31 October 2019
Making Manifest
In the festival season.
By John Watson
So a December election it is. It is said that that may tell against the government because the electorate do not like to be disturbed in the run-up to Christmas. After all, there are precedents. Remember how Edward II consulted the barons in the festive season and look what happened to him: a red-hot poker in an uncomfortable place, according to tradition. Remember how Anne Boleyn put a little political advice in Henry’s Christmas card when all he wanted was pictures of holly and angels. That didn’t go too well either. What nonsense it all is! The electorate may have any number of reasons to prefer one party over the other but I don’t really believe that they are going to be much swayed by having the Christmas retail season interrupted. Some of them may be rather grateful.
No, I expect the British public to look at the manifestos, to listen to the commentators and to make their decision in a fairly serious-minded way, so it is to be hoped that those manifestos will be worth the study. When we open them, what will we expect to find there?
Let’s start with the Tories. Obviously they will major on the Johnson deal and on the freedom we will gain by coming out of the EU. So far so good but not quite good enough. We elect a government for five years not just for Christmas so we will want to know to what use the new freedoms are to be put. Take freedom from the EU labour laws as an example. The Government has said that we can replace them by something more attuned to the pattern of UK business. Okay. Fair enough. But what? The electorate will want to know.
Then there is the nonsense about the National Health Service being in some way “sold to the Americans”. It is unclear what that means since I imagine that we already buy a large number of drugs from US pharmaceutical companies and will inevitably continue to do so. Still, it is a good moment to map out the future for the service and the way it is to be funded as the population gets older. Come on, Mr Johnson, lay it out for us please. There are lots of other areas too, not least the environment where I recently heard an experienced civil servant arguing that the Tory party wanted to leave the EU so that we would have less environmental legislation, thus increasing the profits of their, presumably old Etonian, friends in the city. Garbage obviously, and for reasons previously discussed in this column it is likely that Mr Johnson will if re-elected make environmentalism his thing. Still, it wouldn’t do any harm for him to lay out some detail if only to silence the nonsense.
And silencing the nonsense is, for the Tories, at the centre of it. Nature, according to Aristotle, abhors a vacuum. That is as true in politics as it is in science. If the Conservatives leave gaps in their programme, their enemies will fill them and not particularly fairly either. For them, the more detail the better.
The Lib Dems have it slightly easier in that we already know what life within the EU is like. They may be tempted, then, just to indicate that things will go on as before. That would be a great mistake. At the root of current dissatisfaction with the EU is the fact that the public do not feel that they were asked to sign up to the way in which it has developed. If we are not going to face something similar in a few years’ time the Lib Dems need to sketch out where they think the union is going to end up. Do they think we will pool our foreign policy and armed forces? If so, they should say so. Do they think that the UK and France should surrender their seats on the security council in favour of an EU seat? If so, they should say so. How do they see the future of our various rebates and exclusions? Are they really going to last for all time or will they disappear as a superstate evolves? They need to explain their thinking on this. It may seem a little hard but in the end they’re asking the UK to choose a particular future. They need to explain what that is going to mean and to sell their vision.
That of course leaves Labour who have recently given the impression of hobbling along behind the Lib Dems with their shoe laces tied together. They too need to put a program before the public and it should contain some of the radical ideas which they have published over the last year or two. The proposal for grabbing 10% of companies without compensation should be there without the ludicrous and dishonest attempt to paint it as giving the workers a stake. The idea of clawing back the gains made by the investment community on the water companies should be there too, as should their proposals for penalising private education. Of course they will run the risk of the public balking at some of this but at least they will get their ideas into the open which is probably better than appearing to have no momentum whatsoever. After all, faint heart never won fair lady.
So will we get all this? Probably not, but we may get some of it and then it will be left to magazines like the Shaw Sheet to tease out the rest. So as you reflect on the way in which politics encroaches even on Christmas, bear in mind that for some of us there is a silver lining. For commentators up and down the land there will be no problem in finding something to write about. There, I expect that makes you feel much better about it!
