What we can learn from the Tories: professionalism

You don’t have to support the Conservatives to learn a thing or two from them.

After all, in amongst the many things they do badly – being decent, principled or equitable spring to mind – there’s one thing they do exceptionally well. That’s winning and holding on to power. That were in government, mostly alone but sometimes in coalition, for two-thirds of the last century, and they look set, barring accidents, to overtake Labour quite soon in this one.

It wasn’t always so. Between 1846 and 1874, the Conservatives never formed a majority government. But that was the time of one of the most exceptional men every to lead that Party, Benjamin Disraeli.

He had to fight antisemitism and the taint of being on the liberal wing of his Party, but he presided over the conversion of the eighteenth-century Tories into the modern Conservatives with their election-winning machine.

In particular, he played a major role in redefining the role of a party in opposition. Disraeli believed that the goal of the party out of government was to take office at the earliest opportunity. Granting the government easy victories, by voting with it, only made the task harder. The opposition had to oppose.

Getting that lesson across wasn’t easy.

Part of the problem, writes Richard Aldous in the Lion and the Unicorn, his brilliant account of the battles between Disraeli and Gladstone, was Disraeli’s innovation. Rank-and-file Tories in mid-century did more than most to justify the Conservatives’ earlier reputation as the ‘stupid party’. What they failed to grasp, or at least appreciate, was Disraeli’s original approach to opposition. He was perhaps the first political leader to demand that the foremost role of the opposition was to oppose. This may seem obvious now, but it was a novel approach in Victorian Britain. Even his most recent predecessors, Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel, had maintained a gentlemanly and statesmanlike detachment in the House, challenging legislation only if they really thought ill of it.

We’re under no obligation to stick with a tradition simply because it is a tradition – Voltaire once wrote that what we call a tradition is just an abuse that we’ve maintained for centuries. On the other hand, if a particular approach works, and the Tories’ record shows how well theirs does, we abandon it at our peril.

Indeed, it should be in the kitbag of any professional politician.

Some people have suggested that I’ve been unfairly critical of John McDonnell this week. He’s the Shadow Chancellor, in other words the opposition politician directly focused on financial policy. And my annoyance was caused by his decision not to oppose the government over tax cuts designed to overwhelmingly benefit the rich rather than the poor.

McDonnell is from the left of the Labour Party. He’s a self-proclaimed socialist. This kind of regressive tax ought to be anathema to him.

But, in any case, simply applying the Disraeli maxim that the opposition’s role is to oppose – as Aldous says, ‘this may seem obvious now’ – meant he had to oppose these cuts.

If her were in the same league, McDonnell (right)
could learn a thing or two from Disraeli

The only argument I’ve seen for his not doing so is that the measures would benefit some people who need the support, even though it would deliver far more to people who need it much less. Opposing the cuts would have led to headlines such as ‘Labour: taking money out of the pockets of headteachers and doctors’.

This is a remarkable position to take. Even an amateur commentator on politics knows that the right-wing press will always publish headlines attacking Labour. Try to accommodate Conservative editors? They’ll just change line of attack whereas you’ll have abandoned a principle. A professional should know that.

McDonnell’s failure to oppose the cuts merely attracted derision from the government front bench. He gave Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a glorious opportunity to mock him, as Heather Stewart pointed out in the Guardian:

”… even the shadow chancellor has welcomed our tax cuts”. She joked that it’s a “shame his party don’t agree with him … you can almost hear Momentum sharpening their pitchforks”.

She added: “I want him to know that all is not lost. Shadow chancellor, you have friends on this side of the House and there is space for you on our front bench. You might have to sit on the home secretary’s knee.”

In attempting to dodge a bad headline, McDonnell opened himself up to ridicule. 

Guess which is more damaging in politics.

Some have asked me what I might have done better. My first answer is that I’m not a politician but, as a literary critic once said on being attacked for not being able to write a book himself, I may not be able to cook but I know when a meal is good. And the one McDonnell cooked certainly isn’t.

My second answer is that I know that I’m an amateur with no experience of executive responsibility in a major party. I know my limitations and I have no illusions about being able to act as Shadow Chancellor, a position to which no one would elect me in any case.

Unfortunately, McDonnell and his party leader Jeremy Corbyn, have as little experience of executive authority as I do. The difference is that they don’t realise it. They don’t admit that they too are amateurs trying to play a game in which Disraeli showed the need for professionalism.

And, boy, does it show.

How the hard left embraces the right

The trouble with the hard left is that it has no anchor.

The hard left, including the group that currently controls the British Labour Party, is the ideological wing of the left. So where others are more pragmatic and look to evidence to guide their thought, the hard left is driven principally by its beliefs. It has faith in the leader, for instance, or faith in its purity of principle.

The trouble with faith is that it depends on nothing but one’s own thinking. Change your mind, which is pretty easy, and your political stance changes with it. This can lead to some serious dysfunctions.

The most painful currently is the British hard left’s stance on Brexit. This is apparently ambivalent. The reality, which the leadership will not admit, is that they back Brexit. Recently, interviewed by Robert Peston of the ITV channel, Chuka Umunna from the right of the Labour Party referred to ‘whether Brexit actually happens.’ John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and a leading figure of the hard left, replied ‘It will’.

John McDonnell (right) with his pal and ally Jeremy Corbyn

That ‘will’ may not be the expression of a wish, but it certainly does not show any kind of attachment to the official Labour position of backing the EU, which is supported by some 80% of the membership. At one level, veiling one’s true position seems to undermine the claim of people like McDonnell, the most senior parliamentary lieutenant of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, to represent political integrity on the one hand and a full commitment to representing members’ views on the other.

At another level, though, it puts these people in strange company. Brexit is chiefly backed by the hard right, specifically by a xenophobic and anti-immigrant right. These are the tendencies that Labour is expected to oppose with all its strength.

Some attempt to justify this position by arguing that many Labour MPs represent constituencies which voted for Brexit. Again, this is a curious position to take by people who claim to stand for strict principle. Electoral calculation when it involves compromising a fundamental tenet of the left? Not what one would expect from self-proclaimed socialists.

That the hard left finds itself in bed with those who oppose everything it ostensibly stands for should, one might imagine, cause it to question itself. But it doesn’t. Because it is unanchored, it can drift anywhere, even into the arms of the xenophobes and nationalists.

Still, Brexit’s just one question. It could be a one-off.

That’s why the latest development by the same John McDonnell is so interesting.

The Conservatives, currently in government, generally try to lighten the burden of taxation on the richest and shift it to the people least able to bear it. That has been a main thrust of the latest budget proposed by the British Chancellor Philip Hammond. He has proposed income tax changes that will greatly benefit the wealthiest while delivering far less to the poorest, who desperately need it.

In other words, it’s a deeply regressive approach to taxation, making the poor pay more while the rich pay less. The Labour Party is normally committed to the opposite, a progressive policy that makes the rich pay higher taxes while lightening the load on the poor.

So it’s curious to find McDonnell declaring that Labour would not be opposing the Hammond measures.

One of the principal roles of an Opposition is to oppose. I suppose the clue is in the name. An Opposition should never back a government unless it absolutely has to, perhaps because it would endanger national security if it did not.

Certainly, the reason I’ve been given for not opposing the budget tax cuts is indefensible: the suggestion is that they provide some benefit to the poor, even though far less than to the rich, and therefore opposing them would be presented as ‘robbing me of my tax break’. This comes down to setting party policy by what the hostile press would say about it.

In other words, it’s handing control over Labour policy not to the members, not even to MPs, but to Labour’s opponents.

There’s another irony here. It is the hard left that never stops denouncing the media – the ‘mainstream media’ or ‘MSM’ – for its perverse behaviour towards Labour. So allowing what it might or might not say about a policy to determine the behaviour of its leaders in parliament defies belief. What’s more, the result is the same as over Brexit: it puts Labour in the same bed as the right.

Their intentions may be good. But we know which road is paved with good intentions. And what matters is less the road than the destination.

That’s the trouble with having no anchor in reality. That’s the hard left’s problem. But sadly, because it controls the leadership, it’s a problem for the whole of Labour.

Well. It controls the leadership for now.

The four-stage strategy for dodging a bullet

In ‘A Victory for Democracy’, one of my favourite episodes of that excellent series from the eighties, Yes Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby, Cabinet Secretary, and Sir Richard Wharton, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, outline the standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis. 

This takes the form of a ‘four-stage strategy’.

In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

In stage two, we say something may be going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.

In stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

Donald Pickering as Wharton and Nigel Hawthorne as Appleby
explaining the Foreign Office Four-stage Strategy

I’ve always found this one of the best pieces of writing in the series, a hard-hitting satire on British politics, cynical but somehow believable.

What makes it believable is that it’s a great way for people who are more comfortable sitting on a fence to avoid being forced off it. That’s happening right now in Britain. Just look at the top of the Labour Party, over the question of Brexit. The top of the party is made up of lifelong Eurosceptics, almost certainly in favour of Brexit, but who don’t dare say so. After all, they lead a party that is massively anti-Brexit, to the tune of nearly 90% of the members. These leaders claim to want to give power over policy back to the membership, so they can hardly admit to wanting to override their wishes on this key question of our time.

So instead they just try to avoid taking a position. Their resolution is beginning to crack, with two close Corbyn allies, the trade union leader Len McCluskey and the MP John McDonnell, both saying that any new referendum on the EU should exclude the option of remaining a member. Even so, they would rather not have to say openly that they back Brexit.

What this does for their claim also to represent a new, refreshing and honest approach to politics I leave it to you to judge.

Honest or not, they need a way out of their conundrum. I humbly submit that they are, in fact, following their own four-stage strategy.

Let them to allow nature to imitate art and adopt a four-stage strategy of their own. Keir Starmer, the Party's Brexit spokesman, has come up with six tests for any Brexit deal the government negotiates. He’s made it clear that they will not back any deal that does not meet those tests.

Let’s leave aside for now the minor objection that it’s not quite clear what ‘not backing’ a deal means. Will they propose an alternative? No one has said yet.

The tests includes this one:

2. Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?

I’ve quoted it as it always appears, with quotation marks around “exact same benefits”. What’s that about? Quotation marks usually suggest that the statement within them is open to suspicion. So are we saying that we don’t really mean exactly the same benefits?

Because if we do mean exactly the same, we already know that no deal the EU will accept can meet that test. The EU has been absolutely unambiguous on the subject: the only way to enjoy the exact same benefits as conferred by membership is by remaining a member.

Maybe that’s why the leadership doesn’t want to be drawn on what it would propose as a deal that would meet its tests. Because the only realistic proposal would be to remain in the EU. That’s hardly a position Eurosceptics can adopt.

What they may therefore want is that Theresa May comes up with a disastrously bad deal so late that Britain is forced out on lousy terms, at which point the government falls and Labour wins the the general election that follows. That way Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and co get to form a government without ever having to address the thorny issue of Brexit, because it’s already done.

Without their ever having to get off the fence.

Smart, isn’t it? They could then pursue the radical agenda of massive public investment and job creation that they propose. The only circle they would still have to square is how they could fund such a programme after the British economy has tanked following Brexit. They may not yet have cottoned on to the fact that far from creating new jobs, in government they would be spending all their time minimising the job losses Brexit will entail.

Ignorance is bliss. They’re clearly enjoying their moment of denial. So, in the meantime, they gaily pursue this four-stage strategy:

In stage one, we say we have our six tests and we will not support any Brexit deal that doesn’t pass them.

In stage two, we say this deal may not pass the six tests but we should do nothing about it for the moment.

In stage three, we say that maybe we should actually propose a deal that passes the six tests, but since we’re not in government, there’s no point so there’s nothing we can do.

In stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done even in opposition, but it’s too late now that Brexit has already happened.

Most amusing. If only it weren’t for the victims who’ll be left picking up the pieces for the next generation or two.

Anyone but Corbyn? Don't be silly...

It began to feel like a trend when the third person in two days referred to me as belonging to the “Anyone but Corbyn” group, neatly abbreviated as “ABC”.

It seems this is the latest term that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, current and flailing leader of the Labour Party, have come up with in their increasingly desperate attempt to label everyone else as part of one, homogeneous and, it goes without saying, despicable group.

We were all at one time “Blairites”. It was hard to get that label to stick to people, like me, with a long track record of opposing Blair as energetically as they now oppose Corbyn.

“Red Tory” didn’t work for people who’d spent a career opposing the Tories, in some cases winning elections against them. 

The label “plotters” (because they supported the supposed “coup” against Corbyn) suggested that there was a conspiracy embracing a couple of hundred thousand people, and you have to be profoundly paranoid to believe such a plot even possible.

They still, though, seem to need a single, simplifying term to brand us all. “ABC” is the latest attempt. Sadly, though, it merely shows how hopeless it is to impose such a simplification on a phenomenon far too complex for it.

I would never go for anyone but Corbyn. Why, we could end up with someone even worse – and there are people who would make an even more dire job of leading the Labour Party than Corbyn. John McDonnell, his Shadow Chancellor, for one. If we can cast the net beyond Parliament, the devious and authoritarian leader of the Unite union, Len McCluskey, would be another.

Perhaps “ABTC” would work: anyone better than Corbyn. Unfortunately not. I thought Ed Miliband, the previous leader, was desperately weak. More lamentable as leader even than his own predecessor, Gordon Brown. But either of them would be an improvement over Corbyn, and the last thing I want to see is either of them back.

What about “AALBTC”, anyone a lot better than Corbyn? I’m not sure that works either. You see, Tony Blair was massively better than Corbyn (or Brown or Miliband) at winning elections; he was dismal at resisting the lure of power and therefore followed the then most powerful man in the world, Dubya Bush, into the catastrophic Iraq War. That’s Dubya who was himself the worst President of the United States, or so I imagined until I discovered Trump.

No. We need someone with the ability of Blair to win elections but the guts to say “no” to power. An earlier Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was good that way, refusing to take Britain into the Vietnam War, but he wasn’t exactly the straightest of individuals and he does suffer from the inconvenient handicap of being dead.

Harold Wilson: said no to LBJ over the disaster of Vietnam
But not exactly pure as driven snow...

So what we really need is anyone but Corbyn who’s a lot better at winning elections without being opportunistic about essential principle or kowtowing to inept political leaders. Sadly ABCWALBAWEBWBOAEPOKTIPL doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.

Which perhaps makes my point. We’re talking about a complex view, not susceptible to simple summary. Trying to encapsulate it with a single word or pithy abbreviation is bound to fail.

On the other hand, if you absolutely insist on coming up with a single term for those of us who oppose Corbyn within the Party, I do have one that I feel goes a long way towards filling the bill.

I like to think of myself as a Labourite.

Labour Pains

The Labour Party’s travails continue. The French call it the ‘parti travailliste’ which seems particularly apt these days. Though the Labouring Party works as well.

The latest blow is the departure from parliament of Jamie Reed, Labour MP for Copeland in Cumbria. It’s a blow not because he’ll be particularly missed – I’m sure I’m not alone in having reacted to hearing his name with the word “who?” No, the damage is that it forces another by-election on the Labour Party, and a difficult race.

The odd thing is that he justifies his decision to leave parliament, for a job in the nuclear industry, by claiming it will allow him to do more for his community than he could as a Labour MP. That feels to me like arguing that burning down a house is the best response to not being able to fix the leak in the roof. But Reed came from the nuclear industry in the first place and he may view it as less toxic than I do.

Sellafield, in Jamie Reed’s county of Cumbria
An easier place to help the Community, apparently, than Parliament

He says it’s not about money. His pay will be higher than as an MP, but only marginally, he claims. Some cynics, however, have suggested that it may be more a matter of job security. The rumours persist of a possible snap election in May and it’s possible Reed is so uncertain of winning his seat back that he prefers to take a job with a better guarantee of tenure.

Others might feel that the people who say that aren’t so much cynics as realists.

There are two reasons to feel a little concerned about a possible snap election.

The first is that, as many commentators have pointed out, it’s likely to be first and foremost a Brexit election. We know where UKIP stands on Brexit: they want Britain out of the EU the hard way – out of the Customs Union and Single Market as well as the European Union itself, bravely forging ahead in a world where foreign nations will applaud British grit, see the far greater opportunities offered by a 70-million strong population over half a billion, and rush to sign new trade deals on terms massively favourable to the UK.

The Tories are far from clear where they stand, except that they’re absolutely resolute that Brexit means Brexit. But since no one know what Brexit means Brexit means, supporters of the hard position can fancy the Tories are on their side, but so can supporters of a softer exit, with Britain staying at least in the Customs Union, possible even in the Single Market. All things to all voters, or at least all Brexit voters, an enviable position.

The Liberal Democrats have also come out for an explicit position. They oppose Brexit altogether. It’s a courageous stance, since it appeals only to the 48% of the electorate who voted to stay in the EU. Still, they’re alone in taking that position, so that trend in the electorate’s all theirs, and when you’re on 8% in the polls, 48% must look highly attractive.

That leaves Labour. Its spokesman on Brexit, Keir Starmer, has taken a highly intelligent position. He accepts the electorate voted to leave and accepts we therefore must. He however feels we can sensibly argue for a soft exit which will damage the economy least.

Unfortunately, his position is not being echoed at the very top of the Party. The leader, Jeremy Corbyn, maintains a Trappist silence. His closest ally, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell, says little though a few weeks ago he did talk about the great opportunities offered by Brexit.

Those cynics we were talking about before, among whom on this occasion I count myself, suspect this is because they are temperamentally inclined to the Leave side, but had to hide the fact since they were at the top of a party committed to remaining in the EU. However, these are people who make it a point of pride to be strictly honest in politics, so the cynics like me must surely be mistaken.

Sadly, though I know that, I can’t free myself of the nasty suspicion.

The result is that the top of Labour Party, which is the bit most voters look at, is firmly glued to the fence. They neither back Brexit nor oppose it. That means they take a symmetrical position to the Tories: rather than all things to all voters, they are no thing to any of them. And it shows.

At this stage of the 1992-1997 parliament, Labour had a lead of 20% in the polls. It went on to win a comprehensive victory at the next election.

At this stage of the 2010-2015 parliament, Labour had a lead of around 2 or 3%, but went on to a depressing defeat.

A few days ago, a fellow Labour Party member took pleasure in pointing out to me that the Conservative lead had fallen to a mere 7%.

There’s a great line in the film Sully about everything being unprecedented until it happens for the first time. All the precedents may be against Labour winning from this position, but the unprecedented can always happen.

Still. Sounds like Jamie Reed doesn’t feel that way. But maybe he’s a rotten old cynic.

A triumph for the LibDems. A defeat for the Tories. A warning for Labour

It’s always satisfying to see a Tory government being given a bloody nose. 

It’s even more satisfying when it’s a victory for those who don’t accept the Brexit verdict as irrevocable. 

And it’s best of all when it’s administered to an unpleasant individual of thoroughly toxic views.

All that happened this week.

Zac Goldsmith ran an unpleasant Tory campaign to be Mayor of London last year, calling on racist and Islamophobic notions to try – and, fortunately, fail – to beat Labour’s candidate, Sadiq Khan, whose name is probably enough to explain the racism and Islamophobia. Not to justify them, of course, but certainly to explain why an unprincipled candidate would resort to them. 

This year, he resigned from the Conservative Party and from Parliament to precipitate a by-election in his constituency of Richmond Park, where he ran as an independent against the government’s decision to build a new runway at nearby Heathrow airport.

The Liberal Democratic candidate, Sarah Olney, a strong supporter of continued membership of the EU, chose not to campaign on the airport but to focus on Brexit instead. To widespread surprise (including my own), she snatched the seat from Goldsmith, converting his majority of 23,000 votes into her own of nearly 1900.

An excellent result.

The defeated candidate (for local MP and London Mayor)
and the victorious LibDem

If I have a quibble it’s that we had to depend on the Liberal Democrats to win this victory. The main party in opposition to the Tories is my own, Labour. It should be the one challenging the government, and all the more so since the Liberal Democrats were in coalition with the Tories between 2010 and 2015. That was both a betrayal of principle and counter-productive: it reduced the party’s presence in Parliament from 62 to eight. The Richmond Park result may suggest that things are turning around for the LibDems (though one win doesn’t make a resurrection), but it certainly reflects a Labour failure.

Why do I say that?

If Sarah Olney’s win owed a great deal to the LibDems’ position against Brexit, undoubtedly the biggest question for the vast majority of voters, her party was able to make it their own because Labour’s silence on the subject has been deafening. 

Why is it so quiet? Silence is always hard to interpret, but occasionally it gets broken. John McDonnell, a close ally of the party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, recently described Brexit as an “enormous opportunity”. This seemed to confirm a suspicion many of us felt that the Labour leadership wasn’t particularly comfortable with the party’s official policy of backing continued EU membership. 

Meanwhile, siren voices on the right of the Labour Party are calling on us to address anxieties over immigration in Labour’s traditional voter base. Again, this provokes suspicion, in this case that we are being urged to move rightwards, to counter the challenge presented by the extreme anti-EU and xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP. As another of Corbyn’s allies, Diane Abbott, recently pointed out – correctly – Labour can’t win by being UKIP-lite. If people want UKIP policies, they’ll vote UKIP. Labour doesn’t beat them by accommodating them, but by explaining that turning against foreigners won’t address any of the real problems affecting our supporters, which are poverty, insecurity and joblessness. Instead, we need to tackle the causes of economic decline – not least of which is the decision to leave the EU.

That’s hard to do if you’re not too sure about the EU yourself. Hence the silence.

The problem is that silence isn’t leadership and leadership is what voters are crying out for. Labour isn’t doing leadership right now. There was recently a Parliamentary vote, on a motion advanced by the Scottish National Party, to investigate Tony Blair’s role over the Iraq War and his possible misleading of Parliament at the time.

There are two positions one can legitimately take on the issue. 

The SNP’s would be that Blair behaved unconscionably and needs to be held to account by Parliament. 

The majority Labour position, with which I agree, isn’t simply one of “hands off our former leader” but rather argues that the problem was that Blair had far too much authority, allowing him to commit the country against its will. So it was an institutional issue, not a personal one, and it needs to be tackled at that level. That ties in, for instance, with the calls for Parliament and not just the present Prime Minister to have the final say over Brexit.

A third position is illegitimate. That’s to have nothing to say on the matter. It’s striking that all three of Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott stayed away from Parliament at the time of the debate.

Silence, like over the EU.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Similarly, voters abhor silence. While it stays quiet and on the fence, refusing to lead, the group that technically controls the Labour leadership leaves the Party vulnerable to attack by those who flow in to fill the political vacuum – whether from UKIP or from the LibDems.

So the Richmond result isn’t just a victory for the LibDems. It isn’t just a black eye for the Tories. It’s also a serious wake-up call to Labour.

The leadership needs to make up its mind: start leading, on the issues that matter to the electorate, or see our support continue to erode. Otherwise – please just stand aside and let someone else take over. 

Someone who has something to say. 

Someone who’s prepared to get out in front and lead.
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Mustn't take joy in Tory misfortunes. Must we?

Schadenfreude is the despicable emotion which leads us to take pleasure in the suffering of others.

Obviously, we ought to avoid it in all circumstances. At all times. That just has to be our rule.

Still, like all good rules, that one has to have exceptions, doesn’t it? And right up there with the most exceptional has to be the British Tory Party. In particular, those of its members who form the present enlightened government under which we groan. Sorry, prosper.

To be honest, I feel no shame over exulting in their discomfiture. They’re so self-satisfied, so certain of their entitlement to consideration and authority, so used to acting on their whims with complete impunity as to the consequences.

Besides, what’s happening to them is so much more commonly the destiny of the left, and in particular of the Labour Party. If there is one characteristic of a party of the left at any time, it’s that it is always being betrayed. Someone in its ranks is, it’s alleged, a crave backslider or a wild radical who risks derailing the movement in its mission. And that person is hated by someone else.

It’s a long tradition. Told that Nye Bevan, father of the NHS, was his own worst enemy, Ernie Bevin, who had been his ministerial colleague in the post-war Labour government, replied “not while I’m alive he isn’t.”

These internecine feuds rumble on for years. The whole Blair premiership was dominated by conflict between him and his Chancellor of the Exchequer and eventual successor, Gordon Brown. Even now, the conservative press has leaked a list of Labour MPs, drawn up by someone in the party, which categorises them by their loyalty or lack of it to the present leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s not clear to me that drawing up such a list was ever a particularly judicious move. Wasn’t it obvious that someone would leak it? After all, we’re always being betrayed…

It’s exasperating that anyone thought this was a good idea, and what I’d really, really like to suggest is that people stop keeping records about people’s supposed loyalty and, equally, that the people who are perhaps not as loyal as one might wish, learn to put a sock in it and knuckle down and support our present leader. For better or for worse. After all, he’s the only leader we’ve got, and any move we made to replace him by someone else would provoke further bitter feuding that would do no one any favours but the Conservatives.

Besides, quite a lot of us think he’s not such a bad leader, and maybe we ought to give him a chance. 

In any case, it would be fun if those who seem intent on making life difficult for Corbyn, turned their ire – and their fire – instead on the other side. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of having a go at each other, all of us in Labour concentrated on bringing down a Tory government all of us know needs to go?

We can do it. Take Angela Eagle, for instance. The other day she told Parliament:

Last Wednesday the Chancellor stood at that despatch box and delivered what he farcically claimed was: "a budget for the next generation."

What we actually got was a botched budget.

A Budget which has disastrously unravelled in just a few days.

Angela Eagle, putting the boot into an inept Chancellor
flanked by Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell

That’s the kind of thing we want to hear from leading Labour voices: picking up on the ineptitude of the Tories and powerfully, effectively denouncing it. She was helped by the incompetence with which George Osborne handled his hopelessly constructed budget, but it still took talent to wield the hatchet as Eagle did.

Which brings me back to the problems of Cameron’s party. Because as well as Angela Eagle’s comments I was delighted to read this assault:

This is not the way to do government…

I believe [Cameron and Osborne] are losing sight of the direction of travel they should be going...

But these remarks weren’t made by anyone in the Labour Party. They came from a former leader of the Tory Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who dramatically resigned from his position as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions last week.

Now, he has an axe to grind. He’s opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU, and his fellow Tories at the top of the party are in favour. His resignation may have been in part to serve the Brexit cause. But it contributes to the sense of disarray in Tory ranks, and that will only increase as the EU referendum approaches. That’s a wedge that Labour should be striving to drive deeper.

Meanwhile, other fissures are also opening up among Tories. Today we learned of the views of a Tory former head teacher and a member of Leicestershire County Council, where he takes a leading role on children’s and family matters. Ivan Ould was reacting to the decision by the government to force all schools to take ‘Academy’ status and therefore leave the control of councils such as Leicestershire’s. He commented:

This seems to be throwing out good practice for the sake of dogma and risking the possibility that standards may fall. I do not believe a system driven by dogma will meet the needs of children.

He’s so right. It’s dogma that drives this government, and centralisation of power: there’s absolutely no need to drive all schools to become Academie – indeed, one of the Academy chains that Cameron identified as exemplary has been placed under investigation for financial irregularities.

It’s dogma, too, that drives the constant obsession with austerity, despite six years of evidence that isn’t delivering growth or even reducing debt.

Taken together, the kind of Opposition Angela Eagle has shown Labour can still produce, and the internal attacks that the likes of Duncan Smith and Ould are launching, suggest that we can after all really do something about this dogmatic, inept government. Which is failing to meet the needs not just of children, but those of all but a tiny minority of the nation.

So I’m doing nothing to restrain my Schadenfreude over the Tories’ woes.

The sorows of poor Mr Osborne

You’ve got to feel sorry for that poor Mr George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. He’s been having rather a torrid time of it lately. As he explained in this touching personal confession.

I mean, I’m a longstanding friend of David Cameron. The one who’s Prime Minister. For now. I mean, friends from way, way back. We’ve both been members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, so we know what it is to have a few drinks, and trash a restaurant or a friend’s room. It builds character, that kind of behaviour, makes a leader of you. And forges a friendship.

Anyway, we had a deal, Big Dave and me. I’d do a few years in the number 2 slot and then he’d stand aside and let me have a go at the top job. And he’s doing his bit: agreeing to stand down before the next election and all that. But now it’s all going wrong.

Fetching, isn't he? Our George? In his trademark hard hat
It's his tribute to the nobility of hard work. Which he admires from afar

I mean, big Dave wants me to keep helping when I can, so I do. I’ve come out all keen as mustard for Britain staying in the EU and all that. Hasn’t done me any favours. Turns out that lots of people in the Tory Party – including in parliament – don’t like that idea at all. They’re feeling a bit riled, basically. And that creep Boris Johnson’s been slipping in with his bloody Eurosceptic position, taking advantage of the mood.

Everything ought to be going swimmingly, but it isn’t. I’ve just given my eighth budget. You’d think that’d be a bit of a high point. But we don’t seem to be able to get rid of the deficit completely, however much we cut the army, the police and support for the poor. So instead of coming down, debt’s a bit high, really. A bit of a record, actually, to be strictly honest. Which is embarrassing, seeing how I always used to have a go at the other side for having got debt so high on their watch.

That all makes even my best moves, well, a bit moot to be strictly truthful. I do try. Take this budget, for instance. I couldn’t give away as much as I’d like, of course, not in the trying situation we’re in, but I did what I could. Raised the income level at which people have to start paying tax. Raised the level at which they have to pay the next level up of tax. Got to help, hasn’t it?

OK, it helps the people who pay the most tax more than the ones who don’t pay much, but still, it’s helping people, isn’t it?

OK, maybe not the people who earn so little they don’t pay tax at all, but I don’t know any of that kind of people – they’re the ones who used to clean up behind us when we were in the Bullingdon Club, right?

OK, maybe 85% of the benefit goes to the top 50% of incomes, or so some pundit or other claims, but hey, help’s help, isn’t it? No matter who it goes to.

Some people are moaning that I’m taking £4 million out of benefit payments to the disabled at the same time as I’m reducing taxes. What’s their problem? Let’s be clear. A lot of the disabled don’t vote. And many of the ones who do, vote Labour. Get real, guys. I’ve got a career to nurture here.

The one good thing is that those sad fellows who lead Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, are even less trusted to run the economy well than I am. A joke, right? A really funny one. Which made it a bit annoying when Corbyn came out with that line about the budget having unfairness at its core. How did he work that one out? No one on my side has.

Though, to be honest, it’s my side that’s the problem. What a bunch. All baying to get out of the European Union. God only knows why. It costs next to nothing compared to, say, a bombing campaign in the Middle East. And the Yanks like it. But those backwoodsmen have got a bee in their bonnet about it. And those bees are all swarming around smarmy Boris now.

Makes you want to weep, doesn’t it? I’ve done everything you’d think you’d need to do to follow my mate into the top job. Well, everything short of actually balancing the books, but just because I said we could do it doesn’t mean it was possible. And despite all that, bloody Boris is giving me a damn good run for my money.

What’s a fellow supposed to do? Do you think it’s all down to my having gone to St Paul’s School? Boris was at Eton with Big Dave. Is that what’s going on?

Tory U-turns: a matter of relief, but with questions of responsibility and irresponsibility.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain’s Tory government, produced a spending review on 25 November that does a complete U-turn on two heavily trailed and highly unpopular measures.

On his way to making those announcements, he repeated the claim he’s advanced frequently in the past, that any difficulties the economy is facing are the fault of the previous Labour government. As his opposite number, the Labour spokesman on Finance, John McDonnell, pointed out, there comes a time when you have to stop blaming your predecessors and take responsibility yourself. Osborne has, after all, been in office for five and a half years. Back in 2010, he set targets by which to judge him, in particular eliminating the structural deficit in government spending by 2015, which he spectacularly failed to hit.

At the 2015 election, he persuaded a large number of voters to give him another chance to hit his targets by 2020, though it again looks as though he won’t make it. Indeed, I believe one prediction we can make about 2020 with some confidence, is that the Tories’ woes will not have been vanquished, and they’ll still be blaming them on Labour. Osborne, it seems, is never responsible.

Part of his irresponsibility will be continued austerity policies. And that’s despite the two U-turns he has just announced.

The first U-turn concerned cutting tax credits, vitally necessary to a great many people for whom the Tories claim to speak – the striving working poor. The Opposition parties and others had mounted a major campaign against the cuts. It’s a measure of the opponents’ success that they were able to convince a great many voters of their case, and a further measure of that success that Osborne, wily politician with well-tuned antennae, simply abandoned his proposal.

Osborne: a wily politician but not so hot on responsibility

Secondly, he has dropped plans for further cuts to the police, a position made deeply unpopular by the Paris terror attacks.

Smart moves by a clever operator. And most welcome: I supported the opposition to both cuts, and it’s with sincere relief that I greet their abandonment. But there’s no reason to reduce the pressure on Osborne, all the same. For two reasons.

Firstly, it would be deeply foolish to think that he isn’t going to sneak them back in. That’s already happening with tax credits. That particular support is being phased out to be replaced by the new system of Universal Credit – which Osborne has already cut. So as people are moved over to the new arrangements, many will face cuts of £2000 a year and more – around 10% of their earned income – that we were complaining about before.

So the opposition has to continue. Otherwise all we’ll have bought is a little time.

And secondly, there’s the justification Osborne has used for his U-turns. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its forecasts of future government revenue. It is on the strength of those forecasts that the government felt it could afford to reverse its cuts. But the Guardian was absolutely right to quote the comment by the great American economist, J K Galbraith, on the subject:

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

George Osborne has taken a gamble on the economy turning out as the forecasters have suggested it might. Not on money in the bank, but on money he hopes to see flow in later.

Now I’m very much in favour of seeing growth stimulating increased government revenue, so that the constant cuts associated with austerity can end. But it strikes me that a government that is constantly quoting little common place phrases of everyday life as though they constituted analysis of an economic policy for a nation – “the country has maxed out its credit card”, “we inherited an economy on the brink of bankruptcy”, “we’re fixing the roof while the weather’s good” – would at least admit that it’s taken to spending today, money it has at best an uncertain chance of earning tomorrow.

It’s particularly striking in this context that the Office for Budget Responsibility doesn’t have a good track record in economic forecasting. Of course, it doesn’t have to take responsibility for any budgetary decision taken by the government.

But then, it seems George Osborne doesn’t feel the need to either. And he’s taking those decisions. With cheerful irresponsibility.

John McDonnell: what matters is that the decision was right, not how you got there

The commentariat has been going wild in Britain this week. It’s been fascinated by the question of whether John McDonnell, newly appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, had made a right hash of things.

The background is that the actual (as opposed to Shadow) Chancellor, George Osborne, has proposed new legislation binding future governments – including his own – to running budget surpluses in “normal times.”

At best, this is a gimmick (I’ll come on to what it is at worst in a bit). It’s ill-thought out: it doesn’t, for instance, distinguish between investment and current expenditure. Investment may well generate a big return in the future (perhaps a new railway line, or a government-financed scientific breakthrough), so it makes no sense to treat it as merely a cost today and not count any of the future benefit against it.

More crucial still, it’s a law that can’t be enforced. Parliament makes all laws, and therefore unmakes any law it wishes; it can’t bind itself by law, because all it would take if it became disenchanted with a law in the future, would be a quick act repealing it. By extension, since under what passes for a constitution in Britain, a government has to have a parliamentary majority it’s hard to see how parliament can pass a law to bind the government: it can simply use its majority to repeal anything it finds irksome.

At worst, what the proposal really intends is to justify further massive cuts in public expenditure, by passing them off as prudent financial management. Many suspect that there’s an unspoken agenda on the part of the Conservative Party to shrink the State. That’s a legitimate aim, naturally, but it ought to be expressed openly, not slipped in disguised as something else. On the other hand, one can understand why the government would want to disguise such an aim: we’ve learned just recently that the NHS, for instance, is on the brink of bankruptcy, with a deficit approaching a billion pounds in a single quarter, making it a little difficult to argue for further cuts.

Finally, it may be just a trick to try to embarrass Labour, by challenging them either to support the government or to paint themselves as opposed to financial prudence.

Which takes us neatly to John McDonnell.

Just a couple of weeks ago, at the Labour Party Conference, he announced that he would be supporting the government initiative.

Now, however, he’s switched round 180 degrees and decided to oppose it.

Imagine the uproar! “U-turn!” cry opponents or the media. “A mess and a muddle!” “Labour in chaos!” At their least ungenerous, hostile commentators point out that McDonnell’s new in post and his wobbles and inconsistencies are all part of the learning pains anyone might expect to go through.

In any case, they make it clear that the whole episode reflects badly on Labour. But then, they would, wouldn’t they?

To me, the whole thing’s another gimmick, just like the government proposal itself. It’s an attempt to paint Labour as incompetent – whereas, to me and a great many others, what matters isn’t that McDonnell changed his mind, but that he ended up taking the right decision.

John McDonnell
Why care that he changed his mind, if he got it right in the end?

This puts me mind of a story about Abraham Lincoln, the man I regard as the best politician in history, bar none.

In 1861, during the American Civil War, a US Navy ship intercepted a British mail vessel, RMS Trent, put men on board and seized two Confederate envoys who were heading for Europe to stoke up support for the rebellious States. Britain was furious, the United States delighted; Britain threatened war, and the US responded with the diplomatic equivalent of “bring it on.” Britain at that time had the world’s most powerful navy; Lincoln knew that he was in no position to fight a second war alongside the great struggle in which he was already engaged. But he didn’t want to back down to Britain, with all the loss of pride that would entail, to say nothing of the opprobrium it would excite around the country.

His Secretary of State, William Seward, on the other hand pointed out that such a sacrifice would be a lot smaller than the cost of a war. He recommended handing over the envoys to Britain.

Lincoln told him he couldn’t do that, and would prepare a paper arguing against Seward’s position that very evening. However, the next morning he turned up at the Cabinet meeting without a paper, and agreed with Seward’s proposal. Surprised by his agreement, the latter caught up with Lincoln after the meeting, and asked why he hadn’t submitted the promised paper.

“I found,” Lincoln replied, “I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind, and that proved to me your ground was the right one.”

Yes. If your second thoughts are better than your first, go with them.

Getting it right first time is great, and it’s a pity McDonnell didn’t. But getting it right at all is what matters. Nothing’s worse than sticking to a bad position come what may. That’s what Maggie Thatcher used to do, refusing to back down from any of her ideas, however misguided; that gave us the poll tax and the Section 28 homophobic legislation, and ultimately led to her downfall.

So well done, John McDonnell, for recognising that you had it wrong. And for having the courage to admit it and change your view. 

Because what matters is the quality of your final decision, not the route by which you got there – even if it was a little convoluted.

The British Labour Party: finding a form of leadership with a great pedigree

Leadership, if it means anything, is about finding a way to persuade people to come with you to somewhere they may not, initially, have thought they wanted to go.

That’s something that many in the Labour Party need to ponder. They point out, correctly, that a great many people in Britain are inclined towards the right wing, whether it’s towards the unpleasantly right wing Conservatives, or the even nastier right wing UKIP. They are equally correct that Labour needs to win some of those people back if it is to have a chance to form a government again.

Where they’re wrong is in assuming that this means we have to adopt the same policies: ape the Tories on austerity, or UKIP on xenophobia. That’s followership. Leadership is persuading them to try a different approach.

Abraham Lincoln was one of the world’s greatest political leaders. There were two particularly admirable characteristics to his politics: the ability to bring people with him, and the capacity to listen, learn and adapt, without abandoning principles.

On the first of these, he applied with consummate skill the notion that the trick, in leading people, is to stay in front, but also to stay in touch. In the immortal words of The West Wing, a leader without followers is just a man out for a stroll. 

So, though Lincoln always abominated slavery, and never gave way on the fundamental point that it should not be allowed to expand beyond the area in which it already existed, he was more than prepared to compromise with the slaveholding south to the extent of not pursuing immediate abolition throughout the US and by toying with notions of compensated emancipation: buying slaves to free them.

On occasions, he even fought election campaigns without mentioning slavery at all, if he felt it would hinder his or his party’s progress to speak out.

That strikes me as entirely legitimate, because what he never did, was endorse the positions of the other side. Never did he support slavery. In that respect, his position is in stark contrast with that of certain Labourites who advocate adopting a Conservative position on, say, cuts in benefits in the hope of attracting Tory voters. That’s wrong in principle, and it’s ineffective in practice: why would anyone vote for a party imitating the Tories? If they want those policies, they’ll vote for the real thing. The trick isn’t to go along with it, it’s to wean them from those views.

The Lincoln position isn’t easy. It leads to accusations of betrayal or of trimming, and Lincoln certainly faced his share of them. But in the end, it was he and not the radical abolitionists who ensured that the 13th amendment to the US constitution, banning slavery completely, was adopted. He temporised, he sometimes forbore to speak, but eventually he achieved what the abolitionists had always wanted but hadn’t been able to implement by more direct means.

He did that by sometimes judiciously shelving the slavery question, while he focused on the overriding issue of his time: saving the union of the United States. Success in that struggle led to success on slavery too.

When it comes to Lincoln learning, it’s fascinating to see how his position changed on Black equality. While he always hated slavery, it’s clear that initially he didn’t believe that Black and White could coexist, and backed the notion of “colonisation”: sending freed Blacks to their own nation, in Africa or possibly in Central America.

However, as events unfolded, he found himself evolving with them. During the Civil War, he was won round to the notion that Black free men could serve in the Army; eventually he accepted that they should be paid the same as their White counterparts; not long before his assassination he had gone so far as to accept that the “most intelligent” Blacks (whatever that means) and any who’d borne arms for the Union, should be allowed the vote.

He was still a long way from a whole-hearted endorsement of equal rights and universal suffrage (not even all White men had the vote, and of course no women did). But had he lived, how far might he have gone?

John McDonnell (left) and Jeremy Corbyn
Following in the steps of Lincoln?

Given my view of what true leadership is, I’ve been fascinated by the way Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, and John McDonnell as shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, have been behaving. They have left issues such as getting out of NATO, of doing away with the British nuclear deterrent, of leaving the EU, to negotiation with other Labour leaders, with whom they often disagree.

Like Lincoln, they’re focusing on the key issue. John McDonnell said it in his first Conference speech in his new shadow post: “austerity isn’t an economic necessity, it’s a political choice.”

Yes. That’s the first issue we need to take on. There’s a stultifying and deeply damaging consensus across most of Europe, that the correct response to the financial crash of 2008 is to cut government spending and inflict terrible suffering on the most vulnerable. As McDonnell also said, that is to make the victims pay for the crash instead of the perpetrators.

That view is beginning to be questioned in European nation after European nation. It’s a huge step forward that one of the main parties in one of the major European economies is taking up that cause. That’s the one to focus on for now, leaving others on the back burner – certainly, the more contentious ones that would split the party and make it less likely to achieve its main goal.

Once we’ve dealt with austerity, we could perhaps move on to the other urgent question, which has to be climate change.

Then we can look at NATO and nuclear weapons. And who knows? If the people are moving with us on the top priorities, they may well move with us on the others.

But that takes leadership. So far Labour’s looking a bit like Lincoln. And that’s promising.