The Conservative Party exists for a reason. The most successful political party in the history of democracy has, for centuries, served the sole purpose of preserving the interests of wealth. I stress that when saying so I am not suggesting that it exists to serve the interests of business, as it would like many to believe, but wealth. This is the party of the rentier, not the business person.
What has to be acknowledged is that it has been remarkablty successful at doing so. It has been in office for 44 of the 72 years since 1945. It's borrowed far more than Labour in the process. And I am quite sure it does not give a damn: the Conservative Party does not exist to deliver policy or purity: it's goal is pragmatic power.
Only once in my lifetime has it forgotten this. That was the 1990s. Then, in a moment of madness (by its standards) it fell into partisan bickering when those who forgot the goals of the party did instead seek to pursue a dogmatic, nationalist, anti-EU agenda that drove it from the corridors of power for more than a decade. The natural order was disrupted.
It has never returned with its old confidence. If Cameron was a weak prime minister, holding office by the thinnest of margins, May is very much worse, despite still running a Tory administration. And that could still work if the Tories remembered what they were all about, which is compromise in the pursuit of power itself.
What Brexit negotiations convincingly reveal is that this is precisely what they have forgotten. They appear to have lost their negotiating ability whilst compromise appears beyond them. And all that remains on view is desperation and dogma. To put it another way, the Tories appear to have regressed to their 1990 state.
We can but hope that there is opprtunity in this. What we know is that the interest of the rentier does not align with that of most people in a country: by definition those who live off the back of the wealth created by others must be in a minority and have to oppress the majority. This is the malignant reality at the core of Tory politics.
What we also know is that this does not deny the minority power: money ensures they have influence beyond numbers.
But, that is only true when the opressor is single minded and the oppressed can be fractured in their opposition.
Or to put it another way, when there is a divided Tory party united opponents can overturn the hegemony of Tory power. This is the opportunity that exists now. This week showed it: the united opposition (because this was a multi-party showing) defeated the government on a motion on universal credit, from the vote on which all but one Tory abstained. They simply ran from the field.
If only this could be built upon the end of Tory rule is possible for a long time to come. I am not optimistic it can be done by one party alone. I know it is possible by an opposition willing to work for a greater good, which is to achieve freedom from the oppression of the rentier.
Is that enough to unite political opinion on the left? I wish I know.
I live in hope.
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In the 2017 election there were a small number of compromises on the centre-left. The Lib Dems stood aside to help ensure the re-election of Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion and the absence of the Greens from Brighton Kemptown surely helped Labour take the seat.
And in my home constituency of Ealing and Acton, the Greens endorsed Rupa Huq and helped turn a thin majority from 2015 into a fairly substantial one. There may have been other quiet arrangements I didn’t notice.
I could have wished for more. If Labour had stood aside, or even just soft-pedalled in Richmond Park (as they did in the recent by-election) it could have kept Zac Goldsmith from taking the seat back, just as a bit of pragmatism could have unseated Amber Rudd in Hastings.
I’m sure I read somewhere that approaches were made to the Labour party about local deals but they insisted that they were committed to fighting every seat.
In the event of a general election in the near future I’ll be writing to Rupa Huq to urge her to support tactical compromises but I suspect the tribal instincts of the party will again prevail.
I fear you are right…
I am not entirely sure about “tribal instincts”. I think that some of the unwise Labour decisions that you speak of came from a sense of uncertainty, insecurity at the time, feeling embattled and trying to hang on to whatever they could.
With the benefit of hindsight, a more secure position and the increasing chance of victory, Labour will not be motivated by desperation. Good strategy comes more easily to those that have confidence.
Yep. Tribal.
In his memoir,*Politics: Between the Extremes* Nick Clegg relates how, the evening of the 2015 election at the combined Sheffield count, the loudest cheer of the night came from the Labour contingent when Vince Cable, comfortably the most left wing member of the LD contingent in the coalition, lost his seat *to a Tory*
Tribal.
I agree that tribalism plays a big part in all of this.
However, based on my experience with a group purporting to be an alliance (aimed at knocking the Tories of their perch) where I live, it is not tribalism that seems to be the problem.
I sit with a load of really nice people who want a better world but all of them – even the Greens – lack one fundamental thing: a knowledge about how the economy REALLY works and correspondingly how to use money to make the things that they want to see happen.
If you come to this blog as I do in support of Richard’s ideas and the ideas of other progressives we need not revisit them in detail here. But I have been arguing with my group that unless they can give a compelling and unified story about HOW they would realise this better world with better macro-economic management then they might not stand a chance of reaching their objective.
As much as I have grown to deplore neo-liberal economic and social thinking, you have to acknowledge that its proponents hold the line and reel off the same lame rubbish TOGETHER. They self reinforce with each other effectively.
One cannot say the same of those of us who want to change things because there seems to be no common agreement amongst progressives – especially at activist level – about what to say or how to present unified ideas to the voter that can lead to us dealing with our problems. And this deficit is borderless – as to be nothing to do with tribalism.
How many times have I heard an activist go on about beliefs and values and then tell me that ‘they don’t know much about economics’!! When in fact economics is a huge part of the means by which what they are after can be realised?!
So yes – tribalism is a problem. But a lack of engagement in and agreement of the mechanics of making things change (economics) is the real problem to me.
It is this that will hold up progress – make no mistake about it.
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
October 23 2017 at 12:56 pm
I agree that tribalism plays a big part in all of this…….It is this that will hold up progress — make no mistake about it.
Sorry that extract doesn’t capture your point , Pilgrim. Worthy of MSM sub editing even !
People say they they don’t understand economics you say. Hardly surprising when much of it is couched in term nonsensical. Gordon Brown wittered-on about endogenous growth and M1, M2….. Mx money supply. Did he understand what he was saying? Dunno. I suspect not.
Bullshit Baffles Brains they used to say. It’s quite deliberate. The ‘dismal scientists’ like to fool us they are into something really esoteric and beyond our ken.
A friend of mine was a staunch Labour member and active trade unionist etc and complained bitterly, when canvassing at election time, that he would repeatedly be met by uncomprehending blank faces to be told ‘We’re not really interested in ‘politics’.
Same problem. Slightly broader sphere of selected ignorance and complacency. People I’ve met have real difficulty making the connection between what happens in their lives and what a collection of self-opinionated windbags say in parliament.
They also believe that they only get to vote at election time. In reality I tell them you vote every time you open your wallet or purse. We do have options and we get to make choices every day if we can be bothered to think.
On which subject Henry Ford is reputed to have said, ‘Thinking is the hardest work there is; that’s why most people don’t do it.’
I still find it remarkable that you support agricultural subsidies to landowners, arts subsidies to the Tory toff segment, and convergence subsidies incident on tory voting factory owners.
Have I said I do?
Or are you making this up
And please don’t say because I support being in the EU my support for agricultural follows, because I have argued for a very long time for its reform
And as for arts subsidies – well, if you don’t see the reason, then you aren’t living
Support for reform of agricultural subsidies is still support for agricultural subsidies to exist, and they are incident on landowners.
It seems to me that your ideal society is one where the haves ( be it owners of land, factories, unpopular theatres that can’t pay their own way etc ) get to keep all the advantages they began life with and continue to get cash support from the government with conditions attached set by government committees – a sort of fusion of capitalist and State power.
Wow
Where the hell did that come from?
Have you really read anything I have actually written?
“Have you really read anything I have actually written?”
Apparently not.
Successful? Well they did manage to win a lot of elections. But they managed to lose The Empire, much of our manufacturing industry, surrendered to European bureaucrats and left us with road and rail systems and other communication systems that say lack efficiency. Oh, and who controls most of the press and TV? One can only say “strewth”.
But they protected wealth
Lose the empire? What, and the slaves as well? You think the clock should be put back?
Demetrius says:
October 21 2017 at 1:11 pm
“Successful? Well they did manage to win a lot of elections.”
I think that was the point being made.
” But they managed to lose The Empire, ” Get real ‘they’ didn’t lose the empire. ‘We’ didn’t lose the Empire it was taken away. The Japanese took a fair chunk of the Far East and then lost it to the Americans who kept it. India couldn’t be held. (And why should it have ever ‘belonged’ to us?)
“much of our manufacturing industry, surrendered to European bureaucrats” Where are you getting this stuff?
I don’t recognise the world you are describing.
Managed to lose the Empire Whaaattt?. the days of Imperial power were clearly coming to an end before WW2 and it was inevitable that post war we would lose our colonies.
I can’t believe anybody in this day and age would consider that keeping other nations under an Imperial yoke was a desirable thing
Colin Honeyman-Smith says:
“I can’t believe anybody in this day and age would consider that keeping other nations under an Imperial yoke was a desirable thing”
Neither can I, but Mariano Rajoy and Theresa May (and others many) don’t seem to share our enlightened view.
Separatists of the world untie !! I’m kind of pleased with that as a slogan. I think it could catch on. and it should if nothing else ensure support from dyslexics 🙂
“to unite political opinion on the left” – if only. It would need Labour to drop “Labourism”. Anthony Barnett, (I think following Ralph Miliband) describes it as a “fixation on one party” and “the way Labour politics integrated itself into the fundamentals of Westminster, rather than challenge them.”
In Scotland we were treated to the sight of Labour jubilating on hearing that Alec Salmond had lost his seat to a Tory. And there is strong suspicions that they “collaborated” with Tories in the GE by not campaigning seriously in certain seats where the Tory was the strongest challenger to the SNP. “Anyone but the SNP” seems to be Labour’s mantra. And of course they shared a platform with the Tories in the IndyRef campaign.
It seems they would rather be out of power than co-operate with the SNP, conveniently forgetting, when talking about Labour’s roots, that Keir Hardie supported Home Rule for Scotland. Labour are now a British Nationalist party of the upper/middle Oxbridge classes.
G. Hewitt,
I know the that the Telegraph probably won’t be your favourite journal (nor mine) but this concise report merely notes Salmond’s stated views:
“A defiant Mr Salmond insisted the SNP had still won the election in Scotland, having held a majority of seats, and refused to blame Nicola Sturgeon’s demand for a second independence referendum.
Instead he argued that the surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn had led to Left-wing and pro-independence voters switching support from the SNP to Labour, allowing the Tories to come through the middle.
The former SNP leader predicted that the Nationalists would now try to form a “progressive alliance” with Mr Corbyn to keep the Tories out of power.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/alex-salmond-warns-voters-have-not-seen-last-losing-seat-tories/
It seems to me that if it were not for the FPTP voting system there wouldn’t be a problem to speak of and Salmond himself has a more positive view of a potential alliance.
As for “the sight of Labour jubilating on hearing that Alec Salmond had lost his seat to a Tory”. Its the first I’ve heard of that and Google search doesn’t seem to know anything about it either.
…and I think the SNP are the only major party that supports PR, as do the Greens. And the SNP have always held out a willingness to form a “progressive” coalition at Westminster, but Labour would rather sup with the devil, I’m afraid – unless someone can find a quote from Corbyn or similar to disprove that.
As I said, Labour are a British Nationalist party, possibly an alien concept in England, who see the UK as one, indivisible, while the SNP are the Scottish National Party, who want an Independent Scotland. Anthony Barnett nails the English conundrum in “The Lure of Greatness”. Meanwhile the underclass suffer what they must while Tory and Labour posture and pose as they welcome the greatness Brexit will bring.
Link to Labour celebrations on demise of AS: https://wingsoverscotland.com/to-nobodys-amazement/ It can also be found on the Herald website.
Marco,
There WAS jubilation in Labour ranks at the results of the GE in Scotland.
There was a three way coalition in Scotland that created an almost binary choice between SNP and the the three opposition parties, Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems. (I’m not sure how the Greens positioned themselves but they are still too small a force in Scotland to have much sway. I would hope to see that change over time, but they do need to get their act together)
Lib Dems and Tories actually pooled their election expenditure in some seats (in effect) by not going head to head with leafletting.
Kezia Dugdale (Labour leader in Scotland) is on record as telling Labour supporters that their best bet was to vote Conservative in some constituencies to consolidate the anti SNP vote.
What happened in England and Wales was quite a different scenario than that played out in Scotland. Yet it was notionally the same election.
The issue in Scotland was to a large extent a fight between nationalist and unionist opinion. This was an entirely (in the short term) false prospectus.
There was jubilation from BBC ‘reporters’ (unwitting ? propagandists) aswell. Kirsty Walk (for example) couldn’t hide her delight at SNP losses. I thought that shameful. And the mainstream media reporting would have convinced anyone not paying attention that the SNP actually lost the GE in Scotland and that Ruth (Bimbo) Davidson’s Tories had won. SNP actually won an overall majority of seats. You wouldn’t have known it without paying attention.
“Is that enough to unite political opinion on the left? ”
Yes, quite probably. A little bit of time is needed for adjustment though. Which means that not quite winning the election was probably a good thing in some ways. The biggest shock of the 2017 GE was not that which was experienced by the Tories in losing their majority. The biggest shock was that which shook the Blairites. They’ll need a bit of time to get used to it but they seem to be making progress (pun intended).
In terms of an alliance, the Scottish question also needs time for adjustments following the GE result. There are one or two other issues that can also be resolved with time. In any case the ongoing self-destruction of the Tories is generating a sense of motivation and opportunity that will probably encourage most of the relevant parties to be make concessions and take a more a positive view. I am not trying to be optimistic in saying this. It’s an objective observation as far as I can tell.
Excellent point about being the party of the rentier, that I hadn’t really thought-through before.
But please proof-read your post (Then feel free to delete this comment!)
Thanks for your comment
I do proof read – and corrected a number of errors before this went live
But this is a blog and I write a lot on it
I can make things perfect and find it deely tedious to write
Or I can do ‘good enough’, accepting it is quite hard to see all errors in your own work just after you have written it on an ipad, and feed the stream of ideas that is what identifies a blog, on my opinion
I go for route two
Route one would never happen in reality: I would give up very quickly
Better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. I’ll but that. 🙂
But that?
I think so….
OOPs Sorry Richard. My mittens off now.
…’Buy’ that.
The tories are in power and intend to hold on to it until at least 2022. It needs a 2/3rd majority of MPs to vote for a general election. They may lose various votes in the Commons, but I can’t see any reason for them to give up.
It will be events…..
The only event that I could see unseating them would be a national strike.
Maybe
Carol, You are missing some possibilities.
The election expenses allegations if justified and penalised (and I do say if on both accounts) could wipe away the Tory majority at a stroke. I believe there are more than twenty cases being (not ?) investigated.
The DUP alliance has parameters. DUP has not agreed carte blanche support for all policies. The Irish border issue is problematic for ALL parties.
The DUP deal forged by Theresa May is being subjected to a legal challenge. It could be judged unlawful (I believe if not unlawful it should be, but I have no jurisdiction in the matter). Theresa May would no longer be able to hope for a majority support for contentious policy.
Yes, the current government may stagger on for it’s full term, but I can’t with confidence see it happening.
I believe there is only one MP threatened under the expenses scandal. And there isn’t much prospect of his being jailed which would lose him his seat.
Carol Wilcox says:
October 22 2017 at 3:11 pm
“I believe there is only one MP threatened under the expenses scandal.”
Ah well. One down two to go.
I expect Tories have better accountants (and legal advisers) than the police forces and are considerably better resourced.
So I expect the allegations have been disproved. Fair and square.
Britain isn’t and never has been a democracy.
I would argue with that
But it is a pretty odd one though
Name a democratically elected government since 1832.
Sorry – but you’re playing semantic games and I have a life
Ah ! K Crosby,
It depends on what is meant by democracy.
I agree it malfunctions pretty spectacularly at times in reflecting the popular will.
This is not accidental. It’s how a ‘mature democracy’ works.
The demos doesn’t make the rules it merely endorses a government which then does what it wishes to do. Voting merely offers an appearance of ‘consent’.
I think that is what it is designed to do. So in that sense it works perfectly to do what it was set-up to do.
No. I don’t like it either.
Research analysis of the Leave vote shows strong correlation with UK manufacturing areas hit by trade globalisation shock especially imports from China which heavily cheats in its global trading. The current Tory government strongly supports no tariff free trade even to the extent of blocking the EU attempts to stop Chinese steel dumping. The last thing that Leave voters in UK manufacturing areas therefore need to do is vote Tory!
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=164026089095087074069099069068126106103071022042063039098083029018006030098097083104027098125022121046105080103014100097105027010025046089088001001010122090082026033089008123118005092103028120127019093005001124096066000068088072087005122072028091099&EXT=pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/21/theresa-may-opposes-eu-trade-tariff-reform-cheap-chinese-steel-brussels-summit
Agreed
Watching Prime MInister’s questions, I often observe the sense of superiority displayed by their front bench. Even when the opposition is talking about real problems of poverty one sees laughter and contemptuous comments.
What is also apparent they always back the financial interest over the industrial interest-back on the gold standard in 1925, cutting public expenditure in 1931 so that the debt to America could be paid, by the Competition and credit control Act in 1971 which contributed to inflation, monetarism in the early 80s which wrote off much of industry ( a high pound AND high interest rates) the ERM crisis in the 1990s , support for light touch regulation of the City and finally the austerity doctrine.
Yet they assure us Labour would be a disaster for the economy.
Ian,
PMQs is an easily orchestrated waste of parliamentary time.
The very (physical) structure of the House of Commons is inimical to rational debate. It should be consigned to the status of national heritage relic (along with the monarchy) as a tourist attraction ASAP.
A new and fit for purpose 21st century parliament building is a matter of urgent need. And ideally it should not be built in London.
HofC is designed on the lines of a bear pit.
Re subsidies for the arts – of which I am in favour. But there is an enormous metropolitan bias to tackle. A friend who recently retired from a management position in a National Park informs me that Covent Garden receives more in subsidies each year than all the 14 National Parks put together. As far as I can, I’ve checked the figures and I think he is correct. The point is not how much the Arts in London receive, but how the budget for culture and leisure outside the capital is stripped bare in the name of austerity. It appears that, unlike credit, austerity is not universal.
I wholly accept that
It needs to be corrected, urgently
But I argue in favour of subsidising the arts
Arts (and other infrastructure) funding should at least be roughly balanced on a per capita basis with some component for deserving cases.
Who are the Rentiers?
I’m not clear who you’re aiming at. I am assuming you meant the State? Or does your view mean: Pensioners; LandLords; Bondholders; Shareholders and any other coupon clippers?
Thanks
The landlords
The monopolists
The companies that create the IP barriers to market entry
The lawyers and accountants that build the ring fences to protect hem
The usurers, of whom there are so many
They are the rentiers
Richard,
Surely the deeper problem is the FPTP voting system which leads to a two party hegemony. As discussed in your comments section, the Labour Party is hardly any better than the Tories when it comes to wanting power for power’s sake. And of course the FPTP system suits both the main parties, so it is unlikely to be reformed any time soon.
It us the niches flaw, I agree
The beauty of FPTP is that the voter rigs their own vote, by voting at all. No need for tanks on the lawn or SA men looking over your shoulder in the voting booth. It’s why the abstainers have “won” (got the largest portion of the electorate’s votes compared to their rivals) three of the last four elections and got no seats. If each candidate had to gain 50% of the votes (of the electorate in the constituency) plus 1 to win, the state couldn’t disenfranchise 30-40% of the electorate.
K Crosby,
I really think you should have put inverted commas round ‘beauty’.
There is no utility in FPTP except in choosing from a binary option. Where there is no utility, beauty is generally absent too.
Though, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
[…] http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/10/21/the-end-of-tory-rule-is-possible/ […]
That’s a very concise overview of the political reality, Richard.
I wouldn’t disagree with any of that. Labour for the most part, with the exception of the immediate post war years have governed by default when the Conservative party have failed to maintain a majority view within their own party ranks.
Theresa May is on a hiding to nothing because once again the Cons. are riven by the European issue. En fin they cannot agree on which arrangement will be easier to manipulate and profit from.
The Labour party likewise is riven, though the Corbyn dissenters are keeping a low profile at present. Pragmatic as ever.
The ‘Progressive Alliance’ promoted by Compass before the GE this year would have delivered Corbyn to No.10, but as leader of a coalition. Labour’s hubris in thinking, collectively, that it can win elections on its own terms have kept progressive politics at bay for …six(?) decades.
Richard
Speaking as a rather woolly tory I tend to agree with your narrative but not your viewpoint . You seem to see Toryism as an ‘evil’ tendency, I don’t. Its worth saying that if John Major had been re-elected in 1997 we, as a country, wouldn’t have caused the deaths of at least 700,000 Iraqis.
Leaving aside the horrors of Bliar’s foreign policy, I would still see much that he did wrong that an old school “conservative” government might have put right, from grammar schools to actually building some houses (how hard can that be!)
I am not a party politician as such
But I do see a bias to wealth as deeply destructive
Blair shared it, very obviously
Tories cannot be let off the hook about Iraq. They were in on the first Gulf War and voted for invasion in 2003 avidly I seem to remember. They love a nice war.
Andy Crow
In other words, only 67% have ever voted.
Ever…..
The man who’s changing politics isn’t Jeremy, its Stormzy & his Bro, Anthony Joshua
eriugenus says:
October 23 2017 at 12:55 am
“In other words, only 67% have ever voted.”
– I’m not sure where you get that figure from, but it sounds about right. The irony of our voting system is that any political party which succeeded in getting that silent 33% to vote for them could win an election and form a government.
33% is, I think I’m right in saying, about the proportion of the total electorate that gave Margaret Thatcher a landslide in 1979. And rather more than Tony Blair won for his landslide majority. Such massive majorities in the HofC are IMO very bad for parliamentary democracy because there is no semblance of accountability and government becomes lazy and all too easily passes sloppily drafted legislation.
“The man who’s changing politics isn’t Jeremy, its Stormzy & his Bro, Anthony Joshua”
I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn is ‘changing politics’ much if at all. He’s leading a shift towards the political left, but that’s not anything new, just cyclical business as usual.
The one thing I seriously find refreshing is that he is moving back a way from the ‘presidential’ leadership style we have become accustomed to. It was indeed the media cry against him that he was ‘not a leader’.
On a good day I think he is more a party convenor than leader and personally I’m comfortable with that. For example his repeatedly stated position on nuclear weapons is strongly ‘anti’. Yet he is prepared to ‘lead’ a party which does not follow him on this issue. I regard that as a strength rather than the weakness the MSM pundits like to point out mockingly. Maybe one day his view will prevail, but in the meantime party policy remains pro-nuclear. (Jobs on the Clyde still sways the issue for the terminal pragmatists, I think.)
eriugenus says:
“Speaking as a rather woolly tory I tend to agree”
I’d rather have a woolly Tory than a zealot of any hue. I’m inclined to agree with you about John Major. I don’t always agree with Major, but I do see him as rational and a man who believes in discussion and the compromises that work towards sensible policies. He was completely shafted by his own party.
“Leaving aside the horrors of Bliar’s foreign policy………..,”
In common with Thatcher, Blair’s great strength was his ability to ‘communicate’. It’s a great shame that he had so very little to communicate that was worth hearing. And in common with Thatcher, most of what they both said that was good was never manifest in the policies they pursued.
They were both mouthpieces for power brokers with different agendas which they didn’t understand. Their leaderships were largely just a front. (IMO)
I would still see much that he did wrong that an old school “conservative” government might have put right, from grammar schools to actually building some houses (how hard can that be!)
Carol Wilcox says:
October 23 2017 at 8:36 am
“Tories cannot be let off the hook about Iraq. ………….They love a nice war…”
I should say. Lots of fat profits for the arms trade – especially if your sales team are nifty and sell to both sides. And the neighbouring states are likely to get a bit nervous so they might want some gear aswell.
Also armaments have a shelf life so you need to use up the ageing stocks, and try out this year’s new stuff.
The way we do accounting of GDP this is all good news for the economy.
Small wonder the money tree has no leaves. It’s being blasted with economic ‘agent orange’.
If there is to be a way for an electoral alliance to get rid of the Tories, it has to be on the basis of policies which address the inbuilt bias of our voting system in favour of the Tories, which address the bias of our media in favour of the Tories, and which remove the control of the money production system from those other wealth defenders, the bankers. Any alliance elected on terms which failed to address these problems wouldn’t represent much of a change. I really wish people would see that failing to support PR is actually giving support to a system under which the Tories are bound to return to power.