I can understand why people are so ambivalent about this Lib Dem – Tory coalition, and my instinctive response to it was also negative. But the more I think about it the more I think it is for the best. It is the best of a collection of less-than-perfect outcomes. Which is a strange thing to say, I guess, given that with a relatively feeble performance at the election we (I keep saying “we” and then deleting and replacing with Lib Dems, but I am getting sick of doing it. To qualify, I am a Lib Dem voter, not a party member. But I do feel a certain loyalty to the party) have found ourselves with a taste of power.
Bottom line: we believe in PR. That system requires forming coalition governments based on what the public has voted for. If all the parties say, in effect: “We will never ally with the Tories” then PR is not representative or democratic. For better or worse, more people voted Tory at this election than for anyone else. So it is fair enough they be in office. Personally, I would rather the Lib Dems came in with them and exerted some influence over policy than the Tories had an outright majority and allowed their right wing to run riot.
And yes, this will involve compromises. But then, it’s not like we would be getting more Lib Dem policies through if we didn’t form part of this coalition. Given the choice of either 20% of our manifesto or 0%, I’d take 20%. And given the choice of 100% of the Tories’ or 80%, I’d take 80%. I actually think the compromises are pretty reasonable, in the main.
I’m sick to death – and its only been a couple of weeks – of people talking about how the two parties have been merged into one now, and hinting at the LDs as now being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tories (this position was most notably put forward, from what I have seen, by Mehdi Hasan on Question Time last week. For the record I thought he was great value. I imagine if the conversation hadn’t been predominantly about the coalition I would have agreed with a lot of what he said).
The LDs are not a subsidiary of the Conservatives. Of course both parties deserve to be represented in a debate, even if they both support the same government. They represent completely different people within the electorate, and have almost diametrically opposed ways of looking at life. When a Tory looks at criminal figures, he demands more prisons. When a Lib Dem looks at the same thing, he demands schools, youth clubs or economic opportunities, to try to prevent crime being committed in the first place. To most people in this country that sounds naïve. So be it.
So I understand those that believe the LDs are spiritually and in terms of policy closer to Labour. I just about agree (despite not liking Labour’s authoritarian streak, and finding the constant repetition about “tax credits for middle income families” faintly ludicrous in the context of the economic situation we are in. Trying to seduce the middle classes with goodies is SO 1997 – come on Brown, get with the programme: 2010 is all about manageable austerity). But that is not what people voted for. Let’s not feed the view that we are just a protest vote for alternative Labour voters by giving the impression we do not have the independence to go it alone.
I am proud the LD politicians who have their reservations about this have so far held their peace and seem to be trying to make it work. I appreciate a lot of what I said above has been said before. But I hope some of the criticisms of the party die down – at least those from within – and the debate turns to more constructive things.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, 17 May 2010
Saturday, 12 July 2008
Are environmentalism and capitalism compatible?
OK on the one hand the two are desperately trying to coexist, via carbon trading, the development of renewable technologies and – although this one is accidental – the massive rises in the price of oil.
There are plenty more areas, however, where the two forces are in opposition. Capitalism is synonymous with consumerism: capitalism works on the basis that people get paid to work in companies that produce things to sell. Regardless of whether they actually need them. Demand, where it does not occur naturally, has to be manufactured through ever-more sophisticated and invasive marketing. If the aim was to ensure every family had a car, that would not provide enough work to the masses of people who currently work for car companies. So the aim has to be for everyone to have a new car. So the world keeps making and making and making things and the old things have to be thrown away to make room for the new ones.
It is often said: “They don’t make things like they used to.” I wonder how many people consider the implications of this. People used to be made to last, because consumerism was in its infancy, and companies had not considered the possibility of reaching a point of saturation in their markets. So manufacturers were not concerned about whether they could sell a car to a family that already had one, because there were plenty of families without one to target.
Now items are made with a very limited shelf life. It is a balancing act: maintaining brand credibility through the perception of quality, while ensuring the need to replace products relatively frequently. And it is not only through things breaking down, and becoming “cheaper to replace than to fix.” It is through the holding back of innovations that have already been thought up in order to sell lesser innovations first. Don’t think that Gillette haven’t already had the idea of a razor with eight blades (for the closest ever shave). It is just that before that they have to surprise us with offerings with six and seven blades.
Everything is geared towards selling and consumption. And consumerism leads to the rapid consumption of the world’s finite resources. It makes any plans to curb energy consumption look largely fanciful: can efficiency gains offset the elevation of emerging economies to the same level of consumerism the West has enjoyed in recent decades? It is hard to see.
I have long counted myself as an economic liberal. I have been convinced of the case for free markets as a force for poverty reduction and the elevation of living standards around the world. (When emerging markets get stiffed by the West it is rarely free trade per se causing the problem, but the lack of its consistency in application. In essence, rich countries want free trade when it suits them, but protect their own workers when it doesn’t.)
But if the environmentalist agenda is to be taken seriously it is increasingly difficult to justify this view. The difficulty comes in settling on a viable alternative to the current political and economic system. Capitalism is too comfortable for people to relinquish it easily. It is system that rewards greed and channels it into productivity. There is no reason to suspect that a system that puts the planet above the individual will fare any better than one that tried to put society’s interests first (communism).
Following this line of thought, however, perhaps the next stage in history’s development will see the outbreak of environmentalist revolutions in countries particularly concerned about, or affected by, global warming and/ or resource depletion. Followed, presumably, by the emergence of environmentalist dictatorships. These would descend, over time, into the inevitably self serving and power hoarding cradles of corruption that is the fate of all but a handful of dictatorships, no matter how ideologically sound they were at the point of conception.
(This is not to say that democracies are not self serving or power hoarding, but that, when they work well, they recognise this trait in themselves, and seek to offset this tendency by diversifying the power bases in a system of checks and balances.)
Can democracy evolve away from unfettered capitalism towards environmentalism? Socialism wove itself into the fabric of democracy so that, in the main, it rose above party politics, so that in the UK we have a consensus that the state has to look after workers. Marx would presumably feel a little placated: the rich still get richer on the backs of the poor, but at least the poor get sick leave, paid holiday time and some oversight in the quality of their conditions. It is a lot less than he hoped for, but a vast improvement on what he was confronted with in his day.
And it is on this same trajectory that we are currently moving. Not a radical rethink of the system by which we live, but a moderation of the existing system in the right general direction. The question is: will this be enough? Will carbon trading, a few dozen windmills dotted around the country and, as Brown would remind us, a cut down in wastage be enough?
There is a definite generational divide in this debate and it is obvious treating the environmental situation as an impending cataclysmic event alienates many people – people of all ages, though the younger generation certainly see it as more serious. The older generation have lived through various threats to civilization and fancy this is just another issue that mankind will muddle through – like the Cold War or the Millennium Bug. And that is quite possibly true. But that is not to deny the problem: just as the Cold War left us with a legacy of problems around the world, so too will “The War on Carbon.”
A better analogy is probably the Industrial Revolution (in this context it is probably more helpful to think of it as the first stage in an ongoing revolution – or evolution). It became obvious the pollution caused by those early factories and mills had to be brought under control when London was caked in black soot. Industry cleaned its act up. The same with early urbanisation and hygiene, after plagues made it obvious city life demanded higher standards. We need to replicate those efforts, and perhaps once the full extent of the problem becomes clear it will be possible to adapt the system sufficiently to resolve the fundamental problems we have with our system.
There are plenty more areas, however, where the two forces are in opposition. Capitalism is synonymous with consumerism: capitalism works on the basis that people get paid to work in companies that produce things to sell. Regardless of whether they actually need them. Demand, where it does not occur naturally, has to be manufactured through ever-more sophisticated and invasive marketing. If the aim was to ensure every family had a car, that would not provide enough work to the masses of people who currently work for car companies. So the aim has to be for everyone to have a new car. So the world keeps making and making and making things and the old things have to be thrown away to make room for the new ones.
It is often said: “They don’t make things like they used to.” I wonder how many people consider the implications of this. People used to be made to last, because consumerism was in its infancy, and companies had not considered the possibility of reaching a point of saturation in their markets. So manufacturers were not concerned about whether they could sell a car to a family that already had one, because there were plenty of families without one to target.
Now items are made with a very limited shelf life. It is a balancing act: maintaining brand credibility through the perception of quality, while ensuring the need to replace products relatively frequently. And it is not only through things breaking down, and becoming “cheaper to replace than to fix.” It is through the holding back of innovations that have already been thought up in order to sell lesser innovations first. Don’t think that Gillette haven’t already had the idea of a razor with eight blades (for the closest ever shave). It is just that before that they have to surprise us with offerings with six and seven blades.
Everything is geared towards selling and consumption. And consumerism leads to the rapid consumption of the world’s finite resources. It makes any plans to curb energy consumption look largely fanciful: can efficiency gains offset the elevation of emerging economies to the same level of consumerism the West has enjoyed in recent decades? It is hard to see.
I have long counted myself as an economic liberal. I have been convinced of the case for free markets as a force for poverty reduction and the elevation of living standards around the world. (When emerging markets get stiffed by the West it is rarely free trade per se causing the problem, but the lack of its consistency in application. In essence, rich countries want free trade when it suits them, but protect their own workers when it doesn’t.)
But if the environmentalist agenda is to be taken seriously it is increasingly difficult to justify this view. The difficulty comes in settling on a viable alternative to the current political and economic system. Capitalism is too comfortable for people to relinquish it easily. It is system that rewards greed and channels it into productivity. There is no reason to suspect that a system that puts the planet above the individual will fare any better than one that tried to put society’s interests first (communism).
Following this line of thought, however, perhaps the next stage in history’s development will see the outbreak of environmentalist revolutions in countries particularly concerned about, or affected by, global warming and/ or resource depletion. Followed, presumably, by the emergence of environmentalist dictatorships. These would descend, over time, into the inevitably self serving and power hoarding cradles of corruption that is the fate of all but a handful of dictatorships, no matter how ideologically sound they were at the point of conception.
(This is not to say that democracies are not self serving or power hoarding, but that, when they work well, they recognise this trait in themselves, and seek to offset this tendency by diversifying the power bases in a system of checks and balances.)
Can democracy evolve away from unfettered capitalism towards environmentalism? Socialism wove itself into the fabric of democracy so that, in the main, it rose above party politics, so that in the UK we have a consensus that the state has to look after workers. Marx would presumably feel a little placated: the rich still get richer on the backs of the poor, but at least the poor get sick leave, paid holiday time and some oversight in the quality of their conditions. It is a lot less than he hoped for, but a vast improvement on what he was confronted with in his day.
And it is on this same trajectory that we are currently moving. Not a radical rethink of the system by which we live, but a moderation of the existing system in the right general direction. The question is: will this be enough? Will carbon trading, a few dozen windmills dotted around the country and, as Brown would remind us, a cut down in wastage be enough?
There is a definite generational divide in this debate and it is obvious treating the environmental situation as an impending cataclysmic event alienates many people – people of all ages, though the younger generation certainly see it as more serious. The older generation have lived through various threats to civilization and fancy this is just another issue that mankind will muddle through – like the Cold War or the Millennium Bug. And that is quite possibly true. But that is not to deny the problem: just as the Cold War left us with a legacy of problems around the world, so too will “The War on Carbon.”
A better analogy is probably the Industrial Revolution (in this context it is probably more helpful to think of it as the first stage in an ongoing revolution – or evolution). It became obvious the pollution caused by those early factories and mills had to be brought under control when London was caked in black soot. Industry cleaned its act up. The same with early urbanisation and hygiene, after plagues made it obvious city life demanded higher standards. We need to replicate those efforts, and perhaps once the full extent of the problem becomes clear it will be possible to adapt the system sufficiently to resolve the fundamental problems we have with our system.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Political engagement
I've just been watching Question Time - one of the television highlights of the week. Amazed to hear the level of congratulation from some members of the audience, and self congratulation from Douglas Alexander, the Labour politician in attendance, about the G8 discussing the world food crisis.
Why should they deserve even the slightest bit of praise for that? They are politicians of the world’s richest countries; it is their job to discuss these issues. If they solved them they would deserve some credit. Talk about setting the benchmark low for political achievements.
It strikes me as being as damning about the level of engagement and expectation of the public with politics and its puppets as typical election turnouts. The former certainly helps explain the latter: if you are only voting for which face is going to turn up to a conference and talk about something (without making any progress towards actually doing anything useful, you understand) then why bother taking the time out of your day?
It isn’t quite as simple as that, of course. Either that or I am more optimistic than many. I am enormously frustrated by politics and the inability of politicians to resolve the problems that face them. But it doesn’t stop me being interested in it.
Why should they deserve even the slightest bit of praise for that? They are politicians of the world’s richest countries; it is their job to discuss these issues. If they solved them they would deserve some credit. Talk about setting the benchmark low for political achievements.
It strikes me as being as damning about the level of engagement and expectation of the public with politics and its puppets as typical election turnouts. The former certainly helps explain the latter: if you are only voting for which face is going to turn up to a conference and talk about something (without making any progress towards actually doing anything useful, you understand) then why bother taking the time out of your day?
It isn’t quite as simple as that, of course. Either that or I am more optimistic than many. I am enormously frustrated by politics and the inability of politicians to resolve the problems that face them. But it doesn’t stop me being interested in it.
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