Socialism « Crash Bang Wallace

Newsnight’s unasked immigration question

markwallace | No Comments » Posted on February 21, 2012

Last night Newsnight ran a package on the findings of the Vine Report, the damning outcome of an investigation into flaws in the security of British borders.

One expert interviewee featured condemning the current Government for allowing the problems to continue after the 2010 election was Matt Cavanagh, introduced as a former “Government immigration adviser”.

Now, Matt Cavanagh’s critique may well be right – the Coalition evidently didn’t ask the right questions that would have uncovered these failings in May 2010. But shouldn’t some criticism – perhaps the bulk of it – go to those who oversaw these security breaches opening up in the first place?

Vine reports that the holes in our borders first began in 2007/8. To prevent such a thing happening again, we surely need to know how the problem first emerged.

But who could Newsnight have interviewed about such a thing?

Perhaps we should look at Matt Cavanagh’s full tagline on Newsnight – which was, err, “Government immigration adviser, 2003-10“.

It was fair enough to interview Cavanagh and ask him about the Coalition’s role in allowing the scandal to continue. But why wasn’t he asked about how the problems allegedly started on his watch?

The Labour Councillor who “Likes” IRA Bombings

markwallace | 26 Comments » Posted on February 16, 2012

Councillor Florence Anderson, Sunderland City Councillor, has form for unpleasant behaviour online. Most memorably, whilst Deputy Leader of Sunderland she got in hot water after saying on Facebook that she wants Margaret Thatcher to “BURN IN HELL” (a statement that she stood by on the bizarre logic that “I’m not the deputy leader of the council on Facebook”).

That was pretty distasteful, and typified the way in which some on the Left take their disagreement with people’s ideas to a truly unpleasant level. There are plenty of Facebook Groups planning to party when Thatcher dies, dance on her grave and so on.

But it seems Cllr Anderson has gone a bit further than merely distasteful behaviour, into the downright worrying.

One of the more extreme anti-Thatcher Facebook Groups is called “Margaret Thatcher doesn’t have to be dead before we give her a funeral“. Florence Anderson is a member. Some of its more memorable posts include calling for violence against Baroness Thatcher.

Just being a member is bad enough, but Florence decided to take it one step further. When the admin of the page posted this:

We are appealing to the IRA to find it in their hearts to bomb the next tory conference

Florence Anderson didn’t think “that’s appalling”. She didn’t think “it’s inappropriate for a councillor to be a member of this group”. She didn’t even think “I could get in trouble for being associated with this”.

Oh no, Councillor Florence Anderson, confronted with a post calling for terrorist murder of her political opponents, didn’t do any of those things.

She clicked “Like“.

It’s perhaps worth pointing out at this stage that she chairs the committee charged with ensuring public authorities in Sunderland are fulfilling their duties to fight crime.

What do her constituents think of this? Or the Labour Party, who would come down like a tonne of bricks on any Tory who did anything even approaching this behaviour?

I don’t think Cllr Anderson’s excuse that she’s a different person on Facebook quite cuts it.

The curse of the Miliband Mix-up, episode 329

markwallace | 3 Comments » Posted on February 13, 2012

This blog has long followed the Great Mili Mix-up, the tendency of even the most accomplished commentators to mix up David and Ed Miliband, almost as if the universe itself is trying to set right the error made when the wrong brother was elected Labour leader. So far it’s struck the BBC website, the Today Programme, the Telegraph, the Mirror and even Google Image Search.

The latest in this longstanding tradition is City AM, who illustrate the findings of today’s Voice of the City poll with the wrong Miliband:

The poll finding illustrated with David’s photo reads “69% Disapprove of Ed Miliband’s performance during the NHS reform debate”.

It’s hardly City AM’s fault that the Opposition Leader is apparently one of Britain’s most forgettable men – or were the picture desk just trying to imply a solution to the problem?

Jowell’s office goes off message on the NHS

markwallace | 1 Comment » Posted on February 08, 2012

Labour are running a concerted “Drop the Bill” campaign against the Health and Social Care Bill. In today’s PMQs, David Cameron cast it as an attempt to save Ed Miliband’s leadership rather than save the NHS, which it may be, but nonetheless it’s a big issue for Labour on the attack and a potential weak point in the Government’s armour.

The left have long been good at raising a Twitter mob for online attack campaigns, but in Tessa Jowell’s office it’s gone a bit wrong today.

Tessa’s political adviser Jessica Asato tweeted this morning, calling on people to “back the Bill” to “save the NHS“. Slightly off message for a Labour campaign trying to , err, sink the Bill which they claim will destroy the NHS.

She’s since ‘fessed up to the error – but it’s not exactly a shining highpoint for Ed’s flagship campaign…

“Filthy rich” Mandelson pulls up the ladder on aspiration

markwallace | 1 Comment » Posted on January 26, 2012

Famously, Peter Mandelson once said he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” – the phrase summed up the embracing of aspiration which proved to be one of New Labour’s key steps to electoral success.

So it’s interesting that he has now apparently abandoned his state of intense relaxation and is instead jumping on the bandwagon of being twitchy about income inequality and critical of the aspiration which he once embraced.

It’s convenient for him that this change of heart has come about in 2012 – long after he himself became “filthy rich”.

No-one knows quite how much he earns, though high six figures or even seven figures a year are often touted. We do know that his latest house is worth £8 million – more than enough to count as filthy, one would have thought.

His spin today is that this is because economic and political circumstances have changed. But isn’t it really just the same old story, that he’s the kind of person who embraces aspiration when he himself is aspirant, but promptly does his damnedest to pull up the ladder once he’s at the top of the pile?

The master strategist was part of the group around Tony Blair who recognised that being tough on crime, welcoming towards aspiration and positive about enterprise is the foundation of electoral success in Britain. If even he is abandoning that thinking – largely because he is now rich enough to afford to – then the Opposition are in real trouble.

Finally the Barnett Formula comes in handy – for allocating Scotland’s national debt

markwallace | 50 Comments » Posted on January 25, 2012

A lot of thought’s being put into the practical implications of Scottish independence – I suspect that if the country doesn’t become independent this time (which more English voters support than Scottish voters), it probably will in the next decade or two.

It’s the practical ramifications which are increasingly causing Alex Salmond touble. The problem being that the SNP likes to have its cake and eat it, too. Take fiscal devolution – when the TaxPayers’ Alliance proposed full fiscal devolution to the Scottish Parliament (an SNP manifesto policy), SNP spokesmen blew their lid because the report also called for an end to English Barnett Formula subsidies for Scotland.

So it has been with Alex Salmond’s plan for full independence – he wants to take as many powers and assets as possible, but leave the nation’s debts squarely on the shoulders of English taxpayers.

For example, he thinks that North Sea oil and gas should be allocated geographically (giving the Scots over 80% of the revenue) but national debt should be allocated on a per capita basis only (giving the Scots just over 8% of the total bill). This is particularly relevant when you start to consider where the debt and liability for RBS would fall in you took a geographical approach to where debt should be allocated.

Happily, someone on the Government E-petitions site has come up with an elegant solution. When we calculate the share of the national debt to be allocated to an independent Scotland, why not use the Barnett Formula?

Yes, is means each Scottish person would have 22% more debt than each English person, but if it’s fair for dishing the cash out then surely it’s fair for sharing the burden of our debts, too?

I’ve signed the e-petition here – I hope you will, too.

The benefits cap debate – a win for Ministers, and an economic fail for critics

markwallace | 11 Comments » Posted on January 23, 2012

The furore over Iain Duncan Smith’s proposed benefits cap was predictable, and Ministers have merrily sailed into it for two reasons – because a high profile fight on this topic brings them an electoral advantage, and because they knew the Left would swallow the bait in one great, unthinking gulp.

The idea that no household should get more than £26,000 in benefits – equivalent to a pre-tax salary of £35,000 – is overwhelmingly popular. British voters subscribe to a strong idea of fairness, particularly when it comes to the idea that working should be more rewarding than not working, and they have been outraged by numerous reports of large families living at no cost to themselves in huge, overpriced houses in particular.

The critique of the proposals coming from the Left, notably from Lib Dem Guardianista Tim Leunig, is fatally flawed because socialist economics fails to recognise that the economy is dynamic. You can’t change one input to the system without others shifting in response – both when macro market forces and micro human behaviour are involved.

The flaw comes when they crunch the numbers. Leunig’s Guardian piece claims to calculate that the benefits cap would leave people living on 62p a day. The most crucial element of his workings is that a 4-bedroom house in Tolworth costs £400 a week. That’s true right now, but it wouldn’t be the case once a cap has been brought in.

The truth is that some of the main beneficiaries of overly high benefits are private landlords. They may not get payments from the DWP direct, but they reap the cash anyway through inflated rents, secure in the knowledge that every time they put the price up, benefits levels are raised to pay them. This is a racket, exploiting the foolishness of officials in pumping more and more money out and the absence of taxpayer power to rein in this behaviour.

Tim Leunig is right that if rents were fixed as they are now then his hypothetical family would pay£400 a week. But rents aren’t fixed, they are fluid. If you remove a large amount of cash from the system then prices will fall. By arguing for the system to remain as it currently is, rather than accept a cap, this supposed “progressive” is effectively fighting the corner of benefit-farming landlords.

There are knock-on benefits to removing the artificial inflation in rents, too. If renting property out becomes less profitable, the desire and the financial means to buy-to-let will be reduced, helping to address the shortage of affordable housing that is so often highlighted as a problem.

This is why we can expect IDS to be intensely relaxed about this fight gaining so much publicity. When it comes down to it, he has public opinion and solid economics on his side.

How to write a catchy song about the wonders of Eurofederalism

markwallace | 21 Comments » Posted on January 13, 2012

Sounds like an impossible task, doesn’t it?

Well how about we take the tune of Breakfast at Tiffany’s by nineties one-hit wonders Deep Blue Something, and recast the lyrics to include such gems as:

Democracy, freedom, subsidiarity
Federalism, the solution we’ve got

How does that sound? Dreadful, actually, but it didn’t stop the Young European Federalists doing the whole song, acting it out and uploading it to Youtube:

This clip has been doing the rounds for some time, but I thought I’d share it as a timely reminder that the true horrors of a Federal EU are far deeper and grimmer than simply bankruptcy, economic stagnation and the abolition of democratic sovereignty.

In case you missed those classic lyrics, or would like to sing along at home, here they are in full:

— VERSE 1 —
They say that we’ve got nothing in common
No cultural ties to build on
The project just can’t work
They say that nationalism will break us
Conservatives will fight us
But trust we really do care

— CHORUS —
And we shout what about Europe United?
Peace and safety for all of the people
Democracy, freedom, subsidiarity
Federalism, the solution we’ve got

— VERSE 2 —
They say we’ll never work together
To make our union stronger
Let us say no!
We’ll build a Europe bold and new
A democracy that’s true
Europe United as one!

— CHORUS —

— VERSE 3 —
We say the EU’s a confusion
Lacking a Constitution
But we know what to do
Reform now, we want to see enlargement
Accept our major statement
Europe united as one!

— CHORUS —

— CHORUS —

Ed Miliband struck by the curse of the anti-mojo

markwallace | No Comments » Posted on January 10, 2012

The success or failure of political campaigns rests on a lot of different factors. Many of them are solid things – do you raise enough money? Do your team work harder than the other side? Are your ideas coherent?

But there is another factor which is just as important, or potentially even more important. There’s not really a specific word in English for it, so let’s call it mojo.

When you’ve got mojo, you’re unstoppable. Everything you say comes out well, everything you do is well received, and you just seem naturally destined to win. Everything you touch turns to gold. Barack Obama had mojo in the 2008 Presidential election campaign.

Of course there are material things supporting this – the hard work is still being put in, the good team still need to be there and you still need to fundraise – but there’s an element of magic about it as well. Some politicians are touched with it for their whole careers – Tony Blair, for example – some people will get it at a crucial time only for it to vanish later, while others may see it crop up intermittently through their whole lives.

It’s when you have the opposite of mojo that things get really interesting.

I’m not talking about a simple absence of it – the vast majority of politicians are, for the vast majority of their careers, lacking it and instead forced to rely on hard bloody work alone.

I’m talking about when you are in active possession of anti-mojo. When you’ve got the Black Spot. When you’re cursed.

You won’t find politicians who have had anti-mojo for their whole lives. If they did, their careers would never have got off the ground in the first place. Instead, it strikes one day, and can prove impossible to shake off.

These unlucky souls are in real trouble. They can have the money, the team, the elbow grease, even the ideas, but everything they touch goes horribly wrong. Bungles are made. Fate intervenes to destroy the best-laid plans (remember Gordon Brown’s literally car crash poster unveiling?).

If it was a patch of bad luck alone, it might be possible to keep your head down and wait for it to pass. In ordinary life, I suspect this happens to most people at one time or another and they survive. As a political leader that’s almost never possible.

Instead, the problem becomes self-reinforcing. Your misfortune, incompetence and absurdity become a media and social theme. After the first obvious incidents occur, people start looking out for them. You swiftly become the laughing stock of the lobby, and then of the public. When this happens, the prognosis is almost always terminal. Needless to say, this is the political comms person’s nightmare – how do you manage the reputation of someone the Universe appears to have taken a dislike to?

Ed Miliband may well have reached this point in the last week. Never the most naturally comfortable or suave politician, his slow handling of the Diane Abbott furore swiftly developed into an out and out collapse in respect through his “Blackbusters” tweet.

Today, you can see the results. When for whatever reason he kept lobby journalists waiting for over half an hour for his much-trailed (and much rewritten) 6th relaunch speech, they went public and started taking the mick out of him on Twitter. (See here, here, here, here, here and here for examples). Then the BBC accidentally captioned him as “David Miliband”.

It’s not just that he’s a leader in the Twitter age – it’s that his anti-mojo has got so bad that the lobby don’t respect or fear him. When it feels natural to the nation’s political press that they can mock you in public, you’ve got a serious problem. When you lose respect to a degree that even the ordinary politeness any Briton would show to a stranger isn’t accorded to you, then that is incredibly hard to overcome.

It’s safe to say Ed Miliband was not born to be a man touched for all his days by the magic of political mojo, but there was a chance he could have been one of those politicians known for achieving through hard work what had not been gifted to him by sheer pazazz. Instead, he’s become infected by a truly severe case of anti-mojo. 2012 is barely two weeks old, but his leadership is already in serious, serious trouble.

Ken’s Con

markwallace | No Comments » Posted on January 09, 2012

Evening Standard polling on the London Mayoral Race shows clearly that transport fares, and the management of the underground service, is the only major chink in Boris’s armour. It’s a topic which is high on Londoners’ list of concerns and it’s the only area where Ken appears to have a distinct opportunity.

As a result, Ken Livingstone is hammering the issue, promising a 7% cut in fares. But can he be trusted to stick to this pledge for a so-called “fare deal”, or is it pie in the sky?

Judging by his track record, it’s the latter. In fact, he’s broken promises on fares at both of the last two Mayoral elections.

In September 2003, with an election coming up, Ken promised to peg fare rises to “no more than the rate of inflation”. But in September 2004, he announced tube fares would rise at inflation +1% and bus fares would jump by inflation +10%.

In December 2007, with another election approaching, he told the London Assembly “I intend to freeze Tube fares in real terms in 2009″. He lost the election, but by April 2008 leaked emails emerged showing that when he gave that pledge to the Assembly he had already signed off on higher than inflation rises for bus and tube passengers.

It’s understandable why Ken – lagging by 8 points in the polls behind Boris – is making increasingly desperate pledges to persuade voters. The question has always been how he will fund them. Looking at his past behaviour gives us the answer – he won’t have any trouble funding his 7% cut, because he makes a habit of breaking his promises as soon as the election is out of the way.

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