do with the differences.
Sasha Clarkson 05.14.15 at 7:25 pm
TM @132. Thank you for posting that link. Monbiot is certainly right about at least some in the Labour ranks. I also think that part of the problem with Clegg was that his roots in his own party were rather shallow. He inherited his Westminster seat from a retiring MP, and, unlike most Lib-Dem MPs, always spent more time in the corridors of power than close to the party’s grass roots.
R Cottrell 05.14.15 at 8:31 pm
Re the Sturgeon Gang, try ‘national socialist’
kidneystones 05.15.15 at 11:43 am
“Someone tried to interview the candidate’s elderly mum.” That’s the reason Chuka is bailing already from the Labour leadership race. It’s not because a major negative story is (evidently) about to break. Must be pretty rotten. I find his oily snobbery absolutely repellent and his remarks about not appealing to the aspiring class are likely to far outlast his extremely short candidacy. This is another marker that separates the US from Britain. Politicians in the US, especially those of the donkey variety, can count on a free pass from their many friends in the press.
Sasha Clarkson 05.15.15 at 3:55 pm
North English separatism is taking off. A border “from the Humber to the Dee” would also include significant North Sea mineral rights. Wales should join in – and allow Bristol in too for the sake of Chris Bertram, and Bristol’s support of Cromwell in the civil war!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/14/petition-demands-northern-counties-break-away-from-london-centric-south-and-join-with-scotland_n_7286464.html
I fantasised on this subject a few years on the BBC Newsnight blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/2011/04/friday_15_april_2011.html?postid=108117526#comment_108117526
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