GOOD ON YOU CLEGGY
As a former member of the UK Labour Party and then defector to the offshoot Social Democratic Party (SDP) I have been immersing myself in the ongoing UK General Election campaign – for me it is all as luxurious as being Cleopatra in a bath of fresh, warm milk (minus the asp).
I don’t find any contradiction in maintaining my loyalty to the NZ Labour Party and having a soft spot for the successors of the SDP, the Liberal Democrats. In fact I know that a couple of very good friends – John MacArthur in Leeds and Bob Wharton in London - will be working their yellow socks off to maximize the vote for the Lib-Dems.
In the first place, no party deserves a long lease on government in a democratic system. Beyond that, the policies of both the modern NZ and UK Labour Parties have been influenced to some extent by those of the SDP and the Liberals. Both try now to balance a commitment to sound public finance and administration with a concern for giving a helping hand up to those who need and appreciate it.
Or as our SDP motto had it: ‘Caring about Costs – Caring about People’.
Back in 1982, as an SDP member of a televised political panel questioning Labour Leader Neil Kinnock in Leeds, I took exception to his claim that ‘the SDP had a rag-bag of policies’, and asked ‘if our policies are a rag-bag, why have you stolen our clothes?’
And the New Labour Party that Blair and Brown rode to power did indeed make good use of Lib-Dem commonsense and pragmatism about the proper role of the state in a modern mixed economy.
So let’s see what Der Spiegel has to say about Cleggymania.
THE EUROPEAN VIEW
[Extract of Comments from Marco Evers of Der Spiegel]
After 13 years of Labour Party rule, Britain is on the verge of historic change as the May 6 general election approaches. For the first time, the Liberal Democrats, the country's third party, could win a big enough share of the vote to force electoral reform and end the traditional two-party system.
One of the most difficult tests in the life of a British politician is the summons to appear on Jeremy Paxman's ‘Newsnight’ program on the BBC. Paxman, the grand inquisitor of British journalism, has been known to make even seasoned politicians squirm in their seats with his hard-hitting questions.
If he feels that an interviewee is being evasive, he repeats his question -- a dozen times, if necessary. He makes it clear that he is not satisfied with their answer and just gives up on them with contempt.
As it turned out, Nick Clegg, 43, the boyish leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Britain's third party, fearlessly entered the ring with Paxman. He withstood everything Paxman threw his way for a full 30 minutes, and came off looking good in the process: telegenic, relaxed and quick-witted.
Compared with the dour Brown and the sometimes supercilious Cameron, Clegg made a profoundly refreshing impression.
The interview, which aired two weeks ago, was Clegg's first sensational success, and it bolstered him and his fans. Several other interviews and two 90-minute television debates later, Clegg has risen to the level of political superstar.
Clegg is no outrageous extremist. Nevertheless, he is unusual for a British politician. He is the son of a half-Russian father and a Dutch mother born in Indonesia. He is married to a Spanish woman, and he speaks German, Dutch, French and Spanish. His sons are not named James and Harry, but Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.
Clegg has worked for the European Commission in Brussels and in Central Asia. He admires the EU project and thinks the euro is a wonderful idea -- two things he has candidly admitted, despite his desire to appeal to the notoriously euro-sceptic British electorate.
The Tories' strategists, who were until recently confident of victory, are frantic. After 13 years in power, the Labour Party is finished, and its prime minister, Gordon Brown, is washed-up and unpopular.
And now, ironically, the centre-left Liberal Democrats, a party that for decades has carved out an unfortunate existence as a third party in a two-party system, could thwart an election win for Cameron.
The British majority voting system has always made it difficult for the Liberal Democrats, because elections are not decided by a party's share of the total vote, but exclusively by the number of constituencies won in a "first past the post" system. This can be cruel. In 2005, the Liberal Democrats captured more than 22 percent of the popular vote nationwide, but had to make do with only about 10 percent of seats in parliament.
As recently as early April, London bookmaker William Hill considered the possibility of Clegg's party achieving a majority in parliament about as likely as a sighting of the Loch Ness monster.
But now that Clegg has hypnotized voters in front of their TV sets, some polls are already putting his party in first place, with about 33 percent of the vote, with the Tories following close behind and Brown's Labour Party bringing up the rear. All polls agree on the fact that a small British party has never made it this far this quickly.
Since the surprising poll results emerged, the conservative Rupert Murdoch press, which includes the tabloid The Sun and the centre-right The Times of London, has done its best to paint an unfavourable picture of the nation's new darling, but without success.
Millions of Britons are in love.
LOVE IS SOMETIMES BLIND – OFTEN FICKLE
Well, where are these new potential votes coming from?
Mary Dejevsky in the UK Independent picks the Aspiring Low Earners:
‘But now Britain's army of low-earning workers are flocking to Nick Clegg in an unprecedented surge in support for the Liberal Democrats.
All the parties have been attempting to woo the 14 million voters in the group, who have jobs and are part of households with a total income of up to £27,000. But, whereas they had looked likely unenthusiastically to back the Conservatives, after the television leadership debates support for the Liberal Democrats surged.
Polling carried out by Ipsos MORI for the think-tank the Resolution Foundation found that the Liberal Democrats had secured an 11-point lead among voters in the group, with the party taking support from the Tories and "other" parties.
The support for the Liberal Democrats is a major breakthrough as these voters do not traditionally vote for them. The poll found the Liberal Democrats had attracted 38 per cent of voters in the "low-earners" category, with both the Tories and Labour on 27 per cent.
On the other hand, Dominic Lawson picks the Worthy Middle Class:
‘As the Economist magazine pointed out last month, "the middle class has had a worse time of it than is generally recognized". Labour have done much to support the least well-off, at least through the tax and benefits system, and have also been very good to the super-rich non domiciles: it is the "hard-working middle class" that have actually done least well out of government policies – however much Gordon Brown eulogises them in principle.
Yet, as the Economist went on to say: "Mr Cameron epitomizes British elites: he understands his high-earning peers and feels a genuine noblesse oblige towards the poor, but the people in between seem somehow beyond his ken."
Who knows, perhaps a part of the sudden surge of support for the Liberal Democrats is from exactly those "hard-working middle classes", who feel overtaxed by Labour and do not feel that David Cameron is truly on their side? This represents a spectacular collapse in support for David Cameron.
In the cases of both the Aspiring Low Earners and the Worthy Middle Class, I find some disturbing resonances of an ostensibly totally unrelated group in the USA. As Kate Zerniket explains in the New York Times;
‘Tea Party Supporters are Doing Fine, but Angry Nonetheless. They are just as likely as others to be employed, and more likely to describe their economic situation as very or fairly good. Yet they are disproportionately pessimistic about the economy and the nation.
What accounts for this gap between how they are faring and how they feel the country is faring?
History offers some lessons. The poll reveals a deep conviction among Tea Party supporters that the country is being run by people who do not share their values, for the benefit of people who are not like them’.
BREAK OPEN MY BONES AND THEY ARE RED, WHITE AND BLUE
So what we are really seeing, at least in part, is a ‘plague upon both your houses’ response to Labour and the Tories, the registering of self-interest and protest about perceptions of unfairness, and a lack of loyalty to any party principles.
Not such a bad thing - just a reflection of a distracted public that puts a lot of emphasis now on ‘what’s in it for me?’ and on putting politicians in their place (somewhere above City Bankers, somewhere below Reality TV Stars).
So I try hard not to get my hopes up too much for substantive change in the UK. A week is as Harold Wilson remarked ‘a long time in politics’.
And, after all – we have been here before.
In a previous incarnation back in 1982, I stood as a Council Candidate for the Social Democratic Party (UK) in Leeds.
I lost. But as they say, it was an interesting experience. We were doing very well on the door step when we knocked until Mrs Thatcher ordered the sinking of the Argentine Navy cruiser the General Belgrano, killing 323 young Argentinians.
Overnight, it became a nationalist (or ‘Khaki’) Local Election. I well remember one Yorkshire-man justifying his switch back to the Tories by claiming a basic skeletal affinity with the Union Jack: ‘if you break open my bones lad, you will find that they are red, white and blue’.
So why was I there on the pavement in North Leeds?
As I still do, I despised the caste-ridden Tory Party, and Mrs Thatcher’s survival of the fittest ethics and avowal that ‘there is no such thing as society’.
On the other hand, I knew from working as a public servant in North East England 15 years before that the Labour Party had frequently become a corrupt Tammany Hall gang at the local level and was open to infiltration by Trotsky-influenced zealots from the ‘Militant Tendency’ who believed that their ends justified any means.
I was also very much opposed to Labour aspirations for the nationalization of private enterprises, its antipathy to the European Union, and its commitment to unilaterally dismantling the UK’s nuclear deterrent without securing any quid pro quo from the USSR.
The final straw for many in the breakaway of the SDP had been the behaviour of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey during the Labour leadership campaign to find a replacement for James Callaghan. He bluntly told those assembled to “vote for him” – no questions taken. At the end of one meeting, when asked why they should vote for him, Healey answered "You have nowhere else to go" (to stop the left-winger Michael Foot from winning).
The SDP enjoyed a considerable honeymoon period with the press, who made considerable mileage out of their quirk for proffering claret at their functions. Claret is an "agreeable" wine, and a metaphor for the party's harmonious internal relations compared to those of the strife-torn Labour Party of the period.
As Wikipedia explains:
‘The policies of the SDP emphasized a middle position between perceived extremes of Thatcherism and the Labour Party. The SDP favoured economic reforms during the 1980s (such as anti-trade union legislation and the privatization of state industries), but took a more welfarist position than the Conservative Party, being sceptical of Conservative welfare reforms (particularly regarding the Health Service).
The SDP formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party late in 1981, under the joint leadership of Roy Jenkins (SDP) and Liberal leader David Steel. The Liberal Party, and in particular its leader, David Steel, had applauded the formation of the SDP from the sidelines from the very start.
However, Liberal pride was damaged by the sustained lampooning of the Alliance by ITV's Spitting Image puppet comedy programme portraying Steel as the craven lickspittle of Owen. One Spitting Image sketch had a Machiavellian Owen proposing to a simpering Steel that the parties merged under a new name: "and for our side we'll take 'Social Democratic', and from your side, we'll take ‘Party'", to which a hesitant Steel agreed.
During an era of public disillusionment with the two main parties – Labour and the Conservatives – and wide-scale unemployment, the Alliance achieved considerable success in parliamentary by-elections. At one point, the party had an opinion poll rating of over 50 percent.
By 1981, David Steel was able to address the Liberal Party conference with the phrase "Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government!"
In early 1982, after public disagreements over who could fight which seats in the forthcoming election, the poll rating dipped, but the party was still well ahead of the Conservatives, and far ahead of Labour. However, following victory in the Falklands War in June 1982, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher soared from third place in the public opinion polls.
The standing of the Alliance and Labour declined. The Alliance did well in the 1983 general election, winning 25% of the national vote, close behind Labour's 28%.
Because of the British "first-past-the-post" electoral system, only 23 Alliance MPs were elected, six of whom were members of the SDP. Two more SDP MPs were elected in by-elections in the next four years, but in the 1987 general election, with the SDP under the leadership of David Owen, the Alliance's share of the vote fell slightly, and the SDP's parliamentary party was reduced from eight members to five’.
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