Diminished, maybe - but not down and out

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Sadly, seeing Farage go down to defeat against a pretend intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head was never more than an outside hope, but the dream was pleasant while it lasted. For Farage himself, despite all his bluster about a resounding victory, and the people having exonerated him, he’s now back exactly where he was before he resigned, with a parliamentary enquiry into his amazingly generous, completely non-political ‘gift’ of £5 million now due to restart. Apparently, he didn’t even realise that resigning and getting re-elected wouldn’t make the investigation go away. Actually, perhaps there is a difference – there are more questions being asked about the source and legality of funding for his company, Reform Ltd, now than there were before he resigned. He may yet face another by-election, this time not of his choosing and against an array of political parties rather than the only credible one being our friend with the bin.

Although it may not have achieved much from Farage’s point of view, it may not have been entirely a waste of time. It has demonstrated how little he cares for the rules and regulations by which others are expected to abide, as well as a certain lack of attention to detail. And his statement last night that he missed the count not for the reasons being claimed by his company’s spokespersons, but because, as he put it, “I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage … and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies” betrays a certain arrogance towards people he considers less important than himself (a category which increasingly seems to include almost everybody else). Election rules in the UK may well turn by-elections into a bit of a circus (I’ve been there myself, although not to the extent of metre long ballot papers with 34 names on them, having fought a by-election in 1989 which was also contested by Screaming Lord Sutch and Miss Whiplash, among others), but them’s the rules, and even if democracy sometimes works in mysterious ways, effectively challenging the right of people to spend their time and money on fringe campaigns has to be better than the alternative of candidates needing to be approved by the state before they can stand.

He will, no doubt, try to claim that getting more votes than in 2024 on a reduced turnout shows that the electors of Clacton aren’t interested in what he seems to see as arcane rules about political donations. Getting 63% of the vote on a 44% turnout means that only around 28% of Clacton’s electors felt strongly enough to go out and vote for him – but it is a quirk of the UK’s parliamentary election system that 28% of the total electorate across the UK on a normal turnout with multiple other parties standing would probably be enough for a party to win a resounding overall majority. I might believe – I certainly want to believe – that the by-election and his approach to it has led to him being a somewhat diminished figure, but we should not be complacent. An electoral system which works, after a fashion, when two large parties manage to gather 80% or more of the votes between them does not work at all well with 6 or 7 parties in the mix: the danger of electing a UK government which is even more unrepresentative of the population than the current Labour government is still present. Electoral reform is desperately needed, yet Burnham seems unwilling to address the issue with anything like the speed needed.

Those with the vested interests aren't the ones who should be deciding the rules

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Back in April, Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, apparently demanded that the security arrangements for a visit to Vancouver should be at a level higher than that provided for Canadian PM Mark Carney, and at a level normally reserved for the likes of the US President or the Pope. Here in the UK, it seems that Farage has refused the security arrangements he was offered – which are equivalent to those provided for members of the Cabinet and the leader of the official opposition – as being inadequate, and said that his company would continue to provide his security instead. In the case of Infantino, it appears to have more to do with validating his own sense of self-importance than with security; perhaps there is at least an element of the same thing with Farage. Two entitled men with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, seeking special treatment. There is a valid question about what level of security is needed for people in the public eye and how should it be provided and paid for, but, even more importantly – who decides?

People who feel themselves to be under threat naturally want the best security they can get, but are probably the least appropriate people to decide what that level should be. But leaving it to the ‘experts’, which is the obvious alternative, depends on an assumption that those experts really are expert, and don’t make mistakes – an assumption which is necessarily flawed when we’re dealing with human judgement. There isn’t a simple answer (which is not to say that the government will not fall back on its usual simplistic answer to all issues – set up a review). I do wonder, though, whether Farage’s motives are as straightforward as he claims. After all, when public servants are providing security, they are subject to the normal scrutiny of public servants, and it’s more than possible that Farage wouldn’t want the security services, let alone various other authorities in the UK, to know where he was and who he was with at all times. And I really don’t believe that I’m just displaying a naturally suspicious mind by saying that.

He has attempted to turn the issue into a justification for the sort of large individual donations on which he and his company seem to depend. Without such large donations, he seems to be saying, Reform Ltd would not be able to afford the level of security which he deems necessary. It’s a complete non-sequitur – spending millions on security depends solely on the total amount of donations received, not on the amount of each one. It does, though, betray how dependent he is on a small number of enormous donations, underscoring that his company is struggling to attract the larger number of smaller donations on which other parties often depend. It is also, I suppose, possible that the widow giving her mite might just possibly be less happy than one of Farage’s fellow millionaires with her contribution being spent on security rather than electioneering. Or expelling foreigners. But here’s the thing: in the same way that people feeling threatened are not the best people to decide on what security they require, politicians dependent on the largesse of millionaires are not the best people to decide on the rules surrounding political donations.

Could Farage be right about the people vs the establishment?

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Farage presumably thought that resigning and fighting a by-election in which he expected to vanquish all his foes was a wizard wheeze. But then the other parties decided not to play, leaving him to fight a campaign against Count Binface and potentially a few other fringe candidates. There’s something rather pleasing about the man who refuses to play by the rules laid down by others now complaining that the others aren’t playing by the rules he has attempted to set for them.

The pundits all seem to be expecting that he will win an easy electoral victory, albeit one that will prove nothing, and probably leave him facing the same jeopardy. I wonder, though. In the first place, turnout is likely to be low – without other parties campaigning at all, who will be working to get the vote out – and for what? Secondly, in a country where ‘the people’ chose to name a boat Boaty McBoatface rather than honouring official national treasure David Attenborough, is it really too much of a stretch to imagine a victory for Count Binny McBinface, especially if the latter opted for such a scotification of his name? Farage claimed that it would be a fight between ‘the people’ and ‘the establishment’, and maybe he’s right. It’s just that he doesn’t understand that in a fight between these two titans, he – a multimillionaire public school-educated city trader – is the establishment candidate, and McBinface the anti-establishment insurgent. Farage also said that it’s an opportunity for people to stick two fingers up to the establishment – is there anything more likely to have that effect than sending a bin-clad warrior to Westminster? If I lived in Clacton, I’d certainly be tempted – and on a low turnout…

For those of us who see Farage as a danger to community cohesion, bringing his political career to an end would surely be a cause for celebration. And could there be a better – or more humiliating – way of achieving that than seeing him turfed out by a man wearing a refuse bin on his head? Maybe the pundits will be right, but we can surely dream in the meantime.

There are limits to what can be controlled democratically

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If Knut had been Swiss rather than Danish, he could have called a referendum instead of having his courtiers carry his throne to the water’s edge. It wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome, but at least he wouldn’t have got his feet wet demonstrating the limits of his authority. Some things are susceptible to human control, others less so; the difference isn’t always clear, especially when it comes to politics. On Sunday, the Swiss voted on a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million, a proposition which was defeated, but with a surprisingly high level of support (the result was 45%-55% on a 60% turnout). The proposition had nothing to do with the reproductive practices of the Swiss people, of course: it was really about immigration. Had the proposal been passed, the government would have found itself obliged to comply, primarily by limiting immigration. What they would have had to do if the Swiss started breeding at a rate which took the Swiss population not counting foreigners over the limit seems not to have been determined, although King Herod’s approach is the historical example which leaps to mind. Too unlikely a scenario to worry about, perhaps.

The figure of 10 million is entirely arbitrary, but the proposition was based on a fear that population growth would increase the pressure on housing etc. It’s a familiar refrain. When it comes to issues like housing, it’s inevitable that a larger population requires greater provision, and that’s true whether the growth is ‘natural’ or the result of immigration. The logical response to an increased demand for housing as a result of a growing population is to increase the housing stock. However, it seems that there are some who would prefer to evict ‘foreigners’ and deport them in order to allocate their homes to ‘natives’, even if they don’t always put it in those terms.

But ‘not always’ isn’t the same as ‘never’, and that brings us to Farage, who, at the weekend, announced his company’s new policy of evicting all foreign nationals from social housing, and deporting them if they can’t find private accommodation within three months. Evicting the unwanted from their homes and re-allocating those homes to others is not without historical precedent, as I’m sure Farage will be aware, although whether deportation is better or worse than being forced into formally demarcated ghettos is a question one might have hoped that we never had to debate. It was ‘interesting’ that, in his rant posing as an essay, Farage chose to make a simplistic distinction between ‘white British’ and ‘foreigners’. The implicit racism is both casual and revealing, and something which the use of language seeks to normalise.

Whether the UK has enough housing overall to serve all its population is a question which isn’t easy to answer; what is certain, though, is that there is a significant mismatch between the available type, location, and price of housing on the one hand and the needs of the current population on the other. I suspect the same is true in Switzerland. In either case, there’s something deeply irrational about setting out to adjust the demand (by controlling population numbers) rather than the supply (by building more homes). But then, rationality and racism have never made for good bedfellows.

Five million unanswered questions

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Labour’s decision to report the alleged hacking of Farage’s phone to the police is a gimmick, of course. Given the reluctance / inability (delete as applicable) of the boys in blue to investigate a whole host of crimes, diverting resources to a crime which the ‘victim’ himself has not seen fit to report is an unlikely prospect. But if the objective is to keep the story about Farage’s receipt of a £5 million gift running for a day or two longer, it is at least an effective gimmick. It’s reasonable to suppose that the attempt by Farage to turn the story into one about an illegal action performed against him was itself an attempt to divert attention from the £5 million, a generous gift which he continues to maintain is an entirely personal matter between friends.

But the ‘hacking’ story raises more questions as well. Farage is claiming that the ‘hacking’ was the result of a spear-phishing exercise. Assuming that to be true, then it wasn’t really what most of us would call ‘hacking’ at all: it means that he was conned into giving the attackers access to his phone and/or data. Still a crime, of course, just not quite the one which is being alleged. We’ve not been told what the messages were which induced him to part with the access codes to his data, but the possibility that revealing them might just be embarrassing could be one explanation for his coyness in involving the appropriate authorities. We also don’t know who the cyber-security experts were who have concluded that it was a “hostile state actor” behind the plot but, again, those experts seem not to have been the ones employed by the British state precisely to counter such actions against politicians and others.

It’s easy to see why, tactically, Farage might want to blame Russia. Given the suggestions that he and his party are too friendly by far towards Putin, putting some distance between him and the Kremlin looks like a reasonable plan. But hold on a moment – let’s look at this from the other side. Why exactly would Russia want to bring down Farage (and it’s reasonable to suppose that to be the aim of the leak of information)? Looked at from the Kremlin, the best chance of getting a more Russia-friendly government in the UK at the next General Election is through getting Reform Ltd elected, and all the conventional wisdom suggests that is more likely under Farage than under any alternative leader. That must surely be as obvious to Putin as it is to me, so why sabotage the campaign?

There are still far too many unanswered questions about that mysterious £5 million and the events surrounding it.

Holes, spades, and generous gifts

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The first law of holes states that when you’re in one, you should stop digging. Like most laws, rules, regulations and probably gravity itself, it’s one that Farage seems to think somehow doesn’t apply to him. The more answers he gives about that dodgy donation of £5 million, the more difficult questions arise. He claims that he didn’t use any part of the £5 million to buy the £1.4 million house that he bought in 2024, and that he actually purchased that out of his £1.5 million fee for appearing on I’m a Celebrity. It didn’t take a lot of financial forensics for journalists to demonstrate that that wasn’t exactly true – that money remained in the account into which it was paid.

I almost hesitate to say this, but that might be a little unfair. Someone who suddenly finds himself £1.5 million richer can afford to spend £1.5 million more than he would otherwise have been able to spend: it doesn’t have to be the exact same pounds and pennies or come from the same account. That concept is one with which most of us will probably be familiar, albeit on a much smaller scale. A windfall of £50 might do nicely for a meal out, we might think, even if that £50 is initially used to pay a bill and the meal out comes a month or so later.

The problem for Farage in using that explanation is that what is true for £1.5 million is also true for £5 million, and adds to the need for him to explain that other little windfall. Whether it was for his security (as he originally claimed) or a reward for campaigning for Brexit, as he is now claiming, matters little (apparently, being paid handsomely for delivering a result which might benefit a donor only counts as proper corruption if the quid pro quo was spelled out in advance – a rather curious, not to say large, loophole). The bottom line is that a politician paid £5 million by someone (who just might benefit by rather more than that if said politician reaches a position of power) gives that politician an extra £5 million of spending power. Whether Farage did or did not spend it on security (and the change of rationale rather suggests that he cannot demonstrate that he did) is irrelevant to that basic fact – he had an extra £5 million to spend, unconditionally according to him, on whatever he wanted. And, on the basis of his latest attempt to ‘explain’ the basis of the gift, it was directly related to his political activity over a lengthy period. I find it hard to believe that even the UK could really dream up a set of rules which means that rewarding a politician for taking a particular political position is somehow a non-declarable gift, but I guess the investigation will tell us the answer to that.

In the meantime, if he didn’t own the company, surely someone would be trying to relieve him of his spade.

Experience is often over-rated

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‘Experience’ is an odd qualification for anything. It’s often assumed that someone who has a lot of experience at doing a job is somehow better qualified to do it than someone with less. It depends, though, on the nature of that experience and what people have learned from it. I once interviewed someone for a job who claimed to have 20 years’ experience of doing the job, but on more detailed questioning, it turned out that he had one years’ experience, repeated twenty times. Length of experience isn’t the same as depth – and experience of failure isn’t the same as experience of success. Contrary to popular belief, people don’t always learn from the former, and the latter can breed complacency and inflexibility.

This week, Farage announced his shadow team – or four of them anyway – and part of his justification for two of the selections (and indeed, for accepting the continued outflow of failed Tory politicians) is that they have experience of government. However, his faith in the value of their experience apparently didn’t extend to allowing them to answer any press questions, a job which he firmly restricted to himself. Given the roles that Braverman and Jenrick performed in a succession of Conservative governments, they certainly have plenty of experience of what failure looks like, although it’s hard to identify any particular success with which either of them were associated during their ministerial careers. Whether they have learned anything from their failures is a matter of opinion, but insofar as we can believe a word they say, or use their words as evidence, that evidence is more negative than positive.

The wider question, though, is whether, or to what extent, ‘experience’ of government is relevant to the potential success of anyone taking on a ministerial job. There are plenty of examples of people who have such experience going on to fail – and equally of people who have no such experience turning out to be rather successful as ministers. And it is almost a given of the UK system that any party entering government after a long period of opposition is likely to be short on people with ministerial experience. I think it’s true to say that, if the polls turn out to be right and the next Welsh government turns out to be either a Plaid minority government or a Plaid-Green coalition, it is probable that there will be only one MS in the governing party/coalition with any experience of government at all. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing can only be a matter of opinion at this stage; a judgement based on actual performance will have to wait. I tend to the view that what’s more important than experience of being a minister is experience of doing other things outside politics, and being able to apply that experience in the new context. Time will tell, but returning to Farage’s experience fetish, it’s not clear that his so-called ‘experienced’ hires have a huge amount of useful experience built up in any non-political roles either.

‘Experience’ in any role, without assessing how good it is, or what’s been learned from it, is over-rated as a qualification, but Farage isn’t the only one to make the mistake of assuming that it is a key attribute.

Will Farage let me drive on the right if I want to?

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Whether the 20mph default speed limit in built-up areas is a good thing or a bad thing is obviously a matter of opinion, depending on whether we prioritise reducing casualties or convenience and speed. The statistics show that it has reduced the number and severity of casualties on the roads, although a thorough evaluation might need a few more years to assess whether it is really working as well as it appears to be. On the downside, experience suggests that it has led to an increase in aggressive driving and risky overtaking manoeuvres, especially by those vehicles whose drivers are exempt from the law. I can’t find a definitive definition of exempt categories in the legislation itself, but simple observation over the past year leads me to conclude that it includes taxis, white vans, and BMWs.

Farage told us last week that it is a ‘looney’ policy, and went on in a Q&A session to describe it as being an example of government telling people what is right for them, adding "It is typical of control, control, control". In essence, his view seems to be that it has nothing to do with safety, and that the Welsh Government have introduced it solely with the aim of controlling what people may or may not do. It’s a particularly silly argument – if it applies to the 20mph limit, then it also applies to the 30mph limit, or to any limit set at 40, 50, 60 or 70. All of them control what citizens can and can’t do. Come to that, why should the government control on which side of the road I should drive? All laws set limits on what we can and can’t do, they all ‘control’ us to a greater or lesser extent. The question is – or ought to be – about where we draw the line, and how we balance safety against speed of travel – or, more generally, personal advantage against collective advantage. ‘Not liking something’ is not enough to distinguish between an arbitrary control of behaviour and a sensible safety measure.

Reasoned debate is not, though, what Farage and his ilk want. Their aim is to appeal to people whose minds are already made up, and to strengthen those existing prejudices. Not that reasoned debate would ever help anyway. No-one who has not arrived at a particular view in the first place through a careful and rational study of the evidence is going to be persuaded to a different view by a careful and rational study of that same evidence. And that doesn’t only apply to the question of speed limits. Believing that evidence can and will shift an opinion which was never evidence-based to start with is a mistake which many of us make. Overcoming prejudice and a willingness to disregard mere facts is more of a long term project, which involves teaching critical thinking as a key element of education. There is a reason why Farageists and their fellow travellers are hostile to the idea of an educated populace.

Is poverty really the right way to save pubs?

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Not so long ago, I wondered whether capitalists and supporters of capitalism really understood the way it worked, a theme picked up again in relation to pubs in this post. Pubs, in particular, have been back in the news again over the last week, with Farage’s proposal that impoverishing 450,000 children and redirecting the money saved into pubs could knock 5p off the price of a pint and save thousands of pubs, and the suggestion from the First Minister, Eluned Morgan, that people should stop drinking wine and watching Netflix at home and get down to the pub instead. The opposition’s response to the First Minister was, sadly, more Farage than Morgan, claiming that the problem was for the government rather than citizens to solve, and lies in the system of rates and taxation. Both Farage and the opposition in the Senedd seem to be starting from the wholly unrealistic proposition – albeit a basic tenet of classical economics – that all consumer decisions boil down to cost comparisons. Under that tenet, people choose wine and Netflix over beer and pubs purely on the basis of relative cost.

Like much of theoretical economics, it’s utter nonsense. It is an established fact that young people, overall, are drinking less and that traditional pubs are considered increasingly unattractive to many of them. Cutting the price of a pub visit so that more people go, or encouraging people to drink more when they get there – which is what subsidies, whether direct or in the form of tax concessions, actually set out to do – might delay the inevitable, but if supply outstrips demand by an increasing margin, and if that falling demand is the result of demographic change rather than price considerations, then capitalism decrees that the supply should fall. Put another way, closing pubs is the natural and rational outcome of a change in consumer choices.

Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. I’m certainly not a fan of leaving all decisions to the dictates of capitalist markets. There are some pubs – particularly, but not exclusively, in rural areas – which also provide a sort of community hub, and act as a centre for other (not necessarily alcohol-related) activities. There is a case, in terms of social cohesion rather than dry cost-benefit analysis, for government action to keep such places open. That, though, requires rather more effort in identifying criteria and assessing locations against those criteria than some sort of blanket aid to the sector (which is what changes to the taxation regime provide). Setting out to save all pubs may be popular with those who use them, but it’s not good policy, and nor is it a good use of resources. And proposing to impoverish children to achieve it is about the best illustration one can think of as to why it’s wrong.

Farage is the consequence of limited ambition

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The owner and proprietor of Reform Ltd seems rather pleased that so many people are referring to him as a racist based on the overt racism he allegedly displayed as a schoolboy half a century ago. His argument is that it increases the probability that racist voters (or, to use the term which he seems to prefer, “our core support”) will vote for his company in a future election. It should be no surprise either that overt expressions of racism or non-denial denials thereof would motivate racists to vote for a racist, nor that so many of those most likely to vote for Reform fall into that category. He might choose his words ever so slightly more carefully these days, but no-one who listens to what he says can be in much doubt about his distaste for foreigners, particularly those of a different hue or religion or who dare to speak a language other than English.

The question is about how to respond. If calling him out as a racist solidifies his core support, does that mean we should all cease calling out his racism? Part of the answer to that is that, outside what he calls his ‘core support’, there are many people who are not racist: contrary to what some seem to believe, voting for Farage doesn’t necessarily make someone a racist. There must be at least some in that category who will be deterred by a better understanding of the nature of what it is that they are planning to vote for. But more widely than that, failure to address expressions of racism tends to normalise those views, and that, in turn, shifts the mainstream of political discourse towards, rather than away from, Farageism.

In effect, normalising Farage’s political views is exactly what the leadership of Labour (to say nothing of the Tories) has been doing for some time. Building a tolerant society depends, ultimately, not on what politicians do or say, but on building a wider consensus in society. But building consensus around the type of society which we might wish to see is a project which politicians, and especially Labour ones, have long since abandoned in favour of building a coalition of voters, whatever their views, which is large enough to secure power. Providing politicians with careers who can then exercise the power of the state is a much narrower project, and will change little. That does, though, seem to be the limit of their ambition.

War is a choice, not an inevitability

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One of the policies which seems to be increasingly common ground between the Tories and Reform Ltd is opposition to the target of becoming carbon neutral, or reaching net zero in terms of carbon emissions. It’s a policy platform which seems to be implicitly underpinned by two very curious beliefs.

The first is that expenditure on achieving neutrality is in some way consuming wealth whilst continued exploitation of fossil fuels is generating wealth. It is, of course, complete and utter piffle. If we measure wealth in terms of GDP (or GVA), what money is spent on is irrelevant. It is the act of spending it which adds to GDP; money spent in insulating properties adds as much to GDP as the same amount of money spent on drilling for oil – and that’s true whether the spending is in the public sector or the private sector. There might be an argument that multiplier effects mean that spending on X rather than Y ultimately generates more GDP per £ spent. I actually don’t know the answer in this specific case, but it’s interesting to note that it’s not an argument they are trying to make. I rather suspect that they are conflating two different kinds of wealth – national wealth as represented by GDP and private wealth as reflected in the bank balances of individuals and companies. I’m sure, though, that this conflation has nothing to do with the fact that both parties rely heavily on donations from established players in established sectors, such as oil and gas. Not.

The second curious belief is that if nothing gets spent on achieving net zero, the whole amount of any projected expenditure becomes a net saving, and makes money available for other things. Their favourite other things are tax cuts for the wealthy and/or channelling expenditure into donor companies, such as those in the armaments industry. Badenoch’s statement today is a classic of the genre. I suppose that, if they really believe that climate change is not happening at all, then it would be a reasonable belief, although that would be flying in the face of overwhelming scientific opinion. I’m not sure that they really do believe that, though; reading some of what they say, it seems more likely that they believe that we can and will somehow adapt to climate change. The costs of that, they simply ignore – a problem for another day.

Badenoch would clearly prefer war to addressing climate change, which I suppose puts her on the same page as Farage and Starmer. There is, though, more to the cost of war than diverting the finite resources of planet Earth into weapons of destruction. There is the obvious cost of loss of human lives (although they would probably all prefer to see that as a loss of a productive labour force). There’s also the lost opportunities which such diversion of resources would entail – the opportunity to provide a decent standard of living for all, for instance. Badenoch is making it clear that she thinks that austerity (obviously not for her section of society) is a price worth paying in order to prepare for all out war with Russia. And then there’s probably the biggest cost of all: in the event of surviving such a war, the cost of reconstruction would be enormous.

There is one point about which she is right. Governments face choices. Whether the constraint on what governments can do is the availability of money (as she, Starmer and Farage all insist that they believe) or the availability of physical resources (as economic reality dictates), governments still have to choose between options for using that money or those resources. Badenoch is making her choice clear – war. And she’s being aided and abetted by politicians and military types urging the same choice on an almost daily basis. There is an alternative, though: we really don’t have to allow them to make that choice.

Peas in a pod

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Yesterday, the owner and proprietor of Reform 2025 Ltd revealed that he thinks the national minimum wage is too high for younger people and should be cut.  He has also previously talked about cutting benefits. With their shared determination to reduce the income and spending power of those on the lowest income in society, in purely economic terms Reform, Labour and the Tories are increasingly looking like peas in a pod. There is another thing they all share as well – a belief that the answer to everything is economic growth. How they reconcile that desire with the desire to reduce the purchasing power of millions of people is one of life’s great mysteries. Because here’s the thing – if you want consumption-led growth, people have to be able to consume, and that means having the wherewithal to buy goods and services.

Instead, they share a strange belief that enabling employers to reduce wage costs and freeing them from regulatory concerns will enable them to cut prices, thus making their goods and services more affordable. They simply don’t understand that making the lives of more people more precarious is a restraint on growth. They also seem to be blind to the experience that shows that employers reducing costs are more likely to simply declare larger profits than to cut prices.

It goes to the heart of one of the big contradictions of capitalism itself. Whilst individual capitalists want to keep their labour costs as low as possible to maximise their own profits, they also need other employers to keep wages as high as possible so that people can buy those things from which the cost-cutting capitalists wish to extract their profit. The idea, which seems to be deeply imprinted into the capitalist brain, that workers and consumers are two entirely separate groups and that impoverishing one of those groups has no impact on the other is sheer madness. It’s also what drives UK economic policy.

Starmer is avoiding honestly facing the problem of racism

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At the weekend, Starmer told us that he didn’t think Reform Ltd voters were racists, merely frustrated. It’s a sweeping statement to make. Although it’s entirely reasonable to suppose that some Reform Ltd voters are not racists, it doesn’t follow that none of them are. It also doesn’t address the converse: whilst it may well be true that voting for Farage’s lot doesn’t make someone a racist, it doesn’t follow at all that being racists doesn’t drive people to vote for Reform Ltd. Whilst it’s not an absolute, 100% causal link, it’s not a bad indicator. Racists have a strong tendency to think that Farage is expressing their views, and not without justification.

When asked directly whether Reform Ltd were trying to appeal to racists, Starmer’s response was a flat “No”, before proceeding to waffle about frustration and economic decline. Given that he’d already said that he thought that Reform Ltd policies were racist, this is a somewhat astonishing contradiction. What on earth is the point in promising outright racist policies if not to appeal to racists? His problem is that – just like Farage and Badenoch – he too is trying to appeal to racists. Not only to racists, of course; and maybe not so blatantly as Farage, but in a sense, that just makes it worse. Offering skimmed or semi-skimmed racism legitimises the full fat version, and can make voting for the real thing more acceptable.

Pretending that anger whipped up by the tabloids over migration is really just about the impact of economic decline and that people’s ‘concerns’ can be addressed by improving the NHS and putting more money in their pockets is wilfully turning a blind eye to the pernicious presence of racism. There is more racism, and even more latent racism, around than most of us would really like to acknowledge, even if racist voters don’t all choose to vote for Reform Ltd. It’s understandable that a PM tanking as badly in the polls as Starmer would be fearful of losing more votes to Farage, but aping his rhetoric in milder terms looks more like panic than a thought-through strategy. Whilst he might be more comfortable competing with other ‘right wing’ parties for the votes he’s losing in that direction, it seems as though he’s oblivious to those deserting Labour for the ‘left’, although there is evidence to suggest that he’d actually find it easier to get those back than those who’ve gone over to the Farageist dark side. It might be easier to pretend that it’s all about economics, but it isn’t honest.

Voters aren't fish, and don't always choose the 'right' angler

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A couple of weeks ago, following a by-election in the Vale of Glamorgan, this blog post talked about the need to count, rather than assume, voters’ second choices. The question about making assumptions came up again on Thursday, in this article by Ben Wildsmith on Nation.Cymru, calling on Gareth Hughes and the Green Party to withdraw from the Caerffili by-election. I’m something of a fan of Ben’s writing: his articles are well-argued, make good points, and are often humorous to boot. But on this occasion, I cannot agree with his logic. The idea that parties seen as outside chances should ‘stand down’ to avoid ‘splitting the vote’ and letting (insert your bête noir of choice here) win is not one I’ve ever been keen on, although my view might be slightly coloured by having been on the receiving end of such expectations on more than one occasion.

There tends to be something of a belief amongst those performing mathematics on polling numbers that there are only two pools of voters. One contains only progressive fish, with Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid and Green anglers all trying to catch them, and the other contains only reactionary fish, with anglers from the Tories and Reform Ltd trying to haul them in. Since the number of fish in both ponds is limited, any caught by one angler are unavailable to the other anglers, and if one of those anglers is better at catching fish than the rest, his total catch is still limited by the number of fish caught by his competitors. And, obviously, the more anglers in one pond, the harder it is to match the catch of the best angler in the other. I’ve knocked enough doors and spoken to enough punters to know that life really isn’t that simple. Voters don’t always stay in their allotted pond, and if the Green angler lays down his rod, some of the fish are as likely to swim into the other pond as they are to leap onto the Plaid angler's waiting hook.

There is a convenient and comfortable myth to which many involved in Welsh politics cling, in which the electorate in Wales is of a radical disposition and finds the Tories toxic. Would that it were so; but whilst it may have been a couple of decades ago, it isn’t today. And the rise of Reform Ltd shows us that Tory toxicity isn’t about policies or personalities anyway, it’s just about branding. Take the same people and the same policies and give them a different brand name, and many voters will, apparently, flock to the cause. To a very large extent, I blame Labour for that. Firstly, because they’ve ceased to be particularly radical or even progressive, and secondly because they’ve depended for so long on one simple attribute rather than arguing for any particular policy platform: being 'not-the-Tories'. It turns out that even those who have voted for them for years, if not decades, have come to believe that Reform Ltd, despite being largely composed of ex-Tories, are also now ‘not-the-Tories’, with the additional advantage of being untainted (as a brand, even if not as individuals) by having failed in the exercise of power.

And that’s the point about the Green angler and his rod. Laying it down simply gives credence to, and reinforces, the idea that all self-identified ‘progressives’ essentially share a perspective, and that ‘progressive’ voters should support the ‘progressive’ candidate most likely to win. I doubt that the Green Party candidate will receive many votes in the by-election (sorry, Gareth), but even if the total votes cast for him is more than the difference between the first and second placed candidate, there will be no way of knowing that his absence would have made a difference – in a first-past-the-post election, his votes cannot simply be added mathematically to those of another candidate. And he will be putting a different perspective and agenda before the electorate – can giving the voters more choice ever be a bad thing?

There is actually a very good case for politicians to come to an agreement on which party will stand where, but it applies only to a single issue and is only relevant in a Westminster General Election. It relates to the question of electoral reform. A short, single issue parliament which passed such a law and then dissolved itself for a new election under new rules would be well worth while. The problem is that that single issue doesn’t neatly split itself between self-styled ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’. And whether Farage will still be as keen on electoral reform if an election under FPTP gives him absolute power on a minority vote is an unanswered question. Not one to which I really want to discover the answer the hard way.

What happens to migrants' property?

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If Nigel Farage were ever to become UK Prime Minister and implement his policy of reversing the residency rights of just about anyone who had migrated to the UK in the past, what would happen to any assets which those migrants had accumulated? I mean, just supposing for a minute that you were a French politician who had found £885,000 down the back of the sofa to buy a house so that your boyfriend could claim to live somewhere that he rarely visited, what would happen to the house if you were forced to return to France so that your boyfriend could implement a wild promise he had made whilst campaigning?

Maybe Farage’s policy has some unstated loopholes, such as excluding French people in possession of valuable homes, although nothing he’s said so far implies any great willingness to make exceptions; he’s even ready to split families as part of his plan, so getting married and having kids doesn't work either. Maybe the assets of those expelled would simply pass to any convenient partner who was allowed to remain. That would make it quite a cunning plan – Farage would end up with a house in his constituency after all, and (unless he was the one who happened to lose £885,000 down the back of the sofa) he’d have got it for nothing.

Starmer and Reeves are feeding Farageism

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Imagine for a moment a different world in which the UK managed to solve its endemic problems. It’s vanishingly unlikely, of course. As long as governments of whatever hue insist that the constraints on what they can do are a lack of money and the need to abide by a set of fiscal rules which they themselves have devised, rather than the availability of physical resources and the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, there is no real prospect of meaningful change.

But, for the sake of argument, bear with me for a moment. Suppose we could get to a situation where the NHS could provide the help that people need, when they need it, with negligible waiting lists; suppose that we had an educational system which produced consistently good results and was the envy of much of the world; suppose that everyone had adequate housing suitable to meet their needs. Suppose also that we had ‘full’ employment: in realistic terms, everyone of working age who was able to work could get a decently-paid job that they wanted to do; suppose that that included not just UK citizens, but also those who had come here from elsewhere; and suppose that all those who arrived from elsewhere spoke impeccable English (or Welsh, of course). In such an ideal world, do we believe that Farage, Badenoch, Starmer, Mahmoud etc. would stop banging on about the need to block migration and remove some or all of those already here?

Sadly, I don’t think it would change their position one iota. There are those who argue that they simply hate migrants per se – I don’t believe that they do. I suspect, rather more cynically, that they believe that a sufficient proportion of the electorate hate migrants so much that there are large numbers of votes to be had by being seen to be tough on migration. It’s not that the politicians themselves are racists or xenophobes, they’re simply willing to appeal to voters who are in order to win elections.

Whether their faith in the innate prejudices of a significant part of the electorate is justified or not is an unknown. For the reasons outlined at the beginning, it’s not a theory which is ever likely to be tested. And for as long as UK governments refuse to fix the problems which they can then blame on migrants, they will get away with pretending that anti-migrant feelings are based on what they choose to call ‘legitimate concerns’ rather than on prejudice and racism, and claim that expelling people rather then improving conditions is the way to solve those problems. Actually, it’s worse than that. By refusing to address the underlying problems and concentrating instead on deporting people, they reinforce the idea that migration is the source of the problems; in other words, the Reeves/Starmer fiscal rules reinforce the narrative about migration. Their ideological blinkers are directly aiding the Farages of this world.

Upping the stakes

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President Trump has been widely (and justifiably) mocked for his promise to reduce the price of medicines in the US by up to 1,500%. It’s an illustration of his somewhat shaky grasp of elementary mathematics, although I suppose it helps to explain how he managed to bankrupt casinos. By and large, UK politicians have not shown themselves to be quite so mathematically challenged as Trump, and the argument about the extent to which immigration should be allowed has largely stayed on the positive side of zero. Until last week.

Robert Jenrick has now attempted to trump Labour, Reform and his own party by calling for a ten year period in which net migration to the UK should be negative. It’s a reduction of more than 100% in the level of immigration, even if it’s not yet quite in the Trumpian league of 1,500%. Give him time. But given what we know about the falling birth rate, he is effectively demanding that the population of the UK should be cut as a deliberate act of government policy. To say that it puts him somewhat outside the normal range of political consensus is an understatement: other politicians (including both Farage and Badenoch) have recently been calling for measures to increase the birth rate to tackle the potential problems associated with a declining population (even though that rather ignores the fact that using an increased birthrate to fill gaps in the UK economy has a rather lengthy lead time). But being outside the consensus is probably what he’s after.

The consequences of a falling population would be significant, not least because those being driven, or encouraged, to leave are likely to be of working age and therefore making a positive contribution to the productive economy. Unless, of course, he wants to offer incentives – which an increasing number of us might even be willing to consider, with madmen like Jenrick and Farage in danger of leading a government – for UK pensioners to emigrate. I suspect not, however: something tells me that predominantly white UK-born people aren’t the ones he wants to get rid of. He hasn’t yet offered a solution to that economic conundrum, and probably won’t. Not only because there isn’t a simple one, but also because spelling out the consequences might somewhat undermine the blatant appeal to prejudice.

It would also be seriously at odds with the rest of his political philosophy. Actually, a reduced population would not, in itself, be an entirely bad thing, ignoring for a moment that merely moving people from one country to another doesn’t exactly achieve an overall reduction. It would reduce the demand for finite resources which is hardly a poor idea, but it would also require a significant rethink in the way the economy works to ensure that economic benefits are shared more equally rather than being increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. That, or force an increasing proportion of the population into poverty, which is not an obvious election-winning strategy, particularly if the deliberately-impoverished come from the voting demographic being wooed by his rhetoric. As they inevitably would. We shall have to see who will attempt to out-compete him, by assigning a hard number to the target for exporting residents in a government-sponsored people trafficking scheme. The way things are going, I wouldn’t put it past Labour to open the bidding.

A choice of possible legacies for Starmer

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There is a lot not to like about the new voting system which will be used for the Senedd elections next year. Whilst most seem to object to the idea of voting for parties rather than individuals, I tend to see that as little more than validation of what already happens: people tend to vote for parties not individuals, even if individual candidates prefer to believe that their ‘personal’ vote is a bigger factor than it is in practice. I've been there myself. The bigger issue for me is that, effectively, only first votes count – votes cast for any party which does not win enough votes to gain a seat are effectively worthless. It is simply not true, as proponents of the system claim, that it means that ‘every vote counts’. Like many others, I would prefer a system of STV, which overcomes both of those objections.

As systems go, however, it’s still better than the one we use for Westminster elections. At the last election, Labour gained absolute power and almost two-thirds of the seats. This is described as an overwhelming victory, despite Labour receiving only a little over one third of the vote. Latest opinion polls (and there’s a lot which can change in the interim, including a high probability of a Farage-led implosion) suggest that it’s a trick which might be repeated by Reform Ltd at the next election. It would, again, be described as a huge victory. Opinion polls for the Senedd suggest a similar level of performance by Reform Ltd in terms of votes which, translated into seats, might even make them the largest party – but they would be a very long way short of a majority. And given that their only conceivable coalition partner is the Tories, there is a vanishingly small probability that they will get anywhere near forming a government. Some have talked about how excluding the ‘winners’ from government is somehow undemocratic, but the problem is with language not democracy. A party which can only win around one third of the vote and cannot find one or more coalition partners to get it up to 50% of the membership of the Senedd hasn’t ‘won’ the election, even if it has more votes than any other party. The only thing they’ve ‘won’ is a few seats, the same as any other party represented in the Senedd. Generations of dealing with a system based on first past the post has led us to a degree of confusion about what ‘winning’ means, and we need to recalibrate our language. The ‘winners’ of an election held under a system of proportional representation are those who end up with enough partners close enough in outlook to them to be able to form a government.

There should be a lesson there for Westminster parties (and most especially Labour) in that first past the post may well gift absolute power to Farage and Reform Ltd, but a system of proportional representation would be likely to lead to a very different outcome. As Polly Toynbee pointed out in Monday’s Guardian, based on current polling Sir Starmer has a choice of legacy: he could be the man who reformed the UK’s electoral system or he could be the man who gifted the UK to Farage. The omens are not good. Not just because this is not a man who never seems particularly enamoured with the idea of changing very much at all, but because he also seems to belong to that strand of thought which has long dominated the Labour Party which would prefer to exercise absolute power occasionally (leaving the Tories or even Reform Ltd to hold similarly absolute power the rest of the time) than share power almost continuously. Choosing between enabling Farage and blocking him ought to be what is jokingly called a no-brainer, but Sir Starmer seems likely to make it literally so, by avoiding the engagement of a single neuron in the process.

Running out of excuses

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Despite what Marx said about tragedy and farce, history never really repeats itself. There are historical parallels, of course, but different groups of people in different contexts never fully replicate the responses of other groups in past times. Marx also asserted that human nature is not something fixed and unchanging (an assumption at the root of much conservative thought) but something which is continually changing and developing, arising more from social and economic relationships than from an innate characteristic. But when those relationships barely change over a long period human nature can appear to be more permanent.

Where the capacity for cruelty fits is open to debate. Those of us who hope for a better world cling to the idea that it isn’t an essential part of us, just waiting to be invoked, but that hope is sometimes challenged. We know from the history of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century just how easy it is for ordinary citizens, given a uniform, weapons and legal authority, to apply their cruelty against the vulnerable and weak – and not even just to ‘follow orders’, but to go beyond and add their own twists when dealing with people who they no longer see as human. The Milgram experiment showed us how easy it is to get randomly selected people to inflict pain on others when told to do so by someone in authority.

Some of the stories coming out of the US seem to indicate that little has changed. Random arrests and detentions – even of firefighters in the middle of dealing with a blaze – are becoming the Trumpian norm; and ‘disappearing’ people and moving them across the country whilst depriving them of adequate food, water and hygiene seem to be widely accepted, with far too many US citizens seemingly welcoming what is happening.

Here in the UK, we had Farage this week proposing to round up and detain at least 600,000 people in camps before deporting them to anywhere which will take them, regardless of their potential fate when they arrive. That is close to 1% of the UK’s population – one in every hundred people, and even if (after a bit of back-tracking) women and children will be ‘dealt with’ later in the programme, he’s been quite clear that they’re not exempt. There can be few of us who don’t know 100 people; even if the proportion of migrants in Wales is lower than it is in the big cities of England, many of us will know at least one person on Farage’s list, even if we don't realise it. They say it will be a ‘targeted’ program, but as we’ve seen in the US, when the target for the number removed becomes the main driver, discriminating between those here illegally and others becomes a luxury, not a necessity, and he’s already made it quite clear that there will be no right of appeal, and no right to any due process before removal.

With the immediate reaction from the Tory leader having been to try and be even harder than Farage by not excluding women and children from her immediate action plans, and Sir Starmer’s lot apparently being more concerned about whether the ‘solution’ is workable than whether it is moral, there is little room for any optimism that the ‘main’ parties will show any leadership. When deliberate cruelty stalked the European mainland nearly a century ago, news of what was happening wasn’t always readily available – people had the excuse of ‘not really knowing’. We’re no longer in that age – news spreads instantly and widely, and even if some of the stories might turn out to be exaggerations, the general drift of what is happening, and the truth of many of the specifics, is clear. What’s our excuse this time?

Legitimising tyrants and wannnabes

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In talking about what concessions should be made to Putin, some commentators have referred to the need to address his ‘legitimate fears’. But what makes a fear ‘legitimate’? I can understand why Putin might not like the idea of a successful democracy – or even semi-democracy – on his doorstep; I can understand why he might not want another Nato member on his border; I can even understand why he might not be happy about Ukraine becoming part of the EU economic bloc, but what turns these aspirations and wishes into ‘legitimate’ concerns? Ukraine posed him no threat, and the ‘fears’ seem to have been more of an excuse to indulge his fantasy about recreating the Russian Empire than about being afraid of anything. We, and especially Ukraine, have no choice but to deal with him because of his military power and willingness to use it, but that doesn’t endow his wishes with one iota of legitimacy, and our use of language shouldn’t do so either. Recognising the reality of raw power and ruthlessness isn’t at all the same thing as agreeing that there is any justification for it.

Something similar applies, in a very different context and on a wholly different scale, to the ‘legitimate’ concerns of those opposing all migration. What, exactly, is the difference between blatant xenophobia and paranoia on the one hand, and ‘legitimate’ concerns on the other? And when and how does the one morph into the other? The distinction is not at all clear to me, but politicians are increasingly falling into the habit of using the word ‘legitimate’ to describe the motivations of those opposing migration, as if they are afraid to confront the much darker motives driving many of those opponents. Actually, I think that I can answer my own question: what legitimises fears or concerns is using the word legitimate to describe them. The language we use is important. Those referring to Putin’s fears as legitimate strengthen his hand, just as those who refer to legitimate concerns about migration strengthen the hand of the Farages of this world. Whether we’re dealing with the actual real world authoritarian in the Kremlin, or the wannabe authoritarian of Reform, legitimising part of what they say doesn’t make it easier to debate the matter rationally, it merely encourages them to bank the win, and expand their demands.

There’s nothing ‘legitimate’ about invading a neighbouring country or about spreading deliberate untruths to whip up hatred of migrants and foreigners. Suggesting that there is merely facilitates them.