I took a week off from looking for things to write about here and during that time it seems that the strangest thing happened: politics got boring.
I am, of course, aware that most in this country think that this is always the case. I have friends (well, maybe acquaintances) who struggled to name most ministers when there wasn't the turmoil we have witnessed this year. But this time it seems to be different: being boring is now government policy, by default. It's as if Sunak became prime minister with the intention of disappearing from view.
I am not sure that this policy is intentional. I am even more uncertain about it being a good thing. Instead this is the consequence of having a prime minister who has no mandate, seeking to govern with the support of a party where young MPs are announcing their intention to quit politics by the day. Older members, meanwhile, are determinedly trying to find employment prospects outside parliament by appeasing whatever bizarre interest groups that they can knowing that the career prospects of ousted backbenchers in their 50s are pretty poor.
The result is not just that politics is dull because there is no imminent Tory leadership election, as yet. Instead it is dull because Sunak knows he cannot command his party to do almost anything and as such will very largely be choosing to do nothing.
Whether the issue is online wind farms, new house building or online safety it would seem that more than enough Tory MPs are willing to oppose the Tory line in parliament for the government to fail if the Opposition choose to abstain, and so he is ducking issues. Relying on the increasingly Tory-lite Labour vote in Westminster really does not look good for him.
In the Lords he is already losing. This week the government was defeated on transparency rules in NHS procurement in that place. Few seemed to notice, but this could become an increasingly significant issue as this government heads towards the end of its torrid existence. The Salisbury Convention, which requires that the Lords do not oppose on an issue in a party manifesto becomes increasingly irrelevant when the government in question is on its third prime minister and the 2019 manifesto is long forgotten.
This does matter, of course. That's because there is much that needs to be done by the government of this country. From simple but urgent things, like changing the rules on energy standing charges and prepaid meter tariffs, to reforming universal credit, to requiring green investment on unprecedented scale, and improving the funding for almost all public services, action is essential. But it is also very unlikely.
That is because the Tories are now a party in name only. The factional breakdown that has long threatened to overwhelm that party is now very clearly doing so. Sunak won because no faction hated him sufficiently. They do, however, hate each other, and he lacks any apparent authority to stop that.
The result is non-government. In effect, we might live the next two years with little more than a token gesture administration in office, pretending to deal with issues but actually powerless to do anything within the constraints of the two party system that has forced Tory MPs to pretend that they are a united force when nothing could be further from the truth.
What does all this mean for Labour? It would seem that it is learning three lessons from the Tories.
First, anyone opposing the leadership is being purged now. Factions are being eliminated before there is a chance of power.
Secondly, policy choices are completely anodyne so that opposition cannot arise.
Third, being united in managerialism is the aim.
Together it is presumed that these provide a platform for both electoral success and government. They won't, of course. The status quo is dead. But Labour is no better at wanting to move on from it than the Tories.
What both parties fail to notice is that political oppression of this sort (I use the word oppression advisedly) will not be tolerated for long. Whether on Twitter, Mastodon, or wherever the void will beg to be filled. We watch protest in China and elsewhere and think that the anger people feel, and the bravery they show is understandable, and to be praised. Before long we will realise that anger is required here. It already exists in Scotland. It will, I think, develop across the UK.
Government in absentia will not be tolerated for long when so much is wrong. All our political parties should take note.
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“Token gesture administration’ sums up this govt.
It has been going this way for some time with policies and attitudes designed to read well in the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph. Boris had more interviews in a hospital. it seemed, than anywhere else. Pritti Patel attacked ‘woke’ and migrants more than police failings. Lord David Frost attacked the EU for a problem of Britain’s own making.
The aim of managerialism is to remain in power.
I once was a counsellor to a man referred by a public sector organisation and he told me of the effects of what his managers were doing-and which caused him problems. I commented that the policies sounded like style over substance.
He replied, ‘my manager has openly said he puts style first’.
Bewildered- I am a simple sort of chap- I said, Why?’
The answer was to the effect that what was on the website was more important. And if his manager wanted to go for another job, the ‘evidence’ was there. I don’t think my client was making it up.
This also seems relevant.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/nov/29/slapps-senior-media-figures-call-for-law-stop-oligarchs-silencing-uk-journalists
Don’t rock the boat or cause us to question our masters.
I question whether the Tories will allow a SLAPPS Bill to pass into law if it were likely to threaten the donations they get from Russian oligarchs and other dodgy sources.
British politics is now practiced at a basic, virtually infantile level.
Every step is taken to try to maintain the status quo, and so we are set up for one almighty fall when the time arrives.
‘Won’t be tolerated for long’. But the nightmare is that it may well be tolerated for long enough to wreak even more havoc. I suppose all we can do is to keep reiterating that the alternative is possible – nay necessary. Crash investment in renewable energy, in green new deal, reigning in the financial sector – harnessing returns from assets , super profits/rents to green job creation etc etc .
But with media disinformation etc it’s a longshot. Labour seems ever more determined to shut its ears and its mind.
Richard,
Would it be fair to say that you are here articulating Clara Mattei’s thesis, from the perspective of our immediate, practical, contemporary experience of Government and Opposition’s urgent attepmpts to find the common political ‘agenda setting’ vital to selling the broad acceptablity of the Austerity agenda?
I gave not yet read her book, but sounds like I am
As outlined in this article?
https://jacobin.com/2022/10/mussolini-fascism-liberalism-austerity
John Crace in his Politics Sketch yesterday makes the same point: “Sunak has created a cabinet in his own image – one of weakness and invisibility”
“Managerialism” is something intended to imply unexciting and failing. But when you think of the state of public services compared with what the Conservatives inherited in 2010, the country would have been far better served by politicians content to manage things competently in the public interest.
I think Starmer knows well that the Tories, as well as their agents in the right wing media, are desparate to accuse him of something that will damn him in the eyes of voters. He has largely succeeded in avoiding that – as shown by Government Ministers reduced to deflecting pertinent parliamentary questions with accusations about something Jeremy Corbyn is alleged to have thought but which was never Labour policy.
Sunak is in a similar situation, in that there are very few things he can say that don’t trigger complaints from one or another of the various Conservative parliamentary factions.
Unfortunately that leaves us with no positive reasons to want to vote Labour, other than hoping they are better than the alternative. And the same with the Conservatives, assuming you can imagine a worse alternative.
The trouble is I believe there is nothing more to Labour than this
My sources thought the party seem to confirm that
You get this because the parliamentary parties largely ignore the preferences of the electorate. As a result, the constituency parties aren’t much of a reflection of the electorate because what’s the point of joining a political party that ignores you? They tend to attract activists. Most of the electorate is conservative, with a small “c”. Whilst most politicians are radicals. And you’re getting this because the electoral candidates are being drawn form a small pool. Either university grads or public sector activists. Neither of which share the life experience of the electorate.
Radical? What else can they be? Even most Tory MP’s are to the left of most Labour voters.
You clearly know nothing about public sentiment – much of which is way to the left of both parties as persistent polls show
Mr Cluny,
“[T]he preferences of the electorate”. How would you know? The total registered electorate does not vote in elections; under 70% typically vote at all. The Conservatives can win an 80 seat majority in Parliament, with the actual votes of only around 24% of the total registered electorate; less than one in four. Nobody knows what “the electorate” prefers of a Government. What makes you think a “majority” could or would agree sufficiently in politics to produce any political manifesto at all, still less one that is coherent or non-contradictory? The reality of democracy is much more unstable, difficult, ill-fitting and impenetrable than you think.
The real problem with our politics is this; there are no permanent majorities, just floating, changing, unstable minorities that ‘Party’ (in our deliberately confrontational, binary, non-compromise Parliamentary system) is able to use far too easily in an FPTP election process, to allow permanent minority Government; operated most tyically by some ill-equipped but financially resourced entryist cabal that has taken over the Party and won the day: before its inherent instability (and doubtless incompetence) inevitably leads to its loss of power.
Richard, .
Sorry to have to disagree, but I find UK not boring but terrifying, in the sense of terrifyingly lethal.
For our politics is not quietly boring, IMO, but dangerously comatose, after 40-years – plus, actually nearly 44 years since Thatcher entered No 10, and began to subject society to two quack remedies: neoliberalism, and austerity.
The first, neoliberalism, which is basically a Ponzi approach to the economy, promising fabulous returns to those greedy enough to be willing to give away their assets in the hope of getting back even more. *Cascade up, rather than trickle down”!
So everything that wasn’t actually nailed down was privatised, robbing the Treasury of the returns that used to accrue from those enterprises (which was the case, as they weren’t all money pits; coal and steel and BR may have been money pits, but Royal Mail regularly generated profits that returned as revenue – all now handed out to shareholders!!)
Austerity was the second “medicine”, based on the entirely fallacious “household budget/cur your coat” model of the economy, but was really to calm down the overheating, or malfunctioning, of the neoliberal Ponzi economy.
So, austerity is like bloodletting, that key practice of mediaeval leech craft, though it might have been justified, had it been confined to leechcraft levels – the leeches only take what they need!
Instead, it was elevated to unsupportable levels, and we all know the effects of excessive loss of blood = weakness, then death.
So, Ponzi neoliberalism as the economic equivalent of crack cocaine or crystal meth, followed up by excessive bloodletting to the point of near death!
Our economy and society are not boring, then, but like a person more than semi-comatose from a combination of a drug overdose and loss of blood, and I’m furiously angry at the same time as terrified.
Because we have the catastrophic misfortune to have a “misgovernment/maladministration” that has played the role of drug-pusher and quack doctor , (something one thinks perfectly describes a snake oil merchant), at the same time as having an Opposition that seems to want to follow this “misgovernment/maladministration”, promising to do what Sunak & co are doing, only efficiently, or at least more efficiently.
And both sides are faffing about, metaphorically wringing their hands, pretending the patient isn’t dying from an O’D, (so needing a stomach pump to drive the intoxicants out of the system and ICU care) but only needs rest to let the continued bloodletting do its work!
I have zero time for Starmer, whom I find both untrustworthy and misguided. I’ll refrain from getting on my hobby horse and ranting.
Suffice it to say I have resigned from the Labour Party, which I joined in 1988, and rejoined in 2007, once Blair was gone (whose pusillanimity over the Jenkins Report on PR caused me to resign in 2001) because Starmer has gone back on everything he pledged/promised to win election as Labour Leader and become LOTO (or maybexbettet, the LOTNO = Leader of the Non-Opposition!)
I find it impossible to trust someone who says, as,Starmer has, that he’ll break every pledge to win power, and has done exactly that, while offering nothing coherent to take the place of what he has foresworn, which did have the merit of coherence, whatever ones views on its authors.
As to the misguided aspect, the dreadful Lisa Nandy has said the “inability” to be able to pay the nurses the 17% they need to put them back to where they were in 2010 is due to Tory mismanagement, when a currency-issuing government (as stated by you, Richard, and many others on this Blog, almost literally ad nauseam) can issue ALL the money it needs to run the economy in the interests of everyone, without causing inflation, providing there is slack in the economy to absorb the funding – which there most certainly IS currently.
The image I have is of a balloon: the government blows up the balloon – air = money. If there is too much pressure the balloon could burst, or at least become too inflexible, so some of the air is released = taxed back.
Labour’s failure to argue for reflation, which is the paramount requirement now, plus some tax increases (wealth and windfall taxes, shaped to meet the need) to rebalance the economy in favour of the majority who are now really struggling) is a CLEAR case of Labour cowardice, a failure of political will, but most importantly, a failure to address the requirements of the situation, falling back instead on solutions that have failed more than once. There’s a reason why I call Starmer and Reeves flat-earther economists!
Alas, then, neither side offers any real answers, because both are proponents of the cowardly State, when an FDR and a Courageous State are what is called for.
Time is short, the patient is in a critical state, in a social and economic ICU, and the staff looking after (well, actually NOT looking after) the patient are all useless.
So, it is up to the people to intervene, by using mass civil disobedience – hopefully peacefully – (via the muscle of the various People’s- Assemblies, organised labour/Trade Unions, organisations such as Enough is Enough, and the Peace and Justice Project, and the Progressive Alliance of the Left, and wiling partners in other Parties, including “wet” One Nation Tories!) to drive the “do nothing” (and often clearly corrupt and grasping) current staff out, and install staff we can really trust, who will know what to do and how to do it, along the lines of your “fantasy” (if only it could be a real) budget, Richard.
A completely fair reinterpretation Andrew
The key thing to remember is that we have a government now that technically no one but a few have been allowed to vote for.
This is far from boring. Infact, let’s do well to remember that this is actually SHOCKING. And also, that democracy has demonstrably FAILED. So, what next? Well, the system that has produced this is now technically (as far as I am concerned anyway) is as illegitimate as its results. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, anything goes. The Fascists also now that they have a huge opportunity and are using it right now. The UK is ripe for a strong intervention. We need to be rescued. That’s where we are as far as I am concerned. But who and how remains the big question.
The ‘boring’ bit though is still relevant and is done on purpose in my view. All you have to do is read Tim Snyder’s ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ (2018) which is the textbook strangely for both victims and perpetrators of what is happening to us now. It’s all there, using the petri dish of Eastern European geo-politics. We in the UK have an oligarchy now (yes – I know – maybe we always have but now it is more barefaced than ever) – it’s as simple as that, and even Labour I feel are supping from the same cup. We are now in a period of what Snyder calls ‘inevitability politics’ (p.15) – the principal idea being that there ‘are no new ideas’ or alternatives. Result: ‘Boring politics’. This leads the door open to ‘eternity politics’ which I would define as a stable state from which wealth and power can sustain itself indefinitely whether fascist, communist or capitalist. This is now our country’s shared journey.
I saw this at work in rural Ireland this last 5 days. Ireland is a country with a mixture of extremes of wealth and poverty just like the UK. My brother is on sick pay as he needs an operation for a medical condition that caused him to have a nasty accident at work. He’s been waiting for 4 years for treatment despite always having paid his health insurance from day 1 in the country. It’s amazing that even after living there and being a part of his local area for nigh on 28+ years, he was still called a ‘Black & Tan’ by an Irishman when he made his first unemployment claim. His Irish friends I’ve met are all blaming other immigrants for waits in the Irish health service, schooling and other services. They all feel that the Irish government is out of touch, and that they are ruled by a middle-class Irish elite who look after themselves. They feel that the EU is also out of touch. Both his kids have low paying jobs or more than one job; they have tried living away from home but have had to return because of high rents and low job security; they all need to run cars to get about as public transport infrastructure is poor. It’s a hard and expensive place to live – most of the infrastructure investment I saw looks to me to be extractive – more places to spend your money but decrepit roads, bridges, public buildings. The traffic going into Dublin yesterday morning at 06:30 was not in keeping with a small country – it was horrendous. We could hardly breath whilst we sat there trying to get to the ferry terminal.
But the overwhelming impression I got from talking to people over a glass of Murphys or a cup of tea (Barrys) with some peat on the fire was one of hopelessness and low expectation. They were on their own and they knew it. And they were salty too but were aiming their frustration at the usual suspects as the Fascists say you ought to. When I tried to engage with some of the issues discussed here, they didn’t know how I hadn’t got angrier about it!!! They did not want to delve more deeply into it what was driving this. They did not know how I could live with such ‘knowledge and awareness’. But it was clear to me that this was because so much of their effort went into surviving – earning enough to live on and deal with day-to-day problems with markets, the state and what else (and there’s always something else).
I’ve read the first chapter of Mattei’s’ book but stopped to head off to Ireland to see my brother and chose to revisit Zubhoff, as the paper back was smaller and lighter than the hard back Mattei. ‘The Capitalist Order’ focuses in on a much-neglected area – the role of Italy in creating modern ‘fascism’ and its links with the UK classical liberalism. Not natural bed follows but conjoined by their use of austerity.
Whereas Mark Blyth seemed to me to look at the faulty mechanics of austerity, Mattei conceptualises it as a reactionary control mechanism used by elites to thwart workers in their quest for a fairer share of the wealth that capitalism creates. It as agent of greed basically. It is also used as one of the sustaining techniques in sustaining fascist style monopolistic rule of any kind. I’m looking forward to going back to it.
Many thanks
Ireland has seen the number of working poor increase by 100,000 in the last year – increasing to nearly 300,000. That reflects how bad things now are there.
And as for the government – it is a compilation with one aim – to prevent the biggest party (Sinn Fein) having power. The risk they create is of a SF majority government next time – and majority governments are virtually unknown in Ireland
And yet Ireland superficially seems to be doing well and is held up as an exemplar – growth in GDP, productivity and so on.
Which perhaps goes to show how misleading these indicators can be. Also how averages (incomes in particular) can hide massive inequalities between a super wealthy elite and much larger numbers of poor. Median incomes are more revealing.
Ireland’s national accounting is so distorted by profit shifting through the country
It looks good, but only really from the viewpoint of the Dublin Financial Services Centre
“From simple but urgent things, like changing the rules on energy standing charges and prepaid meter tariffs,”
It would be nice if something like this was even on the agenda, but unless I have missed it this is a good example of what Labour should be doing to address financial injustice, but as far as I am aware they are not. For me, the energy standing charges have become nothing more than an energy poll tax, which is currently around £300 a year. You have to pay that regardless of use. Those on prepayment meters, often the worst off in society, actually pay a higher standing charge. Even worse, the reason why the standing charge is going up so much is because the Tories have put the debts of the failed energy companies on all of our standing charges. You will also find that once the standing charge goes up it never comes down again. It’s baked into the inflation cake.
I think we should only pay for the energy that we use. I would even go as far to say that those who use less should be given a discount on their bill for saving energy. What better way to promote energy efficiency than encouraging people to use less if they can.
As for the standing charges, they are mainly for the “maintenance of the network.” This is not done by the private energy companies themselves. I think it is the responsibility of the National Grid, although I am happy to be corrected if wrong.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/about-us/what-we-do
The National Grid just announced £4billion of profit back in May.
https://www.cityam.com/national-grid-post-4bn-profits-amid-soaring-electricity-and-gas-prices/
Another £2.1billion profit since then.
https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/11/10/national-grids-underlying-operating-profit-soars-by-50/
I think the answer is simple.
If Labour do not want to nationalize the individual energy companies, then at the very least they should re-nationalize the National Grid. This is a private monopoly. A license to print money via the standing charge poll tax. Surely control of the national grid should be in public hands, for the benefit of us all?
I agree: it should be in public hands
To make things a little less boring, Sir Keir asked today about the tax benefits accruing to private schools from their charitable status.
He said that Winchester College benefits from tax relief to the tune of £6m a year. It has around 700 pupils, so that is about £8,500 per pupil, which is close to the 20% VAT they would charge on the £45,000 of annual fees, so I suspect it may be an underestimate.
For comparison: “On a per-pupil basis the total funding allocated to schools for 5-16 year old pupils, in cash terms, in 2022-23 was £6,970” https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics
I’ll say that again. The charitable relief granted to Winchester College means it gets more from the taxpayer per pupil than the average state school does.
Whether or not you think private schools are a good thing, that is extraordinary.
Staggering
And Starmer was good – he pushed the point hard
That really is a staggering contrast. Private schools now are just businesses with a massive dependence on overseas students. I struggle to see how they can justify their charitable status in any way. It goes back hundreds of years to when they were charitably funded, often by guilds, and provided education to a broader range of children. That model died decades ago.
It would be interesting to see the comparable figure per child for state education in other similar countries.
Some numbers here, but I don’t know how reliable they are : https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/
University funding is skewed by funding directed at research rather than teaching, but primary and secondary schools look reasonably comparable with many other European countries.
I’d ended up at the same source Andrew, but asking similar questions about separating tertiary education and the research element.
It has left me wondering what you get for spending 6-7 times as much to send your kids to private school. They are not 6-7 times better
Diminishing marginal returns……
The problem with coalitions is you end up with the larger parties being held hostage by the smaller ones (as with the Greens in Germany and elsewhere), which results, not in greater compromise, but worse, more extremism.
Far better to stick with First Past the Post and coalitions being few and far between. At least that way the electorate has a chance of getting the government AND the policies that they voted for.
So you mean you’d rather the ERG held the Cabinet to ransom? Really? And you can see no difference?
Mr Taylor,
In Scotland there is coalition government; and it does require compromise. You made up the argument about extremism following. It seems rather that you simply do not like compromise, although it is the essence of constructive politics. As for, “the electorate has a chance of getting the government AND the policies that they voted for”: no, it doesn’t provide the government the electorate voted for. FPTP delivered an 80 seat majority to the Conservatives, beased on the votes of only 24% (less than 1 in 4) of the total registered electorate. That means 75% of the electorate did not vote Conservative or receive a government it actually voted into office. Even taking only the electorate who voted, about two-thirds did not vote for the Government that now takes all the decisions about their future.
You can support this failed electoral system (that produces Parties drawn from the <1% of the propulation who join them; generally at the extreme of opinion and unrepresentative of the country at large) if you like, but it doesn't actually provide the result you have just claimed; that is just a fact. Our current system is producing bad, incompetent Government. I would have thought that was too obvious for any well informed person to avoid acknowledging, any longer.
As is often pointed out, the only other country in Europe using FPTP voting is Belorus.
And as both John and Richard point out, we have a government driven by a small extreme faction, that was voted in by a small proportion of the electorate. About as undemocratic as you can get.
In contrast, coalitions tend to lead to compromise and reduce the power of the extremes.
Agreed
Isn’t the purpose of private schools to make an elite who do not mix with the rest of us?