Children as Chaff

Dominic Lawson wrote a powerful piece for The Sunday Times last week and I suspect that few would disagree with his final comment about the behaviour of politicians who use children as 'political chaff'.

I wrote about this myself at the time and said that this 'monstering' approach to politics does the political classes no good at all and helps to explain why so many people are cynical and hostile towards the Westminster Parliament.

And as the Labour Party begins to tear itself apart after the resignation of its Scottish leader, Johann Lamont, it seems plain to me that while Ed Miliband is clearly a clever chap, he has a problem in behaving with real integrity at times.   

So Ed may have scored a 'hit' at Prime Minister's Questions the other week, but his success didn't last long and the Labour leader now looks opportunistic and weak; only for Johann Lamont to cry foul and accuse him of treating the Scottish Labour Party as a 'branch office' of Labour in London.

David Miliband must be glad he's building a new life for himself in New York because Ed's 'victory' in the Labour leadership election (with the backing of trade union votes of course) now looks to be a very badly damaged prize.  


Lord Freud’s slip I don’t mind, but the confected outrage disgusts me

By Dominic Lawson - The Sunday Times

MY 19-year-old younger daughter works for two hours one night a week pulling pints in a pub. She is not paid. And she loves it. To be specific, she loves the sense of performing a task appreciated by others that requires concentration on her part and yet is immensely sociable. For many millions of Britons these are the attributes that make employment psychologically essential, quite apart from any financial rewards: this is why Sigmund Freud observed that the principal ingredients of happiness were love and work.

Unfortunately, not much more than 10% of those with mental disabilities are in employment, so my daughter, who has Down’s syndrome, is statistically most unlikely to have the good life, as set out by the founder of psychoanalysis.

Yet last week one of Freud’s great-grandsons, the government minister Lord Freud, was depicted as a monster for applying his own fertile mind to dealing with precisely this problem. In a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference two weeks ago he was challenged by a Tory councillor, David Scott, whose own daughter had been mentally disabled: “I have a number of mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the minimum wage but want to work. We have been trying to support them in work, but you can’t find people who are willing to pay the minimum wage . . . how do you deal with those sorts of cases?”

Freud replied that the government’s universal credit scheme might help top up their wages, and added: “I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage, and I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally.”

Unknown to Freud, there was a Labour party researcher present who was taping that discussion and passed the recording to his leader’s office. Two weeks later, during a prime minister’s questions that might otherwise have been tricky for Labour on the day record employment figures were announced, Ed Miliband ambushed the PM with Freud’s comments (minus the context) and declared they showed that “the nasty party is back”.

Following Miliband’s line of attack, various disability charities, such as Mencap and Sense, waded in to denounce Freud. Even Esther McVey, his ministerial colleague at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), remarked on BBC2’s Daily Politics: “Those words will haunt him . . . He will have to explain himself.” Oddly enough, just before McVey’s contribution, Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, had conscientiously explained the context of Freud’s remarks.

I gather there was consternation at the DWP over McVey’s apparent willingness to join in the group hate of the by-now- distraught Freud, but fortunately Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state, prevailed on him not to resign. I say fortunately because the day a minister loses his job as a result of an afternoon’s confected outrage in the 24-hour news cycle is the day many other people with a sense of public service would vow never to go into politics themselves.

Freud is a natural target for such abuse, given that he made a lot of money in the City, principally as an adviser on the stock market flotation of large companies. Yet he is far from your typical pinstriped plutocrat, as I know, having worked with him at the Financial Times back in the early 1980s.

When David left the FT for the Square Mile, stock-market analysts were paid no better than senior financial journalists; it was the desire to be making deals rather than opining on them, not the prospect of big money, that lured him away. He still lives in the same unpretentious north London house as he did 30 years ago — and refuses to take any pay for his government work (which he began as an adviser to the last Labour administration).

Indeed, Freud’s semi-public rumination on exempting employment of the mentally disabled from minimum-wage regulations might have stemmed from knowing that Labour had at one point considered precisely this policy: in 2003 it suggested that so-called therapeutic work should not qualify for the minimum wage. It envisaged such work as “packing and assembly . . . for mental health outpatients” to be paid “varying amounts up to £20 per week”.

This document was drawn up after discussions with the very charities that last week were treating Freud as some sort of vermin. They included Mencap, which, when Labour floated this idea, declared that an exemption from minimum-wage regulations should be allowed for those employing the mentally disabled, because “most people with a learning disability want to work and we urge the government to give them that chance”.

Such anger as was genuine stemmed from Freud’s phrase, echoing that of his questioner, that many mentally disabled people “aren’t worth the minimum wage”. On the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday, Ming Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, thundered: “It is a question of dignity — that every citizen is worth as much as every other citizen.” Leaving aside the fact that a person has more dignity in work than out of it, Campbell — along with many others, including his successor, Nick Clegg — was wilfully misunderstanding the point.

Freud was not arguing that some mentally disabled people were worth less in an intrinsic moral sense — merely that their economic value to an employer might be less than the £6.50-an-hour minimum wage, and there are not many bosses who will deliberately hire people at a loss.

Interestingly, the audience showed themselves far more perceptive than the politicians — and very alert to the cheapness of the attacks on Freud’s character and motives. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, after referring to Freud’s words as “utterly appalling”, nervously suggested, “This won’t be popular, but he should be given a second chance” — and, clearly to his surprise, was roundly applauded. Yet Hunt was not as startled as Angela Eagle, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, whose claim that Freud had caused “a great deal of offence to disabled people” and should resign was greeted with boos; to more applause, a member of the audience declared that this was “hypocritical point-scoring, disgusting”.

The flushed look of shock on Eagle’s face was neatly captured by the cameras: she can never have imagined that a cross-section of the public would take the side of a multimillionaire former banker against Labour and a host of disability charities. But while the British people may have no natural affection for pointy-headed policy wonks from the House of Lords, they have a finely tuned hatred of hypocrisy and cant from the House of Commons.

In that context, it is a pity that David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and other Conservatives did not have the courage to explain what Freud was (clumsily) trying to say, rather than just depict him as a sinner who should be forgiven. As we head towards a general election, politicians are becoming ever more nervous of saying anything that might cause the slightest offence to anyone at all.

But, believe me, parents of those with mental disabilities are not particularly offended by Freud’s remarks. The people we can’t forgive are those who would use our children as political chaff.

Dumbing Down Politics (19 October 2014)

John McTernan was a key adviser in the last Labour Government; a bright engaging chap who believes that party politics is a 'contact' sport in which no quarter is asked or given, under the normal rules of engagement at least.

But in response to UKIP's walkover victory in Clacton by-election and, arguably, an even more significant result in the previously safe Labour seat of Heywood and Middleton all bets appear to be off, as the penny drops that voters in some areas of the country are set on punishing the political establishment, which effectively means Labour and the Tories.

Now the recent Scottish independence referendum is proof positive that voters will turn out in large numbers when the stakes are high and if they believe that their views will count.

And the fact that the SNP is still riding high in the opinion polls after more than seven years in government shows that it is possible to exercise power in a difficult political climate and still enjoying relative popularity with the voters.     

So the phenomenon of voters not listening is really one that affects large areas of England rather than Scotland and if you ask me what is at the heart of this malaise, is the gravy train image voters have of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Now John McTernan ends his article by saying that "cabinet ministers and shadow ministers alike believe in this model" which strikes me as an appeal for bi-partisanship across the Tory, Lib Demand Labour parties in order to defeat the political insurgents.

But the reality is that this spirit of political consensus never lasts long as we witnessed the other day when a Government Minister, Lord Freud (a former Labour adviser) was 'monstered' for thinking out loud about the problems profoundly disabled people have in finding work.  

John Rentoul writing in The Independent commented on this ridiculous row which blew up at Prime Minister's Questions last Wednesday:

"I know it got Ed Miliband out of a difficult bunker, but I thought his attack on David Freud, the welfare minister, at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday was old politics. Lord Freud did what we want politicians to do, namely to discuss a complicated problem in public – in this case what might be done to help mentally disabled people find work – and is now being howled down for an unfortunate phrase when, if you read the whole passage, his compassionate intention is plain."

Yet this episode quickly led to an over-the-top, organised attack on Tories for their non-existent attitudes towards disabled people with one commentator from The Guardian opining that 'this government sees disabled people as less than human".

If you ask me, this kind of rabble-rousing nonsense degrades politics and politicians, so it's no surprise to me that the voters aren't listening any more.  

John McTernan: Voters aren’t listening any more

Voters don't seem to mind that Douglas Carswell, left, backs a privatised NHS. Picture: Getty

By JOHN MCTERNAN - The Scotsman

The rise of Ukip shows how much the electorate is in a wild, irrational mood – and the main parties can’t really deal with it, says John McTernan

Chatham Dockyard has a historic heritage. Since the 15th century it has been central to the defence of England, Britain and the UK. It has built over 500 ships, and at its peak employed 10,000 workers. A hub of innovation, engineering and employment. No wonder its closure is a central issue in the Rochester and Strood by-election which was caused by the defection of the marvellously named Mark Reckless from the Tory Party to Ukip, and his subsequent resignation. 

The thing is, Chatham wasn’t closed 30 days ago by David Cameron but 30 years ago by Margaret Thatcher. The grievances that are driving voters are well beyond traditional alienation from politics as practised by the current elite. We are through the looking glass when voters want to use a by-election in the 21st century to re-litigate the 1980s. 

No wonder Labour and Tory politicians wandered round their respective conferences with a dazed and confused look. From junior woodchuck to grizzled greybeard, nothing in their experience had prepared them for this. It’s not just the left-field nature of the grievances, it’s the fact that no traditional political techniques seem to have any effect at all. Tell voters in Clacton that Douglas Carswell, their Tory MP turned Ukip candidate, wants to privatise the National Health Service and halve welfare spending and they just don’t care. It’s as bewildering as Buffy discovering that stakes, crucifixes and sunshine have no effect on vampires.

This is not in the least academic for either party. Yesterday’s by-election is merely the entrée for the Tories. The Rochester and Strood poll follows hot on its heels. What looked like a simpler contest for Cameron – more commuters, fewer pensioners – started to look scarier when a poll by Lord Ascroft gave Ukip a nine-point lead. It’s like snakes on a plane – a threat wherever you turn. 

For Labour it’s no better. Their traditional working-class vote in the North-west of England has long been a target for Ukip. The Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election was just at the start of the recent rise of Ukip, so Labour escaped without a scare.

Heywood and Middleton, though, is different. For a start, the combined right-wing vote – Tories, Ukip and BNP – at the last election was nearly the same as the Labour vote. Worse, it borders on Rochdale – an area in which there was a serious sexual abuse case involving young girls in care being groomed and raped by gangs. 

Race was not the cause of these crimes but Ukip have been quick to point out the rapists and abusers were Asian and the girls mainly white working-class. All of it, in Ukip’s eyes, the fault of Labour. 

This is toxic – and the failure is real. The politicians and professionals betrayed the young women, feeding an anti-establishment mood. Worse by far for Labour is the forthcoming by-election for the Police and Crime Commissioner in South Yorkshire. There, in Rotherham, a massive abuse of young women has been uncovered. The crimes are appalling. 

The institutional failure is systemic. The politics only go one way. Ukip won nearly half the vote in Rotherham in the May local elections. And they have a real issue – the catastrophic failure of public authorities. Labour are treating this as seriously as any parliamentary by-election.

This is the brutal reality of life for Labour and the Tories. They face a foe fuelled equally by real and imaginary grievances. An enemy that is never asked for consistent answers. One that is able to look left on some issues and right on others. And nimble enough, and trusted enough by voters, to hold contradictory positions that would be unsustainable for one of the mainstream parties. 

At this point, Scots would be forgiven for thinking that they have been here already. A large part of the fuel for the Yes campaign was a collective sense of grievance about the Thatcher years. No matter that her era is long gone, and her policies dead and buried. There still remains a wound that is unhealed. It may look ludicrous to vote Ukip because of a 30-year-old decision to close a dockyard, but it’s no more ludicrous voting Yes to avoid a poll tax that was abolished over 20 years ago.

What is being fought by Ukip is a culture war. Like the independence campaign, it is not simply a rerun of the failed, socially conservative, culture wars of the 1980s – the homophobic, racist, anti-feminist, saloon bar politics of that time. It is an inversion of those politics. 

It has often been observed that the Left won the Sixties - in terms of equalities and social issues - and that the Right won the 1980s – in terms of economic management. All true. As is the fact that no political party represent what mainstream voters really want – a socially liberal party that is also economically liberal. 

What has been less noted is that while these issues form the common sense of the leadership class in UK politics, there remains a substantial minority of voters who have not accepted this settlement. As the support for the two main parties combined has fallen below 70 per cent, and sometimes below 65 per cent, the minority has gained a more powerful voice. What is being rejected by substantial numbers – on both Left and Right, in both England and Scotland – is the economic, not the social, settlement. 

This is the hardest challenge for the Labour and Conservative parties. Each in their own way has made a long and hard journey to policies that recognise the economics of globalisation and what that requires as a response – education, high skills, membership of a large free trade area, free movement of capital and labour to match free movement of goods and services. Cabinet ministers and shadow ministers alike believe in this model. However, until they can convince the voters, in a lasting way, that this is right, then mainstream parties will face the disruptive and increasingly successful challenge of insurgent parties.