Election Stories 2: The Labour Party

Part One looked at the narratives of the big winners and smaller losers in the 2015 general election. We now turn to the Labour party.

So, what was Labour's story in the last election? As far as I can tell — and I'm trying to be generous here — it was:

Mumble mumble squeezed middle burble rail fares something utility bills.

Ed Miliband thought a manifesto was a substitute for a story. There were some worthy policies in there, but no inspiring narrative.

When Miliband condensed his offer down to six bullet points, they were positively embarrassing, even before he had them carved onto a big lump of rock. Campaigning for a strong economy isn't a story; it's like saying kittens are cute and chocolate is delicious. That's very nice, but it's no reason to give away the keys to a whelk stall, let alone 10 Downing Street.

Election Stories 1: Winners & Losers

Very few people vote for a detailed manifesto; we vote for stories.

Any major party's election manifesto makes for deadly dull reading. It's an earnest, detailed description of actions they would take if they get into power. It's important to have one, so the government can be held to account for what it promised.

However, no normal person would read the whole thing. Anyone who studies it closely is being paid to do so, or is an obsessive political anorak, or quite possibly both. I take a closer interest in politics than most people, but I've never read a manifesto in full and seldom read them at all.

Instead, we vote for a story. Pundits like to call it a narrative because that sounds fancier, but really it's a story. It needs to be short and simple, because we're easily distracted, and the stories on Game of Thrones are more entertaining. Successful political parties understand this.

England, awake

I recently wrote about how the SNP showed change is possible within our political system. Even the safest seats are vulnerable to a well-organised and inspiring opposition party.

In England, the SNP were not on the ballot paper. A plurality of voters backed the Conservatives.

The Conservatives aren't promising a better tomorrow. Oh, they want to tinker with health, education, and policing as all governments do, and they have their obsession with the EU. That is not the core of their electoral appeal.

They want to cut taxes, slash public services, deregulate and make life easier for business; but I don't think the typical Conservative voter believes this will bring a new golden age of joy and prosperity.

Here is the Conservative promise: If you are one of the 64% of Britons who owns a home, and you have a good job or pension, tomorrow will be pretty much like today. That's all.

(Corollary: For the other 36%, including all of the poor and most people aged under 30, tough shit.)

It's not noble or ambitious, but it resonated with frightened voters in these uncertain times.

It's a depressing truth, and I fear the consequences. As a resident of England, I am seriously concerned at the damage the Conservatives may do to public services in the next five years. However, Tory victory was not inevitable. If some alternative party inspires the English to come out and vote in sufficient numbers, the Conservatives will be beaten.

What could this alternative be? I don't know. It wasn't Ed Miliband's Labour, with their vapid platitudes carved into a stone tablet. It wasn't the clowns and xenophobes of UKIP either, for which I am grateful.

I can only hope that before too long, someone better comes along to knock the Conservatives off their perch.

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England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death
And close her from thy ancient walls?

Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move:
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways:
Then was a time of joy and love.

And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, and London's towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England's green and pleasant bowers.

— William Blake

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Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.

— Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity

Services to Democracy

Political parties like to pretend they own votes, but they don't. The SNP proved that on election night.

The first-past-the-post electoral system used to elect the UK government is archaic and unfair. I've said so myself, as have many others. In our fully justified railing against the system, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we still have a vote. The UK is a democracy, however dysfunctional.

Parties say past elections and opinion polls determine the future. They make claims like "only we can beat That Other Party in this seat". They openly ask for tactical votes, from anyone who dislikes them less than their opponents. The example below was put through my letterbox in Cambridge, and it's far from the worst I've seen.

Strictly speaking, and with all due respect to Julian Huppert, this is not true. There is no such thing as a marginal seat, or a safe one. There are only parliamentary seats.

I've never stood for election myself; but I have gone hitchhiking, and I imagine some similarity. You make yourself visible, stick out your thumb, and hope for the best.

Post-Election Reasons to Be Cheerful

ICYMI, my Reasons to be Cheerful tweeted the day after the election are below the fold.

My Election Night on Twitter

For your edification and amusement, some of my Twitter activity from the long dark night of the election is below the fold. Shockingly enough, it contains NSFW language.

Election wishes and early reaction

I'm writing this around midnight on election night, as the results begin to come in and we digest that shocking exit poll:

State of the parties, according to #GE2015 exit poll http://t.co/jsd8Jb1lYA pic.twitter.com/VNQYwE0akg

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 7, 2015

I've said what I want in Cambridge: Re-election of Julian Huppert, our excellent Liberal Democrat MP. What about the UK as a whole?

Government

In the classic choice between a rock and hard place, I would prefer the next government to be led by Labour, not the Conservatives.

I don't trust Labour to govern on their own. Ed Miliband has grown into his job somewhat, but he and his party are still deeply uninspiring. For Loki's sake, they thought putting "Controlling Immigration" on a coffee mug was a good way of getting votes. That said, I greatly prefer Labour to the Conservatives as a party of government.

My preferred outcome would be a Labour/LibDem coalition. (A LibDem majority would be nice, but let's keep this at least somewhat grounded in reality.)

This is less likely than a minority Labour government trying to pass legislation on a vote-by-vote basis. I'd be pretty satisfied with that too.

That said, if this exit poll is accurate, we will almost certainly see a minority Conservative government supported by some combination of LibDems, DUP and UKIP. That's very close to my nightmare scenario. Cameron can get Tory policies through, but only by appeasing the most reactionary elements of Parliament. We would also be subjected to two years or so of an EU referendum campaign, possibly followed by a British exit. It's a depressing prospect.

SNP surge

The BBC exit poll predicts the SNP to win every single seat in mainland Scotland, with only Orkney & Shetland being retained by the Liberal Democrats.

I supported a No vote to Scottish independence, but this isn't a repeat of the referendum. It's about electing representatives to govern the UK, including Scotland. I've recently argued the SNP are a responsible, moderate, social democratic party and should be treated as such.

If the SNP aren't devils, they aren't angels either. I am deeply skeptical of their claims to skip past thorny practical difficulties with nothing but the power of good intentions. Like all politicians, they are prone to duplicitous behaviour and convincing themselves that what's good for their careers is good for the country. If there is one thing we should have learned from Tony Blair and New Labour, it is to be cautious around leaders who say they are "whiter than white."

It's hard to remember after the Iraq War and financial crash, but there was a period from about 1995-2002 when Blair and New Labour were enormously, genuinely popular. The SNP has borrowed heavily from the Blairite "things can only get better" playbook. Neither Blair nor Sturgeon would appreciate the comparison, but it has substance.

In its day, New Labour was a formidable election-winning machine, and so it is with the SNP. They have done well in government at Holyrood, and in the general election have run a smarter and more principled campaign than Tories or Labour. They deserve to reap the benefits.

I am a little concerned about the prospect of a wipe-out for other parties. The SNP are competing in a four-party system, and could take a clean sweep of seats on, say, 48% of the popular vote. It would be a very impressive achievement, but the other 52% would still deserve representation. The system would be letting them down in a big way.

On the UK stage, my optimistic hope was that the SNP, for all its faults, would be a progressive influence on a minority Labour government. If we see the extreme scenario of big wins for Conservatives and SNP, the SNP will have very little influence on UK government policy, and both parties will actively exacerbate divisions between Scotland and England. I don't believe that would help either nation.

Still, we should be patient and wait for the full results to come in.

Election night drinking game

The campaigning is over. (Thank Cthulhu for that.) If you have a vote, please use it, but I'd be grateful if it is not for UKIP.

The next parliament promises to be more fractured, and fractious, than any in living memory. Before then, we have an eventful night ahead. I'll be on Twitter from about 10 pm as the results come in. I have ample supplies of beer and popcorn, and I'll try not to startle the cats by shouting at the television.

Dexter and Belle are eager to see who will be Prime Minister what's for dinner.

I've composed a drinking game to get us through the night. It's simple and not especially partisan. Play with the beverage of your choice: Wine, beer, tea, Ardbeg, lemonade, or whatever. I won't judge.

Bringers of Chaos 3: We have met the enemy and he is us

In Part 1 and Part 2, I looked at reasons not to panic over the rise of the SNP. The UK political classes seem determined to panic anyway.

Both Labour and Conservatives talk as if the SNP are a new Jacobite rebellion, marching south to seize power at the point of a claymore. They have indulged in hysteria for the sake of short-term partisan advantage. The consequences could be profound.

The SNP's method of taking power. Note the absence of guns, bombs and bayonets.
Source: Daily Telegraph

Bringers of Chaos 2: Keep calm and look at Canada

(Part 1 of this series looked at reactions to the SNP's likely victory in the general election, and reasons why it will not be as cataclysmic as many believe.)

The rise of the SNP may be unprecedented in the UK; but as luck would have it, there is a recent parallel from across the Atlantic. We have seen what happens in a British-style parliamentary democracy, when a left-wing nationalist party wins a large proportion of seats.

I am referring to the Bloc Québecois, from the French-speaking province of Québec in Canada.

Flags of Québec and Canada.

Bringers of Chaos 1: Reality Check

The UK political classes claim an SNP victory in the general election would have cataclysmic results.

There are not many points of agreement between the left-wing Scottish nationalist Craig Murray, and the Conservative politician Boris Johnson. However they share a fondness for lurid rhetoric, and a belief in the awesome power of the SNP:

Murray:

A sweeping SNP victory on May 7 is considered enough of a threat to the United Kingdom for the security services to use up some assets. [...] The still bigger worry is that, as the security services get increasingly desperate as polling day approaches, they will manufacture a false flag incident in which people deliberately get hurt.

Johnson:

You wouldn’t get Herod to run a baby farm, would you? [...] [The SNP] want to end Britain, to decapitate Britannia, to cause a constitutional upheaval that would gravely weaken this country, a rupture that has provoked horror in Britain’s friends around the world – and a silent chuckle among those who do not wish us quite so well.

(Incidentally, what the hell is a baby farm? Does Johnson not know where babies come from?)

Newly elected SNP representatives arriving at Westminster.

Spray Paint in Aberdeen

Earlier this month, someone vandalised the Conservative and Labour party offices in Aberdeen. I assumed it was the work of a random bampot with nothing better to do on a Friday night, but Craig Murray has a more outré theory.

Graffiti on the Conservative Party office. Source: BBC News

Why I'm voting for Julian Huppert

In the general election on 7 May, I am voting to re-elect Julian Huppert as Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge.

Sign in my front garden.

I am not a member of the Liberal Democrats. I have voted for other parties in the past, and this is the first time I've so much as put a political party's poster in my window. I take a close interest in politics, but I've often been a "plague-on-all-their-houses" person, voting for the Greens or other no-hope parties. This time is different.

Make Her Deny It: The French Ambassador Memo

The Daily Telegraph has published a leaked civil service memo; it recounts a conversation between SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and the French ambassador to the UK, in which which Sturgeon allegedly said she would prefer David Cameron to Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. When you sum it up like this, it sounds like something from primary school: Simon says that Sylvie says Nicola fancies David and thinks Ed is a dweeb, but Nicola says that's rubbish.

Nicola Sturgeon at an anti-Trident rally in Glasgow. Source: Guardian

It also reminds me of an apocryphal story about US President Lyndon B Johnson.

No deals, Mr Cameron

This week, Alex Salmond announced the SNP would vote against a minority Conservative government, if David Cameron attempts to form one after the general election. If the polls continue to hold steady, this makes it highly likely we will have a minority Labour government after 7 May, with Labour all but wiped out in Scotland but making significant gains in England.

No deal with the SNP to keep Cameron in Number 10 Downing Street.
Source: Daily Telegraph

Source: Electoral Calculus, 27 March 2015. There are 650 seats in the
House of Commons, so 326 are required for a majority.

A bunch of amateurs

Another week, another UKIP scandal. This time it involves Janice Atkinson, an MEP and prospective parliamentary candidate for Folkestone and Hythe. She was previously in the news last September, for referring to a consituent of Thai background as a "ting tong". Now her chief of staff, Christine Hewitt, appears to have been recorded attempting to fiddle her boss' expense claims as an MEP.

Janice Atkinson. Source: BBC News

The sheer audacity of Hewitt's claimed justification is impressive:

In the footage, she appears to ask for an invoice for a much higher sum than the bill she had originally received. 

Ms Hewitt is heard to say: "The idea is we overcharge them slightly, because that's the way we repatriate it."

In other words, she seeks to overcharge the taxpayers of the European Union, to "repatriate" some of the funds which the UK contributes to the EU. This is meant to be a noble ideological cause. If reports are accurate, Hewitt is fighting the good fight on behalf of Atkinson and the British public, one phony expenses claim at a time.

The UK's net contribution to the EU budget was £8,624 million in 2013, so I don't think a few thousand pounds will make any substantive difference. On the other hand, they would be quite significant for Hewitt, Atkinson or whoever else was the final recipient of the money.

The Shallow Talent Pool of Scottish Labour

The Scottish Labour Party is in deep trouble. Many of the reasons are obvious, but I will explore a less obvious one.

The facts are well known: Since October 2014, the SNP has held roughly a 20 point lead over Labour in voting intentions for Westminster in Scotland. This basically reverses the situation in the 2010 general election, and would hand about 30 of Labour's Scottish seats to the SNP. It is usual to credit the energy, optimism, and unity of the SNP, galvanized by its efforts in last year's referendum campaign; contrasted with the internal conflicts of Scottish Labour, the uninspiring leadership of Ed Miliband, and Labour's dismal efforts to chase swing voters in middle England to the exclusion of all else. All these things are true, but I think there is another underlying factor.

The Scottish Parliament building.