Lessons we can learn from Obama's circumstances

You can’t have failed to note that the US is at their polls today - half term voting and Obama (personally - though not in the election) and his Democrats likely to take something of a drubbing. You may well have noticed, too, that the TEA Party (a loose knit right wing grouping) is making headway and shoe-horning in its own candidates into the Republican movement. Quite how far the TEA party candidates will be able to shift Republicans to the right remains to be seen; and in the full-term elections (including the Presidential) nobody knows if the TEA Party will attract moderate voters or put them off.

It would seem that the US elected Obama with his left-of-centre policies on a wave of unseeing (or unthinking?) enthusiasm. Then, seeing what he is trying to do, run away from him. TEA Party members to a man and women (and lots of women in the movement) speak of his move to make America socialist (based to a great extent on his moderate Health Reforms). In the UK many of us would see this Socialist accusation as laughable - it is, but it’s mighty serious too.

Serious because in the UK we are different only in degree. Tony Blair created the Labour victories by rebranding Labour from Socialist to New Labour; Tony Blair introduced many socialist leaning policies (despite accusations to the contrary). But to do this ‘Socialism’ was something not to be spoken of - Christian Democrat became an unnatractive euphemism. The UK population is as deeply conservative in essentials as the US.

For the majority of the populations Socialism strikes them as inherently unfair. ‘Why should I let someone else have what I’ve worked hard to get?’ You have only to listen to the TEA Party members and supporters to hear this time and time again.

Is this question so far removed from the way the Housing Benefit and Welfare Reforms are being argued. Last week I suggested that Labour has to be very clever in handling this issue because it has popular support; I’ve seen a recent YouGov poll which suggests more than 70 per cent of UK people support the Housing Benefit policy of Cameron. Let’s not fool ourselves here! Cameron is totally confident in sticking to this policy despite adverse publicity. Why? - Because his private polling must have been giving him this 70 per cent information.

This doesn’t make this policy right. But we must acknowledge the truth - the realty if you like - and them create and appropriate strategy to overcome it.

Obama has shown himself inept (because too inexperienced) of handling the presentation of politics and the reality of working within party politics. In exactly the same way that Cleggie has - and he is inexperienced to the extent of naivete. Ed Milliband must ensure he doesn’t fall into this trap too. Intellectual cleverness doesn’t equate to political nous. Nearly all LP members and supporters I meet are complaining about Ed Milliband’s lacklustre performance - by which they mean he’s not in the news. ‘Give him time,’ I say. But he must be aware, time will soon be running out.

ConDem mess in the Universities

It’s been pointed out in this space before that the present ConDem government seem not to have thought through any of their policies. And it goes on.

To give IDS the benefit of the doubt, I accept that he thought long and hard about his reforms. However the way Cameron has implemented some aspects of them has more to do with news capture than anything else. Housing benefit and child benefit policies are both slowly unravelling to the point of fudging and tweaking.

But it’s the mess of university funding I would like to approach today. Universities have already found their way through one major cut in income and now face a second - the removal of all subsidy for teaching in arts and humanities subjects - which is to say virtually all subsidy in these disciplines.

The Government’s idea was that this should be replaced by increasing student fees; and here the current mess. The ConDems can’t even manage this process; I have, to date, heard three fee-levels floated; 12k, 9k, 7k per year. These figures leave out the ‘no cap’ possibility. It all sounds as if reporters are picking figures out of the air. Does the Government have no awareness of the effect on universities of this situation? Or don’t they care?

They certainly haven’t got their act together. They appear to be arguing that Universities will have to ensure entry across the social and economic range. But these are little more than weasel words when you’re busy erecting barriers against this.

I hear another option being raised; privatised universities or parts of universities. That would suit a Conservative philosophy very well; a true free market in which fees and teaching can find their own levels according to what the market can sustain. Perhaps they would like to see faculties hived off into private ownership and leasing, say, space and other support services from a university - what a nightmare.

In addition, why attack the arts and humanities like this? People with these qualifications go into the world and make valuable contributions too. Yes, we must encourage science and engineering, but we must support and value these other areas too; if not we shall quickly become a philistine nation. And arts subjects will become the preserve of the well-off . . . and there, perhaps, is the point.

There are some universities (like schools) that aren’t performing as well as they should. These must be pulled up to scratch or close. There are students (a few) who it would appear shouldn’t be at university - though it’s more likely they are not yet ready to be there. It would seem inevitable at this time that some universities will, rightly, close. But we don’t want to go back to is a time when a university education was only for a comfortably off tiny minority.

The Government options for cuts; reaction on the march in the C of E

Who’d have thought anything as anorakish as a spending review could create so much interest? Much of this interest has been fuelled by the press; and for once I don’t criticise them. They have supplied much analysis and information to enable us to consider circumstances for ourselves.

And now (with the review due next week) they’ve gone into overdrive; in part, forcing the hands of ministers. Cleggie, anxious to pour honey over the bitterness of his many broken promises, announced a pupil premium to help poorer pupils. Quick as a flash the press started asking: ‘Will this money come from elsewhere in the schools budget?’ So (again quick as a flash) the government had to announce that the schools budget (not the education budget, by the way) will be protected.

Now this is interesting, isn’t it? Every time something contentious has come up, D Cameron has made a point of protecting it . . . police numbers, free bus passes, now schools, child benefit - well not child benefit, to protect that was just an election pledge.

Cameron has spent most of his premiership so far on PR; he doesn’t want bad news. But how’s he going to avoid it? The schools protection and pupil premium with the, as I understand it, proposed smaller defence cuts, could be reckoned to amount to some 18 bn gpb. This is quite a proportion of the targeted 83 bn gbp.

The options open to the government, now, are to make much bigger cuts elsewhere (and education as a whole has not been ring-fenced) or to go for a smaller figure of retrenchment. The latter option might be attractive; although Boy George would get a lot of stick, and it would be embarrassing for the Conservatives, that story would quickly disappear, massaged by lighter cuts. But I don’t think this will be palatable to them.

This means bigger cuts elsewhere. Even the Conservatives, who seem to have done little planning before the election, must be concerned about the effect of cuts on growth and unemployment. Unemployment is a major indicator and rising unemployment is always bad-news headlines; but let’s remember rising unemployment didn’t stop Margaret Thatcher. The attractive place (for the government) to cut is welfare; IDS has been sweetened already, so we could be in for some really bad news on welfare cuts. And this could be on other universal benefits.

On a completely different subject we see that the forces of reaction are on the march again in the C of E. Traditionalists (those who don’t approve of women bishops but can’t now get rid of them) reckon they have stitched up enough seats to take the reins of power in the Synod. This will mean restricting the role of women bishops for no other reason than that they are women.

Personally I don’t give a b****r about the C of E and its synod except for one reason. The Synod is a traditional powerbase; they have a powerful voice. And a powerful voice can effect change; this will not be change for the better. So I do give a b****r.

Pinocchio and a Poem

The Conservatives made much noise in their election campaign about how much money they were going to save by cutting out waste (have we ever heard that one before?) Their savings formed a significant part of their plans for deficit reduction. One of the major savings they were going to make was by getting rid of a large number of QUANGOs. Today they are going to announce the fate of many of them. So far so good . . .

However, we now learn that many of them will be subsumed into Whitehall civil service. Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, says that it was never about saving money but about accountability. Good job he’s not Pinocchio, I say. But then, if he were, we’d at least get a laugh out of this sick joke.

In the description of this blog I mention the importance of art and culture; I’m attaching, as part of today’s blog, a recent poem of mine. It may be too overtly political to be good poetry . . . I don’t know.

But here goes.

We Can’t Rhyme, David

You don’t speak to me.
However earnestly
you don your Honest-Dave face
(the one you had so exquisitely
bespoke in Saville Row)
it’s just for show.
No, we don’t inhabit the same space.

Your PR crafted creed
we’re all in this together doesn’t chime
with me, we don’t bleed
in the same way
you and I, we
can’t rhyme.

You tell me, media hype
cocooned (you recognise the political type?)
we live in a broken society;
from where I stand I see
it’s always been like this –
hard as nails, yes,
a son or daughter who careers
off the rails, a friend who fears
work, a neighbour who peers
into another’s business and who
tells tales. But, too,
the occasional helping hand,
a friend who’ll understand,
lines etched merely in sand.

You think you’ve jettisoned grand
but your eyes are your eyes
and the shoes you live in are your shoes;
you cannot help but patronise
us; I cannot excuse
you for the lives you’ll destroy
and for your smile while you do it.

I'm not saying the nasty party is back . . .

In his final conference speech, David Cameron invoked the spirit of Kitchener (which is synonymous, in the circumstances, with the spirit of Churchill). ‘Your country needs you.’ What a cheek. ‘We’re all in this together,’ the millionaire says, ‘Go out and do your voluntary work - your country needs you.’ Interestingly, it didn’t get a warm response, perhaps even his delegates think they’re doing quite enough already, thank you.

I’ve argued before that if all his volunteers get going (civic gardens, volunteer libraries . . . ) it won’t be the well-healed that’ll suffer, nor the well paid managers, but the low-paid librarians, LA gardeners and the like.

Now put this alongside the welfare cap - around 500 gbp per family. There is some argument about the fairness of this; it runs along the lines of ‘If you’re on benefit you shouldn’t have so many children.’ This may be harsh, but, for some, there is a cruel logic behind it. Precisely the reason, of course, that the Tories use it. But it’s not the true picture.

The real problem is that people have their families (large or small), then, possibly out of the blue, are made redundant or lose their jobs. What are they supposed to do with their children then? Put them back?! The capped figure includes housing benefit, so what happens to a family in rented accommodation in central London or other areas of the South East? Let’s take our clue from one of the delegates at the Tory conference; she said, ‘They’ll have to move house.’

And the final, never mentioned, element of this . . . we can all see that the policy of cuts Cameron and Osborne are promoting will certainly raise levels of unemployment.

The Conservatives are going to force people on to benefits . . . and then punish them for being there.

I’m not saying the ‘nasty party’ is back; I’m saying it never really went away, just hidden by a bit of PR camouflage.

Life isn't just PR, is the real world beginning to get to the Tories?

One of the things that’s marked the ConDem time in office is their cool, calm assurance; it’s reassuring, ‘they know what they’re doing, we’re safe in their hands.’

But it’s easy for them to be calm and cool; their time, so far, has mostly been PR with few policies being outlined in detail or implemented. One Minister who hasn’t seemed sure-footed is Education Secretary, Gove, Cameron’s right hand man; look how Gove has been shoved out of the media spotlight after his spectacular encounters with a number of banana skins.

But now do we begin to see more things wobble?

Osborne has broken the link of child benefit with universality; the wisdom of this is open to debate. But he has make the break point the higher rate tax - c 44k gbp per year. However, if one person in a family earns above this figure child benefit is lost; if two people in a family are working and they individually earn less than this figure but their joint income is more (even quite a lot more0 .......................then they don’t lose it - even if, say, both earn 40k gbp (ie 80k per year). Anyone can see this is unfair. But Osborne says to the effect: ‘It’s tough, but we have to put up with it.’

Osborne can put up with it - he’s a millionaire, so what will he feel?

Conservative Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton, has already said the policy may need revising . . . It didn’t stand up to much scrutiny then.

Osborne has also capped a family’s benefits to the level of the average family income - around 500 gbp per week. This sounds quite a lot, but in London and areas of the SE housing costs alone could approach this. The policy effectively shoves people out of their homes in London and areas of the SE to areas with lower housing costs; sounds a bit like ghettos to me.

At the same time three local authorities are taking legal action against Gove cutting the funds for schools for rebuilding.

And now, Jim Gamble, Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre, has resigned, following a disagreement with the Government over the Government’s future plans for the agency.

I hope the new Labour Leadership notes these cracks. But it’s not enough to attack them . . . we have to be much cleverer. We have to have better policies. Let’s get our skates on.

Slasher Cameron's now pinching policy ideas from The Archers

Did you catch the latest Big Society big idea from Slasher Cameron?

He wants community groups to take over the civic gardens from local authorities. Another cosy idea for Cameron supporters. But this one appears to be plucked from The Archers. In one storyline, Linda Snell, headmistress of Ambridge, and Elizabeth Pargetter (Archer), went out secretly at night to sort out the flower beds around the village green.

But Cameron’s Archer’s policy isn’t quite so cosy. What will happen here is that low paid gardeners from wealthy LAs will be sacked so that middle-class amateur gardeners, with time on their hands, can take over their jobs unpaid (because they can afford to work unpaid.)

This is a specific example of what I was outlining in a previous blog about the Volunteer Society.

Nothing cosy, clandestine nor fictional about this, is there?

Can you afford to volunteer?

David Cameron wants a lot of the slack created in his new Big Society taken up by volunteers – he wants to create a volunteer culture. Sounds OK in front of a nice audience or when you hear it on the television; it sounds wholesome, doesn’t it.. But let’s unpick it just a little bit.

One concern (although not really the one I’m going to follow up, here) is that he wants to remove many jobs from the public sector – we know this. ‘Public sector, bad; private sector, good (presumably with worse terms and conditions)’ is an Old Tory mantra and one well rehearsed. But Cameron appears to be going further than this; he seems to want the jobs to be taken up by volunteers. In other words, get the work done for nothing. Fine policy when you’re a millionaire, I suppose.

But the aspect I’d like to follow up is ‘Who is going to do the volunteering?’ To be a volunteer you need the time to be a volunteer. When trying to answer this it’s easy to pick out people who run a scout group or a youth group. Valuable people, doing valuable work.

But I’m thinking about running schools, or managing big projects ‘in my community’ – whatever that means. Big complex projects take up lots of time; and only certain groups of people have the time to do it.

I’m not knocking the idea of volunteering – I’m a member of a Board of two regional arts organisations as a volunteer, one of the Boards meets at 3 o’clock. I’m a self-employed worker, so I can organise my diary to be free when needed. But only certain types of worker can be free in the middle of the afternoon.

I used to be on the Independent Monitoring Board of a prison near me; in many ways one of the most important things I’ve done. I felt it was important, anyway. But it required almost the equivalent of one day a week, and every now and again a duty week came up. On your duty week you needed to be in the prison a lot, as near to each day as you could; and you were also on call. If there were any sort of emergency you had to drop whatever you were doing and speed to the prison.

Only a certain type of person (retired, senior managerial, non-working partner) can commit to this. Eventually I had to give it up; as a self-employed person, I simply couldn’t afford to give the time, free. The spirit was willing the but mortgage and utility bills weren’t.

Hence, the aspect of our Big Society Volunteer Culture is that we shall be increasingly run by a small group of volunteers taken from an increasingly small section (social, financial, racial) of society. This is not healthy.