The BNP and the tide of history

‘The Social Democrats haven’t a hope of winning a general election, [because the unemployed and low-paid] make up 40-45 percent of the entire country’s workforce. Certainly under the present electoral system, they will provide Labour with a solid 200-seat base.‘

Tony Blair, August 1982

And so Labour believed back then, even though the election of 1983 took them perilously close to undercutting that 200-seat base. This notion of a ‘base’ of support was what made the formation of New Labour possible - pragmatically, abandoning the interests of your core supporters in order to attract more support from other demographics would seem to be electorally suicidal. But if that core support could be relied upon to vote Labour regardless, then abandoning those principles which run counter to the interests of the demographics whose votes you are seeking would be a wise step. Assuming, of course, your only goal in politics is the attainment of power.

Now, of course, Labour’s support is collapsing across the entire spectrum, and the loyalty of that ‘base’ is rapidly evaporating. In many respects, it’s surprising that it lasted as long as it did - eleven years in which a supposedly socialist party presided over a massive widening of the income gap is eleven years in which the interests of that ‘base’ were only serviced perfunctorily. Many of the voters who previously would have been Labour loyalists are now supporting the BNP, the Lib Dems, or even the Tories.

The rise of the BNP has caused an awful lot of anguish, but it is in no way surprising. After all, the BNP are a socialist party with an emphasis on nationalism (sound familiar?), and so can legitimately claim to be standing up for at least the short-term interests of the white working classes. They have thereby provided that particular demographic with an alternative, and they’re taking it. Why should the working classes listen to middle-class moralising about the importance of free trade, the market and allowing immigrants to work here when they see no return for themselves? You can’t sell an economic theory by talking about GDP growth, people need to be given something real.

While the Lib Dems are offering long-term solutions to help close the income gap, none of the main parties is putting forward the same sort of short-term massive state intervention that would make a real difference to the lives of these people now. There is no easy market-based solution here - low-skilled workers are simply economically unproductive given the UK’s position in the global economy. There are far fewer significant quantities of natural resources for them to extract, or factories willing to pay the higher wages required by UK employees. State intervention would merely prolong the inevitable.

Nonetheless, this has not prevented calls from within the Labour Party for a return to collectivism and to the party’s roots. Labour is currently caught in a quandary: its old voters are beginning to desert it for a party which partly resembles its former incarnation, while its new voters are deserting it for a party that resembles its present incarnation. Which way to turn? Either field is contested. But surely returning to its previous values would at least give it the security of Blair’s abovementioned 200 seats?

This is not the case. Employment patterns have shifted throughout Labour’s time in power. Examine the graph below.

Over the last fifteen years, the population of the working classes as a percentage of the workforce has declined. This trend is likely to continue in the near future - as I mentioned before, there is simply little call for low-skilled work in the current British economy. Even if Labour did manage to revive their support, relying on a shrinking demographic as a springboard back to power - not to mention a demographic that will be fought over with the BNP - is a foolish move. Thus, I suspect that they will make some cursory moves to the left in an effort to regain some of their heartland support, but retain their market ideology so as to not lose all of their new voters.

This will also affect the BNP. No matter how well they do, since they find their support in a shrinking demographic they can never wield the influence to bring about the changes they seek. For this to happen would require a massive expansion in Britain’s manufacturing industry, which is extremely unlikely even with higher oil prices making it more appealing to produce goods closer to home.

But what do we Lib Dems do about this disaffected demographic? What principled approaches can we take to improve their quality of life? As yet, I am uncertain. I am currently working on this issue with a colleague, but have yet to come up with a solution. I begin to suspect that the answer may lie in high tech industries that require low skilled workers for the production processes, as in biotechnology. But even still, answers on a postcard please.

Madness & the Labour Party

Thanks to a minor operation, I suddenly find myself with a great deal more free time, part of which I have spent catching up with the slow decline of Gordon Brown’s mental health, and by extension that of the Labour Party as a whole.

It’s fascinating, it really is. In any form of company, a chief executive who spent his time dealing with complaints from individual customers would be seen as a pathological control freak. The minor PR benefits in no way make up for the time lost by someone meant to be providing strategic direction to the organisation, in this case Britain. And this has supposedly been released in an effort to make Brown appear more human? If this is his most human caprice, I fear what else may be lurking behind the doors of No. 10.

More worryingly, the Prime Minister’s reality disconnect appears to be spreading to the rest of his party. Draper writes that “…sure, Brown has made mistakes but that the main source of his unpopularity is that people blame him for the economic downturn. He is hoping that he will receive reciprocal credit for any subsequent recovery. In the meantime something akin to mass hysteria has gripped the nation.” Draper asks us to believe that, instead of one man in an incredibly stressful job who has been described by members of his own party as ‘psychologically flawed’ cracking under the pressure, the rest of the nation has gone mad.

Leaving aside the amusingly ironic way in which Draper attempts to use Freud to transfer the blame for Labour’s current poll ratings from its leader to the public, this is something I’ve seen elsewhere in the Labour Party too. A couple of weeks ago, while out guerilla campaigning, I met my opposite number in the Islington Labour Party, and had a long chat about the London election. Even taking into account the slight mental disturbance generated by meeting a Geordie who introduces himself as your nemesis, the poor boy seemed entirely incapable of processing why Ken had lost. The combination of high taxes and allegations of corruption didn’t appear to be featuring on his radar at all. And it appears to be the same with Draper.

Labour hasn’t just been making mistakes. It’s been making fundamental miscalculations. It’s been holding down public sector wages to lower inflation - while at the same time allowing the tax on fuel to rise along with the price, giving Brown additional funds but simultaneously contributing to inflation. I am not convinced that the public blame Brown for the economic downturn - but I am convinced they blame him for making it harder for them to live with. And yet Brown still manages not to see it. The 10p tax band removal was a classic example, one that should’ve been flagged up as obviously against the interests of their core vote as soon as it came up - but it didn’t. Again with the relative lowering of public sector wages. Nervous Labour MPs have started forcing him to take account of these concerns on particular issues, but still there appears to be no change of direction from No. 10, no even slight admission that the current approach is not working.

The problem is, as many commentators have said, that Brown is psychologically incapable of admitting his mistakes. And he is passing this on to the rest of his party, in a real example of ‘Crowd Behaviour’, as Draper puts it. Is it possible to have an entire political party sectioned?

Showdown at the P.O. Corral

WE WON! We won! Not the election of course, but rather the fight to save Essex Road Post Office from the ravages of a Labour Government bent on ruining anything of benefit to the poor & vulnerable. A concerted effort involving the local community, our PPC Bridget Fox and the Lib-Dem run Council had produced an agreement with Royal Mail Ltd. to allow a franchisee to take it over.

This was a tremendous victory for Bridget. She’d campaigned for over a year to keep it open, and had gathered thousands of petition signatories and organised hundreds of people into protests. I’d taken pictures of lots of them and put them into exciting leaflets. And so we marched down Essex Road early on Wednesday morning to proclaim our victory before the media.

Unfortunately, Labour had had the same idea. The local MP and champion pie-eater Emily Thornberry had been given a roasting in the press over the hypocrisy inherent in voting in favour of post office closures in Parliament while simultaneously campaigning to keep an Islington branch open. A few minutes after we arrived a rather aggressive man in a red t-shirt appeared and started shoving a piece of paper with ‘Emily saved the PO’ scrawled on it in marker pen into the faces of passers by. We took advantage of this by introducing Lib Dem Councillor Emily Fieran-Reed to the same passers by. He then scrawled on the reverse ‘Local MP saves Post Office’, and given that an awful lot of Islington residents think that Bridget is already the MP thanks to our campaigning and Thornberry had chickened out of turning up, was again quite amusing.

More Labour activists showed up, and after an initial period of studiously ignoring each others’ existence we started to exchange accusations of lying. I nearly got into a fight with the aggressive red t-shirt, although to be fair he did become distinctly more aggressive after I tickled him to get him to lower the sign. It all got rather ugly. The lady from the Gazette took pictures of each set of politicos, then one of the avowedly ‘neutral’ people, which was quickly swarmed by Thornberry’s lackeys. So I pushed into the middle. Unsurprisingly, the neutral photo was used.

Politics shouldn’t have to be like this. Instead of coming together to celebrate a victory for the community, we spat at each other like children fighting over a toy. This is especially a shame, as one of the Labour activists was quite pretty. But it leads to an interesting question: would the Post Office have been less likely to be saved if two separate groups of people hadn’t been quite so determined to beat the other in terms of campaigning? Demonstrating that your party is better equipped to represent local people is a big spur to activism, and I am not convinced that either party would have put in quite so much effort if everyone had agreed to share the PR spoils equally. But then, that’s why socialism doesn’t work, isn’t it?