Two dubious truths, and one whopper

Tweet The Sunday Times treated us to an essay by David Cameron this week.  There’s much in it with which I’d disagree (so what’s new?), and I won’t attempt to go through the detail.  There was one passage though which particularly struck me as a classic example of the way in which a politician can select ‘truths’ which suit him, and by an apparently logical process arrive at a wholly unsubstantiated conclusion.

Talking of Ed Miliband’s wish to follow the example of the French president on economic policy, Cameron said, “Unemployment over the Channel is almost twice what it is in the UK.  Our economy is growing seven times faster than France’s.  Imagine if Miliband had been free to pursue his French dream: the fallout would be felt in catastrophic job losses, falling living standards, eye-watering debt, and fast-diminishing hope in our future”.

Now the first two statements of that passage are ‘true’, up to a point.  They depend on a snapshot comparison at a point in time, of course.  And whether that comparison is valid depends on a range of factors.  What we can say, with rather more certainty and validity, is that, over the long term, the growth trajectory of both economies bares a remarkable similarity.  However, I’m prepared to accept that, in the very limited short term context of a snap shot view at a point in time, both statements are true.

Whilst the third sentence appears to follow on from the other two, it simply doesn’t by any process of logic or rational argument.  It’s like an answer to a maths problem in an exam; without showing the workings, it’s impossible to see where exactly he went wrong.  There are though at least three unstated and almost certainly invalid assumptions being made, namely:

·         that the differences between France and the UK are the result of government policies,

·         that Miliband’s economic policies are more similar to those of the French president than to those of Cameron himself (especially bearing in mind Balls’ statement that there is nothing in the budget that he would change), and

·         that the consequences listed would have been replicated in the different circumstances of the UK had the same policies been followed.

Still, who needs truth or logic?

Don't anybody move, or...

Tweet As of yesterday, Ed Miliband has decisively ruled out something which was never likely to happen anyway, namely SNP participation in a formal coalition.  It’s easy to be decisive when the decision has already been taken by someone else.

But it was his apparent reasoning which struck me.  I had naively thought that when he finally got around to stating the obvious it would be to blunt the Tory attack and placate the tabloid frenzy about those dastardly Scots actually daring not only to vote for another party, but to play a role in the UK as well.  But no, it seems not.  In Milibandland, this is actually a cunning ploy to persuade the Scots to vote Labour after all, on the basis that he’ll allow the Tories to run the country if they don’t.

It reminded me, rather, of this scene from the film “Blazing Saddles” where the hero holds a gun to his own head and tells the townspeople who are about to lynch him “Don’t anybody move, or the black guy gets it”.  It works well in a comedy film; the townspeople all lay down their weapons and the sheriff pushes himself back into his office.  But then, it’s fiction, and comedy; and whilst Miliband knows that his line about the largest party getting to form the government is pure fiction, I don’t think he was intentionally being comedic.

But if “Vote for me in Scotland, or I’ll let the other guy run the country” isn’t an attempt at comedy, not to say farce, then what is it?  It sounds like a form of blackmail where the blackmailer is threatening to be his own main victim.  But it’s probably just the result of a thought process which is trapped in Westminster and a million miles removed from the real world. 

There’s a certain lack of understanding at the top of the Labour Party about how much has changed in Scotland since 18^th September.  At one level, I can’t blame them for that; the scale of the change has obviously surprised even the SNP.  But while the SNP have adapted to it and are riding the wave, Labour seem to be still in denial, clinging to the core belief that normality will return soon, if only they can find the right combination of threat and menace.

It’s an approach which seems likelier to accelerate their fate than to avoid it.

Back to the future

Tweet One of the characteristics of so-called ‘New Labour’ in government was that the solution to everything was always more legislation.  It was often poorly thought through legislation, and didn’t always achieve the claimed outcomes; but it usually achieved the desired political result, which was that the government was seen to be doing ‘something’.

Ed Miliband’s commitment to legislate for leaders’ debates in future elections seemed to me to have come from the same stable.  It’s perhaps even less well thought through than even some of Blair’s efforts, but it gives the impression of reacting decisively to a problem and promising to act.

The proposal is blatant nonsense, of course; but I doubt that Miliband will be over-worried about that.  He’s seen a problem, promised decisive action, and is now moving on.  All his focus groups probably told him that being decisive is a good thing in itself – the ‘about what’ and ‘in which way’ questions are secondary.

On the essence of the issue, I doubt that the public are demanding these debates in the way that the politicians and broadcasters seem to believe.  And I have a suspicion that 7 (or more) way debates are going to be televisual Mogadon, with too little time to explore any issue in depth, deteriorating into a swapping of pre-rehearsed sound bites and insults.  Plenty of artificial heat, and very little light.

None of that matters in the slightest to Miliband or his advisers, because his latest promise isn’t about debates or even about legislation; it’s all about image.  New Labour never really went away at all.

Does Ed kow something that I don't?

Tweet Last week, Ed Miliband told us that “The question on the ballot paper … is who is going to be prime minister, is it going to be David Cameron or is it going to be Ed Miliband?”.  This came as news to me – has the UK’s electoral system been changed without me noticing it?  And what if I don’t want to vote for either of them – am I to be disenfranchised?

It’s just sloppy wording on his part, of course, albeit part of a continuing deliberate attempt by the Labour-Tory parties to shut down any form of electoral debate which doesn’t focus on that simple question.  It’s also another nail in the coffin of parliamentary democracy; he’s effectively confirming his view that MPs are only there to vote as they’re told, either for or against the government of the day.

It’s clumsy, but it also strikes me as being not entirely wise.  In his position, and looking at the ratings given to the party leaders in opinion polls, I can’t believe that asking people to make a direct personal choice between himself and Cameron is the very best strategy he could have come up with.

It's all an act

Tweet I doubt that there’s anyone who really believes Cameron’s line about not wanting to take part in leaders’ debates because the Green Party has been excluded, even himself.  He’s simply calculated the potential risks and benefits and decided that the downsides of participation are greater than the upsides.  The line about the Green Party isn’t entirely the fig-leaf as which it’s been painted though.  Part of his calculation will have been that having Farage present as a perceived alternative to the Tories might at least partly be countered by having Natalie Bennett there as a perceived alternative to Labour.

The others are just as calculating.  Farage probably calculates that the status accorded to him and his party as a serious player, coupled with his ability to play the outsider, can only be a plus.  Miliband should be very wary of going head to head with Cameron if he has any sense at all, but is milking Cameron’s refusal to take part for all it’s worth.  I can certainly see why he’d calculate that going ahead with the debates without Cameron might help him.  As for Clegg – well who knows what goes on in the mind of a Liberal Democrat?  Probably that nothing he can do can make things much worse, so any chance at all of redeeming his party's position is better than nothing.

The way that they and their advisors are calculating the risks and rewards of these debates isn’t the only similarity between them of course.  When it comes to policy there isn’t that much to choose between them either.  And four middle-aged male millionaires from the South East of England, saying and believing much the same, aren’t exactly a representative or exciting prospect.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of leaders’ debates anyway.  Partly that’s because of the exclusion of any serious alternative viewpoint, and partly it’s because the election is about electing a parliament not a president.  (Although I wouldn’t have a major objection to separating the election of the executive from the election of the legislature, as it happens – indeed, I can see a number of advantages to doing that.  But while we're still electing a parliament rather than an executive, treating the votes of all the citizens of the UK as votes for one or other of the ‘leaders’ is to treat local MPs as nothing more than lobby fodder.  That may well be what they are much of the time, but that’s another problem which needs to be addressed not reinforced.)

However, neither of those objections are really what concerns me.  My biggest objection of all is that they’re not even proper debates.  They’re staged to suit the broadcasters’ wish for good television. 

The participants have all been coached and rehearsed and we’re encouraged to distinguish between them on the basis of their performance.  It’s all an act where the ‘winner’ is the one who has the best coaches and the best memory.  Remembering to look sincere in the right places, to display the right degree of outrage at others, to deliver the scripted sound bites and even the scripted jokes – all of these are more important than the substance of policy.

Would it be any different if Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood, or Natalie Bennett (or even all three) were included?  It would certainly look different, but how certain could we really be that they too wouldn’t have been coached and rehearsed to perform well?  And how well would the format really suit the presentation of a serious alternative viewpoint?

I’m not at all confident on either score, much as I’d like to believe otherwise.  Unintentionally, perhaps Cameron is doing us all a favour by finding an excuse to block the debates.  For sure, the broadcasters will complain about the impact on democracy, but in reality it’s no such thing.  And believing that the broadcasters are interested in democracy rather than ratings would be as silly as believing that Cameron really cares about excluding the Green Party.

It really is all about prejudice

Tweet According to Miliband last week, he doesn’t believe that “... it is prejudiced to worry about immigration”.  Faced with the fact that immigration is a major issue on the doorstep, he has pledged that Labour will, however, ‘bear down on immigration through a six-month restriction on benefits for EU migrants and longer transitional controls for new accession countries’.  If this isn’t responding to prejudice, what is it?

Prejudice is simply ‘forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case’.  Given the research which has been done on the economic effects of immigration, showing that it has a net benefit to the UK economy; and the research on benefits showing that immigrants are actually less likely to be on benefits than UK citizens – effectively demolishing the most usual arguments against immigration – what is left as the basis of the concern to which Miliband is trying to respond other than prejudice?

And that prejudice isn’t uniformly directed at all immigrants either.  Farage may have been attacked for the politically unwise distinction that he drew between Romanians and Germans, but I rather suspect that his chilling response “You know what the difference is” reflects an attitude which is all too common.  In trying to generalise the issue to one of ‘immigration’, politicians are glossing over the fact that the opinions to which they are trying to pander do indeed make distinctions between different types of immigrant from different backgrounds.  Politicians like Miliband can’t or won’t acknowledge those differences because to do so would be to admit that much of the doorstep hostility to immigration is indeed based largely on prejudice.

I can understand why Miliband says that Labour should not turn its back on public concerns, but the choice he faces isn’t the binary one of ignoring those concerns or pandering to them.  The option of countering prejudice with facts doesn’t seem to be on his agenda.

Being right for the wrong reasons

Tweet I find it hard to disagree with Ed Miliband’s assertion that banks have become too large and financial power too concentrated in the hands of a few.  That alone is reason enough to want to see some of them broken up into smaller banks.

I’m far less convinced about his apparent belief that the additional competition which he expects to result will bring benefits to businesses, such as more lending.  The faith in “competition” as the answer to just about everything is what gave us the marketization of the health service – perhaps he isn’t so far away from Thatcher and Blair as he’d like us to believe.

Certainly, having more and smaller banks will lead to more competition; it’s the leap beyond that to the conclusions about who would benefit that I would doubt.  Smaller banks are likely to take less risk rather than more; they’ll be competing for the safest, most profitable, customers, not the riskiest ones.  And if banks aren’t lending to businesses at the moment, it isn’t because they can’t – it’s because of their assessment of the likely levels of risk and return.

Paradoxically, Miliband’s advocacy of breaking up the banks may actually have the opposite effect of that he claims.  Insofar as breaking up the banks is one of his better ideas, it’s for completely different reasons than those he gives.

A marketing ploy

Tweet Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices if Labour are elected in 2015 is likely to prove popular, even if the policy seems to be unravelling somewhat at present.  The squealing of the energy companies is likely to be more of a help to him than a hindrance.  Standing up to what is perceived to be an unpopular bunch of fat-cats is hardly an unpopular position to take.

I’m not sure how much of a promise it is though.  If elected in May 2015, and allowing a little time if legislation is required (and I rather suspect that it is) a freeze until the start of 2017 is about 18 months, slightly less than the 20 being bandied about.

Many of the energy companies already offer customers fixed price deals for periods of 12 months at a time – extending that from some customers to all customers and from 12 months to 18 months doesn’t look like the big deal both the energy companies and Miliband are making it out to be.  That’s particularly so if we consider the way in which they achieve their fixed prices.

The price per unit for fixed-price customers is set at the level which the energy companies believe that they can sustain over the period concerned.  As a result, that price may be higher than it needs to be at the start of that fixed period – and lower than it would otherwise be at the end.  “Fixing” prices is not something that they do generously out of the goodness of their hearts – it’s a marketing ploy which they calculate will not adversely affect their profitability over the long term.  By giving almost 2 years' notice of intent, Miliband has given them time to ensure that the base price, at the start of the fixed price period, will be where they think they need it to be. 

Paradoxically, the promise to guarantee no increases for a set period in the future may just encourage higher price increases in the interim.  They won’t do it as openly as that, of course; they will merely take into account future expectations when they calculate the next price increases.  From a business perspective, that's a rational and prudent approach.  From Labour’s point of view it may even be good politics – it’s Cameron who will be blamed for the high prices in the interim – but it isn’t necessarily good economics or good energy policy.

And even if the energy companies don’t simply implement a pre-emptive price increase in advance, they will recover their position after the freeze period.  The only thing of which we can be entirely certain is that, over the long term, a period of frozen prices will not affect their overall profitability – they’ll get our money from us somehow.

The reason given by Labour for this policy is the most depressing aspect of all this.  The “markets are broken” they claim, and the period of frozen prices will give them time to fix them before competition is allowed to run free again. The underlying assumptions are firstly that the markets can be fixed, and secondly that if the market operates properly all will be well.  Would that life were so simple.  Politicians who were serious about controlling energy prices would never expect the free market to deliver that policy for them.  Politicians who were serious about tackling the high profits and fat-cat culture of the energy companies wouldn’t just be talking about a very short-term price freeze.

For all the hype, Miliband’s statement ends up looking like the fixed-price deals on offer in any event from the energy companies – it’s a marketing ploy; no more no less.  The only difference is that he isn’t marketing anything useful – only himself and his party.

Carwyn doesn't trust Ed

Tweet One of the problems in basing support for keeping Wales in the EU solely on the economic arguments is that those taking that view inevitably have to argue against the Euro-sceptic claim that the UK Government could give us the same money directly.  The Euro-sceptic claim that the money really doesn’t have to go through Brussels at all has an inescapable logic to it.

But economics is indeed the basis of the position taken by Carwyn Jones.  This is what he said earlier this week about a vote to leave the EU:

“Welsh farming would end, basically – £300m of support would disappear.  It wouldn’t come from London, not a hope”.

“That money would certainly be pocketed by Defra [the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs], it wouldn’t come to Wales.  It would mean the end of a substantial market for Welsh farming, and the end of support for Welsh farming.  That worries me tremendously.”

I think that he’s probably right to be sceptical about whether any UK Government would, rather than could, treat Wales as generously.  It’s interesting, though, that he placed no caveat at all on the colour of the UK Government in this context.  He didn’t argue that those wicked evil Tories would simply pocket the cash; he argued that any London Government would do so.

In short, he clearly has no more faith that Ed Miliband would stand up for Wales than that David Cameron would.  Again, I think he’s probably right.  But if he doesn’t trust UK Labour, why should the rest of us?