Wednesday, January 21, 2009 

A welcome back to Ken Clarke.

Probably the most astonishing thing about the last few months politically has been one of the things that has been barely touched on: just how badly the Conservatives have been doing when they should be, by rights, decimating Labour in the polls and potentially getting ready for government. By badly we have to keep things in perspective: at no point has Labour actually regained the lead in the opinion polls, although it has come strikingly close to it in some. Looking back historically however, Labour after the 92 election consistently led the Conservatives in the polls, sometimes by ludicrous figures of 25%+. The Conservatives for a while managed comparable figures in the middle of last year, before the second Brown bounce after the bail out took full effect.

Things have since improved, the gloom of January, the ever rising toll of job losses, and now increasingly the beleaguered nature of both Brown and Darling, no longer looking like they know what they're doing, or rather at least not radiating the confidence which infected the former during the initial stages of the banking crisis, all coming into effect.

Less immediate will be the impact of the bringing back of Ken Clarke, a move long mooted and encouraged but which still seemed unlikely. Looking at the Conservative front bench today, excepting Clarke, it was impossible not to see a group of grey men, one which you'd find it difficult to have any confidence in. The wider Conservative reshuffle, and Cameron's strange refusal to bring back the irascible David Davis, still apparently smarting from his decision to resign and fight for a principle, said much the same: for all the boasts that Cameron's shadow cabinet now contains more women than Brown's, all, except for perhaps Theresa May, moved to Shadow Work and Pensions, are in the jobs which rarely result in them appearing on our screens. Similarly mystifying was the move of Chris Grayling, a true grey, underwhelming man if ever there was one, to shadow home secretary. When we have a government which is so apparently wedded to the casual dilution, even evaporation of our civil liberties, you want someone in the seat opposite to have something approaching credentials for fighting against such policies. Say what you will about Davis's support for capital punishment and hard-line approach to immigration, you knew where he stood on ID cards, 42 days and everything in-between. His first replacement Dominic Grieve, moved back to his former job as shadow justice secretary, was never likely to live up to Davis's success in outliving, even bringing down consecutive home secretaries, but apart from his supposed libertarian leanings he made truly abysmal speeches and comments on the Human Rights Act and came across as having been promoted above his competence.

All the immediate comparisons regarding Clarke's re-entry to the shadow cabinet were to Brown's far more surprising offering of a job to Mandelson, to whom Clarke will shadow, but to compare the two any further than that is more than a disservice to Ken. Both might be widely disliked amongst the parties' respective core supporters, but Clarke is lovable, affable and endearing when Mandelson is a person you suspect only a mother could truly love. Doubtless that is part of the reason why Mandelson succeeded in most of what he did outside of his resignations; even those that loathed him seem to have a grudging respect. Clarke on the other hand has always been, along with Alan Duncan, regardless of his involvement with Vitoil, the "acceptable" Conservative, the ones that don't instantly set your teeth on edge. Compared to George Osborne, supposedly having lessons in how not to make people resort to violence on hearing or seeing him, there simply isn't a contest. It helps also that as Cameron retorted at PMQs today, he has something of a shining record as the last Conservative chancellor.

It might well have been coincidence, but today was also the first PMQs for quite some time when Cameron comprehensively scored a victory. Brown was so desperate to change the subject away from the economy that he brought up the completely irrelevant fact of Clarke's differences with most of his Tory colleagues on Europe, when surely more damaging would have been Clarke's also apparent agreement with Brown on the need for a stimulus, that the VAT cut wasn't completely idiotic or a "bombshell" as the Conservatives portrayed it, and that anyone going into the next election promising tax cuts was asking for trouble. For someone who appeared to be finally getting better at the dispatch box, it was embarrassing, and the silence on the Labour benches was eerily apparent.

When criticising Conservative politicians you can't of course ignore the fact that there are much the same problems on the Labour benches, with the added disadvantage that these less than promising individuals are actually in power. The only consolation is that we know the Conservatives would introduce even more swingeing reforms of benefits than James Purnell is proposing; there is however no one quite as pompous or over-promoted on the opposite side as Geoff "Buff" Hoon, and that only Harriet Harman could possibly be so utterly stupid as to try to block freedom of information requests on MP's spending in the current economic situation. Not that the Tory shadows would be much better in the same jobs, and indeed, the idea of George Osborne being chancellor is terrifying in the extreme. Likewise, Eric Pickles, the new party chairman, who is doubtless very popular with the Tory grassroots, seems such a throwback to Thatcherite days that he appears to have the exact same bulk as the pre-diet Nigel Lawson.

The bringing back of Clarke bears further comparison to Brown's strategy for a further reason: while Brown has been apparently desperate to put back together the original New Labour coalition, sans Blair, with the equally dislikable Alan Milburn also brought back into the fold, Clarke is from an even earlier era. The difference is that his stretches in Thatcher's government, and spell as, however humourously aesthetically, health secretary, have been all but forgotten. We instead remember him as chancellor, as the successive leadership challenger that could have restored the Tories' fortunes earlier if only he could have closed the chasm between himself and the rest of the party over Europe. Mandelson and the rest just remind us, quite rightly, of spin and the decadence now in retrospect of the early New Labour years. He might well be, as Lord Tebbit characterised him, lazy, but his laziness might just be the thing that convinces those uncertain of the economics of Osborne that there is something of substance there after all.

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Wednesday, July 02, 2008 

The undemocratic task force.

In a way, it's almost verging on chutzpah for Kenneth Clarke, former member of the Conservative government which foisted so many unpopular and regressive policies on Scotland first as an experiment to now be offering solutions to a problem which he had a hand in cultivating in the first place. One of the main reasons why Scotland finally achieved devolution and a parliament was undoubtedly the poll tax, levered first on the nation which had steadfastly refused to become a part of the Thatcherite revolution and therefore deserved the contempt with which it was treated, but we should perhaps let bygones be bygones. On the whole, Clarke and his "Democracy Task Force's" paper (PDF) on the West Lothian question is worthy of praise, praise of which more in the final paragraph. It's just that it comes to such a simpering compromise in its conclusion that's unlikely to be accepted, and that will do very little to staunch the sense of grievance which some feel about where the power now lies in the UK.

First though the conundrum itself. Devolution in Scotland has left the unhelpful constitutional problem of Scottish MPs being able to vote on legalisation that affects only England and/or Wales, the Welsh assembly not currently having the same powers which have been devolved to Scotland. This problem wouldn't be so bad if the MPs in Scotland were spread more equally across all parties, but the Labour party has overwhelmingly had Scotland as its personal fiefdom for quite some time. This is gradually starting to be broken, with both the Scottish Nationalists themselves and the Liberal Democrats making gains, and could be much extended at the next election with Labour's collapse in popularity and with the SNP in power in Edinburgh, but at the last election Labour had 29 Scottish MPs, the LDs 12, the SNP 6 and the Tories a very lonely 1. Added into the problem is that most of the Scottish Labour MPs are either one of two things: mostly completely loyal and therefore unlikely to rebel against the Labour whip; or either ministers or former ministers, not to mention the prime minister himself. This has led to bills affecting only England, such as the votes on tutition fees and foundation hospitals being carried only by Scottish Labour MP votes. With the Tories likely to sweep the board in England at the next election, but with certain victory still in doubt, it's feasibly possible that Labour could still cling on to a majority but only through their Scottish seats, with the Tories the defacto party in power in England.

One of the other factors which the Clarke report doesn't touch on much is that the Conservatives already have won the popular vote in England, as they did at the last election, yet because of first-past-the-post still received 100 fewer seats than Labour. This will undoubtedly be even more pronounced at the next election, with the Tories likely to wipe out Labour almost completely south of a decent chunk of the Midlands (London is a different matter), yet the Conservatives continue to oppose proportional representation because they realise that even though the system works against them, they'll still be able to get a decent majority if they win well, let alone if they win big. This was more defendable when the vast majority voted for either Labour or Conservative, but that is no longer the case when the Liberal Democrats won over 22% of the vote last time round, not to mention the votes the other minor parties received despite there being next to no chance that any of the candidates would actually win any seats. The report however meekly dismisses proportional representation out of hand, with the simple response that "[W]e do not favour either practice [PR or US-style separation of powers] in the UK as British political culture would take a very long time to adapt to either practice." This simply isn't good enough.

The Clarke solution is instead of pure "English votes for English laws" a poor substitution for it that would make very little overall difference. Rather than simply barring Scottish MPs from voting on legislation which doesn't concern their own constituencies, the task force proposes that Scottish MPs would be barred from taking part in the committee stages and report stages of a relevant bill, while being allowed to vote on both on the second and third readings. This would still however leave non-English MPs with the ability to vote down a bill at the crucial third stage. Clarke is rather pleased that this would still leave the UK government with an effective veto if it felt that the bill damaged UK interests as a whole by urging its members to vote down the amendments made to it in committee stages at the third reading.

If this sounds complicated, then it is. If you're reading this in the first place then you're likely to have some sort of remedial interest in politics, but for those out there that don't this is about as confusing as it gets, like attempting to explain what colour something is to a blind person. It also falls down because it ignores the simplest solution, if we're also going to reject PR: that English votes for English laws makes the most sense and would be easy to institute. The other argument made by some is for an English parliament, or full English devolution, but this isn't a solution or option which I've ever been tempted by: what's the point of establishing yet another devolved instutition when we have a perfectly acceptable one already in use, if only it can be acceptably modified to make it work both more fairly and better than it currently does? The break-up of the union this also might herald is also a red herring; Scotland still seems unlikely to go independent any time soon, however much some both north and south of the border might like it to, and any changes on the constitutional level over the West Lothian question are hardly likely going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It is of course Labour that is stalling any solution on either front. It didn't shoot down Clarke's "solution" for the exact reason that it keeps their strangehold on Scotland and also potentially England in tact. It's the best of all worlds in short-term polticial terms: the West Lothian question has been answered, but things carry on as before. That this trickery won't trick English voters themselves doesn't seem to enter into the equation. It's strange however why the Conservatives are still so mealy-mouthed with their policy. They could have proposed something that would have made everyone except the Labour party immensly happy, yet they've done the opposite. You can understand why they reject PR, as they fear that it could keep Labour and the Lib Dems in a coalition for potentially all-time, especially when they can still win big as long as they're slightly more popular than Labour under FPTP, yet on this they have potentially everything to lose. The best thing that can in fact be said for Clarke's task force's report is that it's short and to the point, unlike so many other policy documents. That it took four years to produce rather dampens down even that accolade.


Related posts:
OurKingdom - The Madness of Ken Clarke
OurKingdom - Cameron wanted English nationalism, not the West Lothian question, answered
Paul Kingsnorth - A radical answer to the West Lothian question

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