Labour leadership race

I haven't posted about the Labour leadership race since it will be resolved and a new leader installed by the time AS students take their exams in summer 2011. However, I though it was worth noting an article by The Economist's Bagehot.

Essentially, the race is between the two brothers MiliE and MiliD who have been portrayed as miles apart in political terms (David as a Blairite, Ed as a Brownite). Bagehot commented:

The press is full of commentary about British politics that would have you believe that the political landscape echoes to the metallic din of ideological combat. Yet when you look carefully at what the politicians from the largest parties are saying, none of it seems so very far from the centre-ground.

Take the Labour leadership race, which by common consent revolves around the two Miliband brothers. According to the newspaper narrative, Ed Miliband, the younger brother and former cabinet minister in charge of climate change, is significantly to the left of David Miliband, the elder brother and former foreign secretary. I have seen the word Bennite bandied around, in homage to Tony Benn, the former Labour cabinet minister who really was a proper lefty in his day, advocating capital controls and the wholesale nationalisation of British industry. It is true that the pair have been sending little hints and signals since the contest became a two horse race, indicating that MiliE is to the left of MiliD (as some call them) and is more tempted than MiliD by some form of core vote strategy to woo back disaffected Labour voters and former Liberal Democrat voters who are disgruntled by the Con-Lib coalition. But Bennite? Come off it.

Quite who the eventual leader will be should prove interesting, especially as Labour and the leadership contenders have a large problem: The credit crunch and the resulting recession was undoubtedly caused by a failure of the banking system ("market forces"), but there is an argument to be had that there was also a failure of government regulation.

The same government which was lead by Blair and Brown and had Milibands E. and D. as well as Balls E. in major positions in the Cabinet. It is therefore in their interests as prospective leaders of the opposition, as well as potential Prime Ministers if the coalition doesn't last the full term, to say that "it wasn't anything to do with us guv". This also ties neatly into the anti-big-business instincts of the average Labour Party member.

The argument about why the credit crunch happened will run and run, and is also outside the remit of this blog. However, a brief taste of some very technical arguments can be found here and here in the Democracy in America blog. Admittedly these are about the US-side, but the credit crunch was a global event closely linked to the American situation and these postings have some pertinent things to say about the UK.

All useful stuff for anyone contemplating the direction of the Labour Party and that classic exam question "Has the Labour party abandoned socialism?"

As a side note, Robert Peston has some interesting things to say about party funding; essentially Labour is heavily reliant on a small number of very wealthy individuals and Trades Unions, and the Conservatives still rely on the City of London's firms for their party funds. This obviously brings up the question of how much these funds determine the direction of party activity and policy formation.

Tony Blair's memoirs are analysed in many places, including here in the Guardian and here and here in the Economist, which has a comment about the nature of politicians who chase voters:

...At best, progressive politicians can hope to define themselves by fixed values, such as concern for the poorest at home and abroad, rather than by policies with fixed party labels.

This is quite a comforting analysis, of course, if you happen to be a former party leader who bet big that likeability trumped traditional party boundaries. But it is possible to find Mr Blair self-serving yet his description of how real voters think and act convincing. In pursuit of governments which speak to their instincts, lots of people may switch from party to party, while feeling they are being perfectly consistent.

There is a pointed lesson here for Labour members as they choose a new leader this month. They need to decide whether they are choosing a new boss for their party, or one who could plausibly belong to the country as a whole, as a future prime minister. Mr Blair has not endorsed a candidate (probably to the relief of all concerned). But then again he barely needs to. Like customers, voters are always right in his world: that is who he is.

To close, that picture of David Miliband which will follow him to his grave:

Obama and the Demoncrats; Glenn Beck and Republicanism

The Economist's Lexington has an interesting post here about President Obama's campaigning message in the run-up to the mid-terms. Essentially the Democrats are ignoring their extraordinary reform of Health Care in favour of talking about job creation in these post-credit crunch times. The President is soft-peddling his success in getting this major reform of America:

The White House has presumably decided that its signature legislation is going to be a negative in a campaign dominated by jobs and the economy. Barnes points out that by steering clear of the health issue local candidates will find it easier to separate their fortunes from Mr Obama's, whose numbers have tanked. The trouble with that way of thinking is that it leaves the Republicans free to paint health reform in the most negative possible light. Worse, it suggests that Mr Obama and his party lack the courage of their rather expensive convictions. If the Democrats are too nervous to defend the bill, perhaps they shouldn't have passed it.

This is of interest to G&P students contemplating any essay about Presidential power, or the direction of the Democratic party.

Healthcare reform may well prove to be a big success in the future, but the costs seem to be very high and benefits are not being felt sufficiently to outweigh the effect of high unemployment and falling house prices.

Elsewhere Glenn Beck, a talk-radio and TV pundit on Fox news who is, um, fairly extravagant in his love for America and hatred of liberals has been campaigning to "get America back". He even has founded a University of his own (latin motto: "Revolution against tyrants, submission to God").

There is not the space to analyse the merits or otherwise of Glenn Beck's views here. However, his views are interesting to G&P students because he is beloved by the Tea Party strand of the Republican party; the core voters who are mad that Obama has got in and is passing laws to reform America. Some call him a communist and a socialist and a dictator and a fascist (I don't think he can be all four). There is a good article from Newsweek about Beck and his impact on the Tea Party and on liberals too here. A brief couple of quotes will help:

Tea partiers are driven by the belief that the America that elected Barack Obama isn't their America, and Beck comforts them by telling them they're right: that the America they love, the America they now feel so distant from, the America of faith and the Founders and some sort of idyllic Leave It to Beaver past, is still there, waiting to be awakened from Obama's evil spell.

For liberals, Beck serves a similar purpose. In an era of massive problems and extreme change—the Great Recession, the health-care overhaul, etc.—liberals can avoid the difficult question of whether Obama is leading America in the right direction by simply telling themselves that the only alternative would be someone like Glenn Beck: hyperbolic, demagogic, irrational, and slightly unhinged—"just like all conservatives." This is comforting. And by choosing to argue against Beck's patently absurd insinuations instead of, say, the legitimate policy proposals of someone like Rep. Paul Ryan... liberals can flatter themselves into believing they're smarter and better informed than anyone who happens to disagree with them.

However, he and Sarah Palin are making the weather in the Republican party and its likely success in November. The BBC's Mark Mardell, one of the resident OEs and US correspondent, thinks it likely Palin will run for the Republican nomination for the 2012 race.

I think its worth while taking a look at some of Beck's statements. On calling Obama a racist white-hater in an extract from a long interview by CBS' Katie Couric (the full interview is here):



The Washington Post describes Beck as trying to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights marchers for tax-hating conservatives:

Finally, Beck updated the meaning of the civil rights movement so that it is no longer about black people; it is about protecting anti-tax conservatives from liberals.

And from the man himself in a transcript of an interview on his own web-site he compared the US government increasing taxes to Nazis persecuting Jews in 1930s Germany:

Big business, big labor and big government. This is, this is fascism. This is what happens when you merge special interests, corporations and the government. And you know what, guys? If people like you don't take a stand and I'm not suggesting that you, you know, don't sign or do sign. That's up to you. You've got a lot riding on it. But at some point you know what poem keeps going through my mind is, you know, first they came for the Jews. People, all of us are like, well, this news doesn't really affect me; well, I'm not a bondholder; well, I'm not in banking industry; well, I'm not a big CEO; I'm not on Wall Street; I'm not a car dealer; I'm not an autoworker. Gang, at some point they are going to come for you.

Overall, while Beck may be a little extreme, there are a significant number of Republicans who accept some of his argument and this feeds into the Tea Part and into the Republican Party itself. It is likely that the core Republicans will turn out for the mid-terms and former Obama-supporting voters may stay away.

An interesting article here on Slate.com by Christopher Hitchens which analyses the Tea Party-Beck phenomenon:

...nobody with any feeling for the zeitgeist can avoid noticing the symptoms of white unease and the additionally uneasy forms that its expression is beginning to take.

There is a strand of thought that there is a crisis of confidence in the US which includes (according to Hitchens):

This summer, then, has been the perfect register of the new anxiety, beginning with the fracas over Arizona's immigration law, gaining in intensity with the proposal by some Republicans to amend the 14th Amendment so as to de-naturalize "anchor babies," cresting with the continuing row over the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque, and culminating, at least symbolically, with a quasi-educated Mormon broadcaster calling for a Christian religious revival from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Democracy in America blog has an article along similar lines here.