A Bond of Association

There is this mistaken belief that the English have highly-developed sang-froid. They are cool, calm and collected. They learned it from Baden Powell:

A Scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances. When he gets an order he should obey it cheerily and readily, not in a slow, hang-dog sort of way. Scouts never grouse at hardships, nor whine at each other, nor swear when put out.

Don’t believe it.

Periodically the English go ding-bat. As they are doing round about now.

This time it’s the Tory end of the political spectrum; and the goad is the Europe thing.

We are led to believe that all we need is a futile Parliamentary gesture for a mythical referendum on a non-negotiation which isn’t going to happen and which won’t satisfy anyone:

DAVID Cameron’s EU referendum Bill is a bold act of political cunning.

At a stroke he has given a boost both to wavering Tories flirting with UKIP and to his panicking, mutinous back-benchers — while challenging Clegg and Miliband to back him or deny the public a say.

 The PM knows his Bill for a 2017 referendum is probably dead without Lib-Dem and Labour support. And neither Europhile Clegg nor Miliband trust voters not to want out. They’d rather we had no choice.

 As President Obama said yesterday, Cameron is right to renegotiate our position within the EU before he puts an in-out vote to the country.

 But his Bill shows that this time his cast-iron referendum guarantee is what it says on the tin.

 It may be doomed. But at the next election Cameron can now credibly present the Tories as the only major party ready to let Britain decide its own future.

A formula of words solves all problems.

So to the past …

It happens that Malcolm was re-reading Robert Hutchinson’s account of Elizabeth’s Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the secret war that saved England. By pure coincidence, just as the news of Cameron’s and Hague’s self-serving and politically-cleaving shibboleth was hitting the tapes, he had reached Hutchinson’s Chapter Four, which starts with Burghley’s and Walsingham’s cunning plan. They:

… needed once and for all to defuse the powder keg of conspiracy they believed was threatening the survival of the Protestant realm of England.

The so-called ‘Bond of Association’ was their adroit solution.

In anyone’s language, it was little more than lynch law.

The idea, probably the product of Burghley’s devious ingenuity, had initially been very simple. It proclaimed that any wicked person who caused the death of Elizabeth would be ineligible to succeed her as ruler of England. Its objective was thus very clear: at a stroke it removed Mary as the focal point of any Catholic conspiracy. Then came a series of more hard-line revisions …

It certainly rallied the troops:

Despite some strong misgivings within the legal classes — lawyers and magistrates — men and women in their thousands did sign copies of the Bond, the illiterate simply with a cross as their personal mark. They pledged themselves before God to take the law into their own hands and to ruthlessly hunt down and destroy anyone associated with a plot to kill Elizabeth. There were even special church services to further sanctify the process of oath-taking.

As for the Queen of Scots, she did what any politico would do when faced with mass hysteria:

… she happily signed the paper herself on 5 January 1585.

At the moment the only questions are whether David Cameron comes out of his present difficulties looking silly, or very silly, and his party looking just split, or totally ruptured. We have had a quarter-century of this internal feuding; and on present form it looks as if the disintegrating English right will be dismembered for as long again. [The Scottish right is happily sailing along under the banner of the SNP.]

At some point the non-Tory parties and the vast majority of sane non-UKIPers will have to sit on their hands, look bemused, say nothing, and let the forces of unreason tear the political Right and Centre-Right asunder.

A Bond of dis-Association, either way.

Historical and other parallels

History repeats itself, said Marx (approximately) paraphrasing Hegel, first as tragedy then as farce.

So let Malcolm repeat himself:

• Prime Minister David Cameron is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King William IV.
• William IV was third son of George III, whose elder brothers were the future George IV and … Frederick, Duke of York and Albany.

Taraaah!

Said Prince Fred is generally accounted to have been the Grand Old Duke of York, who:

… had ten thousand men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up, they were up.
And when they were down, they were down.
And when they were only halfway up,
They were neither up nor down.

Fred, who now is dead, earned that reputation because of the futile Flanders campaign of 1799.

Cameron’s  hill-climbing and descents are as well-established as Fred’s; but he doesn’t have ten thousand men. He has just 304 MPs, and 48 of them are definitely not men. Though many of those women have more balls than their male colleagues.

Further back

Malcolm can’t be bothered to work out what the precise relationship is; but Cameron must be related somehow to the Stuarts. Which brings us to James II and VII.

After the near-rout at the Boyne, James sweatily arrived back in Dublin where Lady Tyrconnell enquired how the battle had gone. He replied, “My cowardly Irish have run away.”

She responded with a hint of acid: “Then I see your majesty has won the race.” Again, a speedy characteristic to be observed in Cameron’s hereditary nature.

The gift of leadership

This is an art or a talent in which Cameron has rarely excelled. Particularly so on matters European.

Which is why he is in his present predicament.

And which brings us to the ridiculous “Referendum Bill”; and Isabel Hardman in the Spectator channeling Lady Tyrconnell:

David Cameron was trying to work out how on earth to deal with the latest Europe row in his party. He heard them demanding legislation in this parliament for a referendum in the next, and this evening, after nearly a year of letter-writing and speeches, he announced that the Tory party will publish a draft bill doing just that. They still can’t get it through Parliament through the government channels, so they’ll be putting it up for any willing backbencher (of which there are many) to adopt in the Private Member’s Bill ballot.

Figures close to the Prime Minister were hinting to Tory MPs this evening there would be a move for legislation, but they were taken by surprise when, just a few hours later, the announcement was made that the draft bill will be published tomorrow.

So is this it? Is the Conservative party falling on its knees with gratitude? Unsurprisingly, MPs are not doing anything of the sort.

Wherein Malcolm found an echo from Li’l Abner, Al Capp, Johnny Mercer and Stubby Kaye:

Stonewall Jackson got his name by standing firm in the fray.
Who was known to all his men as good ol’ “Paper Maché?”
Why it was Jubilation T. Cornpone; 
Jubilation T. Cornpone, he really saved the day!

Isabel was being as polite as the circumstances permit. For sheer vitriol — and a longer view — there’s  Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times, subtitled in near Marxist terms — and with a flourish from Mao for added relish:

Drama is giving way to farce. The eurosceptic demands are now plain odd

Touchingly, they really believed it would work. When David Cameron pledged a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU four months ago, his team were certain it would pacify eurosceptic Conservatives, disarm the UK Independence party and ensure he would not need to talk again about this electorally esoteric issue for the rest of this parliament.

That speech, his most important deed as UK prime minister after his austere fiscal policy, has failed on all counts. Tories now hound him to go further, Ukip romp on, and he is condemned to revisit the subject periodically on behalf of his party.

Downing Street is mystified by the collapse of the January truce, and commentators also scribble their surprise. But it is not surprising at all. It was predictable, and predicted. We are now a quarter of a century into the Tories’ rancorous fixation with Europe, a single-issue neuralgia that knows no equivalent in any major party in the west, and the pattern is familiar: no concession satisfies those who ultimately want to leave the EU, even if they say it will before receiving it. Mr Cameron, remember, has withdrawn his party from the centre-right caucus in the European Parliament, vetoed a fiscal treaty and cleared a path to exit. On each occasion, Tories have summoned a practised glee before returning to their core view of him as the craven running dog of a europhile establishment.

Even that lacks the sheer horror that Ben Brogan, for the Torygraph, evinces:

It may be, as some Tories tried to explain yesterday, that a cunning new strategy is evolving before our eyes, one that Mr Gove and his friend Mr Cameron are developing as part of their wider campaign to shove Labour – and the Lib Dems – on to the wrong side of popular causes. By this theory, Europe is no longer a divisive, dangerous issue for the Tories to be caught arguing about, but is in fact a vote-winner. Look at us, the Conservatives are now shouting, we are so crazy about Europe that we are desperate to give you a vote on it and – nudge nudge, wink wink – we might just join you in voting to get out. By allowing his colleagues to say it all in public, and say it loudly, Mr Cameron is giving himself free advertising for his Euro-robustness two years early. The tease of a referendum, the catwalk of Tory beauties sashaying in their see-through ideological out-fits, the Cabinet loyalists talking naughty – it’s all part of a great plan. By allowing his colleagues to talk up the possibility of a British exit, the Prime Minister’s hand is strengthened in the EU negotiations to come. First welfare, then immigration, now Europe: everything is lining up in Mr Cameron’s favour.

Except it isn’t, of course. No 10 has lost control of this one. Even those involved admit it’s a Euroshambles. After all, can any of this truly be said to advance the cause of a Conservative victory in 2015? Surely the first part of Mr Cameron’s negotiating strategy requires winning the general election? Does an inward-looking spat about Europe really fit alongside the message about a global economic race and the importance of the EU/US trade deal that Mr Cameron found himself promoting in Washington yesterday?

Surely soon we must be reaching the end-game? That can involve just one (or both) of two possibilities: the defenestration of Cameron, and/or the collapse of the ConDem coalition. Either way the lunatics have taken over the Tory asylum.

Which brings Malcolm back to:

The English are mad! Mad, I tell you!

The Lady in Malcolm’s Life is guid Scots-Irish. Could she be anything else from a loyalist Portadown background?

However, she went into convulsions of mirth with George Eaton’s gem.

In essence, it goes like this:

• Tory back-benchers have laid an amendment to the Queen’s Speech. They regret that it didn’t contain an EU referendum bill.
• David Cameron has indicated his support for this amendment.
• Were the amendment to be carried, it would be a lost vote of confidence, and cameron would constitutionally be obliged to resign.

Why would the Opposition vote against the amendment?

Back from the future

Malcolm would have to admit Mark Pack came as close as anyone yet to defining why UKIP causes cringing:

Some of UKIP’s support comes from places the Liberal Democrat should leave well alone — especially those yearning for a 1950s-style society of white men at work, white women at home and gays in the closet.

Why only LibDems, Mark? And why only Some of UKIP’s support?

An agenda for retrogression

Meanwhile, there are the opening four paragraphs of Tim Montgomerie’s piece in this Monday’s Times [£]. These provide as good a check-list of the present Tory malaise as you’ll find; so let’s rip them from behind the pay-wall:

Spend most of your time as Tory leader ignoring the issue that matters most to your activist members: Europe. Launch your bid to be leader by promising to introduce a tax allowance for married couples and then, once you’ve won power, fail to deliver that pledge at four successive Budgets. Tell parents that they can set up any school they want as long as it’s not the one they most want, a grammar school.Stop Gordon Brown holding a honeymoon election in 2007 by promising to abolish inheritance tax but then put it up in office. Spend the general election campaign talking about an issue that no one understands — the Big Society — and don’t talk about immigration, an issue that three-quarters of voters do care about. Subsidise expensive renewable energies at a time when families are struggling to pay their electricity bills.

Form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats even though 80 per cent of your members want you to lead a minority government. Promise not to reorganise the NHS, then reorganise it anyway. Oppose press regulation but then embrace it. Keep pledging to tackle European human rights laws but do nothing when Abu Qatada proves again and again that Britain is run by inventive lawyers rather than democratically-drafted laws.

Insist that you want to reach out to northern and poorer parts of Britain but stuff your Downing Street operation with southern chums who attended the same elite private schools as you. And, just for good measure, insult people who normally vote for your party as clowns, fruitcakes and closet racists.

There are six policy-points there, and counting, that Malcolm, as most decent types (probably including Mark Pack) must find close to abominable; but we’re not Tories, and we’re not seduced by Farage’s forked tongue to bite his rotten apple.

Even so, as Clegg was so emphatic that Europe was his main reason for urging Gordon Brown not to resign, to allow more time to knock sense into the Tories, we might reasonably ask: “How well is that one going, Nick?”

The light of evening, 11th May 2010

No election is a “good one to lose”; but that last one came close.

Any incoming administration was going to have to spatchcock a programme out of nowhere. Alistair Darling had already gone a fair distance in sketching one out. That Gids Osborne, not Darling, was the recipient of the poisoned chalice will tax future historians in finding enough ordure to chuck.

Instead we got Alec Issigonis’ (attrib) horse is a camel designed by a committee. The committee being the now-infamous “quad” of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, and Alexander. Read that as an interior decorator’s otherwise-unemployable son, an EU apparatchik, a huckster for a Scottish ski-lift, presided over by the:

PR man for Carlton, the world’s worst television company. And a poisonous, slippery individual he was, too.

No! No! Who was spawned was even more hideous! The ConDem creature came straight out of Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein:

The Monster: For as long as I can remember people have hated me. They looked at my face and my body and they ran away in horror. In my loneliness I decided that if I could not inspire love, which is my deepest hope, I would instead cause fear. I live because this poor half-crazed genius, has given me life. He alone held an image of me as something beautiful and then, when it would have been easy enough to stay out of danger, he used his own body as a guinea pig to give me a calmer brain and a somewhat more sophisticated way of expressing myself.

What could possibly dissuade us from confidently predicting a quick ride to Hell in a handcart? Who could doubt there was something even more horrible and unprincipled waiting in the wings, stage right?

And then all our fears were doubly underlined: it was going to be gothic Dickensian as well:

• Veneerings in 10 Downing Street: bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London.
• Thomas Gradgrind for education minister: A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.
• Josiah Bounderby slashing-and-burning what was left of local government:  A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
• Culture courtesy of the Dodger: as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; … all the airs and manners of a man. … He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in his bluchers.
• Health in the claws of Quilp: … his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling.
•  Bumble the Beadle for welfare:

Oh yes, this is looking distinctly due for disaster.

Let’s change the literary media and revert to Young Frankenstein for Gids Frankenstein’s economic experiment on the British body politic:

[after failing to bring the creature to life] Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Nothing.
Inga: Oh, Doctor, I’m sorry.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: No. No. Be of good cheer. If science teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures, as well as our successes, with quiet dignity and grace. [starts beating up the creature] Son of a bitch! Bastard! I’ll get you for this! What did you do to me? What did you do to me?

Laugh and the world laughs with you

At least one is allowed to laugh at, and with Mel Brooks. The imperial and imperious Cameroonie ukase has gone out that UKIP are no longer “clowns”. Well, respectable thesps do tend to look down on lesser theatrical species.

And that is a shame.

For, if there is anything more ludicrous than the pantomime camel that rules us, it is the troupe of performing Kippers.

What other “party” has been so prone to splits and harbouring frauds? How many kipper MEPs have cast themselves adrift, unable to stomach any longer the overweening pump and pomp of Farage?

And, what — may we ask — are kipper policies? The next mile-stones are the EU-elections (in which the kippers expect to do well) and the Scottish referendum (on which they might be expected to have an opinion). Try the Scottish UKIP websites and you find:

Not Found

The requested URL /scotland was not found on this server.

Hielan laddies

UKIP have a “Scottish chairman”. He is one Mike Scott-Hayward, a former Tory councillor … a former army major and ex-coastguard officer. And then we have the amazing political-chameleon,

UKIP’s first Scottish spokesman is Mike Haseler, an energy sector researcher from East Dunbartonshire. He was a Liberal Democrat candidate in Watford in the 1990s and stood for the Greens for the Holyrood elections in 2003.

Haseler has a blog, which explains what a well-rounded specimen he is: a self-proclaimed expert in physics, electronics and some philosophy, studying archaeology, learned Danish to understand the competition, worked in the wind industry (surely, a given for a politico) but is now a climate-change doubter. According to his blog, he joined UKIP as long ago as March, 2013. A “March violet“, indeed. Yet, a person of outstanding merit, to have risen so quickly from aspirant member to “first Scottish spokesman”.

As for “policy”, the aim seems to be to render Scotland into an administered colony:

Although UKIP wants to scrap MSPs, it says it would hold on to the Scottish Parliament, with MPs handling affairs on their doorstep three days a week and UK matters at Westminster the other two.

Presumably, some Tory presence would be required in Edinburgh were there ever to be a Tory government in Westminster. So we can confidently expect the Dáil Éireann solution of a nominated “taoiseach’s eleven” to keep the natives in order.

Slugging it out

Much of this came together in Malcolm’s recent recollection of Julian Critchley.

Critchley was a close buddy of Michael Heseltine, a dandy, a bon-viveur, a man-about-town, possessed of considerable wit, a sharp pen and a waspish tongue. As the Tory MP for Rochester between 1959-64, then retreaded for Aldershot for 1970-1997, that absence cost him promotion in the interim. He was a “country member” of the Westminster club, commuting for whipped votes from Ludlow. He was , by any contemporary standard, wringing”wet”, as the Guardian obituary summed him —

a liberal Tory, supporting one-nation social policies, membership of the European Community, and a defence policy based on Nato and a nuclear strategy. He would have been a natural and able young ally for Edward Heath, campaigning for him against the Conservative right, which was increasingly hostile to the Rome Treaty and current levels of public spending.

Everything that the present Tory tendency is not.

His saving grace was as a gad-fly to whom Thatcher never took (and whom he mocked disgracefully — it was he, not as frequently-cited Denis Healey, who stuck on her the moniker, “the Great She-Elephant”). As a result the ministerial team was denied one of the brighter sparks in sight.

Malcolm’s reason for this memory is that Critchley deplored the dumbing-down of the Tory Party, and the arrival of the “garagistes” (we stand correction on that spelling, though we can be sure Critchley would have made it as effete as possible). The “garagistes” were the golf-club nineteenth-holers, the wide boys, the “Essex men” who came to infest the Tory Party under Thatcher.

So, three decades on, and the change of a single initial letter F for g, we are fulfilling his prophecy, with Nigel of the cheesy grin and the ever-ready pint, as the apotheosis of all things garagiste.

The Times they are a-churning

This could be one of those intrusive Malcolmian asides. Indeed, that was how it started in another post that is cooking.

Let’s keep it as main text.

Malcolm’s morning trip to the doctor’s surgery allowed him to read Andrew Adonis’s account,  Five Days in May, of life in Downing Street, while the Quad were stitching up their ConDem package. This is being serialised in The Times.

Unless one is possessed of Mark Packian  (who will be featured in that other post) partial eyesight, Nick Clegg (along with the endearingly peremptory Captain Ashdown) does not emerge well.

This is part of the entry for 4pm Monday, May 10, 2010:

Gordon confirmed that Labour would definitely offer AV legislation and a referendum.

The issue now was the status of the Lib-Lab talks. They were for real, Clegg responded.

But, GB pressed, would he say that the talks with Labour were on the same basis as with the Tories?

“Well, we don’t want to bounce ourselves,” said Clegg, uneasily.

So they wanted to negotiate a final deal with the Tories while merely listening to representations from Labour.

The decision — at least on Gordon Brown’s part — was confirmed after Tuesday’s 1pm final Brown and Clegg meeting:

Ming Campbell, the most pro-Labour and pro-Gordon of the senior Lib Dems, erased any lingering doubts when Gordon spoke to him on the phone at about 4pm. “I wish it were otherwise,” said Ming, clearly dejected. Gordon called Vince Cable, who said much the same.

“OK,” said Gordon, putting the phone down. “I’ll do the call with Clegg at five. Get everything ready for the Palace immediately afterwards.”

Even in that 5pm phone-call, Clegg is procrastinating:

“I’m really sorry, but I still haven’t taken a decision,” was Nick’s opener. “Genuinely, I mean this. I’m sitting here with Vince and the party meeting now isn’t until 8.30.” […]

“I can’t wait that long, Nick. I can’t wait the whole evening,” Gordon said, urgent, insistent. “The country expects a decision.”

“Just two or three hours then,” said Nick, almost pleading.

And so Clegg bought himself another hour:

6.30 came and went. Still no Clegg call.

At 6.45, Sue put another call through to Tim Snowball in Nick Clegg’s office.

“I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting and I can’t get him out, ” said Tim.

“It’s really got to be now, Tim. It absolutely has to be,” said Sue.

Thirty seconds’ silence then Nick Clegg on the line.

“Gordon, I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Nick began. “Following our conversation this afternoon I’m basically finding out how far I can push the Conservatives on Europe. I genuinely take to heart what you said about that. We need some sanity on Europe. We can’t seek to renegotiate. I’m trying my best …”

“I’ll tell you what’s happening …”, “basically”, “genuinely”, “some sanity”, “I’m trying my best …” It all seems somewhat pathetic. And unconvincing.

Adonis’s account immediately continues:

Gordon interrupted. “I need to resign immediately  Nick. I can’t leave this hanging. I can’t be hanging on to power while we can’t get an answer.”

“But Gordon, this isn’t over yet …”

“Nick, you are continuing negotiations with the Conservatives and you have rejected a deal with us.”

“No, Gordon. Today is Tuesday. We have only just started the talks. We have not rejected you. We are trying to play our role, to find a stable coalition.”

“I have to do the right thing by both the Queen and the country,” Gordon continued.

Nick again said he hadn’t made up his mind. “As you know the working group weren’t able to answer some of our questions …”

“Nick, it’s past that. I have to resign as people don’t understand my clinging on to power.”

“Why? In other democracies trying to do this takes weeks. It’s quite right for us to to do it methodically.” His big concern remained Europe, he added.

What was Clegg’s end-game here? Was it to remain centre-stage for weeks, in some kind of Belgian government stand-off? Or was it part of the Cameron-Osborne choreography, with Brown forced to sneak out of Downing Street in the depths of the night?

Back with Adonis:

“Nick, you’re a good man. But I have to respect the British people. They don’t want me hanging on. I wish you well in the future. I think your decisions are important. I prefer the progressive way forward …”

Nick interrupted, reverting yet again to the negotiations not having gone well, particularly on the economy.

More shaking of heads in the inner office. David Muir [Brown's SpAd] texted Jonny Oates [Clegg's Chief of Staff]: “He’s not bluffing.”

Gordon: “Nick, I’ve no choice. I have thought through the implications. I cannot go on for another day. Your are negotiating with another party…’

Nick, dramatically: “Just five minutes. There are two more people I have to speak to. Then let’s speak again. Please.”

A collective groan in the inner office as the line went dead.

We are now in the dénouement:

The No 10 staff were now crowding into the war room, along with Sir Gus O’Donnell and senior Cabinet Office officials.

Five or so minutes later, Nick Clegg again. “Gordon, I cannot give you assurances. That would be acting dishonourably. But please, please don’t resign…”

“I can’t delay. I’ve got to resign now, Nick. I need to go to the Palace.”

“You are holding me hostage. You don’t need to act unilaterally. We have only spent five days holding these important negotiations. I can’t do anything about that …”

“No, Nick. I’ve got to go to the Palace. I’ve got to resign. I haven’t any choice now.”

“It doesn’t need to be like this …”

“It does, Nick, I’ve got to resign. It’s got to be now. I wish you all the best for the future. You’re a good man, Nick. I’ve got to go now.”

We wouldn’t want Nick Clegg to be perceived as acting dishonourably, would we?

 

Some confidence and a bit of supply?

If James Kirkup, blogging at the Torygraph, judges aright (and he’s a shrewd wee fella), we have all crossed a Rubicon:

I’ll leave it to others to discuss the fine details of Press regulation, but having returned from David Cameron’s (fairly hastily-arranged) media conference on the issue this morning, I’m struck by something that may have wider implications.

As he explained his plan to put his own proposals for regulation to the Commons next week, Mr Cameron used a striking phrase.

“Look, we have a hung Parliament,” he said. “In the end Parliament is going to have to decide. Parliament is sovereign.”

Now, at one level, that’s fairly unexciting: it is a simple fact that the 2010 general election led to a hung Parliament, where no single party has a majority.

Yet this is the first time I can recall Mr Cameron explicitly admitted that; I don’t think he’s ever used the phrase “hung parliament” before, though I’m happy to be corrected if anyone can find another case.

In effect, we are where we should have been in May 2010, and where we were bound to be long before 2015: the Tories are governing as a minority administration, with limited aid and assistance from the LibDems. The LibDems are kept “on board” by a love of red boxes, some fancy titles, personal ambition, a need to strut — all at the cost of underpinning ‘Gids’ Osborne’s continued slash-and-burn on the national economy.

The men in grey suits approach!

We have, it ought to be admitted, gone past the moment when this administration was serving any useful purpose. The only wonder is that there is any public support left. The Tory party nationally is in revolt against its elected members. The parliamentary party is riven asunder. Things have reached a pretty pass when Adam Afriyie can seriously be viewed as even a stalking donkey. Whether Mrs May is a more serious proposition remains to be seen (and Dave Brown at the Indy seems to relish the thought):

It was the marvellous Alan Watkins who came up with the term “men in (grey) suits” — the political undertakers who arrived to tell a party leader the time had come for his early departure from the scene. While the old notion was that “loyalty” was the Tory Party’s greatest asset, the truth is that the Tories are the most ruthless assassins of a failing leader.

Prognostications:

1. Two years out from a General Election is getting very close to the moment when a failing leader (Tory, LibDem or whatever) can be defenestrated, and party loyalties re-connected;
2. It is difficult to see how — short of Pope Francis leading an Argentinian landing party at Port Stanley — the credibility of the present government and its Prime Minister can be recovered;
3. Well, actually, one scenario — the nuclear option — offers: Cameron dismisses all the LibDem ministers, reshuffles, goes far Right (he still wouldn’t be believed or trusted by those he seeks to appease), invites the UKIPper defectors back into the tent, and abandons any hope of the centre ground;
4. If he doesn’t  quell the dissent on his right, Cameron limps on until the men in grey suits toll the knell of parting Dave;
5. If Cameron goes, who?
6. If Cameron goes, can Clegg be far behind?
7. Can Ed Balls keep a straight face?

Slapping it on the plastic

There’s a large section of Cameron’s speech today devoted to the topic of debt. Par for the course, you say: it’s the bog-standard Tory incantation.

Except it wasn’t all about the dreaded public debt:

We will not be able to build a sustainable recovery with long term growth unless we fix this fundamental problem of excessive government spending and borrowing that undermines our whole economy.

Second, we had over-indebted households borrowing from over-indebted banks.

Banks lent more than they could afford to — spurred on by an irresponsible banking culture that rewarded short-termism and unmanageable risk-taking.

And households borrowed more than they could afford to — spurred on by an assertion that we had ended boom and bust.

So, when the crash came we didn’t just have over-indebted banks, over indebted households and a big budget deficit, we had the most over-indebted banks and the most over-indebted households as well as the biggest budget deficit of virtually any country, anywhere in the world.

All conveniently in the past and the past tense.

Err, really? Consider Philip Aldrick in the Telegraph:

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the average indebted household increased their non-mortgage borrowings by £400 between 2008 and 2010, to £3,200. In total, households’ financial liabilities rose 10.3pc from £85.9bn to £94.7bn in just two years…

Howard Archer, UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “It seems reasonable to suspect that household debt has risen further. While employment has been resilient, people’s purchasing power has been squeezed by extended weak income growth and elevated inflation.”

He added that the debt burden was likely to hold back the recovery.

“Increased debt levels highlight, along with extended squeezed purchasing power, why consumer spending remains so limited compared to pre-crisis levels,” Mr Archer said. “The extended need for consumers to deleverage is likely to limit the upside for consumer spending for some time to come, and hence constrain overall growth prospects.” …

Mr Archer claimed conditions for households had worsened since the period the survey covered. “Another recent survey from the ONS shows that the economic position of households hit a five-year low in the first quarter of 2012 … [and that] in the third quarter of 2012 real income per head was still 2.4pc below the peak level seen in mid-2009,” he said.

Which means that Cameron is correct that private debt has been a drag on any recovery: the whole 2010 rosy prognostication was based on an assumption that consumer expenditure and, therefore, private debt would carry the economy to the blue horizon. But he is whistling in the dark: not just because (see Archer above) he hasn’t got the statistics on private debt, but more to the point because it has patently increased, rather than been paid-down, since 2010.

Rejoice! TINA’s back!

It jumps out of the screen (or, if you can find a full text, the page):

If there was another way I would take it. But there is no alternative.

Yes: David Cameron has tripped off to Keighley and made a speech, saying … well, absolutely nothing. Except that he is the current possessor of Ma Thatcher’s handbag, and is prepared to filch the odd trifle therefrom.

Except:

That’s from 1980, when the Tory government was already heading further and further into the slough of despond.

Consider this, from Anthony Wells’s ukpollingreport:

Thatcher’s key economic speech of 1o October 1980 was her  Conference “not for turning” address to the Tory faithful:

If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they are prepared to will the means to keep it great, a great nation we shall be, and shall remain. So, what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again”

And Yogi Berra is still with us (now in his later 80s).

The problem common to Thatcher in 1980, and Cameron in 2013 is: who is their audience?

It is, in short, their own party — and in both cases the speeches are defence mechanisms, self-defences against an increasingly unhappy and fractious parliamentary party. We need to recall that in 1980 Thatcher was not, by any means, the autocratic Tory leader that Galtieri, his Argie military cronies, and near on a thousand unnecessary corpses made her.

Cameron’s electoral problem

It isn’t just the Eastleigh business. The 1979 General Election meant that Thatcher’s Tory benches included 22 Scottish MPs (with 31.4% of Scottish votes) — Cameron has just the one (and 16.7% of the votes). In 1979 Northern Ireland returned five (of the ten in total) MPs as Ulster Unionists (with 36.6% of the poll) — on all matters economic, the UU MPs voted with the Tory Whip: today there is not a single Ulster Unionist MP remaining, despite Cameron’s explicit involvement and rebranding of UCUNF.

Let’s continue.

In September 2012 The Economist had a definitive description of:

The great divide
Economically, socially and politically, the north is becoming another country

The piece went still further back, and deeper into the socio-economics of English history:

The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In 1965 men in the north were 16% more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south. By 2008 they were 20% more likely to, according to a study published last year in the British Medical Journal. This is not just because poor people die young: rich northerners apparently live shorter lives than their southern peers…

Whereas government spending is spread fairly evenly across the country — nurses and teachers are needed roughly in proportion to the population — private-sector growth has been heavily concentrated, mostly in and around London. Between 1997 and 2010 gross value-added, a measure of output, grew by 61% in the three northern regions. In London and the South East, it shot up by 92%. According to a study by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester, the state accounted, directly and indirectly, for 64% of the jobs created in the north between 1998 and 2007, against just 38% in the south.

It also considers the electoral impact:

The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, points out that Conservatives held two-fifths of northern seats in 1951. They now hold less than a third, mostly in rural areas. In the cities, and in former-coal mining areas, the party is all but invisible. In July the Sheffield Conservative Party was forced to relocate to nearby Rotherham, as it is so short of cash…

And, of course, so much of what ConDem austerity economics has done disproportionately impacts upon the North and the devolved regions: the attacks on public employment, the squeeze on municipal budgets, replacing poor employment with even poorer-paid part-time work, lower productivity, rack-renting public housing, energy costs, transport costs … What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?

Cameron’s revolting women

This is the most jaw-dropping of the lot: women have turned against the Tories. In every post-War election until 2005 women voters preferred the Tories: it has been a declining gap (it was +12 in 1974), but in the last two general Elections, it has reversed. When one digs down into the most recent YouGov/Sunday Times poll, we find the gender gap is now a chasm:

Note that: a 12 point gender deficit for the Tories.

A curious beast

Peter Hoskin on ConHome finds only luke-warm words for Cameron’s speech (and it was an extended one) today, at Keighley:

David Cameron’s speech on the economy today is a curious beast. Here we have the Prime Minister pronouncing on growth, competition, debt and all that – but it has a thin flavour to it, as though it’s just an appetiser for the Budget in a couple of weeks. There are no new policy announcements, nor anything we haven’t really heard before. Yet perhaps that is the point: Mr Cameron emphasises, à la Lady Thatcher, that “there is no alternative” to the Coalition’s current plan. He speaks of consistency and continuity. It reads like a message telling everyone – from the restless Tory backbenches to Ed Balls and Vince Cable – not to expect a change in course.

That addresses the “what” of the speech (or, perhaps the “what-not?”), but not the more telling “where” (Keighley!)  and “why?” (because he’s dans le merde!). On the other hand, that’s precisely what Nick Robinson has caught on (and saying far more succinctly and elegantly than Malcolm managed here):

Perhaps most revealing, though, is that he feels the need to make this speech at all and who it is aimed at. It is a restatement of the government’s central economic purpose aimed at:

• his own party, which is why he is borrowing Margaret Thatcher’s language
• the North of England
• and women

Look at this paragraph to see what I mean :

“I know things are tough right now. Families are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. Some are just a pay-cheque away from going into the red. Parents are worried about what the future holds for their children. Whole towns are wondering where their economic future lies. And I know that is especially true for people here in Yorkshire and in many parts of the north of our country who didn’t benefit properly from the so-called boom years and worry they won’t do so again. But I’m here to say that’s not going to happen. Because we have a plan to get through these difficulties – and to get through them together.”

A man! A plan! A canal! Panama!

As good a palindrome as you’ll get in these parts to remind us just how much of British politicking involves going round in circles and disappeared up one’s own … canal.

Incomprehension

Good fences make good neighbors

Robert Frost, of course, hence the spelling:

There where it is we do not need the wall: 
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 
My apple trees will never get across 
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.

As is generally accepted, the proverb goes far further back than Frost in 1914. Benjamin Franklin had it in Poor Richard’s Almanack, in the form:

Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge.

Clearly it was a well-worn axiom, even then.

Or, as Dominic Behan — ambiguously — had it:

The sea, oh the sea is the gradh geal mo croide
Long may it stay between England and me
It’s a sure guarantee that some hour we’ll be free
Oh! thank God we’re surrounded by water.

Somehow that was transported (like much else) to Newfoundland, where Joan Morrissey gave it new life:

The whole point of the relationship of the Celt and the Saxon is mutual incomprehension. It is a gaping chasm dividing the nearest of neighbours. A couple of the Great Moments of Anglo-Irish history were:

• Queen Elizabeth I being verbally lambasted (in Irish) by Shane O’Neill (6th January 1562):

John Onell the Frenshman who had don much myschief the sommer past in Ireland cometh by save condytt into England and was receved gentelly in the courte in his saffron shorte the twelveth day at night. He accuseth the erle of Sussex of great crymes, crueltie, breache of promyse, putting to death of divers contrary to promyse and saue conduytt, pilling and polling etc.

O’Neill and his party were the subject of much chatter at Court. They were so unlike us, my dear. The version given on electricscotland.com is strong on romantic imagination, if nothing else:

Few scenes could be more picturesque than this visit of the great Ulster chieftain to the capital of his unknown sovereign. As he came striding down the streets of London on his way to the Palace, attended by his train of gallowglasse armed with the battleaxe, his was indeed a figure to strike the imagination. Like the great golden eagle from far-off Donegal, when seen among homely surroundings, Shane the Proud impressed those who gazed at him as being indeed a king of men. He stalked into the Court, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair curling on his back and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from under it with a grey lustre. Behind him followed his gallowglasse, their heads bare, their fair hair flowing on their shoulders, their linen vests dyed with saffron, with long and open sleeves, surcharged with shirts of mail which reached to their knees, a wolf-skin flung across their shoulders, and short, broad battle-axes in their hands.

The redoubtable chief had no reason to be dissatisfied with his reception. The Council, the peers, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, were present in state, and the assembly included ambassadors from the King of Sweden and the Duke of Savoy.

O’Neill, later that same year, sweetened the occasion by sending Elizabeth, through Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a present of two horses, two hawks, and two Irish wolfdogs.

• Then early in September 1593, Gráinne Ní Mháille (a.k.a. Grace O’Malley), de facto (leaving aside any legalistic details) lord of Umhall Uachtarach, came to Greenwich to make her complaints.

Let’s hear it from Mary O’Dowd, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography:

On her husband’s death, O’Malley, according to her own account, ‘gathered together all her own followers and with 1000 head of cows and mares’ went to live in Carraighowley Castle, co. Mayo, on part of her late husband’s territory, where she continued to ‘maintain herself and her people by sea and land’ . She may initially have established friendly relations with the new president of Connaught, Sir Richard Bingham, but she and her sons soon fell out with his regime. Owen was killed by the president’s brother George Bingham in 1586 and O’Malley was imprisoned and threatened with death. Theobald was maintained in the president’s household for some time as a pledge.

O’Malley was implicated in the Burke rebellions of 1586 and 1588 by Sir Richard Bingham, who accused her of drawing Scottish mercenary soldiers into co. Mayo. Her actions suggest, however, that she was primarily concerned to protect the interests of her immediate family and particularly those of Theobald. By 1591 Theobald had emerged as the leading Burke and the strongest contender for the position of MacWilliam but despite submitting to the government he was still regarded with suspicion. Her son’s arrest precipitated O’Malley’s visit to Elizabeth I in the summer of 1593. A remarkable aspect of O’Malley’s petitions was that she acted as spokesperson for the men in her family. She asked the queen for the release of her son and of her brother, who had also been arrested by Bingham. She also requested that her two sons and two other male members of the Burke family be given letters patent for their lands. As a widow under English common law, O’Malley also laid claim to dower from the land of the O’Malleys and of the O’Flahertys. In a much quoted passage she explained that a widow under Gaelic law had no right to her husband’s land. The royal visit was a success from O’Malley’s point of view. Bingham was ordered by Elizabeth to release Theobald and to grant O’Malley maintenance from her husbands’ lands. As a demonstration of loyalty, O’Malley claimed that she had ‘procured all her sons, cousins and followers of the O’Malleys’, with a number of galleys (some newly built on her return from London) to assist the Elizabethan forces in the Mayo area . The Irish administration was, none the less, slow to implement the queen’s instructions and in 1595 O’Malley made another visit to London, renewing her requests for herself and her male relatives.

There are umpteen accounts of the meeting of O’Malley and Elizabeth — the number of them alone testifies to the strangeness of the occasion, of two worlds colliding. Here is E. Owens Blackburne, doing one of those mid-Victorian (1877) shelf-fillers,  in Illustrious Irishwomen: Being Memoirs of Some of the Most Noted Irishwomen:

Tradition says that Grainne O’Mailly and her retinue performed the entire journey by sea, and sailed up the Thames to the Tower Gate. In this case tradition does not seem to be far wrong, for her little son, Theobald, or Toby, who was born during the journey, was called, Tioboid-na-Lung, or “Theobald of the Ship.”

The meeting of the two royal ladies must have been a strange sight, — the light-haired, light-eyed, fair-faced and rather shrewish-looking Elizabeth, and the swarthy, black-eyed, and black-haired Queen of Connaught. That the latter and her retainers were not attired in the then prevailing mode is pretty certain; but it may also be positively stated that, whatever was the fashion of their habiliments, the texture and workmanship would have borne comparison with any to be found at the Court. For in Ireland, from the earliest ages, skilled needlework was held in the highest esteem.

There are many traditional accounts of this memorable interview, but the chief and best result of it was that it consolidated the treaty already made between Grainne and Elizabeth. At the same time the Irish chieftainess although expressing herself grateful for the protection afforded by the English Government did not cede one inch of her royal dignity. The English Queen offered to create her a countess ; to which Grainne replied that she could not do so, as they were both equal in rank. But she said she would accept a title for her little son Toby, who had been born on the passage from Ireland. Accordingly, the infant was brought into Court, and then and there created Viscount Mayo ; from whom the present noble family of the Earls of Mayo is descended.

When the Irish chieftainess arrived at the English Court, she described herself as “Grainne O’Mailly, daughter of Doodarro O’Mailly, sometime chief of the country called Upper Owle O’Mailly, now called the Barony of Murasky.” This statement rather puzzled Elizabeth, who knew that Grainne was a married woman, until it was explained to her that it was customary amongst the Irish for the women to retain their maiden names after marriage.

They haven’t gone away, you know

The cultural differences extend well into the 21st century. Hence the Celt (who has a more intimate experience of the pained relationship) views the Saxon with amused contempt; while the return glance — when it is deigned to be afforded — remains devoid of real understanding.

The whole thing was writ small and neatly summed by a letter on The Guardian website, reproduced in the Saturday Review section. It’s from a regular contributor to the Books pages, poet, and publisher. The topic is Hilary Mantel’s London Review of Books article:

Given Cameron’s role in this affair, it’s difficult for an Irish person not to take some unwonted pride in a recent speech by much-maligned Irish poet-president Michael D Higgins; Joyce, Beckett, Marx, Sartre, de Beauvoir were all name-checked by a career politician who has read their works.

BillyMills

National Brotherhood Week … not!

All the other versions are blocked on copyright. But there it is:

It’s fun to eulogise
The people you despise,
As long as you don’t let ‘em in your school.

Which would sound well from a certain Anglo-Maltese Tory lady:

On the first day of her campaign, Maria Hutchings was asked about one interview in which she was quoted as saying she did not care about refugees and another in which she allegedly claimed that Labour had done more for “the immigrants, the gays, the bloody foxes” than for children with special needs. She claimed she had been misquoted.

Who flung dung?

Sure, enough, the cow pats are flying in Eastleigh. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, so uplifting as a LibDem (“a yellow bastard“) wafting a ripe splatter at an opposite number of the ConDem coalition. Unless, of course, it’s vice versa.

Fortunately for the future of political mud-wresting-in-a-recently-vacated-cattle-pen, it’s already getting down-and-dirty:

Whereupon the Tories — specifically the unspeakable Harry Phibbs (by name and nature) — at ConHome, swiftly shuffle sideways:

However is the Lib Dem attack so smart? Their leader Nick Clegg says he may send his eldest son to an indepedent [sic] school. Why should he be able to exercise the choice and not Maria Hutchings?

Iain Dale points out that the child in question may well be autistic.

If so the view that existing state provision is inadequate is shared by the National Austic [sic, again] Society. That is why they are involved in helping to start specialist free schools for children with autism. That will provide a choice for parents who can’t afford fees.

Whatever truth or not there is in that remains unclear. What is clear is that some Tory-run local authorities have absolutely no intention of willingly providing proper facilities in state schools for autistic children.

Which is why North Yorkshire recruited the self-proclaimed “ABA-killer” for the appeals procedure.

Airbrushed for change

There is, by the way, a bit of the old Cameroon Photoshopping going on.

Compare and contrast the image of Mrs Hutchings above (on the leaflet, from in action at the B&Q presser) with the ‘official’ version (as just above).

With luck, the air will remain blue (though not, perhaps, politically) — in Westminster and Eastleigh, alike —  for at least the next twelve days.