ConservativeHome: No HealthCare Provision, GBP18 per year Welfare is “Textbook Formula for Economic Success”

November 17th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

ConservativeHome, the right of centre resource website and opinion blog owned by Conservative Party activist Tim Montgomerie, let slip the facade of “progressive conservatism” today, with a blog entry about how simply awesome it would be if we could only combine China’s welfare state with Britain’s lack of corruption. Here’s a choice cut from the story:

The welfare state is very limited: according to the state Xinhua News Agency China plans to spend £25 billion on its safety net in 2009, that is £18 per person. In comparison, the UK spends £164 billion, or £2,645 per person. Before privatisations, state owned companies and agricultural communes often provided cradle-to-grave healthcare, education, pensions, and healthcare. Now 300 million Chinese have no health plan whatsoever, with most others having to foot substantial percentages of every medical bill themselves… It is a textbook formula for economic success.

Astonishing.

But please, the Parallax Brief urges you to follow the link, because there’s more where that came from.

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Categories [ Economics and Finance, UK Politics ]

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Congratulations Liz Truss

November 17th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief would like to take this opportunity to offer his heartfelt congratulations to Liz Truss for her victory in her battle against the slobbering puritans of the South West Norfolk Conservative Committe, who had put her through the political ringer of a deselection hearing and vote for no other reason than that she once had an affair with a married man while married herself. She won the vote 137-37.

The SW Norfolk Committe claims it forced the deselection vote because she didn’t reveal in a timely manner that she had had the affair, rather than for the affair itself, but given the fact the affair was common knowledge in political circles, and available knowledge to anyone with the wherewithal to Google “Lyn Truss”, the Parallax Brief has his doubts.

He wonders, for instance, how many of the dribbling prigs adored Alan Clark while piously judging Ms. Truss?

Anyway, it’s time to forget all that and move on.

Ms. Truss will make an excellent MP, adding to the intellectual vigour of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, and if there is a positive for the Conservative Party to draw from this whole farce it’s that she has the toughness necessary to succeed.

Well done her.

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Is Closing the Polling Gap Enough For Labour?

November 17th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Labour, for the first time in quite a while, to the Parallax Brief’s knowledge, has closed the Conservative Party’s lead in the opinion polls. In an ICM poll for the Guardian, Labour now scores 29, up two, with the Conservatives down two at 42, and the Liberal Democrats up one at 19.

At face value, this is positive news for Labour and will offer its supporters a glimmer of hope that Labour may yet do what John Major manages in 1992 — bring an unpopular party back to government. But the Guardian focuses more on other questions asked as part of the poll, the answers to which do not augur well for the Labour Party in general and Gordon Brown in particular.

According to the poll, 42% of people would be either pleased or excited if David Cameron won the next election, with 36% angry or disappointed; while 27% would be pleased or excited if Mr. Brown won, as opposed to 53% angry or disappointed.  Further, the poll shows that the public see Mr. Cameron as “tougher, more decisive and more internationally respected” than Mr. Brown.

The Guardian frames this as evidence that the Tories are “closing the deal”, but whether this is the case or not, the Parallax Brief believes it is clear evidence that the Conservative lead in the polls is about more than just anti-Labour sentiment.

Despite this, as Mike Smithson said on the brilliant Political Betting Blog today, “movement is movement”. Ultimately, the Labour Party should be pleased with what is its highest ICM poll since April, and Gordon Brown in particular should feel safer after the double whammy of the Glasgow NE by-election win and this ICM poll showing a glimmer of an upward trend. If, as Mr Smithson predicts, tomorrow’s MORI poll shows something similar, the Labour Party may have hope indeed.

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Benefit Addiction and Inequality

November 14th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Benedict Brogan, in his Telegraph blog, offered a withering assessment of the Glasgow North East Labour victory

But the result is terrible for Scotland, and Glasgow. A constituency that achieves such terrible scores on all the social indices turns once again to Labour despite its dismal record on poverty and inequality. It reminds us how much work the Tories have to do to persuade to give up their addiction to welfare. It is a glaring example of how successfully Gordon Brown has rigged the political system in his and Labour’s favour by extending the client state. Shaking off its dependency on the public subsidy pipeline built by Mr Brown is the biggest challenge facing Scotland, and Glasgow North East illustrates how far it still has to go.

Hopi Sen (real name), a former Labour Party head of campaigns, thinks that “Benedict Brogan is a twit“, and offers the following justification for that charmingly forthright statement:

Well Ben, I don’t think there are many people who’ll benefit from inheritance tax cuts in Glasgow North East, but there are plenty who’d suffer if there was less nursery provision. Some people call this “dependency on the client state”. I call it Government working to make life better for families.

If you live in a poorer area, the money Labour governments spend on schools, on policing, on child care, on sure start and on tax credits make a big difference for you.

[...]

If Ben really wants to know why people in poorer areas think it’s in their interest to vote Labour and people in richer areas think it’s in their interest to vote Conservative he could do worse than start with this chart from the IFS.

[...]

The IFS research suggests that those on benefits alone are not hugely better off under Labour*. Rather, it is the relatively low income workers, the shop assistants, the cleaners, the part-time time nursery nurse, the office assistants and the manual workers who have done better in terms of income.

On top of this, it is groups like this that benefit most from schools that have had more money spent on them, medical provision that has improved, more access to nurseries and so on.

The Parallax Brief thinks that this is right, to a certain degree. The problem with benefits is that certain members of society decide that they would rather claim the benefits than take low paid work, draining public money, reducing the workforce and diminishing the incentive to work. The Parallax Brief — and probably most of you — has anecdotal evidence that this is sometimes the case.

But it’s important to remember why aid like unemployment and incapacity benefit were first introduced: the idea that a fair, meritocratic society would not consign to squalor hardworking citizens who through no fault of their own became unable to support themselves or their families. Unfortunately, because it doesn’t really make interesting news, we never get to hear about the genuine claimants, who still account for the vast majority of benefit claimants, and who genuinely require help.

It’s true, therefore, that more could be done to restructure the way benefits are delivered to both support and encourage work, but the Parallax Brief has always suspected that those on the right who trot out phrases like “benefits trap” and “benefit dependent” don’t want to restructure or improve, but remove: Freeing people from benefits dependency by drastically reducing or completely taking awa the benefits available.

Another way to think about Brogan’s argument is this: sure, Labour might not have solved many of the social issues in Glasgow, and poverty certainly exists, but would it be better under the Conservatives?

Perhaps Labour should be punished, but that doesn’t mean the Conservatives should be rewarded.

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Could Negative Voting “Seal the Deal” for Tories?

November 11th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Mike Smithson’s Political Betting blog today offers a fascinating insight into what he calls negative voting, and suggests it might further accentuate the swing away from the Labour Party during the elction.

As we get closer to elections, it seems, there is one hardy topic that always emerges – that of the impact of negative campaigning and we saw in 1997, 2001 and 2005 how much of the Labour message was primarily about demonising the Tories.

But what about negative voting? Do negative messages chime with what some of the electorate wants and what’s the impact?

[...]

We do know that in 2005 ICM found that nearly one in five of all voters answered YES to the question “Did/will you vote … because it is your first choice or because you want to try and keep another party from winning in your Constituency?”

At the same time, on the eve of the 2005 election, Populus found that more than half of those voting Labour and Lib Dem were doing so “more because of negative views about other parties than out of enthusiasm..” for their own one.

All the evidence this time is that the mood is anti-Labour and my guess is that we might see disproportionate swings against the party in the marginals. For on top of the anti-Labour moves a lot of the anti-Tory votes that are locked in from the last three elections could unwind further distorting swing projections.

This seems exactly right to the Parallax Brief. There’s a palpable sense in the country now that people may not love the Conservatives, but these just want Gordon Brown and the Labour Party out. The Parallax Brief’s memories of 97 are still sharp, and while Labour might not be as unpopular now as the Tories were then, he remembers distinctly several people who would have usually voted LibDem or wouldn’t have voted at all switching their vote to Labour just to make sure the sitting Conservative MP wasn’t returned.

This factor will definitely be at play this time, and it will hammer Labour in even the not-so-marginal seats.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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Tory EuroFissure: Hague’s “Business as Usual” Approach to EU Asking for Trouble

November 9th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that his party would not immediately take on the EU to repatriate the powers to the British Parliament demanded by Conservative policy, according to the Telegraph yesterday.

“After abandoning plans to hold a referendum on Europe, following last week’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Hague said the Tories accepted that constitutional reform would not be on the EU agenda for some years.

And while the party remained Euro-sceptic, a Conservative Government would not get into a “bust-up” over its new policy of seeking to negotiate opt-outs in a number of areas of European policy and pass a sovereignty bill to stop further powers being repatriated for some time to come.

Until then, he agreed that it would effectively be “business as usual” for Britain within Europe under the Tories.”

It’s clear to the Parallax Brief that David Cameron and his team do not want to divert their energies away from the main task at hand if and when they gain power: fixing the economy and Britain’s parlous public finances. It’s equally clear, however, that this isn’t going to satisfy the party base.

Sure enough, ConservativeHome was all over the story, furious at the suggestion.

“…he should not, not be suggesting, unless he wants to generate a massive split in the party, is that the policy is to be a low priority, something not all that important in a world of deficits to cut and wars to fight, something we might or might not get around to one day if we’ve nothing better to do. As I have argued here, Cameron’s hierarchy are mistaken if they believe that the route to an easy life is by doing little on Europe, and equally mistaken if they believe that addressing the Party’s overwhelming (and country’s heavy majority) concerns over Europe would use up political capital rather than create it for other priorities such as public spending cuts, the broken society, and education reform.”

Fighting talk?

Probably not. The Parallax Brief has come to the conclusion that Conservatives on both sides to the Europe divide will fume in private but bite their tongues until the election. They must know, as the Parallax Brief suggests, that the only thing that can stop the Tory Party winning the election is the Tory Party.

But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t storing up trouble for the future.

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Categories [ International Affairs, Tory EuroFissure, UK Politics ]

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Number of Privately Educated Tory MPs Set to Rocket — So What?

November 7th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Guardian ran with an interesting article yesterday — albeit one that blatantly played to the foibles of its natural readership — highlighting the number of Conservative MPs likely to be elected in the next election which will have been educated in independent schools.

At the last count, 52% of the Conservatives’ so-called “A-list” of prospective candidates had been privately educated.Among likely new Tory MPs whose education is a matter of record, 43% went to independent schools. Among the same group, only 36% would have gone to comprehensives, compared with 88% of the population at large.

All this feeds into one striking statistic. After next year’s election about a third of all new MPs will have been to fee-paying schools, compared with 13% of new arrivals when the Commons last underwent major change in 1997.

Most of this data is to be found in The Class of 2010, a report put together by the lobbying firm the Madano Partnership, based on work by academics from Plymouth University. The research suggests that relative to 1997, the number of new MPs from comprehensive schools will fall from 46% to about 30%; and that 17% of the new intake will come from grammar schools, despite only 5% of pupils attending such schools.

[...]

The arrival in power of Cameron and his circle will be heralded as a return to more well-heeled Tory stereotypes. In that context, the arrival of so many privately educated newcomers will be of a piece with the general mood. Politics will feel much posher.

The Madano Partnership profiled 242 of the likely next parliamentary generation, and focused on the Conservative candidates who will have to make it to the Commons if the party is to win a majority. There is a smattering of Old Etonians, including millionaire campaigner Zac Goldsmith, Tory intellectual Jesse Norman, and Rory Stewart, once a tutor to princes William and Harry. The ranks will also include at least two alumni of Harrow, and three from Radley College, along with old boys and girls from Highgate, Millfield, Winchester, Charterhouse, Stowe and Roedean.

To which the question the Parallax Brief asks is, so what?

The Guardian report laments the lack of representation, arguing that Dave has been at pains to try to sculpt a “Conservative parliamentary party that looked more like Britain”. Why should it look more like Britain in terms of gender and ethnicity, the Guardian’s argument goes, but not in terms of education?

Two points. First, the Parallax Brief has already gone on record in saying that discrimination of any kind, even that favouring those who must struggle harder in life to achieve because of a variety of social and educational disadvantages, is morally wrong. He has nothing more to add to that other than to say that beyond the moral scope, it is surely the case that favouring comprehensively educated candidates will be a horrendous, asinine example of simply treating the symptoms of the disease rather than the illness itself. The real problem is social mobility, and having more comprehensively educated candidates in the Parliamentary Conservative Party will contribute exactly nothing to the cause of creating true meritocracy in the United Kingdom.

Second, what would really be best for the country would be having the best people for the job representing their constituency in Parliament. Jesse Norman and Zac Goldsmith will surely add to the intellectual vigour of the Parliamentary Conservative Party and the Commons. Why should the location of their education matter?

The Guardian is right to point out that the system could be changed to improve social mobility. One of the examples it gives is that many parliamentary and public policy interns, a surefire — and perhaps these days compulsory – route into Parliament, remain unpaid, which genuinely excludes the less wealthy. That’s a commonsense proposal that Parallax Brief could get behind — Choosing MPs based on anything other than calibre and popular vote, on the other hand, is nonsensical and something he can’t support on any terms.

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Tory EuroFissure: French Government Lashes Out at “Autistic” Tory EU Plans

November 5th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

If there was any reason to doubt the egregiousness of the euroscpetic view that the major repatriation of powers, or even the post-facto nullification of the Lisbon Treaty if a referendum returned a no vote, would not lead to the mother of all diplomatic rows with Europe, last night should have dispelled any doubts, as the French government lashed out at the mere prospect of such steps.

According to the Guardian, France’s Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche, accused the Conservative Party of “castrating” Britain’s position within the EU by adopting an “autistic” approach to European relations and policy.

“It’s pathetic. It’s just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map …. This is a culture of opposition … It is the result of a long period of opposition. I know they will come back, but I hope the trip will be short.”

“They are doing what they have done in the European parliament. They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament.”

The Guardian also reports that Lellouche said he has told Hague personally that his position was a “waste of time for all of us”.

The Parallax Brief is particularly interested in this point, as it provides some indication of just how difficult any negotiations with the EU will be for William Hague and David Cameron. How much compromise will Britain have to make? What will it have to give in return? And, most important, what compromise will his own party members, for many of whom all-out diplomatic war with the EU, far from being something to avoid, would likely be welcomed as an opportunity to reset Britain’s position in Europe altogether.

The Parallax Brief asks the question again: Can Cameron offer the Eurosceptic wing of his party enough red meat to satiate their appetite for a major recalibration of Britain’s EU relations without boxing himself into a corner where a major blow up with our EU partners becomes inevitable?

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Categories [ International Affairs, Tory EuroFissure, UK Politics ]

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Tory Eurofissure: Dan Hannan Resigns Post in Lisbon Protest

November 5th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Daniel Hannan, Conservative Party MEP for South East England, has resigned his post as party European legal spokesman in protest at Conservative leader David Cameron’s decision to recant from his promise to hold a referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. Mr. Hannan has become an immensely popular figure within Tory circles, due to his hit book, The Plan:12 months to renew Britain, uber-Eurosceptic views, and sharp, Labour-baiting tongue.

Recently the Parallax Brief has focused on the idea that only the Conservative Party can stop the Conservative Party from winning the next election, and it is the fissures that run internally — especially the intra-Tory split on Europe — which have the potential to derail the Tory locomotive which has hitherto appeared unstoppable as on its way to an election victory.

Indeed, the Parallax Brief believes that in the event of another election loss, hung parliament of slim majority, the Euro issue has the potential to become the kind of issue that might see the Conservative Party split altogether in the way Shirley Williams, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rogers broke away from Labour to form the SDP in the early eighties.

The Eurosceptic branch of the Conservative Party simply does not see how the ratification of the Lisbon treaty makes a referendum any less feasible. They accept that it would lead to far greater diplomatic problems with the EU, but given that most want a vastly restructured relationship with Brussels, this is no concern.

Cameron must tread carefully if he is to offer these absolutists enough red meat to satiate their appetite for a showdown with the EU, while not enraging the europhile wing of his party by backing himself into a corner from which he is obliged to roll back Britain’s relationship with the rest of the EU.

The previous assumption had been that Tory MPs would hold their tongues and maintain discipline as long as it looked as long as the party was successful. But Mr. Hannan’s resignation and call to arms might suggest otherwise.

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TrussGate Gets Nasty

November 3rd, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The ongoing debacle over Lynn Truss’s prospective deselection by the Conservative Party South West Norfolk constituency association has descended into an unseemly, spiteful proxy for long held resentments between the traditionalists of what in America would be called the Conservative Party “base”, and the socially liberal modernisers at Tory HQ.

Yesterday, writing for the Guardian’s Comment is Free forum, Dorothy Lockhurst, another of Mr. Cameron’s A-Listers, fired off a withering broadside against the Norfolk faithful:

The local activists who have asserted their power to humiliate Truss are not acting in the name of localism, or any other principle worth defending. Their case consists of misogyny and jealousy in roughly equal parts. As a former member of the Scottish Conservative Candidates Board, responsible for the selection and vetting of dozens of Conservative candidates, and as an experienced parliamentary candidate myself, I have witnessed similar behaviour often.

Early in my career a constituency association deselected me because I had the effrontery to become pregnant, within marriage, but without consulting them first. It gave me enormous satisfaction when other, more enlightened Conservatives responded by inviting me to fight the Glasgow Anniesland byelection while I was four months pregnant.

The South West Norfolk 19 represent the type of Conservatism that risks placing our party beyond the frontiers of tolerance. Their conduct makes our cause unappealing to ambitious women. It weakens our potential to appeal beyond our traditional electoral base and diminishes our capacity to govern in the national interest.

Iain Dale, an influential media figure with forward thinking Conservatives, who had earlier been reported by the Guardian as having called the Norfolk faithful “Neanderthals”, joined the fray:

Because they are often people whose own private lives don’t quite stand up to scrutiny. I wonder how many of the nineteen members of the South West Norfolk Conservatives Executive Committee who voted to put into doubt her candidacy could look themselves in the mirror and honestly say they were entitled to sit in judgment of Ms Truss. The only person entitled to judge her is her husband. And he stuck by her. Isn’t that what should matter?

Ah, some say, but if she betrayed her husband, how can we trust her? How can we be sure she won’t betray her constituents? Utter poppycock. It’s a lazy argument perpetrated by the small minded.

[...]

Can we also put to rest another myth, the one which says that David Cameron is trying to parachute in candidates against the will of local parties. It’s rubbish. The six strong shortlist was drawn up by the local party with very little direction from the centre. The local party included one local candidate. James Tumbridge, who fought Norwich North at the last election, but ignored the merits of any other local candidates among the 150 or so who put their names forward. Presumably they did that because they felt that Liz Truss and the four other candidates were of better quality. What other reason can there have been?

Meantime, on the other side of no-man’s land, the South West Norfolk constituency association have stayed silent on the matter, but their neighbours have not. According to the Guardian,

“Cliff Jordan, the chairman of neighbouring Mid Norfolk Conservative association, is supporting his defiant neighbours. “The bully boys at Tory HQ are coming out. It’s appalling. They are trying to twist it to look as though the association is in the wrong. But she didn’t tell them. And what Cameron doesn’t seem to understand is that in Norfolk truthfulness, honesty and integrity mean something,” said the Norfolk county councillor. “As for the A-list, it’s about as much good as a chocolate fireguard. We’re given assurances they’d be vetted properly, we’d get really good quality candidates. And it’s proven to be false,” he added.”

It seems that on both sides, Ms. Truss has become a catalyst for long held resentments: the hard core Tory supporters who believe that in moving the party to the centre, David Cameron has disconnected from traditional conservatism and is simultaneously trying to impose centralised decisions, and especially candidates, on local constituency committees; and from HQ that they’re having their best efforts to make the party electable foiled by puritanical prigs who still live in an alternate reality where the Queen Victoria never died and the sixties never happened.

The Conservative Party can only lose the election from here; Labour cannot win through communicating a positive narrative about their vision for the future of the country. They have been in power too long and the economy and public finances are in too much of a mess for that. But Brown and Mandelson can (and will) hammer away at negative Tory stereotypes. With the Guardian gleefully lapping up TrussGate, it is exactly this type of own-goal that Cameron must minimize if he’s to appear electable. He must handle the South West Conservatives adroitly, easing Truss into a safe seat without using the strong arm tactics that will likely make the priggish codgers even more intransigent.

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