Silvio Berlusconi offered Italian citizens low taxes, action on immigration, drastic reductions in bureaucratic interference in people's lives. Angela Merkel offered low taxes, action on immigration, no Turkish membership of the EU, a cut in bureaucratic interference in people's lives, and stability - stability expressed as protection from international and global economic forces. Many dislike both of them, but most have settled for the broad policy bases that are all democracy can deliver.
Brown's Labour offers high and ever higher taxes, high levels of immigration, grotesque rises in bureaucratic interference in people's lives, a country so unstable that its borrowing costs are the third highest (after Greece and Portugal) in Europe; and globalisation.
Labour hasn't the slightest chance of winning the election; what it is manouevring for is some kind of coalition with Brown retaining the prime ministership. The United Kingdom is an electoral dictatorship (except in the case of Brown where the courtesy of an electoral mandate has been dispensed with until forced upon him, and he has governed using his predecessor's mandate) which is renewed or with held every four or five years or so. Who is prime minister is king, in some ways quite literally holding the powers of the monarch; and all the cabinet government stuff belongs in political science text books of the 1950s (and earlier).
Why should Brown be given a dictator's mandate? The moment the centre-left of the electorate saw that a vote for the Liberal Democrats would not be a vote wasted they were off and running from their sad subservience to the Brown faction who hold in thrall what has been, for so long, the main party of the centre left.
What is more, there is the consistent expression of a desire for 'a hung parliament', ie., for a grand coalition government of all the centre parties that will deliver low taxes, action on immigration, a cut in bureaucratic interference in people's lives, and stability, with protection from international and global economic forces (of which immigration is but part).
Brown can deliver none of this. He is its antithesis: his is narrow, sectional rule, exclusive even of most of the Labour party - never mind the electorate. He stands on a programme rejected decisively in Italy and Germany (I choose these comparison electorates as Italy is a country with a similar standard of living, size of population and with an only slightly larger economy; while Germany is the kind of economy we might hope to have with sensible and similar policies.) And in Italy and Germany the Social Democrats languish in the low 20s of electoral support while they come to terms with smaller state and lower taxes policies.
The United Kingdom does not have a social democrat default setting. It is centre-right in its political culture - indeed it has to be restrained in its more atavistic right-wingness by its own centre-right leaders. For a grand coalition to be constructed there are going to have to be compromises, mostly on our relationship with Europe; but there are solutions to finding agreement through our Parliament and constitution that are ours to use and the electorate's to settle, without any permission-seeking from Brussels, just as is done in Italy and Germany. Also the mitbestimmung contribution to Germany's economic success must find its English transformation and place in our 're-balancing' of our economy. The federation of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom needs 're-balancing' too, with parliaments for each and federal relationships more respectful of the interests and cultures of our constituent parts.
There is no place for Brown in any of this; he has betrayed our sane interest for his entire political life, let alone his thirteen years in office. Those to the right of centre can vote for the Conservatives, those who are social democrats will divide between Liberals and Labour, but all of us must be aware that Brown has no interest in bowing to electoral withholding of his mandate, nor capacity to build what we all want, and need, to emerge from the disaster he has made.
Our first objective must be to vote Brown from office, any office, for he can make no contribution to political life nor can anything he stands for.
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4 comments:
Well said. You'll note how Labour are oddly quiet over the Clegg rise, even falling to 3rd in some polls, it suits them fine.
Thank you, Span.
What would suit Labour is to be rid of Brown and his cabal. I fear they will pay a terrible price for not moving with the normal development of social democracy, over the years since the mid-eighties, and leaving themselves open to factional takeover.
Nice thoughts, but in fact if the Lib Dem surge continues, what we will get is five more years of Broon.
They can't win outright; they won't deal with the Cameroons, and Broon won't do the deal with them unless he stays in post; they are so desperate for power that they'll agree.
The one thing they can and will insist on is a firm committment to PR of some sort; naturally Broon will do his best to evade and wriggle his way out of any promise he's forced to make (remember "not subject to legitimate expectation"?) but if he fails, then we're doomed to endless woolly-left coalitions and we'll never be able to turn the rascals out.
That hill in Umbria is looking more attractive by the minute; maybe the person who had the foresight thirteen years ago might have a cottage or two to sell?
People with yachts must be particularly well-placed at the moment in Brown's island.
I don't know how to set about buying a cottage with a bit of land, mine having come with Mr HG. Who holds it for the children, so he wouldn't sell, and nor will anyone else for the same reason; apart from the fact that there isn't anything to do with the money except buy gold - and land is more useful than gold. People are back to hoarding on quite a scale again.
Local word of mouth is that single fields or even bits of fields (which is tricky to do under planning laws that try to maintain land use integrity) are being sold off at high prices as people secure vegetable plots.
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