Conservative Zugzwang Redux

After the 2017 General Election, I wrote a post about how, whatever the Conservatives did next, they would make their position worse (a situation called ‘zugzwang’ in chess). In that post, by taking a piece of received wisdom as given, I underestimated the hole they were in. The mistake I made was to assume that by 2021 the Brexit issue will have been put to bed and a new Conservative leader would be elected in time to fight the next election.

The error was to underestimate the determination of the Brexiters to keep the issue alive. If a deal is made with the EU and parliament accepts that deal (both big ifs) it will be on terms which Brexiters find more intolerable than being in the EU. We will be in the customs union and at least part of the single market: pay, obey but no say. The reasons that the Brexiters will keep complaining about that kind of Brexit is partly because they cannot stop themselves, but mainly because they need to keep the issue alive to obtain the prize of the Tory leadership. In this they will be helped by the return of UKIP talking of the Brexit betrayal. The received wisdom after the 2016 vote that the Brexit vote would end this fatal division among the right of UK politics was another mistake. 

That leads to the ultimate zugzwang: Remain Tory MPs cannot risk May departing from the scene, because if she does the solid Leave majority among members will vote in a Brexiter. The Conservative zugzwang is even worse than I thought in that earlier post. If MPs vote through an EU deal and we enter transition there is a good chance Theresa May will fight the next General Election. What seemed unthinkable after 2017 now seems most likely. We know from 2017 and the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy that May is the type of leader that makes the most of Corbyn’s qualities.

It is worse than that. The issue of ‘Brexit betrayal’ will remain alive until 2022. UKIP will start taking votes from Conservatives more than they take votes from Labour, because Leavers are more likely to be Conservatives. That does not mean Labour are bound to win in 2022. The Conservatives will try their best to convince voters that Labour under Corbyn will tear the UK's economy and foreign policy apart even more than the Tories have done. But an actual or impending end to transition will not be sold by the Conservatives as a triumph but instead will remain an existential threat to the party.

If this happens, Labour’s position becomes much easier. From the moment Labour vote against the deal and if we leave in March 2019, the pressure on Labour to adopt a clear Remain stance will ease and they can focus on the damage the deal will do to the UK. The focus will move to how we can improve ties to Europe compared to the final settlement rather than how we can avoid leaving. If they are smart they will play on who will replace May, and what a Conservative government with Rees-Mogg or Johnson as Prime Minister would be like.

This is the real significance of the next election whenever it comes. It is tempting for many to see this as a battle between extremes, with the two main parties being forced away from the centre ground of politics by their memberships’ ability to choose their leaders. In reality any Labour government under Corbyn or any successor will follow a centre-left agenda because the overwhelming majority of their MPs are that way inclined. Whatever some centrists may say now, from their point of view a Labour government will be mostly harmless as well as doing the economy a lot of good.

Divisions within the Conservative party over Brexit are far more fundamental, because the number of Brexiter MPs are much greater. As their membership is that way inclined they could quite quickly become a majority. A Brexiter leader seems inevitable before that point, and the last two years have taught us that the internal resistance to that among MPs will be pretty weak. Tory Remain MPs have a fatal weakness, which is that they value party unity much more than their Brexiter opponents.

Once the Brexiters have captured the leadership, they will of course attempt to achieve a much greater break with the EU than anything May negotiates. No referendum will be necessary, because they will only be achieving the true ‘will of the people’. With that is bound to come a much more authoritarian and illiberal regime, partly because the Brexiters have no problems with that as we have seen, but also because it will be required to retain power. The Conservative party will become very like today’s Republican party in the US.

The question that everyone besides Brexiters should be asking is how their eventual domination of the Conservative party can be stopped. The only way I can see is for Conservative party members and their supporters in the press to see how damaging that position is, and the only way I can see that happening is by the Conservatives becoming the natural party of opposition as a consequence of Brexit.

A divided nation

After the Brexit vote, economists and others who voted Remain are quite right to say I told you so as the economic hit they expected comes to pass. The Brexit Bust needs to be labelled clearly, given the power the Leave side has over the means of communication. (Those behind that campaign are already talking utter nonsense in order to pretend it had nothing to do with them.) But those who voted Remain also need to understand why they lost.

The studies I’m going to focus on here use regressions and the breakdown of the Brexit vote district by district. [1] It is important to do regression analysis, which can look at more than one factor at a time, because influences are correlated with each other. We might note, for example, that districts are less likely to vote Leave if they contain relatively high earners, or relatively well educated people. So is it lack of education or lack of money that caused people to vote Leave? That is what any kind of multiple regression can try and sort out.

Before looking at individual studies, let me mention some things that appear to be uncontroversial. Education and age are key determinates: if you are less educated or older you tend to vote Leave. Both matter independently: although young people with few qualifications tend to vote Leave, they are less likely to do so than less qualified older people.Once you take these into account, income is not a significant factor. Geography matters in key ways. One of those is that people in Scotland and Northern Ireland were much less likely to want to leave (controlling for other factors). The other I will come to.

A key issue is whether the local level of migration has had an influence. Stephen Clarke and Matthew Whittaker at the Resolution Foundation find that the level of immigration is not important, but its recent rate of change is, in making people vote Leave. Zsolt Darvas at Bruegel also finds the level unimportant. However Monica Langella and Alan Manning from the LSE find that areas with high immigration are more likely to vote Leave, and confirm the finding that the rate of change matters too. So while two studies agree that areas with a recent large increase in immigration are more likely to vote leave, more work needs to be done on whether its actual level matters. However, even if it matters, it does not matter that much, as the large majority for Remain in London tells us.

One other area where the studies differ is employment or unemployment. Clarke and Whittaker suggest areas with a low employment rate are more likely to vote Leave, but Langella and Manning seem to find the opposite, and Darvas says any impact from levels of unemployment (which is not the same as the inverse of the employment rate) is explained by other factors which I will now come to.

There are some variables that have not been considered by all three of these studies. Darvas has one particularly interesting result: the Leave vote increases in areas where there is a lot of poverty and local inequality. Langella and Manning find that areas with long term declines in agricultural, manufacturing or public employment are more likely to vote Leave. This is also the conclusion of a team led by Bristol geographer Ron Johnston, which is worth quoting in full.

“There are substantial parts of the country where large numbers of people have lost out from the deindustrialisation and globalisation of the last few decades of neo-liberal economic policies, and where the educational system has not helped large proportions of the young to equip themselves for the new labour market. Increasing numbers in these disadvantaged groups were won over during the last few decades by the campaigns in parts of the print media, taken up by UKIP since the 1990s, linking their situations to the impact of immigration – uncontrollable because of the EU freedom of movement of labour principle. The wider Leave campaign built on that foundation in 2016, producing the geography displayed here.”

That conclusion of course goes beyond the finding that areas hard hit by globalisation tended to vote Leave, and adds an explanation that sees the press and politicians actively trying to link the experience of disadvantage to the issue of immigration. It is an argument I have also made. Unfortunately it is an argument that is very difficult to prove using regression analysis, because - as newspapers often argue - they may print just what sells newspapers, so any correlation does not imply causation.

It is also important to remember that the link between voting Leave and areas of deindustrialisation is in additional to the strong links with education and age. Education may fit in with a story where the anti-EU stance (to say bias does not do it justice) of most of the tabloid press is important, for obvious reasons. The same is true with age, as younger people are likely to get their information by other means than the tabloid press.   

There is another, very different, line of argument that tries to explain the Leave vote not in terms of class but psychology/culture. Eric Kaufmann finds simple correlations between voting Leave and authoritarianism. A story you can tell is that, for some at least, Brexit was a vote against not neoliberalism but social liberalism. The link between social liberalism and the EU is once again migration, which represents one more unwelcome change for social conservatives. Social conservatism and authoritarianism may also map more easily into nationalism and wanting to 'take control', and it was part of the tabloid 'grooming' to do exactly that. Social conservatism may also explain the importance of age and perhaps also education.

There is no reason why we need to choose between the economic and the social types of explanation. Kaufmann and Johnston et al can both be right. As Max Wind-Cowie says (quoted by Rick here):

“Bringing together the dissatisfied of Tunbridge Wells and the downtrodden of Merseyside is a remarkable feat, and it stems from UKIP’s empathy for those who have been left behind by the relentless march of globalisation and glib liberalism.”

Both these explanations see antagonism to the idea (rather than the actuality) of migration as the way an underlying grievance got translated into a dislike of the EU. But was immigration really so crucial? A widely quoted poll by Lord Ashcroft says a wish for sovereignty was more important. The problem here, of course, is that sovereignty - and a phrase like taking back control - is an all embracing term which might well be seen as more encompassing than just a concern about immigration. It really needs a follow-up asking what aspects of sovereignty are important. If we look at what Leavers thought was important, the “ability to control our own laws” seemed to have little to do with the final vote compared to more standard concerns, including immigration.

However there are other aspects of the Ashcroft poll that I think are revealing. First, economic arguments were important for Remain voters. The economic message did get through to many voters. Second, the NHS was important to Leave voters, so the point economists also made that ending free movement would harm the NHS was either not believed or did not get through to this group. Indeed “more than two thirds (69%) of leavers, by contrast, thought the decision “might make us a bit better or worse off as a country, but there probably isn’t much in it either way””. Whether they did not know about the overwhelming consensus among economists who thought otherwise, or chose to ignore it, we cannot tell.

Third, Leave voters are far more pessimistic about the future, and also tend to believe that life today is much worse than life 30 years ago. Finally, those who thought the following were a source of ill rather than good - multiculturalism, social liberalism, feminism, globalisation, the internet, the green movement and immigration - tended by large majorities to vote Leave. Only in the case of capitalism did as many Remain and Leave voters cite it as a source of ill. These results suggest that Leave voters were those left behind in modern society in either an economic or social way (or perhaps both).

Taking all this evidence into account it seems that the Brexit vote was a protest vote against both the impact of globalisation and social liberalism. The two are connected by immigration, and of course the one certainty of the Brexit debate was that free movement prevented controls on EU migration. But that does not mean defeat was inevitable, as Chris makes clear. Kevin O’Rourke points out that the state can play an active role in compensating the losers from globalisation, and of course in recent years there has been an attempt to roll back the state. Furthermore, as Johnston et al suggest, the connection between economic decline and immigration is more manufactured than real. Tomorrow I’ll discuss both the campaign and what implications this all might have.

[1] Please let me know if I missed any studies. One I found out about as this post was about to be published was this by Richard Mann.

Rolling Postscript: Studies I've seen since. This by Jo Michell (particularly on migration impact). Geoff Tily argues that London may be special.  

UK immigration and social attitudes

In a previous post I speculated on how the disaffected voter could be both part of the UKIP story and also a factor behind the decline in the popularity of the LibDems. But what about UKIP’s two key policy areas: leaving Europe and stopping immigration?

As I noted last time, for most UKIP voters Europe itself is no big deal. It is an issue which will sit naturally with disaffected voters: if UK politicians seem remote to their interests, politicians in Europe will seem even more so. It is not an issue that a large number of voters will regard as all important in itself. Immigration is much more interesting. This post looks at what evidence we can get from surveys about voter attitudes towards immigration.

The first point to make is that a large majority of the UK public have always favoured tighter controls on immigration. (Interestingly, given SNP policies for an independent Scotland, a majority of Scottish voters also want less immigration!) What has changed over the last two decades has been the salience of the issue. (The charts in this post come from the three sources listed at the end.)

This chart is a little busy, but the green line is the number of people rating race and immigration as one of the top issues. The issue was nowhere until the end of the 1990s. Within the space of about four years its importance rose dramatically, and it has stayed as a key issue since around 2003.

The temporal link with actual levels of migration cannot be a complete coincidence.

Note that immigration from the EU only took off from 2004. So freedom of movement for labour within the EU, which is discussed so much in the media, is not the key to understanding voter concern about immigration.

Nor does concern about immigration appear to involve class. Any differences between the standard social classifications (A-E) and voter concern seems to be swamped by a common movement, as this chart shows.

There is, however, an understandable difference between income groups when they are asked why they are concerned about immigration. Those with low incomes tend to want to reduce immigration because of the perceived impact on jobs and housing, while those on higher incomes are more concerned about the impact on public services.

There are also two additional class related factors which do distinguish between voters attitudes towards the impact of immigration. The first is whether the voter has a university degree. For those that do, the majority believe that immigration has benefited the country both economically and culturally, while those without a degree think the opposite. Second, there is a clear correlation between concern about immigration and the newspaper people read. In addition, people seriously overestimate the extent of UK immigration, probably because of the impression they get from reading certain newspapers. To some extent this may be inevitable, as sensationalism like this or this may help sell newspapers to those who worry about immigration. However the fact that large sections of the UK press want us to leave the EU may mean that causality runs the other way, as I note below. (I do not see this as a simple right-left issue, as many on the right are against tight immigration controls.)

Location is also important. One widely reported result is that concern about immigration tends to be higher where actual levels of immigration are low. (An exception seems to be where asylum seekers are placed.) Many have noted that UKIP’s first MP is in a constituency where levels of immigration are very low. Chris Dillow mentions one poll that found that while 76% think immigration is a very or fairly big problem for Britain, only 18% think it is in their own area. Furthermore those with migrant friends were far more likely to be positive about the impact of immigration than those without.

So immigration for many is about a fear rather than perceived experience. The fear is fed not by official statistics but stories in the media. In that sense it is like crime. In the case of crime, the general perception is that crime is rising, even though for many years nearly every type of crime has been falling in the UK. This encourages politicians to focus on the appearance of action: most calculate that they are better off talking about 'cracking down' on crime than in celebrating its decline. With immigration, the political benefits of appearing to 'deal with the problem of immigration' are greater than arguing that, in average economic terms at least, immigration may not be a problem at all.  

Two things make immigration particularly toxic as a political issue. The first is that economic issues (jobs, housing, public services) can so easily be linked to it. However the first chart should warn against a belief that immigration concerns will disappear if real wages begin to rise. The second is the link with EU membership. While it is clear that public concerns about immigration became important long before immigration from the EU rose substantially, it suits those that want us to leave the EU to suggest that EU immigration is critical to public perceptions on this issue. For that reason, it seems unlikely that the political 'problem of immigration' is going to go away as long as the UK remains in the EU. 

If this last statement is true, there is an interesting implication. UKIP can continue to receive strong support by saying that they have the only certain way of 'tackling immigration', and this will be true whatever actually happens to the numbers (immigration is like crime). The question that then arises is whether the Conservative party can live with that. Promising a referendum and then staying in the EU may win the next election but it will not make UKIP go away. Instead the party may calculate that the only way of making the issue of immigration less toxic is to take the UK out of the EU. 

Sources for charts:

Oxford’s Migration Observatory, Ipsos-Mori and the British Social Attitudes survey.

Ukipanic

After Thursday’s UK by-elections, we have had a huge amount of ‘Oh God, what will it all mean, will politics ever be the same again’ speculation. As Labour nearly lost one of its safe seats, they as well as the Conservatives are trying hard not to panic. Some writers have optimistically coupled this result with the Scottish referendum turnout to suggest there is a new engagement in politics (but not of the conventional kind) and a search for ‘political identity’. Others have more pessimistically drawn parallels with the rise of fascism. (Are these two contradictory?)

If you see everything in terms of a left-right spectrum, then UKIP’s popularity seems to indicate a dramatic shift to the right. Here is the share of the popular vote gained in elections since 1945, but ending with an average of current polls.

If we place the LibDems as somewhere near the centre of this spectrum, then we have a fairly even balance between parties of the right and left - until now. So has there been a sharp movement to the right among the electorate? UKIP policies are clearly to the right of the Conservatives. But it may be a mistake to confuse the party and its policies with the views of those currently voting for them. Here is Owen Jones noting how UKIP voters tend to want to renationalise the railways and energy companies, increase the minimum wage substantially, and keep the NHS within the public sector.

Perhaps we should see UKIP as an anti-Europe party, something outside the left-right spectrum? Again the party is not the same as its supporters. Only a quarter of UKIP voters in this survey said resolving Britain’s future relations with the European Union is one of the three most important issues currently facing the country. Conservative MPs may be switching to UKIP because of Europe, but it is not clear that UKIP voters are.

Before leaving this chart, we should note that the rise in UKIP is not the only recent dramatic change. The other is the decline of the LibDem vote. In the by-election where Labour only just retained their seat, we actually saw Labour keep its 2010 share of the vote. The gain in UKIP’s share was accounted for by a roughly equal decline in the share of the Conservatives and LibDems. As many Conservatives will have been voting tactically, we once again see an apparent shift from LibDem to UKIP.

Now we know that around half of UKIP voters used to vote Conservative, not LibDem. We also know that a significant number of ex-LibDem voters (about a third?) have moved to Labour, as we might have expected as a result of forming a coalition with the Conservatives. But about 20% of UKIP voters who voted for another party in 2010 are ex-LibDem voters - that is about half a million voters. (The equivalent number for Labour is 15%) Anyone familiar with LibDem policies would be surprised the figure is this high: UKIP wants to leave Europe, but the LibDems have always been the most pro-Europe party. However this may be making the same mistake again: assuming that voters’ views map to party policies.

Here is an alternative idea that might be part (and only part) of the story. (It is far from original - see Adam Lent for example.) An important underlying trend since perhaps the 1960s is the rise of the disaffected voter. These are voters with no strong ideological affiliations, and with little interest or knowledge of politics. What they do feel strongly about, however, is that politicians in power do not represent their views or interests, and that ‘they are all as bad as each other’. What will attract these voters are politicians who are not part of the ‘Westminster elite’, because they are untainted by government. This is not a peculiar UK phenomenon - not being part ‘of Washington’ is a constant appeal in the US. This, rather than policies, may be the key factor for these voters.

The emergence of this group could explain some part of the rise in the LibDem vote since the 1970s. By joining the coalition after the 2010 election the LibDems not only lost their more left leaning supporters, they also lost the support of the disaffected voter, because they were now part of government. Very quickly their image changed from plucky outsiders to part of the Westminster establishment, and they could no longer be the party of the disaffected voter. But neither could Labour, who not only had been recently in government, but continued to behave as they did in government. The disaffected voter needed somewhere to go, and for some UKIP became their home.

Of course a large part of UKIP’s support is from disgruntled Conservatives. But if that was the complete story, UKIP’s rise would only be a problem for the Conservatives, and Labour would be quietly encouraging UKIP. This is clearly not the case. If this idea of the disaffected voter sounds similar to the old idea of the protest vote, that is partly true, but with an important difference. Protest votes are generally assumed to melt away come general elections, but this will not be true of the disaffected voter. For that reason, expecting UKIP to fade away may be naive. 

By now you are probably screaming: what about immigration! I think immigration is the kind of the issue that the disaffected voter would focus on. But this post is already too long so my thoughts will have to wait, although I think Chris Dillow is on the right track.  

Dreams of autonomy

The latest poll results suggest a Yes vote for Scottish independence is a distinct possibility

In one sense Nigel Farage (leader of UKIP, the UK Independence Party) and Alex Salmond (leader of the SNP, the Scottish National Party) are doing the same thing. They are trying to convince voters that if only they (the UK and Scotland respectively) were free of them (Europe and the UK respectively) life would be better. The rhetoric is much the same: you will be free to make your own decisions, make your own laws, and decide your own destiny. Recent events suggest the rhetoric is working.

Here is another similarity. In both cases, the economic benefits that would flow from independence appear to be based on wishful thinking. Detailed analysis by economists not attached to any particular side come to a clear conclusion: existing arrangements are beneficial. (For example economists at the LSE for the UK and EU, and for Scotland studies by NIESR and IFS that I note here, or John McDermott on North Sea Oil here.) Let’s be blunt: independence is likely to make the newly independent poorer rather than richer.

Another similarity. At the economic level, neither side actually want complete independence. UKIP still wants all the benefits of free trade in goods with the EU – it is the free movement in people that they really object to. The SNP want to maintain a monetary union with the rest of the UK. What they do not want is to see their national health service starved of money, and their poor and disabled treated badly.

So the rhetoric is simplistic. Neither the SNP nor UKIP want complete freedom: they recognise the benefits that can come from cooperation with larger groups. So the arguments get into what is always involved in cooperative agreements: messy give and take. Will Europe allow free movement of goods without free movement of people (see Switzerland)? Will the UK allow a monetary union, and at what cost in terms of UK control over Scottish fiscal policy? But those promoting independence would rather you didn’t worry about such things, and instead focus on the rhetoric of freedom.  

Of course UKIP and the SNP are in very different places on the political spectrum. How does this influence the rhetoric of independence? Traditionally the benefits of individual freedom and autonomy have been emphasised by those on the right, and the benefits of cooperation by those on the left. England votes more to the right, Scotland more to the left. So it is quite understandable that the English right (be it UKIP or Conservative party members) should buy the benefits of going it alone. There is, after all, the phrase ‘little englander’, not ‘little britisher’. Perhaps those arguing against Scottish independence have focused too much on the safety of the status quo, and not talked enough about solidarity.

But here is the rub. Is it solidarity with the British people, or with their governing class? Although an independence vote should be about the next hundred years, there can be no doubt that a current UK government that is arguably more right wing than Margaret Thatcher has won many to the independence cause. Yet ironically Cameron and Osborne’s Conservative party have probably also encouraged UKIP’s cause by trying to chase the anti-immigration vote, and appeasing its right wing by committing to a referendum on Europe. 

Which brings me to this final thought, for those contemplating voting Yes to an independent Scotland on 18th September. Suppose you win, and as a result the remaining UK under a newly elected Conservative government without Scottish voters narrowly votes to leave the EU. Not our problem, the newly independent Scotland might say. But it would leave Scotland with a horrible choice. Do they forsake Europe to keep sterling and preferential access to their largest market, or do they become poorer still by joining the EU/Euro and trying to redirect their trade in that direction? But no worries: Scotland will be free to make that choice!

Why no public fury over austerity?

Janan Ganesh has an article in the FT today that made me so cross I just have to write about it, even though I should probably let it pass. The theme of the article is how mature the British have been in accepting austerity. To quote: “For countries menaced by the symbiosis of economic suffering and political turmoil, Britain has lessons to impart.”

Of course I see it rather differently. Austerity is either a major technical error, or a political con. According to very conservative estimates from the OBR, it has already cost around 5% of UK GDP. That is a huge amount of money to waste: resources that wanted to be used to produce goods and income that everyone could enjoy, but which have been kept idle as a result of government action. Of course this cost has not been spread evenly, and has been much greater for some.

If this was just my personal view, or the view of a cranky minority, then there is not much more to be said. But instead it is the view you will find in the economic textbooks, and I suspect among the majority of macroeconomists. So given this, the fact that the policy has been accepted with little protest is not something to be commended (unless you are in the business of manipulating opinion), but a major problem. It is a huge failure for good government, and our democratic system. In fact you see similar failings elsewhere. Austerity as a policy has not been seriously challenged in Europe among mainstream parties, and even in the US I think it would be fair to say that views both within the Democratic Party and from the President have been mixed.

So how can Ganesh have completely the opposite view: that the British have shown “impressive calm” in taking their medicine with little protest, and that the lack of any passionate public debate about austerity in the UK is somehow a virtue? I can think of three reasons, none of which is very flattering.

1) That the “elite dialogue” that did take place on austerity is just so much intellectual hand wringing, and that the public know better what the real score is. I might not be surprised if a government politician took that line, but you would expect that a journalist working at the FT, and previously at the Economist, would know better.

2) That his admiration for George Osborne has distorted his view of the real world. Or, to put it slightly more kindly, if you spend your time talking to people who think austerity is inevitable, you begin to believe the propaganda.

3) That he is trying to analyse how the Conservatives have got away with the con of achieving a smaller state by fueling a panic over debt, without of course admitting that that is what he is doing.

Yet whichever of these is the case, the article seems to miss two obvious points. Could it be that the reason there is not a passionate public debate in the UK about austerity is that there is no one to lead that debate? When the political class, of which he is a member, view austerity as inevitable, is it any wonder that the public takes a similar view (particularly when it is dressed up in terms of household economics). He acknowledges that the trade union movement has been vocal about austerity, but does not examine why this voice is largely ignored by the UK media.

There is also no discussion about how popular anger against the impact of austerity may still be there, but that in the absence of any public debate on the policy, it is manifested in other ways. He writes that “Britain remains gloriously free of a serious far right or far left”, which of course is a put down of UKIP. But although Ganesh may not find UKIP serious, Cameron certainly takes UKIP seriously, and has geared his policy on Europe and immigration with them in mind. Perhaps he sees the current obsession in the media (and government) about welfare cheats and benefit tourists as totally unconnected with the unemployment and cuts in living standards that austerity has helped bring about. (For some serious analysis on these issues, see Alan de Bromhead, Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke here.)

But none of that was what made me so cross reading the article. Instead it was its juxtaposition with something that I heard about 4 days ago. A reader of my blog, a retired teacher of A level economics and a LibDem member, is about to give a talk on austerity related themes. The features writer on a local newspaper was interested, and spent an hour interviewing him, later writing 750 words. The article was spiked by the editor, because it was controversial and critical of the government. Perhaps the editor was also showing the “impressive calm” which so pleases Mr. Ganesh. 

Is UKIP the UK's Tea Party?

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) received a quarter of the vote in the recent council elections. UKIP has been described as the UK equivalent of the Tea Party movement in the US. Its policies are certainly very much to the right. Large tax cuts (possibly one flat rate) financed by huge reductions in public spending, except for defense spending which would increase, a five year freeze in immigration, a return to coal based power stations and no more wind farms, more prison places, and so on. Unlike the Tea Party, UKIP currently fights against the Conservative Party rather than working within it, but too much should not be made of this difference. UKIP’s leader says that he could cooperate with the Conservatives if they ditched Cameron as their leader, and there is some sympathy for UKIP’s aims within the Conservative Party.

One common reading of UKIP’s rise is that it represents the disaffected right wing of conservatism, generated by Cameron’s attempt to move the Conservative Party to the centre ground. However there is one problem with this interpretation - the Conservative Party has not moved to the centre ground. Apart from the odd token issue like gay marriage, the supposed move to the centre was just spin. Under the cloak of the need to reduce debt, the government has embarked on a programme to shrink the size of the state that goes well beyond anything attempted by Margaret Thatcher. Reforms to the National Health Service and education involve the large scale private provision of services or governance.

In terms of the distribution of income, the Conservative Party seem happy with increasing inequality and poverty. The 50% tax band on top incomes was reduced to 45%, while welfare spending is cut. The impact on child poverty will emulate what Margaret Thatcher achieved, according to the latest analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) released today. Updating figures that I reported recently to take account of the latest welfare cuts, the IFS estimate that the percentage of children in poverty (in families with incomes 60% below the median) will rise from 17.5% in 2010 to 23.5% by 2020. Crucially, according to the IFS the rise in this measure of relative child poverty is entirely the result of the tax and benefit reforms introduced by this government. This is, quite literally, a government created increase in child poverty.

So if we have a government where major economic and social policies are very much to the right of the political spectrum, how do we account for the rise of UKIP? One possible story is that the Conservatives are a victim of their own spin. In trying to ditch the image of the ‘nasty’ party that came to be associated with the Thatcher era, they have alienated those that rather liked her openly right wing style. The parallels with the US may be quite close. Where the Tea Party is associated with, and definitely encouraged by, Fox News and talk radio, so the values of UKIP are also the values of the UK tabloid press, by which we essentially mean Murdoch’s Sun and the Daily Mail.

Yet there is one key feature of UKIP which has no US parallel, and that is in its name - independence from the European Union (EU). Since Thatcher’s time the Conservative Party has been seriously split in its attitude to the EU. The leadership knows that a decision to exit the EU will almost certainly have serious negative consequences for the economy, which is why most business leaders would be horrified by the prospect of leaving. However the tabloid press have run a relentless campaign to highlight any negative aspects of EU membership. It has to be said that Eurozone governance in particular gives them plenty to work with, but when that is not enough, then in true tabloid style stories are made up. While the Conservative leadership seems in its element in going along with the tabloid attack on the welfare state, when it comes to the EU, the game becomes appeasement.  

How all this turns out may depend on how the economy performs over the next two years, and how effective the Labour Party are at shifting the public debate. If the recovery is strong, and we see more of this kind of political naivety from Labour (yes, Ed did not read my post on the B word), then the tabloids will push Cameron as far as they can on Europe, but then rally round to support the Conservatives at the election. On the other hand if the recovery is weak, and if Labour is more effective (like here) and looks like winning, then the tabloids may continue to encourage UKIP, in the hope of engineering a reconciliation of the right under a new Conservative opposition leader hostile to the EU.

But these are dangerous games. Much of UKIP’s popularity comes from straightforward dissatisfaction with falling living standards and a lack of good jobs. It is expressed as hostility to immigration and welfare recipients, in part because the tabloid press suggest this is the cause of these problems, rather than it being the result of government economic policy [1]. Even if the recovery is strong and Labour opposition weak, this may not produce enough to enable the tabloids to put this genie back in its bottle. They may find it as difficult to control those who recently voted UKIP as the Republican Party has found it impossible to control the Tea Party.

[1] Some good posts on these tabloid myths: NEF here, the Guardian here, Ian Mulheirn here, and much more detail from Alex Marsh here.