Andy Beckett's Blog, page 9

Britain is the most socially liberal it's ever been. Could somebody let our politicians know? | Andy Beckett

There is a seemingly limitless supply of reactionary politics on offer today. But it looks increasingly out of step with reality

If you’re a social conservative in Britain, these are the best of times and the worst of times. They are the worst because, as the rightwing press warns daily, liberal and other subversive values are spreading: in universities, cultural bodies, local councils, corporate boardrooms and big cities. Even private schools, previously assumed to be a reliable conservative production line, are showing signs of malfunction. “The hard-left’s woke private school revolution is here to stay,” despaired the Telegraph last year. “Private schools have started eagerly introducing their pupils to all the hottest new progressive ideas.”

Yet while social conservatism appears to be under threat in many institutions, in politics it seems more influential than ever. On complex issues such as crime, immigration, patriotism and the value of work, family and the monarchy, Labour and the Tories compete to offer the most traditionalist stances and policies, presented in a ritualised language calculated to appeal to socially conservative voters: “crackdowns”, “security”, “stability”, “respect”.

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It’s tempting for Starmer to fall back on the Blair playbook – what are the risks? | Andy Beckett

The former Labour leader’s appeal was his personality, but with the country on the rocks voters may overlook Starmer’s lack of charisma

Tony Blair’s triumphant time as opposition leader was more than 25 years and several political eras ago. But it still casts a huge shadow over our politics. Tories fear a repeat of the 1997 election. Pollsters try to work out whether such a rare and pivotal event could soon happen again. Centre-left voters of a certain age remember the mid-90s as a time of steadily growing hope and then pure elation, before Labour politics gradually went back to its usual divisions and disappointments.

But perhaps the people most fixated by Blair are Keir Starmer and his inner circle. In his use of former Blair speechwriters such as Philip Collins and Peter Hyman; of old Blair lines such as “Labour is on your side”; former New Labour ministers as advisers, including Blair himself; New Labour-style focus groups and charm offensives towards business; revived Blairite policies such as the asbo; and former New Labour strategists, spin doctors, party bureaucrats, fundraisers and donors. In all these ways, Starmer’s leadership often feels like a tribute to a form of politics many voters under 40 won’t even remember.

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Behind the smile, smart suits and ‘reasonable’ solutions lies Rishi Sunak the authoritarian | Andy Beckett

‘Technocrat’ is too bland a label. His administration is proving just as extreme as those of Truss and Johnson

In some ways, this has been a good year so far for Rishi Sunak. His young government has produced a succession of solutions to problems that have dogged the Tories for years, from the Channel boats to the Irish border. These solutions may well not work; but until that is clearly the case, the impression of a problem-solving prime minister has been created, in studied contrast to the chaos left by his two predecessors.

After this week’s privileges committee hearing and their Commons defeat over the Irish border, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss seem even more discredited. Meanwhile, much of the media – always ready to give the Tories another chance – is beginning to present Sunak as someone who might save his party, and even the country, from total disaster.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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A lesson for Sunak: when the Tories take on striking workers, they don’t always win | Andy Beckett

The prime minister is pitting the public against trade unionists — forgetting that, in millions of cases, they are the same people

In Britain, the feelings that strikes arouse in Tory politicians can be more complicated than you might think. At first, there is often outrage that the usual supremacy of bosses over workers has been suspended. Preserving such hierarchies is one of Conservatism’s main aims.

But then there is sometimes a sense of opportunity: a belief that the strikers and their supporters may fall into a familiar trap, set by decades of anti-union legislation and press propaganda. Ever since Margaret Thatcher defeated the miners and other unions in the 1980s, Conservatives have believed that strikes can be used to make Tory governments look tough, and to discredit Labour and the wider left. The succession of aggressive, deliberately provocative anti-strike measures announced over the last six months by the governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak all reflect an assumption that taking on the unions is one of the few remaining strategies that might get the Conservatives re-elected.

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Starmer may lack Blair’s charisma, but he may well change Britain more than New Labour ever did | Andy Beckett

Without the optimism that carried Labour to power in the mid-90s, the party now has no choice but to go big on reform

Britain seems in a strange mood as 2023 blearily begins. One of the worst periods of peacetime crisis in our modern history grinds on. Frighteningly, it is spreading into more and more areas of life that we’re used to thinking the state and business have largely under control. One of the world’s richest countries, even after the economic calamities of Tory rule, has in many ways become dysfunctional.

Yet the response from voters seems complex and relatively muted. There is fear – please don’t let me need a hospital – and frustration at how the stoppages and shortages are dragging on. There is disbelief at the country’s accelerating deterioration; but also fatalism, a feeling that Britain was due a fall after years of cost-cutting, complacency and overindulgence. There is exhaustion at the sheer length of the disruption; and scepticism about the ability of any politician to end it. But there is less overt anger than might reasonably be expected. Unlike the early 1980s, or the early 2010s – like now, both times when Tory policies were doing immense social damage – Britain is not rioting. At least, not yet.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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These strikes are telling us something: the era of low wages may be over | Andy Beckett

Higher salaries would boost Britain’s economy and bring us in line with many other rich countries

For almost half a century, in other words within the limits of political memory, Britain has been a country where the priority of most governments has been to keep a few key economic numbers low. Income tax, interest rates, inflation and most people’s wages: all were deliberately suppressed by Downing Street and its collaborators in business and the Bank of England. By doing so a space was created – in theory at least – for certain interest groups to flourish: employers, entrepreneurs, shareholders, top earners, homeowners and consumers. Together, they were supposed to boost our previously sluggish rate of economic growth.

It hasn’t quite worked out like that. Britain is on the brink of recession yet again. Interest rates, taxes and inflation are all high. Only average wages are still low. And even that dubious achievement of British government and capitalism since the 1980s now feels fragile, with strikes solidifying and spreading across both private and state sectors, determinedly driven by workers who have finally had enough of years of falling pay. As Mick Lynch of the RMT union put it with characteristic pithiness on the Today programme last week: “The price of labour isn’t at the right price in this country.”

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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The fading Tories are stealing ideas from Labour – a transition has already begun | Andy Beckett

Blurred lines between one government and the next happen quite often, but that doesn’t mean Starmer’s fight is over

The British political system likes to present itself as one where power shifts decisively from one party to another. The removal van arrives in Downing Street, and a very different government replaces the defeated one. These quick, dramatic switches are meant to be one of the good points of our system: the electorate’s wishes clearly enacted, in compensation for being kept at a distance from centralised Westminster the rest of the time.

It’s in the interests of the two big parties sustained by this system to say they offer a stark choice. And sometimes that’s true: Jeremy Corbyn’s loose socialism against Theresa May’s stern Conservatism; Keir Starmer’s self-conscious competence against Boris Johnson’s showy chaos. Since 2015 the gap between Labour and the Tories – in style, ideology and policies – has often been larger than ever.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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If you’re outraged by XR and Just Stop Oil, imagine how disruptive climate breakdown will be | Andy Beckett

Focusing on activists detracts from what we should be angry about – failure to tackle the most urgent problems of our age

Disruptive political activism, from strikes to boycotts to road occupations, always makes enemies. That’s part of the point: confrontations and controversies mean publicity. More ambitiously, stunts and provocations by activists are also meant to remind the public that the status quo itself is built on disruptions. Even supposedly cautious governments are constantly altering the distribution of power and wealth, and the environment itself.

Four years since the founding of Extinction Rebellion, known by its highly committed members as XR, climate activists in Britain and many other countries are still launching waves of protests: blocking roads, throwing food over famous artworks, gluing themselves to surfaces in public places and spray-painting banks that invest in fossil fuels. New groups have appeared with XR-style tactics and goals: Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, Animal Rebellion, Youth Climate Swarm. A steady stream of activists from teenagers to pensioners are prepared to face arrest and imprisonment in order to press governments, businesses and voters to change their behaviour.

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Britain has reversed its decline before, but things may get worse before they get better | Andy Beckett

The decay has set in across social classes, and more deeply than when the country last turned itself around in the 90s

Decline is a spectre that has haunted this country for at least a hundred years. Through the retreat from empire, postwar recessions and growth panics, and our inward turn since Brexit, the worry that Britain is falling behind other countries – or deteriorating in absolute terms – has repeatedly gripped journalists, politicians and the public.

We are in one of those periods now. Seven out of 10 people in a recent Ipsos Mori poll agreed that the country was in decline. Commentators in other countries look on with a mixture of pity and schadenfreude.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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From the archive: ‘A zombie party’: the deepening crisis of conservatism – podcast

We are raiding the Audio Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2019: The traditional right is clinging on to power – but its ideas are dead in the water

Archive: The Guardian, Reagan Foundation, Conservative Party, AP, Wall Street Journal, ABC.

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