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Monday, 18th May 2009

How to breathe in an anti-politics atmosphere

Fraser Nelson 2:20pm

So will David Cameron ride the wave of anti-politics or be crushed by it? I have for years thought that trends towards people power and away from hierarchies - in every sphere of life - shows the world is moving the conservative way and that the idea of a big government belongs in the last century. This morning, someone forwarded me a memo from James Frayne, who won the referendum on the north-east assembly for the No campaign by tapping into the anti politics vote. Frayne is now at Portland PR, for whom the memo was written. I suspect he won't thank me for publishing it - but it seems in keeping with this new age of transparency to do so, and I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested as it raises some good points.

MPs' expenses: a new chance for the Tories
One of the most surprising things about the recent storm over MPs' expenses is that MPs have been surprised by the ferocity of the public's response. For anyone who has taken even a passing interest in the state of public opinion over the last few years cannot have failed to notice the anti-politician sentiment that has been developing.
So it wasn't going to take much to push people over the edge. MPs' expenses have provided more than just a small push. The result is we are now in completely new territory. And while the storm has shredded the reputation of Parliament, it also provides Conservatives with the chance to push a much more radical agenda than they have felt was possible in recent years.
The opportunity for the Conservatives lies in the fact that they are now operating in a climate where messages about Government incompetence, massive public sector waste, and high taxes controlled by inept and untrustworthy politicians, are going to stick like never before.
The argument that ordinary people know much better than politicians how to spend their own money has not had a more willing audience in years.
If the Conservatives are bold enough, they now have a way of tapping into the anti-politician mood by making one simple argument: "if you don't trust politicians, why do you trust them with so much of your money?" While the Left will struggle, ideologically, to deal with this crisis of Government (which it is), the Right can define themselves by the controversy.
It is perhaps strange the Tories have never really tried to tap in to this mood. One of the few victories of the Right in the last two decades was the victory in the North East Regional Assembly referendum in 2004. While the party centrally played practically no role in the campaign, the campaign was run by and fronted by small-c conservatives in the Government's own backyard and ran a brutal anti-politician message to deliver those rarest of victories - an upset landslide.
The campaign was completely defined by anti-politician sentiment, using the slogan "politicians talk, we pay". Not unreasonably, some Tories argued that lessons from the North East were not transferable to party politics because politicians can't do anti-politics campaigns and because it was a referendum on a single issue.
But this ignores two things. Firstly, the precedent set by Reagan and the Republican Party over the 80s and 90s - where low-tax, small-state messages were explicitly linked to anti-politician messages (why is it British politicos only want to learn from left-leaning campaigns like Clinton and Obama?). Secondly, it ignores the fact that the Tories, along with other parties, simply cannot afford to duck the issue. Mistrust of politicians is one of the defining issues of the times - parties can either embrace it or be swallowed up by it.
In the short-term, the Tories need something of a instant quick fix. The only way genuinely to take control in this crisis will be to de-select any MP who has behaved dishonourably and to replace them with new faces, even if that means a significant purge. It won't be enough to rely on spin. But in the medium-term, the backlash against MPs can actually be embraced to drive policy - it will not only allow the party to make gains on issues it was struggling to get traction on, but it will also inoculate the party from a large number of attacks on Government failure moving forward.
David Cameron is not temperamentally a radical and has so far shown little interest in the concept of anti-politician politics so far. But he has responded much more quickly to the public mood than the Government and his tone has been basically right. If he is committed to changing the country - and doing to Labour what they did to the Tories after 1997 - he has that opportunity now.
James Frayne runs Portland's Campaign Unit and was Campaign Director of the North East Says No campaign in the 2004 referendum on an elected Regional Assembly

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Publius

May 18th, 2009 2:44pm Report this comment

"I have for years thought that trends towards people power and away from hierarchies...shows the world is moving the conservative way"

How do you distinguish "people power" from mob rule? Or is "people power" just mob rule you approve of?

It seems to me that the world is naturally hierarchical. What I object to is being governed by dishonourable uneducated crooks.

Alex

May 18th, 2009 3:07pm Report this comment

Ah, the 'burn the house down' approach. If there's anything we've learned from the anti-politics approach of the American right it's that electing people who think government can't work tends to make sure of that fact.

Ian Walker

May 18th, 2009 3:16pm Report this comment

A well-thought-out and interesting memo; the comparison's with Reagan's campaign are very good as well.

People understand from their everyday experience in work and other walks of life, that by and large, the more people you get on a "committee", the less useful and effective it becomes.

The parallel with the public sector and with government is also true - the more MPs, assemblies, quangoes, devolved parliaments, councils, mayors and NHS managers you employ, the lower the mean quality will be, and the more opportunity for the mediocre to rise above their station.

It's also a great platform to counterattack Brown's current favourite line of "Tory cuts" - yes, cutting MPs expenses, cutting unecessary assemblies, cutting ineffective public sector management, and giving the money back to people who the public trust - themselves.

Ian C

May 18th, 2009 3:17pm Report this comment

He says what thas been staring us in the face for at least a decade, if not since the 1992 election.

Should DC fail to get radical, and actually take the knife to gov't - both local and national - he will not last long in this new world that many like me have been longing for.

I have blogged here since arriving that the future of politics is about the State, what it has to do versus what it is/has been doing and how badly it has been doing it.

This is all too apparent in most areas of governmet influence - especially in education, the most vital thing (apart from Defence) that gov't has to have a stake in, and in the directly related family and social affairs.

It all starts with rigorously high and maintained standards in public life. If those are not seen to be of the highest order, how can politicians command the necessary authority and respect and thus influence the most basic of matters that need maximum involvement of the population?

Forlornehope

May 18th, 2009 3:24pm Report this comment

After their behaviour, or should that be misbehviour, on Sark, am I the only one who is deeply suspicious of the Barclay brothers' motives in all this. When are we going to see their "Integrity" candidates list?

Will the Barclays' Spectator publish this comment?

Stephen

May 18th, 2009 3:35pm Report this comment

I have to confess that I'm not sure that I do know more about buying tanks than a politician advised by a civil servant. The soundbite 'ordinary people know much better than politicians how to spend their own money' is very appealing. But things are just a bit more complicated than that. German railways and French healthcare work more efficiently than their counterparts in either the UK or the USA. Sometimes, only sometimes, but nevertheless sometimes, strategic planning at a level larger than the individual 'spending their own money' can bring benefits to the individual and the nation state. Soundbite simlpification can be good politics for the party but bad leadership for the nation.

And it is even possible that the 'victory for the Right' which saw the end of devolved government in England also saw the retention of power at Westminster. For the NE Assembly proposals did not mean extra government. Just existing government in another place as some powers would have been aquired from councils and some powers devolved down from Westminster. Whether that would have been a good thing for the remote NE England or not is questionable. Debatable even. But of course, the sensible debate about centralization was drowned out by the clever if essentially dishonest 'No' campaign. And the decision-making stayed in London.

Rob C

May 18th, 2009 3:43pm Report this comment

Publius: The world maybe naturally hierarchical, but generally in recent times the move has been for the hierarchy to be appointed by consensus of the 'mob'. This mob however is increasingly more vocal because the hierarchy are adding more and more of themselves at ever more cost to us! Lack of choice here has been the problem and likewise the EU and it's lack of accountability. Politics has become too dictatorial and the politicians are now paying the price of their failure to listen. A mob ceases to be a mob when it becomes a majority. The conservative 'small government' approach has a distinct advantage here and I only hope they don't squander it! Perhaps they'll even see the light and apply it to our EU membership?

Verity

May 18th, 2009 4:32pm Report this comment

We should be mindful of the fact that it is not just "expenses", as heinous as this misbehaviour has been; but it's also about taking a wrecking bll to our Constitution and deliberately setting about to unpick our social fabric woven for over a thousand years. It is not just about money and venality, but the pulling down around our ears of all our institutions. The Tories were too fearful to object, and at the same time have been almost equally complicit about stealing from the wealth creators - workers in the private sector - so they should be sluiced down the tubes, too.

George D

May 18th, 2009 5:03pm Report this comment

What james is saying is surely right. It's been brewing for a while but I've never known the mood to be so anti-politician. Surely the tories should seize their chance. They could define themselves on it. Something they have singularly failed to do so far

Carol B

May 18th, 2009 6:50pm Report this comment

I am not sure the NE vote was simply anti-politician. It was as much about anti-EU, a reaction against the perceived abolition of England and about the similar perception that the NE assembly would be an impotent talking shop!

What is needed is more immediate direct democracy, that may be more assemblies but also other democracy such as elected police chiefs, elected local prosecutors, parliamentary approval of the budgets of Gov't agencies and likewise of Ministers add in fixed term parliaments etc.

Above all provide incentives for less apathy amongst the electorate - make voting real and worthwhile!!

Edward

May 18th, 2009 9:52pm Report this comment

Democracy is "mob rule" via the ballot box.
What's being expressed now is a level of national public anger, at a level beyond the experience of most. Not mob rule.
It's been bottling up for 12 years at least.
Access to the ballot box will just take the sting out of it, and will cure nothing.
Tony ??? Gordon ??? Dave ???
Labour ??? Conservative ???
Does anybody but me remember the national mood of optimism in 1997 ???
We were shafted then. We'll be shafted again.

"Anti-politics atmosphere" ???
Politics in the UK is simply in the process of reaping what it has sown.

In the sixties, Profumo resigned, not because he had an affair, but because he lied to the House about it.
Now lies have become truth. Truth is spun. Truth is lies. Who pays any attention anymore to tractor statistics ?
At least Profumo had the decency to disappear, and work quietly for the poor for thirty years.
"Toff" he might have been, but at least he had a sense of repentance.
We no longer need "politicians" to represent us. We need some honest, conscientious, vocational souls, willing to put national and constituency interests before lifting snouts from the trough exclaiming 64k p.a. is not enough.

"Anti politics atmosphere" ???
Is anyone surprised ??

TGF UKIP

May 18th, 2009 11:06pm Report this comment

Talk to the 95% of people who aren't political nerds like we are, and the two phrases which resound over and over again are "they're only in it for themselves" and "they're all the same there's no difference between any of 'em."

Now the first complaint is perfectly demonstrated by the present expenses scandal and the second pefectly exemplified by The Heir's Tories over the past three and a half years.

In one case the thieving bastards steal our money and in the other they steal our chance of having any real choice other than voting for a green, politically correct, economically social democratic programme dressed up in red, blue or yellow ribbons.

And when Mr Frayne says "If the Conservatives are bold enough" to seize upon a small government agenda, he clearly has not been observing Dave too closely. There is not the slightest shred of evidence that Dave believes in cutting the size of the state and its expenditure. And the one thing Dave certainly doesn't do is bold - at least not without the focus groups and the Green Party's take from the Mekon.

This is the main reason why the mentions of constituency parties deselecting are so muted and so cautious. Having been told by the constituencies to sod off with his "A" List metropolitan clones, Dave is absolutely terrified that deselections will usher forth onto his backbenches a mass of sharp, provincial conservative climate change sceptics. Oh horror of horrors!

Mr Frayne is dead right though in making the point about RR and the GOP. RR never saw himself as being of "the government" and neither for that matter did Mrs Thatcher. Both saw the state as an impediment but unfortunately as we know only too well, Fraser, your mate Dave is indeed the self-declared Heir to Blair, not to Thatcher. And that's why we've had our chance of a choice stolen as well.