Dave Kean

The last couple of weeks have been by far the biggest for the coalition government in London. The Libyan uprising has not only been David Cameron’s first big foreign policy test, but his reactions to it have not been great.

The last couple of weeks have found the raised a lot of questions about the coalition. Cameron was on tour with arms manufacturers and the increasingly marginalized Nick Clegg was skiing in Switzerland and had forgotten that he was in the role of acting prime minister. The Foreign Secretary William Hague stalled and repeated unverified rumours about Gaddafi leaving from Libya and mysteriously declining to call a meeting of the service heads. Both huge mistakes, you would have thought that after Iraq and Blair’s actions that senior ministers would be far more careful about passing on unsubstantiated rumour.

This week, the Government will be cross-examined in the Commons on its performance thus far and what went wrong with the extraction of UK nationals from Libya. Labour has settling into opposition rather well and Douglas Alexander is becoming an increasingly impressive Shadow Foreign Secretary, is right to insist that the statement be made to the house by Cameron, rather than William Hague.

It may have been the governments first test, but it’s not big enough to really show any level of incompetence beyond doubt. But there are still very serious questions to be asked, and it’s right that the PM who answers them in the house.

This week, the Government will be cross-examined in the Commons on its performance thus far and what went wrong with the extraction of UK nationals from Libya. Douglas Alexander, the increasingly impressive Shadow Foreign Secretary, is right to insist that the statement be made by the Prime Minister rather than William Hague.

The last seven days have not been good for the Coalition. The PM on tour with arms manufacturers; Nick Clegg forgetting on the slopes of a Swiss ski resort that he was meant to be Acting Prime Minister; Hague stumbling uncharacteristically as precious hours ticked by, reporting flaky rumours about Gaddafi’s supposed flight from Libya and mysteriously declining to call a meeting of Cobra. This was hardly the Coalition’s Hurricane Katrina – a crisis that revealed, definitively and beyond doubt, an administration’s structural incompetence. But there are still very serious questions to be asked, and it should be the PM who addresses them in the Commons.

This was not the administrations “Hurricane Katrina” moment, it is merely embarrassing rather than a real challenge to his credibility. but it is embarrassing for a man trying to find his place on the world stage. It’s not only the British PM that’s in this position. The US government largely stood there immobile. The UN and EU got involved, made noises about statements and resolutions, but ultimately nothing happened.

The British government has it’s own hawks, notably in George Osborne. The chancellor seems to be moving past William Hague as the PM’s true deputy in the government. There have been a number of reports that Osborne and not the foreign secretary is pulling a lot of the strings and is the real interventionist at the sharp end of this government.

In a speech in Kuwaiti last week Cameron said that it’s not for the West to impose their ideals and values on the region, but warned that “we cannot remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success”.

In the same Kuwaiti speech Cameron said “political and economic reform in the Arab world is not just good in its own right, but it’s also a key part of the antidote to the extremism that threatens the security of us all”.

This hardly contains the power of the “Blair Doctrine” Chicago speech of 1999, where Blair laid out his thoughts on pre-emptive intervention under certain circumstances (see this post), but it is a step to defining what his government believes in and the countries place on the world stage. It is true that the current government sees the world (and the UK’s role in it) very differently to that on Labour a decade ago, but there are times when Cameron feels a little uncomfortable about the global legacy he inherited from Blair.

I was listening to a BBC podcast today and they had an excerpt from Thatcher’s 1980 Conference speech, the rather influential “this lady is not for turning” speech.

Here we are thirty years later and last month was David Cameron’s first Tory conference as PM and the most significant theme of his election campaign was carried through to the conference. Big Society and what it means. I’m not a natural Tory and did not vote for them last spring.

It’s difficult to imagine Thatcher using the same words and discussing “new politics” while telling her base that’s she is cutting child benefits for the middle class. The PM said “I know how anxious people are. I wish there was an easier way, but I have to tell you there is no other responsible way.” His first speech as PM was not rewarded with cheers and endless ovations.

I think most people understand what Cameron is talking about in his “big society”, getting rid of the huge central bureaucracy put in place by Labour over the last 13 years and giving power to local authorities and empowering local people to run things as they see fit.

Cameron did not face his critics during his speech, the child benefit cuts are seen as exactly what they are, an attack on the middle classes. The PM and the senior members of the coalition, to a certain extent have to sell the British people the financial pain, hundreds of thousands of public job losses and shrinking public services are going to be worth it. We understand there is little choice, that the road of the last few years is unsustainable and get the doom and gloom both the current and previous governments were very vocal about.

It’s not so much the elimination of child benefit that’s important, it’s that the chancellor announced it at the party conference. He was letting the public know that the conservative base that gave Cameron and the Tories Number 10, will be suffering alongside the rest of us.

The spending review cut some 80 billion pounds of spending, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and at the party conference a few weeks ago the PM and chancellor made it clear everyone is going to take some of the pain. In theory the austerity that is going to go along with the reduction of the bloated, centralized government that emerged during the good times under Blair has been applauded by most. However this was the first contact the Troy faithful have had, and like everyone else, they don’t like it

He said most of the right things, content was fine, but the delivery poor. He lacked the humanity, the down to earthness that he was known for on the opposition benches. Critics have been very vocal about Cameron and Osborne not understanding the British middle class. They come from a place of privilege and don’t get the aspirations people have to move forward.

The main point of Cameron’s speech was his much talked about his vision of “Big Society”.

‘Let’s pull together,’ he said. ‘Let’s work together in the national interest_… The Big Society needs you to give it life… More power to local government and your neighborhood and you… It is a revolution. We are the radicals now.’

All very noble and rather compelling TV in the moment, but I think most people are pretty apathetic about the whole idea. No one has shown how it will help them day-to-day. It’s just politics as usual. Snow, North Korea and England’s performance are far more pressing to most.

There was nothing in the speech to make the electorate sit up and think “he may be onto something here…” The cynical see it as a distraction from the theme of cuts, cuts and more cuts.

You know there is discontent in the party when the leader that gave them government after 13 years in opposition is compared to Thatcher, and the Tory right are not happy. They feel Cameron is making a critical mistake by hitting the people who voted for him. They say (rightly, BTW) Margaret Thatcher would never have done that. Like Blair, she always looked after the people that put her there.

Any general election day is something of a celebration of democracy: this one feels a little different, for only the second time in the last thirty years we may see a change of government. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this feel different from 1997, the mood is a lot darker and there is not the feeling of better days to come that was had when Tony Blair and New Labour swept the Conservatives from power so comprehensively.

The electorate once again has the chance to remind those who end up in Westminster just who their ultimate boss is. It’s not the whips or the party grandees, it’s the electorate they have been courting so determinedly for the last few weeks.

I think we all understand the country is in trouble. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have actually seen the books and if it’s as bad as we’ve been led to believe it may be the country is faced with the biggest peace time deficit ever.

Whenever the next Prime Minister is will have to face the debt that’s been run up and make a large number of tough decisions. As a country we have tried to mitigate the recession by spending money the country did not have. This money has to be paid back.

In Greece we can see what happens when a government and people live so far beyond their means. There has been a nationwide social breakdown followed by strikes, arson, rioting and today deaths. While I don’ believe that Britain could head down the same path as Greece, but if the government does not reduce it’s spending to match it’s income then massive social problems await.

Blair and Labour were elected in ’97 with a mandate to fix public services and that took money. This increase in public spending was affordable as long as the economy kept growing at a pace that supported it.

When it stopped growing a couple of years ago swift, and potentially unpopular action was required. To be frank, I think Brown bottled it, with worried too much about being reelected rather than doing the right thing for the country

This election is unlike any other. In 1979 the country was feeling the pain, we were in the aftermath of the winter of discontent and inflation was rampant. It was obvious to all that the economy needed to be sorted and it turns out Thatcher was willing to risk her popularity and was the person to do it.

War and a Labour party that was all but unelectable aided her subsequent election wins, but the wins in the 80’ were based upon an economy made possible by the difficult choices and occasionally painful policies her government followed when they first came to power.

I also believe the same policies divided the country in a way never seem before. There were those who made fortunes off her policies, and a huge subclass that were left behind. Her government squandered billions of North Sea oil money and billions more raised by selling publicly owned companies.

The problems with the economy today are less immediate to most people, the power is there and rubbish does not lay uncollected in the street. The tough decisions were put off by Gordon Brown, but they are still there to be made.

The Australian government did the right thing, they made unpopular decisions and decided to live with the results. It hurt, and is still hurting, but the country will come out of the recession in better shape because of it. Whoever is living in Number 10 next week will have to make hard, painful and unpopular decisions. I hope they do the right thing for the country, not the right things for the polls.

One thing I don’t understand is that if Labour has identified 6 Billion in efficiency savings, why have they waited until now to implement them. They have seen the state of borrowing and if they truly waited until the election to roll out these savings it’s truly criminal to waste billions in taxpayers money.

Labour has had something of a deathbed conversion to a principal of Proportional Representation. An idea that the Lib Dems have held dear for many elections.

This election has become more than who leads, but also something of a referendum on PR and its merits. The Lib Dems have waged a very intense and successful campaign over the last month; a significant amount of credit for this must go to Nick Clegg.

I think the Liberal Democrats and their growth as a true contender over the last month reflect an overwhelming national mood for real change. Business as usual for has left a country full of disenfranchised voters who are tired of the old politics and the professional politicians who see an election as a career more rather than the opportunity to better the world for the people they represent.

Proportional representation will not fix that, but it will give the UK something important: a parliament that is a true reflection of one of the most vibrant and diverse countries on earth. I think this election has shown that the two-party system is unrepresentative of the country and perhaps it’s time is done.

David Cameron promises a different version of Conservative Government than offered in the past. I think he deserves credit for moving to the political center ground and going some distance to making the Tory’s electable, a feat so many other leaders have failed to do. He has forced the party to become accept diversity; reject the Thatcherism that the party grandees embrace so surely. These are the people who have kept the Conservatives on the opposition benches for the last 134 years.

However his message that it’s going to be different has not been conveyed very well. There are contradictions and very little detail, the manifesto and promises sit there with little information to convey what it really means. He is message on people taking more responsibility for their lives and choices is an interesting argument against “big government”, but high among his policies is getting rid of the Human Rights Act. The one thing the people have to protect themselves.

In another contradiction the Cameron talks of “united and equal” taxation, while advocating inheritance tax cuts for the wealthy. At the same time the party plans to continue the recovery with both austerity and spending pledges at the same time.

In a two party world the other choice would be embracing five more years of Labour government under Gordon Brown. There is no question that Labour have achieved much in the last three terms, the saving of the NHS, investment in education and a minimum wage are huge items of agenda the party delivered.

Hand in hand with revitalizing these services, we were promised reform. The inefficiency still exists and has grown in the last few years with all sorts of Quangos and legions of managers in the NHS. If Brown says they can find 6 Billion in savings this year, why have they not done it already? Politicians the world over forget whose money it is they are spending.

In this campaign Brown has failed to inspire me with a vision for the future or provided an argument for giving Labour another chance.

For many the second biggest issue on the table is the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was maybe the most important foreign policy call of the past sixty years. Labour lied, the Tories backed them and both were catastrophically wrong.

The Liberal Democrats have become a significant factor in this election and when this is all said and done there is every chance they become that party that makes, or breaks a minority government through a formal pact.

The party has traditional appealed to the working middle classes. Labours record on defeating poverty and being a spokesman for the working class remains unmatched, but for me they, and in particular Gordon Brown has not done enough. The Lib Dems are philosophically closer to Labour than Cameron and the Tories, but could they work with a Labour party led by Brown?

After decades of being on the outside of the two-party political system and not being heard, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem center message has been heard very clearly in a way I’ve not seem in my lifetime. Today both Labour and the Conservatives must be second guessing the decision to invite Nick Clegg to the debates.

“What I’m interested in is the big poll on 6 May, when people really have to choose five more years of Gordon Brown – the uncertainty, the bickering, the haggling of a hung parliament – or a decisive clean break with the Conservatives.”  David Cameroon

Is it really as simple as that? Perhaps it is, but a hung parliament could potentially force debate and compromise. With a huge Labour majority these are things that have been missing for the last 13 years.

After the Labour landslide victories in the ’97 (179 seat majority) and ’01 (167 seat majority) general elections there was no requirement for Labour to worry what the opposition had to say. The last election in 2005 was not quite as overwhelming a victory, giving Labour a still substantial 66 seat majority.

For the last 13 years Labour had a very comfortable working majority, with the loyalty to the party rather than the electorate it’s meant unpopular legislation can still be railroaded through in comfort with the minimum of debate. There have been once or twice that the party whips have had to do a little work, but the MP’s understand where their loyalty lay.

The opposition is relegated to a rather noisy, but ultimately inconsequential role.

There is no check and balance to the government and they are allowed to operate with relative impunity.

Looking back to 2001 and 2002, having a 167 seat majority when some very controversial laws and motions were being revised (extended detention without charge, ID cards and the war in Iraq) meant that the wants and desires of the electorate were not necessarily considered.

Looking at it in a rather simplistic way I do think that a functional pack made up of a couple of the current parties could be a good thing for government and would certainly add a check to the system that has been missing since the tine Conservative majority of the mid 90’s. A Labour-Lib Dem pact (anti-Conservative more than anything else) seems the obvious alignment. The Lib Dems are philosophically a lot closer to Labour than the Cameron and the Conservatives. To give some additional credit to Nick Clegg, he’s done a rather good job in differentiating the party from the big two during the last year and taking a lot of the ground in the political center Under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy the party seemed a little further to the left than today.

David Cameron stood in front of the crumbling, but iconic Batersea power station and  framed the launch of the conservative manifesto as giving power back to the people (Tooting Popular Front and Wolfie anyone?) by asking the voters to join them in forming the next government.

Once I got past the jargon (Labours was refreshingly buzz-word free) I felt much like I did after perusing the Labour manifesto yesterday. Once again there is a lot of effort talking about how tomorrow will be different from the last few years, but with no compelling vision for what the country will look like in 2015 if we were to believe.

The sharing government part comes from a proposed “Big Society”: a combination of decentralization and social responsibility. The idea as I saw it was that the electorate will be able to take over public services, choose the run their own school or hospital as a trust. No detail is given as to how that could happen,

“The Labour way assumes that only Big Government can solve our problems, but the alternative to Big Government is not no government: its good government, effective government”

Labour and the Lib Dems have both claimed VAT will have to rise to pay for Tory tax cuts and spending pledges. The NI rise, affecting anyone earning over £20,000, will hit small businesses “especially hard”, costing, according to the document, up to 57,000 jobs in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Conservatives and Labour traded barbs over taxes (this is good, they get that the economy is the central issue). Labour proposes a 1% increase in National Insurance (social security for my American friends) for those earning over 20K/year. The Conservatives are not totally against the rise, but have pledged to raise the threshold for the higher contribution to 35K/year.

Cameron said nothing about keeping taxes where they are; both income tax and VAT (sales tax) were not mentioned. The Conservatives have said that the 6 billion/year hole left by pushing out the National Insurance raise will be met by efficiency savings. In an organization the size of the civil service that should not be a difficult figure to find, but the question comes why has it no been done before now.

This is one of my biggest problems. Labour offered some public sector workers guaranteed minimum wages. Call it what it is, a bribe. The conservatives pledged a public sector pay freeze for all but a million of the lowest earners (how many public employees are there in the country?)

Politicians the world over forget whose money they are blowing on legions of managers for the NHS (more managers than hospital beds…), quangos overseeing public services and civil servants micro-managing public services.

“Together we can even make politics and politicians work better. And if we can do that, we can do anything. Yes, together we can do anything. So my invitation today is this: join us, to form a new kind of government for Britain.”

Labour published their manifesto today, Cameroon and the Conservatives tomorrow and the third of the major parties, the Lib-Dems release theirs on Wednesday.

Brown said Labour has a plan for the future and their first priority is to secure the recovery. Any party that says continuing the recovery is anything other than job #1 will be dead in the water, so no shocks there..

Labours manifesto harboured no was no real surprises (as these things generally don’t). There were some minor give aways and one fairly major one that looks a lot like a bribe. Labour is offering a “living wage” to all those employed by the government, this is to lead by example and show the government can be a good employer. Under Labour the public sector has grown by close to 600,000 over the last 13 years.

To appeal to the squeezed middle class there was some minor tax credits, but that’s about it.

No increase in income tax rates in the next Parliament. No commitment to increase VAT (sales tax), but they did promise not to extend VAT to food, children’s clothes, books, newspapers and public transport fares.

Brown added a shot straight at one of the perceived weakness of the conservatives, taxation.  “We have not raised VAT since 1997, the only party that has raised VAT in the last 25 years is the Conservative Party.”

The economy thankfully gets lots of play and there is a commitment to halving the deficit over the next four years and some additional funds (sounds like venture capitol seed money) to “green” businesses. For a significant number of voters it’s going to come down to who is most trusted, or perhaps is least distrusted, to run the economy.

A lot of it seems like “business as usual with a lot of talk about the positives and minimizing the negative. There was little to no detail about where the spending cuts are going to be, the government have acknowledged they are coming and they will be deep, but have said they will not affect “front line” services.

Economists compare the depth of the cuts needed to those put in place by the Thatcher government in the early 80’s. Those cut a lot of public services, including the NHS, rather severely.

My first flick through the manifesto indicates it’s about hope. Along with showing that Labour should be trusted for another four years and don’t let the conservatives wreck the recovery.

The major parties are all publishing their manifestoes over the next few days. Each party is making statements about where they will not raise taxes to fill the black hole in national spending. For example Labour has said no change to income tax, but said nothing about VAT (sales tax) and the pledge to increase National Insurance (social security contributions if you are American) was already known.

The open promise to keep “business taxes as low as possible” is a pointless waste of good paper and does nothing to help Labours’ dwindling credibility on the economy.

Once again David Cameroon and the conservatives are not talking about the economy, the economy, but how the National Health Service (NHS) will be safe in their hands. It’s an interesting strategy, because if there is one thing that Labour has looked after OK over the last 13 years it’s the NHS. The previous conservative government under Thatcher and Major reduced funding and did the NHS a huge disservice. While there may be many problems with the NHS, too many managers seems to be one of the favorites, it provides a top quality service and is staffed by people who really care about the patient.

Clearly money public money is tight, clearly all the major political parties, if they’re going to be credible and trusted by the electorate in the run-up to the election, have got to make promises which we know the costs for and are clear know where the money is going to come from.

Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg (who I’m rather warming too, if my vote were still in Guildford they might get it) did have a couple of good lines over the weekend. He pointed to the rioting in Greece as a warning of what could happen if public spending were cut back too much.

Earlier this year Greece’s socialist government introduced some rather deep cuts to public spending to bring its deficit under control. Many thousands took to the streets and there was a general strike across the country in protest to the cuts.

While the UK has a nice history of rioting and social unrest over government taxation in the past (see “Pole Tax Riots” on Wikipedia), it seems difficult to see something similar happening. Primarily because the social stress brought about by the growing divide between the disenfranchised working class and those the new-money middle class no longer exists in quite the same stark fashion that it did under Thatcher.

With out that stress and the divisive policies along side the strict anti-strike laws in the UK it seems difficult to imagine to same level of coordinated protests over the loss of civil servant jobs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming election. In 1997 Tony Blair promised the electorate real change and asked us to give Labour the mandate to go and make those changes. He got his mandate through a landslide election.

May 7th could dawn with the same optimism we felt when New Labour swept aside the Tory old guard and promised us a new tomorrow. As we watch the opening salvoes in the election fight I don’t see the same excitement, the same promise of a bright future.

This election is shaping up to follow the traditional pattern; the parties and their spin doctors spend the next four weeks talking about how the other guy is wrong, that it does not all add up and that there are “black holes” in their budget figures. This election could rapidly devolve into mud slinging, dirty lies and twisted half truths.

There is an alternative to the “business as usual” election race for the bottom. Someone could see this as an opportunity to truly engage the electorate and set out their vision for Britain in 2015.

Voters are not stupid; we see that the present government is in trouble and seems to be running out of ideas. Just for once I’d like to hear from the politicians that they understand what we want, and repeat it back to the electorate just so we can hear it.

After the lies over Iraq, the sexing up of dossiers, the expenses scandal and the usual run of illegitimate children and affairs we deserve to be respected. We have lost trust in our elected representatives. This is why the mood and desire for change is different from that in 1997.

Today it’s legal for an MP to simultaneously work as a paid lobbyist and still take their seat in the House of Commons. It’s not just the rules that need to change. To the outsider looking in there is a culture of entitlement, and that needs to be put right.

After the expenses scandal none of the parties dare claim the ethical high ground in the way Tony Blair and Labour could in 1997. They offered the country a real change from the Conservative culture of sleaze.

If politicians can treat us with respect, then maybe we could start believe in British politicians once more. All we ask is that our representatives let us know they hear our problems and remember who they represent when they take their seat in Westminster

Our demands are not much. We want fiscal responsibility from our leaders; we want them to lead by example, we want personal freedom to pursue opportunity and a safety net for those who need it. We want to be responsible and just ask the chance to be so.

There are too many professional politicians in parliament, too many MPs of questionable quality who have never worked a day in the real world in their lives. They seek power not to make a better Britain, but to build a career in politics.

The sad truth is that MP’s are not beholden to the people that elected them, but to the party whips. They are too indebted to the party to show real independence. Parliament should be controlled by it’s members, it should be more transparent and better understood by the voters.

Having spent most of the last month in London has been rather tough at times, however feeding my ongoing interest of British politics has been one of the bright spots. Dad is a Daily Mail reader, previously he got the Mirror untill that paper got caught in the race for the bottom a few years ago.

Historically my family is a center voting, concentrating on issues that matter to us (less about immigration and more about the economy). Dad has some sympathy with UKIP, but in what used to be one of the safest Tory seats around (Guildford) he’s typically voted Lib-dems (or Lib, or SDP and so on as appropriate). After 91 years of Conservative representation in Westminster Guildford returned a Lib-Dem MP in ’01. The Lib-dems only narrowly (by 347 votes) lost the seat to the Conservatives in the 2005 election.

The good news today is that Gordon Brown will have finally done the right thing and called an election to get himself a genuine mandate to lead, rather than the backroom deals that allowed him to replace Tony Blair. Having said that indications are that Gordon will not get than mandate from the electorate next month.

That doesn’t mean I think the Tories would be inherently much better than the incumbent in No. 10 marvelous either though. To me it seems they may be the least worse option on the table. The party is making lots of promises (it’s election time after all, promise the earth and hope the voters buy it) but under it all seem to understand that the solution to the country’s problem do not lie in ever increasing spending and spiraling debt.

While Parliament does not actually dissolve for another week, this was the start of a month of what may be some of the fiercest and perhaps most spun campaigning for many years. The conservatives are desperate to show that they are a good choice, but have yet to really gain any traction on Browns handling of the economy. I think Labour really see this as a winnable election.

The one thing all the parties should be most concerned with this time is voter turnout. The ongoing expenses scandal along with the lobbying busts over the last few weeks have lowered how people feel about politicians even further (and the existing bar was set comically low), this could mean that a lot of people really can’t be bothered to vote. If the turnout is lower than during the 2001 and 2005 general elections (about 60% in round numbers) then serious questions need to asked about how the electorate view Westminster overall.

The answers may not be pleasant for the career politicians, but if they wish to make Westminster relevant once again they had better take notice.