Pots, Kettles, Negative Campaigning, and the Left-Right Blog Gap

January 14th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Guido Fawkes has blogged accusing Labour of going negative by picking up on the “grass roots geek campaign” of snide and comic alternatives to the Conservatives’ airbrushed David Cameron advert. He ridiculed Labour Party HQ for being “so devoid of original ideas that they have taken to stealing internet memes again.”

Well, that may be so. The Labour Party should remain aloof of such matters, and let the grass roots take care of such indecorous — if funny — activities, while perhaps providing the occasional bit of inconspicuous encouragement. It really doesn’t do Labour any favours to be seen to be at the front of a snarling, infantile pack. But Guido’s hardly the right person to be moaning about this kind of campaigning. He personally revels in his image of being the Right’s leading gadfly, and his blog was almost certainly the trailblazer for such campaigning, and is still at the vanguard. Nobody did more than Guido to bring this tabloid, viral, populist style into the British political blogosphere — an achievement of which he is openly proud.

And he is right to be proud, says the Parallax Brief. His is still the most entertaining political blog out there, and his perspicacious muckracking is bitchily underrated by a jealous printed media corps. But that also means he’s probably about as qualified to complain about this kind of thing as Kelvin MacKenzie is to decry the dumbing down of the newspaper industry.

Meantime, in the same post, Mr. Fawkes raises a penetrating point about the relative quality of the Right’s electronic presence compared to the Left’s:

The official Labour Party site is usually visited only by the party faithful. You have to push your message out. Look at what the Tories are doing, they are paying to advertise their Cameron videos on YouTube, reaching out to people who are not already signed up supporters. There are no votes to be gained from repeating your message to faithful party supporters on the official website or the party affiliated sites like LabourList and LabourHome.

Ignoring for a moment the merits of advertising on YouTube,  one thing that has always struck the Parallax Brief as odd is how much better the Right’s blogs are. If it were just a case of popularity and page traffic, then one may have been able to conjure all kinds of arguments (perhaps that it’s easier for the right to be sensationalist, or that it’s easier to blog when in opposition, or the right has better networks for promotion, or simply that right wing views are more popular.) But it goes beyond that. ConservativeHome is simply better than LabourList. There simply is no Guido fascimile of the left (thank God, they might touch and send the world supernova, or something). That’s not to say that there are no good left leaning blogs. Hopi Sen and LeftFootForward are both consistently excellent. It’s just that the general standard of content on the right is better than on the left.

If anyone can explain this, please let the Parallax Brief know.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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Political Needs Trump National Interest

January 13th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Danny Finkelstein uses his column in today’s Times to savage Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

The Chancellor [Alistair Darling] is insisting — as his predecessor Philip Snowden did in 1931, as Roy Jenkins did in 1968, as Denis Healey did in 1976 — that a plan for public expenditure reductions be agreed to retain the confidence of the markets. Gordon Brown — like Arthur Henderson in 1931, Aneurin Bevan in 1951 and Tony Benn and Mr Crosland in 1976 — is resisting. To dress up this resistance as if it was part of some new fangled clever (or even stupid) campaign strategy is to deny the force, the true importance, of what the Prime Minister is doing. It is to end up having a debate about things that really matter (tax, spending, debt, public services) in a sort of code (strategies, dividing lines) that only insiders can understand.

As Chancellor, Mr Brown spent money as if there would never be a bust — an absurd hypothesis. And now, as Prime Minister, he is blocking the measures necessary to put right this error.

For this dispute over public spending is different in one way from any of the past 100 years. The Prime Minister is refusing to support his Chancellor. MacDonald threw away a lifetime’s service to Labour to support Snowden, a man who cordially loathed him. Attlee sided with his Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, from his sickbed (“I am afraid they will have to go,” he mumbled to Gaitskell, who at first heard the remark as “very well, you will have to go”). The normally tricksy Harold Wilson gave solid backing to Jenkins. And Callaghan won round the critics by showing that he and his Chancellor were indivisible — if he had not done so, Mr Healey would not have prevailed.

Mr Brown, unlike any of these predecessors, has put himself at the head of the spending rebels. Far from backing his Chancellor in what needs to be done, he forces him to water down his proposals, making clearly inadequate plans to deal with the crisis.

The common attack on Mr Brown, the one we heard again last week from inside his party, is that he is a poor leader, that no one likes him, that he is a loser. But this verdict, damning though it is, is too kind.

It’s a brilliantly withering attack, but the Parallax Brief wonders whether Mr. Finkelstein hasn’t missed the two key points.

First, that part of the reason for the Prime Minister’s dalliances on public spending cuts is unavoidably the approaching election. Of course it is shabby to put party politics before the national interest, and a damning indictment of Labour that it seems to be entering the election with the no-policies policy usually reserved for the opposition. But to ignore the political realities of an approaching election is integral to the story, and should not be ignored.

Second, while it is true that the absence from the pre-budget report of a clear, tough plan of spending cuts to reign in the deficit was an appalling concession to brazen electioneering, it is also true that even if such a plan were in place down the minutest detail, it would not be implemented until after the election. Not because Labour doesn’t want to go to the polls as the party which savaged public services — which it surely doesn’t — but because cuts now would plunge the economy back into recession and have the peverse effect of increasing the debt-to-GDP burden.

And just as Parkinson’s Law tells us that work expands to fit the time available, so it is an unbreakable law of politics that no government will ever raise taxes or lower spending on key services until the last possible minute.

None of this makes Labour’s appalling fiscal policy in the run up to the crisis acceptable. Nor does it excuse the party’s inertia when it comes to dealing with the nation’s problems. Mr. Finkelstein is right to criticise both, and is probably justified in his evisceration of the Prime Minister. He is also correct to note that the country desperately needs a plan to deal with the deficit if it is to retain the confidence of the markets and maintain the ability to borrow cheaply.

But the real “old story” isn’t Labour squabbling over spending, but a party putting politics before country.

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Categories [ Economics and Finance, UK Politics ]

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Sympathy for the Devil?

November 11th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

A couple of evenings ago, after the Sun’s sociopathic and appallingly cynical attack on Gordon Brown for his sloppy letter to the bereaved mother of Grenadier Guardsman Jamie Janes first kicked off, the Parallax Brief was talking over the phone to one of his masters from Think Politics management. Both of us, in our own way expressed sympathy for Brown, despite the fact both of us think he’s a poor premier who deserves almost all the criticism that’s come his way.

The Parallax Brief got to wondering whether the Prime Minister isn’t in the same position John Major was in 1996, where he was led a fantastically unpopular government despite being seen as an honourable man who couldn’t keep control of his philandering cabinet members.

However, Benedict Brogan, the the Telegraph’s Chief Political Commentator, has today on his blog listed the reasons not to feel sympathy for the prime minister:

Regardless of its patent sincerity, the letter should never have been sent, either by him or his staff. We may deplore Mrs Janes’ decision to make a public meal out of an unintended slight, but she is entitled to and as with any statement he issues he must always have mind to how it might appear if made public. Mr Brown has been in the business too long to be excused the kind of petulant amateurism that characterises so much of what he does.

Mr Brown wanted to be Prime Minister. He volunteered for this gig. He had a decade to learn the pressures of the job. He should have studied the job description more carefully rather than spend his time trying to hound his predecessor from office.

Mr Brown is not blind. It is admirable that he has reached the top despite suffering limited vision, but as he assured us only recently his eyesight is stable and he can still read. If his eyesight impairs his ability to lead, he should step aside. If not, it’s time his friends stopped pleading it as an excuse.

Mr Brown spent much of the past 15 years or so sucking up to the Sun. He helped it lay in to Tony Blair and whichever hapless Tory leader happened to be in its sights. He used it ruthlessly to do in potential rivals. If you ride the tiger…

The Parallax Brief really hasn’t anything to add to this perfectly logical and well-considered list, except to say that perhaps these don’t actually tackle the reasons that people sometimes feel sorry for Brown. Perhaps it’s more that we see that deep down Gordon is a good man, with a strong Calvinist moral core, who wants to do the right thing, but simply isn’t cut out for the top job. And that inability to meet the demands of being prime minister has led to a series of strategic, tactical, political, policy and presentation mistakes which have (rightly) attracted vast quantities of criticism. In fact, there’s so much criticism that when the Sun slips back into its old role of snarling Tory attack dog over an issue like the Jamie Janes letter, we feel a good man who tried to do that right thing is actually being bullied.

It’s not an excuse for Brown, who deserves to go, but perhaps it can offer an explanation.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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FT Right; Right Wing Wrong.

October 28th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Financial Times on Monday published an editorial suggesting that George Osborne doesn’t look much like a chancellor in waiting.

The FT leader attacked Osborne on two fronts. First, it criticised the shadow chancellor for his lack of substance. On this matter the Parallax Brief believes the FT is being unrealistic. Parties in opposition have always been light on policy detail, so really, what do they expect?

More concerning, however, is the second prong of the FT skewer: Osborne’s apparent lack of economic savvy. He has criticised the government’s fiscal stimulus program, despite the fact withdrawing it would worsen the downturn, and also argued, according to the FT, ‘that cutting spending would make no difference to economic recovery because “what you lose in government spending, you gain in exports”,’ which is clearly nonsense.

Yesterday, however, ConservativeHome, struck back — in the most feeble way imaginable, well and truly throwing the baby out with the bathwater by whinging not only about the matter at hand, but the Financial Times’ supposed support of “big public spending, big Europe and big unaccountable elites” and  “the corporatism that so failed our land in the 1970s,” as well as for giving the impression that “Democracy to them seems to be a sort of evil necessity that has to be put up with from time to time”.

But apart from the unnecessary bad-mouthing, the ConservativeHome hissy fit didn’t even tackle the Financial Times’ premise that Osborne was wrong to advocate the withdrawal of stimulus in a liquidity trap economy. It instead seemed to accuse all those who believe it is right in a downturn to maintain public spending at a level unsustainable in the long run of endorsing profligacy writ large, unwarranted bonuses and waste:

“It’s simply unacceptable in the bust to hand out money like confetti any more… It’s quite wrong the head of the FSA is trousering bonuses when the banking system collapses around his ears. And what exactly has the head of Network Rail done to deserve his £200K bonus? This list goes on and on. What do all these quango heads and senior civil servants do to deserve massive bonuses?

… George Osborne is absolutely right to point out that rewards should be linked to longer term performance. How did it ever make sense to be any other way?”

Well, quite. Who could disagree with that? But those of us who believe in maintaining or ramping up public spending in the face of an economic storm have never argued that waste cannot be cut. It is our argument that overall spending should not, because to do so would be pro-cyclical, accentuate the downturn.

The party of economic responsibility would make this point. But the Conservative Party, and now its supporters, are not. In the editorial that so irked ConservativeHome, the FT called Osborne’s performance “alarming”. The Parallax Brief agrees, which is quite a situation considering Labour’s abject economic failure.

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Categories [ Economics and Finance, UK Politics ]

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Will Clegg Take a Risk on Afghanistan?

October 28th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Gordon Brown’s u-turn on funding for the Territorial Army (TA), reported this morning, is indicative of the hard choices the country must make when it comes to Afghanistan.

Training troops, purchasing military equipment, and the logistics needed to transport both and them keep combat ready is expensive. Really, really expensive.

Short-changing our heroes in Afghanistan would be morally reprehensible, but the money has to come from somewhere. And in an economic environment where government spending will soon have to be slashed, the massive expense of maintaining a world-class military and keeping it at war will be felt even more acutely. Simply, every pound spent on war and the agents of war is a pound that could have been spent keeping school class sizes down or not firing a nurse.

But for the moment, it seems that the public — and political points scoring — is on the side of those who believe the money should be found no matter what. Certainly, David Cameron and shadow defence spokesman Liam Fox are making much hay by hammering away on the defence ticket, a traditional blue riband Tory strength. However, there may come a time when the public starts asking why the money is being spent on the military when painful public service cuts are harshly impacting on the lives of Britons back home.

The question is: who will take the calculated political risk to make that point?

Given the Conservative Party’s traditional, strong-defence creed, and Labour’s governmental commitment and obvious aversion to the politically disastrous position of being the party to have admitted defeat, the best bet for now would be the Liberal Democrats. If Lib Dems can formulate a cogent argument that the money spent on Afghanistan is profligate in current economic climes, and then communicate the argument persuasively, it would set them apart from both Labour and the Tories, and may even boost their chances at the election. Of course, nobody wants to look like a surrender monkey, so to take a position against the war would be risky. And ultimately, despite the interesting Trident stand, the Parallax Brief believes Nick Clegg is too timid and banal to take such a bold stand.

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Categories [ Defence, International Affairs, UK Politics ]

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More Mickey Mouse Economics, Please

October 20th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Kenneth Clark, the Shadow Business Secretary and Tory Big Beast, yesterday became the latest Conservative MP to blast away at the government’s economic policy. Clarke, according to the Guardian’s Parliament round up, ‘warned that to continue increasing public spending next year amounted to “Mickey Mouse economics”.’ Given what is expected to be lethargic recovery accompanied by high unemployment in the first half of next year, the Parallax Brief is seriously concerned for Britain’s economic prospects under a Conservative government if Ken Clarke genuinely believes that immediate cuts in spending are the prudent course of action.

Clearly, Britain’s finances are in a parlous state. No Government can go on spending more than it earns indefinitely, and ours is spending so much more than it earns that it must now borrow an eyewatering GBP493 mn every single day simply to stay afloat. Left and Right might disagree on whether the problem is best tackled through tax increases or spending cuts, but any sensible observer knows that when the recession ends there will have to be a ruthless and painful rebalancing.

When the recession ends. Because while under usual circumstances such an exploding deficit would have to be crushed remorselessly, in the current situation doing so would be calamitous.

On paper, it seems right to want to balance the budget. When the Parallax Brief’s household income is reduced, he must curb his extravagant ways. And so it stands to reason that the country should do the same. In practice, however, the economy is tumbling essentially because people all over the country are cutting back on spending all at once, and in this environment any government effort to try to balance its budget by slashing spending and raising taxes would only reinforce vicious cycle.

Many tens of thousands in the public sector would lose their jobs or have their wages cut and would therefore spend much less, which would mean private sector workers would lose their jobs as the businesses they worked for were forced to cut back. That in turn would feed back through the economy. Public works projects and spending plans would be frozen, putting suppliers out of business, worsening the situation. Meantime, on the income side, those who still had their jobs would all have less money to spend as income taxes were increased, while the money they did spend would travel less as indirect taxes like VAT were ramped up.

Make no mistake: slashing public spending right now to balance the books would make the current slump deeper, longer and harder to escape.

Conservatives would likely retort that this argument does not hold because eventually the bond market will take fright at the mountainous debt and start demanding higher interest rates to loan us money, choking off any recovery in the process.

But, like the idea that spending should be reduced to match income during a crisis, fears of the bond market’s reaction sounds convincing, but is in fact misleading. It appears to makes sense: if Britain looks like a riskier loan prospect, you’d want a higher return for lending to it. If the interest rates for gilts, the bonds Britain sells to finance deficits, increases, mortgage and loan rates will move up in lockstep, stymieing economic activity.

However, when the market judges a country’s ability to pay back its debt, it’s not really the absolute total debt that’s important but its size in relation to GDP. Think of it this way: if you were a bank manager, wouldn’t you be more willing to loan a hundred thousand pounds to a man who earns a million a year than to a man who earns twenty thousand a year? So, in fact, if the government immediately started cutting back on spending to reign in debt, the real burden of that debt would increase as GDP (the denominator) collapsed while total debt (the numerator) remained constant.

Economists call this the paradox of thrift, and it’s a phenomenon to which the Parallax Brief is certain George Osborne and Kenneth Clarke are not ignorant.

Why, then, are they choosing to ignore it? Could it be that the Conservative Party, traditionally the strongest party on economic matters, has mistaken austerity for orthodoxy in a macho effort to serve up some red meat to the faithful by showing it really is the party of public spending parsimony?

Whatever the reason, it says much for the Conservative Party that it is being outperformed on the economic debating floor by a party with a record as abject as Labour’s.

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Categories [ Economics and Finance, UK Politics ]

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