The decision that doomed the Lib Dems

The result of the British General Election partly confirmed my earlier post in which I said Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn had no chance of winning.

It was an easy prediction to make. Corbyn was perceived by many to be an old-style leftie, set in the ways of public ownership and centralised Government in a world which had moved away from those ideologies.

Moreover, his irritating fence-sitting over whether Britain should leave the European Union had alienated both Brixiteers and Remainers. Trying to be all things to all people, in the end meant he was nothing to anyone on this central issue of the campaign.

Where I got it wrong was my doubt over whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson would get a majority.

Here I was expecting a much better showing from the Liberal Democrats, the one party who throughout its history has supported membership of the European Union.

I thought this would resonate with enough Remain voters for the Liberal Democrats to pick up seats and hold the balance of power in the next Parliament.

Instead the party won a miserable 11 seats and its leader, Jo Swinson, lost hers.

While it is often said that a week is a long time in politics, in searching for the reasons why the Lib Dems failed to break through as a realistic third power and kingmaker in this election, it is necessary to go back almost a decade.

In 2010 the party was riding high with 57 seats and 23 per cent of the vote in the recently completed General Election. The Conservatives, led by David Cameron, had the most seats, but was short of an absolute majority.

After considerable thought the Lib Dems’ leader, Nick Clegg went into coalition with Cameron — it was to prove a fateful decision.

The Conservatives’ central plank was fiscal responsibility after what they considered to be years of wasteful spending under Labour. Among their targets was university tuition fees which they wanted to raise.

The Liberal Democrats had campaigned on the promise they would not raise the fees; Clegg had signed a pledge with the National Union of Students that the party would have none of it, yet in Government he supported the raise.

So the fees went up and Clegg and his party went into sharp decline.

That decision was all the more devastating because with the two major parties moving slowly but steadily towards their extremes, the Lib Dems were finding a centralist role among the moderate middle classes.

Their support was strongest among student activists and academics in the university towns.

As Cameron explains in his recent book, For The Record: “Their tuition-fee reversal was also the worst type of broken promise: The type you  break by actively going back on your word, rather than by failing to meet a target that you have set.

“In my view, that type is far more serious, and will be seen as such by the voters.”

So it was: In the 2015 General Election the Liberal Democrats shrunk to just eight seats and Clegg, belatedly apologising for the tuition fee reversal, resigned.

I believe the party was right to side with the Conservatives in 2010 rather than prop up a tired Labour administration that had been in office for 13 years. However, a full coalition, despite its glittering prize of Ministerial rewards, was a mistake.

An agreement involving a promise to always vote on ‘supply’ of finances so the Government could do its job — and at least abstain on any votes of no confidence, would have been sufficient.

In that way only the Conservatives would have worn the criticism for their unpopular measures and the Lib Dems would have kept faith with their supporters.

This latest poll shows the Liberal Democrats have failed to mend fences and have yet to regain the trust of those who once put their faith in them.

For those of us who believe that Brexit will be disastrous for the UK, it is the true tragedy of this election.

Corbyn will lose – but will the Tories win?

As the British General Election campaign enters its final days one outcome is becoming clear — it will not result in a Labour Government.

Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn has no chance of overhauling Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, while third party Liberal Democrats appear set to remain just that — a third force in United Kingdom politics.

Beyond that nothing is certain.

A few days ago the predictions were for a Conservative majority of around 60, but since then polls on the number people who are prepared to vote tactically — that is voting for a party they would not normally support in order to keep another party out — by one measure as much as 10 per cent of the electorate, has muddied the water.

Two other factors may work to narrow the Conservative lead still further in the run up to polling day: Concerns over the future of the National Health Service (NHS) after Brexit, and the damning indictment of the Government’s policies over leaving the European Union from a diplomat who has resigned rather than continue to try and ‘sell’ them.

The NHS has been a persistent thorn in the Government side, with critics claiming that crucial aspects of the universal health care system may be negotiated away in a rush to do a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States.

A leaked report posted on the internet, admittedly from a dubious Russian source, suggests the NHS would be “on the table” in any talks.

If nothing else, this news has highlighted how easy it is for the country’s democratic process to become vulnerable to influence from overseas — something that has been claimed to have affected the outcome of the 2016 referendum which resulted in a narrow majority to leave the EU.

On top of this came comments in a resignation letter from Alexandra Hall Hall, the diplomat in charge of explaining Britain’s approach to leaving the European Union to the US Congress and the White House.

Ms Hall Hall said she had become increasingly dismayed by the demands placed on the Civil Service to make claims about Brexit that were not “fully honest”.

She did not name any particular figure in the UK Government but said leaders were reluctant to be honest with Brexit to the point where it was undermining the credibility of the UK abroad.

Ms Hall Hall said her position had become “unbearable personally and untenable professionally”.

In other late developments, one of the masterminds behind the Conservatives’ 2015 election victory, Lord Cooper, said the Conservatives had degenerated from a “broad-based, open-minded, aspirational One Nation party into a narrow nationalist party obsessed by the single issue of securing Brexit at any cost”.

Lord Cooper said it was clear from his surveys that a majority of voters did not want the Conservative version of Brexit to go ahead without a referendum, but also that the majority was opposed to a Labour Government led by Corbyn. 

It may be that the outcome of this election may rest with moderate Conservative voters, the so-called ‘civilised Tories’ in the Ken Clarke mould, appalled by the unabashed jingoism of the current leadership, but wondering if they have no choice other than to go along with it.

Their decision will be crucial – but for many it may not be made until they enter the polling booth.

Toxic Brexit a recipe for strife

Nowhere in the United Kingdom are the toxic effects of Brexit more felt than in Northern Ireland.

The pact made with the European Union by Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘to get Brexit done’ has produced a unity of sorts with all communities in the Province determined to oppose it.

However, that unity is paper thin concealing a roiling sectarian anger threatening the fragile peace that has prevailed for the past two decades.

Historically Northern Ireland’s Protestant Unionists have favoured retaining links with Britain, while Catholic Republicans seek to unite the Province with the Irish Republic.

At the 2016 referendum Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by a substantial majority. For different reasons, both sides in the sectarian divide saw advantages in an arrangement that allowed free movement between north and south while keeping the Province’s links with the UK.

Their vote — and that of Scotland’s — was overwhelmed by the predominately English decision to leave. It was the beginning of a downward slide that is sorely testing the strength of the historic Good Friday Accords of 1998.

Under the EU, the border between the two Irelands is open, uniting the island in all but name. Leaving could have meant the reintroduction of customs, the so-called ‘hard’ border, anathema to the Republicans and a spur to the resumption of sectarian strife.

It is Johnson’s compromise — the so-called ‘Irish Sea Border’ that treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, that is almost universally opposed by the Unionist Protestants

Republicans see their dream of a united Ireland — and the end of the flow of EU money that has done much to revitalise the Northern Ireland economy — slipping away.

Unionists feel betrayed, especially as their main party in Parliament, the Democratic Unionists, played a vital role in propping up the Conservative Government after its disastrous 2017 General Election.

While there will be few Northern Ireland votes for Johnson in the December 12 poll, it is unlikely to matter. The Conservatives are expected to be returned on the backs of an English majority and Brexit will be done.

The forces that could be unleashed by this are evident in statements by key figures on either side of the sectarian divide.

Speaking at the annual conference of the pro-Irish Sinn Fein Party, President Mary Lou McDonald called for a referendum on unification with the Republic.

“The days of partition are numbered, change is in the air. Brexit has changed everything,” she said.

In the next five years let the people have their say.”

Meanwhile, a leading Member of the Protestant Orange Order, Mervyn Gibson has called for a campaign of civil disobedience if the Johnson deal comes into operation.

While Mr Gibson stressed such a campaign should be peaceful, another prominent Unionist, retired clergyman Harold Good said criminal elements within loyalist paramilitaries could easily hijack the protests.

Those of us with long memories will remember that it was a peaceful civil rights movement in the late 1960s, led in this case by aggrieved Catholics, which resulted in the sectarian strife that tore the Province apart for almost 30 years.

Leadership lacking in an age of chaos

In the drama series Years and Years, currently running on SBS Television, an initially well-off couple lose their jobs as the United Kingdom plunges further into a post-Brexit recession.

They have to sell their house, depositing the more than £1 million they receive with a bank that fails overnight as the result of a new Global Financial Crisis.

Having lost their house and their money, they are forced to move in with an aged parent while the man, a former banker himself, is reduced to delivering pizzas on a bicycle.

Far-fetched? Australia currently has a household debt-to-income ratio of just under 200 per cent, a situation described as a “massive risk” by economist Gerard Minack.

“It is a house of cards…I just hope we do not head into recession in the next 10 years,” Mr Minack says.

As house prices soar, the million dollar mortgage is no longer unusual, yet even as debt continues to tick upwards, neither the Government, nor many business leaders, seem to be worrying.

Chief Executive of the Commonwealth Bank, Matt Comyn says he has no concerns at the ability of his customers to repay their mortgages.

“Obviously that’s contingent on interest rates remaining low; under any scenario interest rates are going to remain low for the foreseeable future,” Mr Comyn says.

I suppose it is inevitable a prominent banker would want to remain upbeat about the country’s financial future, but in a world where trouble spots are proliferating on a daily basis, it is dangerous to be too optimistic.

With Brexit uncertainties, a continuing trade war between China and the United States, and an unstable President in the White House, ‘foreseeable future’ is a very relative term.

An Australian Government obsessed with balancing the National Budget has dipped its toes in the financial stimulus water with a $3.8 billion infrastructure package that has ‘too little too late’ written all over it.

No one is going to wave flags and dance in the streets if and when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announces the economy is in surplus.

Maybe ‘sound economic management’ had a pleasant ring to it in the past – but something more that steady as we go is needed in these different and troubled times.

With unemployment too high and under-employment a major problem, what is required is an inspirational program of projects that give Australians something to believe in and offer an example to the world.

Australia is better placed than most to withstand the kind of shocks that are multiplying almost daily, but it requires better leadership than has so far been demonstrated by those in charge of its destiny.

A time to build — not balance

Australia is giving every indication of a country coming apart at the seams — an endless drought that has many farmers seriously contemplating their future on the land; raging bushfires devouring lives and property, and the prospects of more of the same, and worse, for months ahead.

Never has there been a greater need for leadership, but leadership is in short supply. Instead, name-calling and the blame game are in top gear, insults and accusations are being hurled across the ideological divide.

Never have politicians seemed so helpless, and hopeless; so completely lacking in answers.

Yes, emergency aid is forthcoming and eventually the shock and mourning will begin to subside, but increasingly Australians are demanding there should be something more than Band-Aid solutions.

Firstly there should be an end to the debate over whether climate change is real. Those that have the view that current weather patterns are just a blip on the radar, to be endured and then forgotten when everything returns to normal, should be respected for their opinions (it’s a free country) and ignored.

Australia simply does not have the luxury of continuing this discussion. Time is running out — and I am not talking about a far-off date in the middle of the century. Some areas are running out of water now. Deserts are on the march.

Secondly, it should be accepted that while Australia’s contribution to what is a global problem is minimal, this should not be used as an excuse for doing nothing. Australia’s climate change crisis and a determination to tackle it must set an example for the world.

Some research suggests that Australia may be the worst affected by a warming climate over the next decades — all the more important that it should be seen to be doing more than anywhere else to combat it.

Dams need to be built, research funded and infrastructure planned, all with the aim of reducing the country’s emissions beyond the modest targets currently set. Above all there is a need to think big, to inspire and lead.

One major project that could fall into this category is high-speed rail, outlined by the Chief Executive of the nation’s largest property developer, Stockland’s Mark Steinert and others.

Steinert believes the Federal Government should commit to funding a Sydney-to-Canberra high-speed train and other rail projects as part of a major program of fast-track infrastructure spending.

“A high-speed rail service between Canberra and Sydney would have a significant, positive impact on productivity given the frequent travel between, and national importance of, these two cities,” he said.

High speed rail would easily be the most efficient method of moving goods and people around the nation, reducing the need for pollution-emitting heavy vehicles and cars on the roads.  

That network could already have been in place had former Prime Minister John Howard not listened to a barrage of dry economic advice in the 1990s after he proposed it as an ambitious nation-building project.

Unfortunately that thinking still dominates the current Government and its obsession with ‘balancing the books’ to prove its ‘sound economic management’.

One wonders how much inspiration the public will draw from black figures in the Treasury’s balance sheet in contrast to a sustainable infrastructure program that would boost economic activity through jobs growth, productivity gains and increased mobility.

Last chance for second thoughts on Brexit

With the United Kingdom General Election now under way and described as “the most crucial in a 100 years” (we’ve heard that many time before but there is a ring of truth about it this time) former Foreign Secretary David Miliband says the long running debate over whether the country should leave the European Union is undermining  democracy.

Slamming the persistent Government rhetoric that the “will of the people” as expressed in the 2016 referendum to leave must be followed, Miliband (pictured) says that mandate is out of date, given all that has happened — and been revealed about the campaign itself — in the three years since.

In a recent visit to the UK from the United States where now serves as Chief Executive of the International Rescue Committee overseeing humanitarian aid and development programs in around 40 countries, Miliband decried the claim that leaving the EU must be implemented because to do otherwise would endanger democracy.

“It cannot be more democratic to plough on with a version of Brexit that was never presented to the public in 2016, than to consult on whether they want to go ahead with this plan,” he said.

It should be apparent to any reasonable person that what Miliband says is true. In 2016 there was little or no debate on the status of Northern Ireland and its land border with the Republic.

There was no serious discussion on the status of EU citizens in the UK, some of who had been living there for decades, or of what would happen to UK citizens who had made their homes in EU countries.

Concerns about the problems that might be faced by British companies that did much of their business with Europe, or who were reliant on EU exports, were dismissed with the fatuous slogan “Project Fear”.

In fact slogans were all that the supporters of Brexit really had. “We want our country back” was one that was heard over and over again — an Animal Farm-style drowning out of any chance of rational debate.

Worst of all were the deliberate lies: The hundreds of million pounds to be saved that currently went into the greedy coffers of Brussels; the lucrative trade deals with the rest of the world that would be lined up on the day after departure.

I have no doubt that among segments of the population there is a hatred of Europe that borders on fanaticism; a desire to leave whatever the price to be paid, whatever the hardships to be endured.

A recent poll among current supporters of Leave found that 75 per cent did not care if Remain-supporting Scotland became independent, and Remain-supporting Northern Ireland joined the Irish Republic, if that was the price to pay for an English Brexit.

These people are entitled to their opinions. However, they are opinions that should surely be tested in a new public vote, given the consequences that have been revealed.

Given also the frail 3.9 per cent margin in 2016 and what has happened since, it would be reckless irresponsibility to do anything else.

Miliband went further, saying a first-past-the-post referendum that split the country almost down the middle was an example of “an early 20^th century class-based structure struggling to cope with 21^st century demands.”

Calling for a “reboot of UK democracy” he said changes could include the adoption of citizens’ assemblies, electoral reform and a written constitution.

I would add compulsory voting, but these are matters for later.

For the moment, it can only be hoped that the outcome on 12 December will produce an opportunity for the British people to have second thoughts on whether they want to take the momentous step of cutting themselves off from their European partners. 

Is this the world we want?

Throughout my career as a reporter I have had almost as many people tell me that politicians are all liars, as those that say they don’t believe anything that journalists write.

The prevailing opinion was that “politicians are out for themselves”; that “there is no difference between the political parties”.

Those of us who were closer to the action knew that while there was always a grain of truth in these comments, most politicians were genuinely trying to do the job they were elected for, and if they didn’t quite measure up…well they were only human.

That was before the election of United States President Donald Trump.

Trump uses Twitter to communicate with his public. While traditionalists might cringe at this, it has to be accepted that Twitter, and other social media, are good ways, maybe even the best ways, of getting a messages across in the modern era.

After all, Trump wasn’t the first. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used it effectively to win election back in 2013; Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was a skilful practitioner.

Apart from the countries where they don’t have to bother, most leaders now use social media to convey their messages to the population.

What makes Trump different is the significant percentage of the more than 11,000 tweets he has made since the beginning of his presidency that are lies — not misrepresentations; not a slight bending of the truth, but flat-out proven porkies.

A couple of examples: “I have cut illegal immigration in half” — Department of Immigration figures show that his record in this area is inferior to Obama’s.

“The Kurds are safer after the US troop withdrawal” — scores have been killed and thousands misplaced.

This is happening to such an extent that lying has become an established part of the Trump presidency, polls showing that most Americans, including many among his own supporters, no longer take him at his word.

A strategic adviser to former President George W. Bush, Peter Wehner says Trump is not just a serial liar, he is attempting to murder the very idea of truth, reaching a stage when the veracity of what is said is no longer relevant.

“That is far worse,” Wehner says, “because without truth a free society cannot operate”.

This is the theme of Trump’s re-election bid. I am the tough guy who doesn’t play by the rules, cuts a few corners, but that is what it takes to face up to the effete denizens of the Washington swamp that are trying to drag down the president you elected.  

Trump’s methods are beginning to resonate. Imitators, to a greater or lesser degree, are springing up in democracies and pseudo democracies around the world. His success points to a tempting path for others to follow.

The longer his example remains, the greater the temptation.

The question is do we want this kind of world? While change is inevitable and often positive in many areas, are there some fundamental principles of honesty and integrity that are worth retaining?

Worth handing on to our children and grandchildren?

We will need answers to this — and very soon.