There are two crippling myths at the heart of societal anguish on youth apathy. The first is that young people’s lack of interest in politics is a demand-side problem. It may be true that that today’s younger generations are less interested in politics, for a host of reasons. But equally there is an important supply-side problem. Formal politics isn’t interested in young people, or if it is, it doesn’t know how to engage them. So alienation is a far more accurate label than apathy.
There is plenty of both qualitative and quantitative research in support of this conclusion. But relatively little research on the front line of the relationship between political parties and young people, that is, the youth sections of the main parties in the UK. This is due to a second crippling myth: that internet-driven, loosely-organised, direct action-style political itself represents a form of progressive political engagement. In addition to the fact that such activity probably remains the preserve of a relatively small stratum of young people, this myth also assumes that activity is its own end, irrespective of the outcomes achieved (or even intended). Climate change campaigners are a case in point. Speak to most activists involved in this issue, and they will tell you about the strength of their movement, citing website hits and Twitter followers and number of students at a teach-in. It’s early days, but in terms of outcomes, the green movement (of which I am a passionate supporter) is dangerously close to abject failure.
I am not saying greens should mimic the trade unions at the turn of the last century, and establish their own political party (or indeed join the one they already have). This is a question that will be settled in years to come. Horses for courses. My point is that while it would be unfair to say that this style of politics isn’t real politics, it certainly isn’t real enough. It should not be seen as a sign that there isn’t a supply-side problem in youth politics, embodied by the main parties’ youth sections. To herald Facebook groups, Live8, or yellow wristbands, as sites of meaningful political engagement is as disingenuous as politicians claiming that because they write tweets, and because you can apply for Jobseekers’ Allowance online, that they are genuinely engaging with young people. Young people need means by which to exercise genuine influence.
The little research there has been on parties’ youth sections shows two main things. Firstly, HE students are dominant. That may not matter in parties like the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives themselves dominated by university graduates. But it’s actually true of all parties, even far-left groups (and certainly greens). Secondly, parties chronically under-invest in youth organisation. The parent organisations have become corporate, centralised entities, uninterested in the vitality of their party’s internal life; older members may accept this as a reasonable sacrifice in the pursuit of elected office. But the same doesn’t apply to young people. Parties should surely be seeking to engage young people with diverse views from a wide range of backgrounds. Given the centrality of parties to the UK’s unwritten constitution, you could even say that this is their democratic duty.
Labour is the worst culprit. It has two youth sections, Labour Students and Young Labour. The former is hegemonic, and grasps 100% of the limited autonomous funding available – despite being extremely unrepresentative of the party’s support base. Young Labour has been bizarrely marginalised by party: they don’t even get to choose their own National Policy Forum members (three Young Labour reps on the party’s policy-making body are chosen by the party membership at large), and its ‘elected’ leaders don’t even have their expenses reimbursed. Far more importantly, the party shows no appetite for engaging with young people outside the party membership. There are virtually no resources or formal support for local activity and organisation. Moreover, the kind of individual this deformed structure attracts are invariably careerists from affluent backgrounds more interested in using the Young Labour or Labour Students banner as a perch for launching their own pursuit of high office.
Labour’s pending return to Opposition may encourage them to take youth politics more seriously. That would be a start. As the only major party with a potential support base among young people that extends significantly beyond HE students, Labour’s fortunes may well be a weather vain for the rest of the political class.
Let us pray: please Lord may the Chilcot Inquiry be the last we see of Tony Blair. This piece is the latest in a series of LeftCentral blogs on the fall of New Labour. Of course, New Labour’s problems extend far beyond the failings of a single individual. But the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the subsequent occupation, is by common consent the worst thing that Labour did in government, so it’s an apt place to start the autopsy. And this, more than anything else, was the deed of just one deeply flawed man.
I’ll start with his wife, who also made the news this week. As a judge, Cherie Blair still has some influence over public life in the UK. She told a defendant convicted of assault that she would suspend his sentence, partly because he was religious. This itself has attracted a bit of controversy. Far worse in my opinion is that, apparently, she went on to chastise the man for his behaviour, telling him that, as a religious man, he should have known better. Cherie’s harmless enough, and there has probably been too much made of this incident. But I think it tells us something quite alarming about nature of the Blairs’ religious conviction.
Just for a moment, Cherie placed this man above the law, by suggesting his sentence was more lenient than it should have been. Then she seemed to hold him to a higher law. And then she placed herself above the law. Surely going beyond her remit as a judge, Cherie (a Christian) told the defendant (a Muslim) what his faith demanded of him. Tony’s two recent public performances, being interviewed by Fern Britton and giving evidence to Chilcot, suggest that he did a very similar thing in deciding to invade Iraq.
Chilcot simply must find that Blair invaded Iraq with disregard for legal authority, and even at a more basic level, with very little evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to anybody. He admitted to Fern that his faith led him to war, and the public arguments used were only secondary considerations. And nothing offered at the Inquiry suggests otherwise. His performance was that of a supreme barrister. He painted a picture of the office of Prime Minister that suggested he was cornered into the invasion. He didn’t make a single decision, he told us, but rather it was a multi-stage process involving countless decisions and judgements which only culminated in military action when all other avenues had been exhausted for sound reasons. Explained in isolation, each tip-toe towards war was in-itself justified, resulting in a logic of no alternative.
Nonsense. There were ample grounds for resisting the surge towards invasion. The lack of a second UN resolution, the dodgy dossier, Cabinet opposition, the military’s concerns about capacity, and of course the legal machinations. These form part of a much bigger picture, but Blair is hiding in the detail. At the core of the bigger picture is the hubris of a profoundly flawed and arrogant individual. It gave birth to the desire for war in the Middle East. It doesn’t matter when or how the decision actually came about. Blair chose to put himself on the path.
The scary thing is, however, is that he doesn’t think he chose the path. He seems to believe that he was chosen for it. He is a man swept up in his own sense of righteousness, bestowed upon him by some higher force. I am not against religious for the most part – but when a person starts to believe that they are destined to play a role in some eternal battle between good and evil, this is the point when religious conviction becomes pernicious. 9/11 seems to have confirmed Blair’s worldview and bolstered his certainty, beyond the grasp of all reason and democratic constraint.
A quite trivial thing struck me during the Fern interview: when Blair admitted that he had decided many years before to abandon the Church of England in favour of Catholicism, but wanted to avoid the political nuisance of converting in office. Astonishing. This is a man who picked the current Archbishop of Canterbury, as was his right as Prime Minister. Despite losing faith in the C of E, he still thought it proper to appoint its leader. He couldn’t be bothered to explain what he actually believed. He took the opportunity to choose the country’s most important religious figure despite having secretly decided to switch teams. How could he live with this state of affairs? Because in his own mind, he had appointed himself as the country’s religious leader. And we all know that they work in mysterious ways.
Now he’s trying to govern the entire world in the same way through his Faith Foundation. Not having much luck, though. Of course that’s not the only thing he’s doing. He’s also making millions and millions as a corporate advisor and professional speech-giver. In other words he is mercilessly grabbing money. In my opinion this is the vengeance of the wronged man. He has come to despise his former electors for turning their backs on him. As he became more unpopular, he came to resent us for not appreciating the difficult decisions he made on our behalf. Because Blair’s sense of morality was wrapped up so intimately in his own sense of destiny, rejection by his party and his people has left him with no moral compass at all.
To reiterate, New Labour’s problems go beyond Blair. I suspect he lacked the policy know-how to be responsible for much of what his government did in office (in contrast to Gordon Brown). The question is: how did he end up at the forefront of the New Labour movement? Was it pre-ordained? His own ruthlessness, and considerable good fortune, obviously played a part. There is also something in the idea that the Thatcher years had destroyed the moral fabric of British society, including the Labour Party, to the extent that we had become ethically anchorless and therefore more vulnerable to Blair’s messianic preaching. From the other direction, the whole notion of new-ness attracts a personality like Tony Blair, a kind of Noah’s Ark mentality. In the Labour Party, he found a flock in need of a leader. He wasn’t one of them, but because after 18 years in the wilderness they no longer trusted themselves, that was just what they wanted. Amen.
The left (such as it is) doesn’t seem to like the idea of recognising marriage in the tax system. Economically, it would be too much like a tax break for the well-off, who are more likely to be married than the more impoverished members of our society. Culturally, too, it suggest privileging one cultural form over all others – especially when gay marriage is still illegal.
There’s also the practicality of it – even if encouraging marriage is the right thing to do, does anyone expect people to get or stay married for the sake of a very small amount of additional income?
Some of these ideas are convincing, but by no means all. On the practicality, there was a very interesting article by Peter Saunders of Policy Exchange this week (arguing in favour of a married person’s tax allowance), in which he admitted up front that the money on offer would make no differences to individual’s choices: David Cameron knows that nobody is going to get married, or avoid divorce, just to benefit from a tax allowance of a few pounds a month, he said.
I think we can call that one a victory for the opponents of the policy. Economically, the opponents’ argument is pretty sound too. Especially in the coming era of contracted public resources, giving a tax break away to people who don’t need seems daft, and would need a pretty strong justification to do it. Saunders’ argument that official recognition of marriage ‘might just help to shore up’ the institution of marriage clearly isn’t strong enough – again, even if supporting marriage is good, a taxpayer-funded punt like that would be irresponsible.
So is there another strong justification for a married persons tax allowance? Perhaps. Let’s begin by looking at the cultural argument – this is why the case against the policy starts to look weak. Such an allowance need not be reserved solely for married people. People in civil partnerships could also qualify. So could people in long-term co-habiting relationships (although Saunders rules this out, without really explaining why). The policy needn’t be about marriage at all – only about recognising that where two people act as a combined financial entity, they can be considered as such for tax purposes.
This is where we can turn to the issue of women’s rights, or indeed individual rights generally. The married person’s tax allowance is basically designed for couples where one person earns the money and the other stays at home. Currently, employed Spouse A is able to use their personal tax allowance, but stay-at-home Spouse B is not (because they don’t personally earn anything). Maybe that’s okay, because Spouse B is not personally contributing to the economy. But is that true?
Consider if this were a divorce case. The courts would rightly consider that Spouse B, by supporting running a home for Spouse A, is entitled to a sizeable share of the assets accrued by the couple during the marriage. It’s a recognition that while Spouse B did not technically earn the money through formal employment, he/she contributed significantly to the couple’s joint efforts to earn the money.
The same logic can be applied when it comes to the tax allowance. The couple have made a joint effort to earn the money, and when taxing this income it is only right that the state should recognise two people are involved in this effort – not just one of them.
That’s the case for it, and I believe it’s a strong one. Now, I don’t know if it’s strong enough to overcome the fact that doing it constitutes a middle- and upper-class tax break in a period of poverty for the state – probably not, but when better times for the public finances come along it has to be considered.
The same logic can be applied when it comes to the tax allowance. The couple have made a joint effort to earn the money, and when taxing this income it is only right that the state should recognise two people are involved in this effort – not just one of them.
That’s the case for it, and I believe it’s a strong one. Now, I don’t know if it’s strong enough to overcome the fact that doing it constitutes a middle- and upper-class tax break in a period of poverty for the state – probably not, but when better times for the public finances come along it has to be considered.
In the wake of JD Salinger’s death let me take this opportunity to unmask a great big phony, one who’s been pulling the wool over the eyes of the British voter for months now.
The phony is supposed ‘disagreement’ between the government and the Tories over whether the government should act now to bring down Britain’s budget deficit (apparently the Tory approach) or instead continue to support the economic recovery (Labour).
Peter Mandelson and Ken Clarke had a humourous but pointless head-to-head about this on Channel 4 News recently, which you can see again here.
The real difference between the two parties’ approach to the issue is tiny, to the extent that it is distinguishable at all. That’s not a bad thing, I just wish they would admit it.
Yes, you can sort of make an economic case both of the approaches, and the parties have tried to do that – trouble is neither of them really believe in their own policy. The Treasury, we hear, had wanted to start making big cuts in public spending before Gordon Brown stopped them – if Labour do win the election you can bet the cuts will start straight away, regardless of the economic situation. David Cameron has publicly disavowed the idea of big spending cuts and, in any case, is already committed to tax cuts (for married people, and inheritance tax) that undermines his deficit reduction agenda.
This whole divide between deficit reduction vs support for the recovery has come about solely because of the way the parties have chosen to position themselves. It’s PR, not economics. The Tories took a view that they wanted to be the party of fiscal responsibility – telling the difficult truths in order to make themselves look more statesmanlike. Meanwhile Labour, realising that ship has sailed for them, want to trot the old ‘your government is here for you’ line.
Let’s drop this phony war and get real for a change.
A guest post by greetings earthling
Are the foundations of the green movement crumbling? Recently we had the East Anglia emails scandal, which supposedly showed researchers were covering up evidence that did not conform to their theories, and now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits to an error in a major report on the topic regarding the speed with which Himalayan glaciers are melting.
We could just interpret these episodes as simply the effect of “climate change sceptics picking holes in the evidence” (with subsequent media hyperbole), or we can see it “holes in the evidence”. Whatever distaste greens may have for the uninformed rubbish the sceptics often come out with, we have to admit where holes in the evidence do exist. A hole is a hole is a hole, no matter who pointed it out.
Of course the apparent urgency of the climate situation means it’s likely emotions on both sides are going to run high occasionally. But green campaigners have to keep perspective, and remember that the main reason there in this fight is the scientific evidence of climate change.
None of us, especially lay people, conclusively know that man-made climate change is happening. I do believe in the scientific consensus that it is, but I can make no further claim to knowledge than that. I can fly in a plane around the world to satisfy myself the world isn’t flat, but with climate change my dependence on the better-informed is absolute.
In this situation we must always be wary of the Fox Mulder syndrome (“I want to believe”), especially because the climate change argument fits so conveniently with other things the left already tends to believe. For instance, let’s say that I’ve always held the view that big corporations and the right-wing parties that support them are crooks, or at least that they tend to do more harm than good to society. All of a sudden, along comes the idea of man-made climate change, with big energy corporations fingered as the primary culprits. My left-wing brain is hard-wired to believe in climate change before I’ve even heard the evidence.
None of this means the evidence is flawed, it’s just that a dispassionate view of it is as necessary as it is hard to achieve. And at the end of the day, aren’t the campaigners and the sceptics united in one opinion at least… we all hope the evidence is wrong.
Finally got round to reading Chris Mullin’s A View from the Foothills. I’ve always thought Labour had wasted a number of its brightest MPs – Tony Wright stands out for me – while in government, leaving them on the backbenches because they were a little too independent-minded to toe the collective responsibility line.
Here, Chris Mullin is served up as one example of the intelligent, free-thinking backbencher who did manage to squeeze his way in. His critique of the failings of the Blair government and the bloated Westminster/Whitehall world was something I was very much looking forward to reading (and hopefully being informed by).
Unfortunately it’s a huge let-down, mainly because of Mullin himself. Yes, there’s some amusing passages about John Prescott’s incompetence, but in these post-Tracy Temple days it’s hard to get excited by that.
What’s disappointing about Mullin is that he spends so much of his time moaning, and very little of it actually trying to do something with the job he has been given. First he’s appointed to the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (John Prescott’s first fiefdom) and given a mish-mash of a remit, although aviation is probably the most important policy area he handles.
Much of this diary is taken up with his subsequent complaints about the Government Car Service. I’m sure like most things in Whitehall this is a badly run waste of public money, but it seems like Mullin makes its reform his primary goal (and he doesn’t succeed).
On the actually important things, he does hardly anything. The expansion of Heathrow Airport and the privatisation of air traffic control were the two big aviation issues during his time at DETR. Admittedly, the decisions were ultimately being made by those way above him in the food chain (Gordon Brown in particular), but Mullin seems to make no effort to influence decisions even where he strongly opposes them.
He only shows any enthusiasm for his duties at the Department for International Development and then the Foreign Office when he ‘gets the travel bug’. This is not to say Mullin isn’t diligent in his duties, it’s just that he barely even tries to rattle the bars.
The odd thing is that Minister Mullin does have successes when he applies himself. He got the scourge of high hedges up the political agenda by badgering anyone who would listen. He also got Britain to take a firmer line with some rogue African dictator after one quiet word in the ear of Tony Blair.
Despite these, for the vast majority of the time Mullin simply gives up. Yes, he is consumed with endless, energy-sapping paperwork, but that’s not a good enough excuse. Just look at some of the sharp-elbowed weasels now sitting in Cabinet – if only Mullins had acted more like them, Labour’s time in government might have taken a different path.
Why do the tories want to recognise marriage in the tax system, or in other words, to cut taxes for married people? Is it simply a way of making the rich better off, or is it more to do with cultural preferences?
By way of warning, I should point out that this post seems very much to be based on the assumption that tax breaks for married people are wrong. Instinctively I think they are, although I’m not going in to too much detail here because I’m told that the False Economy is going to go through the pros and cons in another post in this series, and I’m sure old falsie is much better informed.
The economic argument is simple. Wealthier people are more likely to be married, ipso facto giving married people a tax break disproportionately benefits the Tories’ core constituency. It’s cash for votes and nothing more.
I’m more convinced by the cultural argument, the idea that the Tories want to favour marriage in the tax system because it’s a cultural ideal they want to endorse. Of course this isn’t mutually exclusive with the economic argument, but I do think it’s the dominant factor in the conservative approach to this.
The fact that Iain Duncan Smith is one of the leading figures pushing for this suggests the cultural explanation. The guy’s so odd, the fact that a normal-seeming and fairly attractive woman has agreed to marry him must be his proudest achievement in life. It has led him to think marriage is the solution to all social and personal problems.
I think it’s more cultural than economic because they don’t really seem that convinced by it themselves. Their plans are vague (at best). Although the rumours that a Cameron government would drop the pledge to recognise marriage fiscally have been denied, whatever they do may well have little more than symbolic value.
Compare this to their much more firm stance on inheritance tax. That really will be a tax bonanza for the rich, hence their commitment. The Tories can get what they want economically for their core voters through inheritance tax and income tax much more simply. The complicated matter of recognising marriage only persists because they have to show some level of commitment to their cultural ideal, give it a higher status.
Does this give any ammunition to opponents of the move? I think there are 2 things to draw from it. 1) Any party that proposes a tax change that is not really justified on economic grounds is on dodgy territory, so the counter-argument should focus on that. 2) It’s not really that important – it would be disastrous if Cameron’s plans to recognise marriage were dropped while his inheritance tax changes went ahead.
Coincidence? Obviously, yes. But curiously apt. One week after LeftCentral launches a blog named Enlitenment (a vehicle for pretentious rants about that vacuous, pseudo-real monstrosity we call popular culture), its inspiration the London Lite falls victim to the very-real economic crisis and goes bust. (Sorry if you are hearing it here first, but as of Friday 13th November, the London Lite has carpeted its last tube carriage).
If I’m honest, I’m relieved. It was beginning to feel like a bit like I was stalking Lily Allen. The paper’s greatest hit occurred, in fact, in its very last edition. For those who have never seen it, the London Lite included a story – and a large (usually unflattering) photo – of Lily Allen every single day. Yesterday, in homage to itself, it had a photo of Ms. Allen reading a copy. In other words, “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.” A sharp and hilarious sense of irony, perhaps? Or just an acute lack of self-awareness? Maybe the whole thing was a joke all along. Maybe Katie and Peter haven’t really split. Maybe they were never actually married. Maybe Simon Cowell isn’t that important.
Let’s get this out of the way: the London Lite was awful. It depicted a world where all that matters is movies, football and being thin. No worse than Heat or the Chris Moyles show, you may say. But at least they don’t masquerade as news.
But that’s not it. Nobody forced us to read it. Yet we did. It was shoved in front of our faces often enough, and even though every day we told ourselves “I will buy the Economist” or “I will finish Midnight’s Children”, we always took one eventually. The problem is not what the London Lite said, but rather what it said about us. About the lives we lead. I’m convinced that the paper’s ubiquity was owed to the fact that our daily lives are so full of pointless information, there isn’t as much room left for the important things as there used to be. And we are exposed every day to so many arbitrary risks and inconveniences, we are comforted by the trivialities of Paris Hilton’s nights out.
Yet now it’s over, the London Lite is no more. Can we have our lives back? Afraid not. The London Lite depended on advertising revenue. That is, on our unending capacity to buy crap we don’t need. But because we gorged on cheap credit to buy that very crap, we helped to created one of the worst economic crises in living memory. Advertising revenue dries up and Lily Allen can stop wearing sunglasses in the dark. So the London Lite is a victim of its own success, you could say. We’re not free. We are still stuck with the mess we’ve made and have to keep working those shitty jobs, only doing more unpaid overtime now, and not able to retire til god-knows-when. And it gets worse: we don’t even have anything to read.
I thought it would be bad, but I never thought it would be as bad as that. On Thursday the people of Glasgow “set about” Sir Paul Judge and his flawed Jury Team experiment. The Jury Team candidate, Glasgow Airport hero John Smeaton, came in eighth, behind all manner of political waifs and strays, with just 258 votes.
It’s embarrassing, very very embarrassing for all involved. Judge has complained that Smeaton wasn’t invited to hustings events during the election, but that doesn’t go anywhere close to explaining the scale of the failure. Especially considering the boast the Jury Team website makes about Smeaton being “Scotland’s most famous political candidate” – it’s not as if he lacks profile.
What does explain it? Well, it is always an uphill struggle for any independent candidate standing for election. Smeaton made it much, much harder for himself by aligning himself with the Jury Team. For instance, on the ballot paper he was described as “Independent backed by the Jury Team”. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Voters might well have been minded to back a man who had shown such personal courage, especially in a by-election in a seat being defended by an unpopular government. But I bet a great many of them were put off when they saw that contorted nonsense on the ballot.
As for the Jury Team, this surely has to represent the end of the road. They have abandoned their own raison d’être by selecting Smeaton as a candidate, weakening their already dodgy claim to be a non-party party. And they have ridden the wave of public anger over the expenses scandal as much as they possibly can, to absolutely no avail. It would be painful to see them push this thing any further (although I strongly suspect they will).
Party Rebel
False Economy
Enlitenment
Postcode Politics
The Canvass
Neopolitics