A rather ruthless tea party

I watched the Tea Party debate the other night, not much changed from last weeks but perhaps notable was this moment.

Moderators always try and bait Ron Paul into these sorts of questions (it gets rather tiresome at times since they're so one-track and unsubtle about it).

In short he's (eventually) asked if society should leave someone with no medical insurance but a serious health issue to die.

He leans towards the personal responsibility but steps back (we'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it's through belief rather than political savvy) from saying let him die by suggesting churches and charities would step in.

It's a position I'm skeptical of but it is at least one with some compassion. Out of the audience you can hear enthusiastic shouts (unrepresentative individuals, can't generalise, etc etc) of "yeah", "yes". I understand the theoretical position, but it is one I find sadly short of compassion. I've never liked ideological purity, I find it leads to worrying places, and there should always be room for compassion.

Received this email today


Dear colleague

This email provides IMPORTANT INFORMATION about events at the Birmingham conference.

Please click on the link below.


http://www.etelligent.uk.com/etelligent/published/LIBDEMSFEDERAL/siteFiles/resources/english party flier.pdf


See you in Birmingham !


The Membership Team


-------------------

I do wish people would send out emails that don't look suspiciously like marketing scams. If I hadn't been able to find references to the email address on google I'd have deleted straight off rather than try the link.

The Grocer's daughter

I'm currently ploughing my way through John Campbell's biography of Margaret Thatcher, because it's on my reading list rather than a great personal desire. Nothing against the iron lady but I find biographies generally very tedious, particularly the early lives of them (where often they're not very different from the young lives of many other people who didn't go on to become very important). Plus the writers usually know that this is a dull part and get tempted to start finding clues to later decisions in the smallest details of childhood.

So far what's far more interesting is where it notes how Thatcher herself (and others) have attempted to portray her childhood rather than her lifestory itself. Or in short, the most interesting parts of this biography are the bits that didn't happen.

Ed "Roseberry" Milliband?

Archibald Primrose (almost equally unknown to most people as the 5th Earl of Roseberry) was one of those glossed over Prime Ministers who fill in the gaps, in this case the transition between the end of the Victorian age and into the early 20th century (a time of a fair amount of political upheaval alongside the switch of centuries). Wittier men than me have commented that his greatest achievement in his ~12 months as PM was having his horses win the derby twice. Damned with faint praise indeed.

He had the misfortune of having to follow Gladstone, when the Grand Old Man finished his last term in Number 10, no easy task to begin with. What made his task all the harder was that there was no leadership election to choose him, nor was Gladstone or leading lights of the Liberal party asked for their opinion.

Put simply, the Queen liked him better than the rest of the possible candidates, both personally and for his policies (he was a Liberal Imperialist against social reform and as foreign secretary opposed to Irish Home rule, both backward steps for the Liberal party at a time when Gladstone's returning reign had already held the party's policies to the lines of a previous age, possibly to the party's long term detriment. See the fast move forward in the early 20th Century when these restraints had been removed).

Now obviously this was all within the rules of the time, the Queen could select someone in she felt could command confidence in Parliament and Roseberry could, albeit not for very long and despite the disapproval of his colleagues who nevertheless weren't going to bring down the government over the appointment. Maybe a better man could have made a go of it. But the nature of his appointment always hung over him and was always a stick to beat him with.

Which brings me to Edward Miliband as I'm told we should call him now. Obviously he has far greater legitimacy in that he was in fact elected leader. But the nature of his victory hangs over him, whether from the close nature of it, the union's influence or the creative campaigning envelopes.

It's not something that in itself is a cause of harm to him, certainly not to the public who (and observe the first rule here) mostly don't know about it, or at best it plays in to a wider narrative of him as a Trade Union man. But it is a stick to beat him with for those who want to undermine him, both within and without the Labour party. If he was doing well and in a strong leadership position I don't believe it would be mentioned much, his legitimacy would be proved by his performances. That it hangs over him (of course a purely personal opinion) is in part evidence of his struggles as leader.

It'd be wrong of me not to mention the Nick Clegg comparison, since in that election (and I voted for him in it) there was a fair number of votes disqualified for being late, which might have swung the contest to Chris Huhne. Of course in the event Huhne took the party view and declared Clegg the winner said he had no problems with the result and importantly stayed part of the team and inside the tent. He wasn't hovering around in the background avoiding any flak and acting as a lightning rod for alternative possibilities or hypotheticals (although in fairness David has now tried to defuse some of that).

But in addition to that I'd argue that Clegg's leadership following his election was generally of a high standard, and also well perceived. By his performances he established legitimacy to the point where the election was a non-issue and is now effectively buried beyond mention. Ancient history.

Edward needs to up his game to bury the election, which he will if he's good enough for long enough, and hope to prove himself rather better than Roseberry (in politics if not horseracing).

The importance of context

An awful lot of 'voodoo' polls get thrown around by people seeking to make points. Notably about traits and attributes of the party leaders and what this might be said to mean. It makes for good newspaper copy, but if you want to understand polls then the first thing is that context is crucial.

If for example we'd taken polls of one US congress we might find great significance in low approval ratings and speculate accordingly about re-election prospects, because we have polls of many of them we find that low approval ratings are normal.

The lesson is simple, for any poll it is meaningless without context and a baseline, instead of thinking about high or low think of better or worse than. No matter how good a poll looks, don't put too much faith in it unless you have repeat results to compare with.

The first rule

The first thing you learn (or should learn) in politics is that people don't care. Or if they care they don't pay much attention. If you want a demonstration of that fact you can either wade through the libraries of political science literature examining this phenomenon or spend a day asking random people about politics.

If you are reading this (then thank you firstly) or any other political blog you are far far far more interested in following politics than the average person. But because people who follow politics tend to group together, whether on blogs, journos, party members, the Westminster bubble or whatever we forget this sometimes. To our cost frankly.

Most people never hear about the day to day things we obsess over, drops in a lake, at best people feel slight ripples and it with other similar stories builds up to a slight change, but that is really all. To switch up the metaphors you're trying to understand shifting sand dunes by examining each gust of breeze. On their own they only move a small number of grains of sand. Sometimes you'll get a major story/gale that'll cross over into the wider public consciousness and make a big move, but they're rare.

If you want so see any effect don't score leaders on PMQs, score leaders on the segments of PMQs that get shown on the 10 o'clock news. Or how the other media says that they are doing (often at best tangentially related to how you believe they're performing). Then apply this same methodology to all political stories. If you want to predict how people will act and react in the future to politics, you must first be realistic about what they perceive and what they're reacting to.

Calling a Scotsman's bluff

Will someone in Scottish politics please find the guts to stand up and face down Alex Salmond, he's been allowed to prance around as the court jester of British politics for far too long.

Scottish independence is not an issue that will go away if we keep dodging a straight fight over it, the SNP are far too well established for that. The only choices we have are how we meet it.

Evading a straight argument does three things,

1. It postpones the inevitable, to no advantage I can see, the opposite in fact.
2.It gives Salmond a campaign target to unite his party around both as a long term aspiration and an achievable short term goal. It motivates the party and supporters to campaign, vote, etc.

3. It makes us (and the other unionist parties) look weak and scared of the issue (and vice versa for Salmond).

Not only is the policy hurting us but it's missing a golden opportunity. We get few enough issues where we can take the initiative distinctively from the other main parties, even fewer where we can make a difference with our voting power on them.

Sooner or later the SNP will have the power to call such a referendum and will have to call one. Our choice is being seen to be dragged unwillingly and fearfully in front of the Scottish people to argue the case for union (and hidden behind the other parties) or we walk in confidently, head high, and ahead of the other two main parties still dragging their feet. Make the choice as stark as possible, in or out, yes or no. No complicating middle grounds, no third choices. Show that you've got something under your kilt.

We're currently taking an issue that is potentially a major benefit and turning it against ourselves. Tavish Scott seems to be holding firm against a referendum but there are rumblings of a rethink. Hopefully it'll result in a policy reversal.

We should never be scared to take our case to the public, least of all on an issue that could be so beneficial to us.