general election ponderings
Apr. 9th, 2010 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajvaI posted this on Facebook, but expect it'll get more attention here. :o)
OK. Only fair to start with a disclosure: I'm generally a floating voter with a slight built-in centre-left bias. Quite left on social issues, a bit to the right on the economic/financial side. It all seems to come out as centre-left in the wash.
Now, I've witnessed elections that were generally quite exciting, because there was a real mood for change of one sort or another. This time, though, there doesn't seem to be such a thing happening in the sense of, say, 1997, when the Conservatives had been in power a little too long, probably, and had got a bit too nasty and hypocritical ('back to basics', anyone?) in terms of their social policies for most people to cope with. (Section 28 was a big issue for me.) And, on the other side, I dare say, had I been around in 1979, I may very well have voted for Thatcher too, given the shocking economic state of the country back then - despite my natural left-wing bias - also because I can well imagine I would have liked the idea of having a woman as prime minister to break the mould and act as an important precedent for the rest of society. But of course, I wasn't round then (well I was, but I was 5 years old), so I can't be sure.
It seems to me that this time round, most people in the country know that we are financially fucked as a nation. And I don't think anyone really knows for sure what the right thing is to do about it. So I don't think most people think there will be that much difference between the Labour and Conservative positions in terms of sorting that particular problem out. So people will be voting on other issues that feel more close to their own lives. The idea that our deficit could cause sterling to ultimately get crucified on the bond markets, leading to sky-high interest rates and the ignominy and severe physical ramifications of devaluation seems somehow far away. A bad thing that could never actually be all that bad (and, after all, say many - wouldn't devaluation help exports?) and is somewhat abstract. And anyhow: higher taxes to call the bluff of the Laffer Curve? Lower taxes to stimulate the economy? Greater or lesser public spending? Who knows? The fact is, no-one can be certain what would be best, really. It all depends on how it's done in practical terms, and in what circumstances it unfolds. It's not for nothing that they still call economics "the dismal science" (even if it's not quite what Carlyle meant at the time of coining the phrase).
I was concerned a few months back that a hung parliament might scare the bond markets, but now I think that the odds on it actually happening have been so short for such a long time that the markets will have had a chance to get used to it. Remember that the financial markets don't tend to work on what's happened, but on what they expect to happen, so if it's accepted that there may not be a clear mandate for any one particular party, then their reaction to a hung parliament could very well surprise on the upside. In other words: they might not react as badly as I feared a while back.
So I'll set out my stall. I can't vote Conservative because I'm afraid I still think that far too many of them are homophobes in a friendly mask, and I'm not at all certain that their economic policies are as sound as they'd have me think. I also don't like the promise to incentivise marriage in the tax system; in my view, government has no place in telling us how to run our personal lives. Cameron's somewhat nebulous promise to encourage marriage seems grounded more in emotion than reason, and reveals him to espouse what I would call "nanny-state Conservatism", as opposed to the more libertarian Conservatism that I find more instinctively appealing. But I can't vote for Labour because they, frankly, spend too much money. I'm no great fan of Thatcher, as everyone knows, but one of her most incisive remarks was this: "They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them." And I think that's true. It's the fundamental flaw in the philosophy. And although the recent economic crisis of which we've been part was global rather than UK-based, we could have been better off today as a nation if, for example, the public sector hadn't been so hugely expanded over the past 12 years.
So I'm retreating to the party I voted for in 1997: the Lib Dems. In the hope of a hung parliament. We've not had one in the UK since 1974, when it proved to be totally unstable and we needed another election to get rid of it and form a clear mandate for one party. I think things might be different now. We are a more globally-focused country and the idea of coalition government I think might come more naturally in a time when we are more educated about continental European politics, and when there is, I think, more of an appetite for discussion and compromise at the heart of government.
After all, if it's not quite clear what path we should take, maybe we shouldn't put it into one party's hands; maybe we should talk about it as we go along.
But don't think I'm trying to convince you; I'm just telling you what I think. Democracy - it could be argued - depends on you doing exactly what you damn well please.
OK. Only fair to start with a disclosure: I'm generally a floating voter with a slight built-in centre-left bias. Quite left on social issues, a bit to the right on the economic/financial side. It all seems to come out as centre-left in the wash.
Now, I've witnessed elections that were generally quite exciting, because there was a real mood for change of one sort or another. This time, though, there doesn't seem to be such a thing happening in the sense of, say, 1997, when the Conservatives had been in power a little too long, probably, and had got a bit too nasty and hypocritical ('back to basics', anyone?) in terms of their social policies for most people to cope with. (Section 28 was a big issue for me.) And, on the other side, I dare say, had I been around in 1979, I may very well have voted for Thatcher too, given the shocking economic state of the country back then - despite my natural left-wing bias - also because I can well imagine I would have liked the idea of having a woman as prime minister to break the mould and act as an important precedent for the rest of society. But of course, I wasn't round then (well I was, but I was 5 years old), so I can't be sure.
It seems to me that this time round, most people in the country know that we are financially fucked as a nation. And I don't think anyone really knows for sure what the right thing is to do about it. So I don't think most people think there will be that much difference between the Labour and Conservative positions in terms of sorting that particular problem out. So people will be voting on other issues that feel more close to their own lives. The idea that our deficit could cause sterling to ultimately get crucified on the bond markets, leading to sky-high interest rates and the ignominy and severe physical ramifications of devaluation seems somehow far away. A bad thing that could never actually be all that bad (and, after all, say many - wouldn't devaluation help exports?) and is somewhat abstract. And anyhow: higher taxes to call the bluff of the Laffer Curve? Lower taxes to stimulate the economy? Greater or lesser public spending? Who knows? The fact is, no-one can be certain what would be best, really. It all depends on how it's done in practical terms, and in what circumstances it unfolds. It's not for nothing that they still call economics "the dismal science" (even if it's not quite what Carlyle meant at the time of coining the phrase).
I was concerned a few months back that a hung parliament might scare the bond markets, but now I think that the odds on it actually happening have been so short for such a long time that the markets will have had a chance to get used to it. Remember that the financial markets don't tend to work on what's happened, but on what they expect to happen, so if it's accepted that there may not be a clear mandate for any one particular party, then their reaction to a hung parliament could very well surprise on the upside. In other words: they might not react as badly as I feared a while back.
So I'll set out my stall. I can't vote Conservative because I'm afraid I still think that far too many of them are homophobes in a friendly mask, and I'm not at all certain that their economic policies are as sound as they'd have me think. I also don't like the promise to incentivise marriage in the tax system; in my view, government has no place in telling us how to run our personal lives. Cameron's somewhat nebulous promise to encourage marriage seems grounded more in emotion than reason, and reveals him to espouse what I would call "nanny-state Conservatism", as opposed to the more libertarian Conservatism that I find more instinctively appealing. But I can't vote for Labour because they, frankly, spend too much money. I'm no great fan of Thatcher, as everyone knows, but one of her most incisive remarks was this: "They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them." And I think that's true. It's the fundamental flaw in the philosophy. And although the recent economic crisis of which we've been part was global rather than UK-based, we could have been better off today as a nation if, for example, the public sector hadn't been so hugely expanded over the past 12 years.
So I'm retreating to the party I voted for in 1997: the Lib Dems. In the hope of a hung parliament. We've not had one in the UK since 1974, when it proved to be totally unstable and we needed another election to get rid of it and form a clear mandate for one party. I think things might be different now. We are a more globally-focused country and the idea of coalition government I think might come more naturally in a time when we are more educated about continental European politics, and when there is, I think, more of an appetite for discussion and compromise at the heart of government.
After all, if it's not quite clear what path we should take, maybe we shouldn't put it into one party's hands; maybe we should talk about it as we go along.
But don't think I'm trying to convince you; I'm just telling you what I think. Democracy - it could be argued - depends on you doing exactly what you damn well please.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 04:20 pm (UTC)I can think of two 'scandals': Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes, both from the time of the leadership election. Did I miss others?
The former was a bigger surprise, but I think he's made it clear that he wasn't pushed to resign as a front bench spokesperson, and if he had wanted to go 'yeah, so what' - and apologised for some previous comments about prostitution - rather than beat himself up about his sexuality, I suspect he'd be standing this time.
(Much the same with Paddy Ashdown's affairs: that he was having them simply was not an issue for the party membership. If they had known he was hypocritically destroying the political careers of at least one and very probably two of the women, that would have been the end of him. Fortunately for him, they didn't want to go public. I went to the party's chief exec, told him I knew, I knew he knew, that it stanked and quit.)
Everyone with even a fraction of a clue knew Simon isn't straight, but he was still elected President of the party (more than once, from memory).
Looking on their website to check the spelling of someone's name, I see the spokesperson on health in the Lords is someone who came out as lesbian in the 80s and was elected (the party picks its peers by a vote) to the Lords in 1999. Doubtless there are more.