The Joy of Six 1477

Martin Parr looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts to depose a prime minister: "Labour, significantly, has never toppled a prime minister. It’s not in the culture of so cooperativist a party: there’s no equivalent of the 1922 Committee. And whenever it might have happened, the challenger blinked: Herbert Morrison with Attlee; Roy Jenkins with Wilson; David Miliband with Brown; Wes Streeting may have just joined the roster of the rueful."

Sumaiya Motara on the brutal contest for low-paid work: "It’s like The Hunger Games, but you’re all trying to get a job in a shop where you’re going to be folding clothes all day, for just over minimum wage."

"The case took a dramatic turn in November when Erin’s teenage son ... ran away from his father’s home and hired his own solicitor. After a period in foster care and a series of urgent hearings, he was later reunited with his mother for their first Christmas together in six years." Hannah Summers reports on a hearing that highlights the issue of unregulated psychologists appearing in court as expert witnesses.

Some major news organisations are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. They are doing so largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using it as a back door for large-scale scraping. Mark Graham argues that these concerns, though understandable, are unfounded.

"Whilst Landlord continues to power its way across the country ... it has to be hoped that the company doesn't forget its roots and the locality that sustained it for much of its existence." Real Ale, Real Music visits Keighley, home of the brewer Timothy Taylor.

Robert Hugill praises the new Opera North production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes.

The Joy of Six 1247

"The party’s organizing basis since the first day Trump took office has been to treat him as a civic emergency. This is the basis for demanding donations, volunteering, and sacrifice. If they are not willing to endure the relatively modest discomfort of a contentious intraparty debate to minimize the chance of a second Trump term, they’ll have broken faith with their supporters." Jonathan Chait says the Democrats will be making a terrible mistake if they stick with Jo Biden.

Paul Bernal warns against heeding Tony Blair's call for the introduction of digital ID cards.

"Doing the right thing economically ... meant Labour opened the door to the Conservatives who enthusiastically exploited popular frustration with austerity - as articulated in the famous 1949 Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico. This allowed the party to appeal especially to middle-class voters who had supported Labour for the first time in 1945." Steven Fielding warns Labour against repeating the mistake made by Clement Attlee.

Humanists UK provides a history of non-religious prime ministers and other politicians.

"As she sings in Backwoods Barbie (2008), 'Don’t judge me by the cover cause I’m a real good book.' When fans dig into Parton’s songs, books, films, and autobiography, they uncover an egalitarian vision of social cooperation." William Irwin examines Dolly Parton's philosophy.

Katya Witney thinks England chose the right time to retire James Anderson: "In the last Ashes series in Australia, Anderson took eight wickets in the three Test matches he played. He hasn’t played more than three Tests in an Ashes since the 2017/18 series, a calf injury limiting his participation in 2019 and being less effective than Mark Wood and Chris Woakes keeping him out of the XI last summer."

The Joy of Six 1207

Gaby Hinsliff reviews Tom Baldwin's biography of Keir Starmer: "The kind of overly simplistic working-boy-made-good stories politicians are coached to tell about themselves on the campaign trail invariably hide complicated subplots, in this case about those who will always be vulnerable or left behind in the most upwardly mobile families. If Keir Starmer still seems frustratingly hard to pigeonhole, maybe that’s ultimately our problem, not his."

"In almost every recent by-election, Reform have underperformed compared to what the Brexit Party's vote share in 2019 and current national voting intention would predict," say Paula Surridge and Sophie Stowers.

"Benefit sanctions imposed by the Department for Work and Pensions have become harsher amid the cost of living crisis, according to newly released government data - with the average penalty lasting a week longer in 2023 than in 2019," reports Chaminda Jayanetti.

Anthony Broxton on how middle-class voters fell out of love with Clement Attlee's Labour Party after 1945.

Polly Pullar celebrates the revival of the pine marten: "From a once detested varmint that polarised people’s perceptions, to an ambassador for an ecologically richer Scotland, the pine marten offers a glimpse into what else might be possible with a change in our attitudes."

"For two long decades, Australian rugby has rotted from its head office to its heartland. The once-proud and powerful code is fractured in so many places, in so many ways, few believe it can be rebuilt." Angus Fontaine dissects the crisis in Australian rugby union.

Photo by Dani Kropivnik

Clement Attlee's granddaugher to fight Yeovil for the Liberal Democrats

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Mark Pack brings the intriguing news that:

Jo Roundell Greene, granddaughter of Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and deputy leader of South Somerset District Council, has been selected by the Liberal Democrats as the prospective candidate for Yeovil:

On a similar note, the Labour MP Lisa Nandy is the granddaughter of the Liberal MP and peer Frank Byers.

Margaret Thatcher was right about referendums

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Perhaps the late Lord Attlee was right when he said that the referendum was a device of dictators and demagogues.

That was Margaret Thatcher speaking in a 1975 Commons debate as Harold Wilson called a referendum on Europe to paper over Labour's divisions on Europe.

Earlier in the debate she had quoted a letter that Roy Jenkins had written to The Times in 1972, which shows why that observation was in her mind:

"It may be argued ... that the EEC referendum would be a once-for-all operation. The device would never be used again. Who can possibly say that? 

Once the principle of the referendum has been introduced into British politics, it will not rest with any one party to put a convenient limit to its use. And most history shows, as Clem Attlee pointed out with terse force in 1945, that it is a splendid weapon for demagogues and dictators."

The referendum on Scottish independence and on British membership of the European Union have shown that Attlee was right, Roy Jenkins was right and Margaret Thatcher was right.

One of the strengths of British Conservatism has always been that it had little time for Continental abstractions like "the Will of the People".

All that has been cast aside and you will now find Conservatives condemning parliamentary scrutiny of the executive and the independence of the judiciary - the very things they are meant to believe in - because they threaten the unopposed implementation of the Europe referendum's decision,

We know that Ukip doesn't like anything about Britain except its past. Now the Conservatives are going the same way.

No, I am not a new convert to Mrs Thatchers' view: I wrote a post entitled Scribbling on the constitution: A referendum on Europe was always a bad idea as long ago as June, when everyone expected Remain to win.

And back in 2011 I wrote an article for Liberal Democrat News saying the party should stop calling for referendums on Europe, in part because of their damaging effect on British politics:

For years the main parties have engaged in something close to a conspiracy. The issue of Europe has been taken out of general elections, with the promise that it will be decided through a referendum. Those referendums never take place. The result has been an infantilisation of debate on Europe, as politicians are allowed to take up self-indulgent, extreme positions they know they will never have to defend to the electorate. 

This process has been bad for us Liberal Democrats, encouraging the idea that all we need do to prosper is not offend anybody and deliver lots and lots of leaflets. And it has been bad for democracy as a whole. Why should voters feel enthusiastic about Westminster when their representatives avoid talking about one of the most important issues facing the country?

They should have listened to me and Maggie.

Scribbling on the constitution: A referendum on Europe was always a bad idea

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Margaret Thatcher, quoting Clement Attlee, once described referendums "a device of dictators and demagogues".

She was right.

A referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union was always a bad idea and it has had an unlovely effect on our politics - or at least revealed a side of it that is usually well buried.

For a discussion of that effect I recommend articles by Alex Massie and the great Neal Ascherson.

Reader's voice: Come off it! You are only saying this because you are afraid your side is going to lose.

Not so.

I have been saying the same thing for many years. Most substantially, as far as I can recall, in this article for the much-missed Liberal Democrat News in 2011:

For years the main parties have engaged in something close to a conspiracy. The issue of Europe has been taken out of general elections, with the promise that it will be decided through a referendum. Those referendums never take place. The result has been an infantilisation of debate on Europe, as politicians are allowed to take up self-indulgent, extreme positions they know they will never have to defend to the electorate. 

This process has been bad for us Liberal Democrats, encouraging the idea that all we need do to prosper is not offend anybody and deliver lots and lots of leaflets. And it has been bad for democracy as a whole. Why should voters feel enthusiastic about Westminster when their representatives avoid talking about one of the most important issues facing the country?

But don't take my word for it: read a guest post by Paul Evans on Slugger O'Toole, the best blog on Northern Ireland politics.

In 2010 he gave 14 reasons why the move to introduce referendums to British politics should be resisted, The European referendum campaign has proved he was right in every case.

Here are a couple of examples:

• They drive out the deliberative element in policymaking. The referendum question is an appeal to reflexes rather than an attempt to get a thoughtful response from the public. 

• They hand enormous powers to newspaper proprietors and people with the finances to take one side of the argument. It also hands the reins of government over to unelected and well-heeled pressure groups.

I am a believer in representative government - what George Watson called The English Ideology. It is the cornerstone of our constitution.

The Conservative Party used to be united by its belief in upholding that constitution. Today, most of its members, and many of its MPs, would rather scribble on it.

How Thatcherites and Blairites buggered up Britain between them

I have a soft spot for The Age of Insecurity, a 1998 book by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson.

In part this is because, having bought a copy and sat down to read it, I found that I was quoted in it.

Since you ask, that quote runs:

In a letter to the Guardian on 15 September 1997, Jonathan Calder wrote: "Labour is effectively recasting unemployment as a form of individual delinquency."

So I can claim to have identified early on a trend that has continued right up to Iain Duncan Smith and his Work Capability Assessments.

The other reason I like the books is that it central analysis still seems spot on.

Elliott and Atkinson argue that the supposed rise of freedom in the two decades before they wrote was only for freedom of a particular sort.

Money had certainly been set free by measures such as the abolition of exchange controls, but people actually enjoyed less freedom. That freedom had been eroded both by the Thatcherite war on unions and job security and by New Labour's enthusiasm for policing private life.

As they wrote:

The citizen now fears not only the P45 and the UB40, but the knock on the door from the child welfare inspector.

Again, that analysis seems prophetic today in a world where money travels the globe in microseconds and refugees die in the attempt to cross national borders.

I thought of The Age of Insecurity today when I read a post on the always excellent Stumbling and Mumbling blog: Workplace Coercion.

In it Chris Dillow ("Rutland's leading economic thinker"), who writes the blog, quotes the Guardian report of working conditions at Sports Direct:

All warehouse workers are kept onsite at the end of each shift in order to undergo a compulsory search by Sports Direct security staff, with the experience of the Guardian reporters suggesting this typically adds another hour and 15 minutes to the working week – which is unpaid.

He then asks why right-wing lovers of freedom are never heard criticising such arrangements.

Is it that they believe the labour markets function as the economic textbooks say they should? Is it that they fear any intervention in those markets will make things worse?

Or is it - and my money's on this one - that they care only about freedom for bosses, and not freedom for all.

The way that New Labour has contribute to the insecurity of the average Briton was also discussed in a Guardian article today by Tom Clark.

Clark argues that successful prime ministers - and he gives Attlee and Thatcher as examples - first argue against the conventional wisdom, then establish a new consensus and finally frame laws and institutions that cement it for years after they have stood down.

He goes on:

Now think of the apologetic nervousness with which New Labour did great things. Within a few years of passing the Human Rights Act, Jack Straw found it expedient to begin rubbishing it – so today Conservatives can now sound respectable in proposing to rip it up. 

Gordon Brown goaded the Tories into voting for the abolition of child poverty, but because nobody outside of Westminster was engaged in that argument, the Tories can today move the goalposts by redefining a poverty measure just before the poverty rate surges. 

New Labour’s tax credits dressed redistribution up as a tax cut. At the same time, the party indulged suspicions about welfare cheats with endless headlines about dedicated hotlines to dob in neighbours for swinging the lead, or lie detectors in jobcentres.

He concludes:

as Labour in parliament looks on in bewilderment at a voluntary party that appears to have lost all appetite for office, it should give some thought to the doctrine of power at any price, and the transient nature of its legacy.

That is unfair to Labour activists, most of who very much want power even if they have opted for a wrongheaded strategy of winning it.

But Clark is right that New Labour ducked arguments and tried to do good while sounding as though it was being nasty to people.

I think New Labour saw this as a way of keeping the middle classes happy, but its effect has been to bolster just those strands in working-class and lower middle-class thinking that make people unwilling to vote Labour.

But then me and Larry and Dan could have told you that almost 20 years ago.

Denis Healey (1917-2015)

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W.G. Grace died at Mottingham in Kent in 1915. Two years later Denis Healey was born there.

Healey was one of the giants of politics in the early 1970s when I started to take an interest in it.

The best tribute and analysis of his career I have seen today is that by Michael White in the Guardian:

By 1945, Healey had already packed in a lifetime of experiences denied to future generations. A beach master in charge of logistics (US actor Lee Marvin was another) at the bloody Anglo-American Anzio landings in Italy (1944), Maj Healey would turn down a lieutenant colonelcy as well as an Oxford fellowship to study the philosophy of art in favour of politics. 

After making a ferocious class warrior’s speech at Labour’s pre-election conference in 1945 (“Your speech may have cost us victory,” he was warned) he narrowly failed to win Tory Pudsey in Clem Attlee’s landslide. 

Losing a marginal seat was probably a lucky escape. He became instead international secretary of the Labour party, nominated by party grandees Hugh Dalton, Harold Laski and Nye Bevan. 

It was a hugely important post when British Labour’s prestige was at its peak in the ruins of post-war Europe, and Healey quickly became a key adviser to the new foreign secretary, the powerful but unlettered Ernie Bevin, writing a stream of pamphlets articulating Bevin’s position against the neutralist and pro-Soviet Left.

1945 and all that

Ken Loach's new film The Spirit of '45, said the Guardian on Saturday, "revisits the year that Britons turned to socialism".

Today I came across two blog posts that questioned this interpretation of the 1945 general election.

Steve Fielding on Ballots & Bullets argues:

The vast majority certainly supported the implementation of the 1942 Beveridge report and its promise of cradle-to-the-grave social security. Yet those that liked his suggestion of a National Health Service did so largely because they hoped to personally benefit, far fewer looked on it as an act of redistribution. In any case, the Liberal William Beveridge's scheme was a continuation of progressive Edwardian reforms and it entailed welfare payments only just above subsistence. His was not a socialist measure, but one designed to make capitalism work more effectively.

And he goes on to say:

The society most people wanted from the 1945 election was a 1930s with jobs, that is, not socialism but reformed capitalism. This would be a private world. As a Labour candidate told his party’s conference in 1945, “two years ago, when I was in Africa, we fell to talking one day about what we hoped to see in the post-war world, and the fellow who put the point best was the one who said that he wanted to settle down with his wife in a cottage, with the kiddies, and to enjoy chocolates and looking after the chickens”.

While David Boyle, who was on Start the Week with Loach this morning, arrives at a characteristically penetrating critique:

The idea that somehow the Labour creation was betrayed or destroyed by Mrs Thatcher, and we must look back to 1945 and do it all over again, is really nonsense. The truth is that these huge institutions carried the seeds of their own destruction. They carried the Thatcherite revolution within them, because they did not work - they disempowered, undermined communities, poured scorn on self-help, worshipped professionals, and never asked for anything back - which meant they failed to build community around them.

As he says, whatever public services now need, it does not involve going back to 1945.

No to a referendum: Parliament should decide on Lords reform

Mark Thompson says Liberal Democrats should not fear a Lords reform referendum. Richard Morris goes further and makes the case for holding one.

Well, I don't fear a referendum, but I don't want to see one held.

As I argued in Liberal Democrat News last year, the way that our relations with the European Union - which should have been one of the great issues in British politics for the last 20 years - have been taken our of electoral politics has been harmful to the standing of Parliament:

Why should voters feel enthusiastic about Westminster when their representatives avoid talking about one of the most important issues facing the country?

So it seems wrong to me, when faced with an important issue like Lords reform, to hurry to remove it from the jurisdiction of Parliament.

Britain is a representative democracy and that is a system that allowed democracy to survive here throughout the 20th century - quite an achievement when you look back at the history of that period. We should be wary of undermining it in this way.

If MPs duck out of taking important decision then the dreary charges that they are only in it for themselves or are all the same will only gain volume. Worse than that, supporters of parliamentary democracy will begin to suspect there is something in them.

The principle that there must be a referendum whenever constitutional change is proposed is a modern invention and it has not been applied consistently. Not every city that has opted for an elected mayor has had a referendum first.

You could, I suppose, argue that a referendum campaign would interest the public in Lords reform, but that did not happened with AV. If anything, the campaign spread ignorance and confusion while, as Willie Whitelaw would say, stirring up apathy.

Margaret Thatcher was fond of quoting the words of Clement Attlee: "plebiscites are the device of dictators and demagogues". He was right and we should be wary of undermining parliamentary democracy by rushing to hold another.