Political Clutter

Defending Ken Clarke

2011-02-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

My old stamping ground, the Tory Reform Group, has a new blog, so I thought I would post one final thought on the old one, before disappearing altogether. Ken Clarke is once again making waves with his honest assessments of the political scene, and is also under regular attack from his right-wing opponents, so I thought it only proper to provide a defence - a somewhat limited one, but it is with specific reference to the accusations that he persistently undermines Tory leaders. Let's see - this is what I said on the TRG blog:

The Tory Reform Group now has an excellent “shiny new blog” called Egremont, so if you’ve landed here from the old home page or by some other remarkable feat of internet legerdemain – since very few people ever have landed here it has to be admitted – then do go there straight after you’ve finished. And you won’t, sadly, need to come back, as this is the last post on the old blog. So forgive me a bit of old guard partisanship as I lay into Tim Montgomerie’s ludicrous caricature of our beloved president, Ken Clarke.

Montgomerie now uses two principal outlets for his brand of right-wing “mainstream” conservatism, the Conservative Home site and the Daily Mail (And how annoyed we should be that he’s nicked our very own former description from us!). While David Cameron is hardly a liked quantity on either of these platforms, for real pantomime villainy look no further than the genial, widely liked Justice Secretary, the Leader Who Never Was, and – despite his desire to release a load of prisoners and give those who remain inside the vote – still one of the most popular Tories in the country (yes, I know, we haven’t set the bar very high have we?). Today, the day on which Mr. Clarke, in another of his trade-marked outbursts of political honesty has announced that the middle classes don’t yet know what is to hit them and when they do, Coalition popularity may well be at what we term a premium, Mr. Montgomerie has used both of his outlets to make sure we know what a lethal, despicable figure the Justice Secretary is. According to the Mail’s under-stated headline, Clarke is a disloyal, pro-Europe old bruiser who should be given the boot. Remarkably for a Daily Mail headline, there are considerable accuracies within it. Even his best friends would never use the term Euro-sceptic to describe Clarke, although some might venture “Euro-pragmatic”. He is certainly an old bruiser too, who takes few enemies. But really, disloyal? The servant of four Tory prime ministers disloyal? If you want disloyalty, look no further than the intransigent euro-sceptics who see no virtue in supporting a party leadership that it will never agree with. I suspect Mr. Clarke’s voting record under Tory administrations compares very favourably with that of, say, Bill Cash, but would Mr. Montgmerie ever consider Mr. cash to be a “disloyal old bruiser”? Conservative Home at the moment positively revels in the disloyalty of a right-wing praetorian guard, standing over the eternal flame of Thatcherite purity, with all that that brings (a receding Tory vote, an absence in the cities and provinces, a heinously divided UK polity….).

The crux of Mr. Montgomerie’s boiling over frustration with Mr. Clarke is that he has been disloyal to three Tory leaders. I wouldn’t be surprise of Mr. Montgomerie found he could probably live with the disloyalty to John Major and William Hague, but what the old-time Thatcherites – sorry, mainstream conservatives – will never forgive is his frank advice to Margaret Thatcher to go now as she was finished, in those fateful days in November 1990. Other people rather admire Mr. Clarke for his bluntness on that occasion, at a time when so many of his Cabinet colleagues were simply trooping in to tell the Lady that of course they would vote for her, and then weeping a little into the bargain. One Nation Tory though he was, he had been one of her more radical ministers, shaking up first health and then education in a way that lesser, even Thatcherite, men might have shrunk from doing in those harsh, divided times. But Clarke was no fantasist – he knew Thatcher was finished and was kind enough to break through the wall of political fiction that had been built around her in order to tell her so. Mr. Montgomerie paints this as a long-term plot, part of Mr. Clarke’s persistent manoeuvring to get rid of her. Hmmm. I remember those days, and my recollection is that Ken Clarke was more interested in heading down to Ronnie Scott’s or a Brick Lane curry house than doing anything so unseemly as plotting. The plotting was mainly conducted by the right anyway, who were far more numerous, or Machiavellian experts such as Tristan Garel-Jones. Mr. Montgomerie’s reading of recent political history is remarkably facile.

Clarke’s opposition to a referendum under John Major – Mr. Montgomerie’s second great accusation – was certainly to do with his general and always public support for the EU as it stood, but it was hardly a strategy designed to undermine a Prime Minister whom he actually liked and with whom he formed a strong working relationship. Mr. Major’s position was made far more difficult and malign by the actions of his euro-sceptic MPs, who thought nothing of trying to undermine support for the sitting Tory premier, and whose own disloyalty almost certainly contributed to the eventual Tory defeat in 1997.

As for Mr. Montgomerie’s third charge – that Mr. Clarke opposed William Hague’s “Keep the Pound” campaign – this was such a fatuously simplistic campaign that it had already failed to make any resonance with the British public.

Ken Clarke is one of the big figures of contemporary British politics, respected for his integrity and his general human-ness. That he maintains a fundamental loyalty to the idea of the European Union is of course the reason why he never became leader of his party, for he would never abandon deeply held beliefs. Certainly it also pits him against the current consensus of the Tory Party. But the British people seem rather less bothered by Europe than the narrow membership of the Tory Party, and Mr. Clarke’s broad political outlook, firmly rooted in the values of One Nation Conservatism, has always had more appeal than that of his more right-wing, authoritarian rivals. I rather doubt that the jovial Lord Chancellor will actually serve out the whole of this government, and when he goes he will be depriving the government of one of the few publically connected members they have. There are many things that make him a frustrating politician, but let us have no truck with the nonsense that he is some sort of treacherous, disloyal Mandelsonian who has single-handedly destroyed three Tory leaders. It is utter bilge, and Mr. Montgomerie should try filling his Daily Mail pages with more elevated material.

Meanwhile, it’s goodbye from this TRG blog, and over to Egremont!

Homosexual or Damned - Does It Matter Which?

2010-05-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

The revelation that Philippa Stroud, the Conservative candidate in Sutton and Cheam, used to pray for homosexuals to be cured of their demons, is merely the latest salvo in a bizarre series of footnotes in the Tory campaign. A few Tory fundamentalists on one side, and a pro-active gay lobby on the other, are engaged in a peculiar danse macabre that would elevate this topic into one of the most vital facing the electorate today. So are these the ‘silly season’ stories that accompany any election, or do they actually matter?

On the one hand you might have thought that what consenting adults do with each other in the confines of their own private lives is a matter that should be left well alone. Why does male on male genital activity so obsess the right-wing Christian tendency? There isn’t even a very good biblical justification for such an out of proportion obsession. Jesus himself never once mentions homosexual activity, preferring to show compassion and commitment to the ‘sinful’ by taking company with tax collectors and reformed female prostitutes. He does have much to say on the issue of being judgmental of course, famously suggesting that we should check the ‘beam’ in our own eyes before trying to remove the ‘specks’ in other peoples’, and telling the self-righteous judgers of a woman caught in adultery that they should only allow those without any sin to cast the first stone of her punishment (the natural result was that they all melted sheepishly away). Paul the evangelist is a little more forthcoming, although he has a tendency to lump homosexuality into a lengthy list of sins that hardly suggest it requires a particular and determined focus, and is in any case commenting for the most part on the behaviour of Christians to each other in their own communities. So quite why a modern Christian right should be so vehemently concerned with the issue remains something of a bizarre enigma. It could be that it is part of an increasing sense of alienation from the secular liberal state that has evolved in Britain. Any people in such a state should, of course, be able to explain their distaste for current cultural or behavioural mores. The reaction to such expression has often itself seemed out of proportion and hysterical, and has hardly done justice to the presumed liberalness of their spokesmen. We could usefully remind some of the gay activists and media commentators who have engaged so feistily with the occasional outspoken Tory that Voltaire’s dictum of tolerance towards free expression didn’t carry a caveat about issues of sexual morality.

All of which leaves us with the question of how much all of this matters. Should we be fearing the rise of a judgemental Tory Party that hasn’t left its Section 28 days behind and wants to outlaw homosexual activity? Is the age of tolerance inaugurated by Labour’s election in 1997 coming to an end? Has the short-lived ‘age of tolerance’ seen our values run amok to such an extent that the family unit, personal values, children’s education and society generally is in danger of falling into an abyss of moral anarchy?

Well, none of the above actually, but there is one thing we should be concerned about, which the salvoes from both sides of this debate are in danger of threatening. The glory of a liberal society is that it is not only inclusive, it is not only freedom loving, but it absolutely embraces a tolerance towards individuals that represents our maturity as human beings. Pride, egoism and bigotry have been the enemies of humanity’s progressive path from time immemorial. Liberalism has taken us to a state where, more than ever before, we are willing to accept our fellow individuals on their own terms, and have rejected the notion that we might force them into a mould more to our own liking. Such a state has enabled a happier, more prosperous and less rancorous existence than our forebears might have dreamed possible. So long as they are not directly affecting our own well-being and freedom, we should not be imposing our own moral prism on others. We may want to argue our case vigorously, we may wish to show by example that we prefer one lifestyle over another, but this should all be done in the context of a mutually embracing and understanding society. The words of a few candidates for office should concern us if they threaten this state of affairs, but so too should the virulent reactions of their counterparts. If homosexuality has, bizarrely, taken centre stage in a series of debates about morality and behaviour, it does so as a patsy for the far more serious issue of liberal tolerance, and that is something we should ignore at our peril.

David Cameron's Woes

2010-02-03T05:44:00.001-08:00

Tonight, at the London School of Economics, Sussex politics lecturer Tim Bale will be launching his new book on "The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron" with a talk entitled "Doldrums to Downing Street? The Conservative Party's long Journey from Opposition to the Brink of Office". It is meant to be an upbeat sounding title, charting the Tory Party's doldrum years when it looked like a near permanent opposition, to its revitalisation under David Cameron. It couldn't, however, come at a more unsettling time for Mr. Cameron. Not only has he made some mis-steps recently, but his party's poll showing looks ever more fragile. And as the polling numbers go down, so the heat from his right-wing critics is being turned up. As Tim Bale prepares to tell his audience why David Cameron has come nearest since Margaret Thatcher to getting the Tories elected, Simon Heffer in the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Adam Smith Institute, are all busy laying into the very same Mr. Cameron for his less than radical economic policies. Even Tim Bale himself, in a piece for the Guardian, opined that Mr. Cameron might be reverting to a bit of populism to shore up the Tories' traditional media base, and thus alienate the liberal middle classes. Who would be a Conservative leader?

The reality is that David Cameron is suffering the inevitable tribulations of a pragmatic leader in a now ideological party. There was a time when the Conservatives were the quintessential pragmatists. It's what gave them such political dominance for much of the twentieth century. Their pragmatism was based on a clear understanding that Britain gravitated generally to a political centre - an eclectic mix of conservative social attitudes coupled with an increasing belief in modern liberal economics. Baldwin kept the ship steady for much of the inter-war period on this understanding, giving full reign to his Minister of Health, Neville Chamberlain, to start developing welfarist policies. After the war, R.A.Butler and Harold Macmillan adopted much of the new modern liberal state created by the Attlee government, fine tuning and enhancing it where appropriate. Through all of this the party leadership kept their much more right-wing grassroots at bay, whilst enjoying an unprecedented level of electoral success.

What started to undo the traditional Tory pragmatism was a loss of nerve when the modern liberal model received a battering in the 1970s - a battering due as much to world events they couldn't control as anything else. Ted Heath's failure to properly define a new pragmatic course - one that would maintain the principles of One Nation conservatism with the needed modification of the economic model - led to his party reaching for the one person with the courage to challenge him, the relatively unknown Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher had not started in Conservative politics as an ideologue, but by the time she took on the Heathite establishment she had become increasingly enamoured of the neo-liberalism being propounded by her mentor, Keith Joseph, and such think tanks as the Institute for Economic Affairs. Identifying the failure of conservatism as a failure of policy, she declared that "we must have an ideology". Her ideology was to ally the neo-liberal economic policy that was looking so attractive in the late seventies, to a more vigorous conservatism in social attitudes. Thus was born the somewhat contradictory mantra of 'let freedom rule the markets, let government regulate society'. It proved a potent political mix, and was hugely popular with the Conservative Party base. In the country at large, Thatcherism had a more mixed reception. While Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives won three general elections with huge parliamentary majorities, they did so with smaller percentages of the vote than had ever gone to earlier Tory leaders, and at the cost of polarising the naton as whole. In the inner urban areas, in Wales and Scotland, and large areas of northern England, Conservatism was in retreat, no longer identified as a national party.

When the Conservatives finally went down to defeat in 1997, they had so eradicated their electoral base that any immediate recovery was doomed. What was worse, the party's grassroots members, and what Tim Bale calls the unlicensed commentariat in the right-wing media, had both become accustomed to having a Conservative leader who reflected their views. Thatcher had created an ideological party, and ideology would dictate who lead it. Kenneth Clarke stood three times as the only openly One Nation Tory, and was defeated three times. The nearest he came was probably in the MPs only election in 1997. His most decisive defeat was against the Thatcherite Iain Duncan Smith, a leadership election decided by the party members. As far as its members were concerned, the Conservative Party wanted nothing to do with the paternalism of the past. In their view, Margaret Thatcher had won three successive elections on the sheer rightness of her political stance, and not because of a triumphant war or a divided opposition.

David Cameron's election as leader came out of the blue. In the 2005 leadership contest, Thatcherite David Davis had been the initial favourite, while Ken Clarke continued to grab the headlines, even managing to sideline the Cameron team's efforts in the afterglow of his third leadership launch. What undid Davis was a remarkably poor performance at the Party Conference, especially when compared against a very assured one from David Cameron. Cameron's ideological position was unknown, but his star quality was becoming apparent, leading to his triumphant election as party leader. Doubtless his electorate thought he would fine-tune Thatcherism, package it more attractively and thus offer the British voters an unbeatable mix of Blairite presentation and Thatcherite policies. Initially, the Conservatives were prepared to live with his environmental obsessions, especially when it seemed he was starting to pull in the voters. Even his ambiguous attitude to future taxation was greeted with only muted opposition, especially since he sugared the domestic pill with a healthy dose of Euro-scepticism, taking the party out of its previous federalist moorings in the European Parliament.

The Recession changed all of that. Confronted with a huge economic problem, David Cameron found himself caught between the fabled rock and a hard place. On the one hand, for his party supporters, here was the classic chance to reassert the supremacy of Thatcherite economic dogmatism. On the other hand, received wisdom across much of the westernised globe seemed to be favouring Keynesian style economic stimulus packages. The only economic stimulus wanted by his died in the wool party members and their favourite media commentators would be one which advanced their moral agenda, with marriage first on the list. Trying to come to grips with this problem, with the need to present an economic face that doesn't immediately turn off the liberal middle classes, is now presenting the Tory leader with his first major wobble. How he resolves it, if at all, will not just determine whether he does indeed cross the threshold of Number 10, but also just what sort of administration he will be heading. A throwback to the paternalist leaders of old, David Cameron is beginning to discover that it is the Conservative Party itself which no longer has any room for that sort of approach. When Margaret Thatcher gifted the Tories an ideology, she slammed the door on One Nation pragmatism. For many Tories, closed is how it should stay.

Why Does Politics Matter?

2010-02-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

I am passionate about politics. Unashamedly, unapologetically so. I am a fully paid up member of a well known democracy, and while it matters not what job I hold, what income I have, what possessions I’ve accrued; whether I’m single,married or divorced; gay or heterosexual; of one faith or none; it matters hugely that I should be interested in politics. At its most basic level, it matters that the vote that was won for me by the struggles of others, should at least be informed to the best of my ability when I cast it. It matters that I should be interested enough to understand what the politicians who have been elected to serve me are doing. It matters that I should be willing to speak out, or march, or write, or protest if I think they are doing something wrong. It matters, too, that I should follow politics not for my own advantage but because it is politics that can and will determine the lives of my fellow citizens. If I am concerned about people affected by homelessness; about those who cannot venture from their own front door through fear; about those who cannot look after themselves through mental or physical affliction; about rising tides of debt and financial corruption that engulf small people just like me; if I am concerned about the education being passed on to our children, and the healthcare being offered to our children, ourselves, our parents and our grandparents; if I am concerned about all these things, then it follows that I should be passionate about politics.

I believe politics is about how we live the good life we want to lead. I believe it is about how we organise society to the benefit of many and the disadvantage of few. I believe in politics as a force for good. I believe that if politicians in a democracy fail to measure up to the standards we expect, then both the problem and the solution lie with us. I believe that we all have the opportunity to pursue political aims, and to make ourselves heard – more so now than ever before. This blog is one of millions that have been set up around the globe. Like the vast majority of those, it may never be read by more than one person – its author. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the very process of blogging, of putting our thoughts into a public arena, is a political act. We may or may not be read by many, but nothing should stop us from adding to the raised voices of the many in a triumphant expression of human freedom. We have been given a mind to think with, and nothing, but nothing, should stop us exercising it in the interests of our own liberation, and the interests of a truly democratic state where no one person, or small self-selecting group of people, control the ideas that empower us and the policies that should liberate us. Blogging is an ultimate freedom, and since it requires an effort, an input, it is also the first step of political activity. And the more political activity from ordinary people, the safer we are from the tyranny and corruption of the small, power-hungry minds that have bedeviled too much of the human story.

Finally, I believe that these sentiments are as old as time, and that the words of an old Jewish prophet speaking over two and a half thousand years ago, still speak true to day, whether you are religious or not:

cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause.

Two Politicians

2010-02-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

Two politicians, of very different calibre, impressed me last week. On Thursday I heard the British Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Vince Cable, speak on electoral reform and the recession at the LSE. I normally come away from hearing politicans with an unattractive belief that I am significantly superior to them. It is not a great reflection on me or them. But I listened to Cable with respect. He spoke even-handedly and intelligently. He did not offer the usual political brickbats but instead a thoughtful commentary on where our politics are now. He wasn’t a rabble rouser, nor a particularly great orator, but he was sincere, measured and, in his own way, passionate. I should blog in more detail about his actual analysis, but it was a useful one, even if I didn’t wholly agree with his assessment of parliament as a political ‘eunuch’.

The other politician of note, as he always will be, was Barack Obama. He’s had a rough first year. He could never have met the huge expectations that greeted his election, but the come down has been sharper and rougher than might have been expected, culminating in the bloody nose of the Massachusetts election. And yet he remains defiant, and nothing sums up his own peculiar brand of hopefulness to the many, and his ‘extra-political’ status, than the closing words of his State of the Union address last week:

Remember this – I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.

Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.

But I also know this: if people had made that decision fifty years ago or one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and grandchildren.

PR and Westminster

2009-12-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

L6th - If you haven't already found it, this link could prove helpful in producing your current essay. It deals with the impact of a minority government, produced in Scotland as a result of the AM system, links to a good Economist piece, and specifically considers Scotland as a guide to Westminster under PR.

Arrangements for Monday Nov 30th.

2009-11-27T07:34:00.001-08:00

L6 Conference - the venue is the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. We will meet at the top of the steps outside Westminster tube at 10.25. Dress is non-uniform.

If you miss the main party at the tube, then make your way to Methodist Central Hall for the conference. It is only 10 minutes walk across the square and onto Victoria Street.