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Ed Miliband needs Labour to have a "differentiation strategy" of its own
Peter Hoskin in January 2012 famously in the Spectator published his version of the Richard Reeves’ famous “different strategy” of the Liberal Democrats as this parliament progressed.
When I tweeted briefly yesterday evening that David Cameron had acquired Obama’s advisor, Jim Messina, my followers who are UK Labour supporters were distinctly underwhelmed. They certainly did not share the naked excitement of Allegra Stratton, the BBC Newsnight’s political editor who was behaving as if she’d won the National Lottery. My followers instead loyally to took this to mean that more people were needed to clean up after the shambolic implementation of policies, such as #RacistVan. Many stuck to the reasonable line that the number of electoral advisers is not strongly correlated with coherence of political ideology, nor indeed electoral success. That of course will be good for Ed Miliband, who currently has no official electoral “campaign head”, although he has a strong policy steer from Lord Stewart Wood. The media are obsessed about the scalp of Lynton Crosby, and some extent they have already obtained the scalp of Tom Watson MP. However, Owen Jones on the BBC ‘Any Questions’ debate last night was quite correct to identify that, even if he personally does not agree with it, the main thrust of the Conservative Policy is in fact very clear: e.g. chucking out of the country illegal immigrants, or being tough on those people who don’t believe ‘it pays to work’. The implementation of both of the policies of course has been cack-handed, in that the Home Office continue to use the #immigrationoffenders hashtag completely ignoring the issue that suspects only become convicts if tried with due process in a legal court of war. In fact, the use of the hashtag not only offends the legal presumption of innocence, but it also potentially runs into problems with ‘contempt of court’. Nobody likewise fundamentally disagrees with the ‘it pays to work’ idea, but resent of course the scapegoating of unemployed citizens, deplore the attitude of ‘zero hours contracts’ as alleged for multi-national companies, with an abject failure to understand the ‘work credits’ policy. However, the Conservatives are ably assisted by a BBC which maintains that it maintains editorial standards upholding ‘accuracy, balance and lack of bias’, even in the face of high profile failures such as the John Humphrys decision. The Government can get away with a huge amount of misrepresentation, particularly ironic in their ambition for transparency and openness, as the debacles concerning the NHS funding and Iain Duncan Smith’s department demonstrate.
What Owen Jones has identified is that the Government appears to have a ‘vision’. Margaret Thatcher had a ‘vision’ too, which many people still profoundly disagree with. ‘Being Ed Miliband’ is pretty predictable though. For Ed, some things go well, some things go not so well. For example, his 2010 conference speech on ‘responsible capitalism’ in Liverpool was widely panned to be to a bit of a ‘turkey’, but many argued that he called it right in fact on the illegal phone hacking allegations of corporates. To give him credit, the wider ideological battle has been progressing well with him, in that policies such as workfare, where corporates abuse their power, curries favour with the public. The public also have taken to the outsourcing scandals like ducks to water, fully resentful against G4s, A4e, and Harmoni for their widely reported problems. The slight poll-lead of Labour one could argue could be greater, but it is easy to overestimate the amount of disunity in the Conservative Party. The Conservatives have had a good few months, having parked the issue about the EU referendum for now, and most importantly with the UK economy having appeared to have turned a corner at 0.6% growth. Ed Balls always had a substantial problem with the fact that he had signed up to the austerity agenda, which appears to be delivering (despite the fact that the UK economy is much more crippled than it otherwise should have been, had it followed the lead of Barack Obama). The Labour Party appears to have been voiceless over the attack on employees’ rights (in unfair dismissal claims). On the Bedroom Tax, it gives a muddled message where it appears to object to it, but does not quite commit convincingly to repealing it if it were to come into office and power on its own in May 2015. As for disability issues, many disabled citizens are left utterly confused on what Labour’s precise stance about ‘universal credit’, and how it does not seem to have any opinions on the steady stream of citizens who have committed suicide on the distress of their benefits decisions.
There are two things to form a strategy for. One is Ed Miliband, and one is Labour, though their relative fortunes are necessarily linked. You can have a reasonable ‘go’ at branding Ed Miliband as the ‘decisive leader’ on the left, despite the usual predictable reports that he can’t make up his mind what type of wine to drink (he has to drink rosé as he can’t make up his mind between red and white). This is all rather reminiscent of how Gordon Brown was also alleged not to be able to make up his mind over what type of coffee biscuit to eat, though ultimately the ‘dithering’ mistake which ultimately cost Brown his career was not this coffee biscuit problem but a problem concerning when to hold the 2010 general election. For me, the fundamental problem is that Labour does not have a clear “differentiation policy” of its own. One massive lack of differentiation remains the economy, where Ed Balls somehow has to concede ‘success’ for the Conservatives while saying that he would like to do something differently. However, Balls does not seem to wish to do anything markedly differently, as he has signed up to the same ‘austerity cuts’, not particularly winning him friends in the Unions with low pay conditions. Labour can of course remedy this by saying that it will fundamentally redesign the economy anyway such living standards are a top priority, such as with implementing a national living wage (either through law or not). However, Labour’s determination not to ‘tax and spend’, and not particularly to wish to do anything aggressive on the rich-power divide which has been bad in all governments since Thatcher to varying degrees, might fundamentally undermine this potential argument for ‘fairness’ many desire. Also, on the NHS, Ed Miliband is not actually signed up to anything fundamentally different for the NHS. Andy Burnham MP is the man who ‘is driving the Conservatives round the bend’, according to Isabel Hardman from the Spectator, because all attempts to smear him have gone belly up. However, Burnham also knows that he is not fundamentally signed up to anything vastly different when it comes to efficiency savings or PFI. The Government could of course potentially get the big four accountancy firms to advise on how it could creatively avoid tax to salvage £20bn in efficiency savings before 2020, or could decide to stop allegedly illegal wars abroad, to make up this ‘funding gap’ in the NHS. However, apart from repealing the Act which builds on the direction of the NHS competition boards set up under Labour and reducing the private income cap of s.164(1)(2A) of the Health and Social Care Act, Labour does not have a drastically different offering on the NHS apart from repeating the tired mantra that “Labour is the party of the NHS”.
Actually, as a Labour voter, I don’t actually really care whether the Liberal Democrats self-destruct or not. I am vaguely interested in whether they might wish to go into a Coalition with the Labour Party 2015, but I suspect this would not be a popular move amongst many members of the Labour Party I know. Anyway, I don’t think it’s going to happen with Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander in the higher echelons of the Liberal Democrat Party. Vince Cable for them can be easily ringfenced as a one-man protest party, so I do not expect him to have much influence and power in that party, unless his guru Lord Oakeshott can go into turbodrive with a campaign should Nick Clegg decide to fall on his sword. On the other hand, people do tend to have very short memories in politics, so ordinary voters might have somewhat forgotten about the closure of libraries, the NHS reforms, the education support allowance, welfare reforms, the economy, all decent policies where the Liberal Democrats have well and truly shafted members of Labour (and the more left-thinking members of their own party.) On the other hand, another factor governs the fate of Labour apart from the performance of Ed Miliband. That factor, whether the Liberal Democrats can rise like a phoenix from the ashes, could yet produce a problem for Labour, but while this Liberal Democrats seem totally signed up to crackpot policies such as #racistvan and lack of plain packaging cigarettes, there is no sign that the Liberal Democrats wish to leave their suicide pact yet. They know full well that if they do, David Cameron will be ecstatic, and their party meanwhile is fucked.
Ed Miliband needs Labour to have a "differentiation strategy" of its own
Peter Hoskin in January 2012 famously in the Spectator published his version of the Richard Reeves’ famous “different strategy” of the Liberal Democrats as this parliament progressed.
When I tweeted briefly yesterday evening that David Cameron had acquired Obama’s advisor, Jim Messina, my followers who are UK Labour supporters were distinctly underwhelmed. They certainly did not share the naked excitement of Allegra Stratton, the BBC Newsnight’s political editor who was behaving as if she’d won the National Lottery. My followers instead loyally to took this to mean that more people were needed to clean up after the shambolic implementation of policies, such as #RacistVan. Many stuck to the reasonable line that the number of electoral advisers is not strongly correlated with coherence of political ideology, nor indeed electoral success. That of course will be good for Ed Miliband, who currently has no official electoral “campaign head”, although he has a strong policy steer from Lord Stewart Wood. The media are obsessed about the scalp of Lynton Crosby, and some extent they have already obtained the scalp of Tom Watson MP. However, Owen Jones on the BBC ‘Any Questions’ debate last night was quite correct to identify that, even if he personally does not agree with it, the main thrust of the Conservative Policy is in fact very clear: e.g. chucking out of the country illegal immigrants, or being tough on those people who don’t believe ‘it pays to work’. The implementation of both of the policies of course has been cack-handed, in that the Home Office continue to use the #immigrationoffenders hashtag completely ignoring the issue that suspects only become convicts if tried with due process in a legal court of war. In fact, the use of the hashtag not only offends the legal presumption of innocence, but it also potentially runs into problems with ‘contempt of court’. Nobody likewise fundamentally disagrees with the ‘it pays to work’ idea, but resent of course the scapegoating of unemployed citizens, deplore the attitude of ‘zero hours contracts’ as alleged for multi-national companies, with an abject failure to understand the ‘work credits’ policy. However, the Conservatives are ably assisted by a BBC which maintains that it maintains editorial standards upholding ‘accuracy, balance and lack of bias’, even in the face of high profile failures such as the John Humphrys decision. The Government can get away with a huge amount of misrepresentation, particularly ironic in their ambition for transparency and openness, as the debacles concerning the NHS funding and Iain Duncan Smith’s department demonstrate.
What Owen Jones has identified is that the Government appears to have a ‘vision’. Margaret Thatcher had a ‘vision’ too, which many people still profoundly disagree with. ‘Being Ed Miliband’ is pretty predictable though. For Ed, some things go well, some things go not so well. For example, his 2010 conference speech on ‘responsible capitalism’ in Liverpool was widely panned to be to a bit of a ‘turkey’, but many argued that he called it right in fact on the illegal phone hacking allegations of corporates. To give him credit, the wider ideological battle has been progressing well with him, in that policies such as workfare, where corporates abuse their power, curries favour with the public. The public also have taken to the outsourcing scandals like ducks to water, fully resentful against G4s, A4e, and Harmoni for their widely reported problems. The slight poll-lead of Labour one could argue could be greater, but it is easy to overestimate the amount of disunity in the Conservative Party. The Conservatives have had a good few months, having parked the issue about the EU referendum for now, and most importantly with the UK economy having appeared to have turned a corner at 0.6% growth. Ed Balls always had a substantial problem with the fact that he had signed up to the austerity agenda, which appears to be delivering (despite the fact that the UK economy is much more crippled than it otherwise should have been, had it followed the lead of Barack Obama). The Labour Party appears to have been voiceless over the attack on employees’ rights (in unfair dismissal claims). On the Bedroom Tax, it gives a muddled message where it appears to object to it, but does not quite commit convincingly to repealing it if it were to come into office and power on its own in May 2015. As for disability issues, many disabled citizens are left utterly confused on what Labour’s precise stance about ‘universal credit’, and how it does not seem to have any opinions on the steady stream of citizens who have committed suicide on the distress of their benefits decisions.
There are two things to form a strategy for. One is Ed Miliband, and one is Labour, though their relative fortunes are necessarily linked. You can have a reasonable ‘go’ at branding Ed Miliband as the ‘decisive leader’ on the left, despite the usual predictable reports that he can’t make up his mind what type of wine to drink (he has to drink rosé as he can’t make up his mind between red and white). This is all rather reminiscent of how Gordon Brown was also alleged not to be able to make up his mind over what type of coffee biscuit to eat, though ultimately the ‘dithering’ mistake which ultimately cost Brown his career was not this coffee biscuit problem but a problem concerning when to hold the 2010 general election. For me, the fundamental problem is that Labour does not have a clear “differentiation policy” of its own. One massive lack of differentiation remains the economy, where Ed Balls somehow has to concede ‘success’ for the Conservatives while saying that he would like to do something differently. However, Balls does not seem to wish to do anything markedly differently, as he has signed up to the same ‘austerity cuts’, not particularly winning him friends in the Unions with low pay conditions. Labour can of course remedy this by saying that it will fundamentally redesign the economy anyway such living standards are a top priority, such as with implementing a national living wage (either through law or not). However, Labour’s determination not to ‘tax and spend’, and not particularly to wish to do anything aggressive on the rich-power divide which has been bad in all governments since Thatcher to varying degrees, might fundamentally undermine this potential argument for ‘fairness’ many desire. Also, on the NHS, Ed Miliband is not actually signed up to anything fundamentally different for the NHS. Andy Burnham MP is the man who ‘is driving the Conservatives round the bend’, according to Isabel Hardman from the Spectator, because all attempts to smear him have gone belly up. However, Burnham also knows that he is not fundamentally signed up to anything vastly different when it comes to efficiency savings or PFI. The Government could of course potentially get the big four accountancy firms to advise on how it could creatively avoid tax to salvage £20bn in efficiency savings before 2020, or could decide to stop allegedly illegal wars abroad, to make up this ‘funding gap’ in the NHS. However, apart from repealing the Act which builds on the direction of the NHS competition boards set up under Labour and reducing the private income cap of s.164(1)(2A) of the Health and Social Care Act, Labour does not have a drastically different offering on the NHS apart from repeating the tired mantra that “Labour is the party of the NHS”.
Actually, as a Labour voter, I don’t actually really care whether the Liberal Democrats self-destruct or not. I am vaguely interested in whether they might wish to go into a Coalition with the Labour Party 2015, but I suspect this would not be a popular move amongst many members of the Labour Party I know. Anyway, I don’t think it’s going to happen with Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander in the higher echelons of the Liberal Democrat Party. Vince Cable for them can be easily ringfenced as a one-man protest party, so I do not expect him to have much influence and power in that party, unless his guru Lord Oakeshott can go into turbodrive with a campaign should Nick Clegg decide to fall on his sword. On the other hand, people do tend to have very short memories in politics, so ordinary voters might have somewhat forgotten about the closure of libraries, the NHS reforms, the education support allowance, welfare reforms, the economy, all decent policies where the Liberal Democrats have well and truly shafted members of Labour (and the more left-thinking members of their own party.) On the other hand, another factor governs the fate of Labour apart from the performance of Ed Miliband. That factor, whether the Liberal Democrats can rise like a phoenix from the ashes, could yet produce a problem for Labour, but while this Liberal Democrats seem totally signed up to crackpot policies such as #racistvan and lack of plain packaging cigarettes, there is no sign that the Liberal Democrats wish to leave their suicide pact yet. They know full well that if they do, David Cameron will be ecstatic, and their party meanwhile is fucked.
The paradox of thrift and bankers' bonuses
Over the last decade, pay at the top of the UK’s largest listed companies ballooned up to £4.2 on average on average for FTSE 100 chief executives from £1 m between 1998 and 2010, while salaries for workers barely kept place with inflation. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) had a huge impact on the world of philosophy, proposing utilitarian value as, ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people works well as a way of doing justice’. This encapsulates why so many members of the general public appear to have a fundamental problem with excessive bonuses for bankers. Whilst people on the left politics-wise do not necessary deny the contribution of bankers to ‘wealth creation’ of the UK economy, many such citizens resent that they appear, along with Premier League footballers, to have levels of pay which represent an excessive contribution to the social value of society. The utilitarian could in fact stress that growth, wealth and GDP contribute much to the happiness of all. These depend upon a functioning banking system. Likewise, banks, in turn, need investment bankers to turn a profit. If those bankers are best incentivised by the promise of large bonuses, then so be it. Indirectly, that makes everyone happier.
Earlier this year, Downing Street appeared to concede defeat in its battle to stop banks paying huge bonuses to their staff; dictating the size of individual bankers’ payments or overall bonus pools was not possible. Instead bank bosses and ministers tried to thrash out a deal that would publicise details of payouts that could reach £7billion this year. The climbdown on bonuses has been a huge embarrassment for Government ministers who had threatened much tougher measures. The impression conveyed in the UK media that bankers have not been adversely affected by #gfc, and indeed some feel that the bankers have profited. This has been against a whirlpool of accusations and counter-accusations that the taxation policy has been indeed been ‘regressive’. Whilst politicians and economists have latterly been at each other’s necks, both are aware that there is enormous voting capital in ‘getting this right’. Equally in the USA the Obama administration have immersed themselves in a populist attack on wealthy US citizens including corporations.
Rumbling along in the background is a subplot ignited by John Maynard Keynes, an outstanding Cambridge academic, and a Liberal. There has been much discussion about whether Vince Cable, a Cambridge graduate, and a Liberal Democrat, follows in the tradition of Keynes, to some extent fuelled by Cable himelf. Robert Skidelsky, Keynes’ official biographer, has made his concerns patently clear. Cable has extensively studied Keynes for his Doctoral studies. Perhaps playing to the Keynesians last week at the Liberal Democrats’ 2011 Summer Conference, Cable opined that, “Keynes talked about a ‘paradox of thrift’; everyone and every country being individually wise but collectively foolish – leading to a downward spiral”.
The paradox of thrift is a very famous paradox of economics, popularized by John Maynard Keynes, though it had been stated as early as 1714 in The Fable of the Bees, and similar sentiments date to antiquity. The paradox states that if everyone tries to save more money during times of recession, then aggregate demand will fall and will in turn lower total “savings” in the population because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth. However, there have many inward attacks of Keynes’ well-known paradox, not least because of the unwitting conflation of the terms “capital” and “savings”. It is mooted that the classical theory of growth in macroeconomic did not presume that every saver was the ultimate investor of goods, especially in relation to the earlier work of another great economist, Ricardo. Economists have recently been quick to point out that Keynes uses the term “savings” to embrace a ‘hoarding behaviour’, which leads Keynes to his direct proposition of a ‘paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty’. Again, there is a problem with definition, as bankers bonuses might constitute ‘plenty’, but not the growth in the UK economy called ‘pitiful’ by Prof. David Blanchflower, himself a pupil of Keynes.
Should the alleged ‘excessive profits of bankers’ be clawed back by the State for its benefit? David Ricardo is credited with the first clear and comprehensive analysis of differential land rent and the associated economic relationships (Law of Rent). In schools of economic thought including neoclassical economics, land is recognized as an inelastic factor of production. Rent is the distribution paid to freeholders for “allowing” production on the land they control. Of course, corn and money, and farmers and bankers, are not necessarily synonymous.
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land ..”
There has been a wider issue about whether the ‘differential theory of rent’ is due to strong emotions concerning ‘private property’, but prominent liberals such as JS Mill have proven words and deeds on the issue, through for example the Land Tenure Act. Adopting a populist stance has always been easy for Vince Cable, and most Liberal Democrats heavily tout that St Vince The Cable was apparently one of the first to predict the banking crisis (as indeed objectively evidenced in Hansard). Whilst a synthesis of the economics is undoubtedly interesting to economist, both new and old, people will want to know what Cable can do about it. The answer is ‘not much’, as the FSA’s code on renumeration is considered ‘good practice’ (but relatively ‘toothless’). Cable wishes also to address the ‘disconnect’ between the excessive pay of top Directors and the performance of these companies, where Cable feels that a schism has developed. Many believe that many senior bankers seem virtually unsackable, which makes an analysis of what level of pay is appropriate for bankers from the “wage curve”. Blanchflower and Oswald (1994) how the existence of a wage curve for a dozen countries, defining the wage curve thus: “A worker who is employed In an area of high unemployment earns le than an identical individual who works in a region of low joblessness”. It would be interesting to know what the views of 31-year old trader, Kweku Adoboli, are towards that. Or indeed, what Oswald Grübel thinks: according to the Wall Street Journal this morning, “Oswald Grübel resigned as chief executive of embattled Swiss bank UBS AG in the wake of a trading loss that cost the bank more than $2 billion and now has cut short the career of a giant of Switzerland’s business community.”
Media pluralism: Cable, Murdoch and the BBC
This is how BBC reported Vince Cable’s now famous ‘outburst’.
Vince Cable, like Nick Clegg, appears to have developed a bit of a Messiah syndrome recently, despite being 8% in the polls. Vince appears to have developed curious delusions of grandeur, thinking that he can make or break the coalition, and also that can break the Murdoch empire. This scoop was brought to the BBC by a whistleblower to the BBC Business Editor Robert Peston who to all intents and purposes appears to have practiced responsible journalism. Concerns remain that inside information from time to time leaks into the market, whether accidentally or intentionally, and may be misused: this is a particular issue in relation to inside information about mergers and acquisitions.
On the day the bid was announced in June, most commentators thought it would go ahead without much difficulty, subject to agreement on price. BSkyB was already seen by government and regulators as part of the Murdoch empire, even though News Corp held only 39 per cent of the shares. However, in September, there began a fierce campaign in the press and parliament arguing that the Murdoch empire would have even more power if it owned all the BSkyB shares. The plain facts are that today European Commission has unconditionally approved News Corp’s bid to acquire BSkyB. In a statement, Joaquin Almunia, EU Competition Commissioner, said: “I am confident that this merger will not weaken competition in the United Kingdom. The effects on media plurality are a matter for the UK authorities.”
To any reasonable observer, Vince Cable calling for war on Murdoch’s successful empire is rather extreme to say the least. Presumably, one shouldn’t read too much into his lack of impartiality by dancing with Alesha Dixon on the Christmas Day special of BBC ‘Strictly come dancing’.
The judgment which came back from Europe today had an emphasis on cross-border media pluralism. Traditionally, Europe’s media companies focused their activities on their national markets. However, in the last 10-15 years a number of media companies have grown significant business outside their primary markets. It has given rise to concerns that it will damage the freedom of expression and information in Europe that are vital both from a democratic and a cultural perspective. Cross-border media concentrations include several phenomena such as media conglomerates distributing their products in many countries, including broadcasts, companies operating directly or indirectly in the media market of more than one country and legal entities owning media companies in several countries. This is the issue which was primarily of concern to Europe. Presumably the BBC falls within the definition of a media conglomerate, and is not expected to partake in cartel and abuse of dominant behaviours itself.
News Corp wants to by the 61% of the pay-TV operator that is does not already own for £7.8 billion. However, independent directors at BSkyB, which operates the 24-hour channel Sky News and provides pay-TV, broadband and telephony services, have previously rejected News Corp’s offer as too low. News Corp officially notified the European Commission of its planned takeover bid on 3 November. The commission conducted an initial investigation before responding today. OFCOM will now examine the deal to investigate media plurality issues in the UK, focusing on content types, audiences, media platforms, control of media enterprise and future developments in the media landscape. Business Secretary Vince Cable will stay in cabinet despite “declaring war” on Rupert Murdoch, says Downing Street. However, he will be stripped of his powers to rule on Mr Murdoch’s bid to take control of BSkyB, which will be handed to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Jeremy Hunt will though the final say over whether the takeover should be allowed to go ahead amid concerns about press freedom and consumer choice. Note – OFCOM will analyse the legal and public interest issues carefully – not Jeremy Hunt on his own. OFCOM is expected to report back to Jeremy Hunt by 31 December 2010.
Jeremy Hunt will then decide whether to refer the issue to the Competition Commission. This is an independent body, which conducts in-depth inquiries into mergers, markets and the regulation of the major regulated industries, ensuring healthy competition between companies in the UK for the benefit of companies, customers and the economy. It is not the case that the Competition Commission can only block it altogether for Rupert Murdoch. Where an inquiry is referred to the CC for in-depth investigation, the CC has wide-ranging powers to remedy any competition concerns, including preventing a merger from going ahead. It can also require a company to sell off part of its business or take other steps to improve competition.
This was never going to be solely an issue for Vince Cable or Jeremy Hunt. However, it could be that Jeremy Hunt feels that this merger does not pose a threat to UK media competition. It has long been argued that the BBC that what the BBC offers is distinctive from commercial media outlets. If Jeremy Hunt then decides to side with the BBC, it could well be that Jeremy Hunt and the Conservatives do not get the media backing from the BBC and the main newspapers including the Sun that they desperately need in 2015 to gain public support and to win the 2015 General Election (assuming that the coalition lasts that long). Therefore, whilst Jeremy Hunt can overrule the decision by the Competition Commission, he will have to have very strong reasons for doing so – Rupert Murdoch may be very happy, or not.
As it happens, I hope sincerely that Rupert Murdoch wins this media battle, as I feel the people who should be taught a lesson they won’t forget are the BBC, not the News Corp. Not as inflammatory as Vince Cable’s message, but meant with the same conviction, I’m afraid.
(c) Dr Shibley Rahman 2010. Dr Shibley Rahman is an academic lawyer and company director who works in London.
Dr Shibley Rahman, PhD FRSA LLB(Hons)
Dr Shibley Rahman is an academic whose specialist interests include the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia, dementia generally, commercial law and business. He is a Queen’s Scholar, and obtained the second highest First Class Honours degree in 1996 at the University of Cambridge in neurosciences. He is disabled, having survived six weeks in coma in 2007 due to meningitis.
Dr Cable is right, but the LibDems don't smell of roses.
Could Ben Page’s IPSOS-MORI ‘worm’ could have predicted this?
Ed Miliband sitting on the picket line, whatever the hot-air discussions between Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, John McDonnell, Ed and Rosie Winterton amount to in the end, will achieve relatively little. It certainly won’t ‘topple’ Dave Cameron.
I have, on a matter of principle, not got carried away with the hysteria surrounding, for example, the ULU sit-in protests. More to the point, I think Vince Cable’s is possibly in fact correct, and we have a mechanism for voters to get what they want; they can chuck out members of the legislature at given opportunities, and also the legislature themselves can vote down legislature proposed by the Government. This is even the case if the Government is the major government in a Coalition.
So what can legal riots achieve? Well, actually, quite a lot actually, potentially. The UK Poll Tax Riots were a series of mass disturbances in British cities during protests against the Community Charge (commonly known as the Poll Tax), introduced by the Margaret Thatcher. By far the largest occurred in central London on Saturday March 31, 1990, shortly before the poll tax was due to come into force in England and Wales. The disorder in London arose from a demonstration which began at 11am. The rioting and looting ended at 3am the next morning Interestingly, at the time, response of the London police, the government, the Labour Party and the labour movement and some of the Marxist and Trotskyist left, notably The Militant Tendency, was to condemn the riot as senseless and to blame anarchists. Nonetheless, Thatcher went, and John Major announced in his first parliamentary speech as Prime Minister that the Community Charge was to be replaced by Council Tax, which, unlike Poll Tax, took account of ability to pay. Who can forget those iconic days?
The strength of campus students feeling currently is undoubtedly strong, as they’re the ones who helped to contribute to a Liberal Democrat vote the most. Students are taking part in a day of action in protest at government plans to raise university tuition fees. In my alma mater, Cambridge, around 1,,000 students from universities and sixth-form colleges took part in the protests. A number of students climbed over railings at the university’s Senate House, where onlookers described the scene as “crazy”. Only two students were arrested by Cambridgeshire Police for obstruction, and there were some reports from protesters of police violence. Students from Parkside Community College staged a walkout to show their support.
The demonstrations come ahead of an MPs’ debate later on the proposals and other plans to cut university teaching budgets and support allowances for low-income further education students.
More significantly is that Liberal Democrat MPs are due to decide next week how to vote on the move to cut higher education funding and force students to pay fees of up to £9,000 a year. Vince Cable, who has responsibility for universities, confirmed he would abide by the decision even if it meant he was blocked from voting for a system he supports and helped to create. Having all signed a pledge before the general election to scrap tuition fees altogether, the party’s MPs are under pressure to vote against the hike. This means that the Liberal Democrats, should they choose to use it, have a casting vote in their future, and, more importantly, in a key plank of their policy, which Tim Fallon MP himself admitted that he ‘hadn’t read properly’. Onwards and upwards, this will achieve much more than Ed Miliband sitting on the picket line, but there’s one man who doesn’t come out of this smelling of roses.
Vince's speech at the LibDem conference: Many themes should be a top priority for us too
Vince’s speech, unlike the misreporting of it mainly from the BBC who patently didn’t understand the business or legal issues involved, made for very interesting reading for me as a Labour member with an interest in both business and commercial law. I would like to discuss various intriguing aspects of it for me.
But to hold our own we need to maintain our party’s identity and our authentic voice.
This is now being an increasingly difficult problem for the Liberal Democrats. There has to be by necessity an alignment of the beliefs and values of the leadership of the Party and its grassroot members. It was interesting to eavesdrop on the discussion that the Party had earlier this week on brand strategy, as it was clear from the floor that there is much confusion about the brand identity and brand equity of the members of the Party. Of course, the position on the rate of cuts which ultimately emerged from Vince Cable and Nick Clegg remains for many quite unfathomable, and certain issues are pretty straightforward by the Liberal Democrats, for example strong Liberal (anti-statist) values in civil liberties. However, certain grey areas see problems for the leadership and activists alike; for example, free schools is an incredibly perplexing area for the Liberal Democrats to embrace in a way so enthusiastically as Michael Gove’s fervour.
We will fight the next general elections as an independent force with our options open. Just like 2010. But coalition is the future of politics. It is good for government and good for Britain. We must make sure it is good for the Lib Dems as well.
Yes, indeed. It is now ‘do-or-die’ for the Liberal Democrats. There won’t be an end of ‘boom-and-bust’ in this context, unfortunately, because if the Liberal Democrats get the economic recovery and cuts wrong, even if the recession ends, they will be unelectable for a decade. However, it is argued that if the Liberal Democrats make a success of their new Coalition policy, the Coalition politics of pluralism could become accepted.
There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people. Their economic model combined the financial lunacies of Ireland and Iceland. They built a house on sand and thought that they were ushering in a new, progressive work of architecture. It has collapsed. They lacked foresight; now they even lack hindsight.
If Cable feels Labour is in denial over the deficit, undeniably he has been slow to come to the conclusion that the crisis was global. I remember him pontificating in the Commons about how it was an academic philosophical issue of where the financial crisis came from, but it was necessary to find a solution for it. Vince Cable’s lack of acceptance that this was a global crisis historically speaks volumes.
We know that if elected Labour planned to raise VAT. They attack this government’s cuts but say not a peep about the £23bn of fiscal tightening Alistair Darling had already introduced. They planned to chop my department’s budget by 20 to 25%, but now they oppose every cut, ranting with synthetic rage, and refuse, point blank, to set out their alternatives. They demand a plan B but don’t have a plan A. The only tough choice they will face is which Miliband.
This statement is totally ridiculous. If Vince Cable is so self-effacing, can he not at least give a suitable explanation for this poster?
But I am not seeking retribution. We have a pressing practical problem: the lack of capital for sound, non property, business. Many firms say they are already being crippled by banks’ charges and restrictions.
This is undoubtedly a sensible line of attack for Vince and George to pursue, as it encompasses the Liberal
Democrats’ values of fairness, and Labour’s lack of engaging with the public about how the bankers, who had largely caused this crisis, were not been punished for their recklessness. If anything, it is perceived that Labour pumped lots of taxpayers’ money in it, whilst the leading CEOs in the investment banks received knighthoods and huge bonuses. Labour’s fundamental error, if there is to be one single one amongst the plethora, is the unforgiveable increase in the rich-poor divide, which will forever be a legacy of Labour. It began in earnest with Thatcher, progressed with Blair, and compounded through Gordon Brown’s long stint as Chancellor. This should be a top priority for Labour too.
And the principle of responsible ownership should apply across the business world. We need successful business. But let me be quite clear. The Government’s agenda is not one of laissez-faire. Markets are often irrational or rigged. So I am shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour. Why should good companies be destroyed by short term investors looking for a speculative killing, while their accomplices in the City make fat fees? Why do directors sometimes forget their wider duties when a cheque is waved before them?
This is an incredibly important paragraph in my opinion, as short-termism has been identified by many academics in leadership, including William George at the Harvard Business School, as a major cause of irresponsible leadership in business. This, together with failures in corporate governance and corporate social responsibility in a post-Enron age, remain admirable targets for Vince’s wrath. This should be a top priority for Labour too.
??But the big long term question is: how does the country earn a living in future? Natural resources? The oil money was squandered. Metal bashing? Mostly gone to Asia. Banking? Been there, done that. What is left? Actually quite a lot. People. Skilled and educated people. High tech manufacturing of which we already have a great deal. Creative industries, IT and science based industries and professional services. In my job I meet many outstanding, world class, British based companies. But we need more companies and more jobs in the companies we have. It is my job as Business Secretary to support business growth. And this knowledge based economy requires more high quality people from FE, HE and vocational training. Here, we have a problem. Businesses cannot grow because of a shortage of trained workers while our schools churn out young people regarded by companies as virtually unemployable. The pool of unemployed graduates is growing while there is a chronic shortage of science graduates and especially engineers. There has to be a revolution in post 16 education and training. We are making a start. Despite cuts, my department is funding 50,000 extra high level apprenticeships this year – vital for a manufacturing revival. My Conservative colleague David Willetts and I want to sweep away the artificial barriers between universities and FE; between academic and vocational; between full time, part time and continuing life long learning; between the academic and vocational.
The ‘Yeah, but’ is that Vince Cable is making savage cuts in universities such as Cambridge, currently top in the world, at a time when we should be investing in basic research, translationary research and applied research, with a view to investing in our country’s future. This should be a top priority for Labour too.
