Andy Beckett's Blog, page 19
November 29, 2019
An election all about the future lets Boris Johnson avoid blame for the present | Andy Beckett
In this acrimonious election, seemingly the one thing everyone can agree on is that Britain’s future is at stake. Yet as a result, so far this election has been too much about the future and not enough about the past and the present. And one party has benefited much more than the others.
Related: In this climate, how does Boris Johnson not melt with shame? | Marina Hyde
Related: Brexit? This election is about something much bigger than that | Ash Sarkar
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November 25, 2019
The Lib Dems are still the party of centrist ‘common sense’ – but are there any takers? | Andy Beckett
The party may find its self-consciously moderate worldview has little traction in a polarising election
If you’re on the left, it’s easy to dislike the Liberal Democrats. Helping David Cameron into Downing Street; supporting most of his austerity policies for five years; splitting the anti-Tory vote; attacking Jeremy Corbyn more than Boris Johnson. Since 2010 the Lib Dems, supposedly a party of the centre, have done much to aid three of Britain’s most rightwing governments ever. As their leader, Jo Swinson, discovered on Question Time last Friday, some voters may never forgive them.
Last week her deputy, Ed Davey, suggested that “the most likely result” of the election was “a minority Tory government”, and that the Lib Dems could informally support it in exchange for another Brexit referendum. The Lib Dems have been much more reluctant to say they might support a minority Labour administration, even though a second referendum is already Labour policy. For many leftists, such contortions may be final confirmation that the Lib Dems have ceased to be a centre party, and have turned into one of the right.
During a polarising election, the middle-of-the-road voter whom the Lib Dems have always sought may only get scarcer
Related: First-time voters hold key in 56 marginals, analysis shows
Continue reading...November 16, 2019
Win or lose, Labour’s radicalism has redefined what’s possible in British politics | Andy Beckett
The party hasn’t even published its manifesto yet – but already it’s changed the notion of what elected politicians can achieve
In today’s troubled Britain, it is commonplace to say that the political parties need to come up with some fresh ideas to transform the country. But what happens if one of the big parties starts announcing radical new policies and yet most people don’t seem to be listening?
That sobering question hangs over Labour’s hugely ambitious but so far only moderately successful election campaign, judging by the slow improvement in its poll ratings.
It's making promises of a scale and novelty rarely encountered in the often content-free world of British electioneering
Continue reading...November 1, 2019
Johnson’s populism has given the Tories a lifeline – but they are running out of ideas | Andy Beckett
After almost a decade in government, the party has nothing left to offer but a tired conservatism
Since Boris Johnson became prime minister there’s been a quiet dread on the left, and a less quiet excitement on the right, that the Tories have found a new magic formula – one that will renew their nine-year-old government. A cartoonishly charismatic leader, a shameless softening of austerity, populist attacks on liberals and the nationalist adventure of Brexit: all this has been carefully calculated, the fear goes, so that the Conservatives can sweep out of their southern English heartlands and into the electorally decisive north and Midlands.
Predictions of an imminent Tory breakthrough and new ascendancy are familiar in British politics – it’s arguably the commentariat’s default analysis. Only two years ago, Theresa May’s combination of tut-tutting provincial conservatism and disapproval of the worst aspects of capitalism briefly persuaded many observers, from the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, to the usually reliable political scientist David Runciman, that she could dominate politics for years to come.
The social, political and economic challenge of actually ‘getting Brexit done' should not be underestimated
Related: Tories accused of using public funds for Facebook ads in key seats
Continue reading...October 18, 2019
The campaign to stop Brexit has never found the right words | Andy Beckett
Remainers had the better arguments, but they have failed to shift public opinion
For a lot of Britons, Brexit is still mostly just words. Jargon, vague promises, dire warnings, contradictory predictions, a few catchphrases – an alternately gripping and boring conversation that has been going on for years, only occasionally accompanied by actual changes to everyday life. It’s a conversation that remainers have rarely controlled, let alone dominated. If they are, finally, about to lose the Brexit battle, this may be why.
Related: Boris Johnson’s Brexit dream is to shred workers’ rights and social protections | Owen Jones
Related: Here’s why Boris Johnson’s plans have every chance of falling apart | Tom Kibasi
Continue reading...October 8, 2019
Margaret Thatcher: Herself Alone, Vol Three by Charles Moore – review
The final volume of this monumental biography is gripping and revealing but fails to grapple with Thatcher’s uneasy legacy
In 1991, less than a year after Tory MPs deposed her as party leader and prime minister, Margaret Thatcher appeared on the platform at the Conservatives’ annual conference with her successor, John Major. Thatcher was not scheduled to speak, Charles Moore explains, but the Tory hierarchy realised that her standing with the party membership meant that a brief appearance couldn’t be avoided. Yet the event did not go according to plan. For six minutes, the audience cheered, applauded, stamped, and chanted, “We want Maggie!” Her parliamentary assassins looked on miserably.
It’s a great moment in a book full of them. But arguably it’s also a moment the Conservatives have been stuck in ever since. With their ever escalating hostility to the EU, their stubborn faith in free-market capitalism, their unease with urban and northern Britain and their yearning for a mighty leader, the Tories are still the party Thatcher largely created during her epic leadership from 1975 to 1990. Moore’s monumental official biography – three volumes, almost 3,000 pages, the books published at regular intervals since her death in 2013 – has played a significant part in maintaining Thatcherism’s hold over the party. All three books are measured in tone and have their critical passages but Moore is, at bottom, a believer. Near the end of this concluding volume, when he finally lets his hair down, he calls her “the greatest genius ever to direct the affairs of the United Kingdom”.
Moore builds a Westminster drama that is compelling and emotionally raw despite the fact that many readers will know the key scenes already
Continue reading...October 4, 2019
Britain was complacent about the far right. Now it’s out in force
Oswald Mosley was banned from the BBC. His modern successors have no such problems finding a platform
Once upon a time, the BBC banned fascists from its broadcasts. In 1935, when Oswald Mosley’s British Union was near its peak of popularity, organising rallies and marches across the country, the corporation stopped allowing him to appear on its programmes. The ban, unofficially supported by successive Conservative, Labour and coalition governments, lasted 33 years. Its rationale was straightforward: Mosley’s views were too extreme, his supporters too threatening, and his admiration for foreign authoritarians too strong for him to be allowed a prominent place in the national discourse. A line was drawn between what was acceptable and unacceptable in rightwing politics, and Mosley was on the wrong side of it. By the time the prohibition was lifted, in 1968, he was a bitter old man.
Related: Centrist politics will not defeat Boris Johnson’s rightwing populism | Chantal Mouffe
Continue reading...September 20, 2019
Even bankers are starting to think Corbyn might be the safe choice now | Andy Beckett
Faced with the Tories’ no-deal extremism and a glaring crisis in capitalism, the financial establishment is losing its fear of a radical Labour government
Beneath all the noise of Brexit, an unexpected question is being quietly asked in British politics as an election nears. Is a Jeremy Corbyn government actually the safe option? If you’ve been persuaded by the years of warnings from most of the media and countless politicians that such a government would be extreme, chaotic, authoritarian and doomed to failure, you may find this question ridiculous. If you’re still a Corbynista, then the notion of him as a stabilising premier for today’s turbulent Britain may be equally absurd. For many believers, the whole point of Corbynism has been the possibility that it might lead to “the most radical government in British history”, as the leftwing theorist and activist Jeremy Gilbert yearningly put it in 2017.
Yet people in unexpected places are starting to consider a Corbyn government less risky than the alternatives. Earlier this month, Oliver Harvey, an analyst for Deutsche Bank in the City of London, told the Telegraph: “We see the magnitude of economic damage caused by a no-deal Brexit as much higher than [that caused by] policies proposed in the last Labour manifesto.” In the same article, Christian Schulz, an analyst for Citibank, noted approvingly that “Labour has become more decisively pro-EU”, while “a fiscally profligate no-deal Conservative government” had become less “enticing”.
Labour’s policies – so often dismissed as weird and naive – have in fact often carefully gone with the grain of public opinion
Related: Labour's tax on City deals would be a big vote winner | Larry Elliott
Continue reading...September 4, 2019
Johnson should beware – forcing a crisis rarely ends well for aspiring strongmen | Andy Beckett
There are revolutionaries on the political right who crave this kind of upheaval. But their opportunism can end in disaster
Genuine national crises, where everyday life is disrupted and the status quo buckles or crumbles, don’t come along often in a usually stable, sometimes boring country like Britain. Over the last half century, there have arguably been less than half a dozen: the three-day week in 1974, the winter of discontent of 1978-9, the riots and recession of 1981, the financial crisis of 2007-8, and the current, accelerating meltdown – constitutional, economic, and cultural – around Brexit.
Such episodes are a nightmare for many people, but others yearn for them. Once, these catastrophists were mostly found on the revolutionary left. Now they increasingly come from the right.
Related: Dominic Cummings role provokes alarm inside civil service
Continue reading...July 26, 2019
The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism – podcast
After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism. By Andy Beckett
Continue reading...Andy Beckett's Blog
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