The Rise and Projected Fall of UKIP

The results are… sort of in! As things stand, with 32 of 35 voting councils declared, the picture is pretty much what was expected, minus that dash of sensationalism over UKIP’s potential fortunes. A projected general election vote share puts them on about 23%, behind Labour and the Tories on approximately 29% and 25% respectively. The Liberal Democrats are consigned to a delicious 14%, adding further ridicule to their leaderships‘ recent, absurdly denialist statements of vitality.

To the figures! Labour’s current addition of 260 seats is barely a performance after their 2006-9 catastrophes. Two councils, South Shields and the two mayors gained will be considered a hazardous minimum. The Tories might be slightly relieved not to have suffered far worse than ten councils (all but two to No Overall Control) and 320 councillors lost, considering they retain an overall majority in councils. Still, it’s a sorry metric for success and more a stern indictment.

Liberal Democrats have typically relied more on “grass roots” council level elections to maintain national influence and the loss of at least 106 councillors and a massive reduction of the vote share could push them into crisis mode, long overdue as that is. Otherwise, the Green Party gaining but one seat and the BNP losing their remaining three is an afterthought. UKIP, adding upwards of 136 councillors to the original eight, is clearly the new “further to the” right wing player.

Farage has reacted, perhaps for the first time with an inkling of legitimacy, in typical fashion to any and all gains or even lateral movements for the party in the last five years. To paraphrase, “UKIP are now on the scene as a major party and will shape the face of this nation’s politics in a substantial way.” He’s a goofy little optimist in that sense and probably an honest one, despite the other half of his world view being consumed by fear of anything beginning with Euro.

But it turns out that the answer to the crucial question of whether or not the England and Wales council elections carried any true significance is, no. Not really. This general election projection is a curiosity at best, and distorts these results. They should be regarded as checking the pulse of the nation, and presently that pulse reads dangerously for the three established parties. But between the present and the spring of 2015 is a meaty chunk of what we humans call…. “time”.

Time, granted, in which the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats could prove incapable of recalibrating their collective sense of basic competency and political focus. In that regard it wouldn’t displease me to see the heads of messirs Clegg, Farron, Balls, Miliband and Osborne upon ye olde Westminster spikes. Cameron remains an oddly wet non-entity at present, avoiding the implicit chop that nonetheless is being steadily prepared by his blonde nemesis.

However I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the whole lot still shackling their parties down with so much toxic association come the general election. Solutions will likely be sought elsewhere although I don’t imagine the main three will have to be too creative. UKIP gave us just a little glimpse in the run-up to these elections of what lies in store for them, and toxic associations in the form of BNP and EDF dabblers aren’t the least of their concerns. They are not prepared.

Part of this is down to Farage’s curious insistence that his members not be whipped into unity in terms of policy. Without anything resembling a comprehensive central party policy all this has achieved is confusion when trying to relate UKIP’s cohesive mission statement to the public. They have somehow achieved a pitfall most commonly associated with liberal politics, despite the supposed anti-EU glue of the UKIP world.

Scratch beneath the surface of the perfunctory stump speech in this area and there is disarray. Email exchanges between the party’s leadership show this as much as any challenge to any of their number on something as essential as tax policy. This pathetic excuse of not having a respectably complete platform for want of a looming general election, is something any party vying for the responsibilities of government should be eviscerated for.

And UKIP have been around for a while now. Discussions of purchasing a platform from right-wing think tanks, at this point, is so laughable you can fairly argue that this party’s ability to only achieve the anticipated degree of success in these elections, in what is an abysmal political environment for the main three parties, shows that scepticism for the protest vote is already in healthy supply. I anticipate they won’t gain a single parliamentary seat in 2015.

Labour’s overall rise in the vote share clearly demonstrates that social democratic values aren’t particularly threatened by UKIP, with most of the actual right-wingers’ share being taken from the Tories and Lib Dems. And most importantly, UKIP failed to take control of a single council, highlighting the common feature of a fringe-turned-protest cum embryonic/ephemeral beta main party – a dispersed and ineffective voting base.

I’m only concerned in-so-far as the moderate political establishment does indeed have a pressing priority in getting their ships in proper order and pulling back the votes, as failure to do so leaves the door open for the sideshow that UKIP intrinsically and unavoidably are. They have two years to achieve this and I have a fleeting optimism that if there is any force that can adequately corral these buffoons, it’s a tangible threat to their political careers.

Well… at least the fleeting optimism will be back to its full anaemic state after my gag reflex settles. I’m turning off the news before I see another adult politician fawn over UKIP and their triumph of the day. Have some goddamned self-respect.

Freedland on Ed

I’m pleased to say another contributor to the world of information has been filtered out for my entirely less qualified attention. Jonathan Freedland is to be the third writer under the microscope, although only after some deliberation, as Caitlin Moran was making a strong case for inclusion in this journalistic canon just the other day, with a piece ranging from the role of art in society to the effects of modern pornography on young sexual expectations.

Freedland edged the focus of this article by a nose however, given the combined events of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions and an article in the Huffington Post looking at Ed Miliband’s new Reaganesque angle of attack. The lead question from the opposition leader echoed that of the Republican icon in his day, “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”. These things are pertinent to Freedland’s recent article, asking what kind of leader will Miliband be.

A brief introduction though. Freedland is a regular contributor to the Guardian, like Jenkins, and also the New York Times, but with a more political focus and journalistic style. A bit less inclined to offer personal thoughts on a given issue than that other monolith of opinion, he is more likely to drive the cognitive gears by framing a discussion. Jenkins generally achieves this with a stronger position put forward for dissection and potential objection.

As to the aforementioned discussion of Miliband’s character of leadership, he actually puts things in more specific terms. “Will Ed Miliband be an Obama or Hollande?”, he asks. The question boils down to the potential manner in which Ed may one day ascend to power; with dynamic, inspiring visions of change, or quietly and inevitably on the back of repetitive Tory failings and subsequent dissatisfaction? I think today’s PMQ’s was a further hint of which.

From my perspective, Miliband has thus far been firmly camped out in the Hollande corner, and not to repeat the statements of several previous articles I shall only here label him the… endless font of condemnation not cut with a shred of evident constructive thinking. This from the alleged ideas man of the Labour Party. Perhaps as Freedland indicates, it has simply been far too difficult to resist the regular temptations of steady government incompetence.

Despite Miliband’s efforts in the Commons today, challenging Cameron on that issue of the voter’s changing fortunes, the Prime Minister had just enough politically viable defence at hand to resist. But his closing remarks to his assailant were something of a PMQ’s knockout, as he told the House of Miliband’s “major speech on the economy”. A speech, he gleefully added, which contains no new policy initiatives. Queue the Tory benches going ballistic.

This somewhat laughable omission would be damaging enough to the idea that the Labour Party are offering a reasonable alternative, but the matter is compounded by the manner in which the man was on the assault today. It was over two years ago that the media had put the notion that Ed could be Ed to the sword, his early tenure being veritably riddled with satire. It was, in all serious terms, quite hard to take him seriously.

Last year it seems that various oscillations of personal image management finally stabilised to some degree, as with the “One Nation” party conference speech he attempted statesmanship. Aside from famously pinching the central theme of that speech from famed Conservative Disraeli, it was only otherwise notable for painfully lacking in policy and detail. Worse however, it was the beginning of his steady evolution into a 19^th Century style of barracker in the Commons.

But “One Nation” hasn’t made much of an appearance since early after the conference, and with his recent channeling of energy into the Reagan Question, it seems he is transforming yet again. Sadly for the state of healthy opposition, it is a transformation of image only and from Ed to Benjamin to Ronald the only consistent thing about Miliband and company is a lack of substance from the Labour front bench.

Freedland is right to indicate that Miliband’s tone of leadership will be more important come election time, and with a sustained healthy lead over the Tories in the polls, thanks to their masochistic tendencies, it can even be said he has no immediate reason to fill that void of usefulness. One can only hope that there is at least a semblance of a plan being squirreled away somewhere though, as an economically rudderless Labour government is a scary prospect.

I could easily be sold on a truly progressive and realistic agenda set out by Labour, admittedly due heavily to present disenfranchisement with the government, but that is not looking likely to appear from this set-up. Frankly the idea of Miliband conjuring a fervour comparable to Obama is a fantasy, with or without policy. But as Hollande aptly proved, and as the Tories are currently adding truth to the fact, all it takes is a really, really unpopular incumbent.

Earlier on in this government I had privately written off Miliband as a caretaker leader, possibly not even set to face a single general election. But Freedland’s article has reminded me of that slightly grim fact. In my defence, back then I could never have anticipated the scope of Tory blundering that led to his ascendancy. Prime Minister Miliband? Too much of a mouthful for me, but I’m not actually partisan… I just want someone to offer something truly appealing.

The State of Governance: UK Edition Three

The long awaited Third Edition of this almost long abandoned series is here. It was my intention at the offset to write a regular article on the lesser machinations of Westminster and yet both initial attempts descended into angst and distraction. I like to think this is because I do care about the nation’s politics, however perilous a notion that is, but I’m also happy to invest plenty of the guilt in Westminster itself.

Where, oh where, oh where to start? Well, despite a recent wild assertion of Simon Jenkins that Nick Clegg is political mastery personified, and an article from Lib Dem president Tim Farron suggesting that the party is still a significant force not to be written off, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem’s are now entirely written off. Attach any variety of expletives to the prefix “catastro-”, and you’ll be in the right descriptive area.

Both Jenkins and Farron were eviscerated for these outrageous views and rightly so, with polls showing Lib Dem support holding to their once familiarly weak 10% vote share. The minor surge in popularity brought to the party by Clegg’s 2010 debate performances has been trampled under the perception that they have done nothing to vindicate a single vote cast for them. The Mansion Tax, voting referendum, university fees and Trident spring to mind.

The truth is that Britain was briefly fooled into thinking there was a viable third party when the Lib Dems were given a platform at those debates, the first of their kind in this country. I can only imagine how small the minority of regularly engaged political junkies is in this country. Most do not take great interest in PMQ’s much less any other venue for occasional Liberal bleetings, and so the sight and sound of an essentially new figure who could complete full sentences was hard to dismiss.

I’m happy to call it now. Come the next election Labour and the Tories will strip the Lib Dem’s back down to their core base, however disenfranchised that lingering gaggle may be. But what of the main two parties, what are they doing to earn those votes? Virtually nothing at a glance. While the Lib Dem’s have been haplessly consigning themselves to ignominy, messirs Cameron, Miliband and all under them have also been resoundingly disappointing.

Labour first. I will admit to having a more sympathetic ear to the Tories, notably after a fairly destructive 13 years of Labour power, but that doesn’t make my present distaste for the front benches totally biased. Wednesday’s PMQ’s provided sound context for this claim, as Miliband stood up once again to try on the latest of his tactics, those currently being aggressive derision for the Prime Minister.

It may appeal to the hardline Labourites but I would think that to anyone to the right of even a fairly liberal disposition is going to be turned off. Speaking for myself at least, I have no time for someone who offers little beyond hugely hypocritical criticism, and in a fashion entirely lacking in deference. He and Balls sit at the dispatch box like some smug cabal, apparently ignorant of their responsibilities towards the current climate.

Labour are direly in need of some housecleaning, starting at the top. It should have taken place in the immediate aftermath of their 2010 defeat, the electorate having only disposed of so much chaff. As much as I may lean towards centre-right views, I passionately believe in a proper socialist alternative to act as a foil and provide a genuine spectrum of political discourse. Labour under this pairing are offering us nothing of the kind. I’ve said it before and will keep saying it.

The Tories, of course, are now also in need of a similar purging. I was for quite a long time pleased and impressed with Cameron’s “compassionate” conservatism, effectively a ploy for moderation while hoodwinking the right of the party into thinking there were still some traditional values politics therein. The game is now up though, and as last night’s vote on legalising gay marriage showed, at least half of the party is significantly behind the times.

As a side note, the legislation isn’t all it could be. I do not like that it explicitly protects religious freedoms as I feel these are already well enough protected. The state recognising the right of homosexuals to enjoy full marital status should have been the extent of it. Churches of any description in the nation can now hide behind the law, without further consideration for the progressive direction of society. Not that it matters to me, but this lack of debate within these religious bodies places their future at great risk.

But that isn’t why over half the Tories didn’t vote for it. Listening to the Commons debate it was the usual bewildered denial of marriage being anything other than the union of man and woman, and similar baseless propositions. The definition of marriage is whatever we what it to be, as made clear by the distinct evolution that the institution has gone through over the centuries. As with some of the stronger anti-European members of the party, I wish they were only a minority. Theirs being the prevalent position would not be good for the country.

Beyond this stark question of identity sadly lies the substance of the Tory’s successes and failures, and here there is little cause for celebration. Farce after u-turn after mishandling after farce, has bombarded my once rosy outlook on the party with so much doubt that I further seriously question the general competency of government. Botched contracts, botched policy and the metronomic presence of scandal does that to a young observer.

The absolute judgement is inexorably tied to the state of the economy, which is presently often labelled “anaemic” despite George Osborne’s regular insistence otherwise. But the signs of his over-optimism are apparent, as with Michael Gove today retracting his plans for an English Baccalaureate we have further proof that disorder is systemic within the echelons of the party. The likelihood now that Osborne stands alone in getting things right, if the Pasty Affair hadn’t already minimised it, is minimal.

Cameron bears plenty of responsibility for not guiding the ship with a firm hand, perhaps the result of trying too emphatically to return to cabinet style politics from the more presidential model of the Blair years. But this failing is clear outside of the cabinet, made visible by the increasing resurgence of the old Tory faction. I frequently allude to his balancing act of satisfying this wing while moving the party forward, and the act is in a more endangered state than ever.

It is unlikely, but heavens forbid he be ousted before the next election. Our political system is essentially one of cheques and balances, where one major party acts as counterweight to the other. Just as we need a worthy Labour party, we need a moderate Conservative party, in light of the fact that people prefer multiple incarnations of Labour to a harder right Conservative image. It was the inability of the Tories to find the middle-ground that allowed Labour so much unhindered activity from 1997 to 2010. After barely three years, it would be disastrous to go straight back to that.

Simon Jenkins on Europe

Well thanks a lot Simon. Usually I like to frame my own arguments around issues, or in the least offer a substantive alternate take, yet on the matter of Britain and the EU all you’ve left me is the potential for verbatim regurgitation. Frankly I find it quite inconsiderate that you would assume such a totally rational perspective on the matter, as I’ve come to expect even a little articulate contrarianism upon which to cognitively chew.

If you’ll excuse me I’ll address the reader now.

At most I find two points to pick up on, and these are simple notes not remotely approaching disagreement. The horror. The first is in regard to what Jenkins calls Cameron’s “vacillations” and to be sure, the Prime Minister has dithered and dallied and gone back and forth with the best of them. However, the question of Europe has been politically toxic for the Conservative party almost since the question existed and I’ve therefore been rather forgiving of the man.

The last six months of coalition revealed quite emphatically that the old Tory party is still alive and kicking, grouchily awakening from the temporary hush caused by Cameron’s astute push towards moderation, if only in image. It’s not a question of only satisfying both his party and the Lib Dems, but almost more importantly, both his vision for the Tories and what they really are. The PM’s balancing act has been revealed and though we can certainly say he was overcautious, he was so with the best intentions.

I would be livid to see the Tories consumed in yet another European-fuelled bloodbath and, admitting to a few hair-raising moments, I might actually go so far as to say I admire him for keeping the wolves at bay. There’s every possibility I’m being overly optimistic but what I ultimately see is a PM who wants to resolve the big question the right way, once. That is despite, or perhaps to spite, the existing impression that the coalition couldn’t hit a bullseye on the first attempt if their lives depended on it. The proof will be in the results.

As for the other side of the aisle, our darling Labour party, replete with Tweedleband and Tweedleballs, disciples of the Dark Lord Brown and consummate inducers of nausea, they’ve shown their hand. Jenkins draws attention to their sordid apprenticeships under the former Chancellor and how they would have had front row seats to the 2003 version of today’s debate. There were indications then of the direction the EU was heading and god save us all if it wasn’t Brown who saw the realities therein.

Thus, rightly according to Jenkins, “There need be no disagreement.” I can’t say with any certainty that there is. I can’t say with any certainty anything about the Labour party’s front pairing really. Perhaps that their sole purpose in political life at present is to offer endlessly snide criticisms with one hand and absolutely nothing with other, unless they occasionally needed both to dole out such useless contributions?

I’m all for a dash of good old fashioned political enmity but the extent to which Miliband and Balls have pushed it is not something I care for. An opposition’s duty is to offer a meaningful second choice, and is essential to democratic government. Yet even on the issue of Europe they have brought little to the table beyond the usual cynical lambasting of the Tories, and a vague to non-existent representation of their own message.

We deserve better, although on many a day I wouldn’t reserve that comment for Labour alone. Not just our political classes, we deserve better from Jenkins too. I’ll be disappointed not to find something more controversial or out of tune with my own views next time. Perhaps the National Trust chairman will call for our heritage sites to be saturated with wind farms. Yes, he’d love that.

The Falklands Non-Question

So, the New Year, full of hope for peace, progress and more. Strange that the mere resetting of the calendar is thus laden with expectation and resolutions of betterment, and less strange that by mid-January most will have succumbed to their sworn-off desires, only more indulged in to compensate for the guilt of a weak will. We are all only human.

The Christmas period is for reasons unknown to me a fairly dead time for news. This is despite the axles of whichever ongoing conflict, diplomatic spat or economic malaise continuing their grind, often unabated, and perhaps the good folk of the journalistic world simply grant us reprieve. Sure enough I spent the last fortnight lulled into a false sense of security, but I think it has more to do with our individual needs not to be endlessly bombarded with strife and hardship. Most days I habitually, almost addictively, move from sleep directly to the rifling through of events I dared to miss through necessary unconsciousness and yet I found myself choosing not to be drawn into any matter. Whether it were the increasing desperation of the Assad regime, the rise of fascist elements in Europe or any of the trivial minutia that dilute the serious issues, I was having none of it.

Wine and whisky, opulently rich meals, late nights by warm fires and the reluctant admission of fine company in a loving family should be the order of things for at least part of our year.

And how it all came screeching back into the harsh light of reality yesterday when reading President de Kirchner’s open letter to David Cameron. At least I thank the gods of news for making 2013’s clarion call back to the newspapers so riddled with a sort of twisted and cynical comedy. There is plenty to say about plenty yet here is just the warm-up I need.

Let’s start from a position of deference however. All praise to Cristina Elisabet Fernandez de Kirchner. Here is a very serious individual with a very serious, distinguished career and record of achievement. First elected female leader of her nation and deservedly so.

Moving swiftly on. If you happen not to have read this particular letter, published by the Guardian and Independent, please do. There are roughly three ways to travel from this point, the first and possibly most rational being to ignore it, as why on earth are two developed nations in the modern world engaging in this bizarre feud over a bleak and frigid set of islands in the South Atlantic whose only natural population was ever a certain number of penguins and seals.

The other two options are more than likely determined by your nationality, where being an Argentine you might think President de Kirchner is spot on, or being British, those little hairs of indignity on the back of your neck are starting to rise with patriotic fervour. Strangely enough I’m feeling quite British today, but not because I’m abandoning rationality by not caring but as I do take thorough issue with what the Argentine leader is trying to do, and how she has decided to do it.

First, at simple face value, there is something distinctly puerile and inappropriate about this letter. International diplomacy should not be conducted indirectly like a shameful parent employing a beleaguered child to communicate spiteful tones to the estranged partner. Let alone at a high decibel level at the dinner party. It screams the most unfortunately cynical of posturing and that is without even glancing at the substance of what’s at hand.

What of the substance? President de Kirchner makes a variety of bold claims aligning to accusations of colonialism and disregard for Argentine sovereignty. She employs a variety of spurious historical claims and tenuous logic to give her case a semblance of depth. The colonialist point is beyond absurd, as Britain has offered each and every former member of the Empire precisely the relationship they choose to have with Britain. It holds no yolk of oppression over any foreign land, as much sooner than other colonial powers Britain accepted the age was dying. That we were emblematic of the age and more successful than most is beside the point.

That sort of an accusation is abound with immaturity and reminds me quite distinctly of the occasional feature in parts of the Islamic world where “Death to America” has become this meaningless and generic slogan, representative of all forms of dissatisfaction. The notion of disregard for Argentine sovereignty is also entirely predicated on the wholly ill-conceived idea that the once uninhabited Falkland Islands were ever really part of Argentina.

A brief glance at the history of these islands will reveal the common features of the time where concerned with territorial claims. An early hint of strategic value in the late 17^th Century led the big players in France, Spain and Britain to jostle intermittently for them until around the early 19^th century. Half-hearted naval exploits or the marginally more asserted efforts of mongrel bands of mercantile folk operating under whichever flag of convenience engaged in limited settlement attempts. The Napoleonic Era and primarily the dissolution of Iberian imperial gains, brought about by French invasions of Spain and Portugal, allowed for the creation of independent South American entities and notably the United Provinces of the River Plate, Argentina’s precursor, in 1810.

Now, President de Kirchner cites 1833 as the date of what she describes as the forcible stripping of the islands from Argentine control. This is ignoring the fact that the modern state of Argentina did not technically exist in this year, the United Provinces of the River Plate having only transitioned into the Argentine Confederation in 1831, only many years later becoming something close to the unified Argentina of today after protracted civil war. What she claims to have been stripped of was the trading settlement of one Luis Vernet, a French-German operating under the loose authority of the United Provinces, that had in 1831 been rendered defunct by the raid of the USS Lexington seeking to exact reparations for Vernet’s pirate-like behaviour in pursuing commercial monopoly.

January 3^rd, 1833 saw Britain engage in the first genuine and realistic attempt to colonise the islands, which, after cleaning up Vernet’s mess and removing an infantile penal colony licensed by Buenos Aires, merely involved substantive investment and population. Argentina’s claim to the islands, even if it could be legitimately called that, lasted no more than roughly ten years.

Simply put, there are no, to few at best, legitimate grounds for President de Kirchner’s renewed efforts in this most pointless of disputes, although her reasons for this course of action are quite transparent. Argentina has suffered many years of effective stagnation under either the populist regimes that espouse the fairly vague constructs of Peronism or the military dictatorships that intersected them. Her own political situation is weakening as a populist leader in a nation experiencing issues of poverty, crime and corruption, and almost exactly like Leopoldo Galtieri is seeking a kind of neo-conservative distraction.

Finally, President de Kirchner’s limited geography lesson in that letter carries little weight. However many thousands of miles closer to Argentina this island is, it is irrelevant to the fact that the long-standing population almost universally wants to remain with Britain. This year’s referendum is almost certainly going to affirm this and the only colonialist ambition remaining will be President de Kirchner’s.

I never thought I would find myself so implicitly agreeing with anything the Sun newspaper did or said, but their sign off to the slightly glib counter-letter released today sums it all up nicely. Hands off!

A Little Nod to Leveson

The big news on the home front in the last week or so was obviously the big reveal for the Leveson Inquiry. This issue was never exactly close to my heart despite being one of the news media and journalism, as it never really dealt with my kind of journalism. I despise the world of tabloids and gossip, and as far as I could tell, the travesties that led to the Inquiry had nothing to do with the international affairs or even domestic ones of any serious import that I follow. The Inquiry itself was more of a news piece than many of the stories it involved.

To be clear, I care about the murder of a young girl like Milly Dowler and I do care about the fates of those families who lost loved ones to either Iraq or Afghanistan. The manner in which I care though is probably quite different to the manner in which a reader of those know publications, now in disrepute, cares. I heard about Milly Dowler and was deeply saddened, can empathise with loss and have a deep, abiding respect for anyone who joins the Armed Forces. I have on the other hand, little to no interest in the sort of in-depth, Victorian-era grotesquerie as provided by many national prints.

Make no mistake, what certain journalists did around these cases was a dictionary example of immorality. But the Leveson Inquiry was not awfully cautious about making a strong distinction and it was for others to defend the incredibly important profession of journalism as it should be. To me, journalism is an essential pursuit in which practices are often daring, dangerous, clever and wholly vital to proper knowledge. There is no natural association with phone hacking and bribes in my mind and thus there must effectively be two types of journalism – real and tabloid.

It’s hardly breaking the thought mould there but I think it’s important to persistently reiterate the fact so as not to drag many an incredible talent into the murk of hacks. The debate on Leveson’s final judgement and Cameron’s reaction raged for a few days but has been reduced to a steady fizzle in the onslaught of other events and developments. Worryingly, the only notable distinction being made was between print and online spaces.

But what of the judgement? A regulatory body with statutory underpinning is required rather than a statutory regulatory body,  but either way it’s irrelevant because Cameron wouldn’t budge on even the lighter interpretation. I will be cautious in agreeing with Cameron, as one should these days, as I’m still not entirely sure I agree with him for his reasons. His revolve around that rather hypocritical political argument about not installing statute that can be used gradually for political gain or exploitation.

Quite the good Samaritan really. Alternatively, any excuse is better than admitting he doesn’t want to annoy the media with further regulation only a couple of years from an election in which he will really very badly need media support. I don’t mind though, politicians will be political, and ultimately he doesn’t want a regulatory system that is basically already in existence.

Ian Hislop phrases this most effectively – why do we need further regulation when there is a system of laws in place that will properly deal with an offending tabloid journalist if caught and properly prosecuted? By all means fine publications a meaningful amount for wildly libellous statements but in terms of ensuring the conduct of journalists and editors, just make sure the actual law is working. If this requires picking apart the hellishly intertwined relationships of journalists and police then by all means, but don’t go about the tired business of shock and outrage followed by overreaching and unnecessary measures.

An attempt to make sure this kind of thing never happens is naïve. Extra regulation or not, some unscrupulous prat working for whichever rag will eventually hack another phone and when he does, we can put others off that kind of behaviour by sending him to jail.

Rhetoric… Broadly Speaking

It’s been a fascinating couple of weeks. Politics have dominated the headlines in the UK and USA given the slew of autumn party conferences here, and across the pond the final countdown to the general elections began with the first of three presidential debates. Needless to say I am giddy and swooning like an addict given too great a fix. The finer machinations of running a nation are, of course, occasionally a bit dull but when the gloves of office come off as they have so energetically done of late even a true cynic could surely not resist a cursory glance at how the key players are attempting to engage their existing and potential supporters. Where to begin?

With Michael Deaver actually. Ronald Reagan’s long serving communications guru and Deputy Chief of Staff during his time in the White House had a very interesting perspective on the importance of constituent elements in a successful broadcast appearance. While referring mainly to the occasion of a leadership debate, his suggestion that appearance was 85% of the game followed by 10% “how you say things” and 5% “what you actually say” is curiously relevant to all of these recent and ongoing events.

Chronologically we had the Liberal Democrats first, as indeed how else could they be first in any other consideration. They may as well have taken this opportunity to lead the pack, in however a meaningless fashion, but sadly there was never a possibility this act could really seize the initiative. Nick Clegg and company are simply far too damaged at this point to attain any reversal of fortune but nonetheless from 22-26 September they did their best to ignore the fact. It was quite remarkable how oblivious they were to the arch-dilemma they are consumed by. Perfunctory apologies from our esteemed Deputy PM for their impotence in opposing the vast student tuition increase were ridiculed but beyond this the Liberal Democrats carried belligerently on as normal.

This was not a party in crisis mode as far as I could discern and my substantial disbelief at claims they were an effective foil to Conservative antics was only surpassed by the audacity of bothering to promote a platform at all. The Mansion Tax, now wholly rejected by the Tories, and any other permutation of their “fairer tax for tough times” initiative was laughably electoral in nature given their roundly accepted inefficacy. One could almost understand this however, if looking at the polls. Somehow, despite the Tories leading the charge on most of the unsavoury policy of government, the Liberal Democrats support has plummeted harder and Clegg himself is arguably the least popular party leader since polling began.

Applying Deaver’s model to the Liberal Democrats is almost wasteful due to the severity of the problems they face. We’re not talking about a short stint in the wilderness that the two major parties must suffer in defeat, but a catastrophic regression that may well require dissolution and recreation to ever re-emerge back into the forefront of politics. But still, with Clegg looking like a walking shambles, sounding like a man on the edge and saying things that make very little sense at all, I’d say he failed to pass the acceptable standard of a man supposedly vying for power over a nation. Moving on.

It pains me to say that Ed Miliband faired better. He went into his conference with a very specific personal mission – to convince the country that he can be as good a statesman as he can be a policy wonk. That I find myself in opposition to many a product of his wonkery does not altogether detract from the fact that he has a decent brain. Probably unfairly though, myself and many, many… many of us have some difficulty hearing past his nasal, whiny voice, his gangly, disproportioned physique and his unashamed usurpation of his brother’s potentially more credible leadership. There are concerns over his ability to exercise authority over the unions who made his ascension possible as well as his formative apprenticeship under the ignominious Gordon Brown.

And how he attacked this mission with heavily coached enthusiasm. And how, in my opinion, he fell short of the mark, thanks mainly to the transparency of every intonation, gesticulation and motive behind near every sentence he spoke. Rhetoric comes so painfully unnatural to this man that in reaching for such heady heights as Disraeli, the most heavily referenced individual in his keynote speech, he forced me on several occasions to literally reel with embarrassment. Was he convinced he was Steve Jobs reincarnate? As the entire affair was so clearly informed by the primary goal of casting off his nerdy shackles he also failed in saying much of worth. Although he did have me nodding in agreement during his feisty attack on coalition incompetence, there wasn’t an identifiable detail of policy in an entire speech that was largely dominated by a tame personal story and the vagueness of the co-opted “One Nation” concept.

Poor man, he did try, but there are limitations there he just can’t surpass. And if we place significant credence in Deaver’s model there is probably no hope for his aspirations. Miliband Junior will always be the nerd and his only chance lies in the ineptitude of his opponents. After all, he’s tried almost everything. Whether it be embracing or trying to defeat the majority perception, he looks wrong, sounds wrong and if the substance of his words is worth so little, I return to an old thought that he really is the caretaker leader while Labour recover as a party. When will David make his move?

The first presidential debate was a bit of a surprise and makes the reality of Deaver’s model a very sad one. Romney was on fire, and I’m sure you have picked up on the general impression that he demolished an inexplicably lacklustre performance from Obama. He looked and sounded rather presidential compared to the hesitant and professorial President. The Denver altitude perhaps. Throughout the history of presidential debates the polling question that attracts the most attention is which candidate seemed more presidential, and there was little doubt in this case.

I can only hope that through some phenomena the American public chose to pay more attention to the 5%. In the aftermath of the debate, the fact-checkers went to work and item by item began to take apart Romney’s performance. In the figurative battlefield of ideas, Obama could have put a bullet straight though the heart of the Romney campaign if he’d even bothered to fight. The painful irony of the supremely encouraging employment statistics that appeared the day after the debate showed this – quite detrimental to Romney’s assertion that Obama’s methods have failed and that he was going to be the master of small business and job creation, employment is at it’s best since 2008 and Obama is in fact a net job creator.

But how Obama allowed Romney to disavow himself of the actually insane though still wholly under-defined budget proposals he’s been running with for months is beyond me. How, after his barnstorming energy of the 2008 campaign he allowed Romney, who stumbles over the most simple sentences on many occasions, to come across as a superior orator is further beyond me still. During one rather extended patriotic rap I actually thought Romney had a shot, it was a sublime political mini-speech. The big question is, was this performance enough to undermine the gradually established notion that Romney might be an emotionless cyborg who gives private dinner speeches describing half of the American populace as welfare dependant parasites.

I sincerely hope not. The thought of a Romney-Ryan Republican government chills me to the core and I cannot begin to fathom his motivations beyond being the first Morman president to Obama’s first African-American president. What is clear is that Romney really wants to be president and I think that’s an unhealthy disposition for a role of sombre duty and immense power.

I’m thoroughly looking forward to David Cameron’s keynote speech. If it can’t surpass the efforts of his fellow party leaders then I would be inclined to lose the last of my now microscopic hope in the Conservative party. That is if I hadn’t seen William Hague’s speech today. I lament his ill-fortuned time as party leader and it continues to feed my distaste for the Eurosceptic branch of the party to this day. Cameron made sense at the time – young, moderate and apparently competent in the wake of the old, grey and angry Tory disasters that were IDS and the vampiric Howard. But barely leading the party to victory against Brown after 13 years of Labour government does not really prove his worth.

Was Hague today renewing his intent? Deaver would probably think so if he was still around today and it just so happens Hague was making sense. Interesting times.

 

The State of Governance: UK Edition Two

I need to start this article with an apology. In Edition One of this series I referred to a number of government issues, all accumulating towards a fairly straightforward condemnation of the state of things as they are. And yet I made one significant mistake. By choosing to repeat the moniker of one particular incident, that being the VAT surcharge proposed for certain hot goods sold on and off our high streets, I became complicit in my own pet hatred of a brand of political and media language that we can all do without. I dare not actually repeat the name in question but we’ll just say it stems from an infamous chapter in American history during which one Richard M. Nixon was obliged to resign from the most powerful office on Earth due to his direct involvement in the attempted cover-up of the break-in of DNC headquarters by subordinates ostensibly trying to uncover evidence of illicit funding to the DNC by Cuban authorities. Snappy.

The Watergate scandal, named after the Watergate hotel and office complex, went beyond this incident however and eventually Nixon implicated himself through recordings he had covertly made of private conversations with various individuals subsequent to this attempted cover-up. This was an astonishing episode in the narrative of US politics that had profound implications for the relationship between citizenry and government as well as the question of executive authority. Its importance cannot be understated.

And yet in the ensuing decades we have grown all too fond of the suffix “gate” attached to any and every scandal from the trivial to the somewhat serious. The aforementioned incident involving, amongst other products, a delicacy of the Cornwall region, was perhaps the final straw for me and despite my indiscretion I had sworn never again to exaggerate such pure banality as a Conservative case of mean policy diarrhoea with such a connection to a definitively seminal event. Even if that was what everyone else was calling it.

No, the use of the “gate” term has certainly now run its course, and likely did some time ago. It is idiotic to use such a term when in fact all this does is dilute the understanding of future generations of a time when the leader of the free world engaged in corruption and criminal activities that appeared more along the lines of an implausible Hollywood script, than the true precedent for the benchmark of genuine political scandal. I never felt more provincial than when newscaster after journalist after opposition member, with regards to what I will now rename Osborne’s Pasty Nightmare, regurgitated the term with that often apparent twinkle of self-satisfaction for having dared to be so terribly bloody clever. Oh, the scorn…

Having said this I could now take an elegant tangent back to what was the planned substance of this article, that being a disdainful look at the Labour party. But actually no amount of elegance could adequately achieve the seamless transition I dreamt of and so I find myself hijacked again by a propensity for distraction. I would rather stick to the issue of language in and around politics and my perception of that itself having been hijacked by the effete gaggle of politicians we are these days served by.

I have certainly mentioned in other articles that part of my enjoyment of the political process in a few nations is the theatre of it. This is partly symptomatic of my understood position of glib observer and commentator, but even though politics should be the serious business of making people’s lives better, it is simply true that there is an obnoxious element of PR and marketing. Stemming from this is the majority of that theatrical aspect, which I usually revel in. Sadly, the fun stops with a resounding thud when I’m forced to listen to the politician who, when grappling with profundity and neutrality all at once, in a struggle akin to grasping a lubricated fish, manages to say absolutely nothing. It is bewildering.

We could probably name the usual language of politicians a language entirely unto itself, and indeed, no longer do our esteemed MPs speak English, I hereby call them users of the unwanted dialect of unremitting twattery. Before you accuse me of being rather overly agitated by this impairment of communication, I should defend myself.

God help me but these are actually important individuals, involved in the important undertaking of running the country. I believe that in a democracy the people should be engaged, and speaking as an avid follower of these issues, nothing turns me off more than this dire situation. It does not surprise me in the slightest that direct democratic participation in the UK has steadily declined since 1997 when professional politicians began to outnumber the politicians of conscience (dare I suggest such a thing exists) and this language became prevalent. What ever happened to the statesman who with eloquence and frankness could deliver a message and actively engage the people with it? I am not imagining this was once a real thing as despite Tony Blair’s era bringing this foul culture into play, he was a supreme communicator. As is Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton for that matter, when either are in form.

It now seems the rare exception that a politician speaks in their fashion, although it so desperately shouldn’t be. Vince Cable is often hailed for undressed language, and it’s perhaps his greatest bit of political currency given his occasional habit of proposing curious initiatives. Incidentally, this opens the door to the question of the substance of policy itself. Maybe I am being too hard on the poor folks over in Westminster, as perhaps if they had even the nucleus of a good idea to run with they wouldn’t have to veil needless tripe with a barrage of meaningless qualifiers and exhaustively researched catchwords and phrases that tested well in sample groups. Perhaps if for once a policy could speak for itself we could entirely forgo the mildly sordid and intrusive experience of an MPs ramblings.

We should be so lucky. I realise again as I draw this piece to a close that I’m not achieving the higher goal of discussing such a diamond-in-the-rough as logical policy but then I can find praise for myself in this. Clearly lacking a decent idea at present I say that in distinction to the majority of our lamentable public servants I did not therefore choose to enter politics.

I honestly did want to spend some time with this piece discussing the Labour opposition. And in light of Nick Clegg’s recent surge of heinously transparent policy shifts away from the Tory side of things I think it would be just about reasonable to discuss him a little further. Despite the… Lib Dem thing. But I’m exhausted with rage now and should the House of Commons not collapse in on itself overnight, I’ll have wandered down that way and repeatedly smashed my ailing, frustrated head against its increasingly redundant walls for nothing.

Until next time. Although to corroborate this article and pre-empt the next, please watch this delightful clip featuring Steve Bell offering his commentary on the current Lib Dem conference. Ask no questions as to why I loathe them thereafter.

The State of Governance: UK Edition One

As opposed to the rather more exhaustively referenced piece on Assange and his road to a Butch Cassidy-style ending (Ricardo Platino can be his Sundance Kid, although I’m concerned about the efficacy of English truncheons over Spanish rifles), this one is more visceral. Not just visceral, mind you, more visceral. Thus I defend all oversights of fact and errors of interpretation.

This decision wasn’t at all based on the advice given after the previous article, suggesting that while it’s good to inform, it’s also good to let my readership finish an article without having to catch up on another twenty first. I’m learning. In all honesty, it’s rather more based on the fact that PMQ archives are dreadfully catalogued, and reading endless transcriptions of the speeches of the most asinine political class since time began was making me very sad. I couldn’t be bothered. My hope anyway is that this issue is a little closer to home for some of you and basically irrelevant to the rest. You’ll either know what I’m talking about or not, and if the former, will sympathise or disagree with me based on your existing feelings. This sense is wonderfully encapsulated by a Gary Younge article written pre-election. So before I finish providing my own reasoning for writing this being a waste of time… UK government.

Two and a half years ago I was elated. I might describe myself as a libertarian, which is basically to say I think taxes and government are generally irksome and I prefer to do what I want, when I want. But this conflicts with my other brain which informs me that social justice and equality of most description is incredibly important, and although we can debate the use of taxes and the competence of government in relation to these, it’s not like anyone else is trying very hard.

But two and a half years ago, New Labour had been trying for 13 years and thanks to an affluent upbringing that brought with it some preconceived political ideology, and a smattering of national and global financial catastrophe, I was only too happy to see Brown finally walking the lonely walk out of Downing Street. This emotion didn’t suffer for the short period of uncertainty during which the Con-Lib coalition formed and there was actually a fleeting possibility that Labour could wrangle back the election with some ungodly, mutant “rainbow” coalition of sorts. I would have very seriously burned Westminster to the ground, seeing that democracy as we knew it had died, but I was denied this public service by the marginally acceptable outcome that was.

Even then I wasn’t a complete fascist though, and won’t ignore some of the good things Labour achieved, such as the adoption of the “Third Way”, provision of the national minimum wage and limited aspects of their tax and benefits reforms. Sadly these scarcely served to diminish my increasingly rancorous disdain for Gordon Brown, his affinity for an older, Keynesian model and general denial of the fact that apart from those embodied by Dennis Skinner, I don’t think anyone wanted him. It didn’t help that I found him personally odious, and it would be a good time to mention that I do believe in statesmanship. It may not be the most elevated concept but who leads the nation speaks for the nation, and I’m not ashamed to say that I would have found his disagreeable policies more palatable had he an ounce more charisma to convince me.

And so in came the Tories, rather jubilant after so long in opposition and content for having expediently arranged victory. The mood was such that you would have thought the Lib Dems were a Tory Lite rump, both parties were so eager for a measure of power. I honestly and totally unrealistically imagined this was the start of a golden age of sensible management and sensible policy, that the coalition would only have the best effect of tempering the Tory right and the more leftwards leanings of the Liberals, resulting in a gloriously harmonious government leading the nation out of recession and into prosperity. It felt inevitable and I ate the Rose Garden scenes up and asked for more. Did India really want independence? Those waves have been looking so glumly unruled…

Oh alas, where to begin? This very question has delayed publication of this article as after only a short while of considering this and marshalling my evidence and subsequent thoughts, my head hurt far too much and I had to lie down. The sheer weight of farce has even forced my to redress the theme as more introductory, the beginning of a serial on the many ways Westminster sapped my faith in humanity. For now, for a start, I think we can find significant complaint simply within the failed or misleading manifesto commitments of both coalition parties and the truly shocking degree of incompetence in the cabinet.

Today we have no electoral reform and no parliamentary reform, but instead a host of reforms to the NHS that were not only excluded by the Tory’s promise not to heavily reorganise, but are at this point broadly a pariah. Instead of the Liberal promise to scrap tuition fees we have the most expensive university attendance in history and instead of bolstering younger levels of educational support we lost EMA’s. Compassionate conservatism evaporated in an instant with punishing welfare and public sector reforms in the same fiscal policy that scrapped the 50p and corporate tax rates. New Deal-esque infrastructural and construction projects have failed to materialise and Trident failed to disappear, but then Mitt Romney did tell me recently that the Russians are still our greatest existential threat and I sleep soundly at night knowing we prescribe to his brand of wisdom. And Pastygate… the malicious brainchild of a demented goblin creature.

On a policy level the situation is clearly poor at best, and gets little better on a personnel level. Before we could blink we said goodbye to David Lawes, a so-called treasury and policy wonk ousted on the back of his miscreant expenses. Andy Coulson later followed under a storm of questions regarding his stewardship of the News of the World, with added embarrassment for David Cameron having firmly stood by him. Liam Fox departed his rather sensitive Defence role thanks to allowing one Adam Werrity to tag along whenever he felt like it. The shadow of the Murdoch’s would later revisit and almost engulf both Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt, the former for “declaring war” on the BSkyB bid and the latter being asked stern questions as to whether he enabled it.

Teresa May actually did go briefly to war with the Civil Service over matters of immigration, and Andrew Lansley with the entire medical profession for obvious reasons. Incredibly he was one of only a few cabinet ministers to take a real knock in the recent reshuffle. I despise reshuffles, such vapid and cynical posturing usually being the remit of a government running out of ideas. Throw in a touch of Oliver Letwin throwing government documents in a St. James Park bin, Francis Maude dangerously suggesting consumers stock up on petrol reserves during the strikes and Michael Gove’s attempts to reinstate Victorian-era educational methods and the cabinet looks to be in genuine disarray.

That’s before you even reach the big dogs. Cameron, Osborne and Clegg are walking a razor’s edge. Clegg has almost singularly absorbed every gram of ire generated by his support base and their dissatisfaction with the Liberal agenda being thwarted at most turns. Osborne has become the walking, talking vision of nasty Tory ethics and probably avoids dark alleys in the wake of the hardship suffered by many during this time of austerity. And all of this, from Lawes to Osborne, trickles up to the detriment of Cameron. If delaying this article’s release did any good, it allowed me to observe today’s piece in the Guardian, unveiling the first of possibly many brewing coups. That Bob Stewart was loyal enough not to play along is likely only a temporary reprieve from the Tory backbenchers.

Appointing Maria Miller to Culture Secretary was a telling symptom of Cameron’s increasing fear of reprisals for daring to be moderate. Her voting record on women’s and LGBT rights tells all but are probably short of the mark in terms of satisfying the hard right’s blood-lust for some genuine anti-EU or anti-immigration reform. And so with the old Tory party vying internally for supremacy and an increasingly dissatisfied and obstinate Liberal minority, the coalition itself also looks to be in serious danger. How I long for the Rose Garden again.

It’s astonishing how poorly this coalition have failed in their early aspirations. I fully accept that my initially high expectations were unrealistic and naïve but to have been proved so completely wrong still comes as a shock. But then I truly bought the message of a new compassionate Conservative party, free of the dead weight of the Zac Goldsmiths and Maria Millers of the world, that could effectively function with the Liberals. Their defence of globally hard economic times be damned, I could accept that the recovery was still not really taking off if it weren’t for the tonnage of political ineptitude that also smothered it.

The only thing that remains to be said for now is that if the coalition hadn’t so painfully mismanaged the message of it having been Labour’s initial responsibility, they could still rely on that fact to some extent. But two years of being asleep or drunk at the wheel, and spouting that line with a twinkle in the eye, has killed it. Now I actually do just about agree with Miliband the Younger, that two and half years on the buck does stop at the coalition’s door.

This is not to excuse the Labour Party from further criticism however. I’ve run out of time but next up will be a closer look at the quality of their opposition in context and with their time in government. If possible I shall try to be even more shallow in my deference. Watch out Balls.