I know it's ten days after the event but Christmas has intervened. A hopeful sign of normal life butting in again after a protracted political nightmare? For most people the mood has lightened and folk have stopped talking about the B word.
It won't surprise some readers to know that I love general election nights. Yes, I'm interested in politics, but I don't watch much tv coverage of politics other than the news and sometimes Question Time. I would have been interested in the Andrew Neil interviews - he's the only good interviewer around at the moment for me - but I didn't make the time even for his one to ones and I thought it was wrong of him to pillory Boris Johnson for not appearing. It smacked of BBC entitlement to me.
But the election results.....for me it's a wonderful overload of numbers - results, statistics, swings - and histograms, political maps....oooh lovely. Just like poring over Wisden as a teenage cricket fan. (Yes, of course I did. In the days when we had libraries). And there's that glorious moment when the exit poll is revealed, followed by all those talking heads saying "let's wait till we have some actual results". With, sometimes, wise old politicians making a complete tit of themselves, like Paddy Ashdown saying in 2015 that he'd eat his hat if the exit poll was right. (Actually, it wasn't right in the overall outcome but it was in predicting that his party would lose most of its seats).
However, the exit poll has now ruined election night for me.
In recent years I've been dismayed by the joint exit poll. Firstly that it's done jointly by the Beeb, ITV and Sky, which spoils the fun of three times as many exit poll numbers and seeing who got the best prediction. To be fair, when the polls were hoodwinked by those "shy Tories" in the past they realised they just had to have a bigger sample. Everyday political polls use a sample size of about 1000 which gives an error band of plus or minus 3 percentage points at 95% confidence. So if you had one party on 40 points and another on 34 there's still a small chance that they are actually neck and neck. So the one off polls, while normally fairly accurate, can sometimes be misleading. Which is why a "poll of polls" chart often tells you more. And why exit polls in the past were unreliable. Also the statisticians assume a homogeneous population so regional or other differences could lead to errors. There are always regional variations in opinion, though what matters is the change from the previous election. And this time we had the wonderful uncertainty (well, not that wonderful while we thought there was any risk of PM Corbyn) of Brexit and switches in traditional voting patterns, including tactical voting.
To get much more confidence in the prediction you need a far bigger sample. Four times the size roughly halves the uncertainty to 1.5%. To get 99% confidence with plus or minus one percentage point you need a sample of over 16,000. Interestingly, once you have a population size of over 20,000 it doesn't make much difference to the sample size you need. So for that accuracy you'd need to sample over 16,000 whether your population was 50,000 or 50 million. Which is why the TV channels work together, otherwise it's too expensive.
But they still got it wrong in 2015, failing to call a Tory majority. Techniques were refined, particularly on how the seats are predicted. The 2017 and 2019 exit polls, while not being right in detail, got the direction and scale of the overall result pretty close.
The exit poll started to ruin my election night in 2015 because they stopped showing the share of the vote and went straight to the predicted number of seats. Why did that bother me? Because I like to test my own feel for the result. In 1992 the exit poll got it totally wrong by calling a hung Parliament when John Major actually got a majority of 21. Mrs H and I had been out for dinner and got back to relieve the babysitter just before 10pm. I hurriedly switched on the TV in time for the bongs of News at Ten. "HUNG PARLIAMENT" they predicted. And then they showed the share of the vote. "If that's right" I said to my other half "we can go to bed because the Tories have won". It just seemed obvious to me that was the implication of the vote share. I sat up till the Basildon declaration proved my feel was right.
I've often wondered why the people in charge of that exit poll didn't share that feeling. Most probably they did, but didn't dare fudge the results. If it had been me, I'd like to think I'd have instructed them to show "Narrow Tory majority or hung parliament". If they'd done that they couldn't really have been wrong, after all.
But since 2015 they don't show the vote share. Three elections in a row I've been shouting at the TV "show us the vote share prediction". Then I can decide for myself if they've got it right. Once they finally showed the predicted vote share this time, some hours into the broadcast, it was obvious the Tory majority would be large. But by then results were already confirming it. If you'd told me it was Con 44%, Lab 32% the detail was pretty obvious after all.
So their failure to show the vote share combined with the accuracy they now seem to be getting, has spoiled my fun. It's a bit like watching the football knowing the pundits' prediction is bound to come to pass. Unlike Basildon in 1992, which made the pundits say "hang on...." this time Blyth Valley just confirmed the exit poll's veracity. It didn't stop me staying up till 2.45am mind. There was still some entertainment to be had. John McDonnell sounding as measured and reasonable as ever straight after 10pm and avoiding doing a Paddy Pantsdown. I respected his manner in defeat but it reminded me why I always felt he was so dangerous. (Was? Still is, as his like has their hands firmly on Labour's tiller). There was a super shouting match between Alan Johnson and the scary John Lansman across the studio. The big difference between these chaps is that Johnson is a decent man, even if he's wrong on most things, whereas Lansman is wrong on everything. And there was Alistair Campbell pointing out that only Tony Blair has won a decent majority for Labour in the last 50 years. Though John Smith would surely have also won handsomely in 1997 had he lived.
I shed no tears for Corbyn of course. A man fortunately too limited to be as dangerous as the opinions he holds. The electorate saw through the "kinder politics", the "many not the few" and the unbelievable promises. They saw someone who has very different values from the majority of British people.A number of writers have pointed out the fundamental thing in common between the electorate's stance on Brexit and on Corbyn: patriotism. Many leavers in that collapsed red wall were always wary of European federalism and ever greater union was not what they wanted. But they also, as Labour MP Pat McFadden said, saw a Labour leader unfit to lead, surrounded by people who believe the wrong side won the cold war and keen to explain away the crimes of the country's enemies as being our own fault. They had reservations about Johnson but his namesake Luke Johnson summed it up when he said "(Boris) Johnson is hardly perfect, but he is intelligent, optimistic, energetic and decisive. Corbyn is a tired Marxist who befriends terrorists and is surrounded by dangerous anti-Semites, quasi-communists and fools". I would add that, when he gets shouty, he sounds like a dalek and so comes across as unthinking and unfeeling. Which is what Marxists are actually like of course.
Many have argued that the electorate, in voting "Leave" didn't vote to make themselves poorer. (This is a canard I will return to). But they decided identity trumped the risk of being better off in the future but not by quite so much. Their reservations about immigration weren't racist but, in the less affluent areas, were driven by an intuitive understanding that low earning immigrants were holding down wages and adding impetus to the multi-cultural agenda that leaves many uneasy that we are losing our Britishness. These are valid, not racist, opinions whether you agree with them or not.
Johnson now has the opportunity to lay to rest once and for all the the charge that his is a right wing Tory party - a charge that has always seemed ludicrous to me. Brexit is not a right-left issue and the rest of the Johnson platform is very one nation conservatism. Though the Guardian has pooh poohed the idea that the Tory party will be fundamentally changed by its influx of new, younger, more northern and yes more gay MPs it must have some effect. The state school, NHS oriented and everyday background of the new recruits was obvious on election night and that back story has only got stronger. That said, the full name of South Dorset's new MP Richard Drax is really Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle Drax. But he didn't go to Eton. Though I'm not entirely sure that the fact none of the new Tory MPs went to Eton is necessarily a good thing.
Pundits have pointed out that Johnson's Get Brexit Done only increased the Tory vote by 0.3 million while May's Strong and Stable put on 2.3 million. But the increase of 1.2% to 43.6% made it the largest share of the vote for the Tories since Ted Heath in 1970. The key thing was that, by creating the situation in which he could turf out the Gaukeward squad, Johnson has united the Tories for the first time since Thatcher's heyday. Given their woes over Europe for the best part of 30 years this is not to be underestimated. And he benefited from a vote split between Labour and Lib Dem very like that which created Maggie's large majorities. The main difference between Johnson and May was that Johnson offered hope (and entertainment). But he also benefitted from the fact that we'd lived through 2 years of purgatory. Woyld tge redult have been the same if the Tories had gone for Johnson, not May, after Cameron? Maybe.
However, we are left with no party of fiscal probity. I just hope the world economy doesn't falter as we could do without heading into a financial crisis with debt going up quickly. Johnson will need luck on his side.
Meanwhile the LibDems reaped what they sowed by hanging their whole body, not just their hat, on total opposition to Brexit, which seemed anti-democratic to so many. It is legitimate to hold the view that we are better off in the EU but it didn't feel right to stridently insist on it against the votes of 17.4 million people. Together with the hubris of Jo Swinson with her insistence that she could be PM, I'm sure this limited the LibDem increase in vote share to a point where they were never going to make an impact. Nevertheless, I was saddened that she lost her seat and disgusted by Nicola Sturgeon's reaction. But Swinson's defeat leaves the LibDems in a difficult position - maybe even the "existential crisis" I saw in one headline.
And Nigel Farage? His place in history is now secure despite leading two different parties which both failed to win a single seat in a general election. An absolutely remarkable achievement.... Hopefully we will see less of him in future, though I expect he'll pop up again as 2020 wends it's way towards a close and the last deal or no-deal cliff edge. On that score, Johnson must resist the EU's preposterous attempt to impose sequencing on the trade negotiation after it caused so much trouble on the withdrawal agreement. (Apparently they want to sort fishing and a few other things first. I'm still not buying another BMW till this is sorted Angela). You know my prescription - walk away early if they insist on prejudicing the negotiation from the start, giving time to come back and reach agreement on mutually acceptable terms.
The only party besides the Tories to do well was the SNP. I think Johnson is right to resist their calls for a referendum for now. A 45% vote share against the unionist parties isn't a clear mandate for independence. If she gets nowhere I wonder if Nicola Sturgeon will dare to have a referendum about having a referendum - if she legally can. But if not don't jail her like the Spanish did with the Catalans. Boris should deliver Brexit and let people see whether it's working for them before anyone, including the Scots, tries to block or subvert it or take their ball away.
The Scottish position is fraught but it's the future of Labour that probably matters most to England and Wales. Corbyn has stayed on solely to ensure that his successor is picked using the same rigged rules that got him there. His supporters, like Richard Burgon - sorely over-exposed in this campaign - show absolutely no contrition, though the claim that they won the argument and their manifesto was popular did make me smile. What would being unpopular look like in a general election result? Labour have the chance to regroup but probably won't be able to take it this time, as the involvement of Ed Miliband in their inquisition demonstrates. After all, Labour's crisis is his fault as he set the rules under which Corbyn got in. They'll go for a younger, probably female leader who may well prove to be as unready for the job as Jo Swinson was. All governments need a reasonable quality opposition to keep them on their toes so Labour's woes aren't helpful but worse, in the longer term, is the lack of an electable alternative.
The scale of the Tories triumph is that both Labour and the LibDems are in deep disarray if not crisis.Suddenly we've stopped hearing that, unless they can appeal to the young, the Tories are dead. Youth fell for Corbyn in 2017 but younger people saw right through him this time as the crossover age at which people are more likely to vote Tory fell from 47 to 39.
A Happy Christmas to all my readers. I wish you peace and prosperity in the new year confident that, for every man (and woman) jack of you, you will be better off under Johnson than you would have been under Corbyn.
Tuesday 24 December 2019
Wednesday 11 December 2019
Who to vote for, Mikey47
Normally I would add a question mark at the end of a title like this and debate the issue with myself leaving the question hanging. But, egged on in their comments on yesterday's post by Democracy Man (who can readily guess who I'll vote for) and Mikey47 (who asked for some real reasons to vote in a particular way) I'll tell you what I actually think.
All elections are bigged up as the most important in a generation. This is the only one that has really felt that way to me for a long time. The Ted Heath "who runs the country?" election in 1974 felt that way and was inconclusive. But Heath hadn't done enough in government to justify re-election and we had a truly awful 5 years of a weak and eventually minority Labour government, the IMF bail-out and the trade unions' winter of discontent.
So the election that turned out to be the most important in my lifetime was 1979. It didn't feel that way at the time: it felt a depressing choice between failure, an unknown quantity in Margaret Thatcher and an attractive middle ground with the newly formed SDP-Liberal Alliance. Fortunately the country set itself on a sustainable course under Margaret Thatcher. I was disappointed at the time as a member of the SDP and it was an uncomfortable, rocky ride at first but with the hindsight of history I can see I was wrong then to oppose Thatcher. Her reforms were desperately needed and the fact that we have had one of the strongest rather than one of the weakest economies in Europe since then can be attributed directly to her government's reforms in the 1980s.
There is a huge risk that we now throw all of that away.
First let's contemplate the extremely unlikely - a majority Corbyn government. The damage would be colossal and immediate. The financial sector makes up over 10% of our economy. The prospect of a transaction tax and the seizure of 10% of the shares of large companies would kill capital markets overnight. Floats on the stock exchange would become a rarity and international businesses would quit London. Many of the 330,000 additional rate taxpayers who contribute over a third of all income tax work in the City. They are highly mobile and would migrate overseas. Then tens of thousands of lower paid jobs would steadily come under threat of being switched abroad, only this time the job would go not the person.
If Mikey47 doubts this, he should ask what I would have done if a Corbyn-led government had been elected in 2005 when I was working for a corporate and running a business that had its production facilities in the USA, Germany and China. A senior management team of three was based in the UK, but we could have departed overnight for Germany or the USA. The pension taper alone would probably have been enough to ensure we did. Had there still been production facilities in the UK (history I won't go into) the option of basing the central team abroad would still have been there. (You don't need to guess - I'd probably have gone to the USA though it might have been easier to decamp to Germany first). Write that story tens of thousands of times over.....
Investment has been weak since 2016, wreaking insidious but significant damage on the economy. It would collapse overnight. As we rely on capital inflows to balance our persistent trade deficit McDonnell would get his financial crisis which he would use to take "emergency measures". There would be prolonged legal wrangles over attempts to nationalise utilities below market value. Our international status would be fundamentally changed by support for every "radical" cause on the planet. As someone has said, this isn't Wilson or Callaghan or Blair or Brown. This is Hugo Chavez.
You might say why contemplate what isn't going to happen? Corbyn can't possibly win. I agree but even a minority government can do stuff. Supported by the almost equally crackpot SNP and moderated only by the LibDems a minority Corbyn government could do huge damage. Johnson could have gone on a long time with a majority of minus whatever in a gridlock situation; so could Corbyn. A minority Corbyn government would still be a 100% Corbyn cabinet, with control over foreign policy, for example.
Mikey47 said he felt we might end up with a hung parliament. That is a very real risk: many sources are saying it would take only a few tens of thousands of targeted tactical votes to deny Johnson a majority and even create a Corbyn-led government. Some say this could happen without Labour even winning any more seats than they have currently.
My problem with a hung parliament is that it really will solve nothing. Oh sure, Brexit might be fudged with a second referendum between a Brexit in name only and remain. The result wouldn't matter, as it wouldn't solve anything. Farage would be as important a figure as ever and the argument would rumble on as strongly as ever. We would not exactly be popular with our EU "friends", still chucking rocks at them in their Parliament. The festering resentment in the country would be colossal.
The only way I can see any chance of a healing process in the country is a convincing Johnson win. We leave the EU and get on with trade deals, investment in the UK strengthens and if things go ok the mood will change. There will still be many who will sadly reflect that we should have stayed in the EU but there is a chance that we can put it behind us, at least for most people and move on.
Won't we be worse off outside the EU though? Essentially all economists agree on that. It doesn't mean they are right, but let's go with it, as they nearly all say the impact on growth rate will be something like 0.5%. If the economy were to go forward with a weaker growth rate but still do ok - which is what most economists say - will we notice? No, of course not. We'll be better off in 5 and 10 years time. Maybe not as better off as we would have been but that would be theoretical to most people. After all, if Germany can tolerate weak growth for year after year, why can't we? Over time how we do on productivity is far more important than whether we are in the EU. Is a Corbyn led government, bringing back trade union powers and influence, likely to revolutionise productivity? Er, yes, but in the wrong direction!
So my healing scenario has a very reasonable chance of coming to pass.
The next biggest risk after a hung parliament is a small Johnson majority. I thought we would hear more about the December 2020 trade deal cliff edge in the campaign. Maybe it's too detailed a point and not immediate enough for the remainers to go at strongly. Instead they've just cast doubt on Johnson's ability to do deals by next December, using lies about the likely time to get a trade deal with the US for example. (The average time it takes the USA to negotiate a trade deal is 18 months. Admittedly more than 12 but not 7 years). It probably hasn't occurred to them that you can do these deals in stages. Effectively we will forever be negotiating and renegotiating trade deals. That sound awful? It's what the EU does on our behalf currently. And because they have to balance 28 countries' interests it takes longer and satisfies nobody. Of course we can do deals that, overall, are better for us and we can do it more quickly than the EU does on our behalf. Johnson probably felt he had to say that the final end wouldn't be overly delayed but I doubt he was wise to choose the December 2020 deadline. However, he got his EU deal through when almost no-one thought he would.
The real no trade deal cliff edge comes if Johnson has a small majority, putting power in the hands of his Brexit ultras. If Johnson has a good majority he can marginalise the ERG and push his deals through. This risk does concern me to the extent that I think a small Johnson majority is nearly as bad as a hung parliament.
But wouldn't a big Tory majority mean a very right wing government? I don't think so. A very wise professor in economics I worked for in the 1980s once told me that, for all the noise, the difference between the parties was usually quite small. I've looked at the numbers more closely ever since. At the time the number bandied about was the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR, what we now call the "deficit"). In 1979 the SDP-Liberal Alliance was pushing for "pump priming" of the economy saying we could afford to borrow more to finance growth. The actual numbers were such a small proportion of total government spend that it was hard to see it having any effect. That's not the case this time on overall spending, but it's worth looking at the detail. There was a good graphic about NHS spending on the BBC news last night. It showed the average annual increase - and it always has been a strong increase - in NHS spend under each government since 1979. From memory the numbers were something like 3% under Thatcher and Major, 5% under Blair and Brown and around 2% after 2010 and the acute need to rein in spending. The Tories are now promising a 4% increase and the extra spending promised by Labour on top barely registered as a thin red sliver. No difference at all really.
Yes we had the media excitement over the awful photo of the boy with suspected pneumonia on the floor at Leeds hospital. The thing that surprised me most about this was that the Tories weren't ready for this year's equivalent of "Jennifer's ear", which was the 1992 election version. After all, an obvious risk of a December election is that all journalists need to do is keep an eye on every major hospital and, in all likelihood, such a case will arise. The only question was whether it was a child or an old person. While having every sympathy for the specific case, if people are saying that the NHS needs to be ready and waiting with facilities and staff for every conceivable emergency case then there's going to be a lot of expensive surplus capacity sitting around 98% of the time. We need a grown up debate about this and Corbyn promising to keep "weaponising" the NHS won't help us get there.
So the question is who will run the NHS more effectively? Labour with its power to the unions policy which will halt any kind of beneficial change in the NHS for good? (A rhetorical question. A separate blog might come on the Labour lie that the Tories would "sell" the NHS).
Johnson is a centrist, one nation Tory. He ran London well with an inclusive style and strong team. His cabinet is the most diverse ever. Yes he's a fudging dissembler but this is not a right wing Tory party. It's been incorrectly branded that on Brexit, but Brexit isn't a left-right issue. Johnson is the best leader on offer by far and the Tories have the most competent squad. They are the only party that has the first clue about business - and then, most of the time, not much more than the first clue. Even they are blind to the needs of the massive number of tiny and small business that are so important to our economy. But at least they aren't hostile to them. Why would anyone want to start a business under Corbyn? (If you aren't sure of the answer, or aren't convinced that entrepreneurs will flee the country, see what Sir Charles Dunstone, co-founder of Carphone Warehouse said a couple of days ago).
In contrast think what could go wrong. Seduced by the offer of "free" broadband? First remember the old saying about free lunches. But secondly ask yourself, why do they want to control our broadband? Because the public sector will be better at rolling out fast broadband? Pull the other one, this is the public sector that can't deliver Crossrail on time and budget and can't get HS2 properly started before the budget is not just blown but annihilated. You may think the next bit is paranoia but bear with me. All far left governments want to control the media. Labour have an "oven ready" way with the print media: the egregious Leveson controls are sitting there waiting to be implemented. The LibDems wouldn't resist it - Clegg was one of its main champions. But the internet is another thing. Control broadband and you're half way there.
This sort of Orwellian development wouldn't happen at once of course. McDonnell and co know that they just need to win battles now and then. Get state control of some of these things now and you are positioned to act later on. Especially when "emergency" circumstances require it. All those counter-terrorism controls are there to be used. After all, local councils have used it if people use the wrong bin....
But aren't the Tories just too awful, seen as the nasty party as Theresa May said? For the most part, no. The so-called friendlier, gentler politics of the left are of course actually bullying, harrassment and anti-semitism. They will use all of these things. Remember the Bolsheviks started as a minority government.
I have often wondered how things would have panned out in 1979 if Thatcher hadn't won and the SDP-Liberal Alliance had been in government or a coalition. I can reluctantly only conclude it almost certainly wouldn't have worked out well. A vote for the middle ground this time could also set us on the wrong track for a long, long time. Democracy Man will vote for his party, as he should but otherwise a vote for the LibDems seems a cop out to me, even if I wasn't put off by their extreme position on identity and gender. I wasn't the only one to find the news that they have accepted a £100k donation from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a firm that sells drugs used in identity clinics to delay the onset of puberty, concerning.
I have more of a problem with people saying they can't stand Corbyn but have always voted Labour so will again. I can respect the idea of fighting from inside the tent but the battle for the heart of Labour seems lost.
But the real question is the undecideds and whether they will vote at all. (Generally they don't).
So Mikey47, I can respect that, if you think the single biggest issue facing us is climate change then, even though we are only one country and your vote won't have much if any impact, you should vote Green.
Otherwise anything other than voting Conservative risks a bad outcome: continuing argument over Brexit, the potential for the end of the union with Scotland after indyref2 and the whole Marxist nightmare slowly unfolding. And don't kid yourself, everyone knows McDonnell can't finance his plans on the back of the rich alone, if only because they'll decamp. He'll be coming after middle ground people like you, me and Democracy Man as well. He'll need to tax the many, not the few. And this from a starting point where the tax burden on the economy has just grown to the largest proportion of GDP since before Mrs Thatcher started her revolution in reducing the size of the state.
We live in a marginal so our votes do count. I'll be voting Conservative as the only viable option to anything other than a bleak, chaotic future. I don't think your constituency is a marginal, so you might as well follow your conscience. But I hope I've convinced you that a tactical vote against the Tories could be disastrous.
All elections are bigged up as the most important in a generation. This is the only one that has really felt that way to me for a long time. The Ted Heath "who runs the country?" election in 1974 felt that way and was inconclusive. But Heath hadn't done enough in government to justify re-election and we had a truly awful 5 years of a weak and eventually minority Labour government, the IMF bail-out and the trade unions' winter of discontent.
So the election that turned out to be the most important in my lifetime was 1979. It didn't feel that way at the time: it felt a depressing choice between failure, an unknown quantity in Margaret Thatcher and an attractive middle ground with the newly formed SDP-Liberal Alliance. Fortunately the country set itself on a sustainable course under Margaret Thatcher. I was disappointed at the time as a member of the SDP and it was an uncomfortable, rocky ride at first but with the hindsight of history I can see I was wrong then to oppose Thatcher. Her reforms were desperately needed and the fact that we have had one of the strongest rather than one of the weakest economies in Europe since then can be attributed directly to her government's reforms in the 1980s.
There is a huge risk that we now throw all of that away.
First let's contemplate the extremely unlikely - a majority Corbyn government. The damage would be colossal and immediate. The financial sector makes up over 10% of our economy. The prospect of a transaction tax and the seizure of 10% of the shares of large companies would kill capital markets overnight. Floats on the stock exchange would become a rarity and international businesses would quit London. Many of the 330,000 additional rate taxpayers who contribute over a third of all income tax work in the City. They are highly mobile and would migrate overseas. Then tens of thousands of lower paid jobs would steadily come under threat of being switched abroad, only this time the job would go not the person.
If Mikey47 doubts this, he should ask what I would have done if a Corbyn-led government had been elected in 2005 when I was working for a corporate and running a business that had its production facilities in the USA, Germany and China. A senior management team of three was based in the UK, but we could have departed overnight for Germany or the USA. The pension taper alone would probably have been enough to ensure we did. Had there still been production facilities in the UK (history I won't go into) the option of basing the central team abroad would still have been there. (You don't need to guess - I'd probably have gone to the USA though it might have been easier to decamp to Germany first). Write that story tens of thousands of times over.....
Investment has been weak since 2016, wreaking insidious but significant damage on the economy. It would collapse overnight. As we rely on capital inflows to balance our persistent trade deficit McDonnell would get his financial crisis which he would use to take "emergency measures". There would be prolonged legal wrangles over attempts to nationalise utilities below market value. Our international status would be fundamentally changed by support for every "radical" cause on the planet. As someone has said, this isn't Wilson or Callaghan or Blair or Brown. This is Hugo Chavez.
You might say why contemplate what isn't going to happen? Corbyn can't possibly win. I agree but even a minority government can do stuff. Supported by the almost equally crackpot SNP and moderated only by the LibDems a minority Corbyn government could do huge damage. Johnson could have gone on a long time with a majority of minus whatever in a gridlock situation; so could Corbyn. A minority Corbyn government would still be a 100% Corbyn cabinet, with control over foreign policy, for example.
Mikey47 said he felt we might end up with a hung parliament. That is a very real risk: many sources are saying it would take only a few tens of thousands of targeted tactical votes to deny Johnson a majority and even create a Corbyn-led government. Some say this could happen without Labour even winning any more seats than they have currently.
My problem with a hung parliament is that it really will solve nothing. Oh sure, Brexit might be fudged with a second referendum between a Brexit in name only and remain. The result wouldn't matter, as it wouldn't solve anything. Farage would be as important a figure as ever and the argument would rumble on as strongly as ever. We would not exactly be popular with our EU "friends", still chucking rocks at them in their Parliament. The festering resentment in the country would be colossal.
The only way I can see any chance of a healing process in the country is a convincing Johnson win. We leave the EU and get on with trade deals, investment in the UK strengthens and if things go ok the mood will change. There will still be many who will sadly reflect that we should have stayed in the EU but there is a chance that we can put it behind us, at least for most people and move on.
Won't we be worse off outside the EU though? Essentially all economists agree on that. It doesn't mean they are right, but let's go with it, as they nearly all say the impact on growth rate will be something like 0.5%. If the economy were to go forward with a weaker growth rate but still do ok - which is what most economists say - will we notice? No, of course not. We'll be better off in 5 and 10 years time. Maybe not as better off as we would have been but that would be theoretical to most people. After all, if Germany can tolerate weak growth for year after year, why can't we? Over time how we do on productivity is far more important than whether we are in the EU. Is a Corbyn led government, bringing back trade union powers and influence, likely to revolutionise productivity? Er, yes, but in the wrong direction!
So my healing scenario has a very reasonable chance of coming to pass.
The next biggest risk after a hung parliament is a small Johnson majority. I thought we would hear more about the December 2020 trade deal cliff edge in the campaign. Maybe it's too detailed a point and not immediate enough for the remainers to go at strongly. Instead they've just cast doubt on Johnson's ability to do deals by next December, using lies about the likely time to get a trade deal with the US for example. (The average time it takes the USA to negotiate a trade deal is 18 months. Admittedly more than 12 but not 7 years). It probably hasn't occurred to them that you can do these deals in stages. Effectively we will forever be negotiating and renegotiating trade deals. That sound awful? It's what the EU does on our behalf currently. And because they have to balance 28 countries' interests it takes longer and satisfies nobody. Of course we can do deals that, overall, are better for us and we can do it more quickly than the EU does on our behalf. Johnson probably felt he had to say that the final end wouldn't be overly delayed but I doubt he was wise to choose the December 2020 deadline. However, he got his EU deal through when almost no-one thought he would.
The real no trade deal cliff edge comes if Johnson has a small majority, putting power in the hands of his Brexit ultras. If Johnson has a good majority he can marginalise the ERG and push his deals through. This risk does concern me to the extent that I think a small Johnson majority is nearly as bad as a hung parliament.
But wouldn't a big Tory majority mean a very right wing government? I don't think so. A very wise professor in economics I worked for in the 1980s once told me that, for all the noise, the difference between the parties was usually quite small. I've looked at the numbers more closely ever since. At the time the number bandied about was the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR, what we now call the "deficit"). In 1979 the SDP-Liberal Alliance was pushing for "pump priming" of the economy saying we could afford to borrow more to finance growth. The actual numbers were such a small proportion of total government spend that it was hard to see it having any effect. That's not the case this time on overall spending, but it's worth looking at the detail. There was a good graphic about NHS spending on the BBC news last night. It showed the average annual increase - and it always has been a strong increase - in NHS spend under each government since 1979. From memory the numbers were something like 3% under Thatcher and Major, 5% under Blair and Brown and around 2% after 2010 and the acute need to rein in spending. The Tories are now promising a 4% increase and the extra spending promised by Labour on top barely registered as a thin red sliver. No difference at all really.
Yes we had the media excitement over the awful photo of the boy with suspected pneumonia on the floor at Leeds hospital. The thing that surprised me most about this was that the Tories weren't ready for this year's equivalent of "Jennifer's ear", which was the 1992 election version. After all, an obvious risk of a December election is that all journalists need to do is keep an eye on every major hospital and, in all likelihood, such a case will arise. The only question was whether it was a child or an old person. While having every sympathy for the specific case, if people are saying that the NHS needs to be ready and waiting with facilities and staff for every conceivable emergency case then there's going to be a lot of expensive surplus capacity sitting around 98% of the time. We need a grown up debate about this and Corbyn promising to keep "weaponising" the NHS won't help us get there.
So the question is who will run the NHS more effectively? Labour with its power to the unions policy which will halt any kind of beneficial change in the NHS for good? (A rhetorical question. A separate blog might come on the Labour lie that the Tories would "sell" the NHS).
Johnson is a centrist, one nation Tory. He ran London well with an inclusive style and strong team. His cabinet is the most diverse ever. Yes he's a fudging dissembler but this is not a right wing Tory party. It's been incorrectly branded that on Brexit, but Brexit isn't a left-right issue. Johnson is the best leader on offer by far and the Tories have the most competent squad. They are the only party that has the first clue about business - and then, most of the time, not much more than the first clue. Even they are blind to the needs of the massive number of tiny and small business that are so important to our economy. But at least they aren't hostile to them. Why would anyone want to start a business under Corbyn? (If you aren't sure of the answer, or aren't convinced that entrepreneurs will flee the country, see what Sir Charles Dunstone, co-founder of Carphone Warehouse said a couple of days ago).
In contrast think what could go wrong. Seduced by the offer of "free" broadband? First remember the old saying about free lunches. But secondly ask yourself, why do they want to control our broadband? Because the public sector will be better at rolling out fast broadband? Pull the other one, this is the public sector that can't deliver Crossrail on time and budget and can't get HS2 properly started before the budget is not just blown but annihilated. You may think the next bit is paranoia but bear with me. All far left governments want to control the media. Labour have an "oven ready" way with the print media: the egregious Leveson controls are sitting there waiting to be implemented. The LibDems wouldn't resist it - Clegg was one of its main champions. But the internet is another thing. Control broadband and you're half way there.
This sort of Orwellian development wouldn't happen at once of course. McDonnell and co know that they just need to win battles now and then. Get state control of some of these things now and you are positioned to act later on. Especially when "emergency" circumstances require it. All those counter-terrorism controls are there to be used. After all, local councils have used it if people use the wrong bin....
But aren't the Tories just too awful, seen as the nasty party as Theresa May said? For the most part, no. The so-called friendlier, gentler politics of the left are of course actually bullying, harrassment and anti-semitism. They will use all of these things. Remember the Bolsheviks started as a minority government.
I have often wondered how things would have panned out in 1979 if Thatcher hadn't won and the SDP-Liberal Alliance had been in government or a coalition. I can reluctantly only conclude it almost certainly wouldn't have worked out well. A vote for the middle ground this time could also set us on the wrong track for a long, long time. Democracy Man will vote for his party, as he should but otherwise a vote for the LibDems seems a cop out to me, even if I wasn't put off by their extreme position on identity and gender. I wasn't the only one to find the news that they have accepted a £100k donation from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a firm that sells drugs used in identity clinics to delay the onset of puberty, concerning.
I have more of a problem with people saying they can't stand Corbyn but have always voted Labour so will again. I can respect the idea of fighting from inside the tent but the battle for the heart of Labour seems lost.
But the real question is the undecideds and whether they will vote at all. (Generally they don't).
So Mikey47, I can respect that, if you think the single biggest issue facing us is climate change then, even though we are only one country and your vote won't have much if any impact, you should vote Green.
Otherwise anything other than voting Conservative risks a bad outcome: continuing argument over Brexit, the potential for the end of the union with Scotland after indyref2 and the whole Marxist nightmare slowly unfolding. And don't kid yourself, everyone knows McDonnell can't finance his plans on the back of the rich alone, if only because they'll decamp. He'll be coming after middle ground people like you, me and Democracy Man as well. He'll need to tax the many, not the few. And this from a starting point where the tax burden on the economy has just grown to the largest proportion of GDP since before Mrs Thatcher started her revolution in reducing the size of the state.
We live in a marginal so our votes do count. I'll be voting Conservative as the only viable option to anything other than a bleak, chaotic future. I don't think your constituency is a marginal, so you might as well follow your conscience. But I hope I've convinced you that a tactical vote against the Tories could be disastrous.
Monday 9 December 2019
Reasons to vote in the general election
Just like last time, I've been finding plenty of reasons for the electorate to vote for the various parties in the general election. Most of them are admittedly whimsical at best - it shouldn't be too hard for you to identify the very small number of reasons I've found that I think might just be good ones.
You don't know if we should leave or remain and think we need at least another year to figure it all out
You want to be able to play Fortnite all day on free broadband on your day off in a 4 day week
You long for the good old days of British Telecom and British Rail. You agree they were completely crap but it's much better to wait for months for a phone line than to have someone make a profit out of providing you with a generally good service.
You don't like rich people and think their taxes should go up so much that they all bugger off abroad. Sure we won't be able to afford as many doctors, nurses and teachers but it's better than having all those blood sucking rich dudes around. Isn't it?
You long for the good old days of secondary picketing and want to see the trade unions restored to their rightful position of being called in to No 10 for beer and sandwiches to fix the problems they have created in the first place
Spending that much money will inevitably create the crisis in capitalism that you crave. Not so much the velvet revolution, more the spendthrift revolution
You like paying for sex and want to see it decriminalised. (The Labour Party officially supports the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade. It's not clear if they realise that means removing all laws against pimping and brothel-keeping and effectively means exploiters and human traffickers would go free. As Andrea Dworkin said, only when women's bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market).
You can't stand Trump or American imperialism and think we should quit NATO and forge a new alliance with Cuba, Venezuela and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
You think Britain should be much more outward looking and so we need a PM like Jeremy, whose main interest is in the international socialist cause not all this boring internal British stuff. Indeed you've always supported all revolutionary causes (IRA, Hamas and so on) and can't understand what the anti-semitism fuss is about. It's much more important to oppose Israel and Trump.
You think that, with so little on the nation's plate currently, Parliamentary time should be allocated to legislating about football club governance. (Shadow sports minister Rosena Allin-Khan says fans should be given a greater say in running clubs, including who the manager is and whether "safe" standing should be allowed. I imagine she doesn't know anyone who was at Hillsborough).
You don't believe what you read (that Johnson has had the most diverse cabinet ever) and think there should be more women and black people in the cabinet. After all, Diane Abbott will really sort the Home Office out
You're fed up with there being so many elections and voting for a bunch of unreconstructed Marxists could well be a way of bringing that to an end.
(Trust me these are only a subset of the range of reasons for voting Labour)
* The pension allowance taper is perhaps the single daftest taxation idea implemented by government in my lifetime. I've read that, as gross salary increases from £118k to £180k take home pay only goes up by £3k (which seems incredible), with marginal tax rates exceeding 94%. Between £118,800 and £122,600 marginal tax rates are over 100%. The arrangements are so complex some finanicial advisers will not offer advice. The taper is why many NHS consultants have limited their hours of work to avoid falling into the trap and large numbers are planning to retire early. One consultant, appointed to lead a regional specialist service, got a £92,000 tax bill, was effectively forced to leave the pension scheme in his 40s and intends to leave the NHS. Anecdotally some have had to sell their house to pay a large unexpected tax bill. Johnson has said he'll fix it but it's still the example that most undermines my view that the Tories are generally competent. I know these are high earners but this is worse than "one for me 19 for you" as George Harrison sang about the taxman under Labour in the 1960s. And note it doesn't affect really high earners. And funnily enough folk like train drivers fall just under the £80k higher rate threshold - as do MPs come to that.
Labour
You don't know if we should leave or remain and think we need at least another year to figure it all out
You want to be able to play Fortnite all day on free broadband on your day off in a 4 day week
You long for the good old days of British Telecom and British Rail. You agree they were completely crap but it's much better to wait for months for a phone line than to have someone make a profit out of providing you with a generally good service.
You don't like rich people and think their taxes should go up so much that they all bugger off abroad. Sure we won't be able to afford as many doctors, nurses and teachers but it's better than having all those blood sucking rich dudes around. Isn't it?
You long for the good old days of secondary picketing and want to see the trade unions restored to their rightful position of being called in to No 10 for beer and sandwiches to fix the problems they have created in the first place
Spending that much money will inevitably create the crisis in capitalism that you crave. Not so much the velvet revolution, more the spendthrift revolution
You like paying for sex and want to see it decriminalised. (The Labour Party officially supports the blanket decriminalisation of the sex trade. It's not clear if they realise that means removing all laws against pimping and brothel-keeping and effectively means exploiters and human traffickers would go free. As Andrea Dworkin said, only when women's bodies are being sold for profit do leftists claim to cherish the free market).
You can't stand Trump or American imperialism and think we should quit NATO and forge a new alliance with Cuba, Venezuela and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
You think Britain should be much more outward looking and so we need a PM like Jeremy, whose main interest is in the international socialist cause not all this boring internal British stuff. Indeed you've always supported all revolutionary causes (IRA, Hamas and so on) and can't understand what the anti-semitism fuss is about. It's much more important to oppose Israel and Trump.
You think that, with so little on the nation's plate currently, Parliamentary time should be allocated to legislating about football club governance. (Shadow sports minister Rosena Allin-Khan says fans should be given a greater say in running clubs, including who the manager is and whether "safe" standing should be allowed. I imagine she doesn't know anyone who was at Hillsborough).
You don't believe what you read (that Johnson has had the most diverse cabinet ever) and think there should be more women and black people in the cabinet. After all, Diane Abbott will really sort the Home Office out
You're fed up with there being so many elections and voting for a bunch of unreconstructed Marxists could well be a way of bringing that to an end.
(Trust me these are only a subset of the range of reasons for voting Labour)
Liberal Democrats
You like to think the referendum never happened. (But sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la la" every time Brexit is mentioned might work just as well for you....)
You want to see gender neutral uniforms in school and want to be able to put "X" against your child's gender on their passport
You like paying for sex and want to see it decriminalised. See Labour above. The LibDems also take the view that prostitution is a job like any other. The party's Wendy Chamberlain argued against criminalising punters saying that "sex work has been going on for thousands of years and sadly no policy will end it". Er, you could say the same about murder, Wendy....
You think we should invest in all our people, not just young people and certainly not just the top 50% who go to university. After all if it's elitist to preferentially treat the top 20% by sending them to grammar schools isn't it just as elitist to send the top 50% to uni and ignore most of the rest apart from some pathetic apprenticeship schemes?
Conservative
You just want to get Brexit DONE! (I've bad news for you: negotiating trade deals will be a pain and won't happen quickly, even if ditches are died in).
You enjoy having a PM who speaks quite well and has comic value even if he doesn't know what he's saying. After all isn't that better than having a PM who doesn't speak well, also doesn't know what he's saying and definitely isn't funny?
The Tories are the only party who have the faintest clue about business and the economy, even if Boris did say **** business and they don't actually have any relevant policies. After all, isn't it just best to end the Brexit uncertainty and then give business the confidence that they can plan because the government isn't actually going to do or change anything?
You are worried that there will be another financial crisis. Oops, too bad, all parties are promising to break what's left of the bank. But the starting point might not be quite as acute under the Tories.
You are worried that there will be another financial crisis. Oops, too bad, all parties are promising to break what's left of the bank. But the starting point might not be quite as acute under the Tories.
You are an endangered or victimised species (i.e. an entrepreneur or a fairly high earner trapped in George Osborne's fiendishly complex black hole of the pension taper; maybe an NHS consultant, praised to the hilt for your work and taxed at marginal rates that can be above 100%*). Actually it's too bad, probably no-one is going to help you but it's just possible that, having created this ludicrous situation, the Tories might not make it worse. Which would probably be impossible anyway.
You think that fairly high earners, even NHS consultants, are as bad as the super rich and so like the Tories for hammering them with the brilliant pension taper.
You think that fairly high earners, even NHS consultants, are as bad as the super rich and so like the Tories for hammering them with the brilliant pension taper.
Green
You had such fun on the XR demos, holding up people going to work and the odd blue light ambulance.
You think it's right on having two people as party leader simultaneously. If Boris had thought of that and shared the role with Gove, they wouldn't have had the problem with Channel 4. Stupid Tories!
You think it's right on having two people as party leader simultaneously. If Boris had thought of that and shared the role with Gove, they wouldn't have had the problem with Channel 4. Stupid Tories!
You are miserable, having given up all air travel, your fossil-fuelled car and gas boiler and are limiting your use of batteries because of all the rare and unrecyclable materials in them. After all, mustn't be hypocritical. But it would cheer you up no end if everyone else had to get on board and join you in the Middle Ages by 2025 at the latest.
You're so woke you never need to set an alarm clock.
SNP
You're fed up with being subsidised by the English and want indeyref2 to sort that out once and for all.
Indeed, given the choice, you'd rather be subsidised and bossed around by the Germans than the damned English.
Plaid Cymru
See SNP
Brexit
Just like UKIP last time, I can't even think of an amusing reason to vote Brexit. It doesn't make sense even as a tactical vote in this election. Campaign for Farage's Nobel Peace Prize instead.
* The pension allowance taper is perhaps the single daftest taxation idea implemented by government in my lifetime. I've read that, as gross salary increases from £118k to £180k take home pay only goes up by £3k (which seems incredible), with marginal tax rates exceeding 94%. Between £118,800 and £122,600 marginal tax rates are over 100%. The arrangements are so complex some finanicial advisers will not offer advice. The taper is why many NHS consultants have limited their hours of work to avoid falling into the trap and large numbers are planning to retire early. One consultant, appointed to lead a regional specialist service, got a £92,000 tax bill, was effectively forced to leave the pension scheme in his 40s and intends to leave the NHS. Anecdotally some have had to sell their house to pay a large unexpected tax bill. Johnson has said he'll fix it but it's still the example that most undermines my view that the Tories are generally competent. I know these are high earners but this is worse than "one for me 19 for you" as George Harrison sang about the taxman under Labour in the 1960s. And note it doesn't affect really high earners. And funnily enough folk like train drivers fall just under the £80k higher rate threshold - as do MPs come to that.
Sunday 8 December 2019
Everton can't afford to keep getting it wrong
How proud did Duncan Ferguson look? And this was at his pre-match press conference before he took charge for the 3-1 win against Chelsea yesterday after Marco Silva's expected dismissal:
Managers and coaches need to be good communicators but, before yesterday, I'm not sure I'd ever heard Duncan Ferguson speak. I'd met him - asking for an autograph with my then 13 year old son as he got back onto Everton's team bus after an away match at Southampton back in the 1990s. Ferguson wordlessly complied and then upset some other parents by diving quickly onto the bus. At least until I pointed out that he had reappeared sitting in the driver's seat and signing everything that was pushed through the open window at him as long as there was anyone showing interest. "He's got a heart of gold, Duncan" said one of them.
Anyway, I expected he would pump the team up with simple messages and they would at least put in more effort than they seemed to be doing under Marco Silva. I've said before that I hoped the players understood more of what Silva was saying than I could from his TV interviews, which always came across to me as confused and lacking inspiration. It seems they didn't.
But yesterday Everton did more than put in effort, which should be a given in all games anyway, but of itself won't win you anything. They executed more tackles than any team in any Premier League game this season, though that in itself shows they were under pressure much of the game. But some of the players of whom I've been very critical produced performances which I hadn't believed them capable of. The best example was Alex Iwobi, who has looked occasionally talented on the ball but hopeless when the opposition is in possession. The first time I saw Iwobi from the stands rather than the TV I couldn't decide if he was lazy, unfit or just couldn't be arsed when the opposition had the ball. His positional play was poor and he didn't seem capable of getting near enough to the ball to exert any pressure. Yesterday was a revelation. It looked like Ferguson had told Iwobi that to close down an opponent you actually have to get close to him.
I read an interview with Chris Wilder, the Sheffield United manager, last week in which he was asked what the difference was between managing in the ninth tier of English football, where he started with Alfreton Town and the Premier League. His answer was nothing at all. I realised this when I coached in the Oxford Boys' League. Sure the top players are faster and much more skilful. But the basics of what need to be done are nearly identical and the way individuals and groups behave has more to do with human nature than anything else. Above all I found in my playing career that the messages I responded best to were simple and punchy. I could never imagine Silva conveying a point that sharply.
So there was no guarantee that Ferguson could cajole a performance out of a team but it wasn't a surprise. He's always had passion and has been coaching at Everton now for 8 years after volunteering to help at the academy and being subsequently taken on to the staff. Promoted to coaching the first team five years ago, he has worked under four different Everton managers, so unless Kenwright has told them all they must keep Duncan, he presumably has coaching ability.
However, as Ferguson himself said, it was one match. Coaching a team to sustained excellence and dealing with all the other aspects of club management is another matter.
Those other aspects include dealing with the media. The reason I hadn't heard Ferguson (pronounced FAIR-guss-n in Scouse by the way) speak was because, for most of his occasionally controversial playing career Ferguson would not give interviews. I imagine he felt the press had given him a raw deal, though they had plenty of material. While at Rangers in 1994 Ferguson was sanctioned for headbutting an opposition player. The referee didn't see the incident but Ferguson was subsequently charged and found guilty of assault - very rare for an on-field incident. As it was his, ahem, third conviction for assault (the fist was for headbutting a policeman) he was jailed for three months.
That sentence came after Ferguson had gone on loan to Everton, then as last week struggling at the bottom of the Premier League. Everton took him on loan for three months in the dog days of Mike Walker's reign as manager, when blues fans had to put up with rednoses asking "what's the difference between Everton and a compass?" (A compass has four points was the answer; Everton had three from eight games). The loan signing felt like desperation by both parties: Ferguson had to get out of Scotland and Everton couldn't get anyone else. Nothing much happened in his first few matches, until Walker was sacked and ex-Everton centre forward Joe Royle took over. Royle's first match was a Merseyside derby. Ferguson scored. Everton won and proceeded to move quickly up the table. His loan was made permanent and he played a big part in the club qualifying for Europe and winning the FA Cup over the next couple of seasons.
I've only recently read a remarkable account of Ferguson's "preparation" for that first derby, which took place on a Monday night. It involved a Saturday night out in Liverpool - maybe not the best idea while waiting for the assault case and still on probation - a lot of red wine, driving through a no entry sign into a bus station, being banged up in St Anne Street police station overnight, failing a breath test and being let out the next morning. The consolation for Ferguson was that the young lady who was in the car with him (I doubt he knew her well...) was waiting in his hotel room when he got back there. "I will be back. I don't know when, but I will be back" he had told her as he got arrested and gave her the room key.
By Duncan's own account this less than ideal preparation meant that he felt he owed Royle a performance. But his night really sparked to life when Neil Ruddock kicked him from behind and, in Royle's words, Duncan "went to war", but this time using his head in the right way for football.
Duncan's first full season at Everton was interrupted by that jail sentence and the imposition of a 12 game ban on top imposed by the Scottish FA. Ferguson quit international football in protest and had nothing further to do with Scottish football and its governing body until taking his first UEFA coaching course at Largs in 2011. And probably it also made him circumspect with the media.
Despite Ferguson's troubled early career and his occasional brush with referees subsequently he was generally more sinned against than sinner. When your reputation precedes you with opponents and referees you often have to put up with a lot. The only player I've seen who routinely had to put up with as much provocation, especially in terms of holding, was Marouanne Fellaini - for similar reasons. Duncan was a far more skilful player than most neutral fans gave him credit for. But you still might not have expected Ferguson to turn into a competent coach, which he clearly is.
And his only publicised problems since in terms of assault have come in 2001 and 2003 when burglars broke into his house. Each time an man ended up in hospital and it wasn't Ferguson.
As for dealing with the media now, I was impressed with his post match interview on BT Sport. Under persistent questioning from Jake Humphrey Ferguson declined to pitch for the Everton manager post, saying he expected the club would go out and try to get the best manager it could. As Humphrey persisted Ferguson stopped him in his tracks, saying firmly but politely "I think I've answered your question". This showed a degree of competence which hinted that Ferguson might have the characteristics and intelligence needed. While football managers don't need to be Brain of Britain - as Bob Paisley demonstrated - they have have nous and emotional intelligence.
What Everton do next could be critical. Fans had thought the Moyes era had brought to an end the persistent flirting with relegation that blighted the nineties and early noughties. Only Arsenal can better Everton's proud record of 65 successive seasons in the English top flight. Having said that the club was poorly lead at board level from the time John Moores grew old. Their purple patch in the 1980s under Sir Philip Carter was delivered by Howard Kendall's excellence as a manager and concealed a strategic void at the heart of the club. As a result it went into the Sky/Premier League era still counted as one of the "big 5" but rapidly fading. They were unlucky in the timing of the English teams exclusion from Europe but missed the boat as the modern era of riches dawned. The once "Mersey Millionaires" would not have fallen out of contention so permanently had they made the right decisions through the 1980s.
The Bill Kenwright era brought a welcome stability but with Manchester United and Liverpool's persistent financial strength, Abramovich investing in Chelsea and Manchester City being given a stadium followed by a a rich Arabian genie appearing as if from a lamp the gap is now so large that it's hard to see how it can be closed. Tottenham - who Everton were well ahead of until just a few seasons ago - might be a model, though they haven't actually won anything yet. And Leicester have shown that miracles might not be temporary. Farhad Moshiri's arrival has brought hope but has so far only revealed that you have to spend money wisely.
So what Everton do next is critical. They can cement their place in the Premier League for the several seasons necessary for the new stadium project to come to fruition after which it might be conceivable that they can build a stronger future. The alternative is terrifying.
In the time I've been watching football only Arsenal and Everton have always been in the top flight. I can remember Liverpool being promoted in 1962. I've seen all of Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham relegated. While big clubs often bounce straight back, there is no guarantee as City found. If you can't get straight back, financial fair play as implemented by the EFL makes life really hard for recently relegated clubs once their Premier League parachute payments cease and some, like Sunderland, go down further.
After initial promise Martinez faltered, Koeman floundered, Allardyce was a stop gap and Silva was just not up to the task. If Everton keep getting it wrong the future is worrying. This time it's important they get it right. Niko Kovac was at Goodison yesterday watching the game. That worries me. The ex Croatian national manager took Bayern Munich to the German title in his first season. It was Bayern's seventh consecutive title so he inherited a decent team used to success. This year it's gone sour and Kovac left last month by mutual agreement after a 5-1 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt. Bayern are currently seventh in a league in which it is hard for them to be below second place. Sounds a bit Marco Silva-ish to me.
Other candidates include Vitor Pereira, who they considered in 2013 but rejected because of his poor English. He'd won the Portuguese League with Porto and subsequently he has apparently learned English, as well as winning a double with Olympiacos. But he didn't last at Fenerbahce and took 1860 Munich down from the second German tier before going to China where he has won their super league with Shanghai. Hmm.
Then, as I've rehearsed recently there is Max Allegri and the more familiar candidates: Pochettino, Howe, Moyes and Benitez, though the last of these is probably not available at the current time.
Duncan Ferguson has given Everton some breathing space at least. The fixture list is still studded with hard matches but there seems no need to panic. It's more important that they get it right this time. I would give Ferguson a few matches and forget the January window. If things go ok let it run to the end of the season while lining up the best candidate. Duncan might thrive, though I wouldn't bet money on it.
But I guess if Pochettino would come now I would go for him, even though his interviews leave me as puzzled as Silva's.
* Alan Patullo write up of Ferguson's remarkable account first Merseyside derby was in the Guardian on 26 Sept 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/26/duncan-ferguson-everton-liverpool-merseyside-derby
Managers and coaches need to be good communicators but, before yesterday, I'm not sure I'd ever heard Duncan Ferguson speak. I'd met him - asking for an autograph with my then 13 year old son as he got back onto Everton's team bus after an away match at Southampton back in the 1990s. Ferguson wordlessly complied and then upset some other parents by diving quickly onto the bus. At least until I pointed out that he had reappeared sitting in the driver's seat and signing everything that was pushed through the open window at him as long as there was anyone showing interest. "He's got a heart of gold, Duncan" said one of them.
Anyway, I expected he would pump the team up with simple messages and they would at least put in more effort than they seemed to be doing under Marco Silva. I've said before that I hoped the players understood more of what Silva was saying than I could from his TV interviews, which always came across to me as confused and lacking inspiration. It seems they didn't.
But yesterday Everton did more than put in effort, which should be a given in all games anyway, but of itself won't win you anything. They executed more tackles than any team in any Premier League game this season, though that in itself shows they were under pressure much of the game. But some of the players of whom I've been very critical produced performances which I hadn't believed them capable of. The best example was Alex Iwobi, who has looked occasionally talented on the ball but hopeless when the opposition is in possession. The first time I saw Iwobi from the stands rather than the TV I couldn't decide if he was lazy, unfit or just couldn't be arsed when the opposition had the ball. His positional play was poor and he didn't seem capable of getting near enough to the ball to exert any pressure. Yesterday was a revelation. It looked like Ferguson had told Iwobi that to close down an opponent you actually have to get close to him.
I read an interview with Chris Wilder, the Sheffield United manager, last week in which he was asked what the difference was between managing in the ninth tier of English football, where he started with Alfreton Town and the Premier League. His answer was nothing at all. I realised this when I coached in the Oxford Boys' League. Sure the top players are faster and much more skilful. But the basics of what need to be done are nearly identical and the way individuals and groups behave has more to do with human nature than anything else. Above all I found in my playing career that the messages I responded best to were simple and punchy. I could never imagine Silva conveying a point that sharply.
So there was no guarantee that Ferguson could cajole a performance out of a team but it wasn't a surprise. He's always had passion and has been coaching at Everton now for 8 years after volunteering to help at the academy and being subsequently taken on to the staff. Promoted to coaching the first team five years ago, he has worked under four different Everton managers, so unless Kenwright has told them all they must keep Duncan, he presumably has coaching ability.
However, as Ferguson himself said, it was one match. Coaching a team to sustained excellence and dealing with all the other aspects of club management is another matter.
Those other aspects include dealing with the media. The reason I hadn't heard Ferguson (pronounced FAIR-guss-n in Scouse by the way) speak was because, for most of his occasionally controversial playing career Ferguson would not give interviews. I imagine he felt the press had given him a raw deal, though they had plenty of material. While at Rangers in 1994 Ferguson was sanctioned for headbutting an opposition player. The referee didn't see the incident but Ferguson was subsequently charged and found guilty of assault - very rare for an on-field incident. As it was his, ahem, third conviction for assault (the fist was for headbutting a policeman) he was jailed for three months.
That sentence came after Ferguson had gone on loan to Everton, then as last week struggling at the bottom of the Premier League. Everton took him on loan for three months in the dog days of Mike Walker's reign as manager, when blues fans had to put up with rednoses asking "what's the difference between Everton and a compass?" (A compass has four points was the answer; Everton had three from eight games). The loan signing felt like desperation by both parties: Ferguson had to get out of Scotland and Everton couldn't get anyone else. Nothing much happened in his first few matches, until Walker was sacked and ex-Everton centre forward Joe Royle took over. Royle's first match was a Merseyside derby. Ferguson scored. Everton won and proceeded to move quickly up the table. His loan was made permanent and he played a big part in the club qualifying for Europe and winning the FA Cup over the next couple of seasons.
I've only recently read a remarkable account of Ferguson's "preparation" for that first derby, which took place on a Monday night. It involved a Saturday night out in Liverpool - maybe not the best idea while waiting for the assault case and still on probation - a lot of red wine, driving through a no entry sign into a bus station, being banged up in St Anne Street police station overnight, failing a breath test and being let out the next morning. The consolation for Ferguson was that the young lady who was in the car with him (I doubt he knew her well...) was waiting in his hotel room when he got back there. "I will be back. I don't know when, but I will be back" he had told her as he got arrested and gave her the room key.
By Duncan's own account this less than ideal preparation meant that he felt he owed Royle a performance. But his night really sparked to life when Neil Ruddock kicked him from behind and, in Royle's words, Duncan "went to war", but this time using his head in the right way for football.
Duncan's first full season at Everton was interrupted by that jail sentence and the imposition of a 12 game ban on top imposed by the Scottish FA. Ferguson quit international football in protest and had nothing further to do with Scottish football and its governing body until taking his first UEFA coaching course at Largs in 2011. And probably it also made him circumspect with the media.
Despite Ferguson's troubled early career and his occasional brush with referees subsequently he was generally more sinned against than sinner. When your reputation precedes you with opponents and referees you often have to put up with a lot. The only player I've seen who routinely had to put up with as much provocation, especially in terms of holding, was Marouanne Fellaini - for similar reasons. Duncan was a far more skilful player than most neutral fans gave him credit for. But you still might not have expected Ferguson to turn into a competent coach, which he clearly is.
And his only publicised problems since in terms of assault have come in 2001 and 2003 when burglars broke into his house. Each time an man ended up in hospital and it wasn't Ferguson.
As for dealing with the media now, I was impressed with his post match interview on BT Sport. Under persistent questioning from Jake Humphrey Ferguson declined to pitch for the Everton manager post, saying he expected the club would go out and try to get the best manager it could. As Humphrey persisted Ferguson stopped him in his tracks, saying firmly but politely "I think I've answered your question". This showed a degree of competence which hinted that Ferguson might have the characteristics and intelligence needed. While football managers don't need to be Brain of Britain - as Bob Paisley demonstrated - they have have nous and emotional intelligence.
What Everton do next could be critical. Fans had thought the Moyes era had brought to an end the persistent flirting with relegation that blighted the nineties and early noughties. Only Arsenal can better Everton's proud record of 65 successive seasons in the English top flight. Having said that the club was poorly lead at board level from the time John Moores grew old. Their purple patch in the 1980s under Sir Philip Carter was delivered by Howard Kendall's excellence as a manager and concealed a strategic void at the heart of the club. As a result it went into the Sky/Premier League era still counted as one of the "big 5" but rapidly fading. They were unlucky in the timing of the English teams exclusion from Europe but missed the boat as the modern era of riches dawned. The once "Mersey Millionaires" would not have fallen out of contention so permanently had they made the right decisions through the 1980s.
The Bill Kenwright era brought a welcome stability but with Manchester United and Liverpool's persistent financial strength, Abramovich investing in Chelsea and Manchester City being given a stadium followed by a a rich Arabian genie appearing as if from a lamp the gap is now so large that it's hard to see how it can be closed. Tottenham - who Everton were well ahead of until just a few seasons ago - might be a model, though they haven't actually won anything yet. And Leicester have shown that miracles might not be temporary. Farhad Moshiri's arrival has brought hope but has so far only revealed that you have to spend money wisely.
So what Everton do next is critical. They can cement their place in the Premier League for the several seasons necessary for the new stadium project to come to fruition after which it might be conceivable that they can build a stronger future. The alternative is terrifying.
In the time I've been watching football only Arsenal and Everton have always been in the top flight. I can remember Liverpool being promoted in 1962. I've seen all of Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Tottenham relegated. While big clubs often bounce straight back, there is no guarantee as City found. If you can't get straight back, financial fair play as implemented by the EFL makes life really hard for recently relegated clubs once their Premier League parachute payments cease and some, like Sunderland, go down further.
After initial promise Martinez faltered, Koeman floundered, Allardyce was a stop gap and Silva was just not up to the task. If Everton keep getting it wrong the future is worrying. This time it's important they get it right. Niko Kovac was at Goodison yesterday watching the game. That worries me. The ex Croatian national manager took Bayern Munich to the German title in his first season. It was Bayern's seventh consecutive title so he inherited a decent team used to success. This year it's gone sour and Kovac left last month by mutual agreement after a 5-1 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt. Bayern are currently seventh in a league in which it is hard for them to be below second place. Sounds a bit Marco Silva-ish to me.
Other candidates include Vitor Pereira, who they considered in 2013 but rejected because of his poor English. He'd won the Portuguese League with Porto and subsequently he has apparently learned English, as well as winning a double with Olympiacos. But he didn't last at Fenerbahce and took 1860 Munich down from the second German tier before going to China where he has won their super league with Shanghai. Hmm.
Then, as I've rehearsed recently there is Max Allegri and the more familiar candidates: Pochettino, Howe, Moyes and Benitez, though the last of these is probably not available at the current time.
Duncan Ferguson has given Everton some breathing space at least. The fixture list is still studded with hard matches but there seems no need to panic. It's more important that they get it right this time. I would give Ferguson a few matches and forget the January window. If things go ok let it run to the end of the season while lining up the best candidate. Duncan might thrive, though I wouldn't bet money on it.
But I guess if Pochettino would come now I would go for him, even though his interviews leave me as puzzled as Silva's.
* Alan Patullo write up of Ferguson's remarkable account first Merseyside derby was in the Guardian on 26 Sept 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/26/duncan-ferguson-everton-liverpool-merseyside-derby
Wednesday 4 December 2019
Let's see more party leaders on tv
So OFCOM ruled that there was no case to answer when Chanel 4 excluded Michael Gove from their climate debate and featured a melting ice sculpture instead. I find their reason - that the Conservative viewpoint had been given due weight - risible, but the main problem is they were looking at the wrong question.
From this year's campaign one would think that it had suddenly become mandatory for all party leaders at the election to be interviewed by Andrew Neil. I'm a long term admirer of Neil but it would clearly be anti-competitive for one broadcaster to be given this status and impractical for every leading channel to have its main interviewer confront all the candidates. The Andrew Marr interview with Johnson was appalling, perhaps because Marr felt slighted that he was seen as a softer option. As a result he spoke over every one of Johnson's responses in the latter part of the interview (maybe all of his responses, I only watched the second half).
There are two problems I see here. The first is a lack of structure which means that there is always an argument about who is hiding from who. The USA has tackled this by having a Commission on Presidential Debates. That is more formal than it sounds, however, as the "Commission" is a carve-up, sorry "non-profit corporation" between the Republicans and Democrats which sponsors and produces the debates and related activities. They have a rule that candidates must have scored at least 15% support across five national polls to keep out third party candidates. That said, the multi-way debates we have here, often including people who aren't even standing at the election (e.g. Sturgeon, Farage) are never very edifying and rarely add much, being far too fragmented to allow development of any point or argument of substance. Indeed why on earth regional parties are given time on UK wide tv I can't fathom. They have their own regional debates.
However, I think there is a case for there being some arrangement between parties and broadcasters about how debates should be staged. In the US system each candidate is asked a question and has two minutes to reply. The other candidate then gets a minute to respond, extendable by 30 seconds at the moderator's discretion. There is a traffic light system which counts down the time remaining for the candidates' responses. I think there is some evidence that this works better than our non-system, even though in recent years the debates have been generally dull, as candidates go for the equivalent of a 0-0 draw rather than avoid risking defeat in open play.
But my big problem with the way we do it at the moment is that I don't believe Channel 4 were correct in insisting on only having party leaders. We are electing a government not a prime minister after all. I think the competence of the prospective cabinet is as important as that of the PM. The main reason I have voted Conservative in recent elections has been my perception that they generally have greater competence at running government departments, probably due to the broader "gene pool" that their candidates are drawn from. There are competent politicians in all parties but there isn't much depth of competence in any other than the Conservatives as far as I can see.
Therefore I consider it important that we see a range of party leaders, not just the leader. Gove would have been a very appropriate participant in the Channel 4 climate debate. He was a very effective SoS for environment, just as he was an effective justice secretary and education secretary. I accept his occupancy of the last of these was not without controversy - indeed, I've been berated for my admiration of Gove's achievements by many in the teaching profession in recent years. I have to admit I discount most of those objections as "producer interest"; even more so after the publication of the recent OECD PISA international student assessment which showed a significantly improved international ranking by the UK, especially in reading. I am not the only one to link this 100% with Gove's reforms.
It is interesting that the Tories chose to try to field Marmite Gove, who Cameron kept out of sight in 2015 as he is by no means electoral catnip. Be that as it may, we really should see other party leaders like Gove being quizzed on the tv. So the Tories are to be commended for fielding Rishi Sunak in the BBC 7 leaders debate. Some tried to denigrate the fact that he was only "number 2" at the Treasury but the Chief Secretary role is important and has been a cabinet minister post for as long as I can remember. (Actually I've just checked: since 1961, though since 2015 it has been downgraded to "attending cabinet"). Former holders of the post include Leon Brittan, John Major and Alistair Darling, all of whom went on to hold high office. And anyway, we know what the Saj sounds like, whereas many wouldn't have heard Sunak.
Three of the last four Parliaments have seen a change of PM between elections so there is a strong argument for us seeing more than just the party leader, as another in the winning team might easily become PM before we vote again. America also has this more right is as there is also a vice-presidential debate, though this is straightfoward for them as the VP candidates are "on the ticket".
So I find the argument about Boris Johnson not turning up for the Channel 4 debate fabricated. What I want to see is more of the party leaders on tv. Adam Boulton made a similar point when he said that the reduced access for journalists to party leaders at daily press conferences and other election events compared with previous decades was harmful. Andrew Neil made the point that the BBC's reason for having Johnson on Marr's programme, that the pubic should hear what the PM had to say about the London Bridge terror incident, was fallacious: it should have been Home Secretary Priti Patel. Quite - and Diane Abbott should have been on with her: we still want to know if the putative Labour Home Secretary can count, after all.
The Lib Dems, to be fair, have fielded someone other than their leader Jo Swinson at many media events: the promiscuous (in political party terms) Chuka Umunna. I can understand this since the opinion poll survey which revealed the more the public sees of Swinson the less they like her. However, I am left wondering how someone, however photogenic, gets to be foreign affairs spokesman for a major party after only being with them for what seems like five minutes. (Umunna joined the LibDems in June, his third political party in 2019). Even stranger is the fact that Umunna will struggle to win the seat he is standing for and get returned to parliament. Meanwhile the competent Ed Davey is nowhere to be seen or heard.
There are plenty of channels gagging to cover the election. So we should have had debates on the economy; the environment; policing, justice and prisons; education; foreign policy and of course Brexit with the party spokespersons for each of these areas appearing, not the party leader, on programmes spread between the main channels.
Speaking personally, I'd have paid money to see Keir Starmer quizzed on Labour's Brexit policy and Diane Abbott asked about anything for entertainment value alone. And it would have been more revealing for the electorate than a melting ice sculpture.
Coming soon - my verdict on the biggest lies in this election campaign.......
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