Let us go forward together

When New Labour signed up to the devolution project for Scotland and Wales, Tony Blair seemed to think he was creating a couple of super county councils which would always be Labour controlled and would kill local Nationalism stone dead.

Those of us with a sense of constitutional history could see from the start that this was bunkum and that his Devolution Acts were not a brake on Nationalism so much as a ratchet. From the beginning the ‘system’ created in 1999 had an enormous flaw – it completely lacked an English dimension. Scottish and Welsh MPs could hold ministerial offices which dealt with solely English concerns but (apart from the anomalous Secretaries of State) they could not have any say in 60% of matters affecting their own constituents. MPs who are not ministers from the devolved countries can and do vote on matters affecting only England, but are unable to vote on most matters affecting the people who elected them. This is really the ‘Westlothian Question’ Tam Dalyell posed in the 1970s. Dalyell’s answer was to vote NO to devolution at all. And that answer was honest and logical.

Faced with four general election defeats in a row between 1979 and 1992, Dalyell’s party changed its tune, under the brief leadership of the Scot, John Smith. Blair was not, I think, ever enamoured of the idea but Labour had signed up to it in order to make common ground with the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems and isolate the Tories politically in Scotland and Wales for what they imagined would be their political benefit. And in 1997 it paid off big time, did it not?

From that moment on the problems engendered by the complete failure to address the Westlothian Question began to kick in, especially in Scotland as I always thought they would. Looking at the Stormont experience in Northern Ireland it was plain that the terms of political debate in Scotland would soon cease to resemble those in England altogether. A Nationalist party exploiting and fostering a sense of grievance as well as Salmond and his friends have done would soon see to that. A party regarded as the lunatic fringe by many (and Tartan Tories by Labour) in the 60s got the chance to participate in government and to form a Scottish Executive (which it quickly renamed – unlawfully in my opinion – the Scottish Government).

Now it seems that David Cameron is trying to come to terms with the mess Blair created. An old idea about English Votes for English Laws is being recreated, but these votes are to be proposed by UK ministers (who could be Scottish or Welsh and not supported by the votes of a majority of English constituencies) and taken within the UK Parliament.

Sorry to say it – I see this as a non-starter. The only answer to the Question posed above is for English Laws to be generated in exactly the same way Scottish and Welsh ones are, by an English Parliament or Assembly to which English ministers are responsible within a Federal United Kingdom. Tam Dalyell’s answer would be infinitely preferable to me but I can see quite clearly that reviving the constitutional settlement that worked so well for us between 1707 and 1999 is impossible in the present political climate.

This way we could maintain a Federal Parliament much smaller than the present House of Commons and a genuinely UK government with responsibility for matters that concern us all, including federal taxation defence, foreign affairs, the currency, energy and trade. And a flag law – giving the Union Flag the status the Stars and Stripes has in the USA, to be flown either on its own or alongside the flags of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but not supplanted by them.

In the beginning we elected New Labour, feeling it was safe to do so under the quasi-Tory Blair and ‘prudent’ Gordon Brown. In Brown’s first budget he set off on the road to where we are today when he tampered with the Advance Corporation Tax regime which had applied for years to pension funds. I have seen figures suggesting that this action has deprived them of funds of in excess of £150 billion since then. Part of the effect of this has been that private sector pension pots have shrunk and final salary schemes, once commonplace, have all but disappeared.

Public sector schemes have not been so badly affected because, effectively, they are supported by everyone else’s taxes. As a councillor from 1998 to 2010 I saw that, in my early years it was occasionally the case that no money came from the General Fund to bolster the pension fund, so well were the fund’s investments performing in relation to the demands upon them. Latterly substantial subventions have been necessary and these have come from Council Tax payers.

Which brings us to the second prong of Labour’s creation of the current crisis. Prudence was abandoned and profligacy was the order of the day. The Guardian on Wednesday bulged for years with adverts for new public sector appointments adding hundreds of thousands to the public payroll and billions to the pension commitments made to each of them. Brown, we know, was creating a ‘client state’ of millions of voters with a vested interest in maintaining and expanding the bloated public sector payroll and the Labour government with it. On top of that we had inflation-busting public sector salary increases whereby  Chief Executives of even small local authorities are being paid more than the Prime Minister – and it doesn’t stop at CEOs, the others are paid pro rata. And it worked for a time – at the expense of borrowing heavily even in the most benign economic circumstances for decades, when a truly prudent policy would have been to repay old debt, rather than taking on new debt all the time. That, and to boost wealth creation and the private investment from which it flows.

And the country fell for it! It suited many of us to believe that Gordon had really abolished the economic cycle and that the cloud-cuckooland we all inhabited would last for ever. Even George and Dave seemed to fall for it, abandoning ‘Thatcherism’ and banging on about ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’, when they really should have known better.

The egg laid by Tony out of Gordon has hatched an enormous chicken which had to come home to roost sometime. Now is the time, but let no-one be in doubt as to the parentage of this particular bird.

Many Lib Dems will feel sore. I understand that. But taalk of getting more aggressive within the Coalition – or even leaving it altogether – would be disastrous for them. Some Lib Dems would obviously like to be in permanent opposition and are very uncomfortable being in government. If they walk away now that’s the future for them. But they mustn’t con themselves into believing that they can ever go back to where they were 12 months ago- All things to all men won’t wash any more.

 The Conservative party has actually emerged with more seats even than 2007. We also have more Welsh Assembly members but fewer MSPs. The constitutional dog’s breakfast that was Blair’s Devolution wasn’t supposed to produce this sort of  result. That it has is a beautiful illustration of the Law of Unintended Consequences – it’s what comes of fixing what ain’t broke! It is broke now and Cameron will have to take note of that.

His Grace is speaking for himself from the 1980s-style intellectual comfort zone into which he has evidently retreated since last May. In the 1980s some Catholics, notably members of an organisation called Pax Christi took the ‘anti-Thatcherite’ view that high government spending was a morally laudable thing in itself. I was then, and I am now, on the side of the Good Samaritan, who, seeing the man wounded and robbed by the roadside, took action himself to alleviate his suffering out of his own pocket. No doubt the priests and Levites who walked by on the other side of the road complained compassionately to the authorities about the risks now involved in travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho and demanded that ‘they’ take action but did not help the man one whit themselves.

His Grace has achieved one thing. He has put me and Francis Maude on the same side for once!

However, I read that there is a plan afoot in Cameroon circles to give Clegg a boost following the victory of the ‘No’ vote on 5th May and expected Lib Dem losses in the local elections by letting him have PR for an elected House of Lords. If this is so, I hope they don’t think they’re speaking for Conservatives. There are seriously more important things in the minds of real Tories than House of Lords ‘reform’, and to waste so much time and effort on it as would necessarily be involved in order to appease the Lib Dem Left would be, in my opinion, grotesquely irresponsible.

Forget it Dave!

In the midst of all this we have a Referendum on whether to adopt the least popular method of electing MPs in the whole world – where they elect them at all, that is! ‘Barmy!’ I hear you cry – and you’re right!

HOWEVER, the worst thing people of sanity can do is to throw up their hands and say ‘I’m having nothing to do with it!’ and not vote. If you do that you leave it open to the celebrities and change-for-the-sake-of-it mongers to impose their half-baked scheme on the rest of us for good and all. Whoever you are and whatever your politics, please vote NO!

The system does not guarantee proportionality of seats. Far from it. It is not what the Lib Dems have campaigned for for decades, which makes their support for it such rank hypocrisy. They probably think that Labour voters will give the Lib Dems second preference against the Tories. But I have news for them. In large tracts of the South and West, where current or recent Lib Dem local authorities abound, lots of Labour activists and voters prefer the Tories to the Lib Dems. Quite a lot lent their votes to the Lib Dems in 2010 but they may well not do so again. Here in Kingston is a strong case in point.

Lib Dem supporters of AV hope it will lead to PR in the short term as its defects become apparent in practice. They are buying a pig in a poke if that’s what they think. What government is going to introduce a major constitutional change like this again within the next few decades? Australians have been critical of their system for decades (they are the only major country to use it, by the way) yet it is still there, largely because every government is nervous about kicking away the ladder by which it climbed to power.

So would everyone please think carefully about their vote on 5th May and find out as much as you can and ask yourself seriously whether this system is the one by which you want to elect MPs (and probably councillors too) for the rest of your life. If you want either to keep the present system – or to change to PR of some sort – then vote NO. It’s the only logocal thing to do.

He begins by saying, ‘After 13 years of Labour, we’ve all had enough. Gordon Brown has failed us.’ Couldn’t agree more! He then implies that the way to sort this out is to vote Lib Dem as if there was a real prospect of a Lib Dem government, which there isn’t and we all know it.

He is very fond of pointing out that ‘Labour can’t win here’ in a bid to get Labour people to vote for him to keep the Tories out, as they did in 2001 and, to a lesser extent, in 2005.

In this he’s hinting at the big elephant in the room whose presence he daren’t fully acknowledge.

He was elected in 1997 as part of ‘Tony’s Big Tent’. He was re-elected in 2001 still as part of the same ‘tent’ The Labour government was as pleased as Punch with the results here because they did indeed ‘keep the Tory out’. The same applies in Richmond Park and Twickenham. Labour knows it can’t win, but every Lib Dem MP in SW London is one the Tories don’t get and that helps keep Labour (of whom ‘we’ve all had enough’) and Gordon Brown (who ‘has failed us’) in power.

The only matter of substance on which he has not remained inside the Big Tent ever since 1997 was Iraq and we aren’t in Iraq any more. And his party has refused to rule out the possibility of supporting in office a minority Labour Government. They have form here. They did it before for three years in the 1970s.

So the message is that Labour really can’t win here – so,  if you want to keep them in office, vote Lib Dem. Vote Yellow – get Brown.

65th birthday lunch at Gravetye Manor, Sussex

I believe the saying has it ‘what goes around comes around’.  So take heart, younger readers – or not, depending on your politics!

40 years ago I was 25 for the first time. From 1967 onwards we’d had huge poll leads pretty well consistently. We’d won Council after Council – including Manchester and the GLC and Liverpool! Then, in the spring of 1970 – for no apparent reason – it all started to go wrong. Or so we thought. The County elections in April showed a bit of a Labour revival. The locals in May (yes we did have separate elections in consecutive months in those days! ) were actually quite good for Labour, so Harold Wilson decided to trot up the Mall to see HM and have a GE on 18th June (anniversary of Waterloo).

On the Saturday before polling day the NOP in the Daily Mail showed Labour with a 12% lead over the Conservatives. The Evening Standard was more hopeful – Labour lead 2%. On the morning of the 18^th no poll gave us a lead at all, though they did all suggest a tight finish. I got a huge laugh when explaining to my VI formers on polling day why the Tories were going to win. By Friday afternoon they were hailing me as a prophet.

It turned out to be one of the most exciting election nights of my life and by lunchtime on 19^th Ted Heath was on his way down the Mall with a majority of 30 overall in his pocket.

So what this new senior citizen is telling you all is, we’ve been here before and we held firm to our resolve and we won. As my parents’ generation would have had it, we resolved to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

If this helps you, tell your friends. If not, keep it to thi’sen, as we used to say up North!

Interestingly the BBC hardly reported 20 economists supporting the Conservative contention that the £178billion deficit run up by Labour needs to be tackled sooner rather than later. When 60 other economists supported Brown’s line that we can spend our way out of recession (which is what his policy amounts to) it was headline news on the BBC. To add to its fairness and objectivity the news item referred to the 60 as ‘leading’ economists. There was no qualification of the adjective of course – other than their agreement with Brown (and the BBC?), one presumes.

Locally our papers seem anxious to give credibility to the ‘story’ put about by our two Lib Dem MPs about the impending closure of A&E and maternity services at Kingston Hospital. This is in spite of a very explicit letter from NHS SW London setting out the facts in the matter and a clear statement from the Health Minister in the Adjournment Debate last Monday.  One might have thought it in the public interest that this letter be published in its entirety. However, it was written on 27th January and I haven’t seen it in the local papers yet.

One wonders if Mr. Falchikov’s kitchen table isn’t groaning under new confections the media might swallow. Time will tell. Watch this space!