Lies, Damn Lies and Google Public Data

Just because... I stumbled across Google's service which turns publicly available data into a graph. The government debt in the UK being an issue at the moment, here is the link to UK government debt as a % of GDP (if you like that sort of thing), and the government deficit as a % of GDP. Both graphs go back to 1995.

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, the mid-terms and the 2012 Republican race

I've just come across a couple of articles on the web-site of centrist (liberal) US magazine the New Republic, which help to expand on a couple of things on my previous post about Obama and the mid-terms.

Here is one discussing Republican former Presidential candidate, and candidate for the 2012 race. Specifically it focuses on his somewhat bizarre take on the non-controversial nuclear-weapons-reducing treaty New START. Essentially, according to the article, the Republicans are becoming increasingly "hawkish" about anything which smacks of reducing spending on defense. They also hate President Obama and everything he stands for, so won't give him any sort of political victory even if it's in US and World interests. Obama's policy of reducing nuclear weapons in the US and Russia seems like a good strategy and helps to encourage co-operation on thorny issues like Iran's dash for the nuke (to borrow a UK phrase: "tough on nuclear holocausts, tough on the causes on nuclear holocausts"). Mitt Romney wants to stick it to those pesky Ruskies because that plays well with the Republican base in these uncertain Tea-Party influenced times.

This article here reflects on the problem Obama has with getting anyone to listen to his message about jobs and the recovery, which has an impact on the Democratic result in the mid-terms.

This one delves into some of the races which are a source of worry for Democrats in the mid-terms. One to watch is the battle for Nevada with Senate Majority Leader (Democrat) Harry Reid, which he looks likely to lose, and this in turn could be devastating for the Democrats and Obama.

All of which should be useful examples if one is thinking about policy in the Republican party, the power of the Presidency, and elections in general.

George Osbourne's emergency budget

I'm a bit wary about posting too much about the emergency budget, especially given that for G&P students taking AS, the autumn spending review will have happened by the time the exam season rolls around in 2011. I think the graph below (from the BBC) summarises the problem for the Government quite nicely, in that it shows the scale of the spending-cut and tax rises needed in the coming parliamentary session to reduce the budget deficit:

In short, as indicated here in a BBC article, the cuts announced by the coalition government are huge, but aim to balance the government books by 2016 (i.e. after the next projected election). There is much uncertainty, especially given that the coalition will face extraordinary pressure, and there is the possibility the government won't survive the next 5 years intact. More thorough business analysis here from Robert Peston and an economic view here from Stephanie Flanders, and here from the Economist magazine. The Think-Tank the Institute for Fiscal studies has a page here of useful links.

The interesting stuff for G&P students is contained here in an article by Bagehot in the Economist: that this budget challenges the dominant political orthodoxy of the past 12 years, that government spending has to increase:

Mr Osborne’s statement shattered and reversed the orthodoxy, which took hold in the last decade, that public spending must grow eternally. It has revised the relationship between the state and its employees, and signalled a reconfiguring of welfare support, which is set to be more generous to some of the very poor and stingier for many others. It was the start of a bid to create a new balance in the British economy: between the public and private sectors, and among industries and regions. This was the most painful budget in living memory, and one of the riskiest.

In short, the government deficit has encouraged the Coalition to think radically about certain areas of public policy, like removing income-tax for the less well-off, and public pension reform which previous governments have been wary of tackling. Nick Robinson highlights some of the impact the Lib Dems on the budget here. Don't forget, that Lib Dem Danny Alexander is the Chancellor's right-hand man as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Labour has not yet found a way of attacking the government policy except to decry it as a return to Thatcherist cutting of public spending; Polly Toynbee in the Guardian puts it this way:

There was nothing "unavoidable" about adding £40bn to Labour's already eye-watering pledge to halve the deficit in four years. There was no necessity to create a surplus in six years, returning to depression economics with mortal risk of sinking the country into second recession or slump. This was the budget to fulfil old Tory yearnings: it promises to shrink the state below 40%, which Mrs Thatcher never achieved.

There are, and will continue to be, complex arguments about the economics of all this which are not within the scope of this blog. We'll all see soon enough what the effects of these policies are; growth, or a disastrous double-dip recession.

The 2010 election

It is obvious that no one party has total control of the House of Commons, despite a very large swing to the Conservatives and a loss for Labour of almost 100 seats. At least one commentator has called this almost as bad as the loss in the 1983 election.

Negotiations are on-going between the three main parties as to what the next step is; plenty of analysis and guess-work is available in most media, including the blogs listed on the left hand side of your screen. Minette Marrin in today's Sunday Times, and Andrew Sullivan both mention the extraordinary fact that the Conservative party would have won the election if Scotland's results were excluded, and that there is only one Tory MP north of the border. The analysis seems to suggest that a Tory administration which cut government spending severely would play into the hands of the SNP who could claim (quite legitimately) that the government had no mandate to perform these cuts north of the border. This would call into question the Union itself.

All of which is useful stuff for G&P students answering any question about why the British electoral system can be criticised. I would like to highlight the difference in result between the 2005 election where Labour won a clear majority with 66 seats on the basis of 35.3% of the vote, and the result of the 2010 election where the Conservatives won more of the vote with 36.1% but didn't win an overall majority with 307 seats.

The poor showing of the Lib Dems on 62 seats was a bit of a shock, but may reflect the fact that in the FPTP system we don't vote for the party leader but for members of their party to represent us; we make judgements about who to support based on a whole heap of local issues, rather than necessarily the national picture.

A key reason for having the FPTP system is that it tends to produce strong government, except that in this case it hasn't. Analysis from the BBC's Robert Peston suggests that coalition government would only happen in the event of a further financial crisis since there are significant obstacles to a stable government being created based on the voting done on May 6th, and more importantly further obstacles which may prevent government making the massive cuts necessary. As pointed out by him and Stephanie Flanders elsewhere there is currently little evidence that any party has got a credible plan to cut the deficit. Should the stock markets open on Monday thinking just that there will be severe problems in the city in terms of stock prices and the like.

Since economic policy is outside the scope of this blog and of the G&P course, I'll merely call attention to the events in Greece, and the potentially dire consequences to the UK, and the EU if a solution is not found. The Economist magazine's "Intelligence Unit" has suggested that a second election later this year is likely.

By way of contrast to the seriousness of the above, The Sun's front page on Saturday was very clever and funny.