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Yesterday’s post examined Britain’s metropolitan elite and the unwitting effect they had on the 2015 general election, handing the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron another term with a clear majority of seats, surpassing the magic number of 326 to end up with 331!
At that point, Cameron no longer needed the Liberal Democrats in coalition. The Conservatives were fully in charge.
David Cameron
Cameron fulfilled two Conservative pledges:
1/ To resolve the 1977 West Lothian Question and EVEL — English Votes for English Laws — the Government made a change to a standing order in Parliament so that:
a new law could no longer be imposed only on England by a majority of all MPs if a majority of English MPs were opposed. However, a proposed new law could still be vetoed by a majority of all MPs even if a majority of English MPs were in favour.
This was abolished in 2021, a move with which I disagreed and instigated by a Scot, Levelling Up Minister Michael Gove, whom I do not trust at all. His reasoning was that the measures:
had “added complexity and delay to the legislative process” and that their removal would allow all MPs to be represented equally.[9]
I watched that debate. Why should another nation have its MPs ‘represented equally’ where English laws are concerned? English MPs cannot vote on another nation’s laws.
That said, so far, Scotland’s SNP MPs are careful to leave their benches when laws for England and Wales are debated.
2/ A referendum on leaving the European Union was scheduled for June 23, 2016. Fifty-two per cent of British voters opted for Brexit.
Although he said that he would abide by the referendum result, David Cameron resigned on Friday, June 24, that year at 9:30 a.m.
He and his wife Samantha honestly did not think the British would vote to leave. According to some news reports, Samantha spent much of the night in tears while watching the returns come in.
Theresa May
Theresa May became Conservative leader and Prime Minister in the summer of 2016.
Having previously branded the Conservatives ‘the nasty party’ at an annual party conference a few years before, she had big plans to improve opportunities for everyone living in Britain.
Although she was a Remainer, she pledged to abide by the referendum result. She appointed good Conservative MPs to her Brexit team, and Boris Johnson became Foreign Secretary.
The Opposition benches said that she had no mandate, so she held a general election in June 2017. Two trusted aides told her that polling showed that the Conservatives would do well. Furthermore, the controversial Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader. It sounded as if May and her party were shoo-ins. In the end, there was a hung Parliament and May brokered a confidence and supply arrangement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Arlene Foster at the time.
Things began to unravel further in the summer of 2018. May’s Brexit team had come up with a sensible, considered plan to leave the EU. May held a meeting at Chequers, the prime ministerial weekend estate, to discuss the plan. Unbeknownst to her colleagues, she had a compromise plan ready to discuss which superseded the Brexit team’s plan. She told her ministers that if they did not agree to her compromise plan, later rumoured to have been developed with German input from someone working for Angela Merkel, they were free to leave the country estate at their own expense. It was shocking and resulted in several resignations from the Brexit team. Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary.
By January 2019, May could get nowhere in Parliament with Brexit votes, even with her compromise. I began watching BBC Parliament in earnest at that time and haven’t stopped. We really do have a load of virtue-signalling troughers from the metropolitan elite in both Houses. But I digress.
On May 24, 2019, Theresa May announced that she would resign as Conservative Party leader on June 7. That triggered a leadership election by the party members. May stayed on as PM until July 24, the day after Boris Johnson became the new leader of the Conservatives. Today, May serves on the backbenches, representing the constituency of Maidenhead, a delightful Home Counties town bordering the Thames.
Boris Johnson
Boris gave his first speech at the despatch box, all guns blazing. I watched it on television. He had a go at Labour, alleging that one of their MPs had been involved in corruption while serving on the Greater London Assembly many years before. A PM couldn’t get better than this.
However, Brexit was the major issue, and he was presiding over the hung Parliament from the 2017 election, with Arlene Foster’s DUP providing confidence and supply to Conservative policies. Try as he might, Boris could get nowhere with the Opposition benches.
Brexit negotiations with the EU resumed on August 28, 2019, the same day that Boris attempted to prorogue (adjourn) Parliament from September 10 to October 14. He claimed that the prorogation would cover all the party conferences normally held during that time. However, court cases arose in the Supreme Court in England, presided over by Baroness Hale, she of the spider brooch (Guido’s story involves a later controversy, unrelated to the prorogation):
‘Spiderwoman’ Hale’s decision forced Parliament to reconvene on September 3. It will come as no surprise that attempting to get Brexit votes through the House of Commons became even more difficult. On September 4, the Benn Act, a bill to block a no-deal Brexit passed. At that point, Boris proposed a motion to hold a general election on October 15. It failed to command two-thirds approval from MPs.
In addition, several Remainer Conservative MPs had the party whip removed at that time, which made matters worse. Although some had the whip restored, the Conservatives no longer had a working majority.
As a result, Parliament was dissolved in October 2019, with an election called for December 12 that year.
What voters thought
Whether Leavers or Remainers, more people began paying close attention to the goings-on in Parliament.
Leavers knew that, while Boris was flawed, he was on their side with regard to getting Brexit done. After delay upon delay in Parliament from June 2016 to October 2019, that was all that mattered.
Remainers wanted a second referendum to confirm (ahem) the first vote. In other words, they wanted to overturn the 2016 vote.
Leavers felt increasingly betrayed by Parliamentarians. However, Brexit was also beginning to have an effect on their personal lives: relationships broke down, family feuds began and working life became strained.
England was becoming a highly divided and divisive place, exacerbated by print and broadcast media alike. Leavers felt alienated and betrayed.
The fallout between 2015 and 2019
I’m returning briefly to the comments left on the 2015 Guardian article I cited yesterday: ‘The metropolitan elite: Britain’s new pariah class’, which appeared on May 22, two weeks after the general election.
What people felt about the metropolitan elite did not change in the four years that followed. Voters were disappointed.
One Guardian commenter remembered the unity during the Thatcher era as the Iron Lady began closing mines (emphases mine):
We have a situation amongst the majority of the “lower classes” which is this:
If you dare to offer a “lefty” opinion you are automatically assumed to be a rich metro elite type, with no experience of the real world.
If you dare to offer a “right” opinion you are immediately branded a racist, ignoramus.
Does no one else see the division this has caused?
Remember when the gay rights groups went to help the miners? Can you imagine that happening today? – They’d be sniping at each other over these perceived differences, instead of recognising their similarities and fighting together against a common enemy.
We are all exactly where they want us, and until we recognise that- the real elite have won and will carry on winning- regardless of what colour they pin to their (old boys) ties.
Another went back further in time, putting forward post-war Prime Minister Clement Attlee as a man of duty:
… the most effective Labour Prime Minister by far was Clement Attlee: the son of a well-off London solicitor, educated at Haileybury and Oxford, served with distinction as a junior officer in WW1 and reached the rank of Major. Though not a patrician, you’d hardly have called him a man of the people, and I suspect that he would have felt under no obligation to put on glottal stops or pretend that he liked football (though he had actually played it in his youth).
The point is that perhaps aided by attending Haileybury – the public school that specialised in training boys up for the Indian Civil Service – he had an intense, deeply ingrained sense of his duty to the nation and particularly to the less well-off part of it, which carried him through all the vicissitudes of setting up the Welfare State in a bankrupt, exhausted country with an empire to get rid of. He knew what had to be done, and he was determined to do it, and what focus groups or the media thought about it was of no consequence to him.
… where there is no vision the people perish. Without a thoroughgoing analysis of the state we’re in and a thought-through programme for putting it right, such as it had in 1945, Labour is simply wasting its own time and everyone else’s and might as well shut up shop now.
People dislike when MPs are not local, especially when a well-heeled Londoner represents a disadvantaged Northern constituency:
It’s ridiculous that these parachuted-in pillocks can hold office in northern constituencies when many of them will secretly smirk about it being “grim up north” every time they’re sat in some trendy London wine-bar.
Someone had a solution to candidate selection:
We need to stop north-London PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics] graduates from pretty much automatically getting into Westminster. Anyone who’s interested in being a politician does that PPE degree, then works for a think-tank or as a political advisor then a junior minister and so on.
Candidates should be elected from people who live in individual constituencies, who have done proper jobs and who genuinely wish to fight for their communities. In this system George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband would not be able to stand in northern constituencies; they’d have to run in the cities and towns where they actually lived. Generally speaking, that would mean a borough of London – Oh, wait Chukka Umunna and Ed Miliband live in the same borough? Tough! Only one of them can stand for Labour. What’s that; several of the Tory cabinet live in the same town in rural Oxfordshire? Oh dear, only one of them can stand. And in order to prevent parachuting candidates in, they’d have to live there for at least five years prior to being selected.
The whole political system in this country lacks any legitimacy. The people who are affected the most by politics are the people who are the least engaged in it …
This issue also affects London. One person wrote about Labour’s David Lammy:
Lammy is my MP and I like him, but I do have a slight problem: according to the Tory leaflet through the door pre-election, he doesn’t live in Tottenham, his constituency, he lives in Crouch End, which is rather met-elity itself. Not to mention giving the option of a state secondary school you’d actually want your kids to go to.
If the Tories were lying I apologise.
One reader understood why people resented the metropolitan elite:
I totally get the hatred of the “metropolitan elite”. The assumption that you, as someone who is not a member of that class, will have no idea what they are talking about whether it is art, literature, politics, whatever and, by extension, you are an idiot. It’s bloody infuriating!!
It’s essential for the media not to leave London:
Aside from John Harris I know of no other Guardian columnist that sets foot out of London – or even North London.
Tell a lie – Polly [Toynbee] is in Brighton for her Arts Festival.
That’s the nature of metropolitan elites – write about those less well-off but be sure never to meet any.
Also:
Metropolitan elite means people living in London who are unnatural and out of touch with the rest of the country. This is nothing new. The medieval word for a Londoner was “cock’s egg”‘ (cockney) which also described something unnatural and out of touch.
I did not know that!
Other readers noted the petty, controlling interference that the metropolitan elite display:
Different people will have different reasons for disliking the ME. One of these must surely be the neopuritanism they espouse, which means you’re always looking over your shoulder worrying whether you’ve exhibited the wrong attitude, e.g. insufficient enthusiasm about gay marriage or a penchant for Top Gear.
On that topic:
Metropolitan elite who work in media, government, academia, charities, and NGOs from the National Trust to Oxfam and the Royal Society. These tend to coalesce on gay marriage, “safe” places, “islamophobia” issues, pro-EU sentiment, pro-Obama and catastrophic climate change. Just watch the BBC for any length of time.
Another said:
I personally feel this miring of everything in semantics does little to describe the current rot in UK politics. It would be better to use a historical example – I personally think referring to these people as “The Marie Antoinette Class” is more appropriate. It illustrates just how out of touch they really are with the current reality of life for British working people.
Even worse, they don’t really seem to be British at heart:
What has happened (maybe?) is that the elite in the UK (England specifically) has become more like other countries – urban and bourgeois, rather than rural and aristocratic – and without the aspiration to ennoble themselves that the previous industrial bourgeois had (by marrying their wealth into the old order’s titles). What we have now is a class of educated professional people who share urban liberal-middle-class values that are much more like those of their equivalents in other European countries than they are many of their own compatriots.
Another reader also noticed the lack of Britishness:
One explanation could be that many young educated people in Europe were brought up to feel European (or even global) than from a particular country or region. Programs like ERASMUS and the increasing cheapness and availability of travel have opened up the horizons of many smart and educated individuals. This is definitely causing a class divide with those who remain rooted and patriotic. Combine that with the growing phenomenon of elitism in all societal institutions (you need a degree to do anything these days), then you inevitably get more of group A in all positions of power.
I can’t tell whether this is a good thing (or even inevitable) or not. The “metropolitan elite” would probably find themselves thinking that they are better than group B, who are quagmired in small mindedness and petty issues. Then you have group B, made up largely of working class people, who are feeling disenfranchised and silenced (the elite would probably condescendingly refer to it as “feeling left behind”). It’s like a soft Russian revolution, and look what happened that time when they let their “betters” look after them. I think a healthy society needs to always listen to both sides, whenever you start thinking “you know best” and ignore the plebs who “don’t know any better”, well, then you get the Star Wars prequels.
Globalism alienates:
There is hardly any difference in the political parties communications, only semantics. The nation state is dying and Universalism is taking over through the multinational corporations & global organisations.
One reader gave us the education profiles of the main political players of 2015 and the Labour years:
They are all cut from the same cloth…a ll that differentiates them is how they divvy up and pork barrel the the trolls tax contributions.
Cameron: Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Brasenose College, Oxford
Miliband: Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics
Clegg: University of Cambridge, the University of Minnesota, College of Europe
Farage: Dulwich College, a public school (private), and stockbroker….
Mandelson: Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Catherine’s College, Oxford
Blair: St John’s College, Oxford…and various private schools
Brown: University of Edinburgh, History (as the son of CoS [Church of Scotland] Minister he is definitely middle class)
The list is not exclusive…….but the stench is unmistakable……
At least voters know where they stand with the Conservatives:
This is why the Tories won the election. So the PM is posh and privileged. He knows it and we know it.
Someone complimented Cameron’s approach to EVEL:
What people object to, at a gut level, is getting a clever-dick, hypocritical answer to their concerns.
For example, Labour’s position on EVEL is transparently self-serving and relies on a lot of chin-scratching about complicated constitutional niceties. In contrast Cameron’s proposition, that it is only fair for England to have self-determination on the same issues which Scotland does, is an uncomplicated statement of a simple principle, even if it is of course equally self-serving.
So people see Labour as putting self-interest first and talking down to them about constitutions, on the one hand, and on the other they see Cameron espousing a simple principle which they see as being on their side.
It’s no surprise Labour end up on the wrong side of so many arguments.
Interestingly, someone brought up Boris:
Londoners are not much interested in the politics of power, influence, wealth and class envy. For many, social justice might mean the mortgage paid off so they can fund their care home one day. Love him or hate him, Boris Johnson recognised and tapped into this and that’s why they voted Boris Johnson Mayor. Twice. London actually gave an early indicator for the national mood.
Labour, on the other hand, cannot relate to most people. The second sentence gave me a chuckle:
I am still angry that Ed wasn’t able to put his view across more forcefully.
He is very fond of the third chapter of The Working Classes And Their Struggle For A Cohesive Understanding Of Dialectical Materialism Within A Framework Of Sonambulant Artifice And Prolapsed Thinking and yet people still didn’t think he understood what life is like on a Council estate or in a factory.
It beats me.
Someone else agreed, saying that Labour were interested only in themselves:
Labour’s metropolitan political class – and believe me, they are ABSOLUTELY the worst, an utter ideological and moral vacuum compared to, say, the Lib Dems or the centrist strain of the Tory Party – are utterly without allegiance to anyone but their own caste.
What voters want(ed)
One reader provided a profile of the ideal MP:
Here’s what we require of our politicians:
(1) honesty
(2) probity
(3) the ability to listen to their constituents
(4) the ability to put the needs of their constituents before the interests of big business, the aristocracy or the establishment.
Tick all four boxes and I don’t care where you were born, where you were schooled or where you live. The problem is finding anybody who’ll tick those boxes.
Little did that person know that a bevy of Conservative candidates could tick those boxes in 2019.
To be continued next week.
By chance, last week I read an article from May 20, 2015 in The Guardian about the general election result earlier that month: ‘The metropolitan elite: Britain’s new pariah class’.
Labour lost, leaving the metropolitan elite scratching their heads and wondering why.
Zoe Williams’s article has three pages of comments, which are illuminating. The general public revealed why Conservatives won not only in 2015 but even more convincingly with an 80-seat majority in 2019.
Of course, in between those two elections was the one held in 2017, whereby Prime Minister (PM) Theresa May barely scraped by with a slim majority which caused her major problems in getting Brexit legislation passed in the first half of 2019. She resigned during the summer, and Boris Johnson became party leader, thereby succeeding her as PM. He held an election on December 12 that year, primarily to break the Brexit deadlock. It was one of the best things he ever did.
What is the metropolitan elite?
Zoe Williams, who has been writing for The Guardian for decades, defines the metropolitan elite through interviews with other people which makes up the article.
The characteristics that tie the metropolitan elite together are working in London, living in an upper-middle class bubble, going to a public (private boarding) school; having an Oxford degree (especially in Philosophy, Politics and Economics); making a close network of friends from school and university; finding employment in politics, the civil service, law, the media and academia. They ensure their children follow the same route.
No one’s definition is perfect. Each needs another element added to it.
Williams concludes that an exact definition doesn’t really matter, because it is fluid, but the reality is that this group has caused the ethos of Parliament to change through the years (emphases mine):
The meaning of “metropolitan elite” is not fixed. It will change in the mouth of whoever says it, and it will take on the shape of the person to whom, for whatever combination of reasons, it is thrown at and sticks. But the anger is real: parliament, as the last century understood it, represented the people to the state. Parliament now represents the state to the people. And maybe “metropolitan” is a way to say that, and to give it a face.
Background to the 2015 election
Below is a summary of the highlights of the 2015 election.
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats
David Cameron was PM at the time, part of a coalition government with the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg was deputy PM.
Clegg ran as the Lib Dem candidate as he was party leader at the time.
Cameron was getting a lot of heat about holding a Brexit referendum. Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP at the time, piled on the pressure. Referenda are not a British thing and Cameron could have happily ignored it were it not for the fact that a Conservative victory depended upon granting voters a Brexit referendum.
There was also much talk at the time about English Votes for English Laws, or EVEL: the inappropriateness of allowing Scottish MPs to vote on English laws when English MPs have not been able to vote on Scottish laws since devolution in 1999. MPs from Wales and Northern Ireland can also vote on English laws, but the issue mainly concerns Scotland, since many laws apply equally to England and Wales. EVEL — arising from the West Lothian Question of 1977 — was another issue Cameron had to address in the campaign. As such, it became part of the Conservative manifesto that year.
Labour
Ed Miliband was Labour’s leader at the time.
Emily Thornberry
The snobbish aspect of the metropolitan elite, which Labour embodies so well, came to light during the World Cup in 2014. Emily Thornberry MP experienced a combination of bemusement and outrage upon seeing that someone would have the audacity to display St George’s flags, representing England, outside their home. What’s more, there was a white van parked in the driveway. Oh, the horror!
She tweeted a photo of the house and captioned it: ‘Image from #Rochester’
The offending home was in Rochester, Kent, where a by-election was being held in November that year. The owner of the house said that he put three St George’s flags up during the World Cup and decided to leave them flying from an upstairs window.
On November 14, the BBC reported that Thornberry resigned from the shadow front bench as a result of the tweet (bold in the original here):
Emily Thornberry has resigned from Labour’s front bench after sending a tweet during the Rochester and Strood by-election which was branded “snobby”.
The shadow attorney general apologised for the message, which showed a terraced house with three England flags, and a white van parked outside.
UKIP said she had “sneered, and looked down her nose at a white van in Strood with the cross of St George on it”.
Labour leader Ed Miliband was “angry” at her, a senior figure told the BBC.
The resident of the house, Dan Ware, said Ms Thornberry – the MP for Islington South and Finsbury – was a “snob”.
“I’ve not got a clue who she is – but she’s a snob,” he told the Sun. “We put the flags up for the World Cup (in 2014) and will continue to fly them.”
Even today, everyone who loves England remembers Thornberry’s attitude towards our nation’s flag. Ed Miliband was right to have been angry at the time. It must have lost Labour votes in certain constituencies:
The Independent had more:
Three hours later she apologised, after Ed Miliband intervened and the Labour leader made it “very clear” that he believes people should be able to fly the England flag without feeling ashamed.
Following her resignation, Labour has revealed that Thornberry had spoken to Mr Miliband a second time.
“Ed and Emily had a second conversation. She thought the right thing to do was to resign. Ed agreed,” the source said.
Her tweeted apology received strong reactions, among them the following:
Simon Danczuk, who was the Labour MP for Rochdale at the time, could see the elitist London-centric outlook at work:
Everyone will know exactly what she meant by that comment. I think she was being derogatory and dismissive of the people. We all know what she was trying to imply.
I’ve talked about this previously. It’s like the Labour party has been hijacked by the north London liberal elite and it’s comments like that which reinforce that view.
In the end, Mark Reckless won the by-election which was held because he wanted to change party affiliation from Conservative to UKIP. Nigel Farage had told him to do the right thing by asking his constituents. Reckless became the second UKIP MP to serve in the House of Commons when he joined Douglas Carswell that year. Carswell also had to hold a by-election in his constituency before Farage would allow him into UKIP.
Ed Miliband
Returning to Labour, a month before the by-election, Ed Miliband proposed a mansion tax, aimed primarily at Londoners.
However, a Londoner from Dartmouth Park in Kentish Town, Dan Carrier, wrote an article for The Guardian in October 2014, saying that not everyone living in a house in North London was necessarily wealthy: ‘My house in the middle of Ed Miliband’s street’.
It so happens that Ed Miliband and his family moved into the street where Mr Carrier grew up. In 2014, his parents still lived in the same house and he had the good fortune to be able to buy a home just a few doors down.
The Carriers and the Milibands are two very different classes of people:
In many ways our road is a typical London street: a mixture of Victorian terraces, some grand double-fronted villas and a postwar apartment block. More recently, however, it has had national media attention, prompted by the arrival a few years ago of Ed Miliband and his family. When they decamped from Primrose Hill, the move produced a swathe of articles describing my neighbourhood as a place of leafy-lefty-intellectual-middle-class types. The road I grew up on, and moved back to, has become shorthand for the gentrification of north London. The gap between the property haves and have-nots has never been starker, and housing is set to be a defining issue of the next general election. Ours is just one street, but it could be anywhere in the capital.
Carrier described many of his neighbours, who were working- or middle-class, hardly of the metropolitan elite. As such, a mansion tax would have been devastating:
Under the proposed system, many of Ed’s neighbours could face large bills.
The newcomers, however, were flush with cash:
One recently arrived couple, both on six-figure salaries, asked not to be named. Being able to buy a property in this neighbourhood these days, it seems, is enough to single you out for unwanted attention.
They say they moved here because of “the large houses, and the fact it’s not chi-chi like Hampstead or Primrose Hill. You see neighbours at the weekends, they’re not all out at their country homes. You don’t see Fortnum’s vans pull up.” Dartmouth Park is not yet Mayfair, in other words – not a comparison my parents’ generation would have felt compelled to make. “It feels like a real street, with real people.”
In the end, there was no mansion tax because Labour lost the election, thankfully.
By the way, Ed’s house has two kitchens in it. One is for the nanny and the children. The other is for Ed and his wife.
Ed Miliband could have taken some advice on the PR front. The lesser of his campaign sins was jamming a bacon sandwich into his mouth, further proof that no one should be photographed eating. The greater sin, however, was imitating Moses by erecting a stone listing five Labour Party goals, dubbed the Ed Stone. Oh, my, how we laughed at such hubris.
The election was held on Thursday, May 7.
Miliband resigned as Labour Party leader on Friday, May 8, a position he had held since September 2010.
By May 10, the Ed Stone was nowhere to be seen.
That day, The Guardian reported:
A case of champagne is among the rewards being offered by tabloids and rightwing pundits in return for the whereabouts of the so-called “Ed Stone”.
The 10 commandments-style tablet, engraved with five promises and unveiled in the final days before the election, was meant to symbolise how Ed Miliband would keep his pledges and restore trust in politics.
But the gimmick was perhaps the greatest gift Miliband gave to his opponents – and the mockery shows no signs of letting up even after his resignation and the quiet disappearance of the stone.
An 8ft 6in-high, two-ton limestone hulk is not the easiest thing to hide. But the stone, which was rumoured to have cost up to £30,000, is proving remarkably elusive and Labour sources are staying tight-lipped.
The Mail has offered a case of champagne to any reader who has information that “leads to the discovery of the Ed Stone”. The Sun has set up a dedicated “Ed Stone hotline” for tips about the stone’s whereabouts.
But without any apparent success in locating the real thing, the Sun also offered its readers a chance to win a full-size replica of “the Labour loser’s laughable slab”.
It was only on January 16, 2016, that we found out what happened to the slab. The Guardian reported:
The Ed Stone was broken up shortly after the general election, it has been revealed, putting an end to eight months of speculation about its whereabouts.
Two party officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg News that the stone had been destroyed in the weeks following 7 May 2015.
Shortly before the election, David Cameron tweeted that there would be chaos with Ed Miliband (pictured with Ed Balls on the left):
Miliband is still an MP.
The Ed Stone might not have survived, but one of his lasting legacies as Energy Minister from Labour’s time in power has: the green levy on home heating fuel, which is more than the VAT. The Conservatives should scrap the levy. Perhaps they will when the cost of gas for the home reaches breaking point and people get sufficiently irritated with Net Zero.
I wrote two posts about the 2015 election. In the second, I wrote about the ‘historic upset the pollsters missed’:
Even the most accurate poll — the exit poll — slightly underestimated the final total. The Conservatives won a clear majority of seats, surpassing the magic number of 326 to end up with 331!
David Cameron no longer needed a coalition government.
Today, Nick Clegg works in California for Facebook and has just received a huge promotion as president of global affairs for parent company Meta, taking on some of Mark Zuckerberg’s former responsibilities.
What the public thought
In 2015, the public made it abundantly clear that they preferred a Conservative government.
The readers’ responses to Zoe Williams’s article about the metropolitan elite made some excellent points. I read them all.
One person said that the Conservatives’ policies appeal more to the average Briton:
The election was won by the Tories less because they represent the views of more people than any other party than because their policies offended fewer people than those of any other party. The widespread and insidious disenchantment with politicians stems from this disconnect and it just happens that at the moment the Tory message is marginally less unpopular than a whole range of unpopular messages – probably because the Tory demographic is a currently a bit wider than that of Labour.
Another said that Labour had deserted the working class for the middle class:
A large section of the working class of this country still can’t box their way out of this ingrained deference to the ruling class. The existence of the royal family and the institution of the monarchy is the guarantor of that deference. But they do not feel the same deference to the ‘metropolitan elite’ and this fact has been nicely used by right wing media to undermine urban liberalism and split the working class vote. The Labour party will have difficulty fighting its way out of this conundrum so long as they exclude working class representatives in favour of middle-class ones, black or white.
The working class feel ignored:
Labour are more and more removed from working class people … The divide is growing -hence the growth in UKIP in traditional labour areas. The metropolitan elite – useless Ed is one of them – have failed to understand and address the concerns of their traditional voting base in far too many areas.
Someone said that the Labour Party was synonymous with the metropolitan elite:
If the Labour Party (or the metropolitan elite that provides it`s talking heads) thinks that simply stealing the Conservatives`s clothes or repositioning themselves on Europe is going to work – forget it. At the moment the terms “Labour Party” and “metropolitan elite” are interchangeable and are synonymous with what us plebs would call “being out of touch”. Can the Labour Party learn how to talk to us again?….They`d better, and quickly because at present we`re all listening to the Tories and UKIP …
Another reader said the same thing:
I say this as a northern working class boy …
Until we have a left wing party led and organised by the working class, I’m a Tory. All you people still voting Labour when these people are in charge of the party are fools – they’ve tricked you into believing they represent you, but actually you’re just useful to them to legitimise their marginal differences compared to their blue friends in the next street.
Two people even had a go at Zoe Williams:
Zoe Williams. Godolphin and Latymer School, Oxbridge, lives in Camberwell, brays, wrote a tedious feminist piece about why she married the father of her kids after a decade as if anyone cared, spouts by-numbers liberal-lefty discourse every week in the Graun.
I don’t loathe the metropolitan elite. It’s just a shame there are so many of them clogging up the national media, the political scene, academia, the arts, public policy, etc. when they represent such an infinitesimal cadre of people. So much for the ‘diversity’ they so often chirrup about.
Also:
YOU, Zoe W, are most certainly a member of that elite. How else do you get on What The Papers Say on Sky television?
This comment seemed to unknowingly say the most about what would happen in December 2019. Britain was — and is — becoming more nationalistic, but not as a Union, only as separate parts:
Events in Scotland and the victory of the SNP and the rise of UKIP, particularly in Northern heartlands, have raised questions about the leadership of a working class party by a group of North London academics and politicians. However the real event is the battle of ideas about what a Labour Party should represent as the North London hegemony over policy has dissolved. The Blairites are in the news on the TV every day attempting to solve the problem of hegemony by a return to the centre. Both the SNP and UKIP have shown that there is no way back as both Scotland and large swathes of England are staunch nationalist. The rest of England, with the collapse of Lib Dems, is dark and lite tint blue Tory, and as such a distinct Englishness has temporarily been established. This Englishness is different from that of the UKIP North and certainly different from that of the Scottish nationalism of the SNP. The hegemonic moment of North London has in the words of Tom Nairn come face to face with the break up of Britain. Dr. Eamon O’Doherty
And, lo, it turned out to be …
More to come tomorrow.
The first part of a review of last week in Parliament concerned coronavirus with a follow-on here.
The other big debates last week were about the Internal Market Bill, a legislative safeguard to preserve Britain’s sovereignty after the Brexit transition period concludes at the end of the year.
Talks with the EU have reached an impasse. Worse, the EU wants to take Northern Ireland hostage, as it were, with the possibility that food from other parts of Britain might be prohibited from reaching it. Absurd, but that is the state of play.
On Saturday, September 12, Steve Baker tweeted:
The Telegraph article in Steve Baker’s tweet explains (emphases mine):
Boris Johnson has accused the European Union of threatening to impose a food “blockade” in the Irish Sea that would destroy the “economic and territorial integrity of the UK”.
Writing in The Telegraph, the Prime Minister made a passionate defence of his decision to alter the Brexit divorce deal, saying he has to protect Britain from the “disaster” of handing Brussels the “power to carve up our country”.
He also issued a direct plea to Tory MPs threatening to rebel over his plans, telling them that, if they stand in his way, they will reduce the chance of getting a trade deal with the EU.
Mr Johnson insisted a Canada-style trade deal with the bloc is still possible and remains his goal, but that Brussels must “take their threats off the table” and rebel MPs must get into line. He also believes the UK will still “prosper mightily” under a narrower, Australia-style trade deal.
The Prime Minister claimed the EU could effectively impose a food blockade across the Irish Sea by refusing to grant the UK approved “third party” status for food exports, which officials say Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has “explicitly” threatened.
The Withdrawal Agreement gives the EU oversight over goods of animal origin being transported from the mainland to Northern Ireland for four years, meaning Brussels could use an “extreme interpretation” to impose tariffs or declare such trade illegal …
The Government is trying to rush through legislation that would amend the Withdrawal Agreement and in particular its Northern Ireland protocol.
Mr Johnson argues that he has been forced to act because of a “serious misunderstanding” in Brussels about the terms of the agreement, and must unilaterally make changes to it because it has become a “danger to the very fabric of the United Kingdom”.
The EU has told Mr Johnson that, unless he backtracks by the end of the month, the trade talks are over.
That weekend, the news was full of MPs, senior legal experts and former Prime Ministers saying that Boris Johnson’s proposals were a ‘violation of international law’:
On Friday a group of more than a dozen MPs, among them former ministers, signalled that they would press ahead with attempts to bar the Government from overriding the Withdrawal Agreement without the support of Parliament …
In the House of Commons, Sir Bob Neill, an avowed Remainer, led the rebel charge. Neill is:
the chairman of the Commons justice committee, who has already secured the backing of Damian Green, Theresa May’s former deputy, and ex-solicitor general Sir Oliver Heald.
The Remain media gave airtime to those who said this proposal violates international law, a distinctly Remainer stance. In 2018, Theresa May watered down an excellent Brexit plan — Canada ++. Boris pushed a stronger ‘deal’ last autumn. Now Boris sees what the EU could do next year if the UK doesn’t close this loophole.
In short, those who oppose Boris’s proposed legislation are Remainers. Those who support it are Leavers.
This became evident in Parliamentary debates last week and this week.
On Monday, talkRADIO interviewed two Leavers.
Sir Desmond Swayne gave an early morning interview:
Labour Peer — and Leaver — Kate Hoey went on the air later:
Guido Fawkes published the full text of the bill.
The second reading of the bill took place on Monday, September 14. Excerpts from the debate follow.
Boris introduced the second reading, emphasising its importance to the Union:
The creation of our United Kingdom by the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1801 was not simply a political event, but an act of conscious economic integration that laid the foundations for the world’s first industrial revolution and the prosperity we enjoy today. When other countries in Europe stayed divided, we joined our fortunes together and allowed the invisible hand of the market to move Cornish pasties to Scotland, Scottish beef to Wales, Welsh beef to England, and Devonshire clotted cream to Northern Ireland or wherever else it might be enjoyed.
When we chose to join the EU back in 1973, we also thereby decided that the EU treaties should serve as the legal guarantor of these freedoms. Now that we have left the EU and the transition period is about to elapse, we need the armature of our law once again to preserve the arrangements on which so many jobs and livelihoods depend. That is the fundamental purpose of this Bill, which should be welcomed by everyone who cares about the sovereignty and integrity of our United Kingdom.
We shall provide the legal certainty relied upon by every business in our country, including, of course, in Northern Ireland. The manifesto on which this Government were elected last year promised business in Northern Ireland “unfettered access to the rest of the UK”.
Sir Bob Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst, Con) spoke, asking about upholding ‘the rule of law’, a popular theme among Remainer MPs:
I have listened carefully to what the Prime Minister says, but does he accept that were our interlocutors in the EU to behave in such an egregious fashion, which would clearly be objectionable and unacceptable to us, there is already provision under the withdrawal agreement for an arbitrary arrangement to be put in place? Were we to take reserve powers, does he accept that those reserve powers should be brought into force only as a final backstop if we have, in good faith, tried to act under the withdrawal agreement and are then frustrated? The timing under which they come into force is very important for our reputation as upholders of the rule of law.
The PM responded:
… there is the question of tariffs in the Irish sea. When we signed the protocol, we accepted that goods “at risk” of going from Great Britain into the EU via Northern Ireland should pay the EU tariff as they crossed the Irish sea—we accepted that—but that any goods staying within Northern Ireland would not do so. The protocol created a joint committee to identify, with the EU, which goods were at risk of going into Ireland. That sensible process was one achievement of our agreement, and our view is that that forum remains the best way of solving that question.
I am afraid that some in the EU are now relying on legal defaults to argue that every good is “at risk”, and therefore liable for tariffs. That would mean tariffs that could get as high as 90% by value on Scottish beef going to Northern Ireland, and moving not from Stranraer to Dublin but from Stranraer to Belfast within our United Kingdom. There would be tariffs of potentially more than 61% on Welsh lamb heading from Anglesey to Antrim, and of potentially more than 100% on clotted cream moving from Torridge—to pick a Devonshire town at random—to Larne. That is unreasonable and plainly against the spirit of that protocol …
MPs on the Opposition benches were restive. The PM said:
To answer the questions that are being shouted at me from a sedentary position, last year we signed the withdrawal agreement in the belief, which I still hold, that the EU would be reasonable. After everything that has recently happened, we must consider the alternative. We asked for reasonableness, common sense, and balance, and we still hope to achieve that through the joint committee process, in which we will always persevere, no matter what the provocation.
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam, Con) asked about violating international law:
… When I was the Attorney General in the previous Government, I was happy to confirm that the ministerial code obliged Ministers to comply with international as well as domestic law. This Bill will give Ministers overt authority to break international law. Has the position on the ministerial code changed?
The PM replied:
No, not in the least. My right hon. and learned Friend can consult the Attorney General’s position on that. After all, what this Bill is simply seeking to do is insure and protect this country against the EU’s proven willingness—that is the crucial point—to use this delicately balanced protocol in ways for which it was never intended.
The Bill includes our first step to protect our country against such a contingency by creating a legal safety net taking powers in reserve, whereby Ministers can guarantee the integrity of our United Kingdom. I understand how some people will feel unease over the use of these powers, and I share that sentiment. I say to my right hon. and learned Friend that I have absolutely no desire to use these measures. They are an insurance policy, and if we reach agreement with our European friends, which I still believe is possible, they will never be invoked. Of course, it is the case that the passing of this Bill does not constitute the exercising of these powers.
Ed Miliband (Doncaster North, Lab) moved an amendment on behalf of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who was not in the Chamber as he was self-isolating. Note ‘the rule of law’:
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House notes that the UK has left the EU; calls on the Government to get on with negotiating a trade deal with the EU; recognises that legislation is required to ensure the smooth, effective working of the internal market across the UK; but declines to give a Second Reading to the Internal Market Bill because this Bill undermines the Withdrawal Agreement already agreed by Parliament, re-opens discussion about the Northern Ireland Protocol that has already been settled, breaches international law, undermines the devolution settlements and would tarnish the UK’s global reputation as a law-abiding nation and the UK’s ability to enforce other international trade deals and protect jobs and the economy.”
There are two questions at the heart of the Bill and of why we will oppose it tonight. First, how do we get an internal market after 1 January within the UK while upholding the devolution settlements, which have been a vital part of our constitution for two decades and are essential to our Union? Secondly, will our country abide by the rule of law—a rules-based international order, for which we are famous around the world and have always stood up?
Those are not small questions. They go to the heart of who we are as a country and the character of this Government …
After interventions from a few MPs, Miliband openly challenged the PM, which had to be seen to be believed, it was that bold:
… there is also an irony here—the Prime Minister tried to slip this in; I do not know whether the House noticed—which is that this Bill does precisely nothing to address the issue of the transport of food from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. It is about two issues where the Government are going to override international law: exit declarations, Northern Ireland to GB, and the definition of state aid relating to Northern Ireland. If the Prime Minister wants to tell us that there is another part of the Bill that I have not noticed that will deal with this supposed threat of blockade, I will very happily give way to him. I am sure he has read it; I am sure he knows it in detail, because he is a details man. Come on, tell us: what clause protects against the threat, which he says he is worried about, to GB-to-Northern Ireland exports? I give way to him. [Interruption.]
As the PM smouldered at Miliband’s arrogance, Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing intervened:
Order. The right hon. Gentleman cannot give way unless he is asked to.
Miliband carried on ranting, ending with:
I do not understand this. He signed the deal. It is his deal. It is the deal that he said would protect the people of Northern Ireland. I have to say to him, this is not just legislative hooliganism on any issue; it is on one of the most sensitive issues of all. I think we should take the word of two former Prime Ministers of this country who helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland.
An indignant Sammy Wilson (East Antrim, DUP) intervened:
Before the shadow spokesman lectures the Prime Minister about reading documentation or starts lecturing us about the Good Friday agreement, does he not recognise, first of all, that the Good Friday agreement talks about the principle of consent to change the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, which is what this protocol does? The Good Friday agreement has within it a mechanism to safeguard the minorities in Northern Ireland through a cross-community vote, which again the protocol removed. So before he starts talking about the threats to the Good Friday agreement, does he not recognise that the protocol was a threat to it in the first place?
Miliband replied to Sammy Wilson, then went on to invoke other Remainers, Theresa May and former PM John Major:
The right hon. Gentleman did not like the protocol at all. He would rather have not had the protocol. He and I just have a disagreement on this issue. I believe it was necessary to make special arrangements for Northern Ireland, or for the UK to be in the EU customs union to avoid a hard border in Ireland. That is why the Prime Minister came along and said the protocol was the right thing to do …
Let us just get this straight for a minute, because I think it is important to take a step back. The Prime Minister is coming to the House to tell us today that his flagship achievement—the deal he told us was a triumph, the deal he said was oven-ready, the deal on which he fought and won the general election—is now contradictory and ambiguous. What incompetence. What failure of governance. How dare he try to blame everyone else? I say to the Prime Minister that this time he cannot blame the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), he cannot blame John Major, he cannot blame the judges, he cannot blame the civil servants, he cannot sack the Cabinet Secretary again. There is only one person responsible for it and that is him. This is his deal. It is his mess. It is his failure. For the first time in his life, it is time to take responsibility. It is time to ’fess up: either he was not straight with the country about the deal in the first place, or he did not understand it.
Enough of Miliband.
Sir William Cash (Stone, Con) spoke on behalf of the bill:
… There has never been a level playing field in the EU. Its cardinal objective in these negotiations from the outset has included preventing us from being able to compete fairly. That is not good faith. Under the protocol, the EU would even control our legal tax freedom to create freeports and enterprise zones. All of this would massively undermine our businesses and jobs and therefore our voters …
He gave several examples of how the EU operates unfairly, then concluded:
The EU seeks to subject us to a foreign regulator, taking essentially political decisions and armed with undemocratic prohibition powers and authorisations. It would be unconscionable and utterly naive for us to allow that to happen. It would be contrary to our national interests at this time of economic instability generated by coronavirus.
You can watch his speech in full here:
Leavers thought it was an excellent performance:
Bill Cash is part of the pro-Brexit ERG (European Research Group), which issued a three-page briefing memo explaining the importance of passing the Internal Market Bill. Guido Fawkes published it in full.
The SNP’s Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) gave his ‘Scotland’ speech once again and made an egregious emotional appeal, invoking, like other Remainers, the rule of law:
Every Member has a choice. We know that the Bill breaks international law—so many learned individuals, including the previous Attorney General, have told us so. Tonight, this House can tell the Government that it is not on and that this House is not going to be complicit in a breach of international law. I venture that that is the responsibility that each Member has. Every Member—every Member, Madam Deputy Speaker—should examine their conscience. This is about a Bill that breaches the terms of a treaty, the ink of which is barely dry and on the delivery of which the governing party fought an election.
As is his wont, he spoke for ages, taking interventions from Labour MPs supporting his position.
Blackford said that the bill would hamper further devolution. Michael Gove, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, asked how.
Blackford replied:
I hear the Cabinet Office Minister shout, “How?” Perhaps he should go and talk to the General Teaching Council, and it will give him its views directly. [Interruption.] Really? We have the Business Secretary, who is supposed to be taking this Bill through, sitting laughing—laughing at the legitimate comments made by stakeholders in Scotland. It is little wonder that the Tories are rejected in the way they are at the polls in Scotland …
Sir Bob Neill began to come around to see the positive points in the bill yet said he could still not support it without amendments being added.
Sammy Wilson responded, making an excellent point:
The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said that we have obligations to the rule of law and obligations to the EU. What about the obligations to the people of the United Kingdom to ensure the provisions of the Act of Union? The economic basis of the Act of Union makes it quite clear that there shall be no barriers on trade between different parts of the United Kingdom. I believe that the Government are fulfilling, in part, their obligations to the people of Northern Ireland in this Bill, and that is why we will support it tonight.
There were many excellent contributions from Brexit-supporting Conservative MPs. Opposition MPs were feisty and the debate was lively.
That evening, the bill passed — 340 to 263:
Guido has the list of Conservative abstentions. Theresa May’s name was among those listed.
The Labour amendment to reject the bill entirely failed by 349 votes to 213. TalkRADIO has an analysis.
The bill then moved on to Committee Stage.
On Tuesday, September 15, MPs debated various clauses and amendments.
That might sound boring, but it made for excellent viewing on BBC Parliament. Sparks were flying left and right.
SNP MPs insisted that the bill would decrease their powers under devolution. This is an argument that Conservatives, rightly, find absurd.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough, Con) asked the SNP’s Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey):
The hon. Gentleman called the Office for the Internal Market an unelected quango. Does he accept that, if he had his way, he would be handing powers back to unelected quangos in Brussels?
Drew Hendry replied:
This is the argument that Government Members try to propagate all the time—that if these powers came to Scotland, they would immediately be transferred to unelected people in the EU. Two things are wrong with that. First, nobody in the EU is actually unelected when they make decisions; they are all elected by either the Parliament or the people who go there. The second and most fundamental point is that, under these proposals, the UK Government are simply taking all control and overriding the ability of Members of the Scottish Parliament to do their job by representing the people who voted for them and their choices.
The SNP fear that the UK Parliament will make decisions that override the spending wishes of the Scottish Government. It’s possible but probably unlikely. Still, would that not be better than the EU making those decisions? According to the SNP, no, it would not.
Bill Cash intervened in an attempt to add reason to the debate:
The arguments that I have just heard from the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) are, in my judgment, completely unjustified. [Interruption.] He might expect me to say that; it is hardly surprising. The reality is that the Bill is intended to provide for independent advice and monitoring through the creation of this internal market within the Competition and Markets Authority arrangements. What the provision clearly states—far from it being just a bunch of nodding donkeys, which is more or less what the hon. Gentleman is saying—is that it will be a non-ministerial department, albeit sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and it will have an enormous amount and range of experience and knowledge brought from its predecessor.
Hendry asked him who would be in the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Cash replied, dryly:
What I can say for sure is that it will not be the European Union, and that summarises the argument in a nutshell.
Cash elaborated on the danger of EU interference:
We will need to be able to compete effectively throughout the world. This is a serious matter about a serious issue. What we cannot have, as I mentioned yesterday, is the situation that we have at the moment, which is where authorisations are given by the European Commission that either create discrimination against British businesses or have the perception or the potential for doing so. They will affect the voters in Scotland—and the voters in Sheffield, if I may say so. I was brought up in Sheffield. I saw what the European Coal and Steel Community did to the British steel industry. [Interruption.] I hear what the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) says. The reality is that those businesses were driven out of business by, in many cases, unfair subsidies and unfair state aids that were given to other member states. I can give an example. I happened to know many people who worked at the coalface—I used to play cricket with them when I played for Sheffield—and I can tell Members that the Sheffield steelworkers, whom I also played with on occasion, sometimes it was rugger, found that they were very severely jeopardised by the massive state aids that were given to the German coal industry—it was as much as £4 billion—and authorised by the Commission. For a variety of reasons, we did not get the same kind of treatment here in the United Kingdom. This is all part of the problem of how to have fair and reasonable competition.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West, SNP) directed her comment to Cash, unintentionally getting the soundbite of the day in his reply:
I am going to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Scottish National party wants Scotland to remain part of the European Union—a single market of more than 500 million consumers. The SNP does not wish to put up trade barriers with England. It is his party that wishes to enforce upon us trade barriers if we dare to exercise our democratic right of self-determination, which he has spent the last 40 years banging on about in this House for England.
Cash’s reply was brilliant:
If I may say so, not unsuccessfully.
Cherry was clearly irritated:
That remains to be seen.
There is too much to quote from this lively debate, so do read it here.
An Opposition amendment and a clause were defeated.
The debate in Committee Stage continued on Wednesday, September 16. The Opposition brought forward more amendments.
The theme of devolution continued. Discussion about a possible threat to Welsh devolution accompanied the concerns of Scottish SNP MPs.
John Lamont, a Conservative MP representing the Scottish constituency of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk asked the SNP’s Alison Thewlis why she thought the UK government was working against Scotland’s interests:
The hon. Lady is giving a typically bitter speech around the role of the UK Government into Scotland. Does she not accept that the UK Government and the Scottish Government have worked very closely together on the growth deals and city deals in Scotland? They are very good examples of what can be achieved in Scotland with both Governments working together, rather than the attitude that she takes of opposing everything that this place does.
Thewliss replied:
I am very interested that the hon. Gentleman raises growth deals, because every single growth deal in Scotland has been short-changed by the UK Government. The Scottish Government have put in more than the UK Government to those growth deals and we are still waiting for the money for some of those growth deals to be realised.
Andrew Bowie, another Conservative MP representing a Scottish constituency (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) couldn’t change her mind, either.
The Conservatives brought logic to the debate, something Opposition MPs were unable to do.
A Labour amendment, brought forward by Ed Miliband, requiring financial assistance to be the subject of a framework agreement to be agreed by resolution of each House of Parliament was defeated: 330-208.
That day, Boris Johnson appeared before a Select Committee to explain why the Internal Market Bill was necessary:
He told Labour MP Hilary Benn that he thought the EU representatives were negotiating in bad faith:
It is always possible that I am mistaken. Perhaps they will prove my suspicions wrong.
On Thursday, September 17, Guido Fawkes outlined the debates which took place this week (emphases in the original):
The Government will table two amendments to its own Bill on Tuesday, firstly a redrafted version of the Neill Amendment – setting in stone the need for a parliamentary vote beyond the requirements of ordinary statutory instruments, and secondly a clause to prevent significant litigation of the enactment of the controversial provisions. Tightening up the ability to deploy with the consent of the House.
Of course, the Government insists it still does not want to have to use these powers of last resort. But now it will have them in case the EU don’t offer concessions…
I’ll cover those tomorrow.
On April 28, I wrote about the UK’s general election, which was held on May 7, 2015.
After endless months of polls showing the two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, either neck and neck or with a difference of three percentage points, election night television coverage showed a remarkable exit poll that defied belief. The Conservatives — Tories — were set to win comfortably.
The Conservatives had been in a Coalition government with the Liberal Democrats for the past five years. Although it worked very well, clearly, Prime Minister David Cameron had hoped to govern independently this time around. But no one, except Australian campaign manager Lynton Crosby with his private polling, thought that would become reality. Probably only Chancellor George Osborne believed Crosby’s polls as he was the only upbeat Tory. Everyone else was quietly cautious.
Even the most accurate poll — the exit poll — slightly underestimated the final total. The Conservatives won a clear majority of seats, surpassing the magic number of 326 to end up with 331!
Interestingly, all the party leaders gathered at the Cenotaph the afternoon of May 8, for a memorial service marking the 70th anniversary of VE Day. That is the last time we shall ever see them together.
Obamarama
Americans might be interested to know that Obama campaign strategists played a role in this very British election.
Miliband hired David Axelrod as his campaign adviser and Cameron took on Jim Messina as his.
Success bred success — in one case.
Historic defeats
The 2015 election will long be remembered for unthinkable defeats:
– The Scottish Labour Party was routed north of the border by the Scottish National Party (SNP). Even their leader, Jim Murphy, lost his Parliamentary seat. Murphy has not resigned from SLP leadership.
– The Liberal Democrats were wiped out in England and Scotland, going from 56 seats to … eight. Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the second most powerful man in Britain from 2010 to 2015, stood down as his party’s leader the morning of May 8. At least he held onto his Sheffield Hallam seat. It was rumoured in the days immediately before the election that Tories there were planning on voting for him just to keep out Labour.
– Big — longstanding — MPs lost their seats. One was Liberal Democrat Vince Cable for Twickenham, west of London. The most notable was Labour shadow Chancellor Ed Balls who lost to a Conservative in the West Yorkshire constituency of Morley and Outwood!
– Labour leader Ed Miliband, although winning re-election to his constituency, stood down as party leader at lunchtime on May 8.
– Spoiler party UKIP experienced an increase in votes, however, in the end, they only won one seat, Douglas Carswell’s Clacton in Essex. Party leader Nigel Farage lost his bid for Thanet South in Kent to a Conservative. Farage announced his resignation soon after the result but said he might be back in the autumn after taking a break.
England speaks
Everyone is examining how the Conservatives did so well.
It seems as if the English were able to speak up in the privacy of the polling booth.
The English are not allowed a voice at any other time unless they deprecate their own country and people.
However, the silent majority finally had their say — and how!
The threat of a Labour government working hand in hand with 50+ SNP MPs finally got through to the English. Ed Miliband mooted a Mansion Tax for those with houses worth £2m and upwards. He also wanted to put a stone monument with the main Labour manifesto points in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street, which many of us thought was very strange, indeed.
The Daily Mail reported (emphases mine):
It was the idea of Torsten Henricson-Bell, 32, the director of policy. A former Treasury economist, he wanted a version of Tony Blair’s pledge card which worked so well for Labour in the 1997 election.
‘Torsten thought we were not getting our policy ideas across, so he persuaded Ed to do the stone,’ said another Labour insider.
Axelrod, on a rare trip to London, enthusiastically signed off on the hubristic monument, having long championed the idea in the US of enshrining policy ideas in ‘stone tablets’. Tom Baldwin, one of Miliband’s media advisers, was also keen.
‘He was like an excitable puppy dog scampering around the newspaper offices, boasting that Labour was going to unveil a brilliant new idea that would be a huge vote winner,’ said another source.
Miliband also has no love of England or the English. His physical presence is uncommanding making it difficult, if not embarrassing, to imagine him on the world stage. He was rumoured to admire French president François Hollande’s policies, which are turning out to be a nightmare economically and socially.
Most importantly, we had not forgotten the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 which put the country on a weak footing both economically and socially. No one wanted a repeat of that, especially so soon.
Two telling comments from Telegraph readers express what many of us thought. Note the mention of queues at the polling stations:
peterl: I live in David Cameron’s constituency and like many I thought that Ed Miliband would be walking up Downing Street (a thought that made me sick to my stomach), that is until Thursday morning when I went to vote. Normally you can just walk in, register and vote within 5 minutes but on Thursday there was a half an hour queue out of the Town Hall door and my wife found it the same later on that afternoon.
It was pretty clear to me then that the ‘English were speaking now’ and the subsequent exit polls declared at 10pm were not a surprise.
hawthorn: Your experience mirrors mine almost exactly. I don’t live in that constituency, but I had just the same sickening feeling about Miliband. Then I got to the polling station and had to queue! Even if just for a short time, I remarked on returning home that I had never before had to do this. And I wondered…..
Left-wing bias
As in other Western countries, British media is very much left-wing.
There are very few commentators and pundits who conduct balanced interviews and present their opinions impartially. The BBC is the worst offender. ITV, on the other hand, does an excellent job of overall analysis. SpouseMouse and I watched their coverage on election night and the following day with the briefest of check-ins at the Beeb.
And, contrary to what hardcore leftists say, there is no ‘Tory media’. Even the Daily Mail and The Telegraph have a lot of journalists openly critical of the Conservative Party.
Election campaign commentary nearly everywhere largely revolved around David Cameron losing his career on May 7. However, by the middle of last week, several endorsements went to the Coalition or the Conservatives. Rupert Murdoch’s papers played a blinder. In the UK, The Sun openly endorsed David Cameron and, in Scotland, the Scottish Sun came out for the SNP!
At least The Telegraph‘s James Kirkup had the good sense to apologise to his readers (emphases in the original):
This is the confession of a political journalist. I get paid to know about politics, to explain politics and yes, to predict politics. On this general election, I failed. I got it wrong. I didn’t see this result coming.
The same is true of a lot of people, but that’s neither excuse nor justification. My job is to tell the people who read me things that will leave them better-informed about the subject at hand. And I didn’t do that job as well as I could have done.
That makes me sad, but happy too. I hope you’ll allow me a minute to explain some of that, and to apologise …
That was based partly on reading opinion polls, something that’s now clearly shown to be an error. Some of it was based on talking to Conservatives in all parts and levels of the party, from Cabinet ministers to party staff, from MPs in rock solid seats to those in marginals. Almost of them predicted that the party would suffer net losses.
Overall, I doubted whether the party’s general election strategy could deliver the majority David Cameron now enjoys …
All of this led to me to write about the Conservative campaign more harshly … But again, that’s irrelevant now. The people who ran the Tory campaign have been vindicated. And I was wrong.
The BBC could not bring themselves to discuss Ed Miliband’s failure and David Cameron’s triumph. They spent a lot of time on Scotland in the election result coverage and were still banging on about the SNP victory in the evening news on May 8. They gave David Cameron brief coverage lasting only a few minutes.
The endless and inaccurate polls
This year, British pollsters went American-style, much to the disappointment of the English.
We had frequent polling from various organisations every week. They showed the same results with insignificant fluctuations. All were wrong.
The only one which turned out to be right was the exit poll commissioned by the BBC, ITN and Sky. This is because it was done by a handful of specialists overseen by John Curtice, the UK’s foremost psephologist. If Curtice didn’t think the permutations from the various data drops during the day fit, the numbers had to be redone for accuracy.
As far as the other polls go, thankfully, the British Polling Council is launching an independent enquiry to examine how and why they were so inaccurate. YouGov’s Peter Kellner blamed everyone but himself and his organisation:
… “What seems to have gone wrong is that people have said one thing and they did something else in the ballot box.”
… “We are not as far out as we were in 1992, not that that is a great commendation.”
But he blamed politicians for relying too heavily on polling data during their campaigns and said they should instead concentrate on standing on a platform of what they believe in.
However, as Kellner knows, the fact of the matter is that polls do generally shape not only a campaign but also the final result.
Number Cruncher Politics has an excellent analysis of the 2015 polling and ‘shy Tories’. Anyone interested in surveys and polling will wish to read all of it. Ultimately:
Most predictions of election results make the assumption (implicitly, perhaps) that polls are unbiased. But the implications of of this are far from being merely psephological, they are also political. They drive the narrative and set the tone. Parties have ousted their leaders based on poll ratings.
But (emphases mine):
- Opinion polls at British general elections are usually biased against the Conservatives and in favour of Labour. In 10 of the last 12 elections, the Conservative vote share has been underestimated and in 9 of the last 12, Labour’s share has been overestimated. The spread between the two has been biased in Labour’s favour in 9 of the last 12 elections, including 5 of the last 6 …
- Every one of the 16 opinion polls with a comparable election in the last two years has seen a pro-Labour bias in terms of the spread. This has closely matched the period during which the Labour lead was falling.
Whilst polling organisations are continually updating their models to adjust for bias, it seems as if they inherently favour Labour.
A Telegraph article noted this loud and clear:
They subscribed to an inherent Left-of-centre bias that infects much of the public discourse in this country and embraces a set of values that are simply not shared by most people. Whether they are sitting in the news rooms of the BBC or the so-called liberal media, they simply fail to understand that this quiet “small c” conservatism constitutes a majority in Britain and always has, even if it manifests itself in different ways.
What happens now?
David Cameron took Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ slogan and made it his own when he spoke on the afternoon of May 8 after visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
He was careful to reassure the Scots about fuller devolution and pledged to achieve this as quickly as possible. He also addressed the concerns of Labour voters in summarising his health and education plans and accomplishments thus far.
Cameron must also make good on his second promise for a referendum of Britain’s membership in the EU. A minority of voters upset with his reneging on a ‘cast-iron’ promise for a referendum several years ago became UKIP supporters. Those Eurosceptics still supporting the Conservatives were able to forgive Cameron once but will certainly hope he will make good on his second pledge for a referendum by 2017.
In short, he will have a challenging time. However, he has the full support of his Chancellor George Osborne who is now also First Secretary of State. This may imply that Osborne is in line to become the next leader of the Conservative Party for the 2020 election. And to think I heard many over a decade ago describe Osborne as weak and simplistic. People do mature and become wiser. Osborne has done an outstanding job as Chancellor, given his relative youth (compared to mine and that of his critics).
Whatever happens, expect stability.
As I write, Britain’s Parliament rejected a move for military intervention in Syria:
A Government motion calling for a strong humanitarian response which may have included military strikes was rejected by 272 votes to 285 late on Thursday night.
Thirty Tory rebels and nine Liberal Democrats joined with Labour to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Prime Minister.
After the historic vote, Mr Cameron said: “I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons.
“It is clear to me the British Parliament does not want to see British military action. I get that and the Government will act accordingly.”
What would Tony Blair have done? Probably forced a vote in his favour by bringing out the party whips. Or perhaps have had no vote at all and declared intervention.
Good for David Cameron. Euro MP Daniel Hannan is also positive and says this is the first time this has happened since Cromwell’s Interregnum:
… we have just witnessed a rather beautiful moment. The House of Commons has recovered a prerogative that it wielded for a few brief years in the 1640s, namely control over the deployment of armed power. This shift has come about because David Cameron chose to stick to the letter and spirit of a promise he made in opposition. He was under no legal obligation to secure parliamentary consent for a strike against the Ba’athist regime; but he felt he had given his word, and he was wise enough not to want to launch non-defensive military action without national consent.
… The power of war and peace, the most awful power a state wields, has passed from executive to legislature. David Cameron was plainly sincere in his belief that a military strike would improve matters in Syria, yet he accepted the will of Parliament graciously, courteously and without demur. Good for him. And good for democracy.
The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley points out (emphases mine):
Wow. Think about what just happened. A Conservative British Prime Minister just put a vote to the Commons basically about going to war and the Commons said no – and the Prime Minister has said that he will respect that answer. David Cameron was defeated not just by the collective will of the House but by rebels within his own party. This is a turning point for the British constitution and a turning point for British Toryism. Excuse the hyperbole, but things might never be the same again.
From the democratic point of view, this is an astonishing departure from historical precedent. For a very long time now war has essentially been the responsibility of the Government. The tradition has been for Parliament to back the Government’s decisions and to act more as a watchdog than a policy maker. So the world is turned upside down: Parliament has earned and exercised the right essentially to control the activities of the Cabinet – to say “yay” or “nay” to something that was once seen as being within a realm of political responsibility far removed from ordinary MPs.
From the perspective of Toryism, the Conservative Party is no longer a united party of war. The party of Suez and the Falklands is now far more cautious, more sceptical of state power, more willing to stop and think before acting …
I remember when Labour were in power — the all-too-recent 13-year nightmare — and Tony Blair felt divinely moved to intervene in Afghanistan post-9/11 and later in Iraq. Labour MPs supported him every step of the way. Now a Conservative PM wanted to take action in Syria and Labour MPs — a number of whom were there when Blair was in power — became holier-than-thou about non-intervention.
Labour Party member — or former member — Dan Hodges has this observation:
There are many Labour MPs who voted against the Government yesterday in good conscience. But the spectacle of some of their colleagues who sprinted through the lobbies in support of the Iraq invasion tweeting self-righteous platitudes about how the Government has “to do better” in presenting the case for war was nauseating. If they have genuinely learnt the lessons of 2003 fine. But they should at least have had the good grace to do so with humility.
Hodges is highly critical of Labour leader Red Ed Miliband. Labour supporters, please note:
Up until yesterday I had thought Ed Miliband was a weak leader. I doubted, and still doubt, he has what it takes to make it to Downing Street. But I also thought that despite his numerous flaws, Miliband was basically an honorable man who was struggling to align his natural liberal instincts with the new conservatism that is the by-product of the age of austerity.
His conduct over the past week shows that’s simply not the case …
… David Cameron believed Labour would fall in line because Ed Miliband kept telling him they would. Yesterday, there was lots of debate about who had said what to whom in what meeting or what phone conversation.
But these facts are indisputable. Ed Miliband said that if he was to back the Government, David Cameron would have to publish the legal advice upon which the case for war rested. David Cameron agreed, and did so.
Ed Miliband then said a solid case needed to be presented demonstrating the Assad regime’s culpability for the chemical attacks. David Cameron agreed, and published the JIC analysis which concluded “there are no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility”.
Ed Miliband then said the Government would have to exhaust the UN route before any recourse to military action. David Cameron agreed, and confirmed he would be submitting a motion to the P5 to that effect.
Ed Miliband said he would need to await the UN weapons inspectors report. David Cameron agreed.
Finally, and crucially, Ed Miliband said there would have to be not one, but two House of Commons votes before military action could be authorised. Once again David Cameron agreed.
And then, having sought – and received – all these assurances from the Prime Minister, Ed Miliband went ahead and voted against the Government anyway.
In closing, Tim Stanley concludes — and I couldn’t agree more:
Tonight Parliament injected reason into a debate about war and reason has prevailed. I wish – wish – this could have happened back in 2003, perhaps saving thousands of British and Iraqi lives. But it’s comforting to know that this time sense has prevailed. The mother of Parliaments has recovered her authority.
Personally, Qatar and the other Middle Eastern nations should sort this out. Instead, they spend their money buying up Western Europe, particularly Qatar. It’s a pretty sweet situation for them for the West to fight their region’s battles. That gives them the financial leverage to buy our football teams and hotel chains as well as inject money into our education* and inner-city programmes**. No longer, I hope.
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* Before school let out this summer, one of our local primary schools had a multi-cultural day in which every student received a Qatar-financed tee-shirt. The country’s name was clearly visible.
** Marianne had a lengthy feature a few months on Qatar’s injecting money into poor French suburbs then telling the residents that France had no use for them. Shameful.
Churchmouse Campanologist 