Category: Election 2010

The point of opposition

During the Labour leadership election Richard and I talked a lot about what exactly it was that we were voting for (I know, I know, but we can’t afford to go out much).  Were we looking for the next Prime Minister – polished enough to win the confidence of media barons and banks,  someone to triumph in the 2015 leaders’ debates? Or were we looking for a Leader of the Opposition, who was focused on giving the government a good kicking every day for the next five years?  In the end I opted for the latter – I voted for Ed Balls – believing that a period of calm  reflection and sweet  reasonableness was a luxury that neither the party nor the country could  afford.

The deafening silence from the Labour leadership since the CSR (and the truly shocking outcome of the Tower Hamlets’ mayoral election); the lack of  an alternative economic plan and the seeming inability to mobilise against  the government’s programme fill me with real despair.  The job of pointing out the dangers of what’s being proposed seems to be being left  to  the IFS,  Nobel Economics Laureates and blogs.  The flood of communication from the Labour Party during the leadership campaign on email and Twitter seems to have dried up completely – they’re not even preaching to the converted at the moment.

One of the problems for any Opposition is that the big, dumb, easily-graspable lines the government is peddling: “This is fair.  It’s all Labour’s fault.  The education budget has been protected.  We’re all in this together” are so much easier  to fit into a headline than the nuanced analysis of the small print that you need to put the opposite view.    The Labour party needs to find ways to counter the belief that this is all unavoidable and it needs to find ways of getting a clear message out, fast.

I assume that the strategy is to build up a plan the party can unite behind and argue for in the long-term.  And I can see the value of not giving in to knee-jerk opposition for the sake of it.  The problem is that – as the man said –  a lie can be half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.  The longer the “this is all Labour’s fault” line is out there unopposed, the harder it’s going to be to avoid the blame for what’s  coming next.

The brothers, a drama in several acts

The press’s  obsession with the psychodrama of Ed vs David Miliband is becoming completely ridiculous.  Ed’s speech yesterday was reported through the prism of how it might affect David; the news today is still about how David might feel about being beaten  by his little brother and the psychological damage each might have inflicted on the other.  At time of writing this, MiliD hasn’t announced whether or not he’s staying on in front line politics.  I assume he’s not, just to avoid  five years of fending off stories about fraternal rivalry, feuding  and factionalism led by the pop-psychologists of Fleet Street and the BBC.

I suggest this as a possible text for his statement this afternoon, and then a long holiday.

The Dr Seuss guide to Labour

Upon an island hard to reach,/ The East Beast sits upon his beach/ Upon the west beach sits the West Beast./ Each beach beast thinks he’s the best beast. /Which beast is best?…Well, I thought at first/ That the East was best and the West was worst. /Then I looked again from the west to the east/ And I liked the beast on the east beach least.

Labour leadership election ballot papers go out today and I still have no idea who to vote for. I’m unable to make up my mind between MiliE and MiliD and  increasingly infuriated by the family-at-war,  feuding brothers storyline that the media seem to have decided is the narrative for the election.  I may just have repeatedly missed all the papers’ in-depth coverage of the Balls/Burnham/Abbott campaigns, family histories and relationships with Blair/Brown; but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that it’s been decided somewhere  that the right answer is a Miliband.  Now, which one?

24 hour news, a modern curse

So, having stayed up all Thursday night to watch the results, and having been glued to TV, radio, newspapers, blogs and (especially) Twitter ever since, I now find myself watching a live stream of nothing happening in front of a teal blue door as the future of the government is not announced – yet. Is there a medical name for an unhealthy obsession with events you have no power to influence?

Look, will you please just vote?

everyvotecounts

I’m not sure I completely buy the “there’s no need to be afraid of a hung parliament” schtick that’s been going around since Cleggmania first hit.  I don’t believe our politicians are grown-up enough to act in the nation’s interest and come together in the kind of coalition people seem to have in mind when they talk about it (interesting how “hung-parliament” elides neatly into “coalition government” in so many articles about the subject).  I’m  pessimistic enough to fear squabbling, back room deals and horse-trading on an epic scale and a re-run of the ’70s when sick MPs were carried through the lobbies on stretchers to keep the government of the day in business.  But even that is better than what we have now.   I’ve  never seen a better argument for political reform than this –  tactical voting guidance for how to vote if you’re in a Lib/Con or Con/Lab marginal,  a Lab or Lib seat with a very small majority, a new constituency created by boundary changes or one of the oddities where minority parties have a shout.  I’m lucky that my personal preference and the tactical necessity in this constituency point the same way so I can vote for what I want with a clear conscience.   But if a hung parliament is the way to get political reform so that we never have to do this again, then bring it on.  And, please vote.

Voting for a hung parliament

I find myself  praying nightly for a hung parliament. Partly because I  want to see some long overdue political reform, but mainly, I have to confess, out of  morbid curiosity to see what happens when the old system finally implodes.

On a purely personal level it will probably mean another election soon (the Tories are already tapping up their donors, apparently).  As purdah has stopped much of the work I’ve been doing in its tracks and put a serious dent in my cash flow, that won’t be good for business. (Although I suppose no one within touching distance of the public sector will be able to afford to do anything at all soon, so I’ll be forced to diversify either way!)

For once I wish I was back inside a Department just to see this unfolding from the inside.  The one general election campaign fought  when I was working in Whitehall felt like a foregone conclusion.  Lip service was paid to the possibility that things might change, but no-one really believed that it would.   I remember writing lots of pointless briefing on the state of policy for new Ministers who I knew wouldn’t be walking through the door, and doing lots of compare-and-contrast of party manifestos to prepare colleagues for change that we knew wasn’t going to happen.  It must feel very different in there now.  For fellow obsessives, here’s the BBC’s take on what happens in a hung parliament and what Gus O’Donnell has said about  the roles civil servants might play.

Bigotry and outrage

Turned the Today programme off, violently, at ten past eight this morning, but not before shouting things at James Naughtie that, had they been picked up on Sky, I would certainly have had to apologise for.

I lost it when Naughtie said that, by agreeing to the leaders’ debates, Gordon Brown made the election camapaign into a personality contest so must accept it when his personality becomes the story of the day.  The idea that the media have been diligently following policy issues for years until being forced to talk about personalities by the sight of politicians debating in public is as hilarious as it’s infuriating.  The papers have been desperate for something like this to happen to liven things up. They’ve finally got the gaffe they’ve been waiting for.  Watch them make the most of it.

The invisible election. Or, if all politics is local how do I find out what’s going on?

Trying to remember the last time I read a local newspaper.  The headline in the local paper the day we moved in was Poplar Gang in Meatcleaver Bloodbath – which you’d think would be enticing enough to make me take out a lifetime subscription.  But I don’t think I’ve  looked at the Advertiser since.  There are lots of reasons why.  I live in the East End, but generally work and socialise elsewhere, and as I didn’t grow up round here my sense of belonging to a local community is pretty shaky.  (As a side issue,  I wonder if I’m unusual in not being locally engaged?  And, if I’m not,  does this make community action as a way of running public services look particularly flaky in London and other big cities?)

A lack of information becomes an issue when  there are local elections being fought.  I’ve seen  no campaigning going on round here apart from a Respect battlebus which occasionally thunders along the Mile End Road.  I haven’t been canvassed by anyone, there are few leaflets for the general election never mind the local  one.  There are lots of  don’t-vote-for-Gordon-Brown-he’s-got-a-silly-grin posters, but they don’t help with local issues.  There’s a referendum going on in Tower Hamlets to install a directly elected mayor that I didn’t even know was happening.

I’ll accept that my ignorance is  my own fault,  but having realised the problem I’m at a loss to know how to put it right.  I can follow Tim Donovan’s  BBC London blog, but he’s really writing about how national policy from the big three parties will affect London.   The same is true for the Standard.  London’s too big and too complex for even the BBC to get down to really local detail.   Which is why I looked at today’s East London Advertiser and found, well, not much.  There is  – shiver me timbers! – a pirate standing at the general election, but  nothing about the local poll.  It’s completely unfair to judge the paper on one edition, but it’s hard not to think of Nick Davies‘ warning of the decline of local newspapers and the sense that as they decline so  does local democracy.  The local papers are also under attack from local authority freesheets pumped out by councils wanting to show what a good job they do.  So, I suppose I do see a local paper every week – East End Life –  where the idea of great headline is something like Council Achieves Record Levels of Satisfaction.  I’m  just not sure I want to base my vote on it.

Don’t mess with Mr Inbetween

We must accentuate the positive – a Tory chorus since Friday.  So here’s a sneak preview of their next PPB – looks like they have Michael Gove on lead vocals, and is that an unexpected recall for John Redwood on piano?

Reasons to be cheerful 1-2-3

1.  We are too skint to have been away over Easter and so are not now stranded with two children and caffeine poisoning at a foreign airport, ferry port, Eurostar terminal or beach-head 

2.  Not only does Cleggmania put a spanner in the Tories’ works (just feel the outrage fizzing off the Mail’s presses – someone was stupid enough to let David Cameron prove that that he’s second rate.  Heads must roll!)  But just as satisfying,  it could also really upset Rupert Murdoch 

3.  Spring is sprung, the grass is ris, and you can hear the birds in the back garden