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7 reasons why Scotland’s Labour party may lose like Sweden’s Labour party

Nov 12

Posted by Jeff in Parties | 29 Comments

– Sweden had been largely ruled by Social Democrats for decades. After one term of the Modernitska Party, the country decided it deserved an historic second term. The SNP may enjoy that same opportunity.

– The Social Democrats are generally popular but a singularly unpopular leader at the helm was their ultimate undoing at the election. Iain Gray is likeable but his lack of chutzpah may similarly count against him come election day.

– Social Democrats promised to outspend the Modernitska Party, regardless of how much it cost the country. The public never fully bought it. Labour is unrealistically opposing ‘SNP cuts’ at every turn while continuing to propose GARL and a substantial building of new prisons.

– The Social Democrats struggled to decide how to tackle immigration, torn between being pro-immigration on principle or taking a stronger stance to win cheap votes. Labour, no thanks to Phil Woolas, are going through the same turmoil.

– The ruling Modernitska party in Sweden were able to outflank the Social Democrats on both the left and the right. The SNP enjoys that same flexibility across various policy issues.

– The Social Democrats are headed up by a tight clique of former Ministers. Labour is suffering from a lack of fresh blood coming through.

– The Social Democrats were far ahead in the polls for months prior to the election date with the ruling Modernitska party only pulling ahead weeks before the election date. Many predict the same will happen in Scotland.

I, perhaps optimistically, like to think that Scots think along the same latitudinal lines as their similarly-minded Social Democratic Scandinavian friends. Could next year’s Scottish election already be foretold by this year’s Swedish election?

incidentally, the biggest gainers in that Swedish election were…… the Green party.

“Clear Green Water”: A Plaid electoral strategy?

Nov 4

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution, Parties | 5 Comments

Better Nation is chuffed to provide another guest post today.  This one comes all the way from Wales and is authored by Marcus Warner, who is a frequent contributor to Wales Home.  This piece focuses on what Plaid should do to encourage voters to switch to them in May’s Assembly election.

In Wales, perhaps the most notable intellectual insight that has come under devolved politics is former First Minister Rhodri Morgan’s ‘Clear Red Water’ speech in 2002. In it, Morgan defined Welsh Labour’s differences between his devolved Government and the then New Labour Government of Tony Blair.

Aside of the politics or indeed whether the theory was a theory at all beyond political positioning, it has defined the narrative about Welsh parties under devolution doing politics. The Welsh Conservative leader, Nick Bourne, is the latest to put this view forward, arguing that the Welsh Conservatives will still reserve the right to oppose cuts that in his view disproportionally hit Wales (Clear Blue Water). The same can be said for the Welsh Lib Dems, who believe that they will need ‘Clear Yellow Water’ to fight back against the Lib Dems falling polling rating since the coalition in Westminster.

After explaining all that, you might wonder why Plaid feel the need to have ‘clear green water’, particularly given it does not operate outside of being a Welsh Party? Clear Green Water is the distance between itself and Labour but also the ConDems – which is very real in terms of values and policies, but communicating that difference is where the challenge lies.

This of course is made very much difficult given that not only has Plaid been in coalition with Welsh Labour since 2007 in the One Wales Government. While the crowning success will still be defined by the forthcoming referendum on primary law making powers, One Wales has largely been a stable Government delivering solidly progressive policy. It has also been seen as innovative during the economic crisis with the PROact and React schemes, as well as the Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones’ ‘Economic Renewal Plan’ reshaping the Government’s approach to economic development. The lack of underlying splits and tensions has also been noted.

So how does Plaid create that ‘clear green water’. Well I confess to being like a sponge on my strategy as painted here. These ideas are not always my own creations made in isolation, they are bloggers, chats with activists, politicians, the public and even anon commenter’s to my old blog (thanks El Dafydd El!). But I hope that a sufficient amount of my own thoughts still underpin these suggestions.

Might I also say that is about political positioning and narrative, rather than policy. If I am invited back I am happy to share some policy ideas.

To veer slightly from the Better Nation brief of focusing on the positive (we’re as bad at times – Ed) Welsh Labour have done a number of about turns since going into opposition, particularly regarding Wales. Barnett Formula reform, a subject that Plaid has campaigned on a number of years, was dismissed by New Labour during the 13 years of Government. Since May’s general election, those very same dismissing voices now champion Barnett Formula reform like there is no tomorrow. There are a number of very recent policy changes in Welsh Labour that many would consider to be ‘leaving their tanks on Plaid’s lawn’.

My first course of action is to be clinical on these about turns. Relentless focus on such matters will help us decouple from Welsh Labour rather neatly.

The economic mess, or the blame game that goes with it, is something that Plaid can exploit. All the polling shows that the Welsh people lay the blame at the door of the last Labour Government at Westminster, followed closely by the current ConDems. The One Wales Government simply does not feature in this blame. Ultimately there is consistent evidence, backed up this week’s poll about Welsh people’s views on the cuts, that Wales is being hit harder than other places.

My second course of action is to equally blame all three Westminster parties for the economic crisis and for Wales’ impending cuts. Plaid is constantly told that little old Wales would simply be too small to change the economic weather, with the UK being a very different beast. It would seem that all three parties haven’t been able to hold that claim up.

The polls are encouraging if a cause for concern in places. Campaigns can often be very localised and the margins regionally can be quite small between winning and losing a seat. Success in a constituency has knock on effects for regional candidates too. But the one thing Plaid has to focus on is denying Labour 31 seats which would mean a majority. Current polling would suggest Labour are there or thereabouts – but I sense the spike since the general elections has about 10% worth of soft belly to cut away at. It is important to remember that in 2009, the Conservatives topped the poll in the Euro elections and Plaid were not far behind in 3rd place. Welsh Labour looked to be in very real crisis – I don’t sense a massive change in the underlying problems it faces in 2011.

My third course of action is to promote the idea of ‘No One Party state’. There is a powerful narrative of the Labour ‘boyo’ getting all the jobs throughout public life. The effects of one party rule can be felt in the Valleys, but things seem to change once you break the iron grip of the Labour Party. This might be a tad cynical, but when Labour fights with fire, you best fight back with some fiery stuff.

Finally, many of Plaid’s growth areas in are in former or current Labour heartlands. In a two vote per ballot system, there is clearly space for some targeted ‘list votes’ to be split. In many Labour heartland areas, thousands upon thousands of regional votes are essentially thrown in the bin when they are cast for Labour. Plaid need to be canny about how they approach this, there will not be a one size fits all solution. Perhaps the narrative of saying that ‘would you prefer a Plaid regional AM or a Tory regional AM?’ which it increasing is the choice for voters, might be a worth starting point in winning those regional votes for Plaid from Labour voters.

Scottish Labour – What’s the story in Tobermory?

Oct 31

Posted by Jeff in Democracy, Holyrood, Parties | 8 Comments

Iain Gray, the LOLITSP“You’re gonna open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, clear off the ground.”

So spake Leo McGarry in the West Wing series, highlighting the oratorical power that his friend and President-elect Jed Bartlett possessed.

While some prematurely see Iain Gray as Scotland’s First Minister elect, albeit without the same rhetorical flair and building-lifting verbal ability that the admittedly fictional Bartlett possesses, there was at least a wind in the rafters created by yesterday’s valiant and aggressive performance at Labour’s Oban conference.

For Iain Gray, trying harder seems to equate to shouting louder so one must wonder what sort of rage machine the Labour leader will be by the time he is at his most trying come May next year.

The primary positive from yesterday’s speech was that it was policy heavy, though it could have been heavier still with a staunch defence of why his party believes we need to raise Council Tax. A single Scottish police force, a Scottish care service and a 1-to-1 tuition project for unemployed teachers are all positive ideas that are worthy of consideration.

However, much of what Iain Gray said yesterday, via a delivery that still needs a strong polish, was inane nonsense. Even the short part that I was able to see live felt interminable.

Overly long and irrelevant content on teaching, working abroad, Keir Hardie, the NHS in 1948 and Pinochet for goodness sake… I mean this in the nicest possible way, noone cares. As for the line “the worst of housing makes the best of people”, one can only wonder what monstrous policy idea that ludicrous soundbite emanated from. One suspects that there will be an uprising from the downtrodden if Gray’s working class hero schtick continues to be so clumsily and insultingly deployed.

The overriding impression that I (and my fellow onlookers) were left with was that this was a speech steeped in negativity and Labour still lacks a key message, a reason for all the sound and fury; something other than being for winning and against losing at least, to borrow another West Wing line. Even the Labour stalwarts looked dullly uninspired as they obediently clapped at respectful intervals.

Don’t get me wrong, there is the beginnings of something there, a restirring of the Scottish Labour beast but this Oban Conference still left us to mull over what Labour’s core message is. What’s the story from Tobermory? Well, wouldn’t we like to know.

And for me, Labour’s problem is this. Scotland doesn’t really need radical change right now. The next Government, regardless of party affiliation or constitutional aspiration, just needs to batten down the collective hatches for a few years. It needs to safeguard as many jobs, put as many students into universities and colleges, protect as many OAPs from a good number of risks and create as fertile an economy for sustainable growth as it possibly can. That’s not radical, it’s straightforward management and a business that the SNP has already marked itself out as an effective provider of.

So genuine questions, and ones that Scots will be asking themselves soon are: Why do we need Jackie Baillie instead of Nicola Sturgeon? Why do we need Baker instead of MacAskill? And, most pertinent of all, why do we need FM Gray instead of FM Salmond?

One can point to reasons why we moved from Labour to Tory in 1979, from Tory to Labour in 1997 and from Labour to SNP in 2007. That reason does not yet exist in 2010 and is the message that Iain Gray, and Scottish Labour as a whole, still need to find in advance of May 2011.

Neo-nazis: ignore them and they’ll go away?

Oct 23

Posted by James in Parties | 4 Comments

Jeff recently wrote about the Swedish experience with the so-called rise of the far right, when the media made it look like boyish Jimmie Akesson’s party won outright. Yesterday these anti-foreigner parties met each other in Austria to pontificate primarily about the “Islamisation” of Europe (for instance, 4.2% of Austrians are Muslims). It’s not just a one-off meeting: they sit together in the European Parliament as the “Alliance of European Nationalist Movements”. Curiously, foreigners who hate the foreigners who come to their countries are OK.

The extent of their rise can be debated. In Sweden, just just one voter in 18 backed them, and if they’ve “risen”, the Greens and others “rose” further. In Scotland, they got less than the pensioners, the Tommy-fragment of the SSP, and one of the two evangelical parties. Even their 2009 Euro success was on a reduced vote but with a lower turnout overall, effectively driven by the abstention of former Labour voters.

Nevertheless, how should the non-fascist majority respond to these parties, before, during and after elections? In general should we boycott them, confront them, ignore them, or even try to reach out specifically to their voters?

The day after the Swedish elections, the Guardian contained another of those regular broadsides against the complacent liberal elites who ignored the Sweden Democrats under the seductive headline “We should have argued Sweden Democrats to oblivion”. When you get into the detail, some of Mankell’s criticisms seem reasonable – does it help to refuse to have your makeup done alongside a fascist before a TV debate? There are arguments for being there and taking part, and there are for “no-platforming” them, but that’s just silly. Conversely, not letting them distribute racist material to schools seems pretty reasonable to me.

The same debates took place here during the Euro elections, and it’s easy to see why. As is regularly observed, free speech only means anything when it applies to people whose opinions you abhor, people exactly like Nick Griffin. Yet does their right to freedom of speech mean he has to get rushed an invitation to the BBC’s Question Time less than six months after becoming an MEP? There have been Greens in the Scottish Parliament for eleven years, but not one has been invited onto this flagship programme.

The other instinct is the one expressed by Mankell – the far-right’s arguments are specious and flimsy as well as hateful, and a good debate with them shows that off. Griffin is almost a parody of himself (see how easy it was for Cassetteboy). The Scottish Greens debated a “no platform” policy some conferences ago, and a passionate version of this argument from a Highlands member won the day. It’s also fun to shout at them. It gives all good lefties that warm fuzzy feeling – we may disagree about the detail, but look how virtuous we all look next to these bastards. I’ve done it myself.

But what actually works? Is there a tactic to adopt which is consistent both with the morality of free speech and the tactics of stopping them? Bonnie Meguid did some research that might be useful for her book Party Competition Between Unequals (pdf), which looks at the tactical decisions made by larger parties to respond to newer entrants: the far right, the “ethnoterritorials” like the SNP (a description I’m sure they love), and the Greens.

Her theory focuses on the three issues of Position, Salience, and Ownership. When a new party appears with a single key policy (e.g anti-immigration, devolution/independence, the environment) other parties can amend their position on that issue, they can increase or decrease the extent to which that single issue is regarded as salient, and they can boost or reduce that new party’s ownership of the issue.

She considers three responses older parties can make to these new entrants. First, they can ignore them and ignore their issue. This helps reduce the importance with which the issue is regarded (salience), and, all other factors being equal, reduces the smaller party’s vote. For an example, the response of mainstream parties to the evangelicals’ call for an explicitly Christian politics gets almost totally ignored. Even the devout like Blair get told “we don’t do God”. Although Scottish politics used to have a stronger sectarian aspect, it’s now largely accepted that one’s faith or absence thereof simply isn’t salient to your politics.

Second, the existing parties can accommodate the newcomer’s issue and develop somewhat similar policy themselves: the Tories moved right on immigration when the National Front first appeared, for instance. This will again tend to depress the smaller party’s vote by reducing their ownership of their key issue. Meguid describes the successful ways first the Tories then Labour sought to accommodate environmentalism after the Green Party’s 1989 false dawn, an accommodation she believes was the main factor behind the decade of Green weakness before the election of first Robin to Holyrood then Jean and Caroline to the European Parliament.

Finally, the existing parties can take an adversarial approach (think the French Socialists attacking Le Pen). Counter-intuitively, this boosts smaller party votes by raising the profile of their issue and ensuring they own it in the public mind. Cynical use of this strategy is best done by parties at the opposite end of the spectrum, where they believe their mainstream opponents will suffer most, and they will gain, relatively. While she downplays the ideological satisfaction of this kind of combative approach, there are clearly examples where cynicism was the motivation. She describes one shocking incident in France where the Socialists persuaded their friends in broadcasting to invite Le Pen into a debate, a debate they then boycotted with a great fanfare.

There are some weaknesses in the theory, or at least incompletenesses – is each party’s internal coherence and organisational ability really not a significant factor? – but it suggests a way forward. Don’t ban them, don’t no-platform them, don’t egg them, don’t try to curtail their free speech and feed their victim mentality, but don’t rail against them or run specifically anti-Nazi campaigns. It’s tempting, it’s fun, but it’s strengthening them. The other parties should just work hard and get their own vote out. When you are in debates with them, just stay calm and stick to the issues (interestingly, this is the approach our Dutch colleagues have already adopted with Geert Wilders, I’m told).

And when you see someone running a campaign centred on them, perhaps it’s innocent, perhaps it’s cynical, but it seems pretty likely they’re also picking an easy way to cover up for their own shortage of ideas.

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Cameron finally accepts that Trident shouldn’t cost a bomb

Oct 19

Posted by Jeff in Economy, Parties, Westminster | 2 Comments

There is something of a boating theme to today’s posts on here as the latest news in the drip-drip-drip of announcements before George Osborne’s CSR speech is that David Cameron has decided to delay the the replacement of Trident until at least beyond 2015.

Given the choice between Trident being replaced from tomorrow and Trident being replaced after the next parliamentary term, anyone against nuclear weapons would opt for the latter so in that respect today’s news is to be welcomed. However, given the choice between deciding once and for all that we will not renew our nuclear weapons and postponing the decision until later, the former is by far preferable. So, in short, good news but the fight goes on.

In political terms, the Conservatives are at risk of leaving themselves exposed by attempting an understandable compromise. The hawkish right wing of the Tory party will be deeply dismayed that they will have to wait longer for new toys in the arsenal and the left-wing anti-nuclear camp may be concerned that this was their best chance to put Trident to bed forever and that opportunity has been missed.

For the Lib Dems, while they have been criticised for reneging on some of their principles on here before, they should only be applauded when they make good on their objective to ‘leftify’ how a Conservative majority Government would have operated. It looks like this is one area where Clegg, Alexander, Huhne and Cable can be satisfied with their contribution.

For Labour, I have been unable to find a response from Jim Murphy on the Trident issue as it seems Jim’s deputy Kevan Jones has taken the lead on this one. I rather suspect that the coalition postponing the Trident decision will push Labour into being more ardent defenders of the (literally) indefensible and I equally suspect that Jim Murphy will step back from the headlines, for fear of painting Labour as the sole defenders of Trident which may not play well at the Scottish Parliament elections.

All in all though, this is surely a good day for the Greens, for the SNP and a for a significant tranche of the Lib Dems who have all argued that building Cold War bombs is a hideous waste of money.