Andy Beckett's Blog, page 15

U-turns have kept the Tories in power, but eventually they'll run out of road | Andy Beckett

Boris Johnson’s dizzying list of policy changes is a way of keeping his party in office, not making British life better

The news that the Conservatives intend to undo their own elaborate NHS reforms could be seen as yet another sign of how badly they’ve governed. It could also be taken as a reminder of how bafflingly long they have been in office, given their record. The original legislation setting out their reforms to the NHS was passed nine years and three general elections ago.

During that time the Tories have reversed their policies, or significantly changed their message, in many other crucial areas: among them the role of the state, EU membership, the north-south divide, the relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and the balance between economic growth and public safety during a pandemic. Sometimes since Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019 he and his ministers have failed to keep to a consistent line for the duration of a sentence.

Related: The Guardian view on Boris Johnson's role: laundering the Tory brand | Editorial

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Think bigger: that's the message for Starmer from Biden's bold beginning

Centrist policies are unequal to the crises we face, and the new US president’s ambitious priorities acknowledge that

If you’re on the British left, the last few months in American politics have provided some cheer during a grim period. Trump lost, despite the widespread fear that he would not. The Democrats captured the Senate, despite the system for electing it being biased against them. The American right, so influential around the world, seems in some disarray.

More startling still, the American left appears to be exerting an influence on Joe Biden. Its two best-known figures, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are seeing some of their ideas, such as doubling the minimum wage and a Green New Deal, shape Biden’s presidential priorities and possibly his actual policies. Former Sanders advisers have been hired by the administration. And Ocasio-Cortez – who said last year that “in any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party” – said last month that she was “extraordinarily encouraged” by his government, for its “openness” to the views of radical climate activists.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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From the archive: PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain – podcast

We are raiding the Audio Long Reads archives and bringing you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2017: Oxford University graduates in philosophy, politics and economics make up an astonishing proportion of Britain’s elite. But has it produced an out-of-touch ruling class? By Andy Beckett

• Read the text version here

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If Labour is serious about regaining power, it will need to woo southern England | Andy Beckett

Rather than simply trying to win back disaffected ‘red wall’ voters, Keir Starmer must widen his focus

In politics, an ascendancy is often strongest when it seems natural. Ever since Britain became a full democracy in the early 20th century, most of southern England outside London has habitually elected Tory MPs. Politics here has effectively shrunk to a choice between the party’s prospective parliamentary candidates.

This arrangement has worked well for the Conservatives and some southerners, but less well for everyone else. The Tories have built on their southern supremacy to frequently dominate national politics, and the south has increasingly dominated the economy. As Tom Hazeldine pointed out in his recent book The Northern Question, only a century ago the southeast and the north “were roughly on level pegging” in their share of our economic output. But by 2000 the southeast’s share was twice that of the north. Britain has become one of the most imbalanced countries in Europe, and the closeness between the Conservatives and the south has played a central role.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The pandemic has hollowed out our politics – but that can't last forever | Andy Beckett

The current lack of political engagement suits the Tories. They should beware though: it’ll be back with a vengeance

In Britain today, politics feels empty. Some of the emptiness is literal: the socially distanced House of Commons, the absence of demonstrations and packed political conferences, the party leaders making endless speeches to cameras in deserted rooms.

As in the rest of life, the pandemic has postponed important events, such as last year’s London mayoral election, and allowed others to continue only in eerily reduced form. For almost a year now, the rowdy political crowds and huddles that usually reassure many people that Britain is a healthy democracy have been absent.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Brexit may spell the end of the tabloid version of Englishness. Can Labour redefine it? | Andy Beckett

With Scottish independence looming, the left must find a space for a vision of England based on our complex identities

For too long, one version of Englishness has dominated British politics. Proud, white, both confident and defensive, often xenophobic, always anti-Europe, this Englishness has changed as little as the tabloid front pages that have bellowed it out for decades. Brexit is one of its greatest victories. The continuing Conservative ascendancy is another.

Even formidable politicians of other parties have struggled to popularise a different national identity. Gordon Brown got lost in well-meaning but unconvincing generalities about the British national character: in 2007, he praised our “tolerance”, “decency”, and love of “fair play” and “liberty”.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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If Keir Starmer wants to change Britain, he'll need more than caution | Andy Beckett

Faced with Brexit and the pandemic, voters will be looking for fresh ideas and ambitious thinking

Since the stiff early weeks of his Labour leadership, Keir Starmer has loosened up a bit as a public figure. He talks in a more colloquial, less lawyerly way on his monthly LBC radio phone-in, Call Keir. He laughs more, sometimes at himself. Last month he appeared on Desert Island Discs, and spoke candidly about his “difficult” father and disabled mother.

Especially compared to Boris Johnson, Starmer has begun to look like a rounded human being, as well as a capable one – the sort of opposition leader that party strategists and many voters consider prime ministerial.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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Is Brexit the end of the game for the Conservative rule-breakers? | Andy Beckett

For years, the Tories have used their power to game the system. But that won’t wash with the EU

In politics, as in the rest of life, rules are often about power. Who sets them, who obeys them and who breaks them – and whether they get away with it – tells us a lot about where power lies. In Britain, with our unwritten and patched-together constitution, the rules of politics can be vague and poorly understood by voters, the media, and even some politicians. What is permitted – and what is not – forms a kind of constant, shifting fog, inside which crucial battles are fought.

“Politics is sometimes … about finding out how to change the rules of the game,” wrote the Anglo-American political philosopher Raymond Geuss in 2008. The Conservatives are often good at this exercise. Despite rarely being very popular, competent or full of ideas, they’ve managed to stay in office for the last 10 years through a variety of unconventional manoeuvres: forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats; changing the electoral cycle with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act; avoiding a hostile House of Commons by illegally proroguing parliament; and, most important of all, by calling a rare and risky referendum on EU membership, losing it, and then siding with the winners.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The left is accused of authoritarianism – but it's the right that gets away with it | Andy Beckett

The scaremongering has begun about Biden and Starmer, while Trump and Johnson undermine democratic norms

For a wearyingly long time now, one of the right’s favourite tactics against the left has been to accuse it of planning a police state. From Winston Churchill’s 1945 claim that a Labour government would need “some form of Gestapo” to last year’s warnings in the Tory press that Jeremy Corbyn would turn Britain into a version of Venezuela, rightwing journalists and politicians have used the spectre of authoritarianism to make the left seem sinister and foreign.

The tactic is sometimes still effective. In this month’s US election, Donald Trump won the key state of Florida in part by persuading Hispanic immigrants that Joe Biden, a famously pragmatic Democrat, would instead form an intolerant leftwing government. “I voted for Trump to prevent the United States from resembling countries like Cuba,” Jose Edgardo Gomez told the Miami Herald. “We want the United States to continue being free and to continue having a true democracy … Many Americans don’t understand the threats that socialism poses.”

Related: America is being subjected to a stress test – and Republicans are failing | Robert Reich

Related: Priti Patel's refusal to go is a blow to the integrity of government | Alistair Graham

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We're told the monarchy steps up in a national crisis. This time it's been absent | Andy Beckett

The royal family have barely been seen during the pandemic. It’s in keeping with their 21st-century introversion

For any monarchy that wants to be central to national life, presence is important. In the media, in popular culture, at public events and in the minds of its subjects, the monarchy’s usefulness and mystique need to be reinforced and appreciated on a regular basis. According to the BBC royal correspondent Sarah Campbell, “the family mantra” of the House of Windsor is: “We have to be seen to be believed.”

Related: Extra bank holiday announced for Queen’s 2022 platinum jubilee

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