Posts Tagged 'David Cameron'

Wall to Wall Populism now Complete

Published September 26, 2010 Opinion 3 Comments
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Ed Miliband, British politician and Secretary ...

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With Ed Milband’s election as Labour leader we now have a full complement of political leaders in the UK that put populism much higher up the pecking order of political attributes than substance, ideology or inalienable values.

Miliband, yet another Oxford PPE graduate, and yet another political leader who has been isolated from any real work or any real hardship, has been propelled to Labour leadership, usurping his own brother in the process.

Now the Primrose Hill set is complete – and the only thing that makes them different is the nature of the dinner party conversations and guests. The wine, no doubt, is equally fine.

British politics has been reduced to the esoteric and the hypothetical. Ed Miliband is only hypothetically socialist – just as David Cameron and Nick Clegg are hypothetically Conservative and Liberal. But what unites them is a focus on the peripheral argument, the nuanced debate, the incremental improvement. Politics, these days, is the politics of argumentative geekdom, devoid of any passion or belief.

One exchange between the brothers Miliband illustrates this wonderfully. During the leadership campaign Ed apparently said to David, “How can you possibly say you’re going to stand on every aspect of our manifesto? We lost the election.” A fair point? Well, no, because Ed wrote that manifesto.

In short, Ed Miliband will dump even his own manifesto commitments, his own articulated policy logic, if they prove to be unpopular.

Unlike his own father who refused to have anything to do with the Labour Party when it apparently dumped any commitment to socialism, Ed Miliband is a breed apart from the voting public. He is the creation of the political mould that regards ideological commitment as a form of intellectual slavery.

PS – I know this is childish and rather barrel-scraping, but is it me or does Ed bear a striking resemblance to Gromit from Wallace and Gromit fame?

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UUP Suck Local Tories Dry

Published May 17, 2010 News 10 Comments
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I gather that Conservative Party central office has laid-off its 3 members of staff in Belfast following the disastrous Conservative/Ulster Unionist Party alliance that saw a decline in the combined Conservative/UUP vote here at the general election.

It appears that the NI Area of the Conservative Party is literally depleted of funds – having invested just about all of its money running (mostly UUP) candidates in the general election – and funding the majority of Jim Nicholson’s Euro election campaign.

Moreover while Nicholson’s Euro-expenses help fund two local employees, the Conservatives receive no benefit (despite having funded his campaign).

I gather that all three CCHQ employees here – including Neil Johnston, the local campaign Director – are now on “gardening leave”.  CCHQ has not made clear if it will be funding a local office here in future.  Moreover the UUP “leader”, Sir Reg Empey, made clear at an Executive meeting of the UUP at the weekend that his party’s relationship with the Conservative Party is now under review.

Bizarre Parallels

Published May 11, 2010 Opinion 14 Comments
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There are strangely resonant similarities between the Conservative/Lib-Dem partnership and the ill-fated partnership between the Conservatives and the UUP.  Obviously we have yet to hear about the finer detail of the ministerial carve-up.  But it looks likely that Nick Clegg will become Deputy Prime Minister – despite only commanding 50 or so seats in the House of Commons.  Clegg, as pointed out by Nick Robinson tonight on the BBC, oversaw a disappointing result for the Libs in the general election.  Yet now he is to be rewarded well beyond his station.  Similarly the UUP had just one New Labour MP but was rewarded with Ashcroft funded election campaigns and a free run for dead-wood candidates.

The Conservatives command 6 times the number of seats than the Lib Dems in the House of Commons.  And yet Cameron, in his pursuit of power, appears to have capitulated to the Lib Dem demands.

It didn’t have to be so.  The Liberals have been aware since last Friday that their only prospect of power was via the Tory deal.  The Tories should have taken advantage of their relative position of power.  However Cameron’s tendency towards populist politics, and his poor negotiating skills, seem to be taking their toll.  Tomorrow we’ll learn that more Liberals have been promoted well above their station – either in terms of cabinet positions, or in terms of influence.

Capitulation and poor negotiation skills within relationships always result in one partner taking advantage of the other. There is a real prospect that the Lib Dems – just like the UUP – will start calling shots in all the wrong ways.

The UUP dragged naive Conservatives into the tribal political mire.  There is a very real risk that the Liberal Democrats will drag the Conservatives into a position where the Party becomes so “progressive” that it ceases to have any appreciable ideological persona and becomes factionalised and, ultimately, unelectable.

Cameron needs to assert authority very soon if this arrangement has any prospect of success.  However, recent evidence in Northern Ireland suggests that Team Cameron’s managerial experience just may not be up to it.

The Shame of UCUNF

Published May 5, 2010 Opinion 2 Comments
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Some believe I am an idealist and that my opposition to the pact between the UUP and Conservative Party is ill-founded.  Let me argue why I disagree.

Tomorrow the people of Northern Ireland go to the polls to elect 18 MPs.  But, unfortunately, they are not being offered the opportunity to vote for a national political party seeking a mandate to govern this part of the United Kingdom.  The UUP is a sectarian political party and UCUNF is the UUP in drag.

UCUNF seeks votes from Protestants.  It cannot claim that its partnership with the Conservative Party is a move towards non-sectarianism when the UUP is, in fact, defined by sectarianism.  While Sinn Fein has been pleading for sectarian pacts with the SDLP – which has bravely resisted – the UUP, DUP and the Conservative Party have created one of their own.  Owen Paterson – the man who wants to be our Secretary of State after Thursday – has been engaged in shabby sectarian deal-making in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

If Paterson can treat the electorate with contempt, breaking his own promise that the Conservative Party would contest every one of Northern Ireland’s 18 seats, he could easily construct a deal with the sectarian, homophobic sleaze-party that is the DUP in the event of a hung parliament.  Moreover quite a few of his new-found UUP buddies, like Danny Kennedy and David McNarry, would support him.

There are many within the UUP and DUP that want a Unionist unity deal after the general election – in preparation for the upcoming Assembly elections.  The fact that the Conservative Party has allowed the UUP to maintain its sectarian back-water persona, while pretending to be a modern pluralist UK-focused party at the same time, has undermined the equal citizenship project.  The Conservative Party had every opportunity to insist on an all-or-nothing approach when the UUP was clearly at death’s door in terms of party finances and popular support.  Instead the Conservatives have given credence to a Party led by a dithering and incoherent leader and with the same orange hall scented brand.  In many respects, this is the worst of all outcomes.

I have been arguing for years – like a broken record according to my wife – that the most elemental democratic right, in any democratic society, is the right to be able vote for or against the government.  Our community still does not have this right.  The Conservatives and Unionists do not appeal to the whole community on the basis of ideological stance. There has been no attempt by the key players in this ill-fated liaison to define a new cross-community politics or brand.  Candidate selection was heavily skewed toward UUP candidates.  Candidates who could have proven a commitment to an all-community constituency were overlooked.  The Hatfield talks reeked of all-Protestant deal-making.  Leading players in UCUNF organised Unionist Unity talks with the Orange Order – and no party discipline followed.  A sectarian carve-up was organised in Fermanagh South Tyrone.  But the fact that Dave Cameron flew in yesterday, and gave a rallying call, makes everything OK – according to UCUNF apparatchiks.  Here was Dave rolling his sleeves up right across the UK – and showing that Northern Ireland is just like every other part of the Kingdom.

Except it isn’t.  Still we are different – different because right in the black heart of our civil society – and in this ill-fated ‘partnership’ – lies the evil of tribalism.  It infects every element of our community.  It robs our supposedly ‘normalising’ society of decency.  It corrupts our children.  It infects any opportunities for social justice.

The Conservative Party had the opportunity – a real opportunity – to act ethically in Northern Ireland.  It had the opportunity to paint of picture of a new Northern Ireland taking its first tentative steps towards a secular political future based on the dominant political discourse of the Kingdom.  It has failed.  Shame on it and shame on those involved.

Cameron, Northern Ireland and Public Sector Spending

Published April 24, 2010 Opinion 7 Comments
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Public sector employment: pondweed

Although David Cameron’s comments about Northern Ireland’s over-dependence on the public sector have done nothing to help the ill-fated UCUNF project, they are entirely appropriate comments and needed to be made.  Northern Ireland is grossly over-dependent on the public sector. 

Some of this over-dependence is understandable.  Spending, per capita, on policing and security, for example, is still higher than in the rest of the UK despite the so-called “peace process”.  But spending on healthcare, per capita, is lower than Scotland. 

However, the main reason we eat up so much public money is not just because of public sector employment – it’s also because of massive social security payments – largely because a big chunk of our work-force is economically inactive. 

Moreover a disproportionate percentage of our “economically active” are in fact not active at all – they are public sector workers.  Public sector workers do not produce anything – they merely consume.  The extent to which they contribute to the economy is purely through spending their wages: consuming retail goods and services. 

NIPSA general secretary Brian Campsfield seems to think otherwise - implying there is some type of merit in having a large percentage of the work-force employed by the public sector – and that the private sector has in some way failed in the competition for employment.

Over on the BBC web site he’s quoted as saying: “[David Cameron's] faith in the ability of the private sector to provide sufficient jobs to replace thousands of jobs that would be lost to the public sector is sadly misplaced…the private sector in Northern Ireland relies heavily on public subsidy and yet its “entrepreneurs” have failed to create sufficient high value employment.”

These comments must surely rank up there as among the silliest assessments of Northern Ireland’s economic woes.  Mr Campsfield seems to believe that entrepreneurs are overtly focused on creating employment – and that they somehow fail if they don’t.  Entrepreneurs, in fact, avoid employment as much as possible because it is expensive.  Moreover, entrepreneurs may not have the ability to employ the local workforce if that workforce simply doesn’t have the necessary skills to sustain revenue.  In an economy where a huge percentage of the workforce is inactive or employed by the public sector, the private sector hasn’t much in the way of rich pickings.  Moreover, given the nature of the workforce itself it yields very few entrepreneurs.  Northern Ireland has an enterprise averse workforce – and a workforce unable to sustain high growth, high employment businesses – unless some drastic action is taken. 

As for subsidy, the fact is that private businesses benefit little from state subsidy – indeed such subsidies are outlawed under European law.  Businesses that thrive here do so despite government rather than because of it.  Business taxation is substantially higher than in the Republic of Ireland and costs of doing business are higher here than in other parts of the UK.  Despite this, Northern Ireland has produced some highly viable export focused businesses.  However, not enough. 

The public sector in Northern Ireland is like pond-weed – it creates the impression of healthy vegetation but, ultimately, it has the effect of crowding-out everything else.  It starves the pond of nutrition.  In many respects this is the effect that over-dependence on the public sector has had on Northern Ireland’s economy. 

That’s not to say that public sector workers aren’t essential.  Of course they are.  But without the private sector there is no GDP to be divided.  The private sector creates ALL of our wealth – but very little of the UK’s private sector wealth is created here in Northern Ireland.  Something must be done to change that.  Perhaps a reduction in the block grant will focus minds on the basic law that without real employment there can be no public sector employment.  Very few of our politicians are prepared to admit that.  More worrying, many don’t even know it.

A Tale of Destruction

Published March 21, 2010 Uncategorized 8 Comments
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Danny Kennedy MLA Carries the Orange Banner for David Cameron into the General Election

On Friday evening I had a long conversation with one of the Conservative nominees who has failed to be selected as an agreed Conservative and Unionist candidate in the forthcoming general election.  She articulated the disillusionment felt by many Conservatives locally who have been duped by a UUP leader and Shadow Northern Ireland spokesman who have carved up this shambolic UCUNF pact between them.

The Conservative Party used to have an organisation here of sorts.  It’s true that membership was never huge.  Activists were few and far between.  But the quality of people was considerable.  Early Conservative activists, like Dr Laurence Kennedy, wanted to see the type of change in Northern Ireland that was only possible through the introduction of a political discourse that was elevated above the nonsense of Unionism or Nationalism. 

Over the last few months we have seen the systematic destruction of the Conservative Party organisation here.  Just yesterday I spoke to a member of the local Executive of the Party here who made clear that the local Area Executive was essentially ignored by Owen Paterson in terms of candidate selection.  Moreover the so-called joint committee has also been side-lined as Reg and Owen essentially carved-up the candidate list between them.  The result is just one genuine Conservative in the list (Parsley doesn’t really count as he has no real ideological conviction and only joined the Conservative Party – weeks after standing as the Alliance Euro candidate – when he was offered a job within the Centre for Social Justice, the Conservative think-tank). 

Owen went to great lengths to point out that he wanted candidates from all walks of society (especially “Catholic women”, he was at pains to point out).  He and Reg prompty loverlooked them, preferring instead to select nice, safe and God-fearing Protestants.  This fits nicely with Paterson’s membership of the Cornerstone Group - once referred-to by Alan Duncan MP as the Taliban tendency within the Conservative Party. 

The result of this will be a slumping in turn-out in the general election.  Far from being a new force in Northern Ireland politics the re-branded UUP is unlikely to perform much better than at the last general election.  If it makes any progress it will only be as a result of the DUP’s bifurcating vote in the face of TUV competition. 

UNCUNF represents nothing new at all.  People will see this shambolic Heath Robinson construct for what it is…and it ain’t pretty.

David Cameron and the Orange Order

Published May 24, 2009 Opinion 11 Comments
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I admire David Cameron.  I re-joined the Conservative Party when David became leader.  On every occasion I have met him he has shown a wonderful insight into Northern Ireland’s political problem – namely a political system that is defined on the basis of religion and constitutional division.  And he is correct that the constitutional business is done.  This article in the News Letter articulates his view well. 

Unfortunately, however, we still have political parties that are defined on the basis of religion.  Their social policy positions are defined by a religious world-view.  The DUP is a fundamentalist Christian Party.  So much so that Gregory Campbell was unable to answer a silly end-of-show question on Let’s Talk posed by a WI Member i.e. did he prefer money or sex?  He declined to answer.  Such is the DUP’s hang-ups about sex, religion, and changing ethics, that the answers to silly, and not so silly, questions are always deferred. 

We need to replace the politics of constitution, nationalism and religion with the centre left/right system of the United Kingdom. 

It is for this reason that David Cameron is right that Conservatives must contest every seat in Northern Ireland.  Because the issue is not about Unionism.  It’s not even essential that a maximum number of “Unionists” are returned.  Rather, David is right because contesting every seat brings a little bit of real, national politics to every contest.  By having Conservative candidates contest each seat we are saying to the electorate that the Conservative Party wants to break, forever, the sectarian basis of our political system and replace it with an essentially secular form of UK politics. 

The key question to ask, of course, is whether the candidates will adequately reflect this ambition.  The joint committee has an important part to play in ensuring that sectarian candidates are not selected.

Moreover the UUP can show that it understands the political imperative and does not put forward candidates from the Orange wing of its Party. 

I think the point is that the Ulster Unionist Party has broken its links with the Orange Order and what I’m trying to do with the UUP is not look backwards, but look forwards and say we can build a new force in Northern Ireland…which can attract people irrespective of which church they go to or how they worship God or which part of the community they come from.  David Cameron

David Cameron in Ballymena on Thursday

Published May 18, 2009 News 2 Comments
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David Cameron will be running another of his Cameron Direct events – his second in Northern Ireland – on Thursday in Ballymena.  If you’d like to attend I can pass on your details to the organisers.

I had the pleasure of introducing David Cameron at his first Cameron Direct event in Belfast late last year.  Wonder will I be asked this time?  Suspect not.

Cameron Direct Belfast and Everywhere

Published May 6, 2009 News Leave a Comment
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I had the pleasure to introduce David Cameron when he did his first Cameron Direct event in Belfast back in November. 

In the latest election broadcast he shows just how effective he can be in this type of “town hall” meeting.  Although the Belfast event was held at the Stormont Hotel.  Nevertheless – the format was the same – no screened questions, shooting from the hip and very direct. 

If you want to watch the Belfast Cameron Direct (introduced by yours truly) it’s here. 

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Musings on things political and secular…

This is my site where I share my world views for anyone who might be remotely interested. Visit only if you think the content is interesting. Oh and comment is free. So go right ahead and agree or disagree. But, please, be kind and polite (especially to me).
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