Call Me Dave and the Melchett Molestation

Not that all politics is basically the same or anything, but I was writing this very piece about an entirely different news story. Funny how all your chickens come home to roost when inevitably they do...

There's a wonderful scene towards the end of The West Wing's final season in which President-elect Santos meets with the favourite to be the new Speaker Of The House. Santos outlines his first legislative priority; reform of the lobbying industry to free Congress from the corrosive effects of special interests. The soon-to-be Speaker's response is simple; "We have a majority and thus the edge in fundraising for the first time in years, I won't just give that away!"

If ever there was proof that psychology is far more important to understanding modern politics than philosophy or political science, it is in this attitude. It's only natural that politicians of all stripes will have their complaints about the nature of the game; everyone feels that way about some aspect of their chosen profession. And yet, when they win the game and have the chance to change it, even the most radical amongst them refuse to challenge the game as it stands, even in the face of their own overwhelming self-interest.

This effect was crucial in the death of the Labour Party; once it had convinced itself that Labour government was good and all other possibilities were fundamentally evil, the important quality for a Labour politician became, not their ideological soundness, but their ability to play the game. That such an attitude resulted in Blair, whose ideological emptiness was crucial to his development as perhaps the ultimate political player of the last half century, should not be too surprising.

The same was very much in evidence during the AV referendum and is an important factor to remember in any future electoral reform campaign. Much of the opposition to AV was based, not on a rational analysis of what Parliament should be and how it should best be composed to achieve that goal, but on the simple premise that first-past-the-post was democracy incarnate. For so many, the fact that the game was what it was meant that the game had to be that way, an attitude that will have to be tackled when the issue comes back round.

And then there is the ghastly ménage à trois that is Cameron, Murdoch and Brooks. The Dirty Digger's skills as a political seducer shouldn't be underestimated, but somehow, a succession of political leaders have failed to realise that his real power is not seduction, but blackmail; any advantage he grants to you comes through destroying your opponent and that power will be unleashed on you just as soon as you cease to be flavour of the month.

How much damage will accrue to each of the protagonists remains to be seen; Dave himself may well be saved by "politicians are all the same" deflecting the attention from his particular case of overindulging in the arslikhan. Still, it can only be good for the country and the coalition if this whole disgraceful affair teaches him the lesson that Lieutenant George got from Captain Blackadder; there's nothing wrong with dancing with the devil if he's the only one who'll bring you, but it is vitally important that you don't let him shag you on the veranda once you're there...

One Nation Conservatism; Not So Much A Philosophy, More A Statement Of Foreign Policy

Last week's reference to my Labour colleagues on Cardiff Council gave me cause to consider my reticence to this point towards blogging on council matters. At one level, this blog was never going to become a repository for ward news because that sort of thing was never its purpose when it started two years and one major city ago and it still isn't. Sooner or later I'm sure there will be a Llandaff and Danescourt Focus Team blog, but that's for another day.

As for city-wide issues, I've always recognised that I'm a member of the ruling group and that I have responsibilities to my colleagues. Our executive team is one of the very best in the country and I would not want anything that might appear on these pages to make it harder for them to do their job. Keeping my own counsel is difficult at times; there's one ongoing story I'd really like to blog about because it has given us the winner of the 2008 Scunner Broon Award for Stupidest Political Quote Of The Year, but I'll save that for the appropriate juncture.

Nevertheless, one thing you do learn very quickly in this business is that the council is a reasonably decent microcosm of the world of electoral politics everywhere and the examples worthy of note abound. One such came last Tuesday at Environmental Scrutiny Committee, where we received a presentation from the leader of the Sustainable Development team as part of the Executive response to a scrutiny report on that subject.

What was remarkable was the questioning that followed from the two Conservative members of the committee. The first enquired about the scientific basis of the team's work, leading to a brief discussion between him and our chair about whether it was most or the vast majority of scientists who think climate change is real and anthropogenic. The second went even further, asking in all seriousness whether the council's 60% carbon emission reduction target had taken into account the actions of China, India and the USA...

And yet, the thing to note is that it's not remarkable at all. Beneath the flaky veneer of the Cameron revolution, these are the members the Conservative Party actually has; old white men for whom the one nation is Britain. Dave's thesis, of course, it that they aren't important in the grand scheme of things and that it is the Goves and Greenings and Warsis of this world that matter. But while in Cardiff we're lucky that they're only the official opposition, it is traditional conservatives like these who are running councils and Conservative Associations up and down England and will have a big say in the actions of any future Cameron government.

Not The Work Of Homer

I seem to have spent an awful lot of time today thinking about this whole question of narratives; the belated spring clean I'm undertaking is probably to blame for this, as are James Graham and Ros Scott. Either way, I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that I haven't found many answers under the piles of paper.

As much as anything this is due to not really knowing what is required. I know that Neil Stockley and the other narrative advocates are right, I do. But agreeing with it gives me absolutely no insight into what it would be. Not that this should surprise me particularly; I am after all a policy wonk of many years standing and that in itself appears to be part of the problem.

Either way, we should resist any effort to use policy to drive any change in the narrative (which, let's face it, is what we're expecting to happen with tuition fees). We undoubtedly need to get better at communicating it, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we do have better policies than the other parties.

There is, however, one thing that does occur to me as a necessary ingredient for the mythic narrative.

Anger.

I may be a policy wonk, but the policies I care about make me angry. Council tax makes me angry. The benefit trap makes me angry. The state of the railways makes me angry. And after eighteen years of Tory neglect and a decade of New Labour bungling, many millions of Britons are angry too.

Not that any of this means that we need Nick Clegg smashing up the Question Time set or taking Scunner Broon outside for a kicking (although I am minded of Leo's line in the West Wing about blowing the Sultan's brains out in Times Square then crossing the street to Nathan's and buying a hot dog...)

What it does mean, however, is being willing to say not merely that we disagree with policy x or policy y, we disagree with what you stand for, in its entirety and to do so with absolute forthrightness. It doesn't even have to be about the words; Ming's conference speech last year could have done it with the right intonation. What's more, anger is a narrative the Conservatives can't steal. David Cameron is not going to summon rage from the depths of Notting Hill, and reaching for it and getting no further than Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells will just look silly.

Of course I'm almost certainly wrong about all of this. But can we at least agree that we need to sort the narrative out and start doing it?

Syntax, Enemy Of The State

A while ago, a post on the LDYS forums prompted in my mind a soundbite that appealed to me perhaps more than it ought;

“You’re not just an economic liberal, you’re an economic liberal and a social liberal? So you’re not a Tory, you’re a Tory who happens not to be a racist homophobe? And I should care why exactly? If I need a Tory who happens not to be a racist homophobe, I’ll talk to Alan Duncan!”

But I’m not one to cut and run on a soundbite, and the more I looked at this one the more I found myself frustrated by it. Not because the sentiment is wrong, but because the words are. Simply put, it strikes me that, when I think of a theoretical, effectively stereotypical, “economic liberal”, what I am actually describing is a right-libertarian. And although the agreement is less pronounced, “social liberal” corresponds pretty well to left-libertarianism.

Now let’s be absolutely clear, there’s almost no mainstream political philosophy (and by mainstream, I do not include “socialism” as practised on university campuses) that I despise more than libertarianism, if only because it commits gross historical and sociological negligence.

Equally, that isn’t the point. I’m quite clear that, when I get PR and when I get the resulting realignment of British politics, the libertarians and I will be in quite separate organisations. Right now, however, I need the Liberal Democrats to be a strong enough force to secure that realignment, which means building a coalition. And while the right-libertarians do have a natural home in British politics (they’re called the Conservative Party, you may have heard of them…), recognise that the left-libertarians are best served by the Liberal Democrats for now.

The implication for our party is clear, however; while that is the coalition, it must be a coalition on those terms. As I have (hopefully) repeated more than sufficiently, the thing I most object to in the current state of the internal debate in our party is the sense that there is one group of Liberal Holy Warriors who are fighting to preserve the Gospel According To Saint Mill and that anyone disagreeing with that group is stupid and/or misguided and can therefore be ignored and patronised until they come to the “right” answer.

I want the input from that side of the debate, but I want it in the right spirit and in the right way; democratically and by demonstration, not fascistically and by faith alone. It’s worth noting in this respect that I agreed with pretty much everything in the Orange Book (even the health chapter!), but that was because it treated me as an adult and worked hard to demonstrate the positive nature of its effects. We have seen that it can be done; I would just like to see a heck of a lot more of it.

But for fear of being even more apocalyptic, there is actually a greater problem. David Cameron’s positioning on supposedly liberal ground can be combated, but ironically, not by us trying to reclaim the word for our own divine use. The problem with Cameron’s use is that it is correct in an academic sense but not in a practical one; the “liberals” he has are right-libertarians, who are liberal for reasons of greed, spite and complacency. Cameron wants his version of liberalism to appear to be fluffily progressive, and the only way to fight that academic fire is with academic fire in return.

At a time when a public clamouring for reform feels betrayed by a supposedly progressive government that has failed to deliver, with a primary opposition party whose only interest in reform is the desires of its narrow electorate, we cannot allow ourselves to get distracted by an intra-mural spitball contest over one word. We do need a consistent message, but it need only be this; we are the only party that can deliver change that is focused on people and on communities and their needs. That alone should suffice, and it must do so; anything else would be a disaster for the changes we all need to be delivered in the governance of Britain today.

PS While pondering all this on the train recently, I found myself passing that redoubtable locomotive, 60056 William Beveridge. Some people might think that someone was trying to tell them something…