UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Alcibiades]

His speech is very Charles.

Not that that was necessarily a bad thing in the circumstances, mind. Its more human touch made for a nice contrast to our robotic Prime Minister’s remarks.

[Alcibiades]

Utterly depressing. I don’t know who this is even supposed to appeal to, electorally speaking. The lion’s share of the benefits are going to the top few percent, not even the broad upper middle classes in a way that might try to bring back the ‘Blue Wall’.

[Alcibiades]

The Telegraph is such a frustrating paper - competent at investigative journalism, and basically c**p at most other stuff.

It's a shame: it used to be a paper with a firm and very right-wing editorial line but with high quality journalism across the board (including very good sports coverage) so perfectly readable even if you strongly disagreed with its politics, but, well, long ago and far away now. It's an extreme example, but the general pattern holds across our newspapers.

That was always the classic excuse for anyone a bit embarrassed by what other people might think of their political leanings when they saw them reading it: “I only buy it for the cricket!”

[Alcibiades]

Recent local and by-elections have indicated that anti-Tory tactical voting has increased hugely since 2019, so I certainly think things could start to spiral out of control pretty quickly for the Tories. In particular, I’m not sure I buy the Lib Dem vote being as low as it is in current polls, and I definitely don’t buy the Green vote being so high. Especially if there’s as much chaos with mortgages as seems very possible as a result of the current mess, I think the affluent Southeast could look a lot more orange…

[Alcibiades]

Recent local and by-elections have indicated that anti-Tory tactical voting has increased hugely since 2019, so I certainly think things could start to spiral out of control pretty quickly for the Tories. In particular, I’m not sure I buy the Lib Dem vote being as low as it is in current polls, and I definitely don’t buy the Green vote being so high. Especially if there’s as much chaos with mortgages as seems very possible as a result of the current mess, I think the affluent Southeast could look a lot more orange…

The Lib Dem vote is low since Labour are on the up (leading to them gaining 25-30% of 2019 Lib Dem voters) while the ‘liberal’ Conservative vote was already an endangered species in 2019 so there isn’t much left to jump ship (and the sort of socially liberal people who voted Conservative in 2019 tend to be very economically right wing/middle class, so Trussonomics isn’t necessarily that alienating). The traditional ‘pissed off Conservative’ vote that has in the past gone their way is more likely to go Labour’s or don’t knows way these days (partisanship has broken down, the Lib Dem profiled themselves in a bad way in 2019 and have been invisible since etc).

The thing is I doubt you’ll see many Lib Dem voters switching to Labour in Con-Lib marginals, out of tactical necessity. I imagine that that swing will more be concentrated in places like the safe Labour Inner London seats where the Lib Dems increased their vote by a lot in 2019. Also I absolutely think Trussnomics will be alienating to those ‘liberal’ Tories; it’s basically utter crap for everyone, unless you’re earning over £150k (and even then…), and such high-earners make up only a small minority even in the most affluent of seats.

[Alcibiades]

Stephen Hammond (the MP for the ultra marginal Tory-Lib Dem seat of Wimbledon, not to be confused with Philip Hammond, May’s former Chancellor), has broken cover as the first Tory MP to openly call for Trussonomics to be scrapped:

Hammond is one of a handful of survivors from the 21 MPs who had the whip removed by Johnson in September 2019, so does have some history as a rebel.

My MP. He’s a quiet, low-profile party loyalist by nature, but he’s also not stupid and aware of the political realities he faces in his seat; that said, that he’s speaking up at all shows how serious things are. That said, I don’t think there’s really anything he can do to save himself now, considering he was already heavy favourite to lose before all this, having only won by 600 votes in 2019.

[Alcibiades]

Braverman at Justice when she committed a felony resulting in her sacking...my god...

I in no way wish to defend Braverman, and of course she is a vile woman who should be nowhere near the cabinet for a multiplicity of reasons, but this is not accurate. She was sacked for an incredibly minor breach (accidentally sending a non-sensitive email from her personal rather than work account) that ordinarily would not be an issue at all, but it was clear that whoever was pulling the strings at that point (presumably Hunt) wanted her gone even if on the flimsiest of pretexts.

[Alcibiades]

Buckland pays the price

Added indignity of being replaced by a certifiable moron.

Was going to say - he’s the kind of backbench total crazy I’d lump in with the likes of Philip Davies, Christopher Chope, and Philip Hollobone, not anyone who should ever be remotely near a cabinet post.

[Alcibiades]

It’s a policy which definitely has some merits, but that I can obviously see both sides to (not to mention it’s a rather tone-deaf announcement considering everything else going on at the moment). I suppose, like Blair, I should declare my own biases here as being someone who took both maths and further maths at A-level!

It’s true that the UK is a real outlier in being one of the very few countries in the world where pupils don’t have to study maths in some form until 18 (the same is also true for their native language). More broadly, this is an illustration of how our educational system makes pupils specialise absurdly early - 16 is really very young for subject choices that inevitably end up restricting a lot of what you can study at uni, at which age a lot of people really have no idea what they want to do later on. An example relevant here is that I’ve known several people who have discovered a passion for economics while taking the subject at A-level, only to find themselves unable to study it at many unis because they don’t have maths A-level. And as well as these practical arguments, there are more philosophical ones about the importance of a well-rounded, ‘liberal’ education.

On the other hand, I doubt this move would be at all popular among those actually affected - in my experience, most pupils tend to like the freedom afforded to them by being able to pick exactly what they want to study at A-level. Similarly, the fact that A-levels encourage depth rather than breadth means that British undergraduate degrees start off at a much more advanced level than in many other countries.

But, regardless of the merits of this maths policy specifically, I think it does raise an important point that seems to have received very little attention; many aspects of the core structure of our curriculum and public exam system have remained unchanged for a very, very long time. A-levels were introduced in 1951, and their fundamental structure - 3/4 subjects of pupils’ free choosing - has never been changed. A somewhat bizarre thought that my grandfather went through a very similar system to me!

[Alcibiades]

I have to say, as someone in one of the few constituencies where both the Lib Dems and Labour have a decent shot at winning, this whole episode has made me much likelier to vote for the former vis-a-vis the latter. I’ve generally been reasonably positive on Starmer’s leadership, but this has been pretty shameful stuff from him.

[Alcibiades]

Henley becomes the fourth (at least) constituency I've seen speculation about Johnson chicken running to.

Obviously his old seat, but I think it would be far from the safest option. The Lib Dems got over 30% there in 2019. I reckon he’d have to bank on them badly splitting the anti-Tory vote with Labour (who got under 10% there last time) to win in the current climate.

[Alcibiades]

It is an area that has changed a lot in recent decades (it is now a comfortable semi-rural constituency with a few working class bits poking through as odd memorials to a different time), but if recent electoral movement holds up and if the insane potato man does run for his new crank party, then it would certainly be worth keeping an eye on.

A description that could apply to quite a few constituencies these days.

What constituencies have gone in the other direction (more working-class with areas of comfort)? I'm thinking quite a few in the Merseyside area.

An interesting example of this from London is Streatham, which even maybe 40 years ago was still a largely upper middle class residential area, but then became a lot more deprived. Like almost everywhere in that part of inner South London, it’s probably gentrified quite a bit in recent years, but that’s presumably been largely driven by young professionals and the like rather than too many middle class families coming back. Fascinatingly, neighbouring Balham took the opposite path: it used to be quite working class, whereas today it’s a highly desirable residential area.

[Alcibiades]

Thought of another London example. Mitcham and Morden used to be humdrum lower middle class suburbia (which is still the case in part of the western, Morden end of the constituency), but much of Mitcham especially is now among the most deprived parts of London. It remains very unfashionable and un-gentrified. I think some of the factors at play there included ‘refugees’ from Wandsworth council’s, um, dubious housing policies, to put it mildly, and a large community of Ghanaian immigrants settling there.

[Alcibiades]

Thought of another London example. Mitcham and Morden used to be humdrum lower middle class suburbia (which is still the case in part of the western, Morden end of the constituency), but much of Mitcham especially is now among the most deprived parts of London. It remains very unfashionable and un-gentrified. I think some of the factors at play there included ‘refugees’ from Wandsworth council’s, um, dubious housing policies, to put it mildly, and a large community of Ghanaian immigrants settling there.

What are those policies ?

I’m not too sure on the precise details, but as I understand it essentially forcing lots of poor social renters out of council homes in the 80s (with the help of right to buy, maybe).

[Alcibiades]

There is pretty robust empirical evidence that PR leads both to more frequent left-wing governments, and to more left-wing policy being passed. As Cassius says, though, there are pretty obvious self-interested reasons why Labour would want to keep FPTP. On the whole, I suspect PR would mean that Labour would lead government more frequently, but of course they would never (and nor would any party) win a majority again.

[Alcibiades]

There is pretty robust empirical evidence that PR leads both to more frequent left-wing governments, and to more left-wing policy being passed. As Cassius says, though, there are pretty obvious self-interested reasons why Labour would want to keep FPTP. On the whole, I suspect PR would mean that Labour would lead government more frequently, but of course they would never (and nor would any party) win a majority again.

I’d be curious to see that empirical evidence. Whilst you could certainly point to some of the Scandinavian countries to exemplify that (although, using post-war Sweden as an example, the SAP vs borgerlig rivalry functioned to all intents and purposes in a very similar way to the UK Labour vs Conservative rivalry, despite the different electoral systems), during the post-war period I think it would be legitimate to argue that government policy in the UK was to the left of most of its other (non-dictatorial) continental counterparts, not least because Labour was able to use its massive 1945 majority to move domestic policy substantially to the left across the board.

Here are a few papers which make the argument that PR leads to more left-wing governments and policy (especially redistribution):

Austen-Smith, D., 2000. Redistributing Income under Proportional Representation. Journal of Political Economy, 108(6), pp. 1235-1269.

Döring, H., and Manow, P., 2015. Is Proportional Representation More Favourable to the Left? Electoral Rules and Their Impact on Elections, Parliaments and the Formation of Cabinets. British Journal of Political Science, 47(1), pp. 149-164.

Iversen, T., and Soskice, D., 2006. Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More Than Others. American Political Science Review, 100(2), pp. 165-181.

Persson, T., Roland, G., and Tabellini, G., 2007. Electoral Rules and Government Spending in Parliamentary Democracies. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2(2), pp. 155-188.

The Iversen and Soskice is the seminal piece here, a very influential and well-known set of findings. The abstract of the Döring and Manow summarises the literature on this topic quite nicely:

How do electoral rules affect the composition of governments? It is a robust finding that countries with majoritarian rules more often elect conservative governments than those with proportional representation (PR) electoral systems. There are three explanations for this pattern. The first stresses the impact of voting behaviour: the middle class more often votes for right-wing parties in majoritarian electoral systems, anticipating governments’ redistributive consequences. The second explanation is based on electoral geography: the regional distribution of votes may bias the vote-seat translation against the Left in majoritarian systems due to the wide margins by which the Left wins core urban districts. The third explanation refers to party fragmentation: if the Right is more fragmented than the Left in countries with PR, then there is less chance of a right-wing party gaining formateur status. This study tests these three hypotheses for established democracies over the entire post-war period. It finds the first two mechanisms at work in the democratic chain of delegation from voting via the vote-seat translation to the formation of cabinets, while party fragmentation does not seem to co-vary as much as expected with electoral rules. These findings confirm that majoritarian systems have a substantive conservative bias, whereas countries with PR show more differentiated patterns.

[Alcibiades]

Problem with AV is that when modelled, it sometimes led to less proportionality and over rewarded electoral landslides. Or in the case of 1997, the Lib Dems leapfrogging the Tories.

There's a great paper on every election under STV and Droop LR  from 1945 by Dylan Difford worth a look.

You’re absolutely right about AV potentially being even less proportional than FPTP, but I still think, at least given the logic of single-member district elections, it’s definitely more democratic; it makes more votes count.

This seems like a substantially worse system than FPTP, seeing as that whether you get a second vote depends on whether you accurately guess who will finish in the top two. It's good that it's gone now.

It’s true that it is not ideal; my suspicion is it was introduced because there was a worry voters in a country not accustomed to ranked voting would have found full STV too confusing. That said, I think it’s clearly preferable to FPTP, coming much closer to reflecting the ‘true’ preferences of the electorate. For instance, the Tories would have won the most recent Cambridgeshire ‘mayoral’ election under FPTP, but Labour actually ended up winning off the back of Lib Dem preferences. The system’s replacement by FPTP is in my opinion highly regrettable, and little more than a nakedly partisan Tory power grab.

[Alcibiades]

Alistair Darling has died. Sad, and at least to me surprising, news; he was only 70.

[Alcibiades]

Humza Yousaf is expected to claim that the general election in Scotland will be a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories. The best part of his planned speech doesn’t come until the end of the linked article however:

Mr Yousaf is also expected to claim that Labour have "made it clear that Scotland is an afterthought" as they are "prepared to risk 100,000 Scottish jobs to build new nuclear power plants in England".

This is in reference to Sir Keir Starmer's plans to raise the windfall tax on fossil fuel firms from 75% of excess profits to 78%, while also extending it to 2029.

The SNP have promised to oppose these plans as they had prompted "extreme anger" from people in the north east of Scotland.

Truly, It’s Scotland’s Oil.

[Alcibiades]

Not that it makes much of a difference at this point, but I suppose the Tories would also quite like to avoid what would surely be yet another by-election thrashing, given that Wragg only had a majority of 10% over the Lib Dems at the last election.

[Alcibiades]

The belief that Western society is seeing an epidemic of child abuse is deeply held and Tory MPs have to reflect that.

Very few people in Britain — including very few Conservative voters — believe this. This is the language of the conspiratorial American far right.

[Alcibiades]

I was surprised by the Lib Dem votes on this because they have previously very much shown a willingness in this parliament to take idiosyncratic civil libertarian stances that might not be particularly in line with, for want of a better word, ‘progressive’ orthodoxy; for instance, ten of their MPs voted against Covid vaccine passports in December 2021.