UK politics

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What’s in a word.

The Prime Minister believes there is nothing wrong with labelling the Benn Act, which prevents him from leaving the EU without a deal, the Surrender Act. His colleagues have suggested it is a legitimate part of robust political discourse. It is equivalent to the Labour Party’s labelling the removal of the “spare room subsidy” as  the “bedroom tax”. This is however a false equivalence.

In the case of the bedroom tax there was a dispute over the change to a welfare benefit which penalised households deemed to have chosen to live in accommodation which had a bedroom they did not need. The Government attacked the Opposition for tax and spend profligacy and a failure to recognise the seriousness of the deficit. The Opposition attacked the Government for a heartless attack on some of the most vulnerable members of society. The debate about this was passionate some might say vitriolic.

However, whilst the terms were strongly contested the disputants were always arguing about who was right and who was wrong. However much they disagreed about who was right and who was wrong they accepted the legitimacy of the other side putting their case. On the bedroom tax, critically, the Government thought the opposition was wrong, but not the enemy.

Using terms like surrender and other rhetoric that has its origins in military discourse and war time challenges the legitimacy of the other sides right to argue a case. The patriotic integrity of the other side is brought into question. They  are no longer people who have a very different view of the world they are the “enemies of the people”.

The distinction between this kind of language and the the dispute over the bedroom tax is fundamental, and profoundly important. It takes public debate into very dangerous territory. At best the PM’s hubris is clouding his common sense. I don’t like to think about the worst.

Recently, I looked at how President Trump compared against a number of tests set out by Levitsky and Ziblatt. in their book How Democracies Die. He did not fare well, which is a real worry for democracy in the US. Sadly, looking at the actions of Mr Johnson we also have cause for concern.

Before I go any further however, let me make clear I do not think Boris Johnson is equivalent to President Trump. Mr Trump is in a category of his own for venality, banality and an absolute stranger to the meaning of right and wrong, truth and lies. By contrast Boris is a pale imitation. But imitation he is.

In their book Levitsky and Ziblatt look at how how populist leaders gain democratic support and then proceed to corrode the democratic system from within. Typically they argue the system is frustrating the “will of the people”. Initially they may well be implementing popular policies but over time their view of the “will of the people” becomes less consistent with what most people think and they transition into increasingly authoritarian systems of government.

This transition is not always the result of a conscious strategy. They did not set out to be an authoritarian. They started out shortcutting the democratic system because it was too bureaucratic, or complex. The shortcuts outrage the opposition who push back and a tit for tat process spirals out of control and can lead to the establishment of a genuinely authoritarian government.

Levitsky and Ziblatt recognise that many people in long established democracies think “it could never happen here”. Their research, however, is a wake up call as in a number of the examples they consider similar views were present before it did, in fact, happen. Their aim is to provide warning signs of the kind of behaviour that precedes a drift to increasing authoritarianism. They identify 4 key indicators and for each indicator they give examples of more or less egregious behaviour which evidence a move towards  it. Thankfully, as yet in Britain, there is evidence of only the first two indicators and indeed the behavioural evidence is at the lower end of the spectrum.

The first key indicator is “Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game”  evidenced by whether they “… they reject the constitution or express a willing ness to violate it.” The Supreme Court seemed to think, eleven / nil, that the Prime Minister’s behaviour did evidence this. Choosing which laws to obey probably falls into this category also.

The second indicator and the one most relevant to the question in hand is the “Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents” evidenced by whether “… they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to the existing constitutional order?” Talk of “surrender”, “traitors” and “betrayal” clearly attack the legitimacy of those opposed to a no-deal Brexit.

Boris Johnson is not a “dictator” and he has not staged a “coup”. He is, however, playing with fire. Talk about a people versus Parliament election ignores that 48% of “the people” wanted to remain. Reinforcing and promoting the divisions in a country should not be the aim of a  of a democratic leader. It may not work  in achieving the leaders goal but even if it does it could well be a case of an operation which was a great success but sadly the patient ended up dead.

 

 

 

 

Michael Gove pulls plans to reveal ‘watered down’ Yellowhammer | Financial Times

Michael Gove has pulled plans to publish a “watered down” version of the government’s Operation Yellowhammer no-deal Brexit contingency plans, after ministers decreed that the findings would still alarm the public.

Mr Gove, minister for no-deal planning, had been expected to publish extracts of the document on Tuesday as part of his efforts to prepare the UK for the possibility of Brexit taking place without an agreement on October 31.

Government officials worked throughout the weekend overhauling the Operation Yellowhammer document, and Mr Gove had hoped to use the work to prove that he had a grip on potential no-deal problems.

via Michael Gove pulls plans to reveal ‘watered down’ Yellowhammer | Financial Times

Lance Corporal Jones continues to reassure the public,… “Don”t panic, don’t panic!”

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“We the people…”

The Constitution of the United States of America has been called one of the hinges of history. For all its imperfections and the compromises over slavery it was a revolutionary document articulating the belief that sovereignty lies with those who are governed and not with those who govern.

The UK took a different path but arrived at a similar recognition of the location of sovereignty. Whilst there are written sources on process, eg Erskine May, there is, however, no definitive written statement of the British Constitution. It is a set of conventions and practices which politicians have more or less adhered to over time.

No one would argue that either constitutional model is perfect but perfection is not a yard stick with much use in the world of politics. Democratic politics is about satisficing, about how the clash of ideas and interests are resolved characteristically by compromise and a willingness to accept outcomes which you have opposed. It may not always get the best answer but will more often than not avoid the worst and critically provide for accountability by the governed of those that govern.

However, crucially, it can only function if there is an overall commitment to, acceptance of and and trust in, the system for securing governments and process of aggregating political ideas and interests. There needs to be an acceptance that the written or unwritten constitution provides a reliable, equable and fair skeleton holding the body politic together. Prime Ministers and Presidents may come and go and the style of governance may ebb and flow but the rules of the game sustain through time, creating continuity and trust in the process if not always happiness with every outcome.

In recent years, on both sides of the Atlantic, weaknesses in this model have come to light. Conventions and indeed laws are only as strong as the willingness of the political elite to follow them. Both here and in America politicians of all persuasions have been engaged in an escalating process of the weaponisation of their respective constitutional norms. This is a very dangerous path. It goes to the integrity of the skeleton without which trust in the process is undermined and commitment to compromise destroyed.

There is no doubt the process is more brazen and ubiquitous in the States, for the time being. President Trump has no understanding of the notion of the separation of powers, the role of an independent judiciary, a free press, the location of sovereignty, or in truth much at all. He is a uniquely awful individual who brings to everything he does a combination of ignorance and prejudice which when combined with the power of his office is truly frightening.

Whilst he has brought a terrible destructive force to the rejection of accepted ways of behaving in truth he is accelerating and deepening a process which has been in chain for some time. Furthermore, culpability for what is happening now is not confined to President Trump. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate has, with the backing of most of the rest of the GOP, sustained and supported his President in a manner which, if there is any justice, history will judge very harshly.

Back here in the UK it is the case that both sides in the Brexit debate have sailed close to the wind in terms of bending and stretching constitutional norms. However, the prorogation of Parliament for 5 weeks at a critical point in the Brexit process raises the the bar to a whole new level. It is a typical populist ploy to claim there needs to be progress and Parliamentarians are getting in the way of firm and clear government. It is also typical of despotic double speak that one claims to be bringing sovereignty back to Parliament by closing it.

If precedents are manipulated to do something they were not intended to they start to lose legitimacy. They then come to mean whatever the government of the day thinks they mean. This completely undermines their function of constraining political battles within civilised bounds. If the rules of the game don’t apply to one side they don’t apply to any. Political debate becomes ever more acrimonious. Effective government ceases, in the United States this has literally involved the shutdown of government 10 times in recent years. The spectacle of all this undermines the faith of the governed in the very process of democratic government and they seek assurance and stability elsewhere. And there is always someone willing to provide that stability, even if the assurance is short lived.

There is a complacency about the strength of democracy, which perhaps derives from the fact that most citizens in the US and UK have experienced nothing other. It may be this complacency has also infected our political elite. They feel they can manipulate the system and it will spring back. They can twist its arm tighter and tighter and it will never break. They need to be aware, however, that a broken convention will take a lot longer to repair than a broken arm, if it is repairable at all.

For a minority of Parliament Brexit is an idee fixe which must be achieved at all costs. They seem to have assessed the political, constitutional and economic cost they are risking as less than the benefits from a country free from Europe. If they get their way we must hope they are right, even if we are sure they are wrong, because if they are wrong they may have inflicted severe harm on democracy in the UK, which, given the current global context, may have implications around the world.

 

 

 

 

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Dark Money

Dark Money by Jane Mayer covers a period from the early 1970’s to the run up to the Trump election. It documents in meticulous detail the amount of money spent over the period by super rich Americans, not just to secure the election of politicians  supportive of their radical libertarian views but more insidiously to shift the terms of political debate to the right.

DMThe process begins in the late 1960’s early 70’s when a number of very wealthy Americans began to fear the US was about to succumb to socialism. It may seem unbelievable now but looking back it was a time of radical foment, the rights of black Americans were being fought for, a nascent women’s rights movement was emerging, young people’s opposition to the Vietnam war resulted in 4 students being shot and killed in a protest at Kent State University.

Whilst all this protest were real worries to many on the right there were other issues about the role of the state that were of perhaps of more profound concern. The Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson had initiated a War on Poverty. Worse however was a proposal by Republican President Richard Milhous Nixon to create a modest basic income, an idea about which there is currently renewed interest.

In 1970 the Family Assistance Plan passed through Congress with a healthy majority but was lost in the Senate to Democratic opposition that it was not radical enough. At the time it was said “This bill represents the most extensive, expensive and expansive welfare legislation ever handled.” Not only was their bipartisan support for this proposed legislation, but it was supported by 90% of the press and popular in the country.

For some, all of this represented an unwarranted intervention by the state in the operation of the market economy. An intervention that would expand the role of the state, require increased taxation and thus impact directly on the fortunes of the very wealthy. Some decided it was time time to act.

Ms Mayer’s book focuses primarily on the brothers Charles and David Koch. The brothers engaged in active politics in the 1970’s providing financial support to the Libertarian Party. In 1980 David Koch ran as the running mate to the party’s Presidential candidate, Ed Clark who was challenging Ronald Reagan, from the right. They got 1% of the vote. From this point on the Koch’s receded from public view and over the next three decades according to Ms Mayer gave well in excess of $100m “…to dozens of seemingly independent organisations aimed at advancing their radical ideas.”

The book charts how the brothers “weaponised philanthropy”, maximising the tax benefits of establishing charitable trusts, thus avoiding inheritance tax, and then using the money from the trusts to support a series of educational and social welfare groups to promote their libertarian viewpoint. Over the years a variety of think tanks were established or supported all with the aim of ensuring that conservative ideas were made respectable.

Over time the thinking evolved and there was a recognition that in order to change opinions the elite educational institutions of the US had to be “penetrated”. This led to the “beach head” theory which was about establishing conservative beach heads at “…the most influential schools in order to gain maximum leverage.” By 2015 the Charles Koch Foundation was “subsidising pro-business, anti-regulatory and anti-tax programmes in 307 different institutions of higher education in America.” Interestingly the book reports a comment about the Golden Rule of philanthropic giving – those with the gold, rule. This was taken to a higher level when a donation of $965,000 to West Virginia University by the Charles Koch foundation came with strings. The foundation was to have a say over the professors it funded, fundamentally undermining academic independence.

The Koch’s were not alone in this enterprise but they did, and continue, to play a major co-ordinating role such that at one point the sprawling breadth of their influence in right wing political promotion was described as Kochtopussy. Ms Mayer’s book makes clear that this was not the outcome of a series of more or less random individual initiatives. Rather it was an evolving, but very conscious, political strategy to move the political goal posts. It responded to a very clear cri de coeur set out in a memo by Lewis Powell in the late 1970’s urging American capitalists to wage “guerrilla warfare” against those he saw as trying to insidiously undermine them. Ms Mayer claims his call to arms inspired some of the super rich, “to weaponise their philanthropic giving in order to fight a multi-front war of influence over American political thought.”

You may wonder whether these people were driven by a bizarre but genuine belief in radical libertarianism, where the state, taxes and regulation were perceived as demeaning constraints on the freedom of the individual. In truth their idealism was always tempered by a strong regard for their personal advantage. When congress was considering the Troubled Assets Relief Progamme (TARP) the Koch’s and their radical caucus were opposed to the massive package of  state support. This changed however when the stock market started to tank. Suddenly their wealth was at risk and opposition to the TARP was dropped.

Another fascinating insight into the motivation of the Koch brothers comes from a post mortem conducted into the right’s failure to prevent a second Obama term at one of their annual seminars. Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute funded generously by the Koch brothers, made the point that if the 1% want to win control of America, “… they needed to rebrand themselves as champions of the other 99%”. This theme was built on in 2014 in a paper that Richard Fink, Charles Koch’s “grand strategist”, gave to a meeting of one of their annual seminars of the libertarian super rich. The paper was entitled “The Long Term Strategy: Engaging the Middle Third”. In a perfectly candid way Fink asked the question, “We want to decrease regulations. Why?” he then answered his own question, “It’s because we can make more profit, okay?.”

One third of the electorate who were perceived as solidly on the side of the libertarians, another third never would be. This mean the battleground was about gaining the trust of the middle third. To do this it would be necessary to convince the them that libertarian intent was virtuous. “We’ve got to convince these people we mean well and that we are good people.”

Following a Supreme Court decision in 2010 known as Citizens United it was found that corporations had the same rights to freedom of speech as individuals. This overturned a century of restrictions banning corporations and unions from spending all they wanted on the election of candidates. This opened the floodgates to political spending to support congressmen and senators and the Koch Brothers took maximum advantage building a real power base which was in but not of the Republican Party.

In 2014 the Koch network invested $100m into House and Senate races for the GOP plus almost twice as much into other kinds of activism. The result was they won full control of both. Their aim was to spend $889m in the 2016 presidential race. Whilst they could not legislate for the Trump wildcard the first attempt to replace Obamacare was such a shambles because of the intransigence of the right wing caucus within the Republican Party largely made up of Koch supported Congressmen and Senators who thought the Trump proposal was too generous!

Dark Money is a sobering work which casts an unflinching light on the very private world of the super rich in America and specifically on the brothers David and Charles Koch estimated to be worth $41.6bn each. It raises all kinds of issue about the role of multi-billionaires in undermining democracy in America and reinforcing a process which is concentrating ever more power and wealth in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of super rich plutocrats.

The influence of the Koch brothers, and many others of the same ilk, is not confined to the States however. They have played a part in shifting the terms of political debate across the whole of the developed world, dragging the centre of politics so far to the right that people like Richard Nixon look like lefty softies. If one thinks about how a proposal to increase taxes on the rich in Britain today would be greeted it is a testament to how far the super rich have captured common sense and shaped it to their benefit.

This is a book that should be read widely. It’s scale will probably prevent this which is a real shame. It is a tremendous summary of a long and sustained process of the exercise of soft power through the expenditure of vast amounts of private money. If the process is not stopped it will ultimately undermine democracy.

Dark Money. Jane Mayer. Scribe Publications 2016