In her resignation speech just ten months later, Wendy was keen to blame the SNP for her troubles, indicating that it was “unrelenting”, “vexatious” and “successive SNP-inspired complaints and investigations” around donations to her leadership campaign which did for her.
However, in truth, nothing seemed to go right for Wendy from day one, and her leadership will be remembered for bad performances, bad judgement, and bad management. Her legacy will bear witness to the fact that her problems, and Labour’s problems, go far beyond issues arising from donations to a leadership campaign that never was. Whoever emerges as the new leader later this summer will need to take stock, understand what went wrong, and try to undo the damage.
The first point they will need to recognise is that, with regard to the donations issues, the real long-term problems for Wendy were less to do with the details of the donations themselves and much more to do with the way the first story was handled and the lasting impressions this generated.
When the first story broke in the Sunday Herald on 25th November, regarding the acceptance of an illegal donation from a Jersey resident, Labour responded with a series of denials and obfuscations until there was no option other than to admit that the law had been broken – though, of course, not deliberately.
It was the nature of the response, rather than the transgression itself, which made the biggest impression on the media and public. It ensured that whenever the issue of donations was raised – and there were three separate issues within the space of eight months – any Labour statement on the matter was met with suspicion. It also generated a public perception of Scottish Labour which saw the party as lacking in honesty, integrity, probity and effective management.
An additional problem for Wendy was that the original story, and subsequent information, could only have been leaked to the press by a party insider. She was barely two months into the job, and already enemies within the Labour party were briefing against her.
However, the damage done to Wendy by the various donations issues serves to distract from the broader range of problems her leadership suffered.
Although she came in to the job with a deserved reputation for intelligence and strong debating skills, at no point during her ten months of leadership did Wendy succeed in besting Alex Salmond during First Minister’s Questions or in outmanoeuvring the SNP on policy or strategy.
Indeed, with regard to strategy, she may be best remembered for undermining her own initiatives.
In December 2007, Wendy put to the Scottish Parliament a proposal to establish an independent commission with a remit to review devolution and recommend any changes to the present constitutional arrangements within a devolved framework (i.e all options short of independence). The proposal was conceived as a counterweight to the SNPs ‘national conversation’ on independence, to take ownership of the constitutional debate out of the SNPs hands, and to broaden the debate beyond the single issue of independence.
With the backing of the Lib Dems, Labour’s former coalition partners, and the Conservatives, the Commission on Scottish Devolution was established. The UK Government announced its support in January 2008, Sir Kenneth Calman was appointed Chair in March, and the Commission held its first meeting on 28th April. Just one week later, Wendy announced that Scottish Labour now supported a referendum on independence.
The apparent lack of co-ordination with colleagues at Westminster, with her own party, and with her own policy adviser on the decision to support a referendum meant that media focus never shifted to the SNP, as it was intended to – the policy change itself, and the mismanagement of it, was the main story from start to finish.
In terms of internal party support for Wendy, it was this policy shift, poor management and poor performances at FMQs, and not the various donations issues, which made her continued leadership untenable.
We will never know whether or not, given the right amount of breathing space and support, Wendy may have been able to grow into the role, but on the evidence of the last ten months it seems that she did not possess the qualities or skills necessary to lead Scottish Labour at this time and, perhaps most fatally, she could not rely on their loyalty.
At the same time as the slow disintegration of Scottish Labour has been playing out, the SNP celebrated its first full year as a minority government and without suffering a major defeat in the Scottish Parliament. (The first bill to be rejected, on 18 June 2008, was a proposal to replace Scotland’s two main arts bodies with a new quango. Though MSPs backed the general principles of the legislation, they rejected the accompanying financial memorandum.)
According to a recent YouGov Poll in the Daily Telegraph, the approval rating for the SNP administration is 52% (with only 27% expressing dissatisfaction), and almost every poll indicates that support for the SNP, in terms of voting intentions, has increased since the 2007 election.
In short, whilst everyone has been watching the Wendy Alexander show, the SNP have had time to settle in relatively unhindered, and are continuing to enjoy an extended honeymoon period.
Whoever prevails in the forthcoming Labour leadership election will obviously need to identify new strategies for dealing with the SNP, but given the extent of their own party’s problems, this will have to be a longer-term objective.
The focus will need to be on recovery, on reassessing the position on a referendum and repairing the damage done to the Calman Commission and to their relationship with the other unionist parties. Perhaps most fundamentally, they will also need to find a way of addressing the issue of devolution for the party itself, seeking greater decision-making autonomy, and disengaging its own fortunes from those of Labour at Westminster.
It is against this background that Labour are now preparing for the by-election in Glasgow East. On paper, this should be an easy win – it is their third safest Westminster seat in Scotland, with a majority of more than 13,500 over the SNP, who would require a 22% swing to win.
But with the SNP riding high in the polls, the Scottish Labour Party leaderless and morale at an all-time low, the timing of the by-election could hardly be worse Gordon Brown.
Labour’s fortunes in the by-election, and the fortunes of the new Scottish Labour leader, will both depend heavily on their ability to honestly assess where the party has been going wrong in the last ten months.
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The constitution also gave some powers to the national Parliaments in the EU for the first time ever. It also set out a mechanism for leaving the EU which currently does not exist.
But the constitution was voted down by two countries who were founders of the EU – France and the Netherlands.
So what did the EU’s leaders do? They took out the flag and the anthem, called it a Treaty and claimed that it was something entirely different. That is a straightforward lie. Anybody who knows anything about the constitution and the Treaty knows full well that the two are basically identical. Don’t kid us.
And now the Treaty has been rejected too by one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe.
It had been thought that the EU would not be able to survive once it became 27 member states without a new constitution or Treaty. But the fact of the matter has been – and this has been shown through independent research – the EU has worked extremely well without a new Treaty or constitution. And the member states know that.
So the EU’s leaders must listen to the people of Europe and not ride roughshod over them again. They have to drop the Lisbon Treaty.
But of course, they won’t. They will invent some sham to get it through against the wishes of the electorate.
And they wonder why the EU is unpopular?
]]>The Tory party has already taken note. You can just imagine Andy Coulson, former editor of News of the World and now David Cameron’s spin doctor, taking Cameron aside and telling him to focus on issues like the economy, taxation, the family etc and to leave the environment alone. Cameron has done so and in a recent speech on his priorities, guess what? The environment was not one of them.
A year ago, Tory policy was to raise green taxes and use the proceeds to reduce other taxes. Talking about raising green taxes now (e.g. fuel tax escalator, vehicle excise duty) is not so sensible as the government is discovering to their cost and so the Tories understandably have gone quiet.
What they are talking more about is how consumers can save money from energy efficiency to keep their fuel bills down.
As for Gordon Brown, he never believed in the first place that environmentalism wins votes. He has always privately felt that the economy, jobs and financial security were more powerful for the vast majority of voters than abstract concepts on climate change. Historically, he has a point. But it is more difficult for the government to back down on policies that it has announced than it is for oppositions to go quiet on their previous commitments. So when the government backs down on bin taxes, delays the fuel escalator (again), goes quiet on national road pricing and maybe gives concessions on vehicle excise duty, as they either have done or are considering, it is widely noticed.
So there can be little doubt that politicians will tone down their environmental rhetoric and their policies in response to an economic downturn and rising prices. They are politicians after all.
But what about companies?
My feeling is that leading companies will continue to develop their climate change, CSR and sustainability policies. This is for a range of reasons. First, everyone said that CSR was a fad and would disappear in the downturn of 2001-03. They were wrong. It did not disappear and has gone on rising up the corporate agenda. Secondly, companies have invested in this area and will want to get a return on their investment. Thirdly, they know that they will be accused of greenwash if they retreat at the first sign of economic difficulties. Fourthly, the best companies genuinely do believe that they should act and that in the long term their key stakeholders expect it of them.
So, for the leading companies, while they may talk more about how customers can reduce their fuel bills or save money through environmental efficiency and reduced use of resources or travel, their commitment for the most part will remain. They will benefit from this. Sticking by your principles when the going gets tough creates respect, trust and loyalty from their stakeholders and will help them when the economy starts to pick up speed again.
]]>But since the beginning of May, the constant speculation about Gordon Brown’s future and the sniping at the Prime Minister from disaffected Blairites (emboldened by whopping advances from publishing houses) have escalated the scale of the challenge facing the Prime Minister. And have created the impression that the next election is already lost for the Labour Party – a prophecy that will prove self-fulfilling if Labourites don’t impose a little more discipline on themselves.
It is unsurprising that someone with a reputation as tarnished as Lord Levy should seize the chance to sling the mud at someone else for once. For John Prescott to vent (or should that be vomit) up a spleen embittered from being the token Old Labourite in Cabinet is, likewise, to be expected. These comments from the wilderness should be taken for what they are – crass, ill-considered, get-rich-quick schemes.
The sniping from the backbenchers, and the briefing from Ministerial aides, is more troubling. Much of this has, of course, been exaggerated by a media that smells blood. When Phil Collins, speechwriter to Pensions Secretary James Purnell, wrote in Prospect about the scale of the challenges facing the Government, his comments (which cited both strategic error and ‘Events!’ as equally culpable) were interpreted as a unilateral attack on the Prime Minister. However they were intended, they were mischievous and unhelpful.
All Labourites, no matter how disaffected by the Government’s recent poor performance, need to remember that their position is dependent, not on how big a splash they can make on one day’s front pages, but on the party remaining united, strong and bold in outlook. Woes can, by all means, be voiced in private. But as we saw from John Major’s time in office, a Government can get by with a less-than-inspiring Prime Minister. It cannot survive a divided party.
So, as a party member, my message to Labour MPs is as follows: get your heads down, keep calm, and carry on. Your country needs you.
Watch our video of Martin Le Jeune of Open Road interviewing Dan Roberts.
]]>It was always too good to be true. Even the most tribal Labourite, the most passionate supporter of Gordon’s could never have dreamed that their man – he with the famous great clunking fist – could have delivered such a bloody nose to the Tories.
But for a few weeks, whilst Blighty was subjected to an almost Biblical series of disasters, Gordo stood above politics, handling the crises with reassurance and resolve.
And then he bottled the election.
In years to come, we may well look back on Brown’s failure to call an election as the watershed moment in his premiership. The decision to postpone until 2009/10 wasn’t surprising, especially bearing in mind the Prime Minister’s legendary aversion to risk: the Government was not, even at that point, so far ahead in the opinion polls that even a half-way decent performance by Cameron at conference would avoid bringing the popularity difference back to within margin-of-error-territory. But the decision brought back to the fore those long-rooted suspicions about Brown – his famous ‘psychological flaws’.
We do not need to proceed through the litany of disasters that have beset the Government since then: I wouldn’t want to appeal to the schadenfreude of Tory friends and colleagues. But suffice it to say, Brown has proved a singularly inept people- and issue-manager in the last year. And this despite innumerable shake-ups to the Number 10 team, designed to inject a sense of strategic purpose into Government.
And so, on the eve of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, where does that leave us? For Labour supporters, in a particularly unpleasant position. On the one hand, the party’s campaign in Crewe has been the nastiest I have ever had the misfortune to witness. And for that alone, Labour does not deserve to win. But on the other hand, a defeat would surely signal the death-knell for this Government, albeit one that will toll for at least another year before we finally get that election.
It needn’t have been like this. The Government still has a lot of credible, worthy ideas to realise and deliver. The blame cannot be placed entirely on Gordon’s shoulders, but one feels that had it not been for his visceral hatred of the Tories (a hatred Tony Blair never had), many of the short-termist, tactical and ultimately damaging initiatives the Government has proposed over the last eight months would never have seen the light of the day.
Ultimately, it is this hatred that has been Brown’s undoing, because it has made the Conservatives seem measured, considered and – shock horror – almost sensible in what few policy proposals they have come up with. It has also given them the space to start making preparations for Government, preparations which demonstrate the seriousness with which they regard their electoral prospects.
And who can blame them?
I am embarrassed to admit that I have done both and it has never achieved any results. My last attempt at forcing BA to own up to something that was wholly their fault which ended up costing me a small fortune merely resulted in me writing to the Daily Telegraph’s travel advice page in the hope that my letter would be published (it wasn’t but I did receive a very nice reply.)
Either large companies such as BA are now so wise to customers yelling at them about how well they know the Daily Mail or they genuinely don’t care any more (and perhaps this is true given the amount of complaints they must receive.) How much I have wished in the past that I could have taken my revenge on BA so sweetly. And I’m not saying that the ‘threat of media’ is necessarily the right route but I have to admit that I felt more than slightly envious at the amount of press coverage generated by Chris Bell’s complaint – in addition to several front pages it also made the Today Programme.
Again, I’ve had terrible service at some point on most other airlines so why is this a big story? Perhaps the media just hate BA so much now that any criticism makes good copy. And I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog in the first place about anyone else.
]]>Within half a mile of the town centre however the place changes suddenly into a semi-rural area. Here I saw a lot of Conservative posters – I swear that the face of Edward Timpson is now seared into my retinas until the End Times. This Tory part of the constituency seemed mobilised, keen and organised.
Certainly everyone in Crewe was aware of the election, and when I say aware, I mean sick-of. Tories had come in force – MPs, activists and pink-shirted Conservative Future youth. On the other side Jack Straw was known to be on the loose. He won the Labour leadership election for Gordon Brown, I wonder if a contest with other candidates presents a more complex challenge?
I helped canvass in one of the outlying villages, a street with well kept semis at one end and fairly large detached houses at the other. Conservative support was strong and enthusiastic, particularly from older people and a couple who ran their own business. About a quarter of those I met used to vote Labour – not one was sure they would now. Concerns varied - economic conditions and “time for a change” all came up on the doorstep, as did local issues – one man was protesting about the fact that his children has not got into the local school and would have to go to another some distance away.
Back in town things are more promising for the government, there are actual Labour posters to be seen, but almost as many Lib Dem and even the occasional Tory ones too. I saw no Labour activists, and word was they were not thick on the ground.
Labour’s election publicity was backward looking, with lots of black and white pictures telling the history of Crewe and the Dunwoodys. It was also severely tactically flawed – “Tory 10p Tax Chaos” seems a good example of pointing out the splint in your neighbour’s eye just in case someone missed the beam in your own.
Conservative publicity echoed that used in London –a leaflet with blue and green positive messages and talk of tackling crime on the one side and scary red letters warning that Gordon Brown wants you to stay at home on the other.
The Lib Dems seemed to be running the strangest campaign. The candidate wore a red dress in her poster, thus at first glance displaying the same colour combination as Labour. Her leaflet, grandly called a “magazine,” used SDP style red and blue lettering on the front with no Lib Dem logo before the back page.
I have few doubts that this will be a Conservative win, and with Labour support so soft, possibly on a larger scale than the polls indicate.
Well they still haven’t done enough but that didn’t matter in these local and London mayoral elections. Even though Boris had very few policies and is not known at all for competence or ability to manage anything, dislike for Labour, dislike of Ken and ‘time for a change’ was enough.
Boris was well advised in this campaign by Lynton Crosby and others. Be serious, do not have too many new policies as they might unravel under questioning, focus on Ken’s cronyism and on time for a change. And go for the outer London boroughs where you can build on a stronger Tory bedrock of support.
The Tories were also helped by Andrew Gilligan and the Evening Standards’s constant drip drip of allegations about Ken’s cronyism, Lee Jasper and Ken’s personal life that was responsible for turning Ken’s initial poll lead into a significant Boris poll lead. Importantly, the Sun came out on Boris’ side. That is potentially hugely significant. It is the first time since 1992 that the Sun has backed the Tories. If Boris doesn’t mess up completely, it is now possible that some or all of the Murdoch papers could support the Tories at the next general election. Andy Coulson of Conservative Campaign HQ – take a bow.
Across the country, the Tories have done well in the local elections and have even started to re-enter the North of England. That is only a start for them, but an essential stepping stone.
Will these results be replicated in a general election in 2009 or - as looks increasingly likely - May or June 2010?
Labour support in a general election will not be as low as the 24 per cent in these elections. They were hurt in their heartlands this time by the 10 pence tax rate row and Brown will not make that mistake again (surely!). And in general elections where Labour supporters will not allow themselves the luxury of a protest vote, the core Labour vote will probably be 30 – 35 per cent.
That cuts the likely Tory lead significantly. Also, incumbent governments tend to reduce the lead of oppositions in the run up to a campaign. So the likely Tory vote would be (looking at it right now) between 38 – 42 per cent. And the Lib Dem vote held up pretty well and so the Tories may struggle a little to win all of the seats they might like to from Nick Clegg’s team.
Incidentally, the figures above mirror the long term trend of pollsters asking about Gordon Brown vs David Cameron.
So looking at the position right now, the Tories as the largest party is highly likely. A Tory government with a workable overall majority is a distinct possibility.
]]>The corporation dislikes top-slicing for the perfectly sound reason that it might reduce its income. But it can’t say so. It prefers, as always, to clamber on the nearest piece of moral high ground and argue that top-slicing would destroy the precious accountability between licence-fee payer and BBC.
There’s not much in this. Accountability is a fairly evanescent concept when applied to the relationship between an organisation which levies a compulsory tax and those who pay it, whether willingly or not.
No, the real argument against top-slicing is that it might offer a fresh lease of life to an interventionist PSB system and a licence fee when we need them less and less. About one-third of households already pay up while consuming less than five hours of corporation programming each week. As audiences fragment, consumption of state-supported television channels will continue to decline. A middle-class minority who watch them will have their pleasure paid for by their poorer compatriots who get little value. That is inequitable.
Ofcom’s partiality to top-slicing appears to be based on the idea that plurality in public service content is essential “to keep the BBC honest”. Fine. But in fact there is bags more plurality in the form of public service content on non-PSB broadcasters (14,000 hours per month according to the multichannel TV trade body) and via the internet than ever before.
Then Ofcom argues that UK original production is central to PSB and the multichannel lot don’t deliver it. The case for intervention is made.
But this won’t do either. Take a look at the original PSB characteristics. They focus - rightly - on quality. But in the new consultation the emphasis on UK origination has been deliberately increased. So manic has Ofcom become in its attempts to make UK origination central to the debate that it even claims educating viewers about the world requires a lot of programmes made over here. By Brits. Isn’t this a bit lacking in logic?
I’d rather pass over in silence the deliberate attempt by Ofcom to understate the value of multichannel UK origination by the crude device of excluding sport. That’s simply shameful.
The final bit of analytical trickery is implicitly to assume that all UK PSB content provided by the terrestrials outside the BBC was the result of regulation. Without Ofcom no Corrie or national news? Hardly.
There is a better way. Keep the BBC focused on delivering PSB: it does it very well. It should get smaller over time - a steady reduction in the licence fee would be a good financial discipline - as commercial players provide more public service-style content. And they will. According to Ofcom’s own research, there is a huge appetite out there for that kind of material. So step back and let them provide it.
]]>And yet she still probably cannot win.
At the end of the day, the process – and the maths that goes with it – remain against her.
With a 10 per cent win, a margin of almost 200,000 votes, the delegate division from tonight so far stands at 55 to Hillary and 42 to Obama allowing Obama to continue to hold a considerable overall delegate lead.
Over 32 million Democrats have participated in primaries and caucuses so far. Obama has a lead of between 300,000 – 600,000 in the popular vote (depending on how you count). He has won almost twice as many states (with 9 more contests to go) and has had greater success mobilizing young people than any national politician in a generation.
These are some of the facts facing the almost 800 super delegates.
But equally, they know that Senator Clinton has won the largest States, has won the swing States that matter in November and has had tremendous success mobilizing women. Her blue collar, Latino, Catholic coalition is the traditional coalition of Democratic electoral success.
The dilemma the Democrats now face is that Senator Obama has fallen from earth. Weeks of attacks have taken their toll and Senator Clinton – to the delight of Camp McCain – has raised questions in voters minds about Obama’s judgement and his electability. At the same time, there is no way for Hillary Clinton to “win” the nomination before the August convention. The only way for her to secure the nomination is to “take it away” from her opponent by persuading super delegates that she is the only candidate that can beat Senator McCain.
It seems impossible to imagine the Party allowing that to happen if she continues to trail in all the key indicators – pledged delegates, popular vote and states won. Tonight, in Pennsylvania, she cut the popular vote lead by 200,000 but moved only marginally in the other categories. I think it will be very difficult for super delegates to put aside Mr. Obama’s lead and hand the nomination to Mrs Clinton because she convinces them she is most likely to beat Senator McCain. Having occupied the high moral ground on counting votes since the November 2000 debacle in Florida, ignoring the popular will of the Party’s rank and file, would be hugely damaging, embarrassing, provide ammunition for the Republicans and would be likely to lead to an internal split in the Party. In a cycle where Democrats seemed poised to take power back in Washington, it’s hard to believe the Party elders will allow that to play out.
So what next?
Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina. The first three all border on Ohio – sharing a demographic profile like Pennsylvania. Obama needs to demonstrate to super delegates that he can win a rust belt state. So Indiana has become the new (or next) Pennsylvania, (which was the next Texas/Ohio, which was). The Clinton campaign will now argue that Obama has been unable to connect with those working and middle class voters who decide battleground states. Someone needs to revive the 1992 mantra and remind Senator Obama that – particularly in times like these – “It’s the economy, stupid”. His ability to convince these voters that he can protect and help them may determine not only whether he is the nominee but whether or not he can win the Presidency in November.
Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton’s needs to continue her momentum, shoring up her argument with super delegates by being able to say that she finished strong, all the while cutting into his numerical leads. She needs to rack up a series of victories and finish the primary season on June 3rd with a clear wind behind her back.
I suspect that she will now be nervous about “going more negative.” It helped her in Pennsylvania but it has a potentially divisive effect on the party. The Washington Post is already reporting tonight that many in the Obama camp now want to hit her harder and that a debate has broken out over whether this is a “winning strategy” or not.
I don’t think it is. More importantly, I can’t help but cringe every time I hear all these paid Democratic pundits suggest on cable news that this increasingly nasty battle isn’t hurting the party’s chances in November. If this process plays out till the Democratic Convention there will not be a candidate until September. That means four months of this level of hostility and bickering. Four months of focusing on each other rather than on the Republican opponent. Four months of chasing money to fund that fight rather than building a war chest for the autumn. I remain to be convinced that this can be a good thing for Democrats.
I have to admit that when watching Barack Obama fend off question after question last week, I suddenly found myself thinking about Adlai Stevenson, Willie Horton and windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket. Would Obama become another smart liberal Democrat – like Kerry, Dukakis and an earlier Senator from Illinois – easily caricatured by the Right as wimpy and out of touch, unable to muster the stomach or strength to counter punch? We all remember swift boats.
Over the past weekend as his tv ad buy seemed endless it was clear that the Illinois Senator was willing to fight back. On the stump and on tv he struck back as the Clinton campaign attacked him on multiple fronts. It wasn’t always elegant, nor was it very complementary to his “new” politics approach, the “politics of the hope”. But, as he said on national television yesterday, “if you get elbowed enough” eventually you have to stop it.
And “stop it” is what more and more party insiders are saying they will expect Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Edwards and the other undeclared elders of the Democratic Party to do in June. One Beltway insider said to me tonight, “They need to get a grip on this process” and “encourage” ( a New Jersey art form based on subtle persuasion)) super delegates to indicate their intentions sometime after the primaries finish in early June. Many now believe that allowing this to drag out another 3 months till the Convention would be a catastrophe for the party’s chances in November. Whether the leadership can pull that off remains to be seen as the campaigns themselves are more interested in winning and less concerned about the state of party unity.
For the candidates, going forward, their focus is clear. It now seems inevitable that the 2008 update of the aforementioned Carville quip will be, “It’s the super delegates, stupid.”
]]>Because the truth is that in a race where both candidates have almost identical policy positions on most issues, no one is interested in hearing the nuanced differences that separate their economic policies or their healthcare plans. The media would argue that they are asking these questions because this is what people are talking about. They would tell us that their polls suggest these issues are what keep popping up in the results. Not for them to encourage a more civil, substantative debate. Not for them to direct the public back to the issues of the day – war, recession or the environment. I like to think that the Greeks (ancient that is) – who had a more noble sense of public debate – would be turning in their graves as they watched the Fourth Estate surrender its opportunity to lead.
To give them some due, last night’s moderators did manage to create a few interesting commitments and comments which might matter next Tuesday, moving towards the August Convention and in the fall, the general election.
First, Senator Clinton was forced to admit that Senator Obama can beat Senator McCain in November. Considering that in private she and her husband are vigorously lobbying super delegates that the Illinois Senator “cannot win” this is an obvious contradiction. To some degree – for the sake of the party - she had to say this but if any of the super delegates break ranks and protocol and publicly expose how the Clintons are arguing this in private it will further undermine her “trustworthy” numbers with the broader public. A poll in yesterdays Washington Post found 6 in 10 Americans do not trust her. This is an extraordinary figure (has anyone been elected with numbers this bad?) and one campaign insiders admit in private they are very worried about. Lots of people don’t like John McCain but most American think he is an honourable, honest man. Any event or comment which seems to further illuminate this problem is trouble for Camp Clinton.
Second, and this is a mistake both candidates made to varying degrees, it’s never good policy making to make iron clad commitments and promises months before taking office on issues of great volatility. Senator Clinton gave an absolute commitment to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on Day 1 – one brigade per month at a minimum – irrespective of the military advice regarding the situation on the ground. Senator Obama gave himself a bit more wiggle room but also emphasised the fact that in the US, military policy making is done by the civilians and it is up to the President to decide on the mission while the military advise on tactics. There is no question that Senator McCain will ridicule such a commitment made months before any assessment of the battlefield situation can be made. In Red (Republican) States this will be positioned as hopelessly naïve and the Republicans will claim that the entire Iraq project and any recent progress will be jeopardized by what will be labelled as pandering to the anti-war left of the Democratic party. This was an interesting commitment to make in Pennsylvania as well, a state with a large military population (veterans and active duty families) and only time will tell if those voters – disproportionately concentrated in the more rural western bits of the state - embrace such an approach.
Tax was the other area where both candidates made blanket promises not to raise them for “middle class families”. Not knowing what the US economy will look like in January 2009 this was also a gamble. Again, after 8 years of the Bush-Cheney administration ensuring the well-off stayed well off there is great appetite for such commitments. Whether fiscal realities will allow them to be kept remains to be seen. As Bush senior remembers too well “No new taxes” can be a noose around a fiscally challenged President’s neck.
In terms of who will be the next Democratic nominee I suspect last night will not have moved the needle very much. Both Senators tried to convince critics that recent gaffes were not windows into bad judgement. It is more likely they bolstered their existing support rather than converted floating voters. There are five days to go before the election and it still feels to me like Mrs. Clinton will prevail here. Varied polls have margins between 6 and 16 points but with as many 10-15 per cent undecided and with margins of error of 5-7 points, anything can happen.
So we wait, knowing that a large Clinton victory means the campaign will continue through June. An Obama victory of any type would put tremendous pressure on Clinton to step aside. Anything in between (a small win for Hillary) will mean the process goes forward with the media and pundits turning North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia into the next “decisive battlegrounds”.
Last week it was reported that all the varied candidates, to date, have already spent just under $775 million on their efforts. So, even if no one else is happy that the process continues, I am absolutely sure that the campaign consultants and advertising executives will not mind a few more months of big fat cheques.
]]>So great news recently then. The banks are pulling back from borrowing excessively and beginning to restore their balance sheets. Consumers are having to rein in their borrowing and who knows they may even start to save a little more over time. Sterling has dropped against the euro and a range of other currencies so our exports should increase. House prices are ceasing to rise which should prevent what could otherwise been a major crash and in the long term this will mean that first time buyers (those with good deposits at least) will not be priced off the housing ladder. And interest rates are down.
So have the media remembered to say that a lot of the problems they were worried about nine months ago have begun to improve?
Errr, no.
Undeniably, there are choppy waters ahead. There is pain in the housing market, in the property sector and in retail. Interbank lending rates remain high which feed into higher mortgage payments which reduce disposable income. Inflation, food, energy and oil prices remain stubbornly high. And the US economy may suffer a short recession followed by a period of low growth.
But it is important to remember in all the doom and gloom that UK economy is due to rebalance, which will be better for the long term. There will be short term pain with an economic slowdown. But the UK economy should grow by 1.6 per cent in 2008, and by a similar amount or more in 2009 which, while not great, is not a disaster.
Biofuels take vast amounts of land to produce which could otherwise be used for the cultivation of food. With world food prices now rising faster than they have done for 20 years, there is a huge risk that hunger will be on the rise again throughout the world. Is it really right to use valuable plants to power your car when they could feed people instead?
Deforestation causes up to 25 per cent of climate change gases. The Stern report pointed out that this must be an area for the world to tackle if we are to reduce climate change. But in Brazil and in other areas of the world, there is a huge risk that deforestation could be caused by the desire to cultivate land for biofuels.
Bad for sustainable development, likely to encourage further rises in the price of food and likely to increase deforestation – does not sound like a winning environmental policy to me. The US, EU and UK need to withdraw gracefully from their support for biofuels until such time as they can be proven to have a genuinely positive impact.
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