March « 2015 « John Harris

Archive for March, 2015

Undermining housing associations is the next big Tory vote-winner | John Harris

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

Spurred on by the memory of right to buy, the Conservatives are resorting to extreme measures in a doomed attempt to replicate Thatcherism’s popularity

As an exam question would put it: David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher – compare and contrast. She wanted to go “on and on”; he thinks two prime ministerial terms – or thereabouts – will do. Triumphant populism came to her as a matter of instinct; he and his allies still cannot bond with the all-important lower working-class C2s, nor articulate a vision of the Britain the Tories now want to create. Inevitably, those failures haunt them: whereas Thatcher entered the 1983 and 1987 elections with a clear sense of her mission, Cameron has been fretting about a pitch to the electorate that earlier this month he reportedly rejected, wanting something “crisper” and “more political”.

Modern Conservatives’ Thatcher-envy has long been focused on one iconic measure in particular: the right to buy, which – at no small social cost – turned council tenants into citizens of the property-owning democracy, and sealed the Tories’ electoral deal with a whole swath of the public. Three years ago, in the manner of a revived 80s pop hit, the policy was dusted down by the Tories and remixed, via increases in the discounts offered to prospective buyers. Legislation in progress shortens the length of residence required to qualify, from five to three years. George Osborne’s help to buy scheme reflects much the same thinking.

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Grammar Wanker: Sleaford Mods 2007‑2014 by Jason Williamson – review

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

Drug comedowns and fist fights – an angry and uncompromising collection of lyrics. Who else in modern English music is doing anything quite like this?

• This article contains language some readers may find offensive

Contrary to what you may have heard, rock music is not quite dead. Its foreground is often dominated by people of pensionable age, hot new acts often arrive when they are in their mid-30s – or even older – and musicians are no longer expected to reflect the social and political currents of their age. But there are arguably more of them around than ever before, and a lot of them are very artistically accomplished. Last month, for example, I bought the new album by a talented group from Sweden called the Amazing – which, like so much modern rock, offers an amorphous air of yearning, redemption, and sadness, while coming very close to meaning nothing at all. But in that record, and others, I have learned to quite like the sense of vacancy. Indeed, after years of expecting guitar-toting herberts to have read Marx and have something to say about the developing world, dropping those expectations feels surprisingly liberating.

And yet, and yet. Among critics in particular, there remains a longing for music that deals in hardened social comment, as evidenced by the feeling of relief bound up in the belated recognition of the Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods. In early 2014, their first notice in the Guardian hailed “the most uncompromising British protest music made in years”, and the fact that the album they released the previous year was titled Austerity Dogs only heightened the sense of the cavalry coming over the hill. Their songs were – and still are – bound up with the arse-end of modern work, the grimmer aspects of weekend hedonism, and a very contemporary awareness of horizons shrinking at speed. Who else in modern English music is doing anything similar?

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Living with the opposition: families who vote differently

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

Mum’s a lifelong Tory but her daughter’s gone Green. Dad backs Ukip and his son can’t shift him. Are relations strained at home? Candice Pires hears young people and their parents discuss their differences, while John Harris explains why the political divide is widening between the generations

To instantly understand the way we used to think about politics, voter loyalty and the basic shape of the British party system, it’s a good idea to go right back to ’82: 1882, that is, when Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Iolanthe featured one of the composers’ most celebrated couplets: “Every boy and gal that’s born into the world alive/Is either a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative.” Give or take the fact that Labour was to seize the “progressive” mantle from the Liberals, what those words implied held true for most of the 20th century: that politics would always be carved up between two monolithic parties, and most of the time, loyalties would be passed from parents to their children.

Obviously, things are very different these days. As evidenced by the fuss over the TV election debates – or lack of them – Britain’s politics are now split between at least seven parties. Moreover, the twentysomethings some people call “millennials” are the least politically loyal generation on record. “What we’ve seen is people being less and less attached to a party on dogmatic or historical grounds,” says Bobby Duffy, the managing director of Ipsos Mori’s Social Research Institute, and an expert on young people’s voting patterns. “There’s a lot more switching and sifting among the millennials.”

Related: Meet the students voting Ukip

I try to convince Mum to vote Green

Hannah has always wanted to be very individual

Our differences in politics make our relationship better – we have a talking point

If he joined Ukip I’d say: No, they’re a bit too nasty.

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Every Tory attack on the SNP is another blow to the union | John Harris

Tuesday, March 10th, 2015

By scaremongering about a possible Labour/SNP government, the Tories have turned from champions of the union to its inadvertent saboteurs

For those who believe in the survival of the union between England and Scotland, these are obviously febrile, fragile times. The latter country’s experience of the independence referendum has sent the SNP’s poll ratings soaring, and the prospect of the country underlining its political distance from England by sending a huge bloc of that party’s MPs to Westminster now looks inevitable.

Over the weekend, the Tory grandee Kenneth Baker floated the somewhat unlikely idea of a grand coalition between the two big English parties to avert a constitutional crisis; a few days before, my Guardian colleague Martin Kettle wrote a somewhat more level-headed column expressing doubts that “either of the men about to contest the premiership know … they too have a country to save and rebuild”.

It’s certainly an interesting look: a fast-and-loose approach to the very existence of the UK

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