On the supposed gap in the centre of UK politics, or the alleged powerlessness of the UK median voter

A remarkable feature of the UK political landscape is how powerless what could be called the political centre currently feels it is. By the centre I don’t just mean individuals that call themselves moderates, but also UK business: capital if you like. How did this happen? It is a long story I’m afraid.

The first and most obvious factor is the UK’s first past the post (FPTP) voting system for MPs. In earlier decades this was thought to empower the centre. If any party drifted towards a less central position in the political spectrum (left/right, or in two dimensions with open/closed), the other would quickly capture that centre ground and would be triumphant in elections. The wishes of the median voter were very powerful. But this assumed that the desire for power would always triumph over a left or right political ideology in at least one party.

The theory seemed to work well in the decades before the turn of the century. When Labour drifted to the left in the early 80s, it ensured its defeat at the polls. Although the Conservatives under Thatcher were also moving to the political right by adopting neoliberalism, that was put down to the median voter wanting the power of the unions to be destroyed, wanting privatisation etc. Labour regained power by adopting many of the elements of neoliberalism, but moved back to the median voter by adding a human face to that neoliberalism.

The Conservatives regained power in 2010 by choosing Cameron as Prime Minister, someone who moved the Conservative party in a more liberal direction in one or two areas, and also was more receptive to the growing concern about immigration. So far you could just about believe in the power of the median voter, and the need for parties to capture the centre ground. I am sure anyone reading those last two paragraphs would have already realised that things were a lot more complicated. But this basic model has had a strong influence on how many interpreted and did politics over this period.

Following this theory Labour moved to the right under Miliband by, for example, gradually giving in to the rhetoric of austerity and immigration control. Given how close the result was in 2010 (the Conservatives could only govern as part of a coalition with the LibDems), you might expect Labour to at least do better than they did in 2010. It did not work. The Conservatives won having pursued in coalition a more right wing policy than under Thatcher. The unemployed, the poor and the disabled were denigrated to a far greater extent than under Thatcher, and so called debt crisis had been used to shrink the state in ways that the median voter did not want. Privatisation continued despite its unpopularity. The hostile environment started.

It is 2015, rather than 2010 or 2016, that is in many ways the critical point in the UK political timeline. Why did the median voter theory not work in 2015?

There is a line that Ed Miliband lost because he was not a ‘natural leader’, by which people generally mean he was unpopular in polls. Strangely enough, Kinnock and Brown also had the same problem, as does Corbyn today. The one exception is Blair. Now it is true that Blair did have qualities that these others did not, but he also had these qualities compared to Major or May or even Thatcher. The other key point about Blair is that he did a deal with the press that helped him win in 1997. One study suggests that this deal was not critical for the 1997 victory, but it was big enough to speculate that the withdrawal of support for Labour by Murdoch in 2010 may have been critical to Brown’s loss.

Labour’s response to the 2015 loss was to stick to the theory and reason that the median voter must have moved to the right. It is a good example of a theory influencing the behaviour it seeks to explain. There was talk by senior MPs of adopting Osborn’s position on austerity. Labour members were understandably having none of it, and elected the only credible anti-austerity candidate. Does the Corbyn election mean the median voter now has nowhere to go? Are we stuck in a new equilibrium, where both major parties were pursuing their ideology? This is the line promoted by many. If true under FPTP the best hope for the median voter is the very risky one of hoping the LibDems can gain enough MPs to hold the balance of power.

Most people in the media do not talk about the influence of the media, for obvious reasons. But the blind spot goes well beyond this. I once asked a political scientist why no regression studies have looked at the role of the media in influencing the 2016 Brexit vote, and their response was because it probably would work too well. This is not quite as bad as it sounds, because there is a real problem in distinguishing between a symptom (Brexit type voters like reading the type of papers that support Brexit) and a cause (Brexit readers are influenced by the paper they read). But just because that problem is difficult to solve should not mean the issue is swept under the carpet.

As I have noted many times, the studies that do try to solve that symptom/cause problem typically find a large causal influence. The most recent was a study discussed here which shows how the Sun boycott in Liverpool (because of its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster) increased the Remain vote there in 2016. Obviously the more united the media is on an issue, the more powerful its influence.

That is what happened in 2015. With few exceptions the broadcast and print media decided that the goal of economic policy was no longer economic growth (the slowest recovery for centuries) or personal prosperity (the biggest decline in real wages since WWII) but reducing the deficit. This created the view that Osborne had been more competent in handling the economy than Labour (whereas he had been the most incompetent Chancellor for decades), and this was the only strong card of the Coalition government. The other factor that may have swung it to Cameron in the last few days was the Conservative line that Miliband would be in the SNP’s pocket, and the broadcast media decided to lead on this rather than Labour’s favoured topic of the NHS. (The English nationalism that is such a strong part of Brexit was evident then, and earlier in Cameron announcing English votes for English issues immediately after Labour had prevented Scottish independence.)

The media persuaded the median voter to elect in 2015 the most right wing government since 1945. Critical to the victory (and to some extent the 2010 victory as well) was the adoption of deficit phobia (a key part of what I call mediamacro) by the broadcast media, and particularly the BBC. After 2010 the BBC began to look more like state media, promoting the interests of the Conservative party, because of relentless pressure and threats from the right. The BBC had managed to remain roughly balanced towards the end of the Labour government (deficit phobia aside), but from 2010 onwards things began to change. What made the difference, or why did Labour’s attempts to intimidate the BBC not end their balance? Again the right wing press plays a crucial role, and in addition the Conservatives have a trump card of threatening to abolish the BBC.

Does this leave the centre nowhere to go? Remember the median voter's power in a two party system comes not from voting for a centre party, but in voting either Labour and Conservative, depending on whichever is nearer the centre. The theory only breaks down if both parties are miles from the centre in different directions but roughly equal distances, and that is not the case at present. Opposite a right wing party adopting authoritarian and undemocratic actions we have a Labour party pursuing fairly solid social democratic policies, as their 2017 manifesto made clear. To put it another way, while Labour are mainstream Europe, the Conservatives are now Trump’s USA.

The leaderships’ left wing baggage has had some effect. It made its leadership an easier target for the media, particularly as a result of Corbyn’s strong support for the Palestinian cause. It also created a group within Labour and beyond whose primary aim seems to be to bring Corbyn down. More importantly the leaderships’ historic Lexit position meant it failed to follow its membership on Brexit quickly enough, which in turn allowed the LibDems to return from obscurity. But in substantive terms such as monetary, fiscal and taxation policy Labour would be considered too right wing in the 1970s. Elsewhere, like a National Investment Bank, and support for public transport as part of a Green New Deal, few except the most ideological neoliberal would think this wasn’t essential. Their Brexit policy of unconditional support for a referendum means Brexit would end under a Labour government.

In contrast, the Conservative party has morphed into a Republican party led by our version of Trump. It was heading that way before Brexit, and Brexit has pushed it over the edge. It is as imperative to remove the Conservative party from power as it is to remove Trump, and ensure that it does not return in its current form. Just as the need to remove Trump is not conditional on whether they are opposed by Biden or Sanders or Warren, so the same is true for Johnson. That cannot be done by the Liberal Democrats in 2019 anymore than it could in 2010, and it cannot be done by forcing the Tories to be a minority government. Only a prolonged period in opposition will convince Tory members and MPs that Brexit, extreme neoliberalism and Trumpian authoritarianism have all become toxic. The median voter still has a natural place to go, and that is to Labour’s European social democracy rather than the Conservatives as Republicans and Johnson as Trump..

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The financial crisis, austerity and the drift from the centre

John Quiggin starts a recent post on Crooked Timber (more below) with the warning ‘Amateur political analysis ahead’, and that applies even more to what follows. I start with the UK, but then broaden the discussion out.

A recent piece by Steve Richards for The Independent has some similarities to a recent post of mine trying to explain the popularity of Corbyn and Sanders. His byline is “The financial crash of 2008 made it impossible for both parties to exist united in their current forms”. On Corbyn his argument is similar to my own. He writes

During Labour’s astonishing leadership contest, Corbyn pitched his message solely against the background of the financial crash. At the beginning of each speech he proclaimed that the 2008 crisis was not caused by “firefighters, nurses, street cleaners, but by deregulation and sheer levels of greed”. As a climactic he declared: “I want a civilised society where everyone cares for everyone else. Enough of free market economics! Enough of being told austerity works!”

In contrast some Labour MPs

were thrilled when Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman declared her support for Osborne’s proposed welfare cuts immediately after the party’s election defeat. They argued this was a sign of a ‘responsible’ opposition showing Labour had learned its lessons about being ‘profligate’ in the run-up to the 2008 crash. If those MPs had retained that early position, they would have been to the right of Duncan Smith - who resigned over welfare cuts - and to the right of those Conservative MPs who rebelled against the cuts to tax credits on the working poor last autumn.

I would add that those MPs standing against Corbyn failed to place at centre stage the contradiction and injustice of how a crisis caused by the financial sector should lead to a reduction in the size of the state.

His account of the problems on the right, and how that too stems from the financial crisis, is as follows:

The row over the recent Budget, Duncan Smith’s resignation and the revolt over welfare cuts also has its roots in the financial crash. Osborne’s economic policy was shaped by what happened in 2008. After initially pretending to support Labour’s spending plans, he made deficit reduction his defining mission, missing his target in the last parliament and now resolved to reach a surplus in this one. But a significant number of Conservative MPs will not tolerate the spending cuts required for Osborne to keep to his chosen course. In effect they are rebelling against his highly contentious interpretation of what needed to be done after 2008.

There are two obvious points here. First, the much more serious divisions within the Conservatives appear to be over Europe, which also appear completely unconnected to the financial crisis. Second, which I will return to at the end, is the extent to which the financial crisis and austerity are linked.

To think about this further, and broaden it beyond the UK, I want to bring in John Quiggin’s ‘amateaur political analysis’. He writes

There are three major political forces in contemporary politics in developed countries: tribalism, neoliberalism and leftism (defined in more detail below). Until recently, the party system involved competition between different versions of neoliberalism. Since the Global Financial Crisis, neoliberals have remained in power almost everywhere, but can no longer command the electoral support needed to marginalise both tribalists and leftists at the same time. So, we are seeing the emergence of a three-party system, which is inherently unstable because of the Condorcet problem and for other reasons.

On neoliberalism he says

Neoliberalism is mostly used to mean one thing in the US (former liberals who have embraced some version of Third Way politics, most notably Bill Clinton) and something related, but different, everywhere else (market liberals dedicated to dismantling the social democratic welfare state, most notably Margaret Thatcher).

Later on

The difference between the two versions turns essentially on whether [globalised capitalism, dominated by the financial sector] requires destruction of the welfare state or merely “reform”.

This would place the majority of Labour party MPs as neoliberal using the US definition. We could describe the Republican establishment as neoliberals of the UK Conservative kind. Quiggin argues that the financial crisis discredited neoliberalism in both its forms (also the starting point of my post). In the US

Trump has shown that the tribalist vote can be mobilised more successfully if it is unmoored from the Wall Street agenda of orthodox rightwing Republicans like Cruz

Tribalism is “politics based on affirmation of some group identity against others”. We could make a similar argument about the rise of the ‘further right’ in Europe, and UKIP in the UK.

The final link is to spell out why the global financial crisis should lead to an increase in tribalism. The standard account is to blame the high unemployment (Eurozone) or lower real wages (UK, US) that followed the crisis, and how this can be easily blamed on immigration or those perceived to be living off the state. We could perhaps go further. Those in the Republican and Conservative parties (and their supporters) are happy to use and even encourage this tribalism as scapegoats to deflect criticism away from the financial sector and austerity policies. For some that works, but not always, and the tribalism can become detached from traditional right wing parties.

This account is neat as it seems to fit the current POTUS election. It could also supply the missing ingredient from Steve Richards’ account if the divisions over Europe on the right in the UK are tribal in Quiggin’s sense. However I think I would like to reframe this account in a slightly different way. Think of two separate one dimensional continuums: one economic, with neoliberal at one end and statist at the other, and the other something like identity. Identity can take many forms. It can be national identity (nationalism at one end and internationalism at the other), or race, or religion, or culture, or class.

Identity politics is stronger on the right, particularly since the left moved away from being the party of the working class. For the political right identity in terms of class can work happily with neoliberalism, but identity in terms of the nation state, culture and perhaps race less so. Neoliberalism tends to favour a more internationalist outlook (e.g. free movement of labour, low tariffs etc). When neoliberalism is discredited, this potential contradiction on the right becomes more evident. This is emphasised when politicians on the right use identity politics to deflect attention from the consequences of neoliberalism.

Why do I prefer this framing? First, in the case of the role of the state, I think it is artificial to make a division between those who are neoliberal and those who are not. I prefer to see neoliberalism as an extreme point or range on a continuum. Only when you do this can you see that there are the tensions on the right as well as the left over neoliberalism, which is the point that Steve Richards makes. (See here for a rather amusing example.) A right wing identification in terms of class does not inevitably imply a belief in neoliberalism. Second, I think an emphasis on identity has always been strong on the right, so it is a little misleading to see it as only something that the right uses in an instrumental way. Third, seeing identity in its various forms as a continuum can explain continuing debates on the left on this issue: here is an example I read only yesterday.

None of this detracts from the basic point that Quiggin makes: the apparent drift from the political centre ground is a consequence, for both left and right, of the financial crisis. I would add that what today counts as the centre in economic terms, which is pretty neoliberal, is rather different from what was thought of as centre ground politics before the 1990s. Now some of those on the left would like to think that this collapse of the centre was an inevitable consequence of the financial crisis. I am less sure about that. On its own, that crisis might have shifted the centre on economic issues to be a bit less neoliberal, and that might have been that.

One interesting question for me is how much the current situation has been magnified by austerity. If a larger fiscal stimulus had been put in place in 2009, and we had not shifted to austerity in 2010, would the political fragmentation we are now seeing have still occurred? If the answer is no, to what extent was austerity an inevitable political consequence of the financial crisis, or did it owe much more to opportunism by neoliberals on the right, using popular concern about the deficit as a means by which to achieve a smaller state? Why did we have austerity in this recession and not in earlier recessions? I think these are questions a lot more people on the right as well as the left should be asking.

The accidental tax credit cuts?

This is a sort of companion piece to my earlier post about the centre-left in UK politics

I complain a lot about the UK media and its coverage of economic issues, so I should in fairness note the occasions when it does its job well. Here is Newsnight last night - look around 18 minutes in. The House of Lords have just voted to delay Osborne’s cuts to tax credits. We have a discussion chaired by Evan Davis between the Labour peer who helped achieve that vote, and two Conservative politicians: Jacob Rees-Mogg from the right of the party and Tim Montgomerie from the left.

The first good point is when Rees-Mogg trots out the standard government line that although these cuts to tax credits will hurt the working poor (a lot), taken as a package with the increase in the minimum wage and changes to tax thresholds they will not. Everyone, including Evan Davis (who once worked at the IFS), turns on him to tell him he is wrong. That is good journalism: when a government tells lies they should be called out. Rees-Mogg’s response about being naive in trusting his Chancellor is a delight.

In contrast Montgomerie acknowledges what the cuts do and how contrary they are to the government’s rhetoric about helping people into work and reducing poverty. The second, and even better point, is when at the end Davis asks Montgomerie where on earth he thought the pre-election welfare savings the Conservatives proposed were going to come from if it was not cuts to tax credits. It was an excellent question, and the response was I suspect quite honest (as Montgomerie tends to be). The Conservatives never expected to win the election. Instead their manifesto was an initial bargaining position, and things like cuts in tax credits were expected to be traded away in coalition negotiations.

This tells you how weak the centre-right is within the Conservative party right now. If the Chancellor and the majority of Conservative MPs thought the same way as Montgomerie, then their response to their election victory would not be to carry out the elements in the manifesto they expected to bargain away. It would be so easy for the Chancellor after the election to find some pretext not to cut tax credits. Instead Osborne went ahead, hoping that his control of so much of the media (and what the Treasury publishes) would mean that he could get away with the gulf between what he claims and what he actually does.

The weakness of the centre-right in UK politics has been masked for a long time by Cameron’s pre-2010 spin, a few progressive social policies and the restraining hand of the Liberal Democrats within the coalition. As I wrote in that earlier post, I strongly suspect a strong political centre (left or right) is vital for good governance, and that both the UK and Europe is suffering from its absence.The big question people like Montgomerie have to address is why, over the next five years, they will not suffer the same fate as the centre-right within the Republican party in the US.