Anyone know how to make moonshine? Thoughts on the economics of minimum booze prices.

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Today the Prime Minister came out in support of a proposal to introduce a 50p per unit minimum price for alcohol within Greater Manchester. Now, leaving aside the absence of any border control in this conurbation and the obvious fact that driving from Bolton to a supermarket in Bacup isn’t exactly a great trip, we should maybe consider the economic impact of minimum pricing.

The core argument – and we have to start somewhere – is that a relatively low minimum price will only impact off-sales since pub and restaurant sales are typically over £1 per unit. Here’s one study’s conclusions:

Only alcohol sold for home consumption would see an increase in prices, and reduction in sales would generally spare pubs and restaurants. While consuming more units of alcohol than other groups, higher income and high managerial groups would be less affected by this pricing policy.

However, this isn’t the view held everywhere. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (in a study funded by a brewer) criticised the theoretical basis for the argument and the evidence. Most importantly, while the evidence shows (not surprisingly) a relationship between price and consumption this is weakest for the heaviest drinkers.

However, when overall alcohol consumption levels and prices are taken into account, heavier drinkers are less responsive to price changes than moderate drinkers. The University of Sheffield study estimates that hazardous and harmful drinkers have a
price elasticity of -0.21 across all alcohol products – this implies that a 10 per cent increase in price would only lead to a 2.1 per cent reduction in consumption amongst heavier drinkers.

However, we still see a “positive” impact from minimum pricing albeit a small one. However, this is a pretty blunt implement that, in effect, targets the poor (note the findings from the first study cited). More importantly, minimum pricing has an impact on supply – there is an incentive for the producers of alcohol sold currently at below 50p per unit to increase their supply so as to take advantage of the excess profits implied by the minimum price. With higher profits the producers (and their retail agents) can afford to invest more in promotion.

The most likely outcome of this surplus reducing investment is promotion targeted at drinkers currently buying alcohol at higher prices – either in pubs or for home consumption. The impact of this would be negative for the pub trade and counter to the expectations of those promoting minimum pricing. And we have not yet considered moonshine!

All-in-all it seems unlikely that minimum pricing will address the core issue of the ‘problem drinker’. And we have to set this against falling consumption and fewer alcohol-related emergency admissions. Whatever we’re doing at present, its working and, rather than penalising people for only being able to afford cheap booze, maybe we should focus our efforts on the relatively small number of problem drinkers.

Anyone know how to make moonshine?

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An (almost coherent) look at urban planning, conservatism and libertarianism

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A few days ago I wrote a piece about urban planning arguing that we are overplanned – we have lost the momentum of urban evolution replacing it instead with the utopian dreams of whichever planner or architect currently rules the roost. Despite the driving, dog-eat-dog libertarianism of Ayn Rand, I can think of no better example of the sort than Howard Roark – arrogant, unpleasant, all-knowing and dismissive of “lesser men”.

Despite this, I remain unconvinced by planning – or rather by the ideology of planning. And, as someone at heart a libertarian, I faced a degree of confusion about what may or may not be the proper role of planning. It pleased me therefore to find a real debate about planning from a conservative perspective – something other than the pale nimby-ism that typifies the debate in England. And moreover heads to the heart of what we might mean by conservatism – is it a tea party, a revivalist meeting or a return to the managed decline of “butskellism”?

Here is Andrew Sullivan:

"…ideology has infiltrated everything, it has saturated public and private, it has invaded even something sacred like religious faith, in which the mysteries of existence have been distilled in writing or even understanding the churches into a battle between “liberals” and “conservatives.”

People accuse me of pedantry or semantics in insisting that all of this – on the right and the left – is in fact a sign of the death of conservatism as a temperament or a politics, rather than its revival. But I have been arguing this for more than a decade. Conservatism, if it means anything, is a resistance to ideology and the world of ideas ideology represents, whether that ideology is a function of the left or the right."

Planning is important because it lies right at the centre of what distinguishes the ideological left and right. For sure there are confusions in this but it remains the case that the left view the use of state-directed, planned interventions as both essential and morally right. Sullivan looks back to a time when conservatism was not about ideology – there was no structure or form to what we believed. And we liked it that way. There was no great Gladstonian vision to what Tories believed, no better world that would come about from the righteous actions of government.

This is partly the Conservatism of Dizzy – raising the condition of the working man – and partly the scepticism of the Cecils. But at its core is the ideas of Burke and the small battalions – the idea that it is not great men who deliver change or make a better world but ordinary folk, in small places doing things together because they want to.

Above all what distinguishes the conservative from the libertarian is a sense of place. An idea of community. And the belief that things are worth keeping because they are there and we like them. Conservatives do not wander into the urban planning room with the “something must be done” slogan on their t-shirts. This idea – what can be called “Burkean” conservatism is what the ideologists of left and right are killing. And for some the consequences of planning are culpable in the murder of conservatism.

"…but one important and oft-overlooked one is this modern American landscape of sprawl and steel, of suburbs and hour-long commutes, of strip-malls and vast concrete scissures. The distance created by sprawl is both a material and spiritual one. Something is lost when we tear apart the natural, organic community and replace it with long lines of indistinct houses, well-groomed lawns, and endless stretches of highway. The very wrong sort of ‘individualism’ which so infests the modern American left and right is spawned from such distances."

Crucially, we believe that planners cannot know what constitutes a community and therefore cannot design that perfect community. For most of our places what’s needed isn’t grand design but a little tweaking. The equivalent of a coat of paint and some new wallpaper rather than a wholesale redecoration. What Andrew Sullivan was saying – and what I hope informs a little of what our choice will be in May – is that while planning has failed us (and will continue to fail us), what we must rediscover is how to let small places make their own choices unencumbered by central planning. And if those choices are mistaken, those communities know it was their choice that was wrong not the imposed solution of some politician planner or developer.

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Police crime figures not a "reliable measure": Official

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Sir Michael Scholar, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, has confirmed that the official crime statistics are useless.

"But a more balanced commentary on national trends in violent crime would, in the view of the authority, also make reference to the estimates given in the British Crime Survey, which in our view provide a more reliable measure of the national trend over time."

Lets get this clear. Records of actual crimes recorded by the police are less reliable than the ESTIMATES in an opinion poll based on the memory of those surveyed.

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The worst crime of all - being a rich Tory...

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The media is full of frothing indignation about Michael Ashcroft's tax status - lots of the self-righteous and politically opportunitistic folk littering that media world are sounding off about the terrible nature of his crimes.

Which are precisely what? As far as I can tell, Ashcroft's crimes are twofold and only apply when combined:

1. Being Rich

2. Being a Tory

Now I know that is enough for some people (funnily being a filthy rich socialist - Benn, Foot, Harman, Toynbee - makes you loved and regarded, something I've never understood)but I see it as an affront. Ashcroft has given large sums to a political party that until the past two of three years has seemed rather a long way from getting power. Unlike Ecclestone, Mittal and Drayson who made very large donations to Labour, Ashcroft's donations have done him no good at all. Indeed, the endless media curiosity, the investigations, the accusations are all things most of us would want to avoid. And have probably damaged Ashcroft's business interests.

Finally, I see no reason why a British citizen - whatever their tax status - shouldn't be allowed to give freely to support whatever causes they wish. I reckon, Ashcroft probsbly pays more into the UK Government's coffers each year than most of us pay in a lifetime. And if he doesn't pay taxes here on money he earns in some foreign place, so what.

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++BREAKING NEWS: Goblins, fairies and pixies deny hacking MPs twitter account ++

In a dramatic twist to the story of David Wright’s mysterious hacker, the little people have denied being responsible for altering the MP’s tweet by adding the term “scum sucking.” The goblins have also denied stealing his lap top, interfering with his phone or any other actions designed to blacken the MP’s good name.

“I understand that various commenters including leading bloggers have suggested that only fairies, goblins or pixies could have made the alteration to David Wright’s twitter account,” said a spokesgoblin for King Oberon of the Fairies; “this may be true but we can assure you all that none of the king’s subjects were involved in amending the tweet or tweets of Mr David Wright MP.”

“For The Gentry to have interfered in human affairs in this way;” continued the spokesgoblin; “would have been a serious breach of the Treaty signed between Queen Mab and Queen Bess. Whatever you may say about elfkind, we keep to our interplaner agreements.”

With the obvious answer of supernatural intervention ruled out, this raises again the possibility that Mr Wright did in fact post a tweet including the term “scum-sucking”.

Fairy expert, Dr Elisa F. Godmother told The View from Cullingworth:

“This is a very serious accusation. Humans are wont to blame fairies for inexplicable events – “who did it then, the pixies” is an oft heard cry, mostly from parents faced with small children and broken crockery. But when these false allegations against fairykind affect Government, we can expect it to be raised by King Oberon’s representatives at the highest levels.”

“To me this seems a classic example of blaming the fairies for something for which the culprit is all too obvious. And anyway, fairies don’t use twitter.”

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Use your own money....

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Amid all the froth and anger about the "Death Tax", we are still staring like rabbits at the real scam in all this. The Sunday Telegraph "special report" on care of the elderly opens with this:

"Grace Young had lived for more than 50 years in the terraced house her husband Edward had worked hard to provide. Her only son, John, was brought up in the three-bedroomed home in Carshalton, south London; the couple intended the house to become his inheritance.

Last year, that dream was shattered. When Mrs Young, now widowed, and 87, became increasingly confused as the result of a rare syndrome, her son realised that she would need to move into a care home.

Under the current rules of "means-testing" that meant one thing: selling their much-loved family home to pay the fees. "

Allow me to translate. This couple are expecting the taxpayer - you and me - to pick up the tab for their Mum's care so they can inherit her house. They're not living in that house - they have their own "much-loved family" home somewhere else.

In just how many ways is that wrong?

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On Markets...(or why lawyers should stick to the law)

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The problem with lawyers is that they don’t understand economics. OK that’s not the only problem with lawyers and it is a problem they share with most politicians and nearly all of the political punditry. And the matter of markets is the most obvious example where this ignorant misunderstanding crops up. Our lawyers seem to think economics is somehow a matter either of policy or of choice. It is neither.

Here’s one lawyer, our dear friend and sceptic, Jack of Kent:

“The ongoing economic crisis is a good moment to test this faith in the Market deity.”

Now describing the market as a God (an approach we might expect from a sceptical atheist, I fear) is something of a convenient metaphor. The suggestion is that we operate with a faith in Adam Smith’s laissez faire dictum of “the invisible hand”. Indeed our economically semi-literate lawyer bases his whole argument on a rejection of faith – in this case a faith in the ‘benevolence’ of markets.

OK, I hear you all cry, that’s fine but isn’t this faith in markets what caused the problem? On one level this might be an argument but it is better put this way:

The credit crisis and consequent recession were a result of our faith in Government’s ability to manage markets not faith in markets.

Indeed, if dear Jack no longer believes in “markets” he enters the same strange world as those who believe the earth is flat or that God created the world in 4004BC.

Markets are a matter of observable fact. Our understanding of markets relates to the ways in which exchange takes place. What Adam Smith observed and subsequent economic theory has supported is that the more free the market operates the better is it at allocating scarce resources. This position is not without challenge – indeed economists, as befits good scientists, continue to explore the ideas that underlie the discipline’s core assumptions.

The point about the current problem isn’t that markets have “failed” but that our management of markets has failed. The credit crunch illustrates the failures of interventions in the market and the culpable markets in this case (finance and property) are perhaps the two most extensively managed markets in our mixed economies. By way of example:

Interest rates are controlled by central banks not the market
Levels of risk taken by banks are subject of regulatory audit
Banks are licensed, inspected and registered
Deposits (up to a given level) are guaranteed
Property rights are only exercisable with regulatory permission
Ownership and disposal of property is subject to registration
Government reserves the right to acquire at a price its agents determine

I’m sure there is much else besides these but these examples illustrate the point. The market – to use Jack’s inappropriate metaphor – being worshipped wasn’t a free one but a managed one. OK, the bankers wanted you to believe it was a free market just as government agents want you to believe that planning law is not the de facto nationalisation of property rights. But these are managed markets.

Don’t take this as a defence of banks. With the consent of their regulators, bankers screwed us over big time. But it was not the free operation of markets that did the damage. It was allowing banks and related financial businesses to capture the regulation of their markets. And in doing so to fix them to the benefit of both the bankers and of the Governments they “advised”.

The lesson of the credit crunch and the banking crisis is that you don’t put the fox in charge of the chicken coop. Sadly, I fear a new sleeker fox is signing up to run the new chicken run.

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Welcome to the Slowburn Revolution

I am convinced of the need for Britain’s (in fact Europe’s) polity to change radically. Not for some kind of Blairite “constitutional reform” – tinkering with the voting system, setting up processes and systems of control, burbling on about transparency or accountability. This is a nonsense – it does not change a thing and merely acts to reinforce the current oligarchic arrangements. And radical change is not, surely, about replacing one set of oligarchs with a different set- however much I may prefer the cut of the new lot’s gib.

It’s OK you can sit down, folks, I’m not about to decamp, to head off into the strange world of minority politics. That’s not going to work – it’s not going to provide the revolution. However much people in such little revolutionary groups may wish for it, the world around them is not suddenly going to get up from its armchair, turn off the telly, pick up its pitchfork and overthrow the evil government. However much you shout and swear, it’s not going to happen that way.

So – given I’m not heading off into the wilderness, embittered and muttering about badness or cursing about the evils of politicians – what’s the deal? How does the revolution happen? And will it be televised (presumably with Iain Dale and Paul Staines giving the blogger perspective as it unfolds before us)?

This is a slowburn revolution not a forest fire. By this I mean that the conditions needed for radical change will come about because people become gradually less tolerant of the behaviour their lords and masters (or indeed ladies and mistresses) display. Today’s expenses reports are another hairline crack in the edifice – members of our ruling oligarchy appearing before the courts with the prospect of a time inside.

Other cracks in that edifice are creeping in – the public has long doubted the climate change story - rather seeing it as a means for Government to nanny them, lecture them and tax them. I happen to think that man does contribute to climate change but not many of the ordinary people I represent share that view. The wealth-creating section of the population (for my Liberal Democrat and Labour friends I would say that this does exist despite your best efforts – it’s just you never meet any of them) is royally fed up with being taxed, nannyed and annoyed by better paid, better pensioned, more job secure and more sanctimonious public sector workers. A word of advice to those public sector workers – you’re not liked you know.

The biggest crack is the good idiots (who the oligarchy like to call – completely mistakenly – “apathetic”). There will not be any increase in turnout at the coming general election – unless labour decides its only chance is to stuff the ballot boxes. People are fed up – people of a left wing persuasion just as much as people on the right. People who care about politics will sit at home, stick two-fingers up at the leaders’ debate and say; “not voting for any of you, you’re all a shower” (or something choicer for some folk I suspect).

Those non-voters – of all shapes, sizes and persuasions – will grow in number. Those good idiots will start (as they already are with the endless lectures on smoking, drinking and eating) to ignore what the oligarchy says. They will carry on driving, flying, eating stuff flown in from New Zealand or Chile in refrigerated air freight containers, using the wrong sort of light bulbs, smacking their children, telling slightly dodgy jokes to mates down the pub (assuming the health fascists haven’t closed it down), giving their kids a bottle or two or lager or a glass of wine and generally living the ordinary decent lives they want to lead. And they’ll start to insist that their politicians share those views, that they stop hectoring, that they take their hands from out of the till and that they start to give attention to the things that matter – including allowing people to get on with their unhealthy, early-death-inducing lifestyles unmolested by a bunch of overpaid busybodies.

That’s the slowburn revolution – and I’m blowing on the fuse. Care to join me?

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Some thoughts on the Co-operative Party and their misplaced ideas

Given that Labour are saying “co-operative party principles” will be included in the Labour Manifesto for the coming election I thought it might be worthwhile looking at those principles and at their practical implications. And I do so from the perspective of someone who favours mutual organisations, community ownership and new models of service delivery – something I share, it seems, with David Cameron.

The Co-operative Party has helpfully published their guide – “A Co-operative Party Agenda for a Fourth Term” (so no question as to who they’ll be backing despite the enthusiasm from all three main parties for mutualism). I thought I’d pull out some of their suggestions and give a considered view set against our mixed experience of co-ops.

Promoting co-operative and mutual enterprise. The underlying argument here – although it isn’t quite put that way –is that co-op and mutual models of business are superior to “capitalist” models of business. These models are dubbed “social” – presumably implying that the joint stock company is anti-social. There is no attempt made beyond glib statements about service and lies about profits (co-ops and mutuals are profit-making organisations) to explain the basis for this distinction. In my view Government should not involve itself in how private citizens and private organisations choose to organise themselves yet it is clear that the Co-op Party wished to force unspecified co-operative “values” on private firms and to “reconnect them with stakeholders and society”. Nowhere in all this is there a word about the consumer, the customer – the most important stakeholder in any business.

Employee-ownership. John Lewis has a lot to answer for! This for-profit, quite pricey general store and supermarket chain is held up as a paragon of socialist virtue. We’re told that this shows just how effective employee-ownership can be. Truth be told though – for the amount of real control employees have over the management of John Lewis – the “employee-ownership” model is just a glorified bonus scheme. Don’t get me wrong – if firms wish to organise this way they can – and it clearly works for some organisations. But there is no evidence of more social or economic benefit compared, let’s say, to being owned by faceless Swiss gnomes or big-hatted Texan billionaires.

Remutualisation. Ah, here’s the cheap shot! Those wicked Tories allowed all those nice cuddly building societies to get turned into banks – and look what happened! We must turn Northern Rock back into a mutual organisation pour encourager les autres! Excuse me but do you remember what those mutual organisations were like? Do you recall how unaccountable, producer-led, unresponsive and lazy they were? Mutual organisation works pretty well at the level of the working mans club (or Conservative Club for that matter, most of which are mutuals) but scale it up to a multi-billion financial organisation and you can forget real accountability. These organisations become run purely for the interests of the management not the member or the customer. And certainly not for any wider “stakeholders”. A quick look at the US savings and loan scandals shows just how vulnerable mutuals are to managerial abuse.

Land reform. Now we get the real lefty stuff. Introducing a land value tax to replace council tax and business rates. Apparently the reason for the strange behaviour of the UK’s property market is because the existing property taxes create a system that favours the developer over the user. Leaving aside the scale of destruction in our property sector during this recession, this argument not only shows profound ignorance of how land is valued but ignores the primary reasons for our distorted property market. And those reasons? Our planning system and our preference for freehold models of residential ownership. If the Co-op Party wanted a really radical approach that would allow for more affordable housing in places where people want to live, then they would be proposing the privatisation of property rights through the repeal of the Town & Country Planning Acts and associated guidance and secondary legislation.

Trade Justice. As we might expect from the UK’s biggest recipient of Common Agricultural Policy cash, the Co-op is firmly in the protectionist camp. OK, they call it trade justice but what they mean is that we carry on the protectionist agriculture policies that puff up the Co-op's profits while assuaging our guilt at the damage this does to poor African farmers by promoting so-call “fair trade”.

There is some good stuff in the Co-op ‘manifesto’ too – mutualising the health service would take us back closer to the private (mostly charitable) delivery that existed prior to Labour nationalisation of health and there are some interesting ideas about increasing participation. However, the Co-op's connection to the Labour Party holds it back – they seem obliged to continue to nod in the direction of groupthink and to promote the failed initiatives of socialism.

It seems to me that trying to make party political capital out of the idea of mutuality and co-operation is misplaced. And it also seems to me that, for all the talk of engagement and participation, the one thing not proposed here is the real transferring of power from centralised, monolithic and failing government to ordinary people. Now that would be radical!

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Election 2010: Seats to Watch #3: Will the Lib Dems break through in those Northern Cities?

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I’ve looked at two sets of Conservative target seats – in the coalfields and in what I called “inner-outer” London. This set of seats is of Liberal Democrat targets in the North of England – where Labour is defending.

For a long while the Liberal Democrats have had a strong powerbase in Northern cities – at present they control Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull and Newcastle. However, this strength has never translated into success at General Elections. The old Liberal Party got David Alton elected in Liverpool and the party have won Manchester Withington, Sheffield Hallam and Leeds North West. A key test for the Liberal Democrats at the forthcoming election is whether they can translate their local success into the election of MPs.

Liverpool Wavertree will be a seat with a lot of attention – at least judging by the 500+ comments on the UK Polling Report thread on the seat! Labour’s Jane Kennedy held the seat in 2005 but is retiring. Labour’s candidate is from London and with boundary changes the nominal majority is just 3,038 requiring a swing of under 4.5% for the Lib Dems to make the gain. With 54% of the vote in the 2008 local elections they really ought to! Expect a campaign laden with scouse vitriol from all sides (plus a little borderline racism wrapped up as anti-Zionism directed at Labour’s Luciana Berger).

Oldham East & Saddleworth is held for Labour by Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister – boundary changes favour labour and the nominal majority is 4,087 requiring a swing of 5%. The seat stretches from Oldham’s multiethnic inner suburbs out onto the attractive South Pennine moorlands – factors that meant the old Littleborough & Saddleworth seat was a Tory seat in the 1980s. Will be a close run thing with Lib Dem success depending on how much they can squeeze the substantial Tory vote – local elections suggest win with the Lib Dems on 52% and labour in 3rd with just 20%.

The City of Durham must be right at the top of Liberal Democrat expectations. Although held by labour since the 1930s (like most of the North’s mining seats) the majority is just 3,274 requiring a swing of just 3.7% for a Lib Dem gain). Local elections show the Lib Dems building powerful position with 41% of the vote and 15 of the 22 councillors but there’s no Tory vote to squeeze and Labour has a reliable bedrock of support.

With Nick Clegg looking pretty safe in Hallam, the Liberal Democrats can direct their efforts to Sheffield Central where they have an outside chance of winning especially since former Sports Minister, Richard Caborn is standing down. With boundary changes the notional result is 4,807 requiring an 8% swing. Local election results put the Lib Dems on 42% to Labour’s 30% but an active Green campaign may not do Paul Scriven the council leader any favours.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne North is the most marginal of the City’s seats (just ahead of Chief Whip, Nick Brown’s East) and is very much a long shot for the Liberal Democrats. The notional majority is some 6,744 and even with current MP Doug Henderson retiring it’s a tough call for the Lib Dems. However, their local government performances suggest a strong chance (52% of the vote in 2008 and all but two councillors). However, the Labour machine will be working hard here and it will not be the straightforward gain it seems like on paper.

With a weaker Labour Party and voters out to punish them this may be the year when the Liberal Democrats do break through in the urban North – these aren’t the only places there’s also Bradford East, Burnley and Hull West & Hessle where the party fancies its chances.

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Saying the unmarried are "punished" by Tory tax plans is just stupid - a bit like those tax plans

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The debate as to whether taxation’s purpose is to raise the money needed to deliver public services or to engineer social change is an important one. For the record I believe that the only moral purpose for taxation is to fund government services – any other reason for taxation is immoral.

However, the recent debate about the Conservative’s proposals on tax breaks for “marriage” has been marred by the persistent argument – used by Ed Balls, for example - that the proposals will “punish” unmarried parents.

This is nonsense – firstly taxation isn’t a zero-sum game. Your tax break doesn’t mean my tax rise. And “rewarding” you for some behaviour or other doesn’t “punish” me as I lose nothing. It may be the case that the tax break results in a revenue shortfall requiring either a tax increase or a spending reduction but this need not be a punishment.

And secondly the idea that rewards and punishments are balanced in some Manichaean deal is sloppy thinking, misleading and unhelpful. The marriage tax break proposals are wrong – just as the skewed support for single parents is wrong, just as so-called “green taxes” are wrong. But they are wrong on principle not because they reward, punish, prefer or discriminate.

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Election 2010 Seats to Watch #1: The Changing Coalfields

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There will be a great deal of discussion and speculation about the next General Election not least in where the places to watch might be – Tom Finnegan on Mandate set out seven he’ll be watching, for example. In the first of a short series, I’m going to give my take on places to watch – starting with what I call the changing coalfields.

England’s former coalfields are, in the popular mind, the true heartlands of Labour support. Great bastions of socialism providing the core of Labour front benches. Having a mining heritage counts you in good stead in the Party still (maybe I should sign up) and no-one in the media is expecting any change to this, the natural order of things.

Let me tell you a different story by looking at five constituencies with a strong mining heritage where there’s a chance of electing a Conservative MP at the coming General Election.

The Yorkshire Constituency of Wakefield has been a Labour seat since a by-election in 1932 but was only held be the current MP, Mary Creagh with a majority slightly over 5,000 in 2005. Boundary changes favour Labour and UK Polling Report gives a notional 2005 majority of 6,526 requiring a swing of just under 8% for the Conservatives to win. A more recent form guide – the 2008 local election results saw the Conservatives a full 15 percentage points ahead of Labour (45% Con, 30% Lab).

Bassetlaw – in North Nottinghamshire - has, like Wakefield, been a Labour seat since the 1930s. In 2005 John Mann held it for Labour with a majority approaching 11,000. Here though boundary changes favour the Conservatives and the UK Polling Report notional majority is 8,126 – requiring a swing slightly over 8% for a Conservative gain. Again the most recent local election results – the 2009 Nottinghamshire County Council elections – suggest the Conservatives are doing well securing over 50% of the vote in this constituency over 10 points clear of Labour.

North West Leicestershire (where the sitting MP suddenly and sadly died on Boxing Day last year) is a genuine marginal having been Tory-held from 1983 up to 1997. There are no boundary changes and Labour held the seat in 2005 with a majority of just 4,477 – needing a swing well below 5% for a Conservative win. In last year's County Council elections Labour won no wards here and got barely 20% of the vote (just a little ahead of the BNP) with the Conservatives winning over 40%. This is the likeliest of these five seats to change hands especially since David Taylor’s sad death.

Rother Valley is classic South Yorkshire mining country and has returned Labour MPs since before the First World War. Kevin Barron, the sitting MP had a majority of 14,224 in 2005 over the Conservatives. The boundary changes here favour the Conservatives strongly and this is reflected in the last local election results with them pulling nearly 9 points clear of Labour (indeed 9 of Rotherham District’s 10 Conservative councillors are from this seat). That said, the swing needed is nearly 15% on the nominal figures from 2005 so a big call for the Conservatives to win. Expect it to be pretty close though.

Don Valley is in the Yorkshire district of Doncaster and is represented by former Labour cabinet minister, Caroline Flint (who had an 8000+ majority in 2005). Making predictions in Doncaster is always a tricky business these days but Labour got just 26% of the vote in winning a recent by-election in Rossington which should be their strongest area in the constituency. However, with competitive minor parties like the English Democrats and the BNP, it’s really anybody's guess. Certainly worth watching on election night!

The point of featuring these constituencies is to show how demographic change in these largely rural places is making them more Conservative-aligned. At the same time the mining heritage, while still very strong, plays less and less of a political role. The next five constituencies will be places where the opposite is true – where demographics are favouring Labour.

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Idiots, Naomi Klein and the branding of political personality

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The other day, Naomi Klein of “No Logo” fame, penned a long, rather impenetrable and certainly meandering think piece for the dearly loved Guardian. Now Ms Klein is nothing if not consistent and lays into her favorite target: “corporate branding”. And this time those bad old brands have taken over the government.

Now I don’t wish to rehearse the legion reasons why Ms Klein is massively and dangerously wrong – why she fails to realise that it is better for corporations to invest in your and my minds than in the pockets of decision-makers. Why the rejection of the trademarked brand gives power to producer cartels. And why we are rich because of brands rather than the other way round. Ms Klein crawled from out the pseudo-liberal American left with its hypocritical and selective take on freedom and its hatred of the ordinary and everyday. What she says displays a deep misunderstanding of marketing.

However, Ms Klein sparked another interest of mine – the idea of the personal brand (or even the anti-brand as she likes to position herself which is really cute). Naomi, ever glib, slipped out this little opinion:

“So, it seemed that the United States government could solve its reputation problems with branding – it's just that it needed a branding campaign and product spokesperson sufficiently hip, young and exciting to compete in today's tough market. The nation found that in Obama, a man who clearly has a natural feel for branding and who has surrounded himself with a team of top-flight marketers.”

Well leaving aside the rapid falling to earth of this Icarus of politics, I was struck by the significance of the political leader as a brand and the importance of that brand to the success or otherwise of a government. However, I suspect that a few moments glimpse at history (and fiction - Liberty Valance springs to mind straight away) will show that, far from Obama – Man as Brand – being as new phenomenon, he is a continuation of a great American tradition.

We have only to think of Theodore Roosevelt with his “action man” positioning, the “Camelot” of JFK and Reagan’s “Sunrise in America” to appreciate that the ‘personality brand’ is central to American politics. It could be said that the “backwoodsman” image of Davy Crockett – even of Abe Lincoln – was central to positioning and the political brand.

As we stumble towards another British General Election, the ‘personal brand’ is taking centre stage. This isn’t new – right back to Disraeli the individual personality of a politician has been significant – but this will be the first British General Election where that fact has been placed centre stage. The campaign is being drawn as a battle between leaders – a war of champions – rather than a contest between competing party organisations. And the brand positioning of those leaders will be central to the outcome.

I’ve said before than this is a retrograde step – I do not get a choice between leaders but a choice between ciphers who may or may not reflect what those leaders want to do (or even what they say they want to do). And the idea that the careful wrapping up of politics into a nice parcel represents an effective approach to branding and positioning shows yet again that our politicians don’t get marketing strategy either. In truth Naomi Klein is right about branding. It isn’t the salvation its advocates say and it is but one element of one part of an overall marketing strategy.

There is a problem. There really is. But it’s not branding. It’s not that corporations are trying to capture government – nothing new there government has always been corrupt. It’s that we, the everyday idiots, don’t care. One day we’ll wake up, realise our mistake and pull the whole house down. Until then I’m going to carry on drinking Nescafe, wearing Levis and all the other bad consumer stuff that Naomi doesn’t like!

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"Vote for me or my demon eats you."

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The witch candidate for Cambridge, self-styled King 0f all Witches, Magus Lynius Shadee has a secret weapon up his sleeve (or possibly on one or other of hell's planes):

"A witch who plans to open an occult centre in Cambridge says he has conjured up a demon - in the city's Catholic Church. Magus Lynius Shadee says the demon could possess parishioners and drive them to suicide.He claims to have instructed the evil spirit to "dwell" in the famous church to "cleanse it". The occultist, who calls himself the King of All Witches, says he let loose the entity to prey on worshippers at the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Hills Road."

Our Mage also plan to use his powers to assist his election campaign and he:

"...hopes to cast a spell on voters and steer them away from the traditional parties."

So what with demonic assistance, magic spells and doubtless assorted sprites and shades to assist him, will our Mage be Cambridge's next MP? Or will the collected "traditional parties" conspire to do him down by underhand methods like leaflets, canvassing and the application of election law? A mighty battle in prospect between these occult forces and a lone witch helped only by a mere demon!

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Why do politicans feel it necessary to be bullies?

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Today’s frothy media story (at least for the anoraks inside the Westminster bubble) is the arrest of Steve Hilton, the Conservative Party’s Director of Strategy. Now leaving aside that this took place in 2008 and resulted in an £80 fine, it seems to me that this is an example of how truly unpleasant politics and politicians can get.

This bloke is a backroom boy – albeit an important one – and someone has seen fit to save up little stories about him so as to do him down. That person – whoever he or she is – is a bully. Let me repeat that – politicians who use ancient history respun to do down another person are bullies. And the hacks who feed on these people’s stories are no better.

Sadly too many other politicians, pundits, bloggers and feeders from the Westminster gutter seem to think that politics should be conducted on the basis of smear, innuendo, sly accusation, misrepresentation of past events and, on occasion, straightforward ranty bullying.

Our political culture now celebrates bullying as an admirable quality in politicians rather than seeing it as a disqualifying character flaw. And those same unpleasant backstabbing bullies are often the first to sign up to cod campaigns against the same bullying they indulge in every day. It makes me sick.

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Third thoughts on a limited understanding of "the progressive": the dark future

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In exploring the “progressive” idea (here and here) I have stumbled upon two important aspects of the concept:

1. Progressive thought places individual rights below group rights – the rejection of individualism is central. Thus the “left” (if that is synonymous with “progressive”) place the interests of the group – however defined – above the interests of individual members of the group.

2. Since this idea runs counter to a liberal view there are considerable grounds for confusion over what are thought to be universal ideas – non-discrimination, choice and rights. Put simply the liberal places these rights with the individual whereas the progressive places them with the group.

Although I am clearly on the liberal side of the fence, it is important to understand this distinction from the progressive viewpoint. Policy choices by the left are directed to groups not to individuals – we are defined by the groups to which we belong (whether or not we have a choice in so belonging). Thus progressives see nothing wrong with granting specific privileges to a given group – as is the case, for example, with trade unions. The rights granted to unions by “progressive” governments only adhere to the union as a group – individuals do not have those rights as individuals only as members of a union.

Of course the left quite correctly point out that other (not progressive) governments have granted special privileges to businesses – indeed the Progressive movement in California grew from the corruption of regular party politics by business interests (and in particular the Southern Pacific Railway). This problem – the corruption of representative government by group interests – was not addressed by the anti-individualist progressive idea. One collection of groups – business, landowners, commercial guilds – was replaced by another collection of groups – trade unions, the muckraking media and academics: the corruption of representative government continued. The system of competing interests that we see in the polarised US and UK polities (and less clearly in European regimes) is profoundly illiberal largely because the resistance to powerful groups has been to create other powerful groups to capture political parties – or in the case of the Labour Party for the powerful group to establish a party to serve its interests.

So where are we headed with all this? Given that group politics pervade all the main political parties – certainly in the USA and UK – the likelihood is that the granting of rights to groups - the progressive approach – will continue because those groups are so powerful. Despite Adam Smith’s warning, greater credence is still given to the comments of “business leaders” and we are still expected to view the remarks of Brendon Barber, the TUC boss, as representing the views of “workers”. And to this classic division we have now added faith leaders, community leaders, the spokesmen of NGOs like Oxfam, Shelter or Greenpeace, and the vast “quangocracy”.

This corporate state – where policy discussion is mediated through interest groups with access to the rulers and where communication with the wider populace is done through granting privileged access to selected speakers in those interest groups, in the media and through the structures of political organisation. The “progressive” idea – founded in great hope at the improvement of man and man’s organisation – has become a monster. The individual has no power any more to say: “no, I don’t want to do that.” That right does not belong to him but to the group he belongs with – who have of course negotiated a “compromise” with the rulers.

Of course we remain mostly free – we don’t yet have to sign in every morning – but with each passing year that freedom becomes more curtailed. Most importantly, our economic freedom is undermined by our being more and more dependent on the state – for roughly a third of the population this is absolute since they either work for the government or are reliant on government handouts.

So a glimpse at the possible future. In his monumental “History of Government”, Finer used the Greek word oikos to describe ancient world governments. Oikos means “the household” which for the Greeks meant family under a male head including slaves and other dependents. We are headed back towards such a polity – where we are free in our daily actions within the constraints placed on that freedom by the government and its advisors. And the product of our labour belongs not to us but to the group and to the state – not through confiscation but through a combination of taxation and benefit dependency. It may even be the case that those out of work will be directed toward “socially useful” labour – a precursor of which we see in Labour’s “Future Jobs Fund”. Future jobs are not wealth creating but have a social purpose paid for either through taxation or (less likely) through philanthropy.

The idea of Liberty has always struggled next to the powerful group interests that dominate our political systems – today we are granted superficial freedoms while the real rights to free speech, free assembly, free movement and free trade are eroded in the interests of “fairness”, “security”, “society” or “community”. Were it not for my anger at this I would like Cincinnatus, return to my plough.

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Thoughts on a limited understanding of "the progressive"

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The idea of progress and progressive politics has always confused me – I’ve never seen anything especially progressive in the anti-innovation of trades unions, the anti-science of greens or the illiberalism of socialist elites. Yet these groups cluster around an idea of being “progressive” – an idea that, as is often the case with concepts, is merely stated never defined or explained. Or if defined it is done so in terms of support for given institutions or specific policies. By way of example the welcome page of Labour Students describes the organisation as:

“…a campaigning organisation, fighting for progressive values.”

The examples that follow are anti-racism, sexual health and the minimum wage – worthy but not a guide to understanding. So what might these progressive values be and do they derive from concepts of community and mutuality or from the anti-business, anti-liberal ideas of progressivism that developed in the USA? From the idea that the individual must be made subservient to the collective. As Herbert Croly put it:

"The Promise of American Life is to be fulfilled ... by a large measure of individual subordination and self-denial."

The problem comes when – as Croly made clear – we arrive at the view that the existence of democratic institutions is not sufficient alone for there to be a government of the people. To achieve this mankind must progress – in Darwinian terms, evolve – from the state of brute individualism that prevails under the capitalist order. So progressive politics isn’t about progress as the ordinary person would understand but represents an attempt to drive an evolutionary development in man – it is a use of Darwin in a political context.

But then we get to those pesky values our Labour Students glibly refer to – how can we define those? First stop is Bernie Horn writing in The Nation – freedom, opportunity, security, responsibility. Not much help there – these are all pretty slippery words that could be used as successfully by the extreme right and by the ultra left (they are also rather scarily reminiscent of the world state’s motto in that great anti-progressive novel, Brave New World - COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY).

I made a little more progress with this piece by George Lakoff written just after the 2004 Bush election victory:

“If you empathize with your children, you will want them to have strong protection, fair and equal treatment and fulfillment in life. Fulfillment requires freedom, freedom requires opportunity and opportunity requires prosperity. Since your family lives in, and requires, a community, community building and community service are required. Community requires cooperation, which requires trust, which requires honesty and open communication. Those are the progressive values--in politics as well as family life.”

Indeed it’s hard not to see in these words the echo of liberty, the words of Locke, Hume, Bentham & Paine – the champions of enlightenment, liberty and the intellectual fathers of the USA. If we build a polity on these values we build it from the bottom up – from parish, town and county – not from the level of grand and important central government be it in London, Brussels or Washington. Today these great institutions of Government – now largely captured by greens, socialists and self-defined “progressives” – are barriers to that very progress, to the vision painted by Lakoff above.

As I’ve said before, a truly radical approach to government would see it returned to the human level – to real local government – and away from the endless journey towards some world government over which an elite few can reign. The choice for progressives must be either to continue the pretence that the institutions of government must grow ever larger to meet the needs of the people or to embrace the pulling down of those institutions. A true progressive would want small government that encourages participation rather than the elitist, oligarchic, pseudo-democracy we enjoy today. Sadly progressives are too often the great champions of big government.

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Why the arguments for "the great leaders debate" are wrong and dangerous

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I gave ten reasons why the “great leaders debate” is a bad idea some while back – non-one has challenged any of those reasons. All I get is the ‘bestseller syndrome’ – “other democracies have them so must we”. This is a ridiculous approach and a truly crass argument.

However, it seems we are to have these debates so what to make of them...

Argument One: Only Gordon and Dave should debate as they are the only “candidates for prime minister” says Charlotte Vere, Tory Candidate for Brighton Pavilion (who I guess doesn’t want the Green Party leader in on the debates either). Sorry Charlotte, much though I want you to win, you have to find better arguments – we aren’t electing a prime minister. In your case the voters of Brighton are electing an MP – hopefully you.

Argument Two: This is a bad idea because we’re ahead/behind in the polls. The cynics approach to politics – we’ll agree to something because it’s to our political advantage not because it’s right. So a big fail to Tim Montgomerie for his “Christmas comes early..” post.

Argument Three: It will rejuvenate politics by getting the otherwise unengaged involved again through the goggle box. Well I’m with Constantly Furious on this – it ain’t gonna happen guys. Those good idiots, my neighbours won’t be watching so long as there’s something else to watch – and there will be for sure. Only the already interested will watch and it will be accompanied by a ghastly, frothing, ignorant and self-serving barrage of political point-scoring, name-calling and bigotry. I really can’t wait!

Argument Four: Every body else has one so we should – or as Dave put it: “I think it's a step forward for our democracy and I think it's something that, in such a bad year for politics and Parliament, we can proudly celebrate. We've joined the 21st century, when every other democracy seems to have leader's debates, we're now going to have them right here in Britain and I think that's a very good thing.” So places with party-run pseudo-democracies have leader debates – and this advances democracy? I don’t think so – in fact it’s a backward step. What about the smaller and regional parties – Scots Nats, Plaid Cymru, UKIP, BNP, Greens? Or the independent candidates? Are they to be crushed by the Westminster steamroller? How exactly does that enhance democracy?

All the political anoraks out there will look forward to the debates – not because they make democracy better but because it’s more of what we like on the telly. Just as the football fan applauds more football and the music fan more music, the politics fan wants more politics. Hiding behind “enhancing democracy” simply doesn’t wash – debates are a retrograde, anti-democratic, controlling, demagogic innovation that will not get a fairer election, a better government or an improved turnout. It would be better to have no election coverage at all and make candidates go out on the doorsteps and into the high street to make the case rather than merely regurgitating the party line that trots out in these debates.

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