Friday 19 November 2021

Tipping point reached?

There are some words that just seem to go together in the mind of the public and the sub editors who write newspaper headlines. "Sleaze" goes with "Tory" just as "militants" goes with "left wing".  The most remarkable thing about the present government crisis (for that's what it feels like) is that is entirely of its own making. Oh, there have been plenty of stories about PPE contracts and so on but the current situation was precipitated entirely by the prime minister's crashing lack of awareness in putting government support behind the original Commons vote on standards, apparently trying to retrospectively change rules to protect Owen Paterson.

It seems that even with a majority of 80 the PM is still not confident in taking on (or just ignoring) his backbench "Spartans". There was then a bizarre attempt to outflank Labour on poorly thought out new restrictions on MP's activities.

Banning second jobs for backbench MPs is, for me, a non-starter. After all, being a government minister is a very distracting second job which must diminish the attention of MPs to their constituents. So there is no argument on grounds of focus on constituents unless we go French style. The legislature and executive are totally separate in France: their equivalent of an MP has to resign if offered a ministerial post. That would be a fundamental change in the UK. It would deter many from standing. Lawyers and doctors are examples of many occupations who need to continue working at some level to preserve qualifications if they wish to be able to resume their career when subjected to the whim of the electorate.

Restricting the earnings of an MP to an arbitrary level seems daft. You mean it's ok to be distracted by poorly paid work but not to get paid a lot for doing less work? I suppose you could say preserving high earnings is a potential distraction and presents more risk of corruption but it's still a weird kind of proto-communist levelling down, that one.

However, the real problem for the PM is that the mud suddenly seems to be sticking, when you look at these headlines from just three days worth of normally Tory supporting newspapers, the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail, aka 'the paper that preaches hate' (© Democracy Man):


It seems they hate everyone, including Tories... 

Some of their examples of the "Tories-on-the-take club" were very odd, mind. Nick Fletcher, MP for Don Valley, was listed for being vice-chairman of the All-party Parliamentary Group on electric vehicles while also being a director of electric vehicle charging point firm Analogue Electrics. I'm not sure if the paper was suggesting that is a conflict of interest but, if so, only in the way anyone actually knowing something about a subject could be said to be tainted. It was also observed that he receives a company car, phone and health insurance worth £800 a month which doesn't seem particularly excessive to me but then the last time I had a company car over 13 years ago I'm sure even then with private health insurance it was worth over £800 a month. (The car was nice but not that swanky: a Mercedes E class, used  by the Germans as taxis). I remember the tax made the perk effectively neutral from an income point of view but it saved some hassle in terms of fixing insurance and servicing etc. So this snippet made me wonder not about sleaze but why companies still offer lease cars instead of just paying the benefit as money, which my company soon did so it didn't have the pain of operating a lease car fleet.

Fletcher also benefited to the grand amount of £2,000 paid as a political donation by his firm - not at all unusual I'd have thought, you'd hope your own company might provide modest support after all. Maybe the Mail has an aversion to a firm trying to influence the government to install more electric vehicle charging points? But, shock horror, he also has shares in his firm! If this is on the take I suggest the Daily Mail looks through some expenses claims in the public sector for an eye opener, with its generous overnight allowances for civil servants that they don't actually have to spend on their trips.

Filling up newspaper columns with such ridiculous tittle tattle along with the genuinely dodgy, like guaranteed seats in the Lords for party donations, dilutes the message for me but presumably the Mail thinks that a double page spread of such nonsense will make the problem look bigger.

Nevertheless, I wonder if a tipping point has been reached, just as it was with John Major's government in the 90s after the "cash for questions" scandal involving a government minister (Neil Hamilton) and the oddity of David Mellor's defenstration clashing with Major's "back to basics" message. These cases seem almost small beer now, especially Mellor who was stitched up by the press and a kiss and tell lover willing to lie. (Though the Chelsea shirt part of the story still makes me smirk). 

In the Major government's case the sleaze accusations combined with the "Black Wednesday" financial fiasco when the flawed strategy of being in the exchange rate mechanism came home to roost. Of course it should really be called "White Wednesday" (and is by some people) because from that point on the British economy recorded unusually solid growth for 16 years all the way through the the global financial crisis in 2008. The policy shift meant joining the euro was no longer a goal (though it took a while for Blair and some others to accept that) and the modern financial framework with its so far robust but soon to be tested inflation target came in to being.

Nevertheless, though with hindsight White Wednesday saved the UK economy from an awful fate, Major's government lost its reputation for competence at the same time as probity. I remember it feeling like the electorate had already decided to kick them out at the next election. Has the same tipping been been reached for Johnson?

There are some differences. Johnson's party has lost its reputation for low taxation after increasing it to the highest level since world war II. But perhaps not yet for economic competence. However if, as I fear, the current inflationary spike does not prove transitory it will do so. Once such a reputation is lost it is very difficult to regain before the electoral cycle rolls round. After all, Major's government with Ken Clarke as chancellor turned into one of the most competent governments we've seen in a long time, bequeathing a benign economic environment and a burgeoning economy to Blair and Brown. Johnson's government is an accident prone, strategy free zone in comparison.

But the other difference is that firstly John Smith and Tony Blair made Labour look electable after Neil Kinnock had turned the tide against the militants. Keir Starmer is a long way off that pace, though he has made progress sidelining the Corbynites. Blair and Brown continued to ruthlessly eliminate the negatives. But Blair also transmitted an air of hope and optimism. On that point Labour still looks like a black hole.

It is also a big ask to turn over the large Tory majority in one go, which Blair didn't have to do. There are a very large number of quite tight marginals so I don't rule it out, though while the SNP hold sway where there used to be swathes of Labour MPs it seems highly unlikely.

So the see saw is tipping but it might need much more weight on the other end for the electorate to decide, as they did with Major, that come the election mate, you're out.


* Black Wednesday, 20 years on: a bad day for the Tories but not for Britain. The Guardian 13 Sept 2012,  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/13/black-wednesday-bad-day-conservatives




2 comments:

  1. A thoughtful and interesting posting Phil. As a Social Liberal of the left I too have been considering the present mess of Johnson's government.

    I have long held the view that the support staff for each MP should be civil servants. This would mean they were line-managed by other senior civil servants, would be far less likely to be used for party political campaigning and they would be a useful counter to the party political nature of many MPs offices.

    On outside jobs, I agree this is the tough nut to crack. I take the view that as MPs are in effect public servants via the fact that we pay their wages there must be minimum standards as to the hours they work for those wages. I'm not sure how that can be sensibly worked out but I worry that MPs in safe seats, who do not have to work to keep those seats, can easilly drift off to make money eleswhere rather than work for their consituents.

    I realise that you back the present electoral system which creates safe seats but surely you can see what I'm driving at here? A safe seat MP is surely far more likely to be a lazy MP and/or one with too interests away from their main job.

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    1. I understand why you say that and it would seem logical. But a PR system with the dreaded list has no connection with constituencies at all. The STV system could lead to 2nd choices always getting in where there was a strong stop tory or stop labour tendency which would effectively equal a safe seat. And I suspect most MPs are pretty diligent - you rarely hear of a poor constituency MP.
      I'm not without sympathy for PR - and campaigned for it in the past. But it's not clear to me that it would strengthen the link between constituents and MPs, indeed it could risk the opposite

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