The Tories and the North: Fisking Owen Jones
I wrote here a few weeks ago about an intelligent article by Peter Kellner which was called Why northerners don't vote tory and which used polling evidence to successfully refute almost every possible explanation for the challenges facing the Conservatives in the North.
Kellner had concluded that
"In the end, the Tories’ problem is not what they do; it’s what they are. Their trouble is their brand. They lost Scotland because they lost their reputation as a unionist party and came to be seen as an English party. They are losing the North because they are seen increasingly as a Southern party.
"In the end, the Tories’ problem is not what they do; it’s what they are. Their trouble is their brand. They lost Scotland because they lost their reputation as a unionist party and came to be seen as an English party. They are losing the North because they are seen increasingly as a Southern party.
This need not stop them winning a future election: there are enough constituencies in the Midlands and the South which, when added to the Tories’ isolated seats in the North, can give them a parliamentary majority. But few, even on the Conservative benches, would regard that as a wholly healthy prospect."
Yesterday in the Independent, updated today and to be found here there was another article, similar to Kellner's in some ways but enormously different in quality, written by Owen Jones in response to Sir Bernard Ingham's recent comments.
Now Sir Bernard's remarks about people from the North who don't like the Tories were, for me, an absolutely classic case where you know exactly what someone meant but really wish they hadn't put it in the words they chose.
Personally I am still so angry about the way the last Labour government comprehensively trashed Britain's financial and economic position, particularly in their last few years in office, that I have to make a considerable effort to make myself treat those who persist in voting for them with a modicum of respect and courtesy. I would find it extremely easy to speak about those who support Labour, whether in the North or the South, in even less flattering terms than Sir Bernard Ingham used about Northerners who don't like the Tories.
I try not to do so for the very pragmatic reason that it really doesn't get us anywhere. Democracy has the consequence that an individual who might consider voting Labour has the same number of votes as me - one - and I'm not going to persuade him or her not to make such a disastrous mistake by calling him or her "demented" or hurling similar insults, no matter what the temptation.
Now the interesting thing about the Peter Kellner and Owen Jones articles about the Conservatives and the North is that when you read them side by side, they are an object lesson in the right and wrong way to approach an issue.
Peter Kellner and Owen Jones are not too far apart politically. Owen Jones openly describes himself as being on the left: as a pollster Kellner always been careful not to do or say anything which would fatally compromise his independence but he has been close to prominent figures in the Labour party. Both are articulate and well informed.
But the difference between the way Kellner and Jones approach the issue is highly instructive. Kellner does something which is far too rare on the right, left and centre: he considers possible explanations for the issue he is addressing - why the Conservatives do not have more support in the North - and tests them as open-mindedly as he can against objective evidence. (And ends up by concluding that almost all of them are disproved by the polling evidence.)
Jones, on the other hand, just offers a list of his own prejudices as an explanation of why the Conservatives are not more popular in the North. And this is the real kicker - practically EVERY ONE of his statements about why the Tories are unpopular in the North is as true, or even more true, of Labour.
Let's fisk a few of them.
Jones: "As the old industrial communities disintegrated at an unprecedented rate under Tory rule, the anger and bitterness was passed from generation to generation."
In the working class Northern borough where I live, what remained of traditional local industry, with the sole exception of the nuclear industry, closed every bit as fast under Blair and Brown as it did under Thatcher and Major.
Jones: "today’s unprecedented fall in living standards conjures up what is – in large swathes of the country – almost an anti-Tory folklore."
Which is very odd, because that fall in living standards has been going on for about seven years. It started, and for the majority of people in the North as well as in the South the majority of that fall took place, while Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. I might not want to repeat his language, but do you really not see why Sir Bernard Ingham found it strange that people should blame the Tories for what was mostly done to them under Labour?"
Jones: "The Tories obsessively bait Labour over its links with trade unions, the biggest democratic movement in the country."
Insofar as the trade unions are genuinely democratic, a significant amount of the reason has a great deal to do with Norman Tebbit's laws requiring secret ballots.
Jones: "It is alarming how little scrutiny the Tories’ own funders get."
Absolute, complete and utter rubbish. These days, as was not the case a few years ago, all major donations to all political parties have to be registered with the electoral commission and are published, and media outlets and opponents of all parties go through them with a fine tooth comb.
Jones: "They are, after all, bankrolled by bankers, hedge funds and legal loan sharks."
If anyone reading the article had still retained had the impression to this point that Owen Jones had the least interest in presenting a balanced, objective and accurate assessment of the Conservative position, they know better now.
All the political parties draw income from a wide range of sources. Insofar as it is true that a substantial part of Conservative income comes from wealthy individuals and companies, the same is true of New Labour. For example, Electoral Commission figures show that while it was still legal for non-domestic taxpayers to support political parties, Labour accepted more money from millionaire non-doms than the Tories did - £8.9 million compared with £5.1 million between 2001 and 2008.
Jones: "Andrew Lansley, who set in motion the wholesale privatisation of the NHS"
The NHS is still free at the point of delivery and funded largely from general taxation. But if you regard the greatly increased use of private suppliers as over the past few years as "wholesale privatisation" then the person who set this in motion was NOT Andrew Lansley but his Labour predecessor as Health secretary, Andy Burnham. The rate of increase of outsourcing was actually faster in the last few years of the 1997-2010 Labour government than under Andrew Lansley.
Jones: "Forget which schools the Tory frontbench attended: it is their donors’ list that reveal the Tories’ historic mission as the political wing of wealth and power, or Boles “party of the rich”.
Remind me which cabinet minister, of which party, and representing a seat in which part of the country, said that the government in which he served was completely "relaxed" about people getting "filthy rich," as long as they pay their taxes?
Here's a clue: Peter Mandelson, Labour, then MP for Hartlepool in the North East. Oh, and George Osborne also thinks rich people should pay their taxes and has been trying to close down loopholes which allow them to escape doing so.
Jones: "It is an age-old Tory strategy: at the start of the last century, the party assiduously courted fear of Jewish and Irish immigrants. There is always a rich vein of prejudice to tap."
You're going back to the early 1900s? That's really pretty desperate. I don't even need to go back ten years to respond.
I'm glad you disapprove of political parties stirring up Anti-Semitism, Owen. So do I, whichever political party does it. So what did you think of the poster Labour prepared depicting the then Conservative leader Michael Howard, who is Jewish, as Fagin?
Yesterday in the Independent, updated today and to be found here there was another article, similar to Kellner's in some ways but enormously different in quality, written by Owen Jones in response to Sir Bernard Ingham's recent comments.
Now Sir Bernard's remarks about people from the North who don't like the Tories were, for me, an absolutely classic case where you know exactly what someone meant but really wish they hadn't put it in the words they chose.
Personally I am still so angry about the way the last Labour government comprehensively trashed Britain's financial and economic position, particularly in their last few years in office, that I have to make a considerable effort to make myself treat those who persist in voting for them with a modicum of respect and courtesy. I would find it extremely easy to speak about those who support Labour, whether in the North or the South, in even less flattering terms than Sir Bernard Ingham used about Northerners who don't like the Tories.
I try not to do so for the very pragmatic reason that it really doesn't get us anywhere. Democracy has the consequence that an individual who might consider voting Labour has the same number of votes as me - one - and I'm not going to persuade him or her not to make such a disastrous mistake by calling him or her "demented" or hurling similar insults, no matter what the temptation.
Now the interesting thing about the Peter Kellner and Owen Jones articles about the Conservatives and the North is that when you read them side by side, they are an object lesson in the right and wrong way to approach an issue.
Peter Kellner and Owen Jones are not too far apart politically. Owen Jones openly describes himself as being on the left: as a pollster Kellner always been careful not to do or say anything which would fatally compromise his independence but he has been close to prominent figures in the Labour party. Both are articulate and well informed.
But the difference between the way Kellner and Jones approach the issue is highly instructive. Kellner does something which is far too rare on the right, left and centre: he considers possible explanations for the issue he is addressing - why the Conservatives do not have more support in the North - and tests them as open-mindedly as he can against objective evidence. (And ends up by concluding that almost all of them are disproved by the polling evidence.)
Jones, on the other hand, just offers a list of his own prejudices as an explanation of why the Conservatives are not more popular in the North. And this is the real kicker - practically EVERY ONE of his statements about why the Tories are unpopular in the North is as true, or even more true, of Labour.
Let's fisk a few of them.
Jones: "As the old industrial communities disintegrated at an unprecedented rate under Tory rule, the anger and bitterness was passed from generation to generation."
In the working class Northern borough where I live, what remained of traditional local industry, with the sole exception of the nuclear industry, closed every bit as fast under Blair and Brown as it did under Thatcher and Major.
Jones: "today’s unprecedented fall in living standards conjures up what is – in large swathes of the country – almost an anti-Tory folklore."
Which is very odd, because that fall in living standards has been going on for about seven years. It started, and for the majority of people in the North as well as in the South the majority of that fall took place, while Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. I might not want to repeat his language, but do you really not see why Sir Bernard Ingham found it strange that people should blame the Tories for what was mostly done to them under Labour?"
Jones: "The Tories obsessively bait Labour over its links with trade unions, the biggest democratic movement in the country."
Insofar as the trade unions are genuinely democratic, a significant amount of the reason has a great deal to do with Norman Tebbit's laws requiring secret ballots.
Jones: "It is alarming how little scrutiny the Tories’ own funders get."
Absolute, complete and utter rubbish. These days, as was not the case a few years ago, all major donations to all political parties have to be registered with the electoral commission and are published, and media outlets and opponents of all parties go through them with a fine tooth comb.
Jones: "They are, after all, bankrolled by bankers, hedge funds and legal loan sharks."
If anyone reading the article had still retained had the impression to this point that Owen Jones had the least interest in presenting a balanced, objective and accurate assessment of the Conservative position, they know better now.
All the political parties draw income from a wide range of sources. Insofar as it is true that a substantial part of Conservative income comes from wealthy individuals and companies, the same is true of New Labour. For example, Electoral Commission figures show that while it was still legal for non-domestic taxpayers to support political parties, Labour accepted more money from millionaire non-doms than the Tories did - £8.9 million compared with £5.1 million between 2001 and 2008.
Jones: "Andrew Lansley, who set in motion the wholesale privatisation of the NHS"
The NHS is still free at the point of delivery and funded largely from general taxation. But if you regard the greatly increased use of private suppliers as over the past few years as "wholesale privatisation" then the person who set this in motion was NOT Andrew Lansley but his Labour predecessor as Health secretary, Andy Burnham. The rate of increase of outsourcing was actually faster in the last few years of the 1997-2010 Labour government than under Andrew Lansley.
Jones: "Forget which schools the Tory frontbench attended: it is their donors’ list that reveal the Tories’ historic mission as the political wing of wealth and power, or Boles “party of the rich”.
Remind me which cabinet minister, of which party, and representing a seat in which part of the country, said that the government in which he served was completely "relaxed" about people getting "filthy rich," as long as they pay their taxes?
Here's a clue: Peter Mandelson, Labour, then MP for Hartlepool in the North East. Oh, and George Osborne also thinks rich people should pay their taxes and has been trying to close down loopholes which allow them to escape doing so.
Jones: "It is an age-old Tory strategy: at the start of the last century, the party assiduously courted fear of Jewish and Irish immigrants. There is always a rich vein of prejudice to tap."
You're going back to the early 1900s? That's really pretty desperate. I don't even need to go back ten years to respond.
I'm glad you disapprove of political parties stirring up Anti-Semitism, Owen. So do I, whichever political party does it. So what did you think of the poster Labour prepared depicting the then Conservative leader Michael Howard, who is Jewish, as Fagin?
Or of their poster depicting the heads of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin (who is also Jewish) on pigs? (pictures depicting Jewish people as pigs or mixing their body parts with those of pigs is a classic anti-semitic trope.)
Put these and some of the other things Labour put out in the run up to the 2005 election together, and it wasn't a nice picture.
I think Mr Jones needs to do better than this. He could start by taking lessons from Peter Kellner.
I think Mr Jones needs to do better than this. He could start by taking lessons from Peter Kellner.
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