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Letters: Fear and loathing in New Labour
In light of the articles by Simon Jenkins (The bankers lied. And Darling, merely a puppet on their string, knows it, 12 March) and Mehdi Hasan (It’s defeatist nonsense to talk of a crisis of leftwing thinking, 12 March), it seems evident that there is the need for a rearticulating of the political discourse. The hegemony of neoliberal thinking has defined the political space for 30 years, so much so that even in the present crisis, when we all should be marching on the streets against the bankers, New Labour is still running in fear of framing the debate in social democratic terms.
For the 30 years the right have had a stranglehold on how we define freedom. The political classes have been fearful of any reference to the state as a means of solving problems. Individual freedom, essentially defined in terms of freedom from the state, has been their mantra. For example, George Osborne’s first reaction to the nationalisation of the banks was to jump enthusiastically up and down, claiming that old socialist nationalisation is here again. Cameron is careful that his slogan that there is such a thing as society is followed up by a clear rejection of any idea that this means a bigger state.
The current crisis has left both parties searching for ways to rearticulate a progressive politics, but it is up to the left to grab this opportunity, because they won’t have another like this, to reshape the political discourse and redefine the state and its relation to individual freedom. This is a hegemonic struggle to reclaim the terms of liberty and equality in social democratic terms.
Robert Proni
London
• Donald Hirsch is quite right to say that decent employers should pay a living wage of at least £7.14 an hour, and more in expensive areas (The wages of dignity, 10 March). However, we also need to realise that the legal minimum wage of £5.80 an hour is not being paid to many thousands of employees. The root of the problem is that the statutory enforcement powers are held by Revenue & Customs, and they are failing to do their job properly. That is hardly surprising as there are only 123 enforcement staff for the whole of the UK.
In Hackney, where I live, only 258 investigations have been carried out in seven years. Anecdotal evidence of illegal avoidance abounds, but the onus is on the individual to complain, and few feel able to do so. Ideally the enforcement powers should be transferred to local authorities, but in the meantime high-profile awareness campaigns could be organised by councils with advice and information points located in their buildings. This policy will be part of the Hackney Labour manifesto for the forthcoming local elections.
Tim Webb
London
• Neil Kinnock (Letters, 10 March) utterly fails to comprehend the burning sense of disillusionment that has driven so many former Labour supporters either into cynical abandonment of politics or, like John Kampfner, to embrace the Lib Dems. The charge against the New Labour project is not that it did not deliver the benefits he lists. It did, and there were others which curiously he omits, above all the lancing of the Northern Ireland carbuncle and significant constitutional reforms – devolution and human rights legislation. The charge is that it squandered its massive parliamentary majorities and the goodwill that the electorate bestowed on it to transform a divided, sick society.
On the contrary, it took to its bosom the neoliberal ideology that nourished that divide, extending privatisation; it renounced and even demonised public sector initiatives and went back on the welfare state concordat that was the hallmark of the postwar Labour settlement. So, Labour administrations have presided over the widest gulf ever between the haves and have-nots and now the inevitable massive recession. We have witnessed a generation of politicians intent on feathering their own nests, the expenses “scandal” being a minor part of this. Not to speak, as Neil Kinnock dare not, of the criminal adventure that was the Iraq war. I, a onetime Labour activist, like John Kampfner, have joined the Lib Dems, who I see as a catalyst for, and working partner of, a rejuvenated Labour party once it is purged of the New Labour virus.
Benedict Birnberg
London
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Westminster wives
about 6 months ago - No comments
She swears, she drinks, she has extramarital flings… The modern MP’s wife is unrecognisable from the simpering cheerleader of the past. So what has changed? And what impact will the other halves have on this year’s election?
When Alicia Collinson’s husband, Damian Green, was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1997, she was provided with a small pamphlet produced by the Parliamentary Christian Wives Fellowship. It was called “Two for the Price of One” and the title was printed across the cover in precisely the same shade of green as the leather benches inside the House of Commons chamber. The eight-page leaflet contained all manner of helpful tips and guidance on how to be a politician’s wife in a breezy style that seemed to have come straight from the 1950s.
“If you look good, you feel good,” the authors stated cheerily, before going on to advise that: “For wives, it is a great help to have a very good relationship with your local garage as you are bound to break down when your dearly beloved is on a parliamentary trip to China and you may need rescuing.”
But it was one sentence in particular that enraged Alicia Collinson. “It’s this one,” she says, pushing the pamphlet across the coffee table and jabbing at the relevant page. “They say: ‘Try to ensure the absent parent speaks each week on the phone to each child personally if possible.’” Collinson snorts with indignation. “That really got my goat. It’s full of things like that, assuming you can do things while your husband’s in parliament. Well, no, you can’t if you’re working, too. There was this assumption that you were just part of the package.”
Times have changed dramatically for the political wife. In previous decades an MP’s wife was expected to be little more than a photogenic adjunct to her husband, someone who could be relied upon to judge cake-baking contests at the village fete and smile prettily in public. Most of the time this charming little creature would be careful not to speak out of turn or proffer any political opinion that might risk embarrassing her husband or his party. Her role, like that of Clementine Churchill or Clarissa Eden before her, was to raise children, run a household and provide constant support to her overworked and sporadically bad-tempered spouse.
On the rare occasion that a wife did speak out, it resulted in a horrified outcry. Margot, the wife of former prime minister Herbert Asquith, was blamed for her husband’s political downfall after she publicly accused her stepson of being drunk. (He had, in fact, been shell-shocked during the First World War.) Now, however, Margot Asquith’s indelicate comment would barely merit a raised eyebrow. In modern politics, it is quite normal for the wife of the chancellor to scream the “c” word in reference to her husband’s treacherous colleagues, as Maggie Darling was reported to have done in Andrew Rawnsley’s recent book about the fall of New Labour. Over the past few months a worrying number of political wives (and it is, on the whole, still largely wives rather than husbands) have crawled out of the woodwork to admit to all sorts of brazen peccadilloes, including binge drinking, promiscuity and the odd extramarital affair.
Sally Bercow, the wife of the Commons speaker, gave an extraordinary interview last December in which she admitted to a debauched past, drinking more than two bottles of wine a day and engaging in a string of one-night stands. “I would end up sometimes at a bar and someone would send a drink over, and I’d think: ‘Why not?’ and we’d go home together,” she said. “I liked the excitement of not knowing how a night was going to end.”
Unlike the quietly spoken, loyal wife of parliamentary legend, Mrs Bercow appeared to be wholly unconcerned as to whether she might be diminishing her husband’s professional kudos. Her political opinions, too, are unashamedly opposed to her spouse’s: whereas John Bercow was a Tory MP before becoming speaker, Sally Bercow is standing as a Labour councillor in Pimlico, central London.
Then, in January, it emerged that Iris Robinson, the wife of the Northern Irish first minister, had an affair with a 19-year-old when she was 58. The ensuing barrage of “Mrs Robinson”-themed newspaper headlines forced Peter Robinson to stand down temporarily. Although both the Robinson and Bercow sagas are extreme examples, there is a growing trend for parliamentary spouses to emerge from the shadows.
Samantha Cameron, wife of the Conservative leader, is creative director at Smythson, the luxury stationery firm. Ed Miliband’s partner, Justine Thornton, is a senior environmental lawyer. Sarah Brown, wife of the prime minister, enjoyed a successful career in public relations before taking up permanent residence in No 10. Shadow chancellor George Osborne’s wife, Frances, is a bestselling biographer, and Sandra Howard, wife of former Conservative leader Michael Howard, has written three novels.
“I think the role has changed a bit,” says Mrs Howard, whose latest novel, A Matter of Loyalty, was published last year. “Three decades ago there were more wives who didn’t have their own career. Cherie Blair did us a really good service by continuing to work as a barrister while her husband was the prime minister because no one could ever complain about a spouse working again.”
“It’s a shift that mirrors what has happened in society,” agrees Alicia Collinson, author of Politics for Partners: How to Live with a Politician and a barrister specialising in family law. She deliberately chose not to take her husband’s surname. “I got very criticised in the press when Damian first became involved in politics because I was a barrister and had my own job, but now the constituency isn’t fussed about it… I used to know one MP who talked about his wife being ‘the hostage’ in the constituency.” Collinson takes a sip of her tea. “He’s now married to someone else.”
Not only are political wives no longer quite held hostage in the shires, they are seen as potential vote-winners. The impact of Michelle Obama, who has expanded the role of political wife and is seen as a crucial asset to her husband’s success, is beginning to make itself felt in the UK. Whereas in the past an MP’s spouse was occasionally wheeled out by central office for a pre-election photo opportunity, the modern political wife has a far more complex role. She must juggle the demands of career and family while developing a public persona that is sufficiently straightforward to be inoffensive and yet interesting enough to intrigue the electorate. Her clothes will be scrutinised and her past raked over. She is expected to have an opinion and yet to keep it to herself. And when her husband films a YouTube broadcast from his bespoke Notting Hill kitchen, she must appear in the background amid the cereal boxes and Blu-Tacked toddlers’ paintings, busy and yet in control: the perfect appeal to the Mumsnet generation.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that some political wives, like Sally Bercow or Iris Robinson, chafe against the restrictions imposed upon them. Others, like Miriam González Durántez, wife of the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, take a more relaxed approach. González, who heads up the trade department of the international law firm DLA Piper, says that a political wife can be “supportive without being submissive… I am sufficiently confident to understand I can have a proper career, and I also understand I happen to be married to Nick and people will want legitimately to have a look into who he is as a person – and provided that they respect our children I’m happy for anybody to have a look. What you see is what you get.”
When we meet in a boardroom at her company headquarters in London, González seeps unapologetic glamour. She has film-star looks and hair that appears expensively blow-dried. Today she is wearing a grey silk shift dress, a chunky gold necklace and fashionable high-heeled ankle boots. It would be difficult to imagine anyone less like the pink-cheeked, floral-swathed MP’s wife of popular imagination.
González embodies the new breed of “Sam Cams”, the independent career women and mothers who happen to be married to politicians but who are determined not to be defined by their spouses and who share the running of the household as equally as possible. The Cleggs have three sons under the age of eight: their father takes them to school every morning and their mother puts them to bed at night.
“Nick’s well known with the neighbours for going to do a very early interview and coming back to go to school before going to Westminster,” says González. Do the children understand what their father does? “Partly. My five-year-old thinks he’s the captain of the Liberal Democrats. My eight-year-old is quite perceptive and understands some of it – he advises on plans to capture Osama bin Laden.”
Westminster hours, however, remain extremely inconvenient for MPs with young children (even since Labour’s landslide victory in 1997, when 120 of the new MPs were women, many of whom were appalled by the unsociable working hours and pitifully outdated office equipment). “It isn’t friendly for families,” says González. “I remember, for example, being very, very shocked – and let’s put this into context: it must be a Westminster village reaction – but I remember Nick saying at some point: ‘I’m a father before being a politician’, and some colleagues were actually thinking: ‘What a weird thing to say.’ I was thinking: ‘Surely that is a perfectly normal thing to say?’ I think it’s incredibly unuseful that Westminster tends to vote at 10 in the evening rather than at four in the afternoon, like you would do in any other kind of job. There’s a lot of evening engagements and media engagements, and that takes a toll on the family.”
It is perhaps partly for this reason that some wives still choose to stay quietly behind the scenes, determinedly ignoring the onward march of equal opportunities. For every Miriam González there is a “Surrendered Wife” like Norma Major, who stood smiling and faithful beside her husband without uttering a single controversial word in public throughout his premiership and who remained loyal to him even after it emerged that he’d had an affair with Edwina Currie. Pauline Prescott, who stood by husband John despite a dalliance with his secretary, calls herself one of a “dying breed” in her autobiography, and is dismissive of “women’s libbers”.
Sandra Howard, who did not publish her first book until her husband had stood down as leader, says the old-style political wife works on the principle that “anything you can do to help, you do. If allowing the person you love to do what they want to do means a little bit of not thinking about what you want to do, it’s almost a non-question.”
The Surrendered Wife must bite her tongue when asked for her opinion, lest she run the risk of embarrassing her husband. “I remember being told that a political spouse will never win the seat for their partner, but they can sure as hell lose it,” says Howard.
When the expenses scandal broke last year, it emerged that almost 80 MPs employed either their wives or girlfriends as parliamentary assistants, secretaries or case workers. (Political husbands are still very much the exception to the rule: Caroline Flint, the Labour MP for Don Valley, employs her husband Phil Cole to run her constituency office, while Margaret Beckett’s spouse, Leo, has been her parliamentary assistant for years.) At the time, there was an outcry at the thought of family members cashing in courtesy of the taxpayer, and the rules governing the employment of spouses and family members are currently under review. The constituency wives, many of whom had worked extremely hard for their MP husbands, felt they had been unfairly scapegoated. Alicia Collinson recalls a trip to the local garden centre with her husband at the height of the expenses scandal to buy some plants. “A man driving his car wound down his window and shouted out: ‘I hope you’ve got a receipt for that,’ and then drove off thinking he was very clever. We’ve never claimed for gardening. It was just ignorant.
“The climate has changed. The respect that parliamentarians were held in is no more… the level of contempt one experiences is quite extraordinary. It’s been very unpleasant. A lot of spouses have been very upset.”
Another wife, who has run her husband’s constituency office for the last 17 years, says: “I got very badly bruised by the whole thing. People don’t realise how hard we work or the hours we put in. We’re the ones who are there at seven in the morning or 11 at night when the phone goes.”
It is perhaps these wives – the uncomplaining troopers who keep their husbands’ schedules organised and their stationery cupboards stocked with Post-it notes – who provide the bridge between the surrendered spouses of the past and the sleekly independent career women of modern times.
But although the increasing number of MPs’ wives pursuing their own careers has been heralded as some sort of feminist breakthrough, much of the media coverage of these women remains distinctly sexist. There is a lingering sense, in spite of the enormous strides made by women such as Cherie Booth and Miriam González, that a political wife’s role is to gaze adoringly at her husband as he makes a keynote speech or to be photographed walking along the Brighton seafront during party conference season, appearing well dressed but not too glamorous in case she is accused of being out of touch with the common man (or woman).
So it is that Sarah Brown – doubtless influenced by the intimate confessions of her Michelle Obama about the president’s bad morning breath – has twice taken to the podium to introduce her husband to the Labour party conference. In 2008 she smiled ingratiatingly and called him “my hero”. Last year she exclusively revealed that Gordon was “not a saint – he’s messy, he’s noisy, he gets up at a terrible hour”.
Mrs Brown, who gave up a career in PR, has carved out a niche as an electoral accessory whose job it is to show Gordon in a warmer, more modern light. One minute Mrs Brown will be in a TV studio, eyes welling up as she listens to her husband unburden his soul to Piers Morgan, the next she will be opening London Fashion Week wearing an Erdem dress and updating her Twitter account (1,118,558 followers and counting, including Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell).
Sarah Brown has provided us with a whole new category of political spouse: a wife who knows how to exploit modern media in order to promote herself and her husband as a successful brand. She is known to have used her sartorial influence to overhaul her husband’s wardrobe and her PR savvy to insist that the couple went on holiday in Southwold, Suffolk last year in an effort to prove their fondness for England. In fact, so successful has she been in modelling herself as cheerleader-in-chief that one member of the prime minister’s inner circle is said to have dubbed her “Mrs Goebbels”.
As the general election approaches, the leaders’ wives in particular will have a prominent role to play in wooing the voters. Already there have been snide comments emanating from government sources that Samantha Cameron does less charity work than her counterpart in No 10. And at the recent Tory spring conference it felt as though far more attention was paid to the cut of Mrs Cameron’s silk ruffled blouse than to what her husband had to say about fixing “broken Britain”.
“I think the trouble with politicians is they have a fixed image in the media which doesn’t involve their personality,” says Alicia Collinson. “So having another side to both David Cameron and Gordon Brown and allowing their wives to convey something that isn’t just the stiff upper lip of a politician can be helpful for the electorate in the run-up to an election. They can see what a politician is like from every angle.”
But reactions to Sarah Brown’s celebrity among the other political wives are mixed. Some find her acting the part of adoring spouse on the national stage a touch retrograde. Miriam González says she’d always go to see Nick deliver a major speech and would expect him to do the same, but adds that: “I wouldn’t ask him to come to the podium to kiss me afterwards, and that is not what I’d do in reverse.” Others, like Alicia Collinson, believe that having a loyal wife in the public eye “suggests that the politician has at least got good taste”.
And perhaps in the end it is not a wholly irrational reason to vote for a particular MP. They might lie about tax rises, cheat on their expenses and have terrible breath in the morning, but at least they have the love of a good woman who knows how to make friends with Paris Hilton on Twitter.
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More money makes society miserable, warns report
about 6 months ago - No comments
Economics experts argue that Britain’s thirst for status symbols harms our well-being
The national belt-tightening expected to follow next month’s budget could prove to be of more benefit to the nation’s sense of well-being than if wealth levels were to soar, according to a new study.
Complex economic formulas developed by two professors of economics, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, and published in the current edition of the Economic Journal, suggest that greater affluence can seriously damage a nation’s health. Based on their mathematical modelling, the economists advance the theory that once a country reaches a reasonable standard of living there is little further benefit to be had from increasing the wealth of its population. Indeed, it could make people feel worse off.
They believe their work shows that, as a nation becomes wealthier, consumption shifts increasingly to buying status symbols with no intrinsic value – such as lavish jewellery, designer clothes and luxury cars. But they warn: “These goods represent a ‘zero-sum game’ for society: they satisfy the owners, making them appear wealthy, but everyone else is left feeling worse off.”
Their work owes much to the economist Thorstein Veblen, who in 1899 coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen argued that people seek status through conspicuous consumption, which derives its value not from the intrinsic worth of what is consumed but from the fact that it permits people to attempt to set themselves apart from others. As the economy grows, people increasingly choose status symbols or “Veblen goods” over other goods.
“Those with above-average wealth consume Veblen goods with a positive impact on their happiness,” the authors write. “But those with below-average wealth simply cannot afford these goods, so they have a negative impact on their happiness. This is known as ‘Veblen competition’. As average wealth rises, people grow richer but not happier.”
The pair believe their research helps to explain why empirical studies show that levels of happiness and feelings of community in affluent countries have stagnated, despite growth in real incomes.
There is another downside. As people yearn for more status symbols they have less time or inclination for helping others. This, the authors argue, damages “community and trust”, which are vital to an economy because they ensure the smooth running of society. They conclude: “Conspicuous consumption can have an impact not only on people’s well-being but also on the growth prospects of the economy.” The theory may go some way to explaining the public backlash against the louche lifestyles of the UK’s footballers, bankers and politicians.
It fits into a debate within economics about how to measure a nation’s true wealth. Many economists believe they need to focus more on measuring happiness. The belief that a focus on individual wealth creation can be divisive has spread around the worlds of politics, psychology and science. Clinical psychologist Oliver James has argued that there is an epidemic of “affluenza” throughout the developed world, with attempts “to keep up with the Joneses” triggering huge increases in depression and anxiety.
Last year a bestselling book by two epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, called The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, suggested that Britain and America were the countries with the widest gulfs between rich and poor in the developed world, and as a result had the most health and social problems.
Nevertheless, Eaton and Eswaran, from the universities of Calgary and British Columbia respectively, do not believe the developed world’s obsession with wealth shows any signs of abating. The pair predict that “it is likely that conspicuous consumption will become worse as time progresses”.
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Catherine Bennett | Talk to us about politics, not your lovely home life
about 6 months ago - No comments
The Cameron and Brown personality parade misses the point that voters care about issues, not character
Recently, on a day when no cameras were looking and he was surrounded by political nonentities, mainly mothers, an off-duty David Cameron was amazingly haughty to a friend of mine. Maybe it was just an off-day. Or maybe, what with all the nation’s mums to think about over, a stressy Mr Cameron had important political things on his mind. What do mums feel about Lily Allen? Would they like him to drink Guinness or bitter? Enjoy gardening or football? Shopping-wise, which out of Primark and Marks & Spencer do mums think more appropriate for a national leader? Examined by Titchmarsh, he came out for the latter.
Lucky Gordon Brown: though pressed on his retail experience by an insistent Piers Morgan, he was never forced to admit to a supermarket preference. But the prime minister confessed, and a cutaway to smiling Sarah Brown confirmed that this was a positive anecdote, that he once accompanied his wife to a supermarket, but stayed in the car.
Admittedly, it’s unlikely she would have stood up and added that they were not, at the time, on speaking terms. We just have to take Brown’s uxoriousness on trust, like his grumpiness-denial and a claim that he once drank “half-a-dozen” pints a night. Are there any witnesses to this excess? The more political parties urge us to go out and vote on the basis of their leader’s characters, the more, if they want to avoid complicity, broadcasters might want to think about testing these auto-eulogies for accuracy.
Does Cameron really play darts? Does Brown, yet more implausibly, never throw anything more substantial than newspapers, and “wake up in the morning thinking what I can do to help people looking for jobs”? Stringent investigation of these claims could provide fabulous light entertainment. Although, inexplicably, waterboarding has yet to feature on daytime television, Jeremy Kyle routinely uses a lie detector to expose disingenuousness, even though all that is generally at stake, for survivors, is not a position at the helm of government, but a chance to “save your relationship”. Once Brown and Cameron were wired up they could even be asked a few supplementaries, about banking regulation, or the size of coming cuts.
Last week, invoking the more urgent electoral issue of himself, Brown gave voters a few tips for personality assessment. “It is for other people to judge,” he said, “but I believe that character is not about telling people what they want to hear but about telling them what they need to know.” And another hint, to help the public succeed where generations of divorcees have failed: “For better or for worse, with me what you see is what you get.” But like a Cretan, who thinks it worth adding, “just ask my wife” to the line “all Cretans are liars”, Brown accepts that the public might, occasionally, feel the need for corroboration.
Over to Sarah Brown. “What you see is what you get with him,” she said, in response to the bullying stories. A comment which only confirms, like an earlier line, “I know he wakes up every morning thinking…”, that here is a couple so close that their “mirroring” has reached the exemplary, automatic stage.
Even so, it’s worth noting Mrs Brown was not speaking under oath. Here is a loyal spouse who stands to be evicted, if she is disbelieved, then rehoused in Kirkcaldy; albeit with support from Naomi Campbell. Nor, perhaps, should the cautious voter believe in Samantha Cameron’s purported diffidence about Number 10, on the basis that she is already a rich baronet’s daughter and a big name in the world of handbags. She still wants to win enough to deploy her children and, in tonight’s profile of Cameron by Trevor McDonald, to throw down this gauntlet about her own Mr Wonderful: “He’s always been incredibly strong, and kind, and supportive.” How do we know this is true? Because the rules of all-political Mr and Mrs now require that candidates provide character references for the wives, as well as themselves.
Dave guarantees, in Samantha, “an amazing woman, a working mum, a very successful career woman” – so a leetle bit more modern, maybe, than Gordon’s “beautiful, elegant, compassionate, dignified” Sarah. Whom he proposed to on a beach. And loves ever so, Piers: it “just grows and grows”. Will he be sure to tell us if it stops? “I’m an open book as far as people are concerned,” Brown says. “Anything they want to know, I’m happy.” Actually, politics aside, it’s hard to think of anything he’s left out. Most of us probably know more about Sarah Brown’s proposal of marriage than we do about our own mother’s.
Presumably, given there has never been disclosure on this level, that the media did not demand it and that no one in their right mind would volunteer such intimacies, Brown and Cameron’s advisers believe that a public hardened by tales of Prescottian bulimia and Mrs Blair’s neglected Dutch cap will respond only to enhanced levels of authenticity stimulus. Heath’s yacht, Mrs Thatcher’s larder and Kinnock’s Welsh idyll have given way to a televised account of his baby’s final moments by Brown, a father who thereby enters an almost obscene contest for public sympathy with his rival, another bereaved father.
On each side, the strategy looks as risky as it is undignified. Their particular brands of insincerity – agonising awkwardness in Brown’s case, supreme smarm in Cameron’s, phony WAG stuff from both – could easily be the strongest impressions created by protracted exposure. More important, this belief in the electoral power of character may be misplaced.
Evidently Brown and his manipulators have evidence, or instincts, that tell them the contrary, but there are doubts about the significance of leaders’ characters in elections, even in an age when it is common to argue that presidential politics and a celebrity-obsessed media have increased their impact. And it is not, anyway, as if charismatic politicians are new. Winston Churchill was a celebrity, and he was rejected. So was Neil Kinnock, even though he was more appealing than John Major. Look at Berlusconi’s behaviour, and you could even argue that voters don’t pay as much attention to character as they should.
Concluding a 2002 study, Leaders’ Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections, the psephologist Prof Anthony King said the conventional political wisdom on character is wrong. Research, he wrote, “indicates that relatively few voters are swayed by candidates’ personal characteristics”. So Brown musn’t worry about being snubbed by Match of the Day.
“Far more important,” King writes, “are voters’ long-standing party loyalties, their views on issues, and their judgments of how well or badly presidents and parties have performed – or will perform – in office.” Ah. Maybe, given the economic tumult Mr Brown has just prophesied, it is a bit early to give up on football. Any port in a storm.
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Embarrassment for David Cameron over Tory hopefuls’ lobbying links
about 6 months ago - No comments
Conservative drive to ‘clean up politics’ faces test over failure by several candidates to fully declare their work for lobby firms, says Nick Mathiason
David Cameron’s drive to clean up politics is facing an embarrassing public test after it emerged that a number of prospective Conservative MPs have failed fully to declare in their campaign literature that they work for lobby firms representing powerful business interests.
The revelation threatens to destabilise Tory hopefuls in the upcoming election as voters in constituencies where alleged “secret lobbyist candidates” are running will be the subject of a targeted online advertising blitz on Google and Facebook orchestrated by 38 Degrees, an innovative online campaign group.
Only last month, Cameron warned that lobbying “was the next big scandal waiting to happen”. But campaigners claim that while secret lobby links extend across all parties, the Conservatives are the worst offenders.
Last night, the Tories hit back saying they “are committed to shining the light of openness onto the lobbying world” and suggested Labour candidates’ links to lobby firms were far more extensive. But several Tory candidates seem to have kept back details of their work for lobbying firms, including:
■ Priti Patel, the Tory candidate for Witham, a new seat in Essex. On her website, Patel says she is a director of a company providing “business and communication strategy” advice but fails to clarify that she works for one of the world’s most powerful lobby firms, Weber Shandwick, personally advising Microsoft and bank lobby group, International Financial Services London.
■ Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative candidate for Labour-held Portsmouth North, who is a 15% shareholder in lobby firm Media Intelligence Partners, which boasts among its clients Sony, Orange, and DHL. Mordaunt is also listed as the firm’s director in Companies House. Mordaunt also worked for 10 months last year at leading public PR firm Hanover.
■ George Eustice, Cameron’s former press secretary, fighting the three-way marginal in Camborne and Redruth, Cornwall, has failed to disclose on his campaign site that he works for powerful Westminster lobby firm Portland, which acts for Google, Tesco and McDonald’s.
■ Prospective Labour MP Emma Reynolds on Friday hurriedly updated her biography on her campaign website to include details of her work for lobby outfit Cogitamus, which advises the biggest names in the construction industry on government relations.
The Observer is aware of a significant number of parliamentary candidates who will be unmasked in coming days as part of a co-ordinated campaign by Spinwatch and 38 Degrees aimed at introducing a statutory register of interests. This would force lobby firms and parliamentary candidates to clarify who they represent and work for.
David Babbs, 38 Degrees executive director, said: “The election is a chance to clean up parliament, which is why it’s time for all PPCs to come clean about their links to lobbying. 38 Degrees members are going to work together to make sure that those people who want to be our MPs promise to put their voters first, not their friends in big business. 38 Degrees is a 100,000-strong, people-powered movement, and during this election we plan to work together to cut through the spin and make sure politicians answer to us. We’ll be challenging PPCs on their lobbying links, and if they refuse to draw a line under their past business interests we’ll be raising money for ads in local papers to make sure local voters hear the facts.”
Tamasin Cave, from the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency, said: “The public is calling for – and deserves – a new type of politics, so it’s vital that prospective MPs are fully transparent about their links to lobbying. If they are helping powerful companies get privileged access to key politicians in the runup to the election, we have a right to know who they are lobbying for and which policies or contracts are being discussed. Covert lobbying harms public trust. Lobbying firms clearly hire these parliamentary hopefuls to both open the door to politics now and to secure a direct line to any future government. If you want to influence politics, it pays to employ political insiders.”
Eustice defended the lack of information about his work for Portland, saying his campaign website was intended to set out his beliefs. The one-time Cameron spin doctor also said there was a welter of publicity when he left Cameron to join Portland. In addition, he had been a tireless campaigner for more transparency in the public relations arena.
Mordaunt said her role at both Media Intelligence Partners and Hanover was centred on communications work rather than public affairs. She explicitly denied she was a lobbyist and said she supported the campaign for a statutory register of lobbying interests.
Patel did not comment on her links with Weber Shandwick. But the firm’s corporate communications and public affairs chairman, Jon McLeod, confirmed that Patel advised Microsoft and the International Financial Services London. He stated: “Weber Shandwick is clearly an agency with a political dimension. We would not be good at our job if we weren’t.” McLeod confirmed he was a vocal supporter of legislation to create a statutory register of lobby firms.
Last night, the Tories said they would introduce new rules to stop central government bodies using public money to hire lobbyists and “push for the lobbying industry to ensure greater transparency of their operations through self-regulation, and we would be prepared to legislate if this fails”.
Cave said: “As David Cameron said just last month, this isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. It’s not just public policy that’s affected by lobbying – government contracts worth billions are potentially at stake. Cameron has spoken about the urgent need to shine the light of transparency on lobbying. But words alone won’t bring public scrutiny: we need new rules that force lobbyists to come clean about their activities.”
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Brown draws flak over role in handling military budget
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Cameron uses prime minister’s questions to challenge Brown over military funding claims made to the Chilcot inquiry
It was possibly the most supercharged prime minister’s questions of the year so far. At 12:09pm last Wednesday the ritual jousting turned toxic as David Cameron challenged Gordon Brown’s testimony at the Iraq inquiry days earlier.
Brown had told the Chilcot inquiry that he never refused urgent requests for more military funding. Cameron did not believe him, citing two former chiefs of the defence staff who had criticised the prime minister for offering the inquiry evidence that was “disingenuous” and “dissembling”.
Several Labour backbenchers could not hold their tongues. But, they roared, Lord Guthrie and Admiral Lord Boyce were “Tories”. The implication was damning; these men might once have been characters of honour whose duty was to serve the nation but now their criticism could be dismissed as readily as, well, Cameron’s.
It was a poisonous putdown. In their view, the opinions of two of the most powerful figures in modern military history had become corrupted to the extent they were no longer impartial.
Some blamed Sir Richard Dannatt, the former army chief, for politicising the military. After all, Dannatt’s consistent criticism of defence spending in Afghanistan had preceded reports that he would become a defence adviser to the Conservatives. Beyond the hullabaloo over political bias weighed against genuine concern over soldiers’ welfare, the debate boils down to whether Guthrie and Co have a point? Did Brown starve the military of funding when he was chancellor, leaving the forces short of vital equipment?
The answer may depend on whose side you are on. Guthrie and Boyd remain adamant that Brown mishandled the defence budget when chancellor and that his prudence meant, for instance, fewer troop-carrying helicopters in Afghanistan, one of the most vexing issues facing commanders in Helmand province. Their critique was bolstered by an inquest verdict hours before Wednesday’s Commons exchange. Four soldiers were unlawfully killed after troops were given “inadequate” training, according to Wiltshire coroner David Masters.
Brown, too, remains unmoved. He told Cameron that “every request” made by defence officials for “urgent operational requirements” was met. In fact, said the prime minister, £18bn had been invested in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of the military budget. In real terms, spending was up. The Tories, claimed the prime minister, cut it by 30% in the 1990s. But the truth, as so often, is somewhere in between.
Analysts point out that the MoD has a long-term core budget while the additional cost of fighting wars comes from the Treasury reserve. Many believe this dynamic fuelled disagreement between Brown and the military men.
However, the future for defence spending appears less ambiguous. Swingeing cuts are a certainty. Days before last week’s PMQ, the defence select committee bemoaned a £21bn funding gap for scheduled military projects. If they win the election, the Tories will have to preside over huge cuts in military spending. The question is, will Guthrie and Boyd sit quietly on the sidelines when that happens?
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Conservative defector condemns party’s ‘vile letter’ and hostility towards Europe
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MEP Edward McMillan-Scott accuses Tories of euro-scepticism and ‘double standards’ for expelling him while only suspending Lord Archer
The former leader of the Tories in Europe launches a scathing attack on David Cameron’s Conservatives today, accusing them of “visceral euroscepticism”, “twisted” thinking and bullying tactics that forced him out of the party.
Edward McMillan-Scott, who defected to the Liberal Democrats on Friday, has also accused the Tories of “extraordinary double standards” for expelling him permanently, having only suspended Lord Archer, who was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury in 2001.
Writing in today’s Observer, McMillan-Scott, who remains a vice-president of the European parliament, says the Tories unleashed a “campaign of vilification” against him after he claimed that Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who now leads their centre-right group in the EU, had an antisemitic, homophobic and racist track record.
A strong pro-European and member of the Tory party for 43 years, McMillan-Scott gives voice to years of frustration at the party’s hostile attitudes to the EU under present and past leaders, including William Hague.
In his outspoken attack on the party over its handling of his expulsion, McMillan-Scott says he has been smeared by Tory press officers who have tried to claim he is the one who holds antisemitic views.
He adds that they have distorted facts about his defection and claims that the party produced no documents to support its case when he appealed against expulsion. “I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now,” he writes.
He accuses Cameron of tolerating eurosceptics who depart from the party line while persecuting him, a pro-European, for daring to express sincerely held doubts about the leadership credentials of a controversial fellow MEP.
“David Cameron shields his europhobes,” he writes. “No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip in the general election against the Speaker, John Bercow. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party.”
Last night, speaking from the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Birmingham, McMillan-Scott said the party had shown “massive double standards” by expelling him while suspending Jeffrey Archer for five years.
When the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, mentioned McMillan-Scott’s name at a rally on Friday night there was a huge roar from activists. Yesterday he was seated in the front row for a question-and-answer session, so Clegg could welcome him.
The row over McMillan-Scott blew up last year when he stood as vice-president of the European parliament against Kaminski, who was Hague’s choice. Following McMillan-Scott’s stand, Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Conservative MEPs, withdrew the party whip.
On 15 September, without any prior notification, McMillan-Scott was expelled from the Conservative party after 25 years as an MEP, four years as leader of the MEPs and three years on the party’s board.
• Hague is also likely to come under fire if he declines an invitation to appear this Thursday before a parliamentary committee investigating the granting of a peerage to Lord Ashcroft .
The three Tory members of the public administration committee – David Burrowes, Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charles Walker – have already said that they will not attend the one-off meeting, at which confidential Cabinet Office records relating to the decision to grant Ashcroft a peerage in 2000 will be discussed.
But the event is now in danger of running into farce. Ashcroft, a “non-dom” who does not pay UK tax on his overseas earnings, is unlikely to appear in person and Hague, too, looks doubtful.
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Recovery yields Alistair Darling a £12bn budget windfall
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Chancellor will cite state investment in jobs as key to lower-than-expected unemployment
Alistair Darling will claim next week that government action to protect jobs has saved around £12bn, as Labour uses the pre-election budget to spell out key economic dividing lines with the Tories.
In what is expected to be the most political budget in decades, the chancellor will cite government investment in jobs programmes as a major reason why unemployment has turned out to be dramatically lower than economists predicted. Last year’s budget anticipated that the level of unemployment, based on National Audit Office assessments of independent forecasts, would be 2.09 million people in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.44 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. By December’s pre-budget report (PBR), however, the government had revised the forecasts to 1.72 million for 2009 and 1.91 million for 2010, saying that this would save up to £10bn over five years from lower unemployment benefits alone.
Since then, the Observer has established that Darling’s officials have cut the forecasts still further. The latest projections for unemployment are for it to hit 1.72 million in the final quarter of this year and 1.75 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 – a further 200,000 lower than in the PBR plans, potentially freeing up an extra £1bn-£2bn.
The work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “In the 80s and 90s unemployment continued to rise even after the recession ended, because the government failed to put the necessary support and training in place and keep it there as the economy returned to growth.” She claimed that the Conservatives would cut back investment in jobs programmes and “put the economy at risk, even though the clear evidence shows helping people back to work saves money for the future too”.
This week Cooper is expected to announce that the government will subsidise another 7,000 jobs for young people, bringing the total created under the Future Jobs Fund to 117,000. The funding will pay for work at the national minimum wage, targeted at under-25s and people living in unemployment hotspots.
Last night Treasury sources insisted that most of the windfall savings from lower-than-expected unemployment would be used to cut the deficit, rather than for pre-election giveaways.
Darling believes the budget could spark a sell-off in government markets unless he stands by his pledge to halve the deficit within four years. Ministers believe that they have a credible plan to put the public finances back in order, through targeted investment in the economy, which they say will speed progress towards sustained growth; the introduction of tax rises such as the 50p rate for top earners (from this April) and national insurance rises from next April; and efficiency savings across government. But Darling is not expected to spell out any more details of specific departmental spending cuts so close to polling day.
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Can Katy Perry stop EMI going to America for a song?
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Billions of pounds of debt, the internet and piracy are crippling one of Britain’s most iconic firms
It is a tale of sex, debt and rock’n'roll that is unlikely to have a happy ending. When Guy Hands, a City financier with a penchant for fast food and an insatiable appetite for deal-making, came up with a plan to buy EMI, Britain’s flagship music company, using billions of pounds of borrowed money, many wondered how he could possibly make a decent return on his investment. As it has turned out, he couldn’t.
This weekend EMI’s new chairman Charles Allen, the former ITV chief executive hired by Hands last week to run the music arm of the company, is battling to ensure its independence, assembling a rescue plan for the company that signed the Beatles and became synonymous with the golden age of British pop.
Sources close to the company say Allen, a former accountant whose eclectic musical tastes encompass Lily Allen and Edith Piaf, is “rolling up his sleeves” and working to ensure the company does not breach the terms of its bank loans, but there is no doubt EMI is in peril. “It is a very, very big moment,” according to Claire Enders, founder of media consultancy Enders Analysis. “The next two or three months are critical for the future of EMI.”
Allen’s predecessor, Elio Leoni-Sceti, left suddenly last week just as the final touches were being put on a rescue package, prompting fears over the company’s future. The business is effectively being propped up by its past, surviving on the revenues generated by artists signed during a 30-year period when British music dominated the world.
The list of talent on EMI’s books reads like a roll call of rock royalty: David Bowie, Queen, Lennon and McCartney, the Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd. As an incubator of home-grown musical talent, the company is without equal and its position as one of the “big four” global record labels is a source of national pride; it exists to make money but EMI also safeguards the country’s status as a place where music that matters is made.
If EMI disappears or falls into foreign hands, many music industry figures worry that future generations of British acts may find it more difficult to find a worldwide audience. Jazz Summers, who manages former Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft, who is signed to EMI, said: “If you look at their track record, they have broken more British acts in America than anyone else, and the same is true in other countries.”
EMI is in crisis because it is burdened with what sources close to the company describe as a “ludicrous” amount of debt, racked up after it was bought in 2007 by Hands’s private equity company Terra Firma. EMI Music currently has three artists in the top 15 of the album chart for the first time this century, including Blur vocalist Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, and it is on course to make a profit of £200m this year, but a staggering three quarters of that will go on interest payments.
Hands borrowed heavily to fund the deal, using money provided by Terra Firma’s investors, and EMI’s valuable back catalogue, as collateral, but even then some questioned whether he was right to pay the amount he did for a business that was struggling to come to terms with downloads and a dramatic decline in physical music sales. The industry has lost between 30% and 50% of its revenues in the last five years, but the irony is that EMI is currently outperforming its peers, which include Sony BMG and Warner Music.
It had the biggest-selling album of 2008, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and reissued the Beatles digitally remastered back catalogue last year. Acts including Lily Allen and Katy Perry are selling well, but the way the company is structured means it cannot trade its way out of trouble.
Before the credit crunch, loans could be refinanced cheaply, but now EMI is struggling to meet its debt repayments in the wake of the severe economic downturn. It has been forced to cut costs dramatically, laying off close to 20% of its workforce. The company is now worth £450m, around a tenth of what Hands paid for it. Some big acts, including Radiohead, have already left, muttering that the money men simply didn’t understand the music business.
Last week one of EMI’s biggest-selling groups, Pink Floyd, won a court action preventing the company from making tracks from their 1970s album Dark Side of the Moon available to download individually. That was widely portrayed as a victory for artistic integrity – the group want their masterpiece to be consumed from start to finish, as they originally intended – but it also illustrates the challenges the music industry faces in an era of huge upheaval, when illegal downloading is costing it dear and making money from talent discovered and developed at huge cost is more difficult than ever.
If Allen cannot persuade Terra Firma’s investors to stump up another £120m, EMI will be in breach of its loan terms, and its main creditor – US bank Citigroup – could seize control of the company. If it does so, Citigroup is likely to sell it to Warner Music, an American rival which was outbid by Hands for EMI three years ago. The situation is complicated by Terra Firma’s decision to sue Citigroup in New York, accusing it of forcing EMI towards administration so it can take possession of the company and make a profit from a quick sale, allegations that the bank denies.
Hands is a larger-than-life tax exile, a hero in the Square Mile whose reputation has been badly tarnished by the EMI debacle. He now concedes he overpaid for EMI, but his miscalculation means he could be about to hand a much-loved cultural institution into the keeping of the Americans.
At the end of last year Cadbury’s city shareholders agreed to sell the nation’s favourite chocolate company to Illinois-based Kraft. The prospect of another household name passing into foreign ownership, particularly a national champion in one of the few industries in which Britain still excels, is an unsettling one.
One senior music industry executive explained: “For British music, the fact that there was a very successful British company to sign for was hugely significant.” However, others say the temptation to indulge in flag-waving should be resisted. Enders said: “Britain is one of the places people come looking for talent and that won’t change. There are a lot of players in the market and advances paid to acts such as Florence and The Machine have gone up.”
If EMI does fall into the hands of an American rival, she added, it might ultimately safeguard its future. “It would be better for EMI to have less indebtedness. It will have much more firepower.”
EMI could survive. It is still lining up the sale of some prized assets. It was reported last month that the Abbey Road studios in London could be sold off. The company later insisted the studios should stay under its ownership and was working with “third parties” about funding a “revitalisation project”.
Raising the possibility that a part of the nation’s cultural heritage could be sold provides a graphic reminder of how the company’s huge debt is forcing it to make unpopular decisions.
It may not matter if British acts are no longer championed by a UK company as long as the country continues to produce talent and A&R men from overseas arrive here in search of the next Lily Allen or Amy Winehouse. “In the end the music business is the same as it ever was,” Enders said. “It’s about hits.”
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How Lib Dems got where they are today
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The Liberal movement’s victories, setbacks and transformations from the turn of the last century to the present day
1906 The Liberal party wins a general election landslide built on a call for free trade and an anti-Conservative pact with the new Labour party.
1916 David Lloyd George heads a Conservative-Liberal coalition in the 1918 postwar election, with Labour becoming the official opposition over the Independent Liberals of Herbert Asquith.
1922 The Conservatives break away from Lloyd George’s wartime coalition, leaving the split Liberal and New Liberal parties floundering, with many Liberal MPs (including Winston Churchill) defecting to the new Conservative government or Labour opposition.
1945 The postwar election is a disaster for the Liberals, who take only 12 rural seats, wiping out the party leadership and its urban representation and leading to decades in the wilderness.
1976 Newly elected Liberal leader David Steel enters into an electoral pact with Jim Callaghan’s Labour government, giving Callaghan a much-needed parliamentary majority that had been lost in byelection defeats. The pact broke down before Labour’s defeat in the 1979 election.
1981 Moderate Labour MPs Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers (the Gang of Four) break away to form the Social Democratic party (SDP), taking a ignificant number of Labour MPs with them. The SDP forms an alliance with the Liberal party, jointly winning nearly 25% of the vote (yet only 23 parliamentary seats) in the 1983 election.
1988 Following Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1987 election, the SDP and Liberals merge, despite loud opposition from members on both sides, becoming the Social and Liberal Democrats.
1997 Under the leadership of Royal Marine-turned-MP Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats record their best result since 1935 in the 1992 election, then more than double their number of MPs five years later by reacting to New Labour’s move to the centre with a campaign to raise income tax to fund education reforms.
2005 Charles Kennedy’s Lib Dems win 62 seats with 22% of the vote, benefiting from widespread anger over the Iraq war.
2010 Nick Clegg narrowly won the leadership in 2007 and is preparing for a general election, declaring that the his party will have four demands before lending any minority administration its support: reform of the tax system, more spending on education for poorer children, a switch to a greener economy and political reform in Westminster.
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It’s Nick Clegg’s chance to shine, so he’d better not fluff his lines | Andrew Rawnsley
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The Lib Dems have a fabulous opportunity, but will need exceptional discipline during the campaign
In conversation with friends about the forthcoming televised election debates between the party leaders, Nick Clegg was heard to say: “I’d better not screw up.” That self-deprecation is an attractive side of his character. If Gordon Brown entertains for a moment the possibility that he might fall flat on his face before 10 million or more viewing voters, you can’t imagine him saying it out loud.
Nick Clegg is right to be nervous that he doesn’t fluff his chance to shine in the TV arc lights. This general election is a golden opportunity for him and his party. A whiskery government asks for a fourth term under a disliked prime minister who has presided over the deepest recession since 1945. An unconvincing Conservative party hasn’t persuaded the country that its air-brushed leader can be trusted with power. If not now for the Lib Dems, when?
The usual case made against them by their opponents is that they are a dilettante party. This time they can say that, when it came to two of the big calls of the last decade, they got it right and their larger rivals got it wrong. Labour and the Tories were united in supporting George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The Lib Dems opposed the war. Iraq is in a better place today than it was five years ago, but there’s no escaping the epic amounts of blood and treasure squandered because the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam was so calamitously mishandled. The Lib Dems can contend that they also displayed superior foresight at home. Labour and the Tories were as one in encouraging the reckless gamblers of high finance during the bubble years. The Lib Dems were the lonely and now vindicated voice which warned that the debt-fuelled boom would ultimately implode in a ruinous bust.
They can also argue – though it would be best for them not to be too sanctimonious about it – that their parliamentarians came out of the expenses scandal looking less mucky than either Labour or the Tories. Not a single Lib Dem MP has been found guilty of “flipping” to bilk the taxpayer for mortgage payments and home refurbishment while avoiding capital gains tax.
Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and other members of the leadership team have also worked hard to enhance their credibility in straitened economic times. They’ve abandoned the party’s tiresome old habit of offering wish lists of goodies to the voters by ditching as unaffordable previous promises to give free care to the elderly and to scrap immediately student tuition fees.
Now to their handicaps. The first is that the Lib Dems can’t credibly claim that they have a chance of forming the next government. The second is that they can’t say who they would govern with in the event that the election produces a hung parliament – what they prefer to call, because it sounds less unstable, a “balanced parliament”.
That outcome could finally give the Lib Dems their long craved chance to shape government to their agenda. At the same time, the prospect of a hung parliament turns the election campaign into a minefield which they will have to safely traverse between here and polling day. Nick Clegg is enigmatic about precisely what he would do in the event that the election does not give a parliamentary majority to either David Cameron or Gordon Brown. I don’t blame the Lib Dem for his muteness on this subject. He is not Mystic Meg. A “photo finish” – in which Labour and the Tories have an equal claim on power – is just one of several possible scenarios. There is a variety of ways in which parliament could be hung and the Lib Dem leader has no more idea than anyone else what may confront him on 7 May.
His reluctance to spell out how he would jump is explicable for plenty of other reasons. To express a preference now would be to take a big risk that his party would split under him. Some of his most senior colleagues believe they would be crucified by much of the media and subsequently immolated by the voters if they try to sustain Gordon Brown in office after he had been rejected by the country. There is interest in the idea, first floated in this space some months ago, of sustaining a Labour government on condition that there was a new prime minister. Step forward, say, Alan Johnson with his long-term commitment to changing the voting system. But there are formidable obstacles in the way of such a deal – not least the likely reluctance of Gordon Brown to go gently into the night.
Many Lib Dems, a party instinctively on the centre-left, would be viscerally hostile to any sort of arrangement with the Conservatives. The Tories are flatly opposed to electoral reform, surely the sine qua non for the Lib Dems of doing a deal with anyone.
In the event of a hung parliament, an understanding which allowed orderly government – the passage of the budget and other key elements of business – looks a more likely outcome than a full-blown coalition. This is not least because the Lib Dems have cramped the ability of their leadership to deliver them quickly and smoothly into power with another party. Long ago, when his members became suspicious that Paddy Ashdown might do a deal over their heads with Tony Blair, the party imposed a complex “quadruple lock” which makes decisions dependent on bewildering permutations of votes by the party’s MPs, its federal executive, a special conference and a ballot of its members. How wonderfully Lib Dem to shackle their leader with more checks and balances than the constitution of the United States imposes on an American president.
Any hint from Nick Clegg that he has a preference between Gordon Brown and David Cameron would hand a massive gift to his opponents. Labour is already trying some elemental blackmail by telling voters that support for the Lib Dems could let in the Tories by the back door. The Tories are likewise trying to scare other voters with the idea that support for the Lib Dems could allow Gordon Brown to cling to office even if he has been clearly rejected by the country.
Nick Clegg’s current formula is to say that the party with the strongest support will have the “mandate” and the “moral right” to form a government “either on its own or with others”. What he has not spelt out is how he defines mandate. Does this mean the party with the greatest number of MPs or the party with the greatest share of the vote? That opacity is deliberate. If he says most votes, that will be taken as a wink that he leans towards the Tories. If he says most seats, that will be taken as a nudge that he is keener on Labour.
The Lib Dems will be intensely pressed during the campaign to jump off the fence, especially when opinion polls put us in hung parliament territory. It’s really not reasonable that the media treats this as a question to which only the Lib Dems owe an answer. It can equally well be asked of Gordon Brown or David Cameron what they will do to ensure stable government in the event that the country declines to give either of them a parliamentary majority. But there’s not much point Lib Dems moaning about that. They ought to be accustomed to life not being fair. They will need to demonstrate exceptional, not to say uncharacteristic, discipline if they are not to be impaled on this question. If his MPs start letting slip opposing preferences, Nick Clegg’s campaign will fall apart.
He has been trying to switch the emphasis to what he would demand in return for support in the hope of redirecting attention to his party’s policies. Today, in a speech to the Lib Dem spring conference, he will set “four tests” for Labour and the Conservatives: reforms to tax, schools, the City and parliament, including changes to the voting system. Some people, among them his own activists, will lament that global warming is not on his list of deal-breakers. Others, including his opponents, will ask why he has left off protecting the health service. This approach is not without its risks.
Most voters have a formed view about Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Their wives have also begun a toe-curling competition to win votes which is not much more edifying than had Sarah and Sam decided to settle it with a wet T-shirt contest.
By contrast, Nick Clegg has a very fuzzy profile with the public. If they’ve even heard of him, they don’t think they know him. If they know him, they don’t think they know him very well. The leaders’ debates will be his great opportunity to change that. He has won the same airtime as his opponents. The big two could have tried to insist that they got a larger share than the third man, but they feared that wouldn’t be tolerated by the broadcasters and wouldn’t be seen as fair by voters. So the Lib Dem leader has been given equal exposure and status with Gordon Brown and David Cameron which treats him as a candidate for prime minister even though he is not. This is a privilege neither Charles Kennedy nor Paddy Ashdown ever enjoyed. It is a fabulous opportunity for Nick Clegg. Yes, he really had better not screw up.
The End of the Party is the number one best-selling non-fiction hardback. To order signed copies of Andrew Rawnsley’s book for only £17, visit guardianbooks.co.uk or call 0845 606 4232.
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