A Pint of Bitter | Anglotopia

A Pint of Bitter: Cameron’s gaffes, Boris’s bikes and one big pub garden

August 6, 2010 By Carl Leave a Comment

We’re in the “silly season” in Britain now, the period when Parliament is in recess and little happens politically until the party conferences in September. But nowadays, politics happens even in August – though the Prime Minister probably wishes it didn’t. First, in America last month, he said Britain had been the “junior partner” to the US in 1940, which didn’t so much wound anyone’s national pride as reveal a dodgy grasp of history – most British people are happy to accept we were the junior partner in war from the end of 1941. His outspoken remarks about Pakistan, during his visit to India, were surely no mistake but agreed with the US beforehand so as to send a signal to Pakistan’s government. Cameron’s batting technique was more suspect, though he still hit a 51-year-old Kapil Dev through mid-wicket. The fact that he used a tennis ball may have helped. But since coming back to this country, the PM has had a series of media appearances and public meetings – and has got into a bit of trouble.

The Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Most recently he said Iran already has a nuclear weapon, which is either a silly mistake, or else a silly leaking of white-hot intelligence. Before that, he suggested in response to a member of the public that social housing should not be “for life”. Obviously people can buy houses or flats in the UK, or else rent in the private sector. But it’s also possible to apply to be housed by local government – or more usually these days, to be housed on behalf of your local council by a “housing association” – and to pay rent to them indefinitely. Cameron’s idea is a radical one: it would not just end the arguably socialist idea that social housing is an alternative and permanent lifestyle choice, but also Margaret Thatcher’s conception of a council house as “your home” – something you should be entitled to buy from the government and then own. The immediate problem was, though, that the idea hadn’t been agreed by the coalition, as was immediately pointed out in no uncertain terms by the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes.

Simon Hughes | Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

Hughes is an interesting figure. Clearly on the left of his party, he’s long wanted to lead it, but never succeeded. He was elected to his post, but in truth practically handed it on a plate in a shrewd move by the real leader, Nick Clegg. Shrewd, because having Hughes as a sort of leader of the Liberal Democrats outside the coalition reassures members that the party’s identity has not been abandoned; shrewd because it means a powerful figure is able, as in this instance on social housing, to exert pressure on David Cameron from outside government, and publicly, as Clegg himself does privately on the inside; and shrewd because it means Hughes cannot actually plot to bring him down except by openly splitting the party. It gives Hughes a powerful role, but making it an official party one ties him into exercising it responsibly.

Apart from that, the Conservative right-winger’s right-winger, the disastrous former leader Iain Duncan Smith, set out some ideas for reforming welfare – a big part of public spending, on which the coalition really must make big savings. Duncan Smith has been devoting himself to social exclusion and poverty since he was ousted as leader in 2005 and has made a decent reputation as a radical and a reformer. But his brief is a tough one to deliver. In truth, making work pay in the way he wants to – by allowing those who find jobs to keep more of their welfare benefits for a transitional period – is likely to cost money rather than saving it. The most radical and immediately implementable idea that would unite two big Conservative themes – the “big society” of active citizens and welfare reform – would be to make receipt of unemployment benefits conditional on providing full-time public service, for instance as a charity volunteer. It’s so obvious that I think the government must already have decided not to dare.

Michael Keen | CreativeCommons

In London, the mayor Boris Johnson finally has a concrete, visible achievement: “Boris’s bikes”. At various places in central London you can now find a rack of sturdy bikes, any of which you can use for half an hour, free, or else pay to ride for longer. This is an idea that deserves to be popular, and which is stolen from Paris. It was even apparently first conceived by the previous mayor in fact, so isn’t Boris’s idea at all. But it’s a good one, and I can’t wait to have my first ride. A pity we don’t have proper bicycle lanes in London to spare the risk of life and limb.

The Merlin's Cave

I’ve spent most of the summer in London, but last weekend involved a brief respite from the big city: Francesca and I spent an afternoon in Chalfont St. Giles, a village in Buckinghamshire that can fairly be called “just outside” the modern megopolis. Unfortunately we found Milton’s cottage closed. But the Norman Parish Church of St. Giles is really worth a visit, with a quite magnificent turnstyle of a lychgate, plus a 15th century mural and 15th century pews. Of course we ended our outing with a pint, at the Merlin’s Cave. Not a marvellous pub, this, at least on the inside – it’s too focused on TV screens and the pool table. But the beer and scrumpy are fine, and its real glory is the huge beer garden stretching down behind the church towards the river and a fine weeping willow. The couple of hours we spent there reading and talking were some of the best of the summer – and it’s places and times like that that make you want to live in England. Big society? Let’s make England one big pub garden instead.

Filed Under: A Pint of Bitter, History, Politics

A Pint of Bitter: Football failure, fiscal austerity and the third man

July 16, 2010 By Carl Leave a Comment

England crashed out of the World Cup. Of course. Their defeat, conceding four goals to Germany, was abject and depressing even by their own sorry standards, and led to an angry, vindictive inquest from supporters, giving edge to the despond that usually follows England’s exit. How is that stars like Rooney and Lampard can go to a tournament like that and simply not perform? How can the manager have stuck rigidly to an outdated tactical system? Why play Gerrard wide on the left? I epxected Fabio Capello to lose his job as England coach but someone, somewhere thinks he has learned enough from this experience to do better in future, that perhaps failure was not his fault. Or he may have been too expensive to sack. At any rate, England carry on as the football world’s most underachieving nation now that relentless Spain, tiring defences like matadors before sticking in one fatal goal in a way that’s impressive, like Rafael Nadal, rather than exciting, have managed to win the big one.

Tim Ellis | CreativeCommons

So it’s back to normal life, and the dreary reality of the coalition’s austerity Britain. Actually I suspect my countrymen and women of secretly salivating at the thought of cut-backs, somewhere in the recesses of our imaginations. Pride in past victory has lent a certain glamour to the grimness of rationing and make-do-and-mend, and I sense relish in some quarters at the thought that the coming years may make rigour pay, and our pleasures rarer and simpler. I share the feeling myself, to some extent. Compared to the old days, when wine was an unheard of luxury to most British people and clothes and books were made from special materials, we don’t even know what austerity means. We live lives of excess, for the most part, private debt is at levels that would have made 1950s housewives faint, and giving a few things up would do us good.

Preapring for Oxfam's "Make do and Mend" fashion event | Ruth Geach | CreativeCommons

It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that the country needs the extremest fiscal rigour possible. Most people I sense accept the government’s view that early, decisive action in needed to reduce Britain’s deficit as quickly as possible. It’s an argument that seems to have been won since the election rather than before it; no doubt the trouble in Greece has helped convince people we don’t want to go there. Perhaps what’s happening shows that the change of government was the best thing for the country because, while many people I think accept Labour’s Keynesian stimulus spending helped the country through the recession (unemployment is lower and fewer people have lost their homes than we might have feared), they’d have found it hard to accept that same government cutting back. The incoming government can do so with much more good will – for the moment at least. Their project is a difficult one, though, and if private sector growth does not pick up it may turn impossible. They have to hope it does – and that their own cuts don’t suppress it.

One of the things the coalition has resorted to in its economy drive is to ask us how they can save money. I think this is a good idea – I’ve even sent in my own suggestions. It may be true that this is more about public morale, but I do think government should consult people individually (rather than simply engage with lobby groups) and that the internet is, realistically, the only way of doing that. Inevitably this sort of exercise is bound to attract the mad, the nasty and the comical. My own favourite was the suggestion that we should sell the England football team, an idea that, together with every other idea, appears unfortunately to have been taken down from the site now. The main objection commenters made was that it wouldn’t raise much money.

Downing Street | CreativeCommons

One way a citizen can make money out of government is to publish political memoirs, as Peter, Lord Mandelson, has done within days, practically, of losing his job as effective deputy to the Prime Minister. The memoirs are being serialised in the Times – which means I can’t link you to an extract, the Times now hiding behind a “pay wall”. A pity. Mandelson’s alienated his few friends in the Labour party with this apparently warts-and-all account of the poisonous relations between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown: he quotes Blair as calling Brown “mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption”, which is not high praise for his successor. I’m glad Mandelson has published, though. The book will reveal little the public wasn’t aware of in at least a vague sense: that Blair and Brown came to hate each other after 1994 has been obvious. What it does do, though, is make it difficult for Labour politicians to deny it any longer. It may also suggest that Brown was more at fault than Blair. If I read it soon, I’ll let you know.

Jonathan and Jackie and the George

It’s not long since I wrote about the George, but I must mention my visit there last week – because it was to have a beer with Jonathan and Jackie, who were in London for a visit. On one of the most sweltering days of the summer we took refuge in the cool interior and downed plenty of salt and vinegar crisps as well as (in my case) a couple of pints of George Ale. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll see them again – but I don’t think it’ll be long!

Filed Under: A Pint of Bitter, London, Politics, World Cup 2010

A Pint of Bitter: Labour’s leaders and England’s World Cup

June 18, 2010 By Carl Leave a Comment

Away from government, the contest for the Labour leadership is beginning to take shape. Nowadays following election defeats, Prime Ministers depart the political scene very quickly indeed. John Major famously went to watch cricket after he was beaten in 1997; this time, Gordon Brown left quickly for Scotland. But was that a good idea? Brown had already resigned as Labour leader before he was ousted as PM, of course, in a desperate attempt to tempt the Liberal Democrats to back some alternative Labour leader. Should he have stayed on as leader of the opposition, as James Callaghan did after his defeat by Margaret Thatcher in 1979?

Labour's five leadership candidates | Courtesy of David Miliband's campaign

I think so; Labour needs space and time to rethink what it’s about after Blair and Brown, and Brown could have served his party well by soldiering on for a year. Against that, some argued that the new coalition government could, just, stumble and break up early on. Labour must be refreshed with a new leader in time for any surprise election. And the Callaghan precedent is not a happy one: when he did eventually stand down in 1980, Labour tore itself apart. In any event Brown had gone, and the real question was whether replacing him should be quick or slow affair. The party’s National Executive Committee opted for a slow contest but initially gave only a very short period for candidates to be nominated. That deadline was extended after pressure from many Labour members, and in the end five candidates achieved the figure of 33 nominations from MPs in order to stand – one, Diane Abbott, only with the help of one of her opponents, David Miliband, who had promised to offer her his nomination if she was one short near the deadline.

Diane Abbott | Alex Hilton | CreativeCommons

Miliband’s move was not merely generous: it was good Machiavellian politics. Diane Abbott is an attractive personality and well known from her appearances on the BBC’s This Week. She’s by a clear margin the most left-wing of the would-be leaders, and is likely to attract many votes that might otherwise have attached themselves to Miliband’s younger brother Ed, who is also standing, funnily enough. Many thoughtful Labour figures came out early in support of Ed, who is clearly positioning himself to the left of David, especially on Iraq which seems bizarrely to be a key issue, though British troops left Iraq last year.

Ed Miliband | Dept. of Energy and Climate Change | CreativeCommons

I doubt Ed Miliband’s campaign is really going anywhere in spite of his attractive personality and ability to appeal to those who want Labour to be a little more greenish, a little more leftish – especially now that Diane Abbott will take votes from his left. Ed Balls is making a decent fist of opposing the coalition, forcefully and vocally. He’s too exhaustingly associated with the Brownite past to win, but his truculent tribalism will go down well with a lot of Labour members, and I think he’ll do reasonably well. Andy Burnham is the out-and-out ultra Blairite candidate, and unlikely to do well. Could Diane Abbott cause a surprise? Yes and no. I think she’ll do surprisingly well, and may well come ahead of Burnham and Ed Miliband. But she is simply too metropolitan to attract enough of the Scottish, Welsh, northern and midland support she’d need to actually become Labour leader. I expect David Miliband to win. If you can use the BBC iPlayer, you can watch the Newsnight hustings from earlier this week and decide for yourself who Labour should choose.

Politics has been largely forgotten for the moment, though – being eclipsed for the next few weeks by the World Cup, of course. Here in England that means a familiar emotional trajectory of cautious hope before the tournament, through gloom once England have played their first match, then a surge of irrational confidence when they win their second, to be followed not long afterwards by fatalistic acceptance of defeat. England supporters reckon it’s a successful World Cup if the confidence stage lasts for at least two matches before England go out in the quarter-final. As I write, we’re in the gloom phase, having drawn with the USA, for heaven’s sake, in part thanks to Robert Green’s mad blunder. After England beat Algeria tonight – which they surely will, won’t they? – we’ll go straight into unjustified exuberance. But the good teams – Germany and especially Argentina – lie in wait beyond. If England can beat any of them, get your binoculars out and look for pigs overhead. The strange thing is, England have two of the best players in the competition, in Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. If the rest of the team could perform well enough for these two to show the world what they can do – then England really could do well. Cautious hope again, you see?

Carl Gardner | CreativeCommons

Let me finish with a pub, the Perseverance, in Lamb’s Conduit Street just off High Holborn. This was a surprise stop on a sunny day, but not a bad pub, serving food and with live music. I enjoyed the Thwaites’ Wainwright bitter, sitting outside in conversation about British and Dutch politics (they’ve just had an election, too; and are likely to have a conservative-liberal coalition, like us) and taking in the odd but fun atmosphere of this quirky bit of central London. The Perseverance takes second place in this street to the excellent Lamb, but there’s no disgrace in that. I expect to be back.

Filed Under: A Pint of Bitter, Politics, World Cup 2010

A Pint of Bitter: UK Coalition government, and how men’s relationships matter

May 29, 2010 By Carl 1 Comment

In one way, Britain’s new government – the coalition, as we’re beginning to call it – resembles the administration it replaced, rather than representing a break from it. Just as Labour government since 1997 was dominated by the relationship between two men, so this government is clearly based on and revolves around the obvious chemistry between David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg. Their first joint press conference in the Downing Street rose garden was an almost embarrassing love-in, partly because the two men do visibly get on well, and partly I suspect because of their shared exhilaration at sealing their deal, each having demonstrated political panache and each now tasting the reward of power. Do watch it here if you want a flavour of how the Conservative–LibDem government started. The two men’s reaction to the question 18 minutes in tells you a lot.

Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

And the new government is, as Alastair Campbell said on the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday, motoring. Since I last wrote, the coalition has published a detailed programme for government, fleshing out what it’s proposing to the country. Some of the agreement is unsurprising: the coalition will take urgent action to reduce Britain’s budget deficit, it will reform banking and it will legislate to reverse what it sees as Labour’s authoritarian measures, getting rid of the planned identity card scheme, for instance, and reducing the scope of the national DNA database. Some of it is clearly compromise – on European policy, on human rights and on immigration. But other parts of the agreement are much less expected.

The coalition Cabinet | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Most controversial has been a complex but important proposal to require a super-majority of 55% of MPs to vote in favour of an early dissolution of Parliament and a general election within five years. Parliament’s term is not fixed like that of the American Congress: at the moment, the Prime Minister can ask the Queen for an election at any time, and most Prime Ministers do so before they are legally required to, usually after about four years. And if the governing party loses its majority in the House of Commons, a vote of no confidence in the government usually triggers an election. The coalition wants to change that for a number of reasons. Liberal Democrats for their part believe in “fixed-term Parliaments“: they have long wanted to remove the PM’s power to initiate elections, which they believe should happen at regular intervals even if the government changes in the meantime. But they also want to remove David Cameron’s ability to undermine the coalition by seeking an election they don’t want. For the Conservatives, abandoning that unilateral right only makes sense if, equally, the Liberal Democrats lose the ability to leave the coalition and join with other parties to force an election. Since non-Conservatives are 53% of the House, settling on 55% as the threshold suits both parties’ aims admirably. But it is precisely this transparently partisan benefit that makes the proposal highly controversial. I’ve written against it myself.

The other surprise proposal is to grant anonymity to rape suspects, a policy that was adopted a few years ago by the Liberal Democrat conference but which most political junkies, never mind the general public, were unaware of. Women who report being raped have been granted anonymity since the 1970s, when the protection was brought in to encourage them to come forward, but this is a rare exception to the principle here that justice should be in public. There is a strand of opinion that thinks defendants in rape cases should be given “equal treatment” with their alleged victims; but strong resistance to this idea comes especially from feminists who see the policy as pandering to the idea that false rape allegations are widespread. The 55% policy will be the first of these to cause real turbulence, as it’s an immediate priority for this year and was trailed in the Queen’s speech – which you can see in its entirety here. There’s no suggestion of a criminal law, sexual offences or criminal justice bill in this session, so the row about rape anonymity will be postponed for the moment.

David Laws | Liberal Democrats | Alex Folkes | fishnik.com | CreativeCommons

But nonetheless, the coalition has already run into a serious, unexpected difficulty. Its early star was David Laws, the rather dashing Liberal Democrat and new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This is always an important post: it’s effectively deputy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is itself a Cabinet post often held by future Chancellors such as John Major and Alistair Darling. But because the Chief Secretary is specifically responsible for public spending levels, it’s even more important than usual at this time of budget cutting. It was Laws who announced the detail of the government’s immediate savings package at the Treasury last week, and it was he who defended them in Parliament. He’s become the pin-up of fiscal conservatives who admire his parsimony in small things as well as big. So it comes as a massive blow to both him and the new government that this Saturday morning the Daily Telegraph reported his having claimed expenses to pay rent to his partner, contrary to Parliamentary rules, since 2006.

The scandal seems to be dividing opinion. David Laws clearly wanted to keep his relationship private; and neither his sexuality nor his desire for privacy are matters of scandal or controversy in Britain, where people increasingly take pride in seeing such things as irrelevant to public life. Some, and not only Liberal Democrats, defend Laws on the basis that he was simply trying to maintain his privacy and that, by claiming for the rent he paid to his partner he actually saved public money, as compared with what he could have claimed had the pair openly bought and shared a property. Certainly, Laws is attracting some sympathy on a human level and because his visible competence has made him look the right man, in the right job at the right time. But this is a very serious business. Laws seems to have plainly broken the rules, which since 2006 have prohibited payments from expenses going to MPs’ partners, and this exposure resurrects the poisonous expenses scandal of last year. Not only that: this apparent abuse of taxpayers’ money comes from the very man – a rich man, at that, who it’s said retired from the City, a millionaire, at 28 – whose duty it is to make the nation face the need for austerity in the use of public funds. This is a sad story of a talented man brought down by a collision between 1950s-style prejudice, or the fear of it, and the fierce new mood of fiscal rectitude in Britain. I’m afraid he’ll probably have to go; perhaps even has gone before you read this.

Maybe next time there’ll be a little less politics to write about, and a little more room for pubs.

Filed Under: A Pint of Bitter, Great Britain, Politics, Prime Minister

A Pint of Bitter: a hung Parliament, and a new kind of government

May 12, 2010 By Carl Leave a Comment

This has been a truly unusual, historic week in British politics. As I delivered Labour’s final leaflet in my London constituency, I felt Labour was coming back slightly. Not enough to win, perhaps, but enough to stave off disaster. Election night itself was reasonably dramatic – we spent hours wondering whether the Conservatives might still gain a majority in Parliament – but it was a night that teased us. By dawn it was clear that the Tories hadn’t quite made it. We would have a “hung Parliament”, no party having a majority. With 306 of the 650 seats, David Cameron’s Conservatives would have great difficulty governing as a minority; Labour, with only 258 seats, would have no chance of doing so. The only stable majority could be formed by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats somehow working together – and that was the truth that politicians grasped early last Friday.

Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Nick Clegg was first, saying the Conservatives – with more seats and more votes than anyone else – had the right to prove they could govern in the national interest. David Cameron acted quickly and more boldly than expected, making a comprehensive offer to open talks about forming a stable government. Gordon Brown emerged from 10 Downing Street to say the other parties could take what time they needed – and that he was ready to talk to Nick Clegg if Tory-LibDem negotiations foundered. The horse-trading began.

The BBC's Nick Robinson reporting on Cameron's "big offer" | Tom Page | CreativeCommons

On Saturday it looked as though agreement could happen very quickly. Tory and Liberal Democrat teams got on well and were clearly engaged in real detail. The mood music was so good that, by Sunday, we wondered why a deal hadn’t been closed. And on Monday, it seemed almost to fall apart when the LibDem MPs met and asked for clarification on various items. At that point, Gordon Brown’s machiavallian instincts showed one final time, as, announcing his own departure as Labour leader, he in effect invited Liberal Democrats to speak to him instead. Was it a last, desperate throw by a man clutching at a last few months of power? Or was it just a low tactic to poison Tory-LibDem relations and damage the new government from the start? We may never know. But for a moment it did throw everything into confusion. Most Liberal Democrats dream, in truth, of an arrangement with Labour, not the Tories, and they found siren Labour calls hard to resist. What killed it was partly the arithmetic – Labour and the LibDems together would still be a majority, dependent on the tolerance of Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists – and partly the resistance of a number of prominent Labour MPs for whom clinging on to power would damage Labour and give the country unstable government. Reality took hold again yesterday, when the Tory-LibDem contract was finally signed.

Gordon Brown left Downing Street to offer his resignation to Her Majesty – early on Tuesday evening, in a final touch of spin, to deny David Cameron a “new dawn” arrival at Number 10. Even before his deal was signed, David Cameron was clearly the man most likely to command a Parliamentary majority, and was summon by the Queen to form a new government as Prime Minister. And we now know the rough shape of that new government. Under Cameron, Nick Clegg will be deputy Prime Minister, and a number of Liberal Democrats will be in Cabinet, including Vince Cable as Business Secretary and David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury – the cutter-in-chief role.

Downing Street | CreativeCommons

The political significance of this week is huge. It marks the end of New Labour, at least in this manifestation. A political era that began with the death of Labour leader John Smith in 1994, and dominated by Tony Blair and his modernising philosophy, will be over. It is the first time Conservatives have defeated Labour to return to power since Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But much, more more historic is the fact that this will be the first peacetime coalition, and the first time Liberals have been in government, since 1935. The political effects are likely to be enormous, too. The Conservative party has survived the civil war that has lasted since Margaret Thatcher was removed from office, and has finally recovered enough to take office. But it remains damaged, without the swagger and confidence it once had. How it fares from now will turn on how well ministers deal with the serious fiscal position they face, and on David Cameron’s performance as Prime Minister. There’s an upside to the compromises he has had to make to Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats: he is free from the shackles of his own campaign pledges, and can discard his less popular policies. He’s been dealt an unusual hand, and has the chance to play it with skill.

The Liberal Democrats have achieved office for the first time, a development that marks their coming of age. I expect their popularity to decrease somewhat as they lose their opposition identity and are tainted by power. I also think there’s a risk they might even split: tensions are bound to surface in a party divided between the left-leaning majority and the more genuinely centrist group around Nick Clegg. They’ve also lost their dream of proportional representation, not just this time but I suspect for some time. Britain has tasted, this week, what coalition politics is like, and most people have disliked the backroom wheeler-dealing it involves. Exciting though the spectacle may be, it seems undemocratic. I’d be surprised if, at the next election, the two main parties do not increase their share of the vote. There’s a vocal lobby for proportional representation, but I doubt many people support it. We can probably forget it for a while.

President Obama calls David Cameron | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Labour is defeated, but not crushed, to the relief of many of its supporters, and its leader Gordon Brown – a divisive and poor leader – is leaving. Opposition to a government making deep cuts and facing certain difficulty gives it a big opportunity to rebuild, and opportunity made all the greater with the effective removal of its competitor on the centre-left. Ideally, Labour would take some time to rethink its new direction. Gordon Brown, with his last-ditch resignation as leader to lure the LibDems into talks, may have done Labour a final bad turn by accelerating its leadership contest unnecessarily. David Miliband is the front runner already, and most expect the fight to be between him and Ed Balls. I’d caution, though, against ruling out Jon Cruddas, who I think stands a good chance of leading Labour by this autumn.

If the British constitution is a fine old stately home, this week we’ve revisited a disused and dusty wing. Absence made the heart grow briefly fonder. I expect, though, that we’ll only visit again if we must.

Filed Under: A Pint of Bitter, Politics, Prime Minister Tagged With: david cameron