1. 1. Although they have a massive majority in parliament, Labour received only 34% of the votes in the 2024 election. Given the low turnout, this means that only about 25% of those entitled to vote supported them, (and many of those will have given their support for what Labour isn’t – the disgraced Conservative party - than what it is. Thus our government lacks the confidence of the electorate, and this may explain why it seems to lack confidence in itself.
2. 2. A succession of minor “indiscretions” were revealed soon after Labour took office - from freebies for suits and designer spectacles to a failure to pay the appropriate tax on a property purchase. These were relatively minor compared to the excesses of such as Boris Johnson and Lady Mone, but helped to confirm the more cyclical members of the already disillusioned electorate in their view that “They’re all at it; in it for themselves; all the same." So “No change there then.”
3. 3. Although the party promised “change” they are effectively continuing the policies of the past, based on the transparent fallacy that the UK can enjoy Scandinavian levels of public realm and services without funding them properly – that is, with adequate levels of taxation. Thus we are experiencing “the mixture as before,” albeit probably more honestly, though not as to date more efficiently.
4. 4. The government (and Sir Keir Starmer in particular?) seems “tin eared” and have clearly not sufficiently thought through the consequences and likely reaction to some of their policies (eg the abrupt cut in Pensioners’ Winter Fuel allowance without a “taper” for the second level of those most struggling; inheritance tax on land to catch tax-evaders without an “active farmer” clause or “grandfather clause;" the appearance of partiality towards the government of Israel whilst using a parliamentary procedural artifice to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group; meeting Reform’s anti-immigration rhetoric half-way by expressing fears of our becoming an “island of strangers.”
5. 5. There is also an alarming list of things that a Labour Government is simply not expected to do: continuance of the vindictive “two child” benefit cap; reductions to disabled people’s allowances; further cuts to the Overseas Aid budget; deliberately making life more difficult for immigrants (not least the overseas students who contribute so splendidly to our university coffers and international reputation.)
6. 6. The government is constrained by the “no increases in key taxes” promise they felt necessary to win the election. They have, however, allowed at least two opportunities to abandon the promise to pass: – the £20bm black hole the “discovered” in the public finances, and the virtual withdrawal of the US from guaranteeing the defence of Europe. Either or both could have been used to justify a change of policy.
7. 7. The Labour Government has to realise that the overwhelming majority of the media is against them and will exploit every error (as it has done very successfully so far), that rich resources, some of them foreign-owned, are being used to facilitate this, and if they muddle along in the current fashion for the next four years things are going to get worse rather than better. A dramatic change is needed (and a change of Prime Minister will be far from sufficient.)
8. 8. Almost exactly a year ago (4th November, 2024) this blog, under the title The Vision Thing, commented that, given its low level of support, the Labour Party could have honestly recognised the situation and offered the Liberal Democrats, Greens and such nationalists as were interested, membership of a Coalition which would have had majority support. These could, together, (preferably over two parliamentary terms) tackled the root and branch reforms which our country desperately need, probably after taking guidance from a series of Citizen’s Assemblies to consider :
· Voting reform
· Parliamentary reform
· Devolution to the nations, regions and localities
· Fair and effective taxation
· The housing market
· The media
· A realistic defence commitment
· Company law
· A constitution
· Our place in the modern world.
We’ve already wasted a year.
membership of a Coalition which would have had majority support
ReplyDeleteI've told you before: you simply can't say something that wasn't put before the electorate, like a coalition cobbled together after the results come out, would have had 'majority support'. Voters don't work like that. You absolutely can't take my vote for party X as evidence that I would support any coalition in which party X is a member.
For example, in 2010 the Conservatives got 31% of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats got 23%. But if the resulting coalition government had been put to the electorate as a possible government before the vote, would 54% have voted for it? No, they most certainly would not. Likely it would have got less than 50% of the vote.
But in actual fact it got zero per cent, because no one voted for it, because it was not on the ballot paper.
However I'm mostly interested in the following:
A constitution
Given that we already have a constitution, I assume this means a written constitution. But I've been thinking about this, and it's simply impossible. For instance, what mechanism do you think could be used to enact such a constitution? The only means to enact a written constitution that we have in this country is an Act of Parliament: Parliament would have to pass a Constitution Act, which said that the constitution was X and Y and Z and so on, and presumably that it could only be amended with a two-thirds majority in Parliament and a referendum, or some such.
But the thing is that no Parliament can bind its successors. So even if the next Parliament were to pass a Constitution Act along those lines, there's nothing to stop the next government from — with a simple majority vote in Parliament — passing a Constitution (Amendment) Act to either remove the two-third majority requirement, or simply to make whatever change they wanted anyway.
Indeed, there'd be nothing to stop any future government passing a Constitution (Repeal) Act and simply repealing the Constitution Act entirely — again, only a simple majority vote in Parliament would be required.
Indeed, we already have an example of how Parliaments can't bind their successors constitutionally with the awful Fixed Term Parliaments Act. That required a two-thirds majority of Parliament to vote for a premature dissolution. Mrs May sought and got such a vote to hold the election in 2017. But in 2019, the required supermajority was not there, so Mr Johnson's government passed — by a simple majority — the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019.
And then the Fixed Term Parliaments Act was finally repealed entirely (hooray!) by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.
Such would be the inevitable fate of any Constitution Act.