The Case Against AV

Warning: posting possibly only of interest to UK readers!


There is coming up on the 5th May only the second referendum in recent times here. The last was held in 1975 on the issue of membership of the EU or "Common Market" as it was generally known then and, as in that case, so in the present one concerning the voting system for Westminster elections, the fact that there is a referendum at all is due to political circumstances of a peculiar sort. Back in the 1970s there was a lot of pressure for the referendum as it helped the governing Labour Party to face both ways on the issue at hand. Now the referendum on the voting system has come about as the price the Liberal Democrats extracted for forming a coalition with the Conservatives. In return the Liberals have "compromised" on a great deal as readers are doubtless aware.


In deciding on the way to vote in this ignobly produced referendum there are two major questions at stake. One concerns the effect of the result on the governing coalition and the other concerns the question of whether there is a genuine issue of principle at stake here that is worthy of a principled commitment. Some people, particularly those in the camp campaigning for a "yes" vote, have attempted to downplay the significance of the first question in order to concentrate on the second. This attempt is doomed to failure given the unpopularity of the coalition government. However, what divides opponents of the coalition when thinking about this question is what result would damage it more and this division is connected to how one understands the character of this government.


Essentially supporters of a "yes" vote have taken the view that the government is, in the terminology of the leadership of the Labour Party, a "Tory-led" government and that the main enemies are the Conservative Party, essentially leaving open possible future alliances with the Liberal Democrats. These considerations are assisted by a general agreement in principle on the part of the Labour leadership with the Liberal Democrats concerning the merits of changing the voting system. This is not a new kind of agreement either since the last Labour government had, as a major piece of its legislative programme, a commitment to constitutional reform that included the ending of hereditary peerages in the House of Lords, the creation of a new Supreme Court and devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, all matters on which there was agreement with the Liberal Democrats. When Labour came to power in 1997 there was a substantial increase in the representation of Liberal Democrats as well and the two, even at this date, shared a commitment to electoral reform, culminating in the establishment of a commission chaired by Lord Jenkins on the question. Labour in government however never advanced the agenda of electoral reform for reasons to do with their own internal politics.


So the first question to be addressed is why it is that there is such a general agreement between the Labour and Liberal Democrat leadership on this issue and why it has extended to the AV referendum debate? The basic core of the agreement is a shared commitment to the view that reform of political processes and constitutional niceties will increase the potential for enhanced democratic engagement in the country. During the campaign thus far the "yes" team have stretched this further declaring that the introduction of AV will "end" safe seats and put greater pressure on members of parliament to be more responsive to their constituents. These are partly factual and partly evaluative claims.


As factual claims there is little to support them. The proportion of seats that will be deemed "safe" is not generally thought likely to change a great deal. The claim concerning the increased pressure that will be placed on members of parliament by the introduction of AV is more of an evaluative than factual claim since it is hardly capable of factual assessment. The evaluative claim is, however, bound up with two other views, one of which is factual and surely wrong. These two other views are: a) that AV will help to produce more proportional outcomes and b) that it will be "better" for politics if representatives of the parties have to speak to a broader segment of the population than their "core" voters.


Looking at these two claims, the first is a factual claim and is simply wrong. There is nothing inherently proportional about AV as a system. As Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, put it during the coalition negotiations last year, AV is in many respects "less proportional" than the current voting system in the UK, a claim that is understood by those who point to the fact that in cases of large majorities produced by one party, AV would have the distorting effect of increasing these majorities. This much was admitted by Chris Huhne, currently a Cabinet minister in the coalition, prior to the last election. The negotiations that set up the coalition never involved the Conservatives or Labour offering a proportional system so the Liberal Democrats got, in return for jettisoning large parts of their election manifesto, a commitment for a referendum on a system that is effectively no more proportional in its results than the current voting system.


If the factual claim concerning the effect of AV on members of parliament is bogus then what of the evaluative one? The core of this concerns the fact that it will be of interest to politicians to reach out beyond their core vote and try to win over voters from beyond their base thus ensuring that politicians will, apparently, be more amenable to compromise and more careful solutions. This is effectively the basis of alliance that exists in terms of political reform between the Labour leadership and the Liberal Democrats. The Labour leadership remains embarrassed by the attitudes of many of its voters and, although in 1997 in particular it was able to reach out to a large enough part of the electorate to take power after winning a large majority, it soon enough angered sufficient of them to govern from 2001 to 2010 in such a way that it lost both total vote share and its proportion of the electorate in every election thereafter.


There is a single basic reason why Labour reached the situation it did of progressively losing its hold on the electorate and eventually losing power. This is that it does not stand for anything that is particularly distinctive. The policies it pursued during its years in office were, as is usually the case, a mixed bag. However, what consistently alienated sections of the voting public were its basic tone-deafness on civil liberties, its lack of responsiveness to democratic pressure (as was signally evident in the case of the second Gulf War), its basically technocratic approach to politics and its deregulatory policies with regard to the financial system that contributed in their own way to the melt-down that occurred in 2008.


The general basis of this failure could be said to be grounded in the inherent resistance of the Labour Party to democracy. It is far from alone in this. The Conservatives have no more interest in democracy than Labour though they also rarely pretend otherwise. The whole "Big Society" nonsense of the current leadership is a way of stating that state money will in future be shared between a wider range of providers who will be expected to offer comparative advantages for such largesse to be distributed. It is not, and is not intended to be, about increased participation in decisions or even wider consultation concerning them.


This leaves the position of the Liberal Democrats. Officially they were committed to a proportional system but have settled for this non-proportional one as an outcome that they argue will unsettle the other major parties. Any hope anyone had, prior to the last election, in the ability of the Liberal Democrats to unsettle the major parties and produce more democratic involvement in politics is now surely gone. Their shabby deals, betrayal of principles and casual dismissal of large parts of their own electorate indicates the kinds of "compromises" they think would be part of any real "new politics". It is as shabby and unrepresentative as what is on offer from the major parties.


Given this situation what the debate about AV masks is the real democratic challenge. This is how to ensure that parties come into existence that are not, more or less in advance, merely representatives of different wings of the current plutocracy. Change in the voting system will make no difference to this one way or the other and is purely a technocratic solution to a deep problem. The Labour leadership and the Liberal Democrats are united in their commitment to such a covering over of the real democratic problem whilst the Conservatives have no interest in even bothering with it.


Returning to the considerations with which I opened the posting: it should be apparent that there is little to support the view that there is a principled issue at stake in the AV referendum. Supporters of the switch try to dismiss this argument, suggesting that whilst AV is not the system they would have chosen that it is better than the present one but I see little by way of evidence for this claim if it is viewed as factual and plenty to stand against it if it is viewed as an evaluative claim. Given this situation the more short-term question of the effect of the outcome on the coalition government seems to me of some importance.


In regard to this effect the question becomes which wing of the coalition one takes to be more reprehensible. Traditional Labour supporters tend to unequivocally believe that this is the Tories and so hope that a "yes" vote will harm Cameron. Possibly such an outcome would hurt Cameron but it would strengthen Clegg and his Liberal Democrats. "Yes" supporters claim that Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are already discredited. However the mandate to change the voting system would give them a solid basis to believe they had brought about a serious change to the constitution. This would reinvigorate the party that brought us a tripling of tuition fees, the abolition of the teaching grant to arts, humanities and social sciences in the universities, the scrapping of the educational maintenance allowance and a program of cuts across the UK. Yes, it was the Liberal Democrats who brought us all this as none of it could have been achieved without them. Further, they betrayed the prospect for political renewal they appeared to represent at the last election. There is also nothing inherently conservative about the present government as has been recognised by most commentators. In fact there are grounds for claiming that, economically, it is "led" by the liberals in the Cabinet of both parties. These factors put together, alongside the flaws in the argument suggesting there is anything especially useful in moving to AV, suggest to me a basic case for a "no" vote on the 5th May.

Report on Netroots UK Conference

I've just returned from attending this conference that was held yesterday in London. It was held at the headquarters of the British Trades Union Congress, the umbrella body here for all the major trades unions. The day featured a couple of plenary sessions and some workshops and was highlighted as an occasion to bring together  "progressive activists" working on the web. As I will indicate by going through my impressions of the day, it was an event that, whilst full of promise, also highlighted some predictably depressing truths about the state of British politics.


The event itself was well attended and it took a little time to register for it. Participants were generally smartly dressed and professional looking. The head of the TUC, Brendan Barber, gave a short address welcoming everyone to the event and was succeeded by a video message from Markos Zuniga, from Daily Kos, one of the points of the second being to emphasize the connection of this event with similar ones in the US. One of the providers of funding for the event was also Blue State Digital.


After these opening salvoes the first plenary session opened and was chaired by Sunny Hundal from the blog Liberal Conspiracy who, despite posting his own speech in advance on his blog, decided not to give it. Speeches were, however, given by Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society, Nigel Stanley from the TUC, the Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee and, most impressively, from Clifford Singer of the excellent site False Economy. Singer made clear the basic strategy of the Coalition government here which is to cut the national deficit over 4 years by a programme which is comprised of 80% cuts and 20% tax increases (with the latter including the recent highly regressive increase in purchase tax, known here as "value added tax" or VAT).


Singer made the point that the basic problem with opposing the government concerned getting across the idea that "growing the economy" would resolve the lion's share of the problem and enable revelation of the real size of the "structural" debt. However, whilst there is this problem, there are clear pressure points on the government in relation to fairness and electoral legitimacy given that neither of the parties to the current coalition indicated prior to the election that they would embark on a programme of the type that they have adopted. There are also alternatives in terms of revenue raising that are not even being considered including the Robin Hood tax and tackling tax avoidance on the part of the super-rich. The former tax has a specific campaign which was one of the sponsors of the conference although , somewhat oddly, I saw no sign of them at the event. The focus on general tax avoidance on the part of the super-rich has been the province of the mass civil disobedience campaign, UK Uncut.


The general strategy of the TUC, as made clear in the plenary speeches, is to aim for a big demonstration on March 26th of this year with the implicit threat of a "spring of discontent" following. It is also being suggested that whilst a third of the population support the government and a third are seriously opposed that a further third are capable of being won round. There are now over 150 separate campaigns listed on the False Economy site and the number continues to grow.


In relation to this struggle activity on the internet has a key role to play as a number of elements of the day demonstrated well. Paul Mason, the editor of Newsnight, one of the top BBC political comment shows, was quoted as stating that social networks have the potential to contest and overturn dominant views of politics and evidence was presented of how the websites of mainstream news outlets such as Mail Online have been influenced in how they present stories by reporting on social network sites and blogs.


After the opening plenary the next part of the day was given over to workshops, about nine of which ran concurrently and featured an array of topics including a "beginner's guide" to blogging, investigative journalism for bloggers, sessions on raising funds for campaign actions and how to plan campaigns. I attended the session on turning online activity into offline activity, not least because it was being addressed by Jessica Riches, better known to her Twitter followers as littlemisswilde and who was head of Twitter communication during the occupation at University College London during December, an occupation that ran for 16 days.


This session was chaired by a guy from the Labour Party who had apparently played a role in the campaign to get Ed Miliband elected its leader. The other speaker at the section was Teddy Goff, from Blue State Digital, who talked about ways in which the campaign to get Obama elected President of the US had been run. Of the two speakers, Riches was decidedly the better despite being less experienced. She made clear how Twitter had helped to "widen the room" when the occupation at UCL was ongoing since it enabled members of different occupations to keep in touch with each other and also to connect to both other students not occupying at the time and to a wider support base. She also furthered the case made earlier by Singer of the ability of social networks to present a clear "alternative narrative" to that being put out by mainstream media, something I can confirm since keeping pace with events in December was definitely possible by means of Twitter whilst mainstream media frequently mis-reported and almost always under-reported actions. Riches also argued that Twitter successfully lowered the bar for entry into actions enabling participation of a wider range of people than would otherwise tend to occur. The discussion was somewhat wide-ranging and a video of Ed Miliband's campaign for leadership was shown, a somewhat slick affair that was far from winning general enthusiasm in the audience. It also opened out the problem, voiced by someone who intervened from the floor at the plenary session, of the relationship of the anti-cuts and protest movements to the Labour Party, something that continued to be a bone of contention throughout the day.


After consumption of a lunch provided by the organisers it was time for the lunchtime fringe sessions which were all successfully run and again concerned a wide range of topics from the influence of the blogosphere on the Swedish election of 2010, to a special session for disabled activists and a non-technical guide to internet security. I attended the session on the student fightback which was led by Guy Aitchison from Open Democracy and Aaron Peters who has been such a successful front for UK UnCut that he has been subjected to a specific attack in Mail Online.


Peters referred as part of his contribution to the theory he has developed of how there is always a kind of "cognitive sharing" occurring in struggles since everyone is capable of having good ideas of how to take actions forward and that this is one of the reasons why the general protest movement has structured its actions in such a way that it tries to avoid reproducing leadership structures. It may be doubted, however, whether this is entirely successful! One of the tensions within the student movement has concerned its relationship to the formal national union, the National Union of Students, not least because of unhappiness with its leadership. Some discussion was had about this but it was rather inconclusive. The shadow of the Labour Party's relation to the movement again lurked but was not seriously tackled.


Afternoon sessions now began, again focusing on a wide range of areas, from local campaigns against the cuts to how women can be engaged on-line to a specific session on how to use satire on-line. I chose to attend the session on blogging in 2011 which was subtitled "how to build an infrastructure for the left". I misunderstood this title since I had assumed that by "the left" what was meant was the general protest movement but, in fact, what turned out to meant by this sub-title was the Labour Party.


Speakers at this session included Mark Ferguson from Labour List, Donnacha Delong from the National Union of Journalists, Laurence Durnan from Political Scrapbook, Sue Macmillan who was until recently the head of new media for the Labour Party and Tim Montgomerie from Conservative Home. With the exception of Delong this was a set-up for the political establishment. It was put into an oddly small room and there was, to be truthful, very little real discussion of blogging. Macmillan made the stern early point that whatever campaigners thought they were doing that political parties had only one real point which was to get elected. Ferguson and Durnan congratulated each other on running great sites and Delong advised bloggers to join the NUJ as bloggers are regarded by the NUJ as journalists just as much as print writers are. Montgomerie gave much the most interesting of the talks in this session pointing out that the really interesting thing when it comes to blogging is not the raw numbers of followers but the nature of them so that the aim should be to get influential followers. He also indicated that the blog did not only reflect his views but also things taken seriously by his readers.


Montgomerie also spoke to a brief of the opportunities and problems for the left in the current period indicating that the opportunities lay in exploiting the cuts, running local campaigns and exploiting the migration of talent from government to campaigns. He also, rather more controversially, indicated the real "problem" for the movement which consisted, in his view, on "infiltration" from extremists, something that led to protests from the floor and from Delong despite Sunny Hundal trying to close this down. As Delong pointed out the recent actions were not led by "extremist infiltrators" but by genuinely very angry demonstrators and, as was added from the floor, it is in any case somewhat offensive to be given such advice by someone who supports the current government and compares the "far left" to racists and fascists!


The disappointing session on blogging was followed by a final plenary that both cemented the disappointment and also confirmed its source. Ari Rabin-Havt from Media Matters gave a narrowly focused but very fine talk on the baleful influence of Fox News in the US and urged all present to do everything they could to prevent Rupert Murdoch consolidating his hold on media in this country. He was then followed by the scarcely believable Labour MP Stella Creasy who gave a very long and boring speech saying precisely nothing. Creasy talked at great length about how good it was to campaign though she only gave two examples of anything she had campaigned for, namely, returning puppies to their owners and against loan sharks. She also reacted in a contemptuous and condescending manner to questions from the floor which grew increasingly hostile. After this appalling performance, a reminder of everything bad about the Labour Party, campaigners were summoned to the mic for plugs of different action groups but were given only a very brief time each at the mic, something, after the awful speech by Creasy, that was pretty offensive.


I had to leave at this point and missed the final speech by Will Straw of Left Foot Forward. My impressions on closing were very mixed. On the one hand, there is still tremendous energy in the campaigns that came together at the end of last year and determination to take on the coalition government. However there is a great risk of this being dissipated and the relationship of the protest movement to the Labour Party emerges as a serious problem. The official line of the Labour Party, repeated as a clear refrain at the event by all its official representatives, is that the campaign against the government is a long-haul thing that will take the length of a whole session of parliament. Effectively they see campaigns as simply facilitating, as Sue Macmillan put it, the task of winning an election. They do not see the point of the campaigns being to force the government to collapse and to do so quickly.


Unfortunately this Labour perspective seems to be shared also by many in the wider movement as was evidenced by Sunny Hundal's talk of being in this for a "long-haul" and by statements made by some in the student session that if some want to lobby parliament and others do other protests that this is fine also. There was lots of talk in this latter vein of "pluralism" but this appears to be a watchword for keeping campaigners away from pressuring the Labour Party and trying to drive it into a more radical posture. Whilst Labour remains committed to the idea that this government will serve a full term and it is allowed by campaigners to persist in this line then there is serious danger that the energy of the movement will dissipate as the agenda of the coalition becomes entrenched in the wider society. Unless the movement takes the wider perspective that it is imperative to have an early and decisive action to close down this government's chance of governing then it is only too likely that the movement will simply go down to defeat. I hope I am wrong about this and I hope the movement adopts a more urgent posture but the evidence from this event was, despite everything at it that was of interest, unfortunately discouraging.

Related articles

• Hacktivists of the world unite (newstatesman.com)
• Left has a difficult job to create an alternative but is winning the argument (leftfootforward.org)
• Anti-cuts campaigners meet to debate next move (guardian.co.uk)
• Online anti-cuts campaign set up (mirror.co.uk)
• Netroots UK: activists discuss next stage of protests against cuts and fees (guardian.co.uk)
• Britain's Netroots must turn online activity into offline protest in 2011 (leftfootforward.org)

PPE and the British Political Class

A lovely story over at the BBC today runs to the effect that taking a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford is something of a requirement for political leaders here in the UK. The evidence cited for this claim is that six members of the current cabinet did so as did three of the current candidates for leadership of the Labour Party along with four previous cabinet members not running in the race. A second strand of evidence is to the effect that of the six hundred or so current members of parliament there are 35 who studied the course and that 2 previous Prime Ministers took it.


Initially this evidence looks impressive though what it shows is less than it seems. It is not in itself news that many members of parliament, of all parties, took degrees at Oxford or that the general political class have mainly studied humanities and social science courses rather than the "vocational" ones they tend to recommend for everyone else and which themselves have less economic rationale than they tend to claim. It is also not discussed in the BBC story which options the politicians cited stay with since it is necessary on the course to drop one of the three options at the end of the first year. This would have been interesting to have some sense of. Do they drop economics as seemed to be normal when I taught on this course and could this help to explain a number of poor government decisions? Do they drop philosophy, something which might explain the poor political theories that abound amongst politicians? Or would they even - gasp!- drop politics?


Fun aside, the story has produced some predictable reactions such as bemoaning the lack of science education of our political leaders, something that plays into the narrative these same leaders like to spin. Surely it would be more interesting to ask why it is that these leaders themselves emphasise qualities in their own education that they later downplay in importance for others? Perhaps it could be that the advantages of studying subjects such as philosophy and economics are things they wish to keep for themselves? Or maybe they really were turned off by rather dull Oxford teachers whose grasp of how to turn students towards philosophical problems was less than we might wish?

The UK's Coalition Government

There has been much ink spilt since the inconclusive result of the recent UK general election and the country is now returning, after a season of high political fever, back to a more gentle normality. However, given my previous posting, just prior to the election, presenting the contest in certain philosophical terms, it is worth adding a brief comment on the outcome.


Certainly, when I wrote my previous posting, I did not anticipate the outcome that has emerged. Like many senior members of the Liberal Democrats I anticipated, in line with the opinion polls, that they could overtake the Labour Party as the main opposition. The actual outcome of the election did not produce such a result. Instead, despite improving the percentage of their vote and increasing their total overall vote, they in fact lost ground in terms of representation in Parliament. The Labour vote did, however, collapse to an historic low producing an arithmetical outcome which did not follow expected political logic.


Given this situation the improbable became the inevitable and the Liberal Democrats are now in coalition with the Conservatives. It is not possible to comment in great detail on this given that the negotiation agreement issued does not cover the full range of policy and is particularly quiet on foreign policy. However, the relationship of this agreement, such as has been made public, to my earlier argument for a "progressive" politics is what I wish to review. In the earlier posting I pointed out many failures of the last Labour government and, given its lamentable record on civil liberties, there are good reasons for being pleased it has passed into history.


I used a guideline of social justice to assess what is "progressive" and on some of these measures the agreement, as published, does not meet these. So, for example, in regard to higher education, the best policy commitment of the Liberal Democrats was for the scrapping of tuition fees and a commitment to free education. This has been dropped with the adoption of the policy, highlighted by both the Conservative and Labour parties prior to the election, of listening to the outcome of a review into student finance. Since it is common knowledge that this review will lead to increase of fees this is a poor outcome masked only by the fact that Liberal Democrats will be allowed to abstain in a vote on the review should they find it unacceptable. Generally that is round one to a reactionary position.


A second point on which I laid stress was rebalancing of the economy away from such a large reliance on finance. In relation to this the agreement speaks of fostering of diversity in the banking sector and promotion of mutuals, both good ideas. Similarly the need for further regulation of the system is explicitly recognised though the details of this are again left to a review. More importantly, the commitment to ensuring credit to small and medium size businesses including consideration of a major loan guarantee and use of net landing targets for the nationalised banks are very good gains. There is still some question about detail of the latter so this second part could be said to be a qualified progressive victory.


Commitment to political reform was the next point I raised. Some unexpected features have emerged here with fixed parliaments being agreed for the first time, something which involves a major shift of power away from the executive. There is further to be a referendum bill on electoral reform in order to ensure a referendum can be held on changes to the voting system. Although the change will not be to a fully proportional system if agreed it still will mark an improvement on the present system. Further proposals are included for a "wholly or mainly elected upper chamber" on the basis of proportional representation. This is a major gain and, along with the commitment to fixed parliaments and the referendum on voting reform marks a progressive agenda for constitutional change.


The most major area of progressive improvement, however, is in relation to civil liberties. After years of intrusion by the Labour government there is to be a freedom bill that will repeal  the ID card scheme, the national identity register, and the outlawing of finger-printing at school without parental permission. The Freedom of Information Act will be extended, trial by jury is guaranteed, restoration of rights to non-violent protest, review of libel law, regulation of CCTV and the ending of the storage of internet and email records. This is a major achievement and marks a decisive progressive step forward.


On balance, then, the issues specifically identified in my previous posting have been addressed and given this the government does qualify for the title of "progressive", certainly by contrast to the Labour Party. This does not, however, mean that its rule will be uniformly pleasant given the cuts in public services it will most certainly introduce and, given that all parties had poor policies on higher education, we can expect a particularly difficult time in higher education. Foreign policy is also an area on which little has been said but in which it cannot be anticipated that there will be much that will involve ideals of internationalism. The result then should be one of guarded and mitigated welcome for this coalition but welcome it should still be.


Finally, looking back at my previous postings on the manifestoes of the political parties, I can point to the fact that in the posting on the manifesto of the Liberal Democrats, I drew out there that the logic of their claim that there needed to be a Council of Financial Stability, led to the notion of a National Government, precisely what has now been formed. Interestingly, in hindsight, this also chimed with the Conservative view, as expressed in their manifesto, of the need for a Office for Budget Responsibility, which has been now established but whose functions are similar to those of the Liberal notion of the Council of Financial Stability.

Progress, Reaction and Liberalism

The current general election in the United Kingdom has a number of peculiar features and, despite taking place against a background of serious economic news, has the potential to remake the image of what political engagement can mean. There is, however, some resistance to this view amongst a broad spectrum of people, not least those who might be thought naturally to be most clearly disposed to adopting such a view.


In the UK the natural home of "progressive" sentiments has, since the end of the First World War almost a century ago, been the Labour Party. This should no longer be the case, not least because of many problems with the record of the last government, problems which alone should give serious pause to anyone. Even more should they give pause to anyone interested in the view of promotion of a "progressive" view of politics.


What are the reasons why I make this claim? Well, prior to looking at the details of specific policies or thinking through recent British political history, the central reason concerns a need to look again at what it means to describe a political position as "progressive". When Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 he spoke of the need for a "progressive" view of politics and he, for at least a time, consolidated behind him a coalition of people who viewed him as embodying such a view. By the time of the last election in 2005 it was very difficult to see Blair in this way and, consequently, hard to view the party he led as the vehicle for progress.


But what went unasked in a general disillusionment that was illustrated in the fact that each of Blair's election victories produced a falling support in terms of percentage of electors, was the question of what was meant by the notion of "progressive politics". It is easiest perhaps to begin to define the notion by reference to what it opposes, the notion of "reactionary" politics. What is "reactionary" is not simply, as many dictionaries would suggest, resistance to change. Any political party or force wishes change. But there are different kinds of change. There are changes which reinforce injustice, deepen social divisions and entrench vested interests and there are changes which aim to reduce injustice, promote that which is just, reduce division and promote an enhanced view of the polity that is not at the service of a given interest. The former is a reactionary change, the latter a progressive change.


This general view of the division between progress and reaction does not emerge from nowhere in political history. It is grounded in divisions between groups that date back to the time of the Glorious Revolution in Britain. At that point monarchical power and vested privileges were broken in favour of a parliamentary system of representation. This victory was accomplished by a party of progressive change that defeated the Tory view, a view that can broadly be understood as legitimist and which took its last stand in 1745. The defeat of this view then produced a consolidated landed oligarchy that entrenched its own patterns of privileges that were challenged by a series of events in the 19th century including the Great Reform Act of 1832, Catholic and Jewish emancipation, the opening of the universities and the granting, after sustained agitation from the Manchester School of Liberalism, of manhood suffrage (albeit not a universal one).


This struggle continued in terms of movement to universal manhood suffrage and the final universal granting of suffrage to women also, something initially championed by John Stuart Mill. The universal opening of representation formulated the uniquely modern political system we term "democracy" and its advent was the result of sustained and continued struggle between those who advocated it and those who opposed it. The former were the "progressives" and the latter the "reactionaries". 


The twentieth century produced, however, new political forces that created confusion and articulated positions that did not easily fit this classical pattern. These forces included the labour movement and socialist and communist parties. This is the origin of the contemporary confusion that obfuscates the clarity required to recognise that the contemporary Liberal Democratic Party in the UK is the natural home of "progressive" sentiment. The view became consolidated in the 1930's and 1940's that labour movements were the ground of "progressive" demands and that liberalism had been left behind. 


There were, nonetheless, many peculiar elements to this view. One was that the economic doctrine that won most adherents in this period was not, despite much pressure to the contrary, a Marxist one. There were many reasons for this, not least that Marxism provides no positive economic model. Marxists are extremely good at providing critical attacks on economic models and economic systems but, in practice, have produced no sustainable economic model for governing a society other than totalitarian coercion, better known as the "command economy". Such a position has consistently failed to secure sufficient adherents in advanced Western countries to be adopted and this is certainly to the good. Some time ago Ludwig Von Mises exposed in detail the difficulties of such a view in his classic work Socialism.


Von Mises' own positive economic position was, however, not one that was adopted during the crisis years of the middle of the 20th century. Rather, at that time, it was the works of John Maynard Keynes that were turned to. Keynes' economic arguments provided the basis of much of what became orthodoxy in politics after the Second World War especially when combined with the welfare state proposals of William Beveridge. Despite being implemented by the Labour Party both these men and their ideas emerged from the Liberal political tradition.


The elements that were added to the positions of Keynes and Beveridge that came directly from within the labour movement were emphasis on sustained state intervention into running the economy, that is, nationalisation. The model of such nationalisation was what became seriously challenged in the advent of the newly globalising world of the 1970s. As economies became more inter-dependent so the insular models of labourism that supported the implementation of trade barriers of all sorts and underpinned unsustainable protectionist views of labour became undermined. 


This was the beginning of the end for the traditional Labour Party which, during the years of Conservative hegemony, was gradually destroyed such that Tony Blair could eventually emerge as the leader of a quite different force in the 1990's. The remaking of Labour was sometimes presented, by Blair himself amongst others, as a revival of "progressive" politics and that good things were done in many directions by Blair's government is clear enough. So civil partnerships were recognised, an equal age of consent for gay people was won and invidious forms of discrimination were removed. Similarly, the Blair government formulated and defended a view of the public services that enabled their expansion including an expanded higher education sector.


Blair, however, had no feel for much that is central to a serious "progressive" view of politics. Under his leadership there was little confrontation with inequality and, under Labour, inequality has increased such that their rule has led to a redistribution of wealth towards the very wealthiest. Similarly, deregulation of the finance sector of the economy gathered apace such that the unstable credit boom of the first decade of this century was allowed to emerge. In such respects, as in others, Blair's government moved in lock-step with the Bush regime in the US. 


Confrontation with finance, expansion of the productive base of the economy and concern with redistribution of wealth towards the poorest, did not feature in Blair's view. Similarly, Blair paradoxically also articulated a shift towards defence of religious privilege, as in his endorsement of faith schools and a privatised model of education that even allowed creationist academies to be given state funding. In these respects the Blair project represented something reactionary. Similarly, civil liberties were never related to by Blair's governments as anything other than a nuisance in a foreign policy that resolutely presented the fight against terrorism as the number one agenda. The hopes for an ethical foreign policy at the origin of the Blair government were lost.


It is time to realise that the Labour Party has no natural claim to represent "progressive" opinion and that what was most creative in its responses to the political crises of the last century in fact came from Liberal thinking. Once this is recognised it also becomes clear that liberalism is the philosophy that is progressive, not socialism. Liberalism has been re-born as something that incorporates the gains of social democracy but which also rests on a stronger connection to civil liberties and to an emphasis on individual freedom that socialists have always been loath to acknowledge.


The socialist force, such as is left, is itself now reactionary. It stands for out-dated positions, recognising sectional interests that cannot promote the renewal of politics. Further, in the context of economic crisis it suggests dangerous illusions concerning the nature of the state and its relationship to the economy. Conservatives, by contrast, have, unashamedly, revealed themselves once again to stand in the long tradition of basic reaction, standing only for vested interests of the super-rich that recognise little in the broader society. The leader article in The Guardian articulates this well.


Given these parameters it is the case that the moment has come to once again recognise that the basic force that represents the possibilities for progressive reform that exist are liberal (and Liberal). This is not a notion that many find easy to see but no other force can bring change that will respect the imperatives of social justice. If social justice is the guideline for what is progressive then it should include such matters as support for free education, emphasis on the need to re-build the economy by rebalancing it, increased and focused regulation of banking and finance, a proportional voting system that ends the shame of governments being formed that have no real majority and a serious commitment to the safeguarding of civil liberties. It should and must also relate to foreign policy through engagement with Europe and the US based on the pursuit of liberal ideals and internationalism. There is much that is problematic in the current Liberal Democrat platform, as I have stated in previous postings. It is, however, the case that only this party and only the general position of liberalism can represent the cause of progress. Given this situation it becomes a clear duty to support the Liberal Democrats and to engage with them in order to further the cause of democracy and to deepen the roots of liberalism. As Obama's struggles in the US have shown it is possible for progressive agendas to be presented successfully and for them to secure victories in the struggle with reaction. Such a struggle is a philosophically deep one and it is one to which this generation, like others before it, is called to engage with.

Secularism and Religious Rights

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has once again been intervening in public debate. The case in point concerned the dismissal of Gary MacFarlane who was dismissed from a job for the marriage guidance counsellors Relate due to his refusal to engage with gay couples. MacFarlane's appeal against this dismissal consisted in the claim that dismissal on these grounds violated his rights since, as a committed Christian, he could not endorse people living "in sin".


The tribunal that judged MacFarlane's case argued fiercely against the claim that there was a religious right here that had been violated but was even clearer in making a specific attack on Lord Carey. Carey had called for the case to be tried by a special panel of judges who had "proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues". This call, when coupled with Carey's support for viewing the case as one of religious rights led Carey to claim that the case was one of competing rights where the right of gay couples to equal treatment is one that needs to be balanced against the rights of religious believers.


Carey's arguments betray deep confusions concerning the nature of rights, confusions that partly grow out of the unfinished secularisation of the British state and partly reflect the pandering to notions of religious rights that have been reflected in the behaviour of the Labour government since 1997. The historic basis is the fact that Carey is a member of a state church that retains a specific place in the British constitution enabling its bishops to act as legislators in a manner not granted to other religious believers, its schools to receive unprecedented state aid and state ceremonies to be held in its buildings. This historic basis to a view that Anglican Christians have special rights has been buttressed by the promotion of "faith schools" on the part of the Labour Party.


Given this background it is less surprising than it would otherwise be that Lord Carey should have the view that he does. It is still the case however that his view is deeply and grievously wrong. The judge who presided in the tribunal Lord Justice Laws made many correct statements in striking down the appeal in the case. Laws states that the precepts of no religion or belief system have any special place in law as, if they did, those who did not have such convictions would be less than citizens under the law. In following up on this claim Laws stated that there is a distinction between the law's protection of the right to hold and express a belief on the one hand and protection of that belief's substance and content on the other. This distinction is the core of the argument. It is due to the fact that Lord Carey assumes that religious rights involve protection of the substance and content of belief that he believes there is a conflict of rights, a view that he has been given support in due to the government's promotion of faith schools. Should there be protection of the substance and content of belief then one of two impossible situations will result. Either the protection would support one religion or belief system or it would support all. If the former is the case then, as Laws rightly stated, the step towards theocracy would be very large. Should the latter however, be the case, then the contradictory nature of distinct belief systems would create an insoluble problem.


Further, Carey's specific request for tribunals based on tests of sensitivity to religious beliefs is intrinsically unjust. Such tests of belief would have to favour one view of such beliefs hence would be sectarian in nature and guided by an evaluation that had nothing to do with the possession of rights. Carey argues that the result of this case is to move Britain in the direction of a "secular" rather than a "neutral" state but gives no definition of the latter. By a "neutral" state one can only mean a state that is not guided by the promotion of a given belief system and is impartial with regard to all. This is precisely what a consistent secularism involves. Secularism does not mean state embrace of irreligion but instead lack of preference to any religion. Given that Britain has historically given preference to Carey's religion then it is true that the drift of law now is towards a notion of the state that is no longer sectarian as it historically was. This is also why it is plausible to speak of the head of state of Britain being something other than an Anglican. The logical thing is systematic and clear separation of church and state, the same as occurred in the founding of the United States. The head of the National Secular Society correctly stated that the judgment enforces the view that anti-discrimination laws apply to people not to holders of beliefs. There is no "conflict of rights" as there is no right to the substance and content of a belief being given any special status and Carey's arguments against betray a reactionary desire to maintain a special status for a state church whose time of dominance in Britain is due to end and whose special legal rights are not only an anachronism but an offence.

The Pressure on the Humanities

The news mentioned in the previous posting is part of a general trend in the UK and also in other countries in the world. The general notion that there needs to be any focus, support or attention given to the place of the humanities in contemporary education has been entirely lost. In the current general election here in the UK the manifestoes of all three major parties are silent concerning any significant role for the humanities, focusing all their attention on the place of STEM subjects. The Labour Party has been particularly bold in this emphasis, folding the Dept for Education into that of Business whilst the Liberal Democrats intend to merge the Higher Education Funding Council for England with the Skills Funding Agency in order to create a single Council for Adult Skills and Higher Education. Since HEFCE pioneered the notion of impact assessment before the Labour Party there are some senses in which its loss would not be as grievous as all that but merging it with a skills council speaks volumes for the general view of higher education assumed.


Whilst the political parties are adopting these blinkered points of view universities across the UK are closing or cutting their philosophy departments. Amongst others there are threats of cuts at the University of Sussex, King's College London, the University of Leeds and Gloucestershire University. It can hardly be expected that these attacks are likely, in a situation of increased budgetary constraint, to cease.


It is worth pausing, however, to question why it is that the humanities in general and philosophy in particular are particularly susceptible to these attacks. It is true that the justifications offered for the cuts are often framed in very narrow budgetary terms as appears to be the case at Middlesex. Such terms do not intrinsically prevent other types of subjects and subject areas being affected and, indeed, at University College London, it is the life sciences that are threatened. However, despite the correctness of this point, there is a particular pattern of assault on the humanities in general and philosophy in particular, that reaches beyond the narrow rationale of budgets.


In a new book Martha Nussbaum takes aim at a logic that generally views the humanities as of little contemporary significance, a view that we can see reflected in the general failure to view focus on them as any kind of political priority. The economic situation has led to an intensification of a trend visible for sometime. This is one in which the value of education is generally assessed in terms of the price of wage one can attract after having consumed it. It is the model of education in terms of preparation for work, as is particularly evident in the subsumption of education under business and the merging of higher education with training.


In this situation the central difficulty with providing a general rationale for defending the humanities in general and philosophy in particular is that alternative views of the point of education are thought to be of little relevance in straitened times. The intriguing thing about this, however, is that this does not apply equally to education that is based on fine art. Whilst this is hardly a season of rejoicing in the arts in terms of funding there is not the same antipathy towards arts that is expressed towards the humanities. The reason appears to be that performance can be guaranteed from art whilst little that is taken to be significant emerges from the humanities.


The central political question that emerges from this concerns how it is that a sustainable civil society is meant to develop without education that is concerned with the nature of civility itself. Politicians make much out of the conditions for civility but seem to think that civility is merely a matter of moral exhortation, not something that requires development of moral sensitivity. Similarly, the focus on instrumental gain from knowledge leaves aside any questions concerning the nature of knowledge itself and hence does not allow for serious engagement with the point of relations with others. The basic case for philosophy as an enquiry is that without it assumptions ossify and prejudice replaces judgment. A "culture" without philosophy is possible, just not desirable and the case for this looks like needing to be made again.

The TV Debates and the Liberal Democrats

There are good reasons for readers of this blog to expect more postings on international affairs than on domestic UK politics but, since we are here in the midst of what is shaping up to be an historic change in the UK political scene, I am afraid there are going to be more postings on this election. At present, what is interesting me, is the response on the part of the traditional print press and mainstream political establishment, to the innovation (in UK terms) of television debates between the leaders of the three main parties.


There are a number of curious features both of the debates and of the responses to them. In relation to the debates themselves the focus of coverage has been less on the specifics of things said than on the instant opinion polls published afterwards. Whilst the general comment has focused on these there has also been a corresponding deprecation of the debates themselves as though they were simply a form of popularity contest like the entertainment show X Factor. So the media sets it up in terms of polls and then denounces the debates themselves due to the way they have chosen to report them!


This irrationality is then reinforced in terms of response to the main apparent beneficiaries of these debates: the Liberal Democrats, whose leader, Nick Clegg, has emerged as the most articulate of the three and easily the best at conveying both the policies of the party he leads and a sense of himself as capable of being a leader. Precisely because Clegg has come out of the debates as the popular favourite he has been greeted with the opprobrium the media has determined the debates in general deserve. So he has been cast as an "anti-politics" candidate due to his challenge to the previous two-party system, denounced by his opponents as immature and presented, most recently in the Financial Times, as the leader of a party that is not really ready for power, not least, according to the FT, due to opposing nuclear power and desiring a debate on nuclear weapons. The fact that nuclear power's safety record is, to say the least about it, dubious or that the very same newspaper reported only days before the need for debate about the future way to relate to Britain's nuclear deterrent? Apparently not relevant or "mature" responses to the situation.


Most bizarrely of all, the former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer from the years of the last Conservative government of John Major, Ken Clarke, has recently claimed that a "hung parliament" in which no party had a majority, would produce an intervention from the International Monetary Fund! In the course of claiming this, Clarke also went on to attack such new media sources as Twitter for, once again, making the election into a "popularity contest" as though winning enough votes was, in some sense, an unfair way for an election to be won! 


The bizarre and incoherent responses to both the debates themselves and the apparent surge in support they have given to the Liberal Democrats suggest a couple of responses. On the one hand, the fact of the debates is unsettling to the traditional media. Such media is compelled to report on them even though the means it does so is precisely through the medium of opinion polls rather than sustained analysis of the policies the debates have articulated. In focusing so consistently on the question of instant polls the media thereby both respond in a way that mirrors the new media they apparently wish to differentiate themselves from and yet also provide the basis of a reflexive backlash on their part to such media. All of which indicates a serious crisis in the form of media itself. Secondly, the apparent rise of a third force within British politics that does not fit into the mould of the previous political structure has further undermined the responsive model of the media itself. In Britain the print media is mainly favourable towards the Conservatives, to such an extent, in fact, that it is always worthy of comment that the Conservatives are so generally unsuccessful (or at least have been for the past 13 years). Those who oppose the Conservatives, by contrast, gravitate naturally towards Labour with the result that none of them are prepared for a possible powerful third force despite the evident greater coherence of the Liberal programme as revealed in the manifestos of the parties. Should the surge reported in the opinion polls be confirmed come election day there can be little doubt that the result of this will to be change British politics as the only basis for a deal between the Liberal Democrats and either of the other two parties would be electoral reform. Once grant electoral reform and there will be no return to the two party system. As I said earlier, this is surely shaping up to be an historic election after which, all could well be, "changed, changed utterly" though it remains to be seen whether or not "a terrible beauty" will thereby be born!

The Liberal Democrat Manifesto

The manifesto of the Liberal Democrats is, in many different respects, the most attractive of the three main parties. Its layout is, for a start, much preferable to the other two. Whilst the Labour Party manifesto is divided into 10 sections and the Conservative Party into five, the Liberals, traditionally the "centre" party, have 7 sections! The cover, however, leads on 4 areas that are presented as central to the whole document and each of which includes the term that is meant to guide the overall understanding of the policies set out, the term "fair". So we have fair taxes, a fair chance for your child, a fair future and a fair deal. I'll say something about each of these but, first of all, let's record the contents page in terms of its seven divisions. Each of these is laid out with a stress on how they belong to us, the voters and citizens, so here we have your money, your job, your life, your family, your world, your community and, finally, your say. After all this the manifesto closes with a detailed costing of all the proposals made, something not included in either of the other two party manifestoes.


The four areas that are stressed on the cover and with which the manifesto opens are clearly indicative of a general stress that the party hopes will be remembered and also meant, in some sense, to provide orientation in the wealth of detail that follows. The key "fair tax" pledge is to take the first £10,000 earned out of income tax entirely. This has one good and one less obviously good consequence. The clear good side is that it removes the lowest earners entirely from consideration for income tax and also ensures that all lower-income earners have a large tax break. The less good element of it is that this tax break is extended to all so that it will be enjoyed as much by the wealthiest as everyone else. Since income tax is the most progressive tax this is, in some respects, a strange move though it is likely the thought behind it was one of not increasing means-testing in tax and benefits and so may be a price to pay for a generally worthy objective. Under the "fair future" area is included a pledge to break up the banks and get them lending again to businesses, both good objectives. The "fair chance" is indicated by focusing spending on struggling pupils, a pledge specifically costed. Finally, the "fair deal" includes a specific freedom bill. Since these headline areas are clearly meant to attract most attention it is notable that two of them (the tax pledge and the chance pledge) involve focus on lower income people. 


Going past the staged setting of the four areas the details of the general approach begin, as was the case with both the other parties, with focus on the economy. In addition to the removal of the lowest-income groups from taxation the response to the economy includes emphasis on reduction of tax evasion and taxing capital gains in the same way as income, both policies clearly targeted at the wealthy, as is the introduction of a Mansion tax. All of this amounts to the basis of a clear social democratic programme. Similarly, like the Labour Party, they pledge to wait before cutting spending programmes, delaying at least until 2011-12 on the assumption, shared with Labour, that cutting too soon will damage the recovery.


When it comes to tackling the budget deficit the manifesto also includes more specifics than are found in either of the other two programmes. Like the other two parties they will effectively freeze public sector pay and, like the Conservatives, will restrict the scope of tax credits (though, unlike the Conservatives, they do not say how they will restrict their scope). There is a mention of a specific Banking Levy so that banks pay for the support they have received, something not mentioned in the other two manifestoes. The basis of the cuts to come is assigned to the findings of a proposed review based on the findings of the National Audit Office and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. The general response to the whole credit problem is, however, assigned to a Council of Financial Stability on which there would be all-party representation. These proposals effectively indicate that there is no specific plan going to be laid out in the rest of the manifesto over how to tackle the crisis and rather suggest the format of an effective National Government to deal with it.


One might think, after this has become clear, that there would be less left to say in this manifesto than in the others unless one recalled that neither of the main two parties said very much at all about the deficit. Some specific proposals are forthcoming, such as the notion of setting up a National Infrastructure Bank that would determine ways of directing investment for the general economy and is surely a good idea. Similarly the commitment to implement a version of Glass-Steagall by distinguishing between retail and investment is a clearly necessary requirement, surprisingly missing from the manifestoes of the other two parties. 


The first mention of higher education is, as with the other two parties, in terms of science budgets. This depressingly familiar picture is accompanied by proposals with regard to research that are less adventurous than the ones set out by the Conservatives. Unlike the Conservatives, who pledge to suspend the Research Excellence Framework until a review reports, the Liberal Democrats are very vague and merely state that research funding should be dependent on peer review though they do attack reliance on "narrow impact factors". Despite these disappointments the Liberal position on student finance is easily the boldest on offer, pledging, as it does, abolition of tuition fees, starting immediately for final year students. Like the Labour Party, however, they drop the notion of expanding higher education to 50% of young people, suggesting instead a balance of "college education, vocational training and apprenticeships", a policy, like that of Labour, that involves a clear devaluation of higher education. As with the other two parties nothing is said at all about the place of humanities and the social sciences. 


The discussion of foreign policy is fronted not by terrorism and the army as is the case with the other two parties but instead with suggestions concerning climate change and the environment. Reform of the World Bank and the IMF is mentioned but the principles of such reform and the mechanisms of achieving it are not spelled out. The claim that there should be an inquiry into allegations of torture carried out by British forces does, however, indicate a welcome commitment to an ethical foreign policy of a kind that was once expected to emerge from Labour. 


As with the other two parties immigration is primarily thought of as a problem with the argument advanced that there needs to be created a National Border Force and regional points-based systems in terms of migration instituted. This is, to an extent, off-set by the commitments on asylum which include ending detention of children and ending the detention of people for whom there is no imminent possibility of deportation unless there is substantial risk from them. Housing policy is focused on bringing a quarter of a million empty homes back into use, something eminently desirable and the mechanisms of grants and cheap loans are plausible ones. The pledge to introduce a Freedom Bill also makes this party the one with the most developed view of civil liberties.


This manifesto contrasts to a certain extent with that of the other two major parties. It is more accessible to the reader, being fuller of specific pledges and containing much less by way of padding than the other two and clearly it is expected that it will be read by both party members and independently minded people, unlike the other two manifestoes which are evidently not expected to be read by anyone other than journalists. The general feel of it is one in which there is an understanding of the scale of the problem although, disappointingly, most of the response to this problem has been pushed to the creation of large investigations to be carried out later. The priorities of the party are, however, clear. From reading it one definitely comes to the view that it is the most philosophically informed approach, guided by Rawlsian kinds of convictions. Whilst not all of its recommendations are different enough from the other two it is evident that this party is the only one open to ideas and debate of a sort that has any chance of reinvigorating politics. Although the Liberal Democrats are pretty much incapable of attaining a parliamentary majority, increase in their representation, on the basis of reading the manifesto, is certainly desirable.

The Conservative Party Manifesto

By contrast to the Labour Party manifesto, viewed in the last posting, the Conservative Party's version is organised not in 10 sections but only in 5. The basic emphasis on "change" that would be expected from an opposition party is rather heavily emphasised in the document as 3 of the 5 headings include the word: change the economy; change society; change politics; protect the environment; promote our national interest. As with the Labour Party, so the lead element of the manifesto is the economy. Unlike the Labour Party, the Conservatives stress a basic theme running through the whole document that is meant to knit them all together, the much touted notion of the "big society", a basic emphasis that accords with their traditional stress on shrinking the state, a shrinkage that, given their agreement with the Labour emphasis on cuts in state entitlement, is one they are better placed to put at the front of their vision of Britain than Labour is.


The Conservative manifesto is a lot better illustrated than the Labour one, with lots of nice graphs and pictures of people and places we are expected to empathise with (including Glasgow, Brighton and Manchester amongst the places, none of which are Conservative areas). When the outline of the specifics of the plan emerges however, it is less different from Labour than might be expected. Opening with a claim that we need to establish an Office for Budget Responsibility that would restore trust in the public's view of the government's ability to run things they generally hope to ride on public discontent with the state of the economy and the deficit in particular. In indicating they would stop paying tax credits to people earning more than £50,000 they also attempt to suggest that they are not simply the party of the wealthy. However, in pinning a great deal on reversing Labour's planned increase of National Insurance payments they quickly disabuse one that they are going to lay out any serious economic plan as the amount involved in this measure is, to say the least about it, paltry.


The Conservatives pledge to match Labour's spending plans for health and overseas aid allowing them effectively to cut all other programs with the exception of defence which will be allotted its own review. The first mention of universities, as with the Labour Party, is in terms of university-business links with concomitant shared emphasis on STEM subjects at the expense of humanities and social science. The next mention of higher education is in terms of a commitment to delay the Research Excellence Framework so that it can be reviewed in terms of a more robust methodology being developed. Whilst this is welcome in principle it doesn't look likely to amount to more than a stay of execution on plans to make universities generally more responsive to business as indicated in the earlier proposal. Like the Labour Party they refer to the planned review into student finance that is almost certain to recommend increasing fees students pay.


A distinctive idea that is welcome is the proposal to create a Consumer Protection Agency that would take over part of the powers of the discredited Financial Services Agency (unlike Labour which would leave oversight of everything to the FSA). There is at the heart of the assessment of the type of society the Conservatives would like to encourage a rather large emphasis on volunteering and civic engagement, a prospectus fitting with cuts in state aid. The Conservatives appear committed to a tougher immigration policy than Labour though the latter advocates a "Australian-style" points system and the former an annual limit on the number of non-EU migrants so the positions are broadly similar.


In relation to the banks the Conservatives say virtually nothing about increase of regulatory oversight, not matching the disentangling of protection of consumers from the FSA with some similar pledge with regard to preventing banks from engaging in the risky practices of the last decade. All that is given is a vaguely worded-pledge to seek international agreement which is hedged by warnings about protecting Britain's economic competitiveness. Like Labour, the response to housing is primarily set out in terms of encouragement for more home ownership, a view that, whilst shared with them, is bizarre in the current setting.


Unlike Labour, the Conservatives do include a section on civil  liberties including the welcome idea that there should be Privacy Impact Assessments with regard to data collection. Bizarrely, however, they also regard it as a priority that the ban on hunting should be put to another vote in the next parliament, hardly a key priority in the current situation.


The discussion of foreign policy is framed in terms of a discussion of national interest with specific focus on defence spending and anti-terrorism, again, much like the Labour Party view. A National Security Strategy is promised but the specifics of foreign policy include seeking greater engagement with China, pressing for an expansion of the Security Council of the UN and a great deal of demands for re-negotiation of various things with the EU.


Overall the peculiar thing about reading this manifesto shortly after reading the Labour one is how significantly similar the two are. The majority of positions are different only by a slight shade and, like the Labour Party, the Conservatives essentially say nothing about the degree and nature of the cuts they will make, eschewing the talk of "tough choices" and focusing instead on moving towards a "more engaged" society. Both indicate a general move towards a situation where the government will shrink and the Conservatives essentially make a virtue out of necessity but their general "big idea" is less than compelling.