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June 2012

Polling

DO THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE A FUTURE?

Andrew Hawkins examines the deputy prime minister’s recent form and asks, are storm clouds gathering over Nick Clegg’s beleaguered party?

The fortunes of the Liberal Democrats offer a brilliant example of the glass half-full/half-empty dichotomy. Eeyores reckon that the party’s 2010 election performance was a disaster, given the promise held out by its poll surge following the first televised leaders’ debate, and they argue that Nick Clegg’s credibility since backing the coalition’s line on tuition fees has been very costly.

To be sure, at less than 14 per cent, the average Lib Dem vote share throughout the most recent Parliament is well down on the average for the Parliament before.

This figure is even worse if you calculate from the tuition fees vote onwards.

Yet the Lib Dems still have five cabinet seats and the deputy PM, plus a further 13 government ministers, which is an awful lot be er than being in opposition. So, two years into the coalition, what are the prospects for the party, come 2015?

On the face of it, its prospects are not good. That pre-election surge was in very large part predicated on Clegg’s ‘honest Joe’ look directly into camera during the TV debates, and saying, “Trust me – I’m different from the other candidates.” Since those heady days, what must worry the party most of all is the extent to which it has become unfashionable to declare support for the Lib Dems generally, but Clegg in particular.

Also damaging is the claim that they are the Tory Party’s patsies. In a recent ComRes poll conducted exclusively for TotalPolitics, fully 50 per cent of the public said the Lib Dems “seem to have almost no influence over government policy” and only one-third disagreed.

The Liberal Democrats seem to have almost no influence over government policy

50 40 30

20

10 0

50%

Agree

33%

Disagree

17%

Don’t know

Showing unity is fine, but as the next election looms the Lib Dems will need to be able to demonstrate to the electorate the difference they have made. That will be at a time when the Conservatives will be working hard to take the credit for everything that has gone well, and blaming the Lib Dems for everything that has not.

However, before we consign the party to history, it’s worth recounting that it did achieve a national vote share in 2010 of around a fi h higher land

McCaus ig ra

C

8 | June 2012 | Total Politics than the Clegg era poll average of 18 per cent. While many in the party were understandably disappointed that they did not live up to the promise of the surge, and saw their seat numbers reduced despite a larger national vote share, it was nonetheless a creditable electoral performance.

That performance was, of course, due very much to the exposure they gained in the televised debates. Even though the impact of the surge weakened a er the first one, it’s still likely to be a phenomenon that will prove repeatable, at least to some degree, in 2015.

Also in the party’s favour is that it has a very substantial presence in local government (even a er the local elections) with around 2,750 councillors across Great Britain. This means it has a robust local campaigning infrastructure, and the party should have learnt the lessons from 2010 about how to take proper advantage of a sudden upsurge in popularity at election time.

However, even if the party does manage to revive its flagging fortunes, it will have to overcome the additional hurdle of the boundary changes. The government is well advanced in its plans to reduce the number of MPs by 50. Elections expert Rob Hayward calculates that while Labour will be

That pre-election surge was predicated on Clegg’s ‘honest Joe’ look directly into camera during the TV debates, saying, ‘Trust me – I’m different from the others’

M eli s s a

P a t t o n.

S a di

U g u r

O K Ç u.

Oli

S c a r f f.

Kri sH a n k e hit hardest by the reduction and redistribution, it will likely reduce the number of seats of both the Conservatives and Lib Dems by around 10. To put this into context, it would mean a reduction of three per cent of Conservative seats, around 10 per cent of Labour seats, but a whopping 17.5 per cent of Lib Dem seats. As Hayward points out: “This therefore represents a marked hit for the party. It also probably makes a Labour/Lib Dem coalition that much less likely, with a net loss of about 35 seats.”

We cannot escape the fact, though, that the Conservatives currently remain well outside the vote share numbers that would result in an overall majority. Given the poll numbers right now, if an election were held, even on the new boundaries there would be a Labour majority of over 50.

So, with a Labour/Lib Dem coalition unlikely, could we be in for a repeat of the 2010 election outcome, waiting 80 years for a coalition government and then two coming along on the trot?

It’s a genuine possibility. Around a third of the 2010 Lib Dem vote has ‘parked’ with Labour for now, but with the oxygen of election publicity it’s likely that a lot of that will dri back to the Lib Dems. ComRes has had vote shares of 40 per cent for the Conservatives just twice since the 2010 general election, and David Cameron needs a bigger margin over Labour if he is to stand any real chance of forming a majority government. Britain may not be finished with coalition government quite yet. ■ u Andrew Hawkins is chairman of ComRes

POLL TO WATCH

73%

MPs are divided over whether the government’s plans to legalise same-sex marriage will succeed or fail, according to a ComRes poll for the Campaign for Marriage. Ironically, given Cameron’s enthusiasm for the proposal, only 41 per cent of Conservative MPs believe it will succeed, compared with 67 per cent of Labour MPs and 95 per cent of Lib Dems. Cameron’s colleagues are consistently and significantly more hostile towards it than MPs from other parties. Therefore, their scepticism over whether it will succeed is either wishful thinking on their part, or they know something the rest of us don’t.

BEHIND THE FIGURE

2 / 3

More than two-thirds (69 per cent) of young Asians living in Great Britain agree families should live according to the concept of ‘honour’, or ‘izzat’. Only six per cent agreed that it could sometimes be right “to physically punish a female member of the family if she brings dishonour to her family or community”. But a much higher proportion – almost one in five – agreed that certain specific acts that were seen as bringing a woman’s family dishonour were reasonable justification for physical punishment. These included disobeying a father’s wishes, terminating an existing or pre-arranged marriage and dressing in an unacceptable manner.

BLOGGER WRITES...IFTHEINTERNETAIN’TBROKE,DON’TFIXIT,SAYSNICKPICKLES

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result, then the internet is certainly living up to its reputation as the source of all insanity.

In recent weeks we’ve had the Home Office’s rehashed attempt to monitor what we do online, Claire Perry’s report calling for a mandatory filter, and a court ruling forcing ISPs to block a well-known site that, in part, was based on sharing links to copyrighted material.

8

The intent behind each of these policies is laudable – so why has Big Brother Watch condemned them all? Simple. They do not, and cannot, work without absolutely everything we do online, content and all, being monitored 24/7. And even then it’s probably likely the real harm will be driven underground to communications channels impossible to monitor.

Want to know how to evade any of these policies? Ask a 14-year-old how they get to Facebook on school PCs, where it should be ‘blocked’.

14-year-old how they get to Facebook on school PCs,

and the internet has already transformed our lives, but we risk throwing

Technology and the internet has already transformed our lives, but we risk throwing that progress away if, when trying to tackle problems, we fail to properly assess the solutions being proposed.

Rather than understand the root of the problem or question the feasibility of solutions, the desire to ‘do something’ has overcome sensible policy-making to a catastrophic degree.

Unintended consequences are a fact of life, but to make policy in wilful ignoransegce of them is not only disheartening but is nothing short of dangerous. Yes, the internet does pose challenges, but they existed long before 1998. Overcoming them was not easy before the internet, and it’s not easy now, but in seeking to do ‘something’, let’s not allow our politicians to legislate anything before they understand how, and if, it’ll work. ■ u Nick Pickles is the director of Big Brother Watch

Total Politics | June 2012 | 9

Striding tiger, Hidden tyrant?

CREATEDInCHInA

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36 | June 2012 | Total Politics

A n d r e w

J o h n s o n.

C hi n a f a c e.

F r a n c k r e p o r t e r

China is positioning itself as a major modern power, but with its poor human rights record, asks John Higginson, should our MPs be learning lessons from how they get things done?

China contains a fifth of the world’s population, is larger than the US, and spans five time zones. Its 350 ethnic groups speak 292 different languages and produce a fifth of the world’s goods. Even with slowing growth, China’s GDP is expected to increase by more than eight per cent over the next year compared to Britain’s 0.8 per cent. In 2016 the IMF expects China to have the biggest GDP in the world. This year, while the eyes of the world’s media will be focused on the US presidential elections, China will carry out a once-a-decade change of administration.

Do we need to be afraid of China’s rise, or should we welcome the Chinese dragon with open arms? Do British politicians need to hold their noses while they sign the deals with China that are vital to our own economic growth, or can Britain learn lessons from the world’s most successful Communist country? Surely there is more to China than chow mein, cheap goods and questionable human rights?

“Perhaps, as a democratically elected politician, I shouldn’t say this,” says all-party parliamentary China group (APPCG) chairman and Labour MP Mark Hendrick as we sit in his private office. He leans in close and lowers his voice. “While China may be far from what we would want in the UK, they are good at getting things done.”

Knowing that such a comment might raise the image of trampled freedoms in the minds of many Britons, he elucidates. “If individuals in Britain want to object to a major development, they can do so. If they have property rights, they can shut down the project altogether. It’s the right of the individual over the right of the masses. The Chinese take a very different view – there are lots of stories of land grabs, where people are deprived of their property. Nevertheless, major projects, whether it’s highways or buildings, can go ahead, and go ahead very quickly. People get into jobs and there’s economic development on a scale that is very difficult to imagine in this country. It’s a huge benefit.”

Having been fighting for years to get a relatively small bridge built over the River Wye, vice-chairman and Conservative MP David Davies was awestruck on a trip the APPCG took to China in December.

“Having been to Shanghai and Beijing, it took my breath away how modern those cities are. It’s absolutely extraordinary. This isn’t ‘First World’ – it’s beyond that. We travelled to and from Shanghai Airport in a train doing several hundred kilometres an hour. They had put up several huge bridges up over the Yangtze River in just a few years. When I think of the work involved in trying to get just a small bridge up in my constituency…” He trails off. “I think we’re going to learn a lot of lessons from China.”

APPCG Treasurer Emma Reynolds says the West “has got to see these things from a Chinese perspective. We should be worried about human rights, and that there isn’t freedom of expression, but we should be mindful of what people say are their priorities. At the moment jobs, having a decent level of income and a roof over their heads, tops other freedoms.”

Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones, who advises a major Chinese corporation and is a vice-chairman on the APPCG, says China’s human rights record will improve as the country becomes more prominent on the international stage.

“You are not going to solve human rights problems overnight, but the Chinese are getting better at discussing the issue without being defensive, which is a step in the right direction,” he says.

In February, US foreign secretary Hillary Clinton called China’s veto of a UN resolution on the Syrian regime “despicable”. But, Hendrick and Reynolds both point out, you only have to look at the country’s history to understand its non-interventionist world view.

“More often than not it has been on the receiving end of hostility, and it doesn’t wish on others what it doesn’t wish on itself. As a result, it spends far more on internal security than it does on defence,” Hendrick says. “There is, obviously, the situation of Tibet, but even the British government now says that Tibet is part of China.”

Reynolds says Britain’s empire-building is partly to blame. “China has been through a period of such terrible political turmoil in the last century,” she explains. “One of the reasons it is against intervention is that it has been invaded very recently, such as Britain’s taking of Hong Kong. That is its background for saying, ‘We are not going to intervene directly in North Korea or Syria’.”

That said, the death of British businessman Neil Heywood has roused Britain’s interest in Chinese political affairs, but the more interesting story, according to Hendrick, is the power play currently taking place as the highest echelons of the Communist regime jostle for position.

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‘In Britain, it’s the right of the individual over the right of the masses. The Chinese take a very different view – there are lots of land grabs, but there’s also economic development on a scale which is difficult to imagine here’

Total Politics | June 2012 | 37

IntervIew

52

ANDREW LANSLEY

The health secretary tells Amber Elliott about his struggle with the health reforms, looking at social care budgets, and why he’s not worried about the future. Photos by Jack Lawson

Andrew Lansley is surrounded by chairs. There must be at least 20 in his plush, cream office, where the carpet is so deep that you sink slightly with every step.

It feels like a waiting room for a private hospital – and Lansley is the grey-suited, breezy physician who greets you at the door.

“The former health secretary sat here,” says Lansley, pointing to a chair halfway down a vast conference table, “but I sit at the head. The department went into a kind of spasm. Change is a terrible thing.

“Time for change,” he adds with a grin. Time for change, indeed. Lansley wants to move on after enduring the longest waiting list ever with his Health and Social Care Act. But it

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52 | June 2012 | Total Politics

‘They said, “We’re going to hell in a handcart. We’re going to lose the election, and it’s all going to be your fault.” That’s pretty stressful. But you come through it’

Total Politics | June 2012 | 53

Regulars Letters 5 Diary 6 BBC Radio 4’s Carolyn Quinn Polling 8 Andrew Hawkins asks if it is all doom and gloom for the Liberal Democrats’ electoral fortunes Blogger writes 9 Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch The idea 10 Robert Halfon MP wants Tories to stop attacking trade unions The insider 11 George Pascoe-Watson Debate 12 Conservatives MPs Jane Ellison and Peter Bone clash over gay marriage Felicity Parkes 13 Our anonymous researcher explains how she keeps her office budget to a minimum Events 14 The dissenter 16 Dan Hodges Data 17 Ministerial profile 18 Ed Vaizey MP MP of the month 20 Alan Whitehead MP

A n d r e w

Y a t e s

Total Campaigns People’s Pledge 22 Chris Bruni-Lowe explains why he thinks this campaign on Europe has captured the public mood The future of war propaganda 24 Speechwriting guru Simon Lancaster is amazed at the success of Kony 2012 Drinks with... 26 Alex Deane of Weber Shandwick

Celebrating 15 years as an MP, Caroline Flint talks about her evolution from ‘Blair babe’ to tough tweeter

John Higginson examines what British politicians can learn from China, the endlessly growing communist superpower

Features The political path 29 Skills minister John Hayes discusses life-long learning and the ‘bourgeois’ education myth Caroline Flint 32 Celebrating 15 years as an MP, Caroline Flint talks about her evolution from ‘Blair babe’ to tough tweeter Rising China 36 John Higginson examines what British politicians can learn from China, the endlessly growing communist superpower Luciana Berger 40 The shadow minister talks about media scrutiny over her looks and why she feels she has to work so hard to succeed in politics In conversation with Nick Herbert 44 The policing minister could be in with a chance for a cabinet position, but is Nick Herbert happy with the response to his ambitious and controversial reforms? Ben Duckworth finds out Labour’s defence 50 Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy explains why Labour’s realism and reform approach is

The shadow minister talks about media scrutiny over her looks and why she feels she has to work so hard to succeed in politics In conversation with Nick Herbert 44 The policing minister could be in with a chance for a cabinet position, but is Nick Herbert happy with the response to his ambitious and controversial reforms? Ben Duckworth finds out

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy explains why Labour’s realism and reform approach is

COVER STORY PAGE 56

COVER STORY PAGE 56 ED MILIBAND

The Labour leader has been ridiculed, dismissed as weirdlooking and struggled to impose himself at the head of a united party. But has the tide now turned? Jim Pickard examines the man who could be king

The Labour leader has been ridiculed, dismissed as weirdlooking and struggled to impose himself at the head of a united party. But has the tide now turned? Jim Pickard examines the man who could be king needed for the armed forces. Andrew Lansley 52 The health secretary’s NHS reforms have been passed, but there is the aftermath to consider. Amber Elliott finds out if he feels his cabinet position is safe

Amber Elliott finds out if he feels his cabinet position is safe

Total History Rocking with royalty 62 Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Debate from the vault 64 The beer tax terror History of one object 65 The documents pertaining to

Total History Rocking with royalty 62 Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Debate from the vault 64 The beer tax terror History of one object 65 The documents pertaining to the first divorce obtained the first divorce obtained by a woman by a woman

Memorabilia 65

Memorabilia 65

Sajid Javid MP

Sajid Javid MP

They were also MPs 66 Sir Herbert Austin

They were also MPs 66 Sir Herbert Austin

Total Life Book review 68 Keith Simpson MP tackles Lord Spicer’s diaries Bought to book 69 Dominic Raab MP My old book 69 Tom Harris MP Film review 70 Free Men Researchers’ stories 71 Hinterland 72

Total Life Book review 68 Keith Simpson MP tackles Lord Spicer’s diaries Bought to book 69 Dominic Raab MP My old book 69 Tom Harris MP Film review 70 Free Men Researchers’ stories 71 Hinterland 72

Penny Mordaunt MP Top ten politicians out of the office 73 Lunch with… 74 Stephen Pound MP dines at Westminster favourite, the

Penny Mordaunt MP Top ten politicians out of the office 73 Lunch with… 74 Stephen Pound MP dines at Westminster favourite, the

Red Lion on Whitehall

Red Lion on Whitehall

Total Politics | June 2012 | 3

Total Politics |