Letter From Caledonia - much politics.

[f4f3]

I wrote this to a friend who lived abroad, bringing him up to speed on the political happenings here over the last few weeks. It's very biased, but for anyone else who's curious...

It's starting to look very bad. The sideshow is that the BNP now have two Euro MPs. Despite all the hand wringing (feigned and actual) this was always going to be a problem with proportional representation and a low turnout. The knuckle-dragger vote actually stayed around the same, but with Labour voters staying away in droves the BNP vote share went up. This also benefited UKIP (the UK Independence Party) who actually went up from 12 to 13 MEPs. They finished above Labour in vote share, pushing Labour and the Lib Dems down to 3rd and 4th, respectively.

Up here in Scotland Labour held on to two seats, the SNP got two and the Tories got one - I think. I haven't checked the Argyll seat, which declares today. The SNP got 29% of the vote, Labour 21%.

I haven't really looked at the English local elections, as, to be frank, I'm not hugely interested in them. But I think it's Labour's worst showing since WWI/The Crimea/1066, depending on who you listen to.

It really has been frightening to watch the establishment machine roll into action to remove Labour, now that they have nothing to offer them. The assault came on many fronts, and was orchestrated to perfection.

First of all was the usual media pressure, ratcheted up a couple of notches. The stuff you expect from the Sun, the Mail, the Star, the Express, the London Standard, the Times, The Telegraph and Murdoch's Sky TV. This was running at its usual level, with an unusual amount of personal invective against Brown - nasty stuff, with more than a dash of anti-Scottish racism thrown in.

The financial collapse was the starting pistol for regime change. All of a sudden, the unregulated City was facing a hostile government for the first time since... for the first time, period, I suppose.

Brown's government seems to have made all the right moves to cushion the fall and position us for a recovery, but those actions were unpopular with everyone, because they'll hurt. The investments to shore up the banks have left a huge debt burden for government, but unless the financial system collapses totally, that will be paid back (Lloyds paid back £2 billion today) - unless, of course, there's a new government who're prepared to "forgive" those debts "in the interest of allowing the financial sector to lead us back to prosperity" - I'd imagine that this is the biggest pay-off Cameron will make in return for their backing.

I don't know if you've been following the expenses row? Basically the House of Commons has been employing what we'd call tax avoidance measures if they were being used by companies, and a strategy of maximising expense claims which started under Thatcher and was facilitated by every government since.

The "logic" of the Thatcher years was that no one would wear an increase in MPs salaries, so instead they would widen the net for expenses claims, especially for travelling and second home allowances. Every MP was allowed to claim for upkeep of a second home, even those living in London. Couple that with the rise in house prices, and you have subsidised property speculation. Throw in a couple of wrinkles like being able to change the designation of your first and second homes for expenses AND for wider tax purposes, and you had MP's "flipping" their homes five times in a year, avoiding Capital Gains Tax when they sold, and furnishing successive properties from expenses. All within the rules, and all smelling rotten (although a lot less rotten, and much less expensive to the tax payer, than almost any UK PLC's tax shenanigans, but no privately owned media outlet will start publicising that particular "shame").

Anyway, Brown was having no luck starting the ball rolling on reform of expenses(talks with the other party leaders failed, since it wasn't in their interest to vote for Christmas). Brown then went on uTube, though, and promised to reform expenses.

The very next week all of the Commons' files on expenses going back 9 or 10 years were sold to The Telegraph by "persons unknown".

Since then they've been cherry-picking morsels to publish which will cause embarrassment all round, but particularly for the government. The first casualty was the Speaker, hounded out of office for being Catholic, working class, and for considering himself to be the shop steward for the commons, not its policeman. He actively encouraged the system of maximising expense claims - coming from the culture of workers as opposed to employers, this was perfectly understandable and culpably naïve. However, once one MP can be made to resign by media pressure, everyone was fair game. About a dozen or so have said they will stand down at the next election, and each party has their own "Star Chamber" (I kid ye not) set up to vet each MP in turn.

Next up in the regime campaign were the enemy within - a cabal of disaffected MPs who Brown has wronged somewhere, either passing them over or preferring someone else - quite often someone Scottish.

Apparently there has been some sort of email write around going on - they haven't all been in the same room together, and no one knows all the names. It would be comical if it weren't so tragic, pathetic if it didn't actually have the potential to cause harm. Last week they broke cover with three high profile resignations from Cabinet, all timed to have cumulative effect, with a continued trickle of lower level resignations over the weekend.

Last week the Guardian came out against Brown, aligning itself with the plotters. I'm particularly annoyed about this, since they've effectively gone all or nothing on forcing him out. If Brown stays leader, they can't support Labour up to the next election - I wonder if they'll turn Lib Dem?

Brown's response has been to unleash The Prince of Darkness. Mandleson is awesome to watch in this sort of situation. He made a public call for loyalty to the leadership while privately applying steel-capped loafers to ministerial bollocks. He also pointed out that if Brown IS ousted then the new leader would have to go to the country almost immediately or be hounded into it by the same forces who've been calling Brown "unelected" and demanding he submit himself for approval by general election. Who was is said that "they have an appetite for power, but no stomach for election?"

Brown might still go this week, but I doubt it (although I may be proven wrong by lunchtime). What I'd like to see is an announcement tomorrow booting every even slightly wavering backside out of the cabinet, and starting the fight back.

The economy may just be turning, Cameron hasn't been tested yet, and the expenses row will lose steam, if the causes are addressed. Truth be told, I think Labour will lose the next election, but I'll feel a lot better about it if we lose after a year of fighting for every inch, rather than being hounded out of office by a coalition of media moguls, grandees and turncoats. If nothing else it will wipe the smile off Cameron's face for a while...

Comments

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

Oh, my God. What a fucking mess.

Although, I suppose the President (D-IL) v. the Senate and Congress (D-majority) and the Senate and Congress (R-minority) in the matter of economic recovery and health care reform will be an equally horrifying/fascinating train wreck to watch.

Obama got elected in part of health care. Our financial travesty means more and more and more people with no health insurance.

[Esp. since it seems like a new favorite game of Republican governors to play to not. raise. taxes. at. all. no. matter. what. Or a game of the voters of the State of California, whose Governator (R-Outerspace)has called the legislature and citizens more or less ahb-struc-tionist. Example: G-Paw, mine own leader, is proposing to cut state health care for the remaining 35,000 Minnesotans on the rolls.]

But, mandate, strong majority, clearly intending to do this thing, and NEED be damned. Our elected reps don't care what we elected Obama to do because they want to be our RE-elected reps and don't want to get blamed for the coming price tags.

I can't even listen to NPR or the BBC online anymore, I get so depressed. Even during the worst of the Bush years, I could at least stick around to hear NPR legal affairs correspondent deliver fabulous reporting. But not now.

*sigh*

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I do get tired of the cheap shots and the constant, repetitive trotting out of negativity and spite. But, hey, no one says I have to read the papers.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Honestly I think this is complete bollocks. Brown has presided as chancellor and PM over one of the most inegalitarian periods in modern British history. He's let the City run roughshod over the economy. far from being a victim of Murdoch politics he's been one of its main protagonists. What else is one to make of someone who would have the odious Damien McBride in their inner circle or turn to Mandelson as a saviour? Blair and Brown alike have treated the electorate (and the party) with contempt. They deserve everything they get.

[liadnan]

I concur. One additional particular point: Martin was an abysmal Speaker -I don't really care what he did or didn't do on expenses, he's been awful all along - and far from "seeing himself as the Common's shop steward" his major failing has been that he has seen himself as a member of the government.

John Prescott says the policy about being lax on expenses rather than increasing salaries goes back to the mid 70s. Under Major, or possibly late Thatcher, they pegged salaries to senior civil servants pay but in 1996 Major and Blair jointly made a thing of opposing salary increases: once in power Blair consistently did so and made greater provision for expenses.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

If Martin was abysmal he should have been sacked for that. As a matter of fact, there were calls for him to be sacked from Day One, before he'd done anything. His problem was that he had no patronage, no connections, that his face and his style didn't fit. And the moment he was weakened enough, the jackals brought him down.

[liadnan]

Rubbish. If he had had no patronage and no connections he would never have been made speaker (in defiance of convention, which would have given the job to a tory) in the first place.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Sorry, what I should have said was that by the time he was forced out, his patronage and connections had run out, partly because the party which had put him in the job had changed, partly because the rest were not prepared to stand up against the mob - that was what I meant by weakened.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Even if I agreed with everything you say above, and I don't, and I'll get back to that, it doesn't contradict what I said - which is that there's an orchestrated campaign to unseat the Prime Minister and force a general election.

I think what you're happy to ignore is that there isn't a choice between nasty Brown and Blair and a radical (or even marginally) socialist government, the choice is between Labour and the Tories. Just as it was in 1979, when Labour lost the election which ushered in Thatcher. Now if you want contempt for the electorate, cast your mind back to that administration. If you want communities destroyed, industries despoiled and blacks, gays and women held up as hate objects, you will find nothing, nothing remotely as ideologically hideous as what was inflicted on us for almost two decades.
I had to listen to every shade of Labour twat, from Militant to David fucking Owen claiming to own the soul of the Labour movement while the Tories won election after election and neighbourhoods and towns got flushed down the toilet as a price worth paying.
Blair made Labour electable.
That's an unpalatable fact.
I'd love to say it was Smith, I'd love to say it was Kinnock for hammering through the repeal of Clause 4, I wish it had been Foot for his decency, compassion and unshakable belief in the movement.
But it wasn't. It was Blair and Mandelson and Gould and others like them who decided it was more important to be in power where they could do some good than to be in opposition while the poor were being hammered.
And to get there they made choices that entitle you to call them any and every name under the sun.
But we ended up with a minimum wage and a Scottish parliament, we retained a National Health Service and the BBC, and we didn't get laws on the statute books banning any mention of homosexuality in schools or banning unions outright in the work place.
And if you think Blair fucked up in Iraq, can you even begin to imagine what the Tories would have done?
The choice is still what it was then - between a government that professes to believe in equality of opportunity and an opposition that just can't wait to stamp on some working class necks.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Question for you. Why don't you consider the Liberal Democrats (or indeed any other party) as a possibility?

Also, in completely unrelated news, rhythmaning thinks your journal title is genius and keeps going on about it.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I don't consider the Lib Dems an alternative because as a consequence of our first past the post voting system they aren't able to form a government. There are many things I admire about the Liberals, although they lost most of my fondness when they sacked their leader for having an illness.
You could regard voting for them in a two party system as a self-indulgent gesture, but I prefer to see it as an abdication of responsibility.

The situation is different in Scotland, and in England for the Euro Elections, where there is a degree of proportional representation. I have far less animus against the SNP than against the Tories - they are a nominally left of centre party who's stated raison d'etre I happen to agree with. I'm fairly comfortable with an SNP government up here, although I have problems with their position on abortion, and a dislike for several of their MSPs. It's conceivable that I might vote for them in a Scottish election, but not in a general election. Again, they are not capable of forming a government, so a vote for them is effectively a vote for the Tories. This might change if, as in the 80's and 90's, a Conservative UK government is elected despite having no or very few Scottish MPs.

And one more reason to despise the BNP is their choice of name - they aren't a British National Party, they are an English National Party.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I'm still thinking about the leader thing (and have been, on and off, since it happened). On the one hand - yes. On the other hand, it is pretty essential to be able to trust your leader. I really don't know what I think here at all. (Hence delay in answering. I was hoping I'd be able to say something useful. But no.)

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Trust your leader? When in the last 40 years has any party been able to say that?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Point.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that his illness might well have it impossible for him to do that job.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

This is how I feel about Obama these days. I have a terrible feeling he's not going to disappoint in a "well, of course he was going to fall down on some issues" kind of way. I have a feeling it might be in a "well, the best we can say is he made sure Palin never saw the Oval Office" kind of way.

It's the obvious non-movement on Don't Ask Don't Tell and the distressing backtracking on prosecution of every single person in Guantanamo that isn't released that has me very, very worried.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

And, yeah, I would like to know why British voters don't seem to give the Lib Dems the time of day, nor the Greens.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

See above. I've voted Green in the past in local elections, and probably will do again, and as I say might be tempted to vote SNP in Scottish elections.

I'm hugely impressed with the Sexual Offences Act which the Scottish government passed today, and I'm probably going to go and post about it now.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

You're the first person who's actually made the link for me between Tony Blair and Obama, and the disappointment which followed the honeymoon period of one with a potential for the same to happen with the other.
I think what you have to do is count the blessings (Palin apart) and I think he's already done more to heal divisions with the Islamic world and offered more hope for nuclear disarmament than the last lot did in eight years.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Currently staying with a college friend in Washington who works for The Economist and has been educating us about US politics. It seems pretty hard for a president to get anything done, no matter what his slate, majority or level of charisma and coherence. Another interesting take on the party politics debate.