Election Special
We are about halfway through this election campaign. ‘Two bald men squabbling about the ownership of a comb’ was Borges’ verdict on the UK war with the Argentine about the Falklands. That isn’t a fair description of this election. None of the major party leaders are bald, unless you count John Swinney. But the campaign does take up an awful lot of media space, newspapers and television; and there have been at least two election specials with representatives of the seven so-called major parties. Which is rather unwieldy, and involves a lot of people talking over each other. Usually Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt, a tetchy couple.
Rishi Sunak is a polite man, a Wykehamist and a number cruncher, who made a lot of money in hedge funds in California. To where he may well return after the election. He has had a dreadful campaign. It began with him visiting a brewery in Wales and talking to men about the Euros. For which Wales failed to qualify. Then he went to Belfast for a press conference at the dock where they built the Titanic. Giving journalists the chance to ask if that was an appropriate metaphor for his campaign. And then came the D-Day fiasco. He has apologised copiously for his lack of judgement in cutting short his visit to Normandy in order to record an unimportant television interview with ITV. But it is quite extraordinary that no-one in his entourage and no-one in Number 10 appreciated that this was a blunder of the highest order. For which he has been pilloried by a lot of people, including fellow Tories of a military bent like Johnny Mercer and Penny Mordaunt. His basic campaign mantra is to say, at frequent intervals, that a Labour victory will cost every family in the country £2,000 in extra taxes. On closer questioning it seems that this figure was dreamed up by some Tory party SPADS, and relates to four years rather than one year. And is anyway considerably less than tax increases already in the pipeline regardless of who wins the election.
Neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer are natural communicators. Starmer is dull, a solid enough lawyer, who has made the Labour party electable again after years in the wilderness under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. If the polls are more or less right, he will become the next Prime Minister with a very substantial majority in the Commons. What worries me is that he seems to have no vision of the sort of country he wants the UK to be. And works hard at not saying anything radical that might offend people. He says that wealth creation will be at the heart of Labour’s programme. Which is deeply depressing. Unlimited economic growth is bad for the planet. I would be much happier with a Labour party that majored on redistribution; on dealing with the problem of steadily rising inequality. Both of wealth and of opportunity. And on building a new vision for the National Health Service. [We continue to spend less on our health system than either France of Germany]. Or for our flawed education system. Or dealing with the rising problems of mental health. Or our unsatisfactory transport system. Or global warming.
None of the other parties really count. The Lib-Dems are the only party committed to taking the UK back into Europe. And to cleaning up Britain’s rivers. But they are essentially lightweight. And Ed Davey’s stunts really belong in a Jeremy Kyle reality tv show. Nigel Farage is a very effective self-publicist. But he is an unpleasant character, labelled by a school friend as “a deeply unembarrassed racist”; disliked by many who have worked with him who see him as a power hungry narcissist. Reform, like UKIP, is basically a one-man show, with no policy other than ‘Net Zero Migration’. And no involvement or voice allowed to Farage’s supposedly 45,000 supporters. My guess is that Farage will again fail to be elected. For the ninth time. And will contest the leadership of the post-election English National party with Suella Braverman. The hard-line Tories.
Memory Lane
When was I last enthused by and involved in an election ? I certainly did some [modest enough] campaigning for Harold Wilson in 1964. When he secured a narrow victory over Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Between school and university I was a member of the Putney Young Socialists, and campaigned with them for the election of Hugh Jenkins, later Lord Jenkins of Putney. [Not to be confused with Lord [Roy] Jenkins of Hillhead.] Wilson came to speak at Wandsworth Town Hall, arriving late as usual; and we were treated to a warm-up speech of the ‘Hang the bankers high from the nearest lamppost’ variety by Tony Booth. Who at the time was the Putney Constituency Youth Liaison Officer. Later better known as the father of Cherie Blair. And as the ‘scouse git’ in Till Death us do Part. But for the election itself I was in Oxford. Where the University Labour Club was less into knocking on doors, and more into sending lengthy telegrams to world leaders.
With the benefit of several decades of hindsight, I think that Wilson, who became leader of the Labour party as a Left-Centre candidate, was a more effective politician than many people now believe. His major achievement was to keep British troops out of Vietnam in spite of the special relationship with the United States. [Are you listening Tony Blair and David Cameron ?] His major difficulty was that there were regular economic crises caused by a weak pound. And that Wilson, more a tactician than a visionary, was obsessed with leaks and factions within his cabinet.
Then two decades later in June 1983 I was actively involved in campaigning for the SDP Liberal Alliance in the West Oxfordshire constituency. The sitting Tory MP was Douglas Hurd, later succeeded by David Cameron. Nationally the Alliance polled 25% of the vote and came within 700,000 votes of outpolling Labour. It was the high point of the Alliance. But the First-past-the-Post system meant that the Alliance gained only 11 seats. Mrs Thatcher won the first of her two landslide victories,. The British victory in the Falklands War had helped her personal popularity. And economic growth had resumed. I was at the Election Day count at Witney Town Hall. Douglas Hurd didn’t turn up because his [second] wife was having a baby. [Like most of Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet, Hurd left his first wife to marry his secretary. The cabinet member who didn’t was Cecil Parkinson, who was pilloried for abandoning his secretary Sarah Keays, who gave birth to his baby.]
Two cheers for the archbishops
Possibly the best thing about this election is the prayer booklet, distributed by the Church Times, appearing under the imprimatur of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury. The booklet, called Pray your Part, contains brief Bible readings and prayer points for the twenty one days of the campaign. The themes include Integrity, Candidates, and Party Leaders, as well as Family Life, the NHS, Housing, Education, Overseas Aid, the Justice System etc. The booklet has been condemned as ‘woke rubbish’ by some Tory party spokesperson – so it must be doing some good. And it a valuable corrective to negative onlookers like me.
A poisoned chalice
The sad truth is that, however much we might want to celebrate the departure of the Tories after fifteen years or so of incompetence and inequality and lying, there is no guarantee that things will substantially improve under a Labour government. The simple fact is that we can’t at the same time run a ‘low tax, high incentive’ economy while providing the level of social services, health, social care, education, that people have come to expect. There is no clear way of squaring the circle. Tory policies mean that the poor will continue to get poorer. While fulfilling Labour policy objectives for the health services, our transport infrastructure, our rivers etc. would need significantly higher taxes for businesses and the wealthy. Which Labour is understandably unwilling to acknowledge.
I was reading the exhaustive [and exhausting] Crossman Diaries a couple of weeks ago. Richard Crossman [1907-74] was an intellectual snob, an Oxford academic, a journalist, a left-wing Labour MP, and a not particularly successful cabinet minister. Writing in December 1967, when he was Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons in Wilson’s administration, Crossman reflects:
“When I look back over these three years I realise how much better we could have done and how everything we have done has been too little and too late. The main disasters are our own fault … … Why was it that when the Labour Government came in after thirteen years the men who took charge of [the economy and] foreign policy and defence all believed that it was their role to prove that Labour could run Great Britain as well as the Conservatives ? Not one of them admitted that the job of a socialist was to scale Britain down to an off-shore island, to accept devaluation, to accept the winding up of the sterling area and to do these things voluntarily and not under compulsion.
… … That’s why it is vital that this new Statement should be a Statement of strategic intent – a new start in government ;policy and not merely the announcement of an economy package.”
I very much hope that we shall not be hearing a similar verdict on Keir Starmer’s administration in three years time.
Envoi
Scotland lost their first Euros game rather embarrassingly. But Germany are better than many commentators expected. And Scotland perhaps not quite as bad as their critics now think. England won their opening game; they totally annihilated Serbia 1-0 ! And they are not [yet] as good as their cheerleaders like to imagine.
Let me end on a happier note. Although too often cool and wet, it has been an excellent year in the garden, especially for roses. There was a very full church and positive atmosphere in Priestfield church this morning, welcoming for the first time the new combined congregation of Newington Trinity. And Susie and I are off up north later this week, heading for Skye and then on to Lewis. Admittedly we are packing pullovers and anoraks and rubber boots ! And perhaps a few books.
June 2024
Through a glass darkly 