The debacle of the Copenhagen conference is only the beginning of a protracted period of international negotiations which, at least at the moment, look likely to come to grief on the rocks of at least three separate problems. Another conference is promised for 2010 in Mexico but if no solutions are found soon then there will be little progress there.
One key issue is the refusal of many in the developed world to accept the reality of climate change and its link to human activity. This is particularly stark in the USA where, according to results released in October last year by the Pew Research Center, considerably fewer Americans now believe the Earth is warming (the decline has been from 71 percent to 57 percent over the space of a year and a half). As for agreement with scientists about the cause of global warming—human activities, human emissions—that too has sloped downwards, to just 36 percent today. In Britain, almost a third of the population is reported to doubt the truth of global warming. One reason for this situation is a well-funded and well-connected campaign of ‘climate-denial’. In Britain, The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express and The Spectator magazine are examples of journals which have given prominence to climate-change denial without bothering to consider either the validity of the claims made or the expert status of those making the claims. Even the BBC commonly ‘balances’ the views of 99% of world scientists with one of the few scientific dissenters. The fact is that it remains difficult to convince people of the need to acknowledge that their comparative prosperity is linked to unsustainable energy use and that some change is needed to their lifestyle. Politicians are aware of this resistance and most take the easy option of either sidelining the issue or, when it is thrust upon them, to try and find an easy way out.
People living in poorer countries have less choice for they are increasingly confronted with the reality of climate change. The human misery in Darfur is, in part, a consequence of increasing aridity throughout central Africa, which is believed to derive from climate change as are the increasing number of unusual and often devastating weather-related disturbances. The scale of the latter was illustrated in the Human Development Report 2007/08 from the U.N. This estimated that, annually, in developing countries between 1980-84, about 80 million people were “impacted” by some kind of meteorological disaster, a figure which had risen by 2000-04 to 262 million, about 1 in 19 people. This has almost certainly increased still more in the last five years as, for example, drought was followed by exceptional floods in southern Africa. That climate change will hurt the poor most of all is demonstrated by the same report’s estimate that only 1 person in 1500 is similarly affected in wealthy countries. ‘Impacted’ is a euphemism for the death and homelessness inflicted on those who suffer these extreme conditions.
The chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries represented at Copenhagen and Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping was reported to have ruffled a few sensitive feathers amongst ministers of the G8 group in Copenhagen when he said “[This] is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries. It’s a solution based on the values that funneled six million in Europe into furnaces”. Insensitive? Well, that is a matter for individual moral perception but the fact is that the thousands currently dying annually right now from climate change will rise into hundreds of thousands within twenty years if nothing is done. It is possible that the impact of extreme weather in Europe and America, for example the fact that unusual flooding has now occurred for three years in a row in different parts of Britain, will change their people’s attitudes. But the money financing the climate-denial campaigns is unlikely to diminish.
The second big issue is easy to summarise: the problem of the USA. President Obama arrived in Copenhagen with just one offer on the table: to reduce US emissions by 17% by 2020. This was a good headline move but it contained a major defect─that the cuts should be from a baseline of 2005. This should be compared with the cuts proposed by all other Annex 1 countries which are all based upon 1990 emissions. When adjusted to this baseline, the proposed US cuts amounted to just 5%. EU countries have been bound under Kyoto to this scale of cuts by now and were offering targets of up to 30% over 1990 by 2020. This was not just a failure by America to propose any significant cut, it was also a signal to a wider issue, that the USA was not prepared to adhere to the Kyoto Treaty but wanted a new agreement.
This was a crucial sticking point for many countries in particular the G77 group. Kyoto had divided the world into Annex 1 countries for which formal and legally binding emission cuts from a 1990 baseline were agreed and the remainder which agreed to try and limit carbon emissions but for which no legal limits were set. The USA had signed the Kyoto Treaty but, under a sceptical Bush administration, had by a unanimous Senate vote refused to ratify it. Other Annex 1 countries had delayed ratification, sometimes by years, but by 2009, the USA was alone in its stubborn refusal with Australia, its last companion, ratifying in December, 2007. By setting a proposed baseline of 2005, Obama was in effect announcing the USA’s continuing refusal to abide by its Kyoto obligation. Instead it wanted to push the developing world into making similar binding agreements over future emissions cuts. It wanted to dump Kyoto, a treaty which only became legally binding in terms of emissions cuts in 2009 and is set to run until 2012.
The much-heralded statement by Hillary Clinton that the USA would be prepared to contribute to an international fund must be seen in this context. Her actual words were “In the context of a strong accord in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation, the US is prepared to work with other countries towards a goal of jointly mobilising $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries” In other words, dump Kyoto and the US would pay some money, some time, from unknown sources though she also made clear that it would be a mixture of both public and private sources, the latter coming in part from money found by carbon trading schemes. I will come back to these but it is worth looking at the conditionality of the finance─a context of “full transparency” about “meaningful mitigation actions”. This is interesting as the refusal to accept this context was used after the failure of the conference to lay blame for the debacle on what has usually been called ‘a small group of countries’ of which China has been singled out but which also seems to include India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. (‘Seems to’ because in the way of this kind of backstairs briefing nothing is ever quite spelled out or attributable).
Interesting in part because transparent and open international inspection is the one thing that the USA has always refused to accept, specifically about carbon emissions but more generally about almost anything. It has also, of course, failed to undertake any “meaningful mitigation actions” with the result that since 1990, its carbon emissions have steadily increased.
Of course neither China nor any other member of the ‘small group of countries’ were particularly forthcoming in the negotiations faced by US intransigence. The Chinese offer to reduce its emissions by 40% over a ‘business as usual’ path did constitute a significant concession but it could have been made a good deal more quantitative. However, William Gumede’s comment in the British Guardian newspaper effectively summarised Copenhagen. “The final "deal", signed by 28 countries, kicked aside a UN-brokered deal that was more inclusive, financially more generous and more sensitive to the needs of African and developing countries – and which was backed by Africans. In Copenhagen, industrial nations have again successfully managed to divide African and developing countries, by co-opting the bigger developing countries, such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa, in private deals.
Such co-opting often starts with the demonising of these countries: those who insist on a fair deal are being mercilessly portrayed as stubborn obstacles in the march for a greener future, or as much to blame for global problems as industrial nations, and therefore should make the same compromises – and pay for it also.” He added, “Of course, the big developing countries – China, India, Brazil and South Africa – are not blameless when it comes to polluting the earth.” ‘Cooption’ is too strong a word for what actually occurred but ‘demonising’ is not.
The final issue raised by the Copenhagen failure is much wider than the specific problems of the final accord or lack of it; the obsession with market mechanisms shown by the major developed countries.
The first is the reliance by almost all the developed world countries on various kinds of carbon trading as a major mechanism in achieving national carbon emission cuts. There is little room here to explain why the generalised use of trading mechanisms is a poor route to global cuts in carbon emissions. (A report from UK Friends of the Earth (FOE) goes into detail ). Historically, it started with the use inside a major oil company of a process of allocating target emission levels (originally of sulphur dioxide) to all operating units within the firm. If any unit exceeded its target cuts then it was able to ‘sell’ the surplus to other units which found it harder to comply at whatever price they could negotiate. This internal quasi-financial exchange would be contained in the accounts of each internal profit centre in the company. This was an efficient and effective procedure inside a large multi-national corporation but was taken up by proponents of the free market as a route to introducing market mechanisms into national environmental control, an area dominated up to the 1980s by simple regulatory control by a government agency. It was adopted after some years by the USA as a procedure for limiting the sulphur emissions responsible for acid rain. It can be contrasted with the simple regulatory caps on sulphur emissions adopted by the EU. Although much lauded by proponents of market mechanisms there is no evidence that the US mechanism was more ‘efficient’ or cost effective than the EU route. What is certain is that reductions in acid rain and the consequent damage were delayed by some years in the USA because of the complex bureaucratic process of setting up the market. As the FOE report notes “the US scheme was much less successful at reducing SO2 pollution than equivalent regulations elsewhere: “SO2 emissions in the US had been reduced by 43.1 per cent by the end of 2007, but over the same period 25 members of the European Union saw a decrease in emissions of 71 per cent. These reductions were achieved through regulation, rather than a cap-and-trade scheme.”
The basis for a similar mechanism in the reduction of carbon emissions was laid by the Kyoto Protocols which allowed countries to meet their emission targets not just by trading between controlled installations inside a country but also by trading between countries, those covered by Annex 1 but also between these and all other nations, the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Under the CDM, projects which would not otherwise have been undertaken commercially in these countries could be financed externally and the carbon emission reductions claimed to be obtained could be traded internationally. Thousands of projects have now passed through the CDM procedure and have resulted in an international trading market, mainly under the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) worth billions of euros.
The ETS is regarded as having failed almost totally in its objectives with companies being given lax targets for emissions and actually making large profits out of the sale of carbon credits. It is quite astonishing that “A study of five EU countries commissioned by WWF from Point Carbon in 2008 estimated that investors and other holders of permits under the EU ETS were likely to make between €23 billion and €63 billion over the course of Phase II of the scheme (covering 2008-2012) on the basis that the price of carbon would be between €21 and €32.73 Amongst the businesses likely to reap significant profits is the world’s largest steel company ArcelorMittal, already estimated to have made approximately €2 billion in profits from the EU ETS between 2005 and 2008.”
The CDM process has come under particular criticism with many well-documented cases of outright fraud as well as the almost universal complaint as to just what is required to show that a project would not otherwise have been undertaken. Hundreds of hydro-electric schemes in China, for example, have been awarded credits under the CDM despite the fact that encouragement of such schemes is a fundamental component of Chinese energy policy.
However, despite such criticism, carbon trading and, in particular, the offsetting of increases in national emissions by the purchase of carbon credits remains a corner-stone of policy for all EU countries as well as any putative scheme put in the USA. The EU expects that to achieve its target reductions by 2020 up to fifty per cent of target will be met by offsetting actual increases by purchase of credits from outside the EU. The result of these ambitions is that just as they are attempting to lock the poorest countries of the world into binding carbon emission targets, the developed world will, in effect, be removing sources of achieving these targets (which will include reforestation) by claiming them for themselves.
In a sense, this obsession with use of market mechanisms, particularly odd at a time when confidence in the free-market has plummeted elsewhere, can be traced back to the first problem noted here; that acceptance of the reality of climate change is, at best, precarious in many developed countries. National politicians in these countries are loath to undertake the necessary measures to limit carbon emissions in their own back-yard and, instead, seek an easy way out by ‘borrowing’ them from other countries, usually the poorest.
A blanket pessimism, though appropriate to the failure of Copenhagen, not entirely warranted however. There are some signs that action will be forced upon the developed world. Some cities are taking a lead in ‘de-carbonising’ themselves by introducing tough controls on car-use and radical energy-efficiency measures in dwellings. Even in the recalcitrant USA, to take one example, Chicago has adopted the ambitious target of making 50% of its dwellings carbon-neutral by 2015. It is possible that the city level is better suited to getting democratic backing for such measures than the national. It is also clear that there is a strong environmental movement which is prepared for a long and tough struggle to achieve an appropriate response by western governments, a movement which contains many of the youth of these countries. It seems to be the young who see most clearly that the issue of climate change really is a matter of life-and-death. Perhaps they realise that it will be their old-age that will be blighted unless some radical measures are taken now. Perhaps they just have better eye-sight.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Friday, 27 November 2009
A Bad End to a Bad Year
A dreadful year for the British left comes to a close with some grim news: that Britain may be heading for a hung parliament next May. The smart money has always had this as a good bet; there is solid electoral bias towards Labour worth as much as 6% of the national vote whilst there are a number of regions where the Conservatives will struggle to make headway. (See my blog in October for the numbers). Why should this be such bad news? It might, after all, keep the beast called Cameron away from our doors. The key point is that the left has to begin to make a strategic assessment of its role and just where it can begin to exert any kind of political influence and a hung Parliament is just the worst place to start from.
There is, it seems, still a current inside the Labour Party which believes that it can persuade Gordon Brown to adopt a policy of taxing the rich and increasing public expenditure as part of Keynesian expansion and so win a popular victory at the polls. Compass’ deeply quixotic report In Place of Cuts: Tax reform to build a fairer society is a well-publicised example of this. Dream on. Whether such a policy could win enough support to win an election is debatable but one stark political fact is not. Gordon Brown no longer runs domestic policy. Lord Mandelson does whilst Gordon seems to be laying the ground for his inevitable exit to some high-sounding job in an international agency. And the Lord of Darkness is not now going to let a band of old-style soak-the-rich wannabees take that role away from him.
A Tory victory with a majority of 50-100 would not be quite the devastating defeat which, naturally, it suits Labour leaders to portray. It is doubtful whether, in practice, there would be much difference in public economic policies between Labour and Conservative; the current recession was partly created by New Labour and is causing much greater economic pain than anything likely to stem from Cameron. He is in fact more likely than Labour to get us out of the quagmire called Afghanistan and might even, post-Chilcot, manage finally to dump the necessary ton-weight on Blair and all those involved in the cover-up over British involvement in sanctioned torture. Not that he would do this out of respect for human rights, just that he is not be part of the ghastly lock which Blair seems have over the Labour leadership.
The central point is that a Tory victory would finally force the left inside and outside Labour to make some strategic evaluation of their options and, perhaps, finally set up some form of united left grouping that would have a few years to develop its electoral position. Possibly a delusion but at least there would be some political impetus for such. Meanwhile, five years of Tory government would just be more of the same.
Consider what a hung Parliament will bring. Labour will be run by Mandelson, the person seen as saving it from oblivion. Brown would be looking for an early retirement to his new job and Lord Peter might even take the step of running for the leadership. Inside Parliament, the form taken by the intense political manoeuvring resulting from no clear majority would depend critically upon the precise numbers. One thing is certain, however. Brown and Labour would still be the government after such an election and they would endeavour to hang on without any decisive vote of confidence for the few weeks until M.P.s left for their customary three-month break during which time deal-making and alliance-building would carry on apace. The outcome of all this is hard to forecast as just about any possible coalition including some kind of Labour/Tory National Government would be on the table.
Both Brown and Mandelson know all about this kind of back-room politics. Such of the left-MPs as remained would be just about the only factions excluded. Whatever their brand of left thought it would not be welcome inside these smoke-filled rooms. (Speaking metaphorically of course; the image of Lord Peter smoking a fag is just too implausible even to win a vote). But they would of course be required to stick to that tribal loyalty to the Party, even to leaders they loath, which has long characterised the left, if not the right, inside Labour. They would vote as they were told on pain of defeating the government.
And outside Parliament, everything would be put on hold. Realignment, reformation, reorganisation, everything would be put on one side until the deals were done. And if, by clever bargaining, Labour remained inside government, either as a minority administration or in some kind of coalition, the same old, same old would carry on amongst the wider left.
So where does this leave us? Essentially almost powerless except to resist the old siren song of voting Labour to keep the Tories out, the ‘hold your nose and vote Labour’ motto first invented by the International Socialists in 1970 and carried on valiantly ever since. Vote Green, vote Plaid, vote Respect, vote SNP, vote for any left-leaning candidate who stands. If nothing else is on offer then either vote for the Lib Dems, who at least retain an honourable stance on the wars, or just stay away. Resist above all, the idea that keeping the Tories out is the only strategic political policy that matters. It isn’t. In fact it comes a long way down the list. The central priority is for the British left to accept that it has to come together of finally to be put out of its misery.
There is, it seems, still a current inside the Labour Party which believes that it can persuade Gordon Brown to adopt a policy of taxing the rich and increasing public expenditure as part of Keynesian expansion and so win a popular victory at the polls. Compass’ deeply quixotic report In Place of Cuts: Tax reform to build a fairer society is a well-publicised example of this. Dream on. Whether such a policy could win enough support to win an election is debatable but one stark political fact is not. Gordon Brown no longer runs domestic policy. Lord Mandelson does whilst Gordon seems to be laying the ground for his inevitable exit to some high-sounding job in an international agency. And the Lord of Darkness is not now going to let a band of old-style soak-the-rich wannabees take that role away from him.
A Tory victory with a majority of 50-100 would not be quite the devastating defeat which, naturally, it suits Labour leaders to portray. It is doubtful whether, in practice, there would be much difference in public economic policies between Labour and Conservative; the current recession was partly created by New Labour and is causing much greater economic pain than anything likely to stem from Cameron. He is in fact more likely than Labour to get us out of the quagmire called Afghanistan and might even, post-Chilcot, manage finally to dump the necessary ton-weight on Blair and all those involved in the cover-up over British involvement in sanctioned torture. Not that he would do this out of respect for human rights, just that he is not be part of the ghastly lock which Blair seems have over the Labour leadership.
The central point is that a Tory victory would finally force the left inside and outside Labour to make some strategic evaluation of their options and, perhaps, finally set up some form of united left grouping that would have a few years to develop its electoral position. Possibly a delusion but at least there would be some political impetus for such. Meanwhile, five years of Tory government would just be more of the same.
Consider what a hung Parliament will bring. Labour will be run by Mandelson, the person seen as saving it from oblivion. Brown would be looking for an early retirement to his new job and Lord Peter might even take the step of running for the leadership. Inside Parliament, the form taken by the intense political manoeuvring resulting from no clear majority would depend critically upon the precise numbers. One thing is certain, however. Brown and Labour would still be the government after such an election and they would endeavour to hang on without any decisive vote of confidence for the few weeks until M.P.s left for their customary three-month break during which time deal-making and alliance-building would carry on apace. The outcome of all this is hard to forecast as just about any possible coalition including some kind of Labour/Tory National Government would be on the table.
Both Brown and Mandelson know all about this kind of back-room politics. Such of the left-MPs as remained would be just about the only factions excluded. Whatever their brand of left thought it would not be welcome inside these smoke-filled rooms. (Speaking metaphorically of course; the image of Lord Peter smoking a fag is just too implausible even to win a vote). But they would of course be required to stick to that tribal loyalty to the Party, even to leaders they loath, which has long characterised the left, if not the right, inside Labour. They would vote as they were told on pain of defeating the government.
And outside Parliament, everything would be put on hold. Realignment, reformation, reorganisation, everything would be put on one side until the deals were done. And if, by clever bargaining, Labour remained inside government, either as a minority administration or in some kind of coalition, the same old, same old would carry on amongst the wider left.
So where does this leave us? Essentially almost powerless except to resist the old siren song of voting Labour to keep the Tories out, the ‘hold your nose and vote Labour’ motto first invented by the International Socialists in 1970 and carried on valiantly ever since. Vote Green, vote Plaid, vote Respect, vote SNP, vote for any left-leaning candidate who stands. If nothing else is on offer then either vote for the Lib Dems, who at least retain an honourable stance on the wars, or just stay away. Resist above all, the idea that keeping the Tories out is the only strategic political policy that matters. It isn’t. In fact it comes a long way down the list. The central priority is for the British left to accept that it has to come together of finally to be put out of its misery.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
A Sea Change in British Politics
There seems little doubt that the next general election will herald a sea-change for the British left. The old monolithic Labour Party, which has for a century dominated left politics, seems unlikely to survive in its present form. The problem is that it is hard to see through the veils of deception and fantasy which presently surround both it and all the attendant left groups and minor parties to any clear view of what it might look like after the election.
A historical survey of why the left has come to this pass can be found at www.hegemonics.co.uk. What I want to do here is muse on just what kind of formations might come about depending upon the actual outcome of the election using the UK Elect forecasting software (www.ukelect.co.uk) which provides the kind of forecast results which accompany media surveys of public opinion.
The first scenario might be seen as the most unlikely; that Labour manages against all current odds to gain a small overall majority. Such a scenario is not as it happens totally inconceivable. Certainly it has to be worth a small bet at current odds. The reason for this is that the present electoral setup contains a substantial bias in favour of Labour whose base is a large number of small city-seats compared with the Conservative base of large suburban and rural seats. The slow workings of the Electoral Commission has yet to catch up with the de-population of these inner city seats though, presumably, it will do so in the next Parliamentary term. David Cameron’s promise to reduce the number of seats in Parliament to 500 will accelerate this process but it is bound to happen to some degree whatever the ruling party.
The result of this imbalance is that, if Labour wins, it will almost certainly do it with the smallest proportion of the popular vote ever seen. It could even do it without being the largest party in voting terms. A split of Conservative 36%, Labour 34% and LibDems 19% would probably hand it a small overall majority of about 7 ─ small but not unworkable. Improving economic performance and a snap election after a year or so, before electoral changes kick in, could see it improving on this.
Small party performance plays little part in this apart from UKIP which could seriously harm Conservative prospects if anti-European sentiment really kicks in. The SNP would chafe at this. Its own electoral prospects require almost insurmountable odds in order to erode Labour majorities in small Scottish lowland constituencies, which have become Labour’s rotten boroughs, providing that Conservative and LibDem votes hold up. The result is that this victorious (just) Labour government would rule because of a majority of Scottish seats often gained by less than 20% of the electorate.
So what Labour Party can one see emerging from this electoral miracle? First and foremost, one in which Peter Mandelson becomes Lord not just of Foy and Hartlepool but of the Labour Party itself. The nominal leader would stay as Gordon Brown but the real power would pass to Lord Peter given the acknowledged deficiency of Brown’s leadership. One probable course would be for Gordon to be shipped off to a prestigious position in such as the IMF whilst leadership would pass to David Miliband or possibly even Peter himself. The new Labour government would privatise everything possible, certainly the Royal Mail, would not dump Trident but would implement swinging cuts in local authority expenditure particularly their capital budgets. They would also implement the same cuts in welfare benefits which Cameron at least has the honesty to signal in advance.
All this will bring little comfort to the left either inside or outside Labour. The standard-bearers of the two left groups, John McDonnell and Jon Cruddas, would both keep their seats handily unless McDonnell is expelled before the election for running on a non-authorised manifesto. It is difficult to see either leaving the Party even though it will implement policies which are, in principle, against their beliefs; the overall aura of unexpected electoral victory would make this almost impossible particularly in the context of protecting a small majority. Neither would wish to be seen as the person who brought Labour down after its unexpected comeback. Instead they would have to acquiesce in the major internal change in their party ─ its transformation from a membership body, albeit one with little internal democracy, to a purely supporters party in which registered supporters provide money and some electoral activism but without any, even nominal, say in party practice. David Miliband has already signalled this shift and it would certainly have the backing of the overlord Mandelson. At a guess, Cruddas would accept a minor government post rather than spend another decade talking against the government and voting with it.
Nor would smaller left groups find much to be happy about. Caroline Lucas might scrape through in Brighton though the odds are against this; George Galloway might keep Bow. But elsewhere, and in particular in Scotland, Labour’s triumph would spell electoral disaster. Tactical voting in the sense of voting for a party likely to win rather than one almost certain to come last would significantly help Labour giving it about 1 extra seat for each percentage point of such voting.
Perhaps the most interesting unknown factor would be the public response to what would amount to a Labour ‘steal’. How would the citizens of Salford respond to ‘our lass’ once again swanning off to her London flat (is it the third or the fourth)? More importantly, how would Scotland react to a Labour victory more distorted there than in any other part of Britain? Speculatively, there would be a significant move towards Scottish independence which would be taken full advantage of by the astute Alec Salmond. A major constitutional crisis would then be sparked by a Labour government, rejected by a large majority of the Scottish people and pushing through policies unpopular by an equally large majority, but refusing to consider independence precisely to bulwark its precarious majority in the British parliament.
It is a sign of the confusion and disarray of the left that the Compass pressure group on the centre-left appears to be justifying a Labour vote on the grounds that a Conservative victory would eliminate the current electoral bias to Labour and put Scottish independence on the agenda and thus wipe out the even more biased Labour base in that country. An odd stance for a group which has recently espoused electoral reform.
So what about the other extreme of electoral spectrum; a massive Labour defeat? It is, because of Labour’s inbuilt bias, rather hard to forecast this unless the Conservative vote stays above 40% and Labour’s drops much below 30%. For example, a 40/31/19% split would still leave the Conservatives 5 seats short of an overall majority. However a 43/24/23% split would give them a majority of 216 ─ a genuine wipe-out from which Labour would take a decade at least to recover, if at all. In this scenario, the SNP would be stuck of 6 seats though Plaid would gain 2. A 43/29/19% split would still give the Conservatives a 154 majority. A 43/31/19% result would, incredibly, give the Tories only a narrow majority of 5 seats. What is at work here is the way in which FPTP voting produces a kind of cliff-edge pattern in which nothing much changes over a range of voting patterns then, wham, there is a cliff-edge over which majorities soar for one party and plummet for the other.
In the 43/24/23% split, which is broadly the peak Conservative lead in recent polls, Labour is reduced essentially to a party of city centres and a few ex-mining constituencies. It would also become an even more Scottish party with 28 seats, the same as all the other parties combined. This situation is largely unaffected by the SNP votes unless they can find a way of targeting their efforts on to the small Labour seats in Glasgow and the ex-mining seats with their big Labour majorities. In large areas of England, Labour would simply cease to exist.
In such a situation, Gordon Brown would, of course, leave the stage rather quickly, perhaps even without the dignity of a plum international job. No doubt he would leave cursing Blair’s luck even more as he sees him cavorting around the world as a wealthy EU President. Jon Cruddas and John McDonnell would also have left the stage. It is difficult to see Lord Mandelson staying on for a ten or fifteen-year haul so the leadership would presumably pass to whoever of the current pack both survive the electoral carnage and see their future careers as opposition politicians. Most of the well-known faces would still be there. The young Labour advisers parachuted into safe northern seats, the Milibands, Balls, Cooper, Alexander, Benn, Johnson (just) and so on, chose their seats wisely or rather had them chosen for them. Harriett Harman is safe in Camberwell. Just which of these would choose to soldier on would depend as much upon their personal inclination as any electoral choice even when Cameron carries out his promise of reducing Parliamentary to 500. There would be little to gain by shifting party allegiance as the LibDems suffer as much as Labour as the Conservatives win back seats in the south of England whilst the Tories would have no need to accept Labour turncoats. Sean Woodward would have no chance of emulating Churchill and “re-ratting”.
The key constitutional as well as political issue in this scenario would probably again be Scotland where Labour would hold on to around half the seats on as little as a quarter of the popular vote. There would almost certainly be a big shift towards Scottish independence which, as Compass suggests, the Conservatives might concede even though they have a strongly Unionist tradition. Oddly, this might have much less impact on a possible Labour revival than might be expected. The point is that although the 27-30 seats Scottish Labour deliver provide a virtually impregnable bedrock for the party, they also have very little chance of much increase. The huge mountain which Labour would be faced with would be increased by their loss but Scotland would offer very little hope for the massive improvement in total numbers required to form a government ever again.
A more serious problem faced by Labour would be the wipe-out from local government which would accompany such a massive Conservative victory. They might hold on to Manchester where the Conservatives have no base at all but elsewhere they would hold almost nothing. In previous defeats, the existence of Labour councils has provided a political springboard to sustain local parties. This time they would not exist and local party organisation, already flimsy, would largely collapse.
So much, so gloomy. But what of a hung Parliament, the goal which seems the most realistic target for Labour. This is actually possible under a wide range of scenarios, some of which might seem quite plausible. Take 38/29/22% with UKIP polling 3% of the national vote. This would leave the Tories, 21 seats short with the Ulster Unionists only providing 11 extra even if this idiosyncratic bunch could be persuaded to stick to their natural home. An even odder result would be 37/32/19% which would make Labour the largest party in Parliament, though 21 short of a majority, despite being well behind the Tories in the popular vote. Although odd, it does illustrate the point that a hung Parliament with Labour the largest party is far from an unlikely outcome of the next election unless the LibDems can get their act together.
There has been pressure on Labour to adopt electoral reform as part of their platform particularly as most surveys suggest that this would be a popular move gaining them votes. So why has their response been so half-hearted with only the possibility of turning to the Alternative Vote system, one which tends to reinforce the current lack of fairness rather than reducing it? The answer is perhaps too obvious from the above number juggling. The party which benefits most from the current FPTP system is Labour as its seats in its old heartlands remain untouched by even massive losses whilst it can benefit from a hung Parliament even when its share of the votes is far from the largest.
The hung Parliament which may result would be very complex with several nationalist groups having 5-10 seats as well as the LibDems. There may also be a few ‘wild card’ independents adding to Galloway and Swyre, both of whom are likely to keep their seats. Caroline Lucas could well win in Brighton and there are bound to be a few seats where the voters rebel against party domination if they have a particularly noxious sitting candidate and a strong independent challenger. In such a situation, there would certainly be a frenzy of deals and, quite possibly, a certain amount of shifting of nominal party allegiance. Either of the main parties might try to form a ‘national emergency government’ rather on the model of Ramsay MacDonald in similar parlous economic circumstances. Any defection from Labour would certainly cause a final split in the monolith with at least two fragments going their own way. It is often assumed that a deal on electoral reform would have to be part of the package leading to formation of any workable alliance or coalition. Well, perhaps. But would Nick Clegg’s hunger for some taste of power override his party’s policy on this issue. And if it did would the LibDems stay united? Or could one or other of the big two form a government on the basis of defections from the other large enough to override any need to deal with the smaller groups?
The basic point of all this playing with numbers is surely this: that the 2010 election will be the final proof of the electoral bankruptcy of FPTP voting and a further stage in the crisis of political legitimacy which exists in Britain. The country hovers on the edge of a multi-party system in which regional as well as national parties will have strong allegiances which are unfairly represented, both up and down, in the UK parliament. However, neither of the main two parties have much incentive to change the system which has served them well for a century. Just how this crisis will play out following the next election is very hard to predict. Unfortunately, it may turn out to be interesting times in the very worst sense.
A historical survey of why the left has come to this pass can be found at www.hegemonics.co.uk. What I want to do here is muse on just what kind of formations might come about depending upon the actual outcome of the election using the UK Elect forecasting software (www.ukelect.co.uk) which provides the kind of forecast results which accompany media surveys of public opinion.
The first scenario might be seen as the most unlikely; that Labour manages against all current odds to gain a small overall majority. Such a scenario is not as it happens totally inconceivable. Certainly it has to be worth a small bet at current odds. The reason for this is that the present electoral setup contains a substantial bias in favour of Labour whose base is a large number of small city-seats compared with the Conservative base of large suburban and rural seats. The slow workings of the Electoral Commission has yet to catch up with the de-population of these inner city seats though, presumably, it will do so in the next Parliamentary term. David Cameron’s promise to reduce the number of seats in Parliament to 500 will accelerate this process but it is bound to happen to some degree whatever the ruling party.
The result of this imbalance is that, if Labour wins, it will almost certainly do it with the smallest proportion of the popular vote ever seen. It could even do it without being the largest party in voting terms. A split of Conservative 36%, Labour 34% and LibDems 19% would probably hand it a small overall majority of about 7 ─ small but not unworkable. Improving economic performance and a snap election after a year or so, before electoral changes kick in, could see it improving on this.
Small party performance plays little part in this apart from UKIP which could seriously harm Conservative prospects if anti-European sentiment really kicks in. The SNP would chafe at this. Its own electoral prospects require almost insurmountable odds in order to erode Labour majorities in small Scottish lowland constituencies, which have become Labour’s rotten boroughs, providing that Conservative and LibDem votes hold up. The result is that this victorious (just) Labour government would rule because of a majority of Scottish seats often gained by less than 20% of the electorate.
So what Labour Party can one see emerging from this electoral miracle? First and foremost, one in which Peter Mandelson becomes Lord not just of Foy and Hartlepool but of the Labour Party itself. The nominal leader would stay as Gordon Brown but the real power would pass to Lord Peter given the acknowledged deficiency of Brown’s leadership. One probable course would be for Gordon to be shipped off to a prestigious position in such as the IMF whilst leadership would pass to David Miliband or possibly even Peter himself. The new Labour government would privatise everything possible, certainly the Royal Mail, would not dump Trident but would implement swinging cuts in local authority expenditure particularly their capital budgets. They would also implement the same cuts in welfare benefits which Cameron at least has the honesty to signal in advance.
All this will bring little comfort to the left either inside or outside Labour. The standard-bearers of the two left groups, John McDonnell and Jon Cruddas, would both keep their seats handily unless McDonnell is expelled before the election for running on a non-authorised manifesto. It is difficult to see either leaving the Party even though it will implement policies which are, in principle, against their beliefs; the overall aura of unexpected electoral victory would make this almost impossible particularly in the context of protecting a small majority. Neither would wish to be seen as the person who brought Labour down after its unexpected comeback. Instead they would have to acquiesce in the major internal change in their party ─ its transformation from a membership body, albeit one with little internal democracy, to a purely supporters party in which registered supporters provide money and some electoral activism but without any, even nominal, say in party practice. David Miliband has already signalled this shift and it would certainly have the backing of the overlord Mandelson. At a guess, Cruddas would accept a minor government post rather than spend another decade talking against the government and voting with it.
Nor would smaller left groups find much to be happy about. Caroline Lucas might scrape through in Brighton though the odds are against this; George Galloway might keep Bow. But elsewhere, and in particular in Scotland, Labour’s triumph would spell electoral disaster. Tactical voting in the sense of voting for a party likely to win rather than one almost certain to come last would significantly help Labour giving it about 1 extra seat for each percentage point of such voting.
Perhaps the most interesting unknown factor would be the public response to what would amount to a Labour ‘steal’. How would the citizens of Salford respond to ‘our lass’ once again swanning off to her London flat (is it the third or the fourth)? More importantly, how would Scotland react to a Labour victory more distorted there than in any other part of Britain? Speculatively, there would be a significant move towards Scottish independence which would be taken full advantage of by the astute Alec Salmond. A major constitutional crisis would then be sparked by a Labour government, rejected by a large majority of the Scottish people and pushing through policies unpopular by an equally large majority, but refusing to consider independence precisely to bulwark its precarious majority in the British parliament.
It is a sign of the confusion and disarray of the left that the Compass pressure group on the centre-left appears to be justifying a Labour vote on the grounds that a Conservative victory would eliminate the current electoral bias to Labour and put Scottish independence on the agenda and thus wipe out the even more biased Labour base in that country. An odd stance for a group which has recently espoused electoral reform.
So what about the other extreme of electoral spectrum; a massive Labour defeat? It is, because of Labour’s inbuilt bias, rather hard to forecast this unless the Conservative vote stays above 40% and Labour’s drops much below 30%. For example, a 40/31/19% split would still leave the Conservatives 5 seats short of an overall majority. However a 43/24/23% split would give them a majority of 216 ─ a genuine wipe-out from which Labour would take a decade at least to recover, if at all. In this scenario, the SNP would be stuck of 6 seats though Plaid would gain 2. A 43/29/19% split would still give the Conservatives a 154 majority. A 43/31/19% result would, incredibly, give the Tories only a narrow majority of 5 seats. What is at work here is the way in which FPTP voting produces a kind of cliff-edge pattern in which nothing much changes over a range of voting patterns then, wham, there is a cliff-edge over which majorities soar for one party and plummet for the other.
In the 43/24/23% split, which is broadly the peak Conservative lead in recent polls, Labour is reduced essentially to a party of city centres and a few ex-mining constituencies. It would also become an even more Scottish party with 28 seats, the same as all the other parties combined. This situation is largely unaffected by the SNP votes unless they can find a way of targeting their efforts on to the small Labour seats in Glasgow and the ex-mining seats with their big Labour majorities. In large areas of England, Labour would simply cease to exist.
In such a situation, Gordon Brown would, of course, leave the stage rather quickly, perhaps even without the dignity of a plum international job. No doubt he would leave cursing Blair’s luck even more as he sees him cavorting around the world as a wealthy EU President. Jon Cruddas and John McDonnell would also have left the stage. It is difficult to see Lord Mandelson staying on for a ten or fifteen-year haul so the leadership would presumably pass to whoever of the current pack both survive the electoral carnage and see their future careers as opposition politicians. Most of the well-known faces would still be there. The young Labour advisers parachuted into safe northern seats, the Milibands, Balls, Cooper, Alexander, Benn, Johnson (just) and so on, chose their seats wisely or rather had them chosen for them. Harriett Harman is safe in Camberwell. Just which of these would choose to soldier on would depend as much upon their personal inclination as any electoral choice even when Cameron carries out his promise of reducing Parliamentary to 500. There would be little to gain by shifting party allegiance as the LibDems suffer as much as Labour as the Conservatives win back seats in the south of England whilst the Tories would have no need to accept Labour turncoats. Sean Woodward would have no chance of emulating Churchill and “re-ratting”.
The key constitutional as well as political issue in this scenario would probably again be Scotland where Labour would hold on to around half the seats on as little as a quarter of the popular vote. There would almost certainly be a big shift towards Scottish independence which, as Compass suggests, the Conservatives might concede even though they have a strongly Unionist tradition. Oddly, this might have much less impact on a possible Labour revival than might be expected. The point is that although the 27-30 seats Scottish Labour deliver provide a virtually impregnable bedrock for the party, they also have very little chance of much increase. The huge mountain which Labour would be faced with would be increased by their loss but Scotland would offer very little hope for the massive improvement in total numbers required to form a government ever again.
A more serious problem faced by Labour would be the wipe-out from local government which would accompany such a massive Conservative victory. They might hold on to Manchester where the Conservatives have no base at all but elsewhere they would hold almost nothing. In previous defeats, the existence of Labour councils has provided a political springboard to sustain local parties. This time they would not exist and local party organisation, already flimsy, would largely collapse.
So much, so gloomy. But what of a hung Parliament, the goal which seems the most realistic target for Labour. This is actually possible under a wide range of scenarios, some of which might seem quite plausible. Take 38/29/22% with UKIP polling 3% of the national vote. This would leave the Tories, 21 seats short with the Ulster Unionists only providing 11 extra even if this idiosyncratic bunch could be persuaded to stick to their natural home. An even odder result would be 37/32/19% which would make Labour the largest party in Parliament, though 21 short of a majority, despite being well behind the Tories in the popular vote. Although odd, it does illustrate the point that a hung Parliament with Labour the largest party is far from an unlikely outcome of the next election unless the LibDems can get their act together.
There has been pressure on Labour to adopt electoral reform as part of their platform particularly as most surveys suggest that this would be a popular move gaining them votes. So why has their response been so half-hearted with only the possibility of turning to the Alternative Vote system, one which tends to reinforce the current lack of fairness rather than reducing it? The answer is perhaps too obvious from the above number juggling. The party which benefits most from the current FPTP system is Labour as its seats in its old heartlands remain untouched by even massive losses whilst it can benefit from a hung Parliament even when its share of the votes is far from the largest.
The hung Parliament which may result would be very complex with several nationalist groups having 5-10 seats as well as the LibDems. There may also be a few ‘wild card’ independents adding to Galloway and Swyre, both of whom are likely to keep their seats. Caroline Lucas could well win in Brighton and there are bound to be a few seats where the voters rebel against party domination if they have a particularly noxious sitting candidate and a strong independent challenger. In such a situation, there would certainly be a frenzy of deals and, quite possibly, a certain amount of shifting of nominal party allegiance. Either of the main parties might try to form a ‘national emergency government’ rather on the model of Ramsay MacDonald in similar parlous economic circumstances. Any defection from Labour would certainly cause a final split in the monolith with at least two fragments going their own way. It is often assumed that a deal on electoral reform would have to be part of the package leading to formation of any workable alliance or coalition. Well, perhaps. But would Nick Clegg’s hunger for some taste of power override his party’s policy on this issue. And if it did would the LibDems stay united? Or could one or other of the big two form a government on the basis of defections from the other large enough to override any need to deal with the smaller groups?
The basic point of all this playing with numbers is surely this: that the 2010 election will be the final proof of the electoral bankruptcy of FPTP voting and a further stage in the crisis of political legitimacy which exists in Britain. The country hovers on the edge of a multi-party system in which regional as well as national parties will have strong allegiances which are unfairly represented, both up and down, in the UK parliament. However, neither of the main two parties have much incentive to change the system which has served them well for a century. Just how this crisis will play out following the next election is very hard to predict. Unfortunately, it may turn out to be interesting times in the very worst sense.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)