Monday 25 February 2013

Eastleigh

A frantic Sunday of campaigning has come to an end and the good people of Eastleigh only have three days of political phone calls, reams of leaflets and crowds of canvassers left to bear. On Thursday the quiet railway town will pass judgement on Britain's government and steer the coalition's program for the next two years.

Let's be clear - we're going to see a Lib Dem MP or a Conservative one on Thursday. UKIP will do well, by their standards, with potentially about 20% of the vote. Labour will pick up 10 - 15%. The main struggle, though, will be between the two parties of the coalition. The winner will go to London as a messenger - their message will be either 'more liberalism' or 'more conservatism'.

The immediate role of Eastleigh's new MP, in other words, will be to nudge the coalition's program slightly to the left or to the right.

Voters with whom I have spoken on doorsteps, on the phone or in the pub (where this was drafted) are broadly sympathetic with Lib Dem views on the economy and tax. They generally side more with the Tories on immigration and the EU.

And what about the candidates?

Maria Hutchings is the Conservative candidate. She moved into Eastleigh for the 2010 election and, after failing to oust Chris Huhne, displayed some tenacity in sticking around for another go in 2015. She didn't have to wait that long. Hutchings is a classic right-winger, pretty much born to join the Tory backbenches, with all the usual suspect views on the EU, gay marriage and abortion.

Mike Thornton is standing for the Liberal Democrats. He has lived in the town for two decades and has - I'm told - served with distinction on the council. He's a centre-ground politician with a classic Lib Dem agenda of lopping a bit more off the bottom rate of income tax and putting new taxes on expensive properties. I've tried and failed to find a tongue-in-cheek joke about whips and dead horses here. Couldn't mince my words enough.

So, as often as it gets said, this really is a pretty straightforward choice for voters.

My entirely unbiased suggestion is that more liberalism would be better than more conservatism. The economy needs a boost through infrastructure programs; the public need to see that government is 'on side' and could do with a bit more disposable income.

Neither immigration nor the EU are the root cause of our current difficulties. Nor, in fact, are they things which another right-wing Tory or even a UKIP majority in Parliament could do much about without driving Britain straight into an economic iceberg.

But that - however people vote on Thursday - is going to be a far harder argument to win.

Saturday 16 February 2013

Through the (PWC) looking-glass

This post is a brief reaction to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report 'The World in 2050'. A recent update of this report included the prediction that Britain will fall out of the world's top 10 economies by 2050. 

The update consisted of new data for 2009 - 2011, the inclusion of Malaysia & Poland and tweaks to the method of analysis. 

Exciting stuff, isn't it?

Really, though, can the inclusion of Malaysia and Poland - neither of which come close making the top 10 - or two years' extra historical data explain fair Britannia's drop down the table? Or, otherwise, can a tweak in basic assumptions for measuring PPP growth make the difference?

And... I'm afraid the news is worse still: we've been ousted by the French. Sacré bleu.

My initial reaction is that none of the above factors are particularly relevant to the wider picture. By 2050 Germany, France and the UK are all bundled together in 9th, 10th and 11th place with projected GPDs at $5,822bn, $5,714bn and $5,598bn respectively. They might jostle for their positions at the 'bottom of the top', but they've got a far bigger fight on their hands if they want to claw back up from the division of yesterday's giants to that of tomorrow's.

The question is partly one of momentum. Malaysia, which I had the pleasure of visiting a year ago, has an atmosphere of momentum, optimism, risk-taking. Brazilians express a similar energy. This is not merely a matter of government regulations, maturing labour markets or uncompetitive wages - it's far more about underlying mood.

Perhaps we should look again at the words of the Bank of England's Martin Weale, who reminded us recently that British companies could be enjoying a competitively weak sterling, a good tax regime and huge emerging markets if they'd just take a little more risk. 

The first maxim of the economist, I was always told, is that gain and risk go hand-in-hand. We'd certainly be grateful for a little more gain. So, corporations of the United Kingdom unite - you have nothing to lose but your (already struggling) chains.

Saturday 9 February 2013

An Apology to Dr. Vince Cable


Originally posted on www.libdemvoice.org.

In what will likely be my last political outing for a while, I got the train to Cheltenham recently for a talk by the Business Secretary, Dr. Vince Cable. It was hosted by Cheltenham Ladies’ College, organised by the impressive local Liberal Youth branch and attended by some exceedingly bright young students.

As expected, the Business Secretary spoke with the lucidity, insight and maturity which characterises his style of politics. He detailed the origins and consequences of the 2008 financial ‘heart attack’ – in terms even I could understand – to a packed room of attentive students, teachers and visitors.

A harsh critic of government at the time, he spoke not with backward-looking triumphalism but with forward-looking pragmatism. When a student asked if he was ‘risking public confidence by texting Ed Miliband’, Cable replied that he wanted to see his policies survive future changes of government – and that the ‘grown-up’ way to do this is to keep Labour in the loop. I couldn’t agree more – this is the ‘new politics’ we were talking about in 2010: a politics of consensus, not of tribalism.

He moved on to explain some of the strategies his department is taking. Research is receiving additional funding, apprenticeships are booming, manufacturing - notably cars and aerospace - is being strongly supported. One gets the feeling that Cable sees our present economic woes not just as a challenge, but as a chance to learn from history and set tomorrow's economy on firmer foundations.

So it is regretful that I have to end this report with an apology. I must confess to having fallen prey to that most clichéd of crimes - I accosted the poor man for a photograph. You can imagine what our poor ministers must think when we do this: "Oh, no. Another photograph with a greasy, grinning volunteer I don't know from Adam. He could be a Kipper for all I know. Great."

That's certainly what I'd think. Worse still, a clamour of equally eager schoolgirls followed suit. I really felt quite bad about it. So, Dr. Cable, thank you for another great talk, in which you have rekindled my faith in the possibility of a British politics based on intelligence, maturity and cooperation. And sorry for unleashing, by way of thanks, a tide of photograph-hungry schoolgirls upon you. It's a thankless task, this business of being a decent politician.

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Tonight, Britain is Great

The House of Commons is an old place. It came into being in 1341, when the Parliament of England split into two Houses, the Commons and the Lords. It has been burned to the ground and bombed by the Luftwaffe. When a bomb hit Big Ben in 1941, the clock continued to keep time accurately and the bell continued to chime.

It marches doggedly on against the tide of history. Most institutions and most places get swept away sooner or later, but this one keeps plodding upstream like a mollusc with Multiple Personality Disorder, imagining itself to be a bulldog at times, a government at others, the voice of its people at others still.

This evening, the Speaker - the colourful Mr. Bercow - squawked out, in the traditional format,

"The ayes to the right - four hundred! The noes to the left - one hundred and seventy-five! So the ayes have it, the ayes have it. Unlock!"

He was recording the passing of the second reading of the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill through Parliament. Next it goes to the Lords. This means that tonight, the Commons has resolved to legalise the marriage of gay couples.

To put it another way, we have started the process of removing one of the last big prejudices institutionalised within British law.

So tonight Britain may call herself Great with some justification. Our Olympic and Jubilee flag-waving was fun - but through this vote Britain has shown that there really is something to be said for her quaint and almost ridiculous way of doing things.

We join the nations of The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Argentina, Iceland, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa and several states in the USA and Brazil. We're not ruling the waves, defeating Armadas or revolutionising industry. But we are moving, later than these countries but earlier than most, towards a future where reason, decency and open-mindedness have utterly overpowered bigotry, subservience to tradition and fear of change.

This evening, without the need for exaggeration or nostalgia, I am proud to be British.