Book review: All In It Together, by Alwyn Turner

How soon is too soon to write about the history of a particular time or place?

Following on from his earlier three excellent volumes which took us from the start of the 1970s to the dawn of the new millennium, Alwyn Turner’s new book picks up the English story at the time of New Labour’s second massive General Election victory in 2001 before dropping us off again at the time of David Cameron’s surprise narrow win in 2015. The stage is set for the divisive Brexit battles of the last five years and for the divisive leadership of the Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn after 2015, but the narrative clearly stops before getting to either. Turner’s book is packed full of reminders of this eventful and turbulent period. Who now remembers Pastygate? Cleggmania? Russell Brand’s dialogue with Ed Miliband or Robert Kilroy Silk’s thwarted battle to take over UKIP? Viewed from the perspective of the current Coronavirus pandemic which, writing in July 2021, has thus far totally dominated the third decade of the 21st century, Turner’s social history of this busy and already seemingly historically quite distant fourteen year period already seems very welcome.

It is not all about politics, of course. As before, Turner takes a good look too at changes in society as viewed through the prism of TV, literature and other developments. No doubt he will one day have much to say about the recent Euro 2020 Finals and subsequent race row. Here, for example, we get a thorough comparison between the different styles of comedians, Jimmy Carr and Roy Chubby Brown. Both are edgy and deliberately tackle sensitive subjects for their humour. Carr, is however, middle-class and Cambridge-educated while Brown never conceals his working-class origins. Carr is frequently on TV, while Brown, although popular, is never allowed on. But, as Turner points out, it is not simply a matter of class. Carr is deliberately careful, firstly never to go too far or to appear as if he is endorsing any (or most) of the dark things he talks about. Brown is much less cautious. He frequently pushes his jokes into genuinely uneasy territory and occasionally seems to be making crowd-pleasing anti-immigration points which totally lack any comedic punchline. Whereas Carr clearly has a carefully constructed stage persona, it is unclear where the stage Chubby Brown begins and the real Chubby Brown ends.

Class comes up a fair bit in the book. Turner identifies a definite resurgence in the popularity of posher folk in public life during this period. Some are obvious: TV chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Chris Martin of Coldplay, the rise of Boris Johnson and David Cameron, the last becoming the first Tory leader to come from a public school background in forty years in 2005. Others are less obvious: musician Lily Allen was privately educated as were Gemma Collins and some of her other The Only Way is Essex companions. Even Labour’s Andy Burnham went to Cambridge.

The underrated Russell T. Davies 2003 TV drama, Second Coming in which Christopher Eccleston’s video shop assistant surprisingly claims to be the Son of God and indeed turns out to really be him. The phone hacking scandal. The London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. The rise and fall of George Galloway. The 2011 London riots. The Jimmy Saville affair and other scandals. The TV show, Life on Mars. All these topics are revisited by Turner in intelligent and readable fashion.

Other interesting nuggets of information also come in the footnotes. “By 2009 over 9 per cent of Peterborough had come to the city from overseas.” Alexander Armstrong was the first man to play David Cameron in a TV drama in 2007’s The Trial of Tony Blair (aired during Blair’s final months in office). We also get reminders of some of the better jokes of the period in this manner. Frank Skinner’s “George Osborne has two types of friends: the haves and the have yachts.” Or the late Linda Smith’s take on the 2005 Tory election slogan: “Are you sinking like we’re sinking?”

We are also kept informed of the main biscuit preferences of our political leaders, an issue Gordon Brown, a brilliant man, but always uneasy with popular culture, characteristically messed up answering.

There is less about music, although Turner does at one point suggest that the Spice Girls “might have been the last group that really mattered, that meant something beyond record sales and outside their own constituency.”

Turner does well to retain a position of political neutrality here and is especially good at retracing the early machinations on the Labour Left and the Eurosceptic Right which seemed irrelevant at the start of this era but which by the end of it came to seem very important indeed. It is, indeed, a very depressing period for anyone on the liberal left. In 2001, the Lib Dems under their dynamic young leader, Charles Kennedy seemed poised to become the nation’s second party. By 2015, Kennedy was dead and the party wasn’t even registering in third place in terms of either seats or share of the vote. In 2001, Tony Blair won a second huge landslide majority, seemed to have the world at his feet and was one of the most highly regarded political leaders of recent times. Furthermore, no one serious in political life was even remotely contemplating withdrawing from the European Union.

What changed? Read this endlessly fascinating book to find out.

Book review: All In It Together, England in the Early 21st Century, by Alwyn Turner. Published by: Profile Books. Available: now.

Exeter 2019 General Election Hustings Debate

With the General Election just ten days away, around 300 people chose to brave the cold December Monday evening air to see four of the six candidates competing to be Exeter’s next MP answer a selection of selected questions submitted by the general public inside Exeter Cathedral.

Two of the candidates were absent: Former pantomime star Daniel Page who is running as an independent and the Brexit Party candidate, Leslie Willis did not attend.

The Liberal Democrats (who performed very poorly in the 2015 and 2017 elections in Exeter) also did not attend as they are not fielding a candidate in this election. The party agreed to step aside to the give the pro-Remain Green Party candidate Joe Levy, a clear run. The Labour candidate, Mr. Bradshaw is also very pro-EU. However, Labour’s overall position is seen as less unambiguously pro-Remain than the Greens. (This paragraph has been amended as of 8th December 2019).

None of the candidates are women: the first time this has been the case in Exeter since 1987.

After some initial sound problems, proceedings began. Although each candidate answered each question individually, I’ll deal with each candidate, one at a time:

Ben Bradshaw (Labour)

This is the seventh election in Exeter for Labour’s Bradshaw and as he won his biggest ever victory in 2017 with 62% of the vote, it must be assumed he is the favourite to win again his time. He performed strongly on questions ranging from climate change, homelessness, transport, Brexit and the party leadership. He lamented the fact that Labour’s successful record on reducing homelessness had been completely undone by the Tories since 2010 and complained that environmental targets would be threatened by us leaving the EU.

He resisted attacking the Labour leadership or predicting a heavy Tory win nationwide as he did in 2017 and provided a convincing defence of Labour’s proposed nationalisation programme. He criticised the First Past the Post system which he campaigned to reform in the 2011 referendum. He argued that the best way to stop Brexit was by electing as many Labour MPs as possible and followed Green candidate Joe Levy’s lead in deriding the notion that a Tory win would mean a quick and easy end to Brexit as a nonsense. He also asked voters to judge him on his record as MP for Exeter since 1997.

John Gray (Conservative)

The Conservative candidate began with an interesting question. How many of the audience had actually read the Conservative manifesto? Very few hands were raised. This would doubtless have produced a similar response if he had asked about the other party manifestos too. But it was a welcome piece of audience participation in an evening which generally did not involve much audience response, aside from clapping and occasional grumbling. Perhaps it would have been a different story if the pantomime man had turned up?

Elsewhere, Mr Gray gave decent, worthy answers, some of which were undermined by the government’s record. He was predictably negative about nationalisation, although not very specific on why and gave good answers on the environment. He argued, as the UKIP candidate did, that the 2016 Brexit vote represented the will of the people. His claim that an overall majority for Boris Johnson’s Tories would lead to a quick and easy end to Brexit was derided by Joe Levy and Ben Bradshaw. His portrait of a Labour government torn apart by coalitions and confusion was similar to the ‘coalition of chaos’ arguments deployed by Tories in 2015. Some in the audience might have reflected that the decade since 2010 has been spent almost entirely under Tory rule and yet has been almost entirely spent in coalition or/and hung parliaments. The last three years particularly have seen more political chaos than anyone can remember.

Later, he was laughed at by many in the audience after he asserted that “a vote for Labour is a vote for Jeremy Corbyn, while a vote for me, is a vote for a Conservative government.” Bradshaw and others were quick to note his failure to mention Boris Johnson at this point. Later, he attempted to endorse Boris Johnson again. It did not seem entirely convincing. However, in general, Mr. Gray performed well.

Joe Levy (Green Party)

As in the 2017 campaign, Joe Levy, though still in his twenties stood out as one of the most impressive figures in the debate, making a convincing case for such concepts as the introduction of a universal basic income and, of course, the urgency of the need to combat climate change.

He drew particular applause for his passionate advocacy of EU membership, arguing his grandparents had supported it for the simple primary reason that they remembered the Second World War.

He also made a mockery of the general Conservative claim that a Tory win will automatically lead to a simple straightforward Brexit. Mr Bradshaw, picked up on this, agreeing that it was one of the biggest and most persistent lies of the Tory campaign.

Duncan Odgers (UKIP)

Arriving slightly late, Mr Odgers annoyed many in the audience, by asserting early on that contrary to popular belief immigration is a major problem in Exeter, in fact, largely explaining why house prices are high. Elsewhere, he performed well on other issues, even acknowledging climate change exists. He argued against nationalisation and argued Exeter (which voted 55 to 45 to remain in the EU) should respect the will of the nation as a whole on Brexit even if the city mostly did not support it itself. He spoke of Brexit as if it was something destined never to happen now and called Jeremy Corbyn’s position of neutrality on the issue, “a disgrace”. Occasionally, he rambled slightly. He blamed overpopulation for many of our environmental problems, but did not say what could be done about it.

A persistent charge, which many would agree with, was that many people today have lost faith in the current crop of politicians. A wider issue which wasn’t addressed was whether the upper ranks of UKIP who have included the likes of Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall in the past are really any more trustworthy.

Chris Hallam has written A-Z of Exeter: People, Places, History and co-wrote the book, Secret Exeter with Tim Isaac. Both are published by Amberley and are available now

Is it 1992 all over again?

It is General Election year and the Labour leader remains unpopular. After years of attacks from the Tory press, he was lucky to survive a direct challenge to his leadership before Christmas, when many suggested an older man should replace him as leader. Despite this and some evidence of economic recovery, Labour remain narrowly ahead in the opinion polls. A Labour-led hung parliament is seen by many as the most likely outcome in the General Election.

Ed Miliband in 2015? Or Neil Kinnock in 1992? The older John Smith was the potential older alternative leader in 1991, Alan Johnson last year. The parallels are uncanny and not encouraging to Labour who, of course, ultimately suffered a shock defeat to John Major’s Tories in April 1992.

But, let’s not get carried away. There are numerous differences…

Labour actually seem less confident now than Kinnock’s party were then. This makes a repeat of complacent gestures like the overblown Sheffield Rally unlikely.

Despite this and their quite small lead, the electoral arithmetic favours Labour far more. The Tories need to win by over 10% to win a majority. Labour only need 2%.

David Cameron is not John Major: It is also true Ed Miliband is not Neil Kinnock. Kinnock was slightly more popular than Miliband but had already suffered defeat in 1987. But Major, though ultimately weak, was untested and novel in 1992. Cameron has been Tory leader for over nine years.

Ultimately, the combination of UKIP and Coalition politics, in fact, means Labour’s chances this year are better than they have been in a decade.

Dear Nigel Farage…

 

 

Well done Nigel Farage. You have fooled some of the people all of the time so far. But, in future, you might want to remember the following things…

Some people argue Ed Miliband looks bad on TV but frankly he looks like Brad Pitt next to most of UKIP’s motley crew. Seriously, are you the only one who really supports UKIP or do no vaguely normal looking UKIP supporters actually exist?

Stop pretending to be a victim

You claimed victory for UKIP at the weekend despite “everyone being against us”. This is total nonsense. UKIP received a hugely disproportionate amount of media coverage and could hardly have received a more favourable treatment from TV, radio and the press. Like many on the Right, such as the BNP, you like to pretend you are part of an unfairly persecuted minority. You are not.

Stop pretending to be a rebel

You often speak of the “elitist establishment” as if you are not somehow not part of it. In fact, as a public school educated ex-stockbroker, you are about as establishment as you can get. Indeed, you are exactly the sort of person who caused the recession in the first place. You will not be able to carry this off much longer.

Answer questions properly

So far, your typical response to tricky questions has been to:

a)      laugh them off,

b)      deny that certain controversial policies are in your manifesto,

c)        pretend you don’t know what’s in your manifesto

d)      claim you don’t have a manifesto.

Some people find this refreshing. It’s increasingly looking amateurish.

Expect tougher questions

On BBC Question Time recently, you laughed off questions about UKIP members’ expenses claims by saying you weren’t going to take any advice from the Tories on it. In fact, UKIP’s record is far worse than the Tories on this. Yet you got off the hook. This won’t always be the case. Remember when Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson humiliated you on TV on separate occasions recently? Expect more of this.

People aren’t that fussed about the EU either way

True, most polls show most people want to leave the EU. But it is way down the list of priorities. Frankly, the issue bores most people. David Cameron doesn’t seem to have realised this either. People voted for you primarily because they wanted to rebel against the main parties. The Lib Dems no longer fulfil this function.

Some people do want to leave the EU, yes. And some people who voted for you were racist. But more than half of UKIP voters from last week have already indicated they won’t vote UKIP in the General Election next year.

So it seems then, this is your peak. Like the SDP in 1981. Enjoy it while it lasts.

A song for UKIP

(Actually, more of a poem than a song…)

Right wing chumps of the world unite!

It’s time to take a stand and fight,

It’s time to desert the sinking ship,

Leave the Tories: join UKIP!

Follow your heart and not your head,

Maggie would back us (were she not dead,)

Listen to the Mail, Telegraph and Express,

Say no to EU bureaucracy and excess!

Are you racist to a small degree?

We’re less scary than the BNP!

If the PC liberals had their way,

Everyone in the world would be gay.

The EU is far too large.

Vote for an Englishman named Farage.

Join the UKIP throng as we march today,

Towards a glorious yesterday!

The rest of us on Planet Earth,

Should cheer on UKIP for all our worth,

For like in 1983,

They’re splitters like the SDP.

For Farage and his doltish band,

Are giving Labour a helping hand,

The bigger the split grows on the Right,

The better things look on election night.

So if you are a lefty liberal type like me,

And value the NHS and BBC,

And don’t blame the poor for being poor,

Or lay all our ills at the immigrant’s door.

If you don’t want to make life a misery,

For the poorest and weakest in society,

Then pray that UKIP win some seats,

And help Labour into Downing Street.

Chris Hallam.

Why Labour can win

Many in the media recently have dismissed Labour’s chances of winning the next General Election.

Most of this speculation is nonsense. Labour are still far more likely to lead the next government than anyone else.

Consider…

Labour are ahead in the polls.

Much has been made of Labour’s apparently small opinion poll leads recently. Yet Labour is currently (according to the UK Polling Report), a full six percent ahead of the Tories. With the parliamentary boundary system favouring Labour this would lead to a Labour majority of 76, bigger than Tony Blair’s majority in 2005 (66) or Margaret Thatcher’s in 1979 (43). Labour would have to do substantially worse than this to be anything other than the largest political party.

Things look much better than they did last time.

Labour are much more popular than they were in 2010 and Ed Miliband is far more popular than Gordon Brown was. And let us remember: in 2010, the Tories didn’t even manage to win a majority. How badly will they do this time?

The Tories haven’t won a General Election in 21 years.

All the evidence suggests the electorate do not like the Tories much. They have not won a General Election since John Major led them to a surprise win in April 1992. A child born on the day of that result, had time to grow up and be old enough to vote in the last election which despite Gordon Brown’s unpopularity and a global economic slump, the Tories still failed to win yet again! They have been behind in the polls almost constantly for the last three years. The public clearly don’t like them.

The Liberal Democrat factor.

Having consistently been betrayed by their party leadership since 2010, the evidence suggests many disillusioned Lib Dems will be fleeing the party in droves. Where are they going to go? It is in Labour’s interests to capitalise on their disaffection.

The UKIP factor.

By splitting the right wing vote, UKIP are making a Labour victory ever more likely.

Leadership.

It is true Ed Miliband is less popular than David Cameron, presumably largely a consequence of unsophisticated attacks from the Tory press. Yet, this isn’t a presidential election. Clement Attlee led Labour to a huge victory in 1945 despite facing the far more popular Winston Churchill. And Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was achieved despite the fact that voters consistently expressed a personal preference for Labour’s Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. It also should be remembered that the election is nearly two years away and voters have responded well to Miliband’s One Nation message.

Economic recovery won’t benefit the Tories.

As in 1997, there is little sign the electorate will be grateful to a government that has consistently got it so wrong over the economy. Even if there are signs of economic resurgence by 2015, there is little sense the Tories deserve any credit for it or that they will receive it. The same was true in 1997, when Labour won its largest ever victory despite an economic recovery which totally failed to vanquish memories of Tory incompetence on Black Wednesday five years earlier.

The Tories are desperate.

Ultimately, this is a shambolic weak government with next to no achievements to its name and more prone to division, u-turns and excuses than anything else. Compare this to Labour’s period in office which witnessed a decade of prosperity, a dramatic fall in crime, peace in Northern Ireland finally achieved and massive improvements in education and the NHS.

Complacency is dangerous, but Labour are still far more likely to be victorious in 2015 than any other party.

Why I hate referenda

Hurrah for David Cameron! He has promised an In-Out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union if he wins the next General Election.

Hurrah? Well, no. Not really. For one thing, Cameron has bad form on this. He famously made a “cast-iron” pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty when he was Opposition leader back in 2007. Writing in the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper, Cameron said:

“The final reason we must have a vote is trust. Gordon Brown talks about “new” politics.  But there’s nothing “new” about breaking your promises to the British public. It’s classic Labour. And it is the cancer that is eating away at trust in politics.  Small wonder that so many people don’t believe a word politicians ever say if they break their promises so casually.  If you really want to signal you’re a break from the past, Prime Minister, do the right thing – give the people the referendum you promised.

“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.  No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.”

Of course, this time it was Cameron who eroded the public trust. As some of you may have noticed, Mr Cameron IS now PM and er…no referendum has ever happened. Cameron broke his promise. He may well do so again.

But perhaps this would be a good thing? Referenda are bad. And here’s why:

1.       Referenda are never held for anything other than party political reasons.

David Cameron knows it is not in our national interest to leave the EU. He is doing it for two reasons: to shore up his own support and to undermine the (exaggerated) threat presented by the UKIP lunatic fringe. It has worked, but don’t think for a moment his motives on this are honourable. Likewise, the first national UK referendum which was held on Common Market membership in 1975 was intended purely to keep the Labour Party from splitting, while the 2011 one on electoral reform was held purely to keep the Lib Dem grouping in the Coalition happy.

2.       In referenda, nobody ever votes on the issues at stake.

Perhaps because we are more familiar with General Elections, voters nearly always end up voting for some party political reason. Last time, it was to piss off the unpopular Nick Clegg. In 1975, Britain voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Common Market (as it was then known) largely because a) the press were overwhelming pro-EC back then (yes, really!) b) because they were told it would be impossible for the UK to pull out anyway and c) to anger the unpopular anti-EC Labour Government. Margaret Thatcher, the new Tory leader, was then a keen supporter of the European ideal.

3.       Don’t we elect MPs to make decisions on our behalf?

If the Tories want to pull out, they should go into the next General Election saying so! Labour did this in 1983 (and subsequently suffered their biggest post-war defeat). Why bother having a referendum as well?

4.       No one knows when to call a referendum or not.

No one has a clue. There are no set rules on it. There have only ever been two national referenda in British history in 1975 and 2011. Generally, they are usually called for when the public already clearly want the change which is being proposed. In which case, why not just pass the law anyway if it’s good? If there isn’t a clear majority supporting the motion (as in the case of electoral reform), everyone whinges and says it’s a waste of time and money.

Here is a list of developments since 1945, none of which the public had a direct vote on. Some of us might feel they would like to have had the chance to vote on a few of these things:

Joining the UN.

Joining NATO.

The end of National Service.

The onset of Commonwealth immigration.

The abolition of hanging.

The legalisation of abortion.

The legalisation of homosexuality.

The closure of grammar schools/introduction of comprehensive education.

The stationing of Cruise missiles in the UK.

The reduction in trade union power.

The Single European Act/Maastricht/Amsterdam/Maastricht etc.

The abolition of fox hunting.

The decision to invade Iraq.

5.       Not every issue is easily resolvable in a simple Yes/No debate.

6.       Referenda rarely satisfy anyone.

I may well take part in the referendum “Yes” campaign assuming it ever happens. I did the same for the last one on electoral reform (which ended in heavy defeat). This isn’t hypocrisy. There is little point arguing against a referendum which is already happening.

But the 2011 referendum was not a happy experience. I can accept that most people didn’t want electoral reform and never would: the margin of defeat was heavy. But the whole affair was highly unsatisfactory for both sides. The victors hardly seemed hugely triumphant arguing that the whole exercise had been a pointless and expensive distraction. There were also lots of silly false rumours about expensive counting machines being needed if the Yes vote won (the reason why was never explained). The No team also enjoyed saying how expensive the changes would be, typically including the cost incurred by the actual referendum itself in their calculations. The referendum, of course, was already happening and would have cost the same regardless of the outcome.

The Scots/Welsh referenda on self government in the late Nineties were more justified, although annoyed some English who wanted a say on the issue too. The EC vote in the Seventies similarly left many people feeling dissatisfied.

Both Clement Attlee (who I liked) and Lady Thatcher (who I didn’t) called referenda “the device of demagogues and dictators”. This is perhaps a bit strong in this case. But even if David Cameron is telling the truth this time, I’m not excited.

Cameron’s cowardly decision

Eurosceptic Tories have been falling over themselves to praise David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership if the Tories win the next election. London Mayor Boris Johnson described the Prime Minster as “bang on” while Mark Pritchard said the PM’s speech was “well considered, thoughtful and long overdue”.

It was anything but.

Cameron’s speech does two things. Firstly, it diminishes the (much exaggerated) threat to the Tories presented by UKIP. Secondly, it gives Cameron the opportunity to curry favour with his own backbenchers. Cameron does not want Britain to leave the EU and indeed knows it would be very damaging for us to do so.

He has blatantly put his own party political interest above that of his country. It is a shameful decision.

Why I love UKIP

Do you feel the main problem with the government is that it’s too wishy washy? Are you a little bit racist but not quite enough to join the BNP?  Do you have little interest in politics beyond a vague notion that leaving the European Union would somehow benefit the UK?

If so, then UKIP is the party for you!

It’s easy to mock. But it’s hard not to feel the latest UKIP “surge” would be a tad more convincing if: a) they had actually won a single parliamentary seat. Even the SDP won some by elections you know!

b) If they actually had any ideas beyond withdrawing from the EU and

c) the most likely outcome of any rise in their support was not to split the Tory vote and help Labour.

So…er, why am I even attacking them? Good point!

Hurrah for UKIP and Nigel Farage!

VOTE UKIP:  FOR A LABOUR GOVERNMENT TOMORROW!