No election news today so here's some 'analysis' instead
Fairly quiet... in fact very quiet Saturday night. Obviously the whole of Essex has worn itself out with the excitement of the Royal Wedding and the Grand National. One of these events featured a couple of old nags almost falling at the final hurdle. And the other was... the Grand National.
The campaign, which has so far been sonambulent, should hot up a little when the manifestos come out, yet there is still something dead about this election. I get the feel that nobody on the left, and few people in the centre, give a f*** about Blair, and nobody on the right really gives a damn about Howard. The reasons for this are more complex than they first appear and to elaborate will generate one of those longer posts, not totally fitting with the most favoured blogging 'style', yet to stop now would be like Wayne Rooney spending the whole game in the centre circle. So apologies to those who don't like using the 'down' wheel on their mouses, and here's a worthy alternative for readers with short attention spans.
Very few on the Left have ever liked Blair, but many were prepared to put up with him to ensure keeping the Tories out for a generation whilst Blair's willingness to cede total control of economic policy to Gordon Brown at least allowed a programme of 'stealth' redistribution via tax credits and National Insurance Contribution rises to be carried out. This worked well as an electoral strategy for Blair, and the Labour share of the vote, on a lower turnout, was almost identical to 1997.
But the Iraq war has changed things a lot for (most of) that left-wing contingent. It was not expected four years ago that by mid-Parliament Britain would be a prosthetic limb of the most right wing president in post-war US history on defence and foreign policy. We have no real way of knowing how big the serious anti-war movement is in this country right now, or of how many people will vote for the Lib Dems, for the far left, or simply not at all, based on the war. But at the same time, Blair has lost support from the centre, even among those who endorse his policy platform 100%, largely because they don't believe he's a strong electoral asset any longer. The same thing happened to Thatcher, a little later into her Prime Ministerial tenure, and the outcome was swift and vicious.
Blair's position was pretty weak a year or 18 months ago, and Brown could have made a move for the leadership then, but something stopped him. In all probability, he calculated that the risks of either (a) failing to secure enough support in a leadership challenge to win, or (b) winning, but crippling the party's public support, and maybe even splitting it in doing so, were too great, and he was better off waiting patiently for Blair to scrape through this election, stumble on for a couple of years, and then retire citing health reasons or a wish to relocate to his real family at Crawford, Texas, leaving the hot seat open for a challenge, a positive boost in the polls, and a John Major-esque crack at the "historic fourth term."
If this is Brown's position then he is certainly accurate as to his chances of succession if the vacancy arises in the next Parliament. Blair has managed to hold the premiership for eight years with two of the biggest majorities in Commons history without doing anything much to secure an ideological legacy or to bring on a successor who would carry his work forward. Some have said this is because he has no ideology of his own, but I am sceptical of this. In fact it is because he is in the wrong party. His natural ideological (not social) tendency is towards the Ken Clarke side of the Tory party, with a streak of Thatcherite authoritarianism thrown in. Such an animal in the Labour party, even today, is a rare find. Blair has been trying to set Alan Milburn up as his successor, but Milburn's sheer chronic incompetence and imbecility means that this will be a difficult sell to the Labour Party and to the country as a whole... I saw Milburn give a talk on 'social mobility' a few months back. His delivery oscillated between solemnity and mania, like a man in the early stages of bipolar disorder, punctuated with straining facial contortions, grinning and teeth-baring. It was followed by a question and answer session in which words were coming out of his mouth, and forming into... what? 'The Blob'? I expected Steve McQueen to roll up and take him out. Barney the Dinosaur could have explained Labour policy better. In terms of articulating a coherent political position (of any kind at all), it made John Prescott look like Dave Willetts.
Although Labour continue to deny otherwise, I do believe that Alan Milburn's input into campaign strategy, from this point on, will be minimal. The Number 10 backroom boys, headed up by ex - ippr Director Matthew Taylor, have already written the manifesto, and they can be expected to take direct charge of proceedings from here on in. We will have to see if that pays dividends...
The campaign, which has so far been sonambulent, should hot up a little when the manifestos come out, yet there is still something dead about this election. I get the feel that nobody on the left, and few people in the centre, give a f*** about Blair, and nobody on the right really gives a damn about Howard. The reasons for this are more complex than they first appear and to elaborate will generate one of those longer posts, not totally fitting with the most favoured blogging 'style', yet to stop now would be like Wayne Rooney spending the whole game in the centre circle. So apologies to those who don't like using the 'down' wheel on their mouses, and here's a worthy alternative for readers with short attention spans.
Very few on the Left have ever liked Blair, but many were prepared to put up with him to ensure keeping the Tories out for a generation whilst Blair's willingness to cede total control of economic policy to Gordon Brown at least allowed a programme of 'stealth' redistribution via tax credits and National Insurance Contribution rises to be carried out. This worked well as an electoral strategy for Blair, and the Labour share of the vote, on a lower turnout, was almost identical to 1997.
But the Iraq war has changed things a lot for (most of) that left-wing contingent. It was not expected four years ago that by mid-Parliament Britain would be a prosthetic limb of the most right wing president in post-war US history on defence and foreign policy. We have no real way of knowing how big the serious anti-war movement is in this country right now, or of how many people will vote for the Lib Dems, for the far left, or simply not at all, based on the war. But at the same time, Blair has lost support from the centre, even among those who endorse his policy platform 100%, largely because they don't believe he's a strong electoral asset any longer. The same thing happened to Thatcher, a little later into her Prime Ministerial tenure, and the outcome was swift and vicious.
Blair's position was pretty weak a year or 18 months ago, and Brown could have made a move for the leadership then, but something stopped him. In all probability, he calculated that the risks of either (a) failing to secure enough support in a leadership challenge to win, or (b) winning, but crippling the party's public support, and maybe even splitting it in doing so, were too great, and he was better off waiting patiently for Blair to scrape through this election, stumble on for a couple of years, and then retire citing health reasons or a wish to relocate to his real family at Crawford, Texas, leaving the hot seat open for a challenge, a positive boost in the polls, and a John Major-esque crack at the "historic fourth term."
If this is Brown's position then he is certainly accurate as to his chances of succession if the vacancy arises in the next Parliament. Blair has managed to hold the premiership for eight years with two of the biggest majorities in Commons history without doing anything much to secure an ideological legacy or to bring on a successor who would carry his work forward. Some have said this is because he has no ideology of his own, but I am sceptical of this. In fact it is because he is in the wrong party. His natural ideological (not social) tendency is towards the Ken Clarke side of the Tory party, with a streak of Thatcherite authoritarianism thrown in. Such an animal in the Labour party, even today, is a rare find. Blair has been trying to set Alan Milburn up as his successor, but Milburn's sheer chronic incompetence and imbecility means that this will be a difficult sell to the Labour Party and to the country as a whole... I saw Milburn give a talk on 'social mobility' a few months back. His delivery oscillated between solemnity and mania, like a man in the early stages of bipolar disorder, punctuated with straining facial contortions, grinning and teeth-baring. It was followed by a question and answer session in which words were coming out of his mouth, and forming into... what? 'The Blob'? I expected Steve McQueen to roll up and take him out. Barney the Dinosaur could have explained Labour policy better. In terms of articulating a coherent political position (of any kind at all), it made John Prescott look like Dave Willetts.
Although Labour continue to deny otherwise, I do believe that Alan Milburn's input into campaign strategy, from this point on, will be minimal. The Number 10 backroom boys, headed up by ex - ippr Director Matthew Taylor, have already written the manifesto, and they can be expected to take direct charge of proceedings from here on in. We will have to see if that pays dividends...
2 Comments:
Just wondered if you had seen the Independent on Tuesday? - asking whether the situation in Iraq had taken a turn for the better. As the riposte to the 'Not in My name' slogan of the 'Respect' movement goes on Fox News - 'Don't worry , it isn't!'
With Iraq, my opinion is that the moment the US troops pull out to fight a similar campaign in Iran, or Massachussets, or whereever, the situation is very likely to collapse... by which time the media will have gotten bored with it, so it won't get much coverage. Meanwhile, Saddam is being groomed as the Vice Presidential replacement when Dick Cheney keels over with heart failure.
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