This story by the BBC lays out how public sector jobs have outpaced those in the domestic private sector for some time, a statement that is hardly likely to surprise regular visitors to Samizdata.
The public sector is creating new jobs at a faster rate than private business, according to the latest official data.
At the same time, UK productivity is now at its lowest level for 15 years, further figures from the Office for National Statistics showed.
Analysts have long argued that the government sector trails behind the wider economy in terms of productivity.
Overall productivity grew by 0.5% in the year to July, the lowest since 1990 and down from 2.5% a year earlier.
The ranks of the public sector expand and of course, the government is quite happy about this state of affairs, since people who work on the taxpayer’s pound are unlikely to be keen on a drastic rollback of said state. Every additional worker adds to this ratchet effect.
As the public sector balloons, the cost frequently falls on those least able to bear it, such as this retired lady who went to gaol rather than pay a council tax bill that has risen far faster than inflation.
People like this lady probably voted for that nice, vaguely Tory-looking Mr Blair back in 1997 and who knows, gave him a second and third chance in the subsequent elections. But the question for the Tories, now gathering for their annual conference in Blackpool this week, is how to credibly halt and roll back the public sector juggernaut and thus make room for sweeping tax cuts. If they cannot do so, then frankly there is no point to them.
UPDATE: Noted libertarian author Sean Gabb gave an excellent talk in Westminster tonight. One of his central themes is that we will not be able to push back the onslaught on our traditional institutions until we understand the nature of what the “enemy” is. A key point is class. Class analysis is not and should not be a tool only of collectivists. The NuLab “project” can be thought in class terms, and the relentless expansion of public sector employment can be seen as a way of entrenching that class and its hold on society.
Jonathan – that retired lady who went to jail was a retired social worker, so, being a passenger on the gravy train, I doubt whether she ever voted Conservative in her life.
She has been funded for her entire career by the wealth creating sector. Her government pension is paid for by the wealth creating sector. She is just pissed off that she will have to give up some of her gravy to the, uh, public sector.
Some public services may or may not be essential, but I don’t place social workers among them.
The problems of Britain and Europe are never going to be rolled back until the vote is removed from people employed in the public sector.
But I want low public sector productivity, at least in the most of the non-military sectors. As Will Rodgers once said, it is a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for. I would much rather my tax money was just flushed down the toilet rather than have it passed on to the departments who actually want to spend it.
Verity, I am not really sure that limiting the vote to those who have only received money or worked in the public sector is really going to fly as a political idea, great though it is.
Perry, I used the quote because it shows how the whole economic pie is being gradually buggered up by this government. Unless one is an anarcho capitalist, we want the minimal state functions like the courts or the police to be run well and show some decent value for money. Same goes for the military, civil defence and so forth.
Ooops, I meant “limiting the vote to those who have never received money or worked in the public sector”..
I must learn to type and not drink coffee at the same time.
Every political solution has to start somewhere. Once people start discussing it, it gains tiny accretions of credibility. Pretty soon, you’ve got some weight behind it and it enters the general consciousness. Like privatisation. That seemed absolutely outrageous at first.
And don’t forget, there is absolutely nothing to lose by promoting it. The people in the public sector, including the BBC and the Guardianistas, were never going to vote for anyone but the socialists anyway.
Verity,
Your proposal couldn’t work. The reason is that many people gain much or all of their income from the public sector indirectly, i.e. they’re not actually employed by it. GPs are the best known example, as they are, in theory, independent contractors – it’s just that they have just one source of income, the government (and by exploiting their monopoly have managed to push up their incomes hugely).
The public sector in the UK spends around 45% of GNP, but only employs directly around 20% of the working population. The other 20%+ is spent on private sector suppliers.
And even if your proposal were accepted, there would be a bloated public sector bureaucracy created just to work out who was allowed to vote and who wasn’t – hardly your intention, I imagine.
Vrity,
It’s also worth pointing out that not all public sector employees choose to work in the public sector or indeed benefit from it. Although, generally, public sector employees are pampered and are paid to do things that the free market would not pay for, this is not universally true. In some areas people working in the public sector would do better if the public sector did not monopolise their employment opportunities and they would be paid more in a free market. I admit that this is probably a small minority, nevertheless it does happen.
Good examples might include teachers in shortage subjects, e.g. maths and physics. They suffer from the fact that 90%+ of employment opportunities are in the public sector, yet the power of the teaching unions means that they are not paid substantially more than, say, art teachers which are in oversupply.
HJHJ – I’m open to suggestions for refinements. But last time I looked, the public sector in Britain, had expanded, under Brown, to around 28%.
I would have no problem banning state-employed doctors from voting. They’re going to vote for the party most likely to see them OK, meaning the socialists. I do not believe such a programme would lose any votes at all for the Tories and may perk up a number of lapsed Tories into voting again.
I don’t know that culling them off the electoral register would be that difficult, HJHJ, as surely all the information about employment is already on the Pensions and Works (or whatever it’s called) computer?
Am I right, though, that non-citizens can vote in Britain? If so, that needs to be changed at the same time.
Citizens of other EU countries can vote in local and European elections in Britain. Likewise, British citizens can vote in local and European elections in other EU countries (there are municipal councils in coastal areas of Spain with large British contigents.) There are some special arrangements in place for citizens of Ireland to be able to vote in national elections in the UK.
No British citizen should be barred from voting by virtue of their profession or presumed voting intention.
No, Robert Alderson. I want to bar them by virtue of their employer: the taxpayer.
If you are excited by productivity, the trouble with public sector productivity is not just that it is low, but that much of what is produced is calculated to the destruction of productivity in private life.
Most of those departments we hate most could be vastly improved without sacking all the civil servants and burning all the files, however attractive that sounds. Simply paying people to go to the office and allowing them to do anything they like there provided it doesn’t involve issuing or enforcing any regulations or collecting any forms, is possibly a politically acceptable approach to the same result. Some of them may end up doing something useful on their own account.
A partial adoption of this policy may be one of the secrets of Italy’s continuing survival, even success.
Not long ago I saw an advert in the back of the Guardian (natch), for some social services job in Norwich. It touted the city as very public sector friendly, because 25% of the workforce in the city were public sector. Terrifying.
As for denying public sectors the vote – obviously daft. Much more interesting schemes are possible. I personally would like a tax rebate given to those who vote for a losing party. This would add an exciting prisoner’s dilemma problem to the whole excercise, although it would require removing the secrecy from the ballot.
“Obviously daft”. Why?
As long as the public sector determines who gets to vote and for whom, public sector employees will have tremendous influence on who gets elected. Also, long before someone could be elected on a platform of keeping public sector employees from voting, you’d have to have someone running on a pledge to reduce the public sector’s influence in general. Even that isn’t in prospect. Is any candidate of any of the major parties willing to take this stand?
Verity: I’m not sure that you read my post. I was making the point that GPs, for example, are not employed directly by the public sector – they just receive all their income from it.
The officla figures show about 20% of the population employed by the public sector. Surveys, however, show that 25% of empoyees consider themselves public sector employees. Exmples such as GPs illustrate the discrepancy.
You also miss the obvious reason why removing the vote from public sector employees would not work. Just as you perceive (generally correctly) that public sector employees will always vote against parties advocating public spending cuts, they will also vote against parties advocating the removal of their votes.
Robert Speirs – Obviously, I don’t know. But I also don’t know why not. They have absolutely nothing to lose. People who work in the public sector were never going to vote for them anyway.
The public sector is dangerous. As long as people can vote themselves raises and privileges, they will do so at no cost to themselves. This sector eats away at the economy. People like Blair and Brown, with no affection for, or investment in, Britain will continue to bloat the public sector – in effect, buying votes with your money. Don’t you care that Blair and Brown and Straw are buying votes for themselves and their foul philosophy with your money?
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
Ideas whose time is approaching always sound far-fetched and unworkable at first.
Timely enough there was an article in my regional newspaper (the Milwaukee (WI) Journal Sentinel) that bemoaned the lethargy in Racine, WI, a once thriving manufacturing city on Lake Michigan. The usual suspect was trotted out first and foremost, business and its greediness, closing down shops and pissing on the unions, and not a single word about Wisconsin being one of the most highly taxed States in the Union.
Most interesting was a graphic showing the top five employers in 1977 versus 2003. Substantial losses at the likes of J.I. Case and Johnson (huge international companies bringing prestige to Racine) while the City and County Government employment shooting up onto the list.
It’s so damned frustrating when the obvious cause is so apparent, but the blame is layed securely on the cure instead. Not one iota of common sense that perhaps the stragulating growth of government hostile to free enterprise is the cause for malaise, no, it’s the mean hearted corporate fat cats.
Oh well.
In principle, you’re right – if there’s no taxation without representation, then there should be no reprentation without taxation, either. But the God of Democracy is an evil and reactionary bastard, and he won’t let you get away with it.
I favour going in the opposite direction. Make things twice as democratic. Get serious about separation of powers by establishing two legislatures, one to legislate and another, independently elected, to raise tax to pay for the legislation. The pointy-nosed and parsimonious tax legislators -who are elected solely on their tax promises – will refuse to fund (or fund contrarily – think of a tax on agricultural land to finance farm subsidies) the airier-fairier schemes of the social-justice freaks in the main legislature, who can pass any laws they like to endear themselves to the electorate, but can’t rob anyone to pay for them without the taxing house’s say so.
I see a hell of a lot of our problems as rooted in the ability of politicians both to tax and to spend. Double democracy, double freedom!
For those of you who didn’t click on Jonathan’s link because you thought it might be too full of statistics, here are the money points:
Health sector
During the 12 months the public sector added 95,000 new positions, an increase of 1.7% to 5.8 million jobs.
Most new positions in the public sector were in health and social services, up by 60,000.
This was followed by 50,000 extra central government jobs and 40,000 in local government.
A hundred and eighty-five thousand extra jobs created in the public sector in one year!! A hundred and eight-five thousand votes bought with your money.
I’m sorry – I screwed up on the italics.
Verity’s ideas would make sense in an ideal world but sadly things are more complex. Would an employee of Liberata be allowed to vote ? Such a person is an employee of a private company but their business aound here is collecting local taxes. Another example would be an employee of Capita a company used to collect TV licence fees here in the UK. Both employees could vote themselves more money in a similar way to a public sector worker. I suppose another example would be a worker in the defence industry.
I heard a comment on the radio today that the Conservatives are trailing as third choice party amongst public sector workers. Well duh. Why would any public sector worker think of voting other than for NuLabor or LibDem?
I hope the new Conservative leader doesn’t think he will have to “modernize” the party to appeal to these people. It will not work, they will always prefer to vote for their real paymasters.
To think Dame Shirley Porter had to flee the country and pay a £12 million surcharge because of her amateurish efforts at gerrymandering in Westminster. Gordon Brown shows her how it should be done. He thinks big. As soon as 51% of workers depend on public money (not necessarily directly employed by the state, Gordon’s Enronned a lot of his expenditure) then NuLabor will be unbeatable. Of course, like the USSR, eventually the whole thing will collapse, but that’s for the future. Gordon’s got his birthright to consider, assuming Jack Straw doesn’t liquidate him of course.
1327 – One doesn’t abandon a vast idea because there will be a series of very difficult knots to unravel. This needs a team of political thinkers working on it for a couple of years to turn it into something coherent.
John K – So the public sector has no intention of voting Conservative! Well, quelle surprise!
But this why I say the Conservatives would have nothing to lose by studying – and perhaps eventually proposing – this solution. No public sector votes will be lost from its proposal. Many people in the wealth creating sector would be most attracted by it, though, and perhaps be motivated to turn out on election day.
Equally attractive, I will give you an iron clad, double-your-money-back guarantee that this is one original idea that Tone, Pete ‘n’ the boyz will not be stealing.
No Verity you cannot remove a person’s vote, they will take unkindly to it.
You’ve got to start small.
I vote their toenails.
What was that Stalin said about “balls, hearts and minds”?
RAB – You never seem to give a rationale for any of your arguments, but I don’t want to be cruel, especially as there’s a fatwah against ad hominens.
You can indeed remove a person’s vote. Prisoners can’t (as of now) vote. Presumably they once had the vote, and now they don’t. So you can remove it.
People choose to go into the public sector, just as they choose to go into crime. If they knew this involved removal of some (it would be manipulated so they retained some sense of being able to “vote”) of their voting privileges, and weighed this against the iron-clad salary raises, benefits and fairly lavish pensions of working in the public sector – this would be the choice they had made. Up to them.
Public sector equals job security for life and a taxpayer-funded pension against lack of ability to cast a vote every four years – how many of them would think it was a no-brainer?
This needs to be studied by a think tank for a period of time. I think it could work to building a stronger country which is not, of course, what Tone, Pete and the boyz want – but is, perhaps, what the owners of our country want.
As with Maggie’s brilliant, and previously unthinkable, privatisation, who is to say it would not be copied around the world within 10 years?
Hmm, that Grauniad article failed to mention that the rather unfortunate former social worker was jailed for 7 days for owing just £53.71 plus £10 costs. At a time when Islamic terrorists or ‘preachers of hate’ (call them what you will) are being sent home from jail, with no doubt a week’s unemployment benefit, then surely there must be some alternative to jailing old ladies and men for such ridiculously small amounts. I daresay the cost of just booking them into prison cost taxpayers far more than the paltry amount they were imprisoned for.
Julian – as I said in my very, very first post above, she wasn’t an innocent victim. She was a “social worker” for god’s sake! State supported all her life and state supported with a government pension now and didn’t want to give up any of what she’d got off the public in order to subsidise fellow government employees.
She wants someone else to pay, and why not? It’s always worked before.
Julian, I’m not being dismissive of your post, because it’s very important. I’m just saying it’s two separate issues: the British public sector and Islamics with an agenda in our midst.
Two separate agendas. No offence.
Tsk Tsk Verity.
I dont do arguements.
Why would I want to argue with you dear lady?
When I usually agree with what you say?
On this occasion though you are wrong. Either you have universal sufferage or you dont, and if you dont , then do not dare to call it “Democracy”( Bugger members of the house of lords, the insane the clergy as well as the imprisoned who are exempted from the chore of deciding between a rock and a hard place)
The rest of us know well enough when to turn up and stick a cross in the place we wish our country going towards.
See I have worked for the British Civil Service, and at no point did I think that my job depended on the way I voted.
People just dont think like that unless their French.
I read the words productivity and public employee in the same sentence on several posts. Forgive me for not using plain English, but would that not be considered an oxymoron?
Government employees are the same everywhere. I think they are a genetically linked to an obscure off-shoot of some species of sponge. Anyway, I fail to see how Veritas’ idea to remove their vote would work. After all, the real political base comes from the millions on welfare rolls. In the good ‘ole USA where I sweat and toil daily to support the welfare state, the lucky recepients are varied. A short list might include senior citizens, military and other government pensioners, drugged out welfare cases and millionaire farmers. Makes me seem like quite the sucker to fork over 40% of my hard earned dollars to support such noble causes. Guess I should look on the bright side, I could be living in the UK where it would be 60%.
Maybe we’re the suckers for not playing the system. At what point do you just give up getting screwed and join ’em?
I have said in previous posts that I want to see long-term (six months) wards of the state off the voter’s register as well.
I want to destroy the system that allows people to vote themselves a raise leeched off productive people’s salaries.
I think the founder fathers of the USA had it right when they limited suffrage to owners of land. Back then an income tax was unconstitutional so the taxes were mostly property taxes. The basic theory that, only those that pay for the government should vote is a good one. In order for it to truly be effective, the 16th Ammendment would need to be repealed.
So, hey, I think your onto something Verity!
TomSawyer
Minor quibble:
[only those that pay for the government should vote is a good one. In order for it to truly be effective]
Err, anyone who has submitted a soc. security at the time of employment pays federal income taxes in the US. Land ownership isn’t catagory of citizen that is required to send funds to the Fed anymore. So perhaps we need to re-qualify your suggestion.
Then again, I will have to second RAB’s comments that suffrage should be universal or may become arbitrary and subject to the whims and whimsy of the favored party or popular meme. It doesn’t seem to be possible to restrict voting rights more tightly, whatever the process for naturalization, without enticing those who may wish to veto your voting rights.
10 years from now:
‘Look here, you’re a white, privileged male! We’ve determined that your kind is responsible for every disaster visited upon mankind. No vote you! So say the majority of us!’
The vote was effectively removed from a large number of “public sector” workers in the last election – the military serving in Iraq. Convenient, really – as they were least likely to vote for the scumbags who dumped them there in the first place…
Verity, another objection that I can see to your idea about banning public sector employees and recipients of tax monies is whether it would be just to ban people like the Armed Forces from the vote? These men and women risk their lives to defend this nation and I would have thought are entitled to some say in how it is run. Ditto emergency service staff, for example.
Your idea has its attractions but it founders on basic tenets of natural justice.
A different tack might be to limit the franchise to owners of freehold property or leaseholders who have owned a property for at least 5 years. Similarly, to sit on a jury, be an MP, etc, similar rules would apply.
As for the old lady who was put in the slammer over a small council tax bill, she may have been an active member of the Communist Party for all I know, but millions of elderly people who have saved money all their lives and were probably on the right side of the spectrum will have sympathised with her.
Johnathon,
Are you serious? So if you rent a house you couldn’t vote? I know people who work in volatile private sector occupations and have to move with comparative frequency, who rent rather than pay Gordon Brown a fortune in stamp duty every time they move.
Your proposal would also remove the franchise from many, if not most, members of the armed forces (very few of whom own their own houses because they are always having to move around) whose franchise you wanted to protect.
Verity’s idea (however modified) is neither practical nor desirable.
HJHJ, yes, of course my proposal would remove all swathes of people from the vote. I mentioned the idea to demonstrate the logical absurdity of trying to exclude certain categories of person in order to bring about a “right” electoral result. I did not make that clear.
I don’t believe we can gerrymander the voting system to avoid the ratchet effect of a rising public sector payroll. As is usually the case in Britain, the doltish electorate will find out – late in the day – that the expansion of public sector workers is unsustainable and there will be a reaction. That reaction will be unpleasant and remind us of what life was like in the late 1970s. Sooner or later the costs will piss people off. Maybe that is happening already, which is why I want the Tory Party to grasp the issue firmly.
rgds
Then basically you need to destroy democracy. Whatever the merits of that idea, it is fair to say that it would hardly enjoy universal approval.
The 16th amendment is not essential for the levying of a federal income tax. To argue that it is seems to be a common libertarian delusion, but it really IS a delusion. If you want to look at legal judgements from before the 16th which uphold the right of the federal government to levy income based tax, there are plenty of them. Even before the 16th amendment, income tax was not unconstitutional in America. At that time of drafting the constitution, income tax was very rare anywhere in the world, but the fact that it wasn’t levied doesn’t mean or imply that it would have been illegal.
EG
Jonathan – Whenever proposing this idea on Samizdata, I have consistently (although I neglected to specify it this time) said our Armed Forces must be exempt from the ban as they are the ones that allow us to enjoy the freedom to vote. I hold our Armed Forces in very high regard.
Were the police uncorrupted by political correctness and surly judgementalism, I would exempt them, too; but given their behaviour and lack of interest in keeping the streets safe, the hell with them. (I don’t want to get into fiddly bits regarding the emergency services. Right now, this is a very broad idea that needs at least a solid year’s work.)
HJHJ says my proposal is neither workable nor desirable, but doesn’t say why. Come on, HJHJ – don’t be shy!
I don’t care about whether people own property or rent, as long as they’re paying for it themselves (or their employer is paying).
I make it a rule not to respond to Euan’s posts, but I don’t want to appear to be avoiding any issues, so when he says above: “Then basically you need to destroy democracy”, I would argue “not destroy; modify”. Do you call it democracy that over five million people in Britain can vote themselves favours and pension rises and pay increases on the backs of people working in the private sector democracy? I do not.
If there is some distaste for removing the vote entirely (although I would do it with relish), let us consider the idea of novelist Nevil Shute. Keep the universal franchise, but different categories of people would have different numbers of votes.
For example, if you work in the public sector, you retain your vote. If you live in the welfare sector (save pensioners), you still retain your vote. If you work in the wealth creation sector, which is vital to the survival of the nation and whose taxes fund the entire country, you get two votes. Members of our Armed Services, which are also vital to the survival of Britain, would also be accorded two votes.
Shute had a more complicated formula, but I think this is sufficient.
Comments?
Verity,
I have said why in several posts above. Perhaps you missed them (you didn’t answer my objections)?
Come on – it’s a daft idea. As I’ve pointed out you would even have the absurd situation where you would have a whole branch of the civil service just to decide who could vote and who couldn’t. These people, of course, being public sector employees, wouldn’t have the vote themselves.
And what about people who currently only have employment opportunities in the public sector, not because they want to work in the public sector but because it has taken over the employment opportunities in their sector? Example: Railtrack employees who were forced into the state-controlled Network Rail.
And who would vote for such a franchise restriction? How would you get the public sector to vote for it in the first place (and let’s face it, if they were all opposed you probably wouldn’t get an overall vote in favour). Or are you proposing a coup d’etat and implementing your franchise restriction by force?
HJHJ – Your objections: “Who would vote for such a franchise restriction?” (Well, it wouldn’t be a restriction; they’d still have the franchise, but the productive sector would have two votes.) We don’t know who would vote for it until it is proposed. I am saying – after a year or two of study by a think tank – the Conservatives should propose it in their manifesto.
There are 5 1/2 million workers in the public sector. Let us say their spouses or a member of their families will vote with them. So probably 11m people will vote against the proposal. Those 11m people were never going to vote Tory anyway, so there is no loss.
The question would be, would the Conservatives vote for it? My guess: yes. But, it may already be too late and the numbers may favour the passenger sector forever more.
“And what about people who currently only have employment opportunities in the public sector, not because they want to work in the public sector but because it has taken over the employment opportunities in their sector? Example: Railtrack employees who were forced into the state-controlled Network Rail.” This is a good point. I do not have answers. It needs an intelligent study by seasoned and talented political thinkers.
Civil servants wouldn’t be doing the deciding. There would be no deciding to be done. Anyone employed in the public sector, on the Pensions and Works computer or wherever else the information is stored, would be programmed as being eligible for one vote. As would the welfare sector.
Everyone else would be registered as eligible for two votes. We have to wrest control back to the productive sector and the numbers are already against us, which is why I think people in this sector, as contributors to the economy and therefore the health of the country, should get two votes.
the Conservatives should propose it in their manifesto
Glad to see that Verity, like myself, wants to speed up the inevitable destruction of the Conservative party.
And if you think i’m being too negative, then just turn on your TVs and weep.
They have nothing to offer that the voter wants. Melanie Phillips had a good piece on her site yesterday. They all want to be Tony Blair, probably the most discredited and loathed British politician in history.
Limiting the voting power of the public sector is a substantive issue and one that would engage the public. None of those currently running would have the nerve to propose it, though, so in that sense, Pommygranate, you are correct.
They all want to be Tony Blair?
I’ve just listened to Ken Clarke’s speech and I detected none of that nonsense. For all that I don’t agree with Ken on many issues, he was impressive.
Instead of tiptoeing around New Labour he went straight for the jugular, exposing Gordon Brown for the incompetent he is and making it perfectly clear that he would attack New Labour on the economy, the growth of the public sector, government interference in everything and on their distortion of the truth and general mismanagement. Contrast this with David Cameron’s touchy-feely wishy-washy message and the incoherent rubbish we had from Michael Howard in the last election.
It’s going to take Ken’s type of approach to get rid of this government. If no-one else shows the willing to do it, I’d support Ken even though he wouldn’t be my preferred candidate in many other ways.
Verity and others, I still think that tweaking the voting system is not going to do the trick, at least not until the state of public opinion shifts drastically. What the Tories should be doing is hammering away at the message that the rise in the unproductive state at the expense of the wealth creating part cannot endure much longer.
I do. I might not like it, but it is still democracy EVEN IF the people don’t choose the libertarian or anti-state choice. You aren’t advocating anything other than, at best, a qualified franchise. I think there’s merit in the idea that the vote should be restricted to those who contribute, but I don’t see that it could work by saying that you only get to vote if you don’t work in certain sectors.
The other problem with restricting the franchise is that no democratic government is ever going to suggest it as a serious proposal. You would, realistically, need dictatorship to do it. And the problem with dictatorship is finding a way to ship the dictator.
So, IF you can find a suitable benevolent dictator, and IF you can arrange a coup d’etat, and IF the dictator is good enough to leave afterwards, THEN you can install your limited democracy. And then you have to address what happens when the new more restricted democracy votes to derestrict itself and grant universal franchise once more. And you can’t put a constitutional bar on it, because they’ll just amend the constitution. And if you make things such that they can’t amend the constitution, you’ll end up with another dictator as people rebel in the face of inflexible government.
The idea has merit, but in practice it won’t happen because it is politically impossible in any reasonably expected circumstance.
Again, it’s seductive in theory but not in practice. You are then handing control of the government to a different set of vested interests. Being human, they will adapt and arrange things to benefit themselves, likely to the demerit of everyone else. Consider how doctors opposed the creation of the NHS in the 1940s, but now oppose its dismantling – once people start benefitting from a system, they don’t want it changed. All you’re proposing here is to change the group of people who benefit, and in time you’ll see just the same problems again.
The answer is to stop bitching and moaning from the sidelines about how bloody frightful the current bunch of politicians and vested interests are. Put your ideas to the public, argue your case and accept the verdict of the people. In a democracy you can’t do anything else. If you want something other than a democracy, you can’t assume it doesn’t have its own problems. It’s not unreasonable to conclude that democracy is the least worst system, considering the defects of all the other things that have been tried.
And replace it with what? Let me rephrase that, replace it with what party that is credible in the eyes of more than a tiny special interest minority of the voters.
EG
Jonathan, I agree with part of what you say. Yes, hammering away at the message can obviously be very effective provided the people wielding the hammer are motivated and canny. I don’t see it in the current crop of Conservatives, although HJHJ seems to have changed his mind about Ken Clarke.
But they should have solutions to suggest, and I believe one solution that should begin to be bruited about is a change in the voting system. You could even use Za-NuLab terminology, if you thought people had the stomach for it: “It’s fairer. Just now, the voting system is not fair.” Although first, I would like to see it subjected to rigorous examination by a political think tank.
We look at France and see how debilitating a gigantic public sector is. There are simply too many non-producers in France who have to be supported by an ever-smaller pool of wealth creators. Meanwhile, this public sector monster feeds ever more voraciously on the small private sector. Working weeks are ever-shorter; working years are ever-shorter. They’re now on a four and a half day week. And six weeks’ annual holiday (including public holidays and bridge days) and demands for ever-earlier retirement and larger pensions are unceasing. The power they yield is appalling. This is an object lesson. And the reason they voted Non to the EU constitution was not a principled refusal to yield sovereignty. It was that it didn’t accord them enough privileges.
I just re-read and enjoyed guy herberts post at 5:19PM on the 3rd.
Guy, the reason that won’t work is because the insult to their pride would be too great. They want power and they want respect.
So here’s a half serious proposal. Why not systematically reassign the responsibilities of all of the myriad of bureaucracies to supervise, regulate and generally interfere with each other?
By doing this in different segments of the ring, seemingly unrelated to each other, they could all be arranged in a vast daisy-chain. This would not only reduce their interference with the rest of us, it would permit them to ‘improve’ each other into non-existence. Especially if they were let to know that some of the money saved in the departments they are regulating would be added to their own budgets.
Hmmmm…..
Verity,
I haven’t changed my mind on Ken Clarke. I said before that although I preferred Davis policy-wise, he’d yet to show that he can be a leader in the same way as Ken Clarke, so I was undecided. Willets’s backing leant me towards Davis, but Clarke has shown how good he is likely to be atattacking the current incompetent and mendacious government. If Davis can match him in this respect, then I’d still go for Davis, but Clarke has made a very good case for himself.
Despite Clarke’s drawbacks (and many people here disagree with him fundamentally on several issues) he was a good chancellor and took on the public sector unions with plenty of verve (remember the ambulance drivers dispute?). He was perhaps not a big public sector reformer in many respects, but we have to remember that neither Margaret Thatcher nor John Major had a privatisation agenda on education, the NHS etc. as they had other, easier, targets at the time , so he could hardly have struck out for privatisation reform on his own, even had it been his inclination.
The point I’m making is that the first priority has to be to expose this government for what it is – and no more of the timidity shown by Howard at the last election over, for example, the economy. The differences between the candidates, although important, are less important than this.
Euan
As i’ve said before, i believe that most people in this country are fundamentally conservative in their beliefs. The benefits of the free market are now widely accepted (a months food at Tesco for a tenner, $2 jeans at Asda etc etc), foreign ownership of industry, marginalisation of the unions, privatisation no longer akin to trafficking heroin, bla bla.
The problem is with the image of the Conservative party. It is just terrible. Watching the conference in Blackpool makes me cringe. The audience consists of my Aunt Dot, her bigoted friends and some geeky men who have progressed from building model Airfix planes to espousing Tory politics.
To become electable once again, they just have to attract more charismatic people (like Ken Clarke) to the party.
The one (and possibly only) thing we can learn from Tone is that image is everything in winning elections.
So to get back to your point Euan, i think the Conservative party needs to implode, split up and form a breakaway group comprising youngish liberals that will attract right-leaning politicians from Labour and the LibDems and all those sick of the NuLab spin machine, and that will have credibility with voters.
It can be done!
Basically I’d agree, but aren’t most people probably closer to the Ken Clarke type of pragmatic “High Tory” than to the more dogmatic Thatcherite type?
Couldn’t argue with that, but it wasn’t so slick in the Thatcher days, either. However, in those days the Labour party was unelectable, so it didn’t matter too much. Today, the Labour party has numerous image problems, but the Tories are so much WORSE, just like Labour in the 80s.
I used to build Airfix planes, but I’ve progressed to Linux and Lego robots…
Last time I went to a party meeting, the average age was about 190 and the general feeling was young people should be thrashed as a matter of principle. Whiter than a pint of milk, too.
Agreed. But they won’t do this by shifting too far to the economic right, since the people that attracts are often in the mould of the spiv and jumped-up wide boy – look at the Tory line-up in the 80s and recall such oiks as Gummer, Archer and Brittan. This is a turn-off for the electorate.
Image is relative, though. They need to be more sane than the LibDems (not exactly hard), less stage-managed than Labour, and at least appear united around something – another thing they desperately need to learn from Labour is that suppression of internal dissent is vital. Nothing wrong with having full and frank discussions about things, but do it in private and DON’T let the voters see.
But not *too* liberal – there’s no market (as it were) for a rightward lurch as there was in the late 70s.
And they need to get sane on Europe. UKIP is not going to supplant the Tories, whatever the fevered imaginings of some. Are hundreds of thousands going to vote for a bunch of monomaniacal eccentrics who think a woman’s place is cleaning behind the fridge, for God’s sake? Its performance in the last election showed that all it can do is deny the Tory victory and thus admit a Labour or LibDem MP. It is not seen as a credible party by enough people to get an MP elected – and I’ll happily bet it never does – but it IS credible with just enough people to screw up the only serious opposition to Labour. It may be recalled that I predicted before the election that precisely this would happen, and behold, it came to pass. The party needs to neuter UKIP, not by adopting its policy but by showing it up for the band of loonies it is, and this will be done by taking it on in open debate about things other than Europe. A little muck-raking and black propaganda wouldn’t hurt, either…
I think that splintering the Tories will only result in a High Tory rump about the size of the current LibDems, a more libertarian mini-rump of a dozen MPs at best, more LibDems and another Labour election victory. It is not a sane policy.
EG
Of the UKIP, Euan Gray (who else?) writes:
” A little muck-raking and black propaganda wouldn’t hurt, either…”
Behold! The voice of “modernising” Conservatism (aka NuLabour Lite).
Just realism. UKIP isn’t doing anything positive and it is doing negative things. It needs to be stopped.
EG
Euan Gray writes:
” UKIP isn’t doing anything positive and it is doing negative things. It needs to be stopped.”
On the contrary. What needs to be stopped is people like you, without, it would appear, a single moral scruple or principle.
And they wonder why politicians are held in contempt?
So other than wrecking the only serious opposition to Labour and advocating splendid isolation from the reality of the nasty, cruel world, what positive things is it doing?
I have many moral scruples and principles. I also happen to believe that if you’re going to have a democracy it needs to be healthy, and if you’re going to have a government it needs to be effective. UKIP prejudices these goals by facilitating repeated Labour victories and crippling the opposition through distraction into futile debate, therefore it needs to go. And it will.
EG
Euan Gray writes:
“I have many moral scruples and principles…”
But they appear to stop at smearing anyone who dares oppose your insipid brand of Conservatism, and against whom you openly advocate the use of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign.
That advocacy will come back to haunt you, Mr. Gray. It is one of the most distasteful comments I have ever seen posted on this blog.
The tactics of a bully serving the principles of a whore.
I see, it’s ok to advocate forcibly slinging Moslems out of the country, denying the vote to anyone who works for a public body, compare a democratically elected prime minister to a fascist kleptocrat, advocate the military overthrow of independent states, accuse the public figures of corruption….I mean, that’s all fine but it’s REALLY beyond the pale to suggest that a procedure not exactly uncommon in democratic states – in fact, it’s routinely used by all British parties against all other British parties – be employed in the interests of maintaining a healthy and functioning democracy? Or are you seriously trying to suggest that British politicians don’t smear each other?
And you still haven’t answered the question – what IS the UKIP doing that is positive?
EG
Euan Gray – Yes, it’s OK to discuss all these issues, which were proposed by various people, among them me, and none of them G Cooper, grace of the owners of this blog.
There’s a chink there, highly rational and distanced Mr Gray, and this isn’t an ethnic slur. Something has made you angry.
I think “angry” somewhat overstates it. Let me say at the start that I have no objection to people discussing the things I listed.
I cannot help thinking that it is histrionic overreaction, not to say hypocritical sanctimony, to decry as “distasteful” the suggestion that politicians should behave in the way that politicians normally behave, but with a specific strategic end in mind, whilst at the same time saying nothing about the taste or otherwise of proposals which a great many would genuinely find distasteful. I don’t care who makes the suggestion, and please don’t think I was trying to single anyone out.
UKIP needs to accept that it is a distinctly minority party. Few people are going to vote for the ideas of women concentrating on fridge cleanliness, of banning the metric system, of pretending the EU doesn’t exist or that it has no effect on us whether we are in or out. But enough people are going to vote for them to deny a Tory victory, and that means enough people are going to vote UKIP to give another victory to Labour. But UKIP isn’t going to accept that it’s a minority nationalist party, because that is not its aim – its aim is to compel the Tory party to adapt to the whim of this small group of petty nationalists and xenophobes by using its ability to deny a Tory election victory.
Whilst I at once accept that not everyone who supports UKIP feels this way, it is nevertheless blindingly obvious as the only possible result of UKIP’s policy and practice. I note that Sean Gabb, someone with whom I rarely agree, wrote pretty much the same way last year when he published a memo said to be given by him to the Tories:
This is unhealthy, not only for the Tory party but for the functioning of democratic government in this nation. I conclude, therefore, that UKIP must be neutered. If UKIP wish to pretend they are a serious alternative party, then let them be engaged in a serious debate on a wide range of issues – this should be enough to expose them for the eccentrics, paternalistic reactionaries and petty Little Englanders they are. Given that they are a somewhat eccentric collection, then an auxiliary tactic of stressing the odd aspects of their characters may be useful. Then again, it may not even be necessary as in this sense UKIP is its own worst enemy. Character assassination is of course unpleasant, but ALL parties engage in it. Perhaps less pleasant – and certainly more laughable – is the manufactured indignation that such a “distasteful” procedure should be adopted.
UKIP, the micro-party that has a selfish agenda of blackamailing the only credible opposition party until it bends to its will, is somehow whiter than white and immune from such low tactics & should never have the game played against them? I think not.
EG
Euan
I actually see UKIP as a net positive for the Conservatives. UKIP acts as a magnet for all the more unsavoury elements in the Conservative party. By removing my Aunt Dot and her bigoted friends, the image of the party can only improve, sucking in the votes and support of the many political agnostics out there.
Dont confuse my plea for a decisive move to the right with a return to the scare slogans of Howard, Hague etc. The new party must vigorously fight for the rights of the working (as in paid employment) class, for equality of opportunity, it must be pro-immigration (albeit actually monitored), it must champion gay rights, womens’ rights and tolerance for different viewpoints (albeit non-violent ones).
It will work.
pommygranate,
I agree with you up to a point, but UKIP as it stands now needs to be dealt with. Yes, it would be good to get the idiots out of the Tory party, but just letting that happen isn’t enough. The best way of dealing with UKIP is to stand up to it and expose the lunacy of its policy on everything other than Europe.
Next step is the imposition of strict discipline on the Tory party. Once the party line is established, people need to be given the choice of supporting it in public or leaving. Private dissent is another matter, as long as it is civil and the public facade is not disturbed.
I think that if (when) the Tories lose the idiots & bigots, and once they start to appear decisive and united again, then yes, you will see their support increase. If they have a moderate platform, then they can recover lost voters from Labour and the LibDems, but if they go too far in the Hayekian direction nothing is guaranteed but further loss of support.
EG
Euan Gray wrote something which I haven’t seen refuted:
The Supreme Court found the income tax unconstitutional in 1895’s Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co..
I wasn’t aware of Pollock, but I was aware of a SC judgement in 1881 upholding the income tax, hence my comment. Pollock seems to be an interesting decision, and somewhat odd since in it the Supreme Court reversed itself and that only on a 5:4 decision.
Section 8, Clause 1 of the constitution grants Congress the right to raise taxes provided the rate of taxation is uniform throughout the US. It was on this basis that income was introduced and, AIUI, upheld by the Supreme Court.
EG
I had forgotten that the SC had upheld the constitutionality of the income tax, and agree with the questionable nature of the majority decision in Pollock.
Then again, the Supreme Court also came up with the decision it did in Kelo….