The curious case of Liz Truss

The premiership of Liz Truss will be remembered for many years to come. She will be remembered as being the shortest-serving former UK prime minister (for now), resigning after seven weeks. It will be remembered that only two days after going to Balmoral to meet the monarch, Queen Elizabeth II passed away having served 70 years on the throne, making Truss her 15th and final PM. People will also remember the Truss premiership for plunging already bad Conservative Party polling numbers down to record lows, giving the opposition Labour Party an unprecedented 30% lead. But the main thing her seven weeks as Prime Minister will be remembered for – destroying the longstanding myth that the Conservative Party are good at managing the economy.

As outlined in a post earlier this year in a global economic crisis, governments, in the short term at least, are limited in what they can do to remedy the situation. However, the one thing governments can certainly do is not make the situation worse. In this Liz Truss and former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng failed spectacularly.

The now infamous ‘mini budget’ or “Growth Plan” of 23 September 2022 caused the pound to hit an all-time low against the US dollar, and force the Bank of England to intervene to prevent chaotic drops in gilts prices from stinging pension funds and threatening financial stability. How on did the UK’s natural party of government, the party of sound money and fiscal responsibility manage to get it all so badly wrong? And so quickly?

Since 2008, as pointed out in my last blog post, right-of-centre governments have stepped back from full Thatcherite free market policies due to the fact that these policies directly resulted in the crisis of the last decade. Whilst free market and trickle-down economics may no longer be electorally viable, there remain many true believers in the small government crusade.

The decline and fall of Boris Johnson as PM was entirely of his own making and had been on the cards for some time. During the period, the disquiet within the Conservative Party was not so much over “Party-Gate” but the increase in taxes, namely National Insurance, to keep their manifesto commitment to fund social care, a policy area where previous governments have failed to grasp the nettle. Tory Party members were furious that a Conservative Government had raised taxes, and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak was in their eyes to blame. Enter Liz Truss.

Truss, on becoming Foreign Secretary in early 2022, began doing these strange photos where she was imitating former Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This Thatcher cosplay was matched by sound-bite rhetoric about free markets and individualism. This really played to the home crowd with supporters in the Tory Party claiming “in Liz we Truss.”

Warnings from former Chancellor Sunak that the programme announced by Liz Truss when running for leader would make the economic situation worse were ignored by the party membership. In Liz they Trussed, in early September she became Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.

A decade before coming to power, a group of right-leaning Tory MPs authored a book titled Britannia Unchained, a treatise, arguing that Britain should adopt a different and radical approach to business and economics or risk “an inevitable slide into mediocrity.” These MPs belonged to the Conservative Party ‘Free Enterprise’ group and included Liz Truss and the person a decade later she was to appoint as Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng.

In a later attempt to shift the blame to former Prime Minister Liz Truss for what happened, claiming he warned her the government were moving too fast. Kwarteng has not yet apologised for his mini budget on 23 September or the catastrophic fallout. In fact, his frustration seems more with the fact that Truss ended up sacking him, not long before being forced to resign herself. The truth is, the throwing caution to the wind approach of slashing taxes, removing restrictions on banker bonuses, and slashing other regulations such as IR35 were all consistent with what he and Truss had argued in Britannia Unchained a decade earlier. And these ideas found favour with the Conservative Party membership – with the idealised view of Thatcher’s vision of small government, deregulation and low taxation. For the general public, this was not so much ‘Britannia Unchained’ as ‘Libertarians Unhinged.’

Where this mini-budget really hit the rocks, especially with the financial markets, was the unfunded tax cuts and spending increases. The Tories, having implemented austerity policies during their first term in office with the Lib Dems, found out the hard way that underfunding the Police or the NHS was simply not an option. The 2017 election where they lost their overall majority, and Corbyn’s Labour had an unexpected surge in support largely due to increased turnout by young voters, was largely due to an anti-austerity backlash. In Kwarteng’s mini-budget, the solution was that the government borrow to pay for tax cuts and spending increases. The former Chancellor argued that cutting taxes and red tape this would stimulate economic growth meaning the government would soon be able to repay the debt.

Many were surprised to see financial markets react to a right-wing Tory budget in this way. Threats of capital withdrawal and other measures are not uncommon when centre-left governments try to implement their agenda. Yet here we had a right-wing budget and the market responded badly. One issue was that Truss and Kwarteng completely ignored the Office for Budget Responsibility before preparing the mini-budget. This office was set up by former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne, in response to his claims that Labour had acted financially irresponsibly when in power. This office was designed to be a check and balance for the left, yet it was the right who fell foul of it. One of Britain’s key selling points is that is a rules-based economy. By not consulting the OBR before the mini-budget, Truss and Kwarteng damaged Britain’s brand.

Cutting taxes at a time of high inflation is not a terribly smart move as it will drive up inflation further. Borrowing money to cut taxes and increase spending is what the Government in Greece did prior to the 2008 financial crash, with devastating consequences. Add both of these to a world economy struggling in the wake of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is no surprise that the markets reacted as they did.

Within days, Truss was forced to sack Kwarteng and announce a U-turn on the mini-budget, to much tormenting that “the lady is for turning” with reference to Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote. Within 44 days of becoming Prime Minister, Truss announced her resignation, having days earlier replaced her friend Kwazi Kwarteng with Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor and almost all measures in the mini-budget had to be reversed.

It was would easy to blame Truss and Kwarteng for this specular failure. Many have cited her shocking performances in the media as why ultimately she resigned and question how someone got to the highest level of public office when so clearly unable to perform. Leadership qualities play a significant role, and in modern politics media presentation is critical. But this was not a problem of style and presentation alone, as abysmal as this was under the Truss premiership.

The initial reaction to the Mini Budget in September was very positive from many in the Conservative Party and their cheerleaders in the tabloid media.

Front page of The Daily Mail in response to Kwazi Kwarteng’s mini-budget

For Tory Party members and Daily Mail readers, this was the budget they had been waiting for. Far from being a surprise, the mini-budget was implementing not just the promises of Truss’s leadership campaign, but the wishes of many rank-and-file Conservatives. After enduring Sunak’s National Insurance increase the free market wing of the party finally had their way, at last, a true Tory budget. Never mind Britannia Unchained, this was Conservative Party unleashed.

The ‘get Brexit done/anti-Jeremy Corbyn’ coalition that won the Conservatives the 2019 election now finds itself in tatters. Not only were so-called red wall voters from the North East of England put off by the return of trickle-down economics, but polls show that large swaths of traditionally Conservative voting south of England were also in despair. Within the Conservative Party, those who still subscribed to Edmund Burke’s view that no “generation should be arrogant enough as to only think of themselves” and that borrowing for tax cuts would harm future generations, found themselves in the minority. In fact, the enduring influence of one-nation conservatism made popular by Benjamin Disraeli, of pragmatism and paternalism was replaced with an unwavering belief in small government and the market.

That Conservative MPs managed to avoid another membership ballot and Rishi Sunak replacing Liz Trus is the topic of the next blog post. Needless to say Conservative MPs, many from Constituencies once considered save tory, are now terrified by recent polls. Allowing the party membership a say risked a further dose of trickle-down right-wing economics, making the Tories unelectable for a long time. It was the party members who supported Truss, while in the first round, only 50 backed Truss for leader, though other candidates who had MP backing early on also espoused not dissimilar economic views.

Some who supported Truss may now have reflected on what happened and perhaps realise that these policies not only do not work, but electorally they are poison. But many on the right will blame it on Truss, her leadership style and the speed with which she tried to implement the reforms. In many ways, the fact that the mini-budget changes were done quickly and communicated poorly was a good thing, as it meant these policies were reversed quickly. A more media-savvy and gradual implementation would have done more harm in the long term. It is no accident that since 2008, free market trickle-down economics has been out of fashion. The Truss premiership has been a timely reminder that these policies do not work and should not be tried again.

Boris Johnson – why he fell and can he come back?

The demise of Boris Johnson’s premiership in 2022 was both a surprising political upset and entirely predictable at the same time.

It was a political upset when considering the large majority the Conservative Party won in 2019 under his leadership, the best result of any political party since Thatcher’s 1979 election victory. Yet, after months of reports about Party Gate and scandal after scandal involving both Boris Johnson and various other MPs, his eventual resignation in June 2022 became inevitable. Indeed back in February last year my blog post questioned how he was still in post and argued that his brand was damaged. Five months later, after yet another scandal involving Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher, he was forced to resign.

Boris Johnson resigned as PM in June 2022.

It is still too soon to say how history will judge Boris Johnson, not least because there is still the possibility that he may return as Tory Leader someday. Few can deny that his ascent to the role of Conservative Party Leader and Prime Minister in 2019 profoundly impacted British politics for many years to come. In 2019 I said that one of Boris’s strengths as a politician was that he could tap into people’s hopes and fears. He would have been a formidable Leader of the Opposition, and if the Conservative Party do not win the next election this theory may be put to the test.

Yet, Boris Johnson is a deeply flawed character whose political ambition has and continues to come first. What little political or policy conviction he held was primarily about staying on brand and winning votes. This in itself is not unusual and in modern politics, one can have quite a successful career by being transactional and self-promotional.

Boris Johnson was ultimately undone by both his own character flaws and by the direction of the Conservative Party, the latter being seriously out of touch with the mood of the British public.

Plenty has already been said about Johnson’s character flaws, which were well-known long before he became Prime Minister. For those who backed him, there was plenty of evidence that things would turn out as they did. The fact is that like Johnson, his backers promoted him for short-term gain. Specifically to break the political deadlock caused by Brexit and to win an election largely on that issue. It worked.

But the fixes the Johnson leadership provided, under the guidance of Dominic Cummins and others, were largely short-term. His oven-ready Brexit deal may have won the election in 2019, but has resulted in a long-term stand-off over the Northern Ireland Protocol causing ongoing problems. The bold assertion during his resignation speech that his government had fixed social care is simply not true, with the system overwhelmed and the system still facing serious workforce shortages and lacking proper integration with the NHS.

The three years of Johnson’s premiership will be largely remembered for the Government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic. As I have addressed in earlier posts, the Government failed in its response to the pandemic. Yes, the rollout of the vaccine was a success, in no small part because this task was administered by the NHS, one of the most trusted British institutions, rather than being contracted out to businesses with close association with the Conservative Party. Examples of favourable business deals, such as those given to Dido Harding or Michelle Mone, whose companies were awarded lucrative government contracts and failed miserably in delivering have left a sour taste in voters’ mouths.

This all happened under Johnson’s watch and he was simply not fit to lead the country during this crisis. But he did not act alone. It was a failure not only of the Conservative Government but also of the British state. The crisis highlighted the country was not prepared for a pandemic, and longstanding underfunding of the NHS made this much worse.

A month before Boris Johnson’s resignation at PM, I argued that during the current time when inflation has increased globally, national governments are limited by what they can do, in the short term at least. Incumbent governments of all political persuasions have struggled in the last year, so it is not surprising that the Conservative’s polling numbers have been poor during this crisis. But in the same way that the Tories blamed Labour’s spending levels for the 2008 financial crisis, despite strong evidence that this was not the case, they cannot now claim economic problems are beyond the control of the nation-state without looking like hypocrites. Again, the short-term electoral gain in 2010 has now made a rod for their backs a decade on.

Boris Johnson is unlikely to return to any leadership role in the short term, not least because the Privileges Committee is yet to investigate party gate and his actions during the pandemic. If this investigation does not go Johnson’s way, he may face a byelection that he is not certain to win. 1922 Committee Chair Sir Graham Brady has suggested that Johnson had the numbers to run for the Tory leadership against Rishi Sunak in October 2022, though others claim Johnson made a desperate bluff talking up his support during this leadership race. Given the number of MPs who called for him to resign only weeks earlier, including the 57 ministers who resigned themselves in protest, for him to return anytime soon is unlikely and unwise.

Yet he retains core support within the Conservative Party, and with a group of Tory MPs. He also enjoys a surprising level of support still with the British public, though nowhere near the level he enjoyed in December 2019. His two months as caretaker Prime Minister in July and August 2022 during a cost of living crisis certainly did not help matters, where he partied in the Cotswalds and took holidays in Greece while many voters struggled to pay their bills. Meanwhile, the Tory Party spent the summer holding a leadership election, where, as the next post will discuss, the least competent candidate was elected by Tory members.

Boris Johnson believes that like his hero Winston Churchill, he can return to power one day. He probably believes that he fixed social care, did a good job during the pandemic and did a good job with his Brexit deal. Or he knows that if you repeat a lie often enough people start to believe it. When you have a legacy to protect and want a future in politics, you say what you need to say and do what you need to do. And the Tory Party? Would they put him in power again? If they thought it would increase their vote, yes they would. That he is not suitable or trustworthy is no matter, when the motivation is power at all costs.

Were Johnson to return as Tory Leader for the 2024 election, he would almost certainly lose. However, he may motivate a section of the Tory base and Brexit supporters, possibly mitigating the losses. On the other hand, this might spur on a wave of tactical voting by Labour, Lib-Dem and Green voters to punish the Tories for putting Johnson back after all that has happened.

It is risky to make predictions, but it is safe to assume we have not heard the last of Boris Johnson. And much like Berlusconi in Italy, the results will undoubtedly be bad both for politics and the country.

The Occupy Movement and the response to the 2008 financial crisis

As the world currently goes through a post-pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine fuelled economic crisis, it is interesting to reflect on the economic crisis of over a decade ago and how the public responded at that time.

After the 2008 financial crisis, despite predictions to the contrary at the time, there was a global shift to the right in the years that followed. Examples of this include the fall of the Brown Government to the Tory/Lib-Dem Coalition in the UK in 2010 or the Clark Labour Government being voted out in 2008. After some initial excitement about Obama’s election in 2008, the Republicans easily won the 2010 mid-terms. There were plenty of other examples across Europe, South Asia and South America of progressive or centre/centre-left governments falling.

Given the financial crisis exposed the failings of the banking sector and free market economics, it would seem strange at first that it was the political right who were the primary beneficiaries of this. In certain countries, incumbency was the issue where rightly or wrongly the party in power were blamed. The late 1990s and early 2000s were the height of the Third Way era, meaning many progressive governments had accepted and made little attempt to reverse the free market reforms of the 1980s. Whilst this position was electorally popular up to this point, by 2008 this position was not tenable. Meanwhile, the right was much quicker to pivot away from Laissez-faire to a more traditionally conservative position, raising concerns about immigration whilst claiming to be prudent economic managers. The politics of austerity were never popular where they were implemented. Yet, the argument that national debt is like household private debt where you just have to tighten your belt to get out of the red was not adequately challenged. That cutting social spending, holding down wages and other earnings and other such measures resulted in less money in the economy thus making the crisis worse became obvious, eventually. Yet in the early 2010s, many European Governments were implementing these sorts of policies.

Above: Protesters in the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011. One of the lasting legacies of this movement is the political slogan “we are the 99%” which continues to resonate with millions around the globe.

It was in this context that ‘Occupy Wall Street’, which quickly grew into the international Occupy Movement was born. Anger at banks being bailed out in the US whilst people’s homes were being repossessed and a feeling that the elected politicians had failed to stand up to Wall Street sparked this protest movement. The protests took inspiration from the Arab Spring protests in early 2011 which successfully brought down a handful of corrupt rulers in the region such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt amongst others.

Although there was some involvement of organised labour and other elements of the traditional left was involved, many more were not. In part, this was due to the reluctance of the main social democratic parties to be involved with such a movement, especially in the US when there was a Democrat in the White House. For many in the movement, there was a level of antipathy towards members of the political establishment, including those on the left.

As a friend of mine said to me a few times during the 2003 Iraq War protests “mass movements shoot up like a rocket, and subsequently fall like a stick.” Within a few months, the initial movement had dissipated. This was very similar to the late 1990s early 2000s anti-globalisation movement, the difference being that Occupy was responding to a serious financial crisis and failure of the global banking system. By contrast, anti-globalisation was reacting to the moral shortcomings of institutions such as the IMF or the World Bank and accused multi-national corporations of undermining democracy and self-determination, especially for those in less well-off nations.

It is interesting to look back now to see how both the anti-globalisation and the Occupy Wall Street movements influenced policy over the coming decade. Both were clear attempts to forge a new left in the post cold war era in response to the new right. On the surface, neither made any direct impact, with the free trade and the IMF agenda still rumbling on after the anti-globalisation protests in Seattle, Genoa and elsewhere. Likewise, the banking sector after 2008, took the government bailouts, the executives paid themselves bonuses and people paid the price, including mortgage foreclosures in the US. This contributed to the backlash against Obama during his presidency, as mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Ironically, the 2008 financial crisis saw the right move away from free market deregulation policies, in no small part as they had just failed on such a spectacular and global scale. The right became much more concerned with reducing debt through reducing government spending and other austerity policies. This is not inconsistent with free market ideology, more radical deregulation policies were not pursued with such vigour. With both the Brexit referendum in the UK and the rise of Trump in the US, the right began moving away from international trading blocks such as the EU or NAFTA. The claim by the anti-globalisation movement in the early 2000s was that the Neo-Liberal agenda wanted the free movement of capital, but not people. Certainly, in the case of Brexit, this was to see greater restrictions on both.

Not for the first time in history, the right took the sentiment of the anti-globalisation campaign and used it to pursue what is now termed a more ‘populist’ agenda. The UK Conservative Party winning “Red Wall”s seats in 2019 or Trump winning in the “rust belt” in 2016 were all in part due to this more ‘anti globalist’ agenda by the right. It also reflected that trying to openly pursue free market policies post-2008 was not going to work. Unlike the left, the right was as always quick to adapt to the changing environment.

The Occupy movement’s influence over politics in the 2010s is less obvious. Whilst the larger protests soon became much smaller, this movement did help shape the narrative of the left in the coming decade. The slogan “we are the 99%” stuck as did accusations of politicians serving the 1%. The surprising levels of support for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in 2017 and the rise of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary owed something to this anti-corporate, anti-banking campaign of a few years earlier. More significantly, as the left needed to reinvent and reposition in the 2010s, this movement at least in part helped shift the centre-left parties towards a stronger anti-austerity and pro-public services position. The austerity light ‘moderate’ position some social democrats espoused in response to the financial crisis was never going to gain public support, especially when austerity was soon shown to have deepened rather than halted the economic crisis of the time.

Sudden mass movements may not instantly change the world. My friend’s analogy of the rocket becoming a falling stick may have been a good comparison. But maybe the falling stick in a small way did help change the course of history at least a little bit.

The end of the post war boom

Throughout my time being active in politics, people have discussed the rise of Neo-Liberalism and the free market that occurred throughout much of the world from the late 1970s onwards. Yet few seem to really understand the reasons for this significant shift in economic policy at that time, which continues to shape our society today.

Those less familiar with the works of Karl Marx may not be familiar with the concept of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. One does not need to be a Marxist nor socialistically inclined to believe or understand this law of economics, which explains what has happened in the last half-century of economics. As Wikipedia explains:

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) is a hypothesis in the crisis theory of political economy, according to which the rate of profit—the ratio of the profit to the amount of invested capital—decreases over time. This hypothesis gained additional prominence from its discussion by Karl Marx in Chapter 13 of Capital, Volume III,^[1] but economists as diverse as Adam Smith,^[2]John Stuart Mill,^[3]David Ricardo^[4] and Stanley Jevons^[5] referred explicitly to the TRPF as an empirical phenomenon that demanded a further theoretical explanation, although they differed on the reasons why the TRPF should necessarily occur.^[6]

The above graph shows the strong level of growth in Western Europe, North America, and Japan between 1945 and 1970. The economic decline that followed would result in the new right revolution of the 1980s and 1990s.

To simplify this concept in explaining what happened in the late twentieth century we simply need to understand that in response to the 1930s depression many nations and particularly developed nations invested in infrastructure to stimulate their economies and create employment. This was followed shortly by the Second World War where investment in industry was required. Then after the war, the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe, whilst similar investment and rebuilding occurred throughout the late 1940s. This period of investment in response to the depression and war created the post-war boom resulting in significant economic growth.

Keynesian economics whereby government policy and intervention in the economy and significant levels of government spending are required to stimulate the economy and prevent depressions. This theory dominated government policy in economically well-off nations from Great Depression until the mid-1970s, when the post-war boom came to an end. The thing Keynesian economics was meant to prevent happening, did happen. So in 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to power in the UK, and the following year Ronald Reagan in the US, and with them came a sea change in economic policies not just in their own countries but internationally.

The Neo-Liberal project essentially was to move away from state intervention and allow the invisible hand to do its dirty work. Privatisation of state infrastructure such as rail or power companies, reducing spending on public services and increased user pay charges, and generally reducing the size of the state to try and stimulate the private sector. Part of this also included reducing employment rights including laws protecting the right to collectively organise, ultimately resulting in reduced earnings for most people. As my series of blog posts about the trade union movement suggested, the job of those wishing to attack union rights was often made much easier by the fact that most union leaders and a poor understanding of economics or how to respond to the end of the post-war boom.

New Zealand was peculiar in its transition to Neo-Liberalism in that it was the Labour Government of 1984 to 1990 that first introduced and championed these right-wing economic policies. At the time the big political issue in New Zealand was the Nuclear Free movement which successfully stopped US Nuclear ships from visiting New Zealand. Whilst this was a worthy campaign, it is strange to think that a government selling off state assets (often for less than their market price) and putting thousands out of work managed to win support based on a Nuclear shipping policy when their economic decisions were hurting so many.

Neo-Liberalism and reducing the size and expenditure of the state were meant to stimulate the economy. For whatever short-term gains were made in the 1980s and 1990s, which generally only benefited the 1% wealthy elite, it soon became clear that the fundamental problems in the economy still remained. Unregulated or self-regulating markets resulted in terrible outcomes including the Pike River mining disaster in New Zealand, the Grenfell Tower fire in London, and the levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina all from lack of regulation and investment by the Government.

The 2008 crash ended the widely held belief that the market could correct itself or that wealth would trickle down. This crisis was due to a lack of financial regulation and was then made much worse by those countries who insisted on implementing austerity measures to restore public finances, instead of making the economic situation worse. Neo-Liberalism now is discredited and few governments either on the left or right really have an appetite for the types of policies Thatcher and Reagan promoted 40 years ago. As I will discuss in another blog post on Liz Truss’s brief time as Prime Minister, attempts to follow such a path now generally end in disaster very quickly.

After the fall of the Eastern Block Communist/Marxism ideology has been largely discredited. The end of the post-war boom saw an end to Keynesian economics and a shift to Neo-Liberalism, which is now also largely discredited. In 2021 economic policy is largely populist and a weird mix of Keynsian/Keynesian-lite interventionism with a sprinkling of laissez-faire rhetoric. So far in the 21st century, Capitalism has lacked any serious rivalry from any other theory or system. But capitalism has also run out of ideas. This is not just an abstract notion as the political upheavals in recent years stem from people feeling let down and angry by an economy that has not delivered. Yet, there is no clear alternative to the status quo. People were shocked in 2016 when the UK voted for Brexit and the US voted for Donald Trump as President. The increasingly polarised and challenging political world we live in can be blamed on many different factors. But at its core, I believe much of the trouble is caused by the lack of economic policy ideas that can address some of the great challenges we face.

We can learn much from mid-20th century Keynesian economics, but we also need to understand the limits of this theory and what caused the shift away from them from the late 1970s. Whilst the Neo-Liberal experiment also failed, we should also understand that bureaucratic and cumbersome regulation must have a purpose, and whilst state investment in public services can have real benefits we must be clear about what these actually are when this money is spent. Whilst I subscribed to socialist ideas in the past, it is clear that attempts to implement such a system to date have all ended in failure. However, we can still take Marx’s economic analysis (if not subscribing fully to his proposed remedy), specifically what he had to say about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Before we decide whether the current economic system can be reformed or needs to be completely replaced, we first need to improve the general understanding of how our economic system works.

The 2022 midterms and what happens next in US politics

Last week we saw extraordinary scenes from the US House of Representatives. The election of the Speaker, normally a formality whereby the winning party gets behind a candidate, became an utter circus where 15 rounds of voting occurred before Republican Congress members could unite behind Kevin McCarthy. Having narrowly won back Congress in the November mid-terms after four years in opposition, this was an embarrassing and frustrating start for Republicans. It highlights the deep divisions within the party and explains their disappointing result last November.

*Above:* January 6: Mike Rogers (R-AL) is restrained after getting into an argument with Matt Gaetz (R-FL) during in the 14th round of voting for speaker in a meeting of the 118th Congress, Friday, January 6, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC. The House reconvened Friday night after adjourning earlier for a fourth day of voting after Rep.-elect Kevin McCarthy failed to earn more than 218 votes on 11 ballots over three days. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

My previous post discussed how in recent US history, mid-terms have generally gone against whoever has control of the White House. Whilst the Republican Party did regain control of the House, it was by the narrowest of margins, 222 to 213. Meanwhile, the Democrats once again have control of the Senate and in Governor races made a net gain of two against the Republicans. This was a long way from the so-called red wave some predicted that the Republican Party would make huge gains just as they did in 1994 or in 2010.

The factors at play which seemed to go against the Republicans were the 2022 Roe vs Wade decision which fuelled a higher voter turn-out, in particular of younger voters. As discussed in the previous post, whilst there is a loud and vocal anti-abortion lobby in the US, polls consistently show a majority of Americans supporting abortion in certain circumstances and more recently a growing number supporting legal abortion under any circumstances. Appointing anti-abortion supreme court judges may play to a section of the Republican base, but is out of step with where the majority of US voters are at.

The second factor is Trump’s ugly legacy on US politics and the Republican Party.Two years ago I wrote the following:

The ugly finale of the Trump presidency will have long term consequences. While many Republican lawmakers now distance themselves from Trump, it took them far too long. For the last five years, they have allowed Trump to create a narrative of misinformation tapping into America’s worst prejudices and fears. Trump has successfully built a following based on these lies and in the process created a political climate of hostility and fear that will inevitably now lead to further conflict and civil unrest.
The ugly finale of the Trump Presidency

Within the Republican Party, there is now a clear split between two broad factions. The first are those who continue to support Trump, his false claims they he in fact won the 2020 election and the style of manipulative and divisive politics he has come to represent. The second faction is traditional conservative centre-right voters and those in the party who can see that it is time to move on from the Trump era.

Trump-aligned candidates overall performed poorly in the 2022 midterms, with this being seen as a significant factor in the Republican Party’s disappointing performance. That Donald Trump has now announced his intention of running again in 2024 will worry many in Party, as his brand has become increasingly toxic, especially given his ongoing legal problems.

Behind all this is a deeper problem, that the Republican Party’s ultra-conservative hard right, including the 20 who blocked McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, are unwilling and unable to compromise even with the more moderate wing of their own party. This hardline approach dates back to the Newt Gingrich era in Congress post-1994. In the past, this may have seemed a sign of strength, but the recent divisions trying to elect a speaker show the Republican Party as weak and deeply divided. Both the Democratic and Republican Parties are broad churches and would both probably be two or three parties in most European democracies. In 2023, the Democrats under the Biden Presidency are doing a much better job at appearing to be a united political force. By contrast, a Republican Congress that struggles to elect a speaker has not shown voters they can govern.

Overall, the 2022 midterms were the best for any sitting Democrat President since 1978. Whilst losing control of the House is disappointing, the Republican majority is slim. Should hardliners try to block the Biden agenda as they did with Obama, they risk moderate Republicans breaking ranks. Further, hardline Republicans overplaying their hand in Congress may scare moderate voters away from the party and at the same time motivate the Democrat base to win back the House in 2024. Add to that the prospect of Trump returning in 2024, it could be about to get very messy in the Republican Party.

Democracy is on the Ballot – watershed US midterms this week.

On Sunday 30 October, a watershed run-off election was held in Brazil where former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) narrowly defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro 50.9% to 49.1%. There was a lot at stake in this election, not least the lungs of our planet, the Amazon forest. In the four years of Bosonaro’s presidency, more than 34,000 square km of the Amazon rainforest disappeared. The return of Lula to power in Brazil certainly will not fix everything, but another term of Bolsonaro would have been a devastating defeat in the fight against climate change.

On Tuesday 8 October, another critical election will take place, this time in the northern part of the Americas, the United States midterms where control of Congress and Senate will be determined, along with elections to State Legislatures and for State Governors.

Historically there are two common trends with mid-terms:

Turnout is significantly lower than in presidential elections

The party with control of the White House usually performs poorly

On point one, turnout has historically been lower for midterm elections. For example, in 2008 President Obama on a platform of hope won by a significant margin with a voter turnout of 57.1%. Two years later in the 2010 midterms, voter turnout was just 40.9% and the Republican Party took back control of Congress. This was at the height of the Tea Party movement pushing the Republican Party to the right. Much of Obama’s “hope” agenda was blocked by this newly energised rabid right-Republican Congress. Had everyone who came out to support Obama in 2008 once again returned to the polls 24 months later (and 22 months after his inauguration) he may well have achieved more.

But this is the second point, whichever party controls the White House, tends to do poorly in the mid-terms. The exception to this was President George W Bush in 2002, who the September 11 Terror attacks were able to keep control of both houses, a situation that continued until his second mid-terms in 2006. Most other Presidents, Regan, Bush Senior, Clinton and Trump all lost midterms to the other party.

President Biden “Make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us”

The US Constitution is designed so that the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government are kept distinct in order to prevent abuse of power. Whilst there is much wrong with the US Constitution, the theory behind the separation of powers is a good one. The problem is, in a First Past the Post two Party system choices are limited. The temptation is to give whichever Party is not in control of the White House control of the Legislature as a check and balance. But what if that other Party ignored scientific advice during a pandemic causing death and misery to millions? What if this other Party is anti-democratic and refuses to accept it lost the previous election and encourages its supporters to turn to violence? What if, rather than being the ‘Grand Old Party’ of the Conservative American right, the Republican Party of 2022 has become a Party of deranged Trumpians where truth and evidence are out and hate-fuelled rhetoric is in vogue? Is allowing a party like this to control the legislative branch of government, either by voting for them or by staying at home really preventing “abuse of power”?

The Judicial branch of government should of course be separate from the Legislative and Executive branches, but is this really the case in the US? The decision in June 2022 to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalised abortion throughout the United States, was the result of Republican Presidents appointing socially conservative judges and Republication Legislatures doing their best to block Democrat Presidents from appointing liberal ones, as Republican Senators did in 2016. Despite the fact that a majority of Americans oppose the decision to overturn Roe V Wade, manipulation of the constitution by the Republican Party has meant the Supreme Court has a socially conservative majority which can be used to undermine abortion rights in the US.

It is easy to be dishearted by the US political system, indeed I have previously argued in relation to Gun Control the following:

The United States is further held back by a Constitution that is cumbersome and difficult to change. Trying to bring about any sort of serious change to allow Gun Control in the US, something that polls suggest a majority of Americans support, would require a change to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. How can the US Constitution be changed? It requires 2/3 support for a proposed constitutional amendment in both the Congress and Senate (see above about how these houses are NOT representative). On gaining this, it then needs to be approved by the legislature of 34 of the 50 US states and then ratified by 38 of the 50 states (again the smaller conservative states get a much greater say than larger ones). A full explanation of this can be seen here.

The US election – why sometimes voting for the lesser evil is right

In the above article I went on to mention Trump appointing anti-abortion Supreme Court Judges and that with the “country’s highest court is so clearly partisan, again a system protected by the constitution means one can have little confidence in this country’s justice system.”

Yet, as flawed and in desperate need of reform as the US political system is, it is still paramount that all eligible voters turn out to vote. The initial response from US voters to the Supreme Court decision appeared to be a backlash. In traditionally Republican voting states of Alaska and Kansas, Democrats made surprise gains. The coming mid-term elections could be an opportunity to send this message on a national level, but polls suggest there are several senate races which are tight and there is a projected national swing to Republicans. Of course, like all elections, there are many factors at play, but turnout will be a significant factor.

As already explained, mid-term elections generally go against sitting presidents. In the case of Biden, he faces low approval ratings due to the state of the economy, which is hurting incumbent governments globally and the lingering backlash from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Biden has a track record of being gaff-prone, often making silly comments and going off script. But in terms of delivery, in the last 22 months, the United States Government has done surprisingly well. Since January 2022, Democrats and the Biden Presidency have achieved the following

Rolled out the $1.9 trillion COVID relief deal, rolled out the COVID vaccine and got control of the virus unlike Biden’s inept predecessor

Got both Congress and Senate to approve the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package which drastically increased investment in the national network of bridges and roads, airports, public transport, national broadband internet, as well as waterways and energy systems.

Made serious commitments to stopping climate change and unlike his predecessor ordered all government agencies to immediately halt the financing of new international carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects, and instead work towards clean energy use.

Has reduced the US unemployment figure from 6.3% under Trump to 3.9% today.

The current cost of living crisis and high inflation are hurting the American people, and it is understandable that there is anger at the US Government and the political and economic system that has allowed this to happen. But allowing the Republican Party, in its current state to control the Legislative branch would be a terrible mistake.

Let’s be clear, we are not just talking about a typical centre-right political party, which let’s be honest tends to dominate in liberal democracies. Whilst the politics of serving the wealthy elites and opposing progressive reforms are distasteful enough, in 2022 the US Republican Party is an entirely different beast. Trump and his allies now control the Republican Party with many mid-term candidates now saying the 2020 election was “stolen” and dismissing the Congressional hearings into the January 6 insurrections as a “kangaroo court.”

Last week Nancy Pelosi’s husband was the victim of a violent attack, a symptom of the increasingly volatile mood in the United States. The intended target of the attack was Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, something that should be quite shocking to anyone who supports democracy. The response from the Republican Party was a mixture of silence, baseless conspiracy theories or in the case of Donald Trump Jr, mockery.

Earlier this week, Bolsonaro supporters took to the streets of Brazil refusing to accept the election result. Bolsonaro initially made no comment on the loss and has only grudgingly accepted that Lula will be the next President. This is straight out of the Trumpian playbook and is incredibly dangerous and divisive. In the US, given historical trends in US midterms and recent polling, it is likely that the Republican Party will make gains. Yet there are already signs that if results do not go their way, several Trump-aligned Republican candidates cannot commit to accepting the election result. There is no evidence that 2022 was stolen, in fact, quite the contrary it was in fact Trump who threatened the Governor of Georgia and demanded he finds him votes and made other false allegations about the 2020 election. These false claims resulted in the violence in Washington on Six January 2021, and it is appalling that Republicans have learnt nothing from this shameful episode. This alone should be reason enough to turn out and vote next Tuesday.

These are deeply troubling times and the stakes could not be much higher. Mid-term elections are a time to send a signal. In response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Trump has described Putin’s actions as an “act of genius.” In light of this, what message does it send voting Trump-aligned Republicans in charge of Congress? Trump continues to deny he lost the 2020 election, or accept responsibility for his part in the violence on Capitol Hill on January 6 2021, should people who condone these actions be given a majority in the Senate? Given the recent decision to overturn Roe V Wade, should Republicans be allowed to control many state legislatures and block women’s right to choose?

At a campaign event last week President Biden said that in these mid-term elections “democracy is on the ballot”. This is absolutely true, and the outcome will be decided by those who show up to vote.

The politics of high inflation – can governments do anything?

Britons woke up to the news today that inflation in the UK has hit a 40 year high of 9%. Recent increases to power bills, fuel and groceries have in no small part driven this inflationary pressure and indications are that prices could increase further. The bank of England governor has called for wage restraint fearing that this could drive inflation even higher, though with the cost of living rising so quickly this call will likely fall on deaf ears. The recent losses in local body elections and lacklustre polling for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives is in part due to the rising cost of living. But is this all just a case of bad economic management by the Conservatives?

My usual reference point is comparing and contrasting the UK and New Zealand situations, having lived in both countries. New Zealand’s inflation rate is at a 30-year high hitting 6.9%. A friend in NZ recently asked if I could send petrol over from the UK as the cost had gone up too much over there, the joke soon fell flat when I told them how much a tank of petrol costs here in the UK. In New Zealand, the opposition has been quick to blame the Labour Government in New Zealand for this, at a time when support for the government is falling fast. Having won a record majority in 2020 for their handling of the pandemic, Ardern’s government now faces a backlash over coronavirus restrictions and is taking the blame for current economic challenges. Commentary in the New Zealand media also tends to focus on inflation as a domestic issue, as such much of the commentary is often wide of the mark.

The above Bloomberg graph shows the global inflation rates spiking upwards in 2022

In Australia, the country goes to the polls for their first federal election since the pandemic. Whilst polling numbers are still fairly close there is a real possibility the right of centre Liberal Coalition Government led by Scott Morrison may lose, in no small part due to inflation and the rising cost of living. Whilst there are plenty of good reasons to vote out the Coalition government, not the least their inaction on climate change, like in Britain and New Zealand, is the cost of living increase in Australia really down to the federal government?

In the US, President Biden and the Democrat controlled House and Senate are facing an uphill battle in the November midterms against a Republican Party now very much aligned to Trumpian politics. For the Biden administration there appear to be few options to control inflation in the short term. I have previously blogged about the limitations of the US political system and it is no surprise that many Americans yet again feel frustrated. However, it is clear that this is not a crisis limited to any single nation-state, what we are dealing with is a global inflation problem.

At the start of the pandemic, I wrote a blog post outlining how there would be long lasting economic ramifications of this crisis. This, along with the Russian invasion of Ukraine is driving inflation and causing economic uncertainty. This is particularly challenging for much of Europe where there is a high level of reliance on Russian Oil and Gas and moves to end this reliance will see short term price hikes and energy shortages.

Previously, I have written about the importance of global governance and how our current global governance institutions are not up to the challenges we face in the 21st century. The current crisis illustrates this more than ever. At the current time, we turn to the nation-state and in democratic countries we as voters can hold our leaders to account for what happens, including economic management. In reality, how much can Jacinda Ardern, Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, Ursula von der Leyen or Joe Biden or any other world leader do? When finance Ministers do the national budget each year, many of the key economic factors are determined by external factors, not by their government’s decisions. Likewise, we can beat up the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank in New Zealand or other central banks for not controlling inflation within the targets they have been set, but they did not cause a global pandemic, invade Ukraine or control many of the key drivers of international inflation at that time.

This is not to let governments off the hook, as they still have the power to mitigate the effect of high inflation. Governments have the power to reduce or remove sales taxes, regulate pricing or support people on low incomes through benefits or policies that help lift wages. On the global stage, finance ministers when they attend the yearly Davos meeting, or leaders who attend the G20 meetings, need to be doing more to develop a global economic strategy that can protect against these sorts of shocks. Further, they need to create global governance institutions that can ensure a stable global economy that delivers for everyone, not just now but into the future. This is what we should be demanding of our governments.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s the big push was for globalisation, which in reality was a push for removing tariffs and international market liberalisation. The anti-globalisation movement of the time often took the position that this agenda weakened the nation-state and undermined democracy. The problem, which neither side really understood, is that in a world where we for a long time have depended on international trade but also on the movement of people, relying on national governments to resolve this will inevitably fail. Margaret Thatcher, in the introduction to her memoir The Downing Street Years, claimed the following:

An internationalism which seeks to supersede the nation-state, however, will founder quickly upon the reality that very few people are prepared to make genuine sacrifices for it
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street years, page 11

Yes, in terms of consciousness people still hold nationalism and their own country in high regard. But where we increasingly see countries with governments of all different colours struggling to control the cost of living, at some point we must face the fact that an international response is required. People may not believe in current global governance institutions or be “prepared to make genuine sacrifices” for them. But they may do if these institutions were in fact giving people a better quality of life by controlling inflation and the cost of living. At the time of writing, this all seems somewhat academic, with there being little likelihood of an international response, other than some short term cooperation to control the immediate crisis without looking at the underlying long term problems. Yet it is clear that we will continue to face these economic challenges with tools that are ill-equipped to face the problems. Only a truly international response can create an economy that delivers for all.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine – an act of aggression

On February 24 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to invade Ukraine, a nation that declared independence from Russia on August 24 1991. This is not the first time in Ukraine’s 30 years of independence that the Russian Federation has attacked Ukraine, having annexed the Crimea region back in 2014. Vladimir Putin has made no secret of the fact that he believes Ukraine has been ruled by forces hostile to Russia. Whilst many were surprised by the Russian government’s decision to take this hostile action toward Ukraine, there were plenty of warning signs that this may happen.

It is not my view that war is inevitable, be it in the Ukraine, Palestine, Syria or elsewhere. However, there are often only small windows of opportunity where a lasting peace can be built or negotiated. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, there have been plenty of warning signs over the last 30 years and potentially different responses to these may have produced a different result. What-if-isms are of little comfort or help to those now forced to flee Ukraine or those who are now staying to defend their homeland against Russian invasion.

*Residents remove their belongings from a destroyed building in Kyiv after it was hit by artillery shelling. [Felipe Dana/AP Photo]*

Russia is the aggressor in this conflict. The targeting of civilians and shelling during a so-called Cease-Fire are acts committed by the Russian forces, and the US President is correct to call President Putin a ‘war criminal’. Those who justify or use moral equivocation by citing the presence of the far-right in Ukraine or that this was in response to NATO expansion miss the point. Yes, the far-right does have a presence in Ukraine and yes they also have joined the resistance to the current invasion. But the logic that this somehow justifies the Russian invasion is incredibly warped. For one, the war gives the far right in Ukraine space to recruit and win support by being part of the resistance. Secondly, if the correct response is for Russia to invade every European country that has an active far-right then very few nations are not at risk of invasion.

On the left, many are still influenced by the analysis of Lenin during the First World War and just before the 1917 Russian Revolution that in an inter-imperialist conflict socialists should be standing up to their own ruling class. During the First World War, there were strong arguments for working people not to align with the Tsar in Russia or other imperialist leaders in that conflict. It is dangerous to simply apply this idea to the current conflict without understanding that the context is different. There is a strong argument that people should be holding their own government or ‘ruling class’ to account during any situation like this. Ultimately, the decision to invade Ukraine was Russia’s, but there is still a question of what the governments and in particular NATO members could have done to help prevent this and what they can do now. Sadly, some on the left and drawn both bizarre and quite dangerous conclusions based on the premise that their role is to stick it to their own ruling class. Bizarrely, some socialists still mistake Russia to be some sort of socialist/anti-imperialist power, thinking that there is some residue influence of the 1917 revolution.

In my late teens, a became involved with radical left politics largely influenced by opposing the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq. I began studying the history of US foreign policy in places like Chile in 1973 or Iran in 1953. In 2001, just before the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, Australian journalist John Pilger released a documentary called The New Rulers of the World, which clearly outlined the role played by the US in installing the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. This in turn meant that country allowed western manufacturers to move production to that country where labour standards were very low and clothing and other items could be produced cheaply. Whilst Pilger has always been prone to being an evangelist for his cause and being a polarising figure, in the past, he has played an important role in highlighting the shortcomings of western governments. Pilger’s bizarre article written days before the Russian invasion is selective with which facts it includes and effectively paints President Putin and the Russian state as victims of Western propaganda. Pilger like many others on the left is so determined to expose their own ‘ruling class’ that they’ll downplay or ignore the countless human rights abuses committed by Russia under Putin’s leadership.

Many on the left, and some on the right or centre focussed their attention on NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a Cold War military alliance designed to stand up to the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, there is a legitimate question as to whether this alliance should have continued. Many continued to be nervous about Russia, a nation that is resource-rich and historically has been very influential. It also does not have a strong history of democracy and instead has had a brutal history of state control both under Tsarism and later when it was the USSR. Certainly for the nations like Lithuania and Ukraine which were ruled by Russia for many years this nervousness is justified. Whether retaining the NATO alliance was the best way to counter this is a fair question. However, to say that the threat of Ukraine joining NATO provoked or even justified the Russian invasion is just wrong. Kier Starmer’s threat to withdraw the whip from any UK Labour MP who supported the Stop the War coalition who is calling for No NATO Expansion is an overreaction. That said, the optics of the coalition’s slogan are really bad. Whatever faults there are with NATO, it is Russia that has just invaded a sovereign country resulting in death, destruction and people being displaced. Trying to deflect from this is not a credible position at all.

The other argument put forward is moral equivalence, whereby people argue that the decision of the US and its allies to invade Iraq was just as bad so who are we to go criticising Russia. The decision to invade Iraq was wrong and few would still defend that action. That does not mean Britain or the US should not criticise Russia for what it is doing in Ukraine, if anything it places a greater responsibility on these governments to uphold human rights now. This is even more important when there is a real chance of forces more sympathetic to Russia taking power. Former US President Donald Trump continues to describe Vladimir Putin in glowing terms. Trump continues to exert considerable influence and control over the Republican Party, who currently stands a strong chance of gaining at least one house in the midterm elections later this year. In such a scenario there are no guarantees that the current pressure being applied to the Putin regime will hold up.

One of the problems has been the inconsistent approach to Russia since the end of the Soviet Union. The recent pressure for Roman Abramovich to sell Chelsea Football Club has brought to light some of the corrupt practices he and others used to make their fortune including the purchase of an oil company from the Russian government in a rigged auction in 1995. The UK allowed these characters to invest this ill-gotten gain into its economy, right up till earlier this year. When the current Russian regime attacked Chechnya in 1999, invaded Georgia in 2008, invaded Crimea and parts of Donbas in Ukraine in 2014 and engaged in a proxy war in Syria it was met with only mild responses including limited sanctions against Russia or mealy-mouthed speeches. Meanwhile, the city of London continued to be awash with ill-gotten money from Russia. That the current UK Prime Minister gave a peerage to Lord Lebedev, owner of two major UK newspapers and friend of Boris Johnson and other senior Conservatives despite security concerns being raised at the time indicates the level of influence Russian money now has in the UK.

Back when the Eastern block fell, the priority was to integrate them into global markets. This was of course at the end of the free market 80s where the naive view was that through economic liberalism democratic political reform would also occur. This maybe a generous view, for many, access to Russian markets and resources was an opportunity for profit. Whilst opportunistically making money from this new market, the political response was to leave NATO intact and treat Russia as a potential foe. Whilst trying to impose Western-style democracy into Russia rather than letting the people of that country decide on their own future would have been an error, to assume that a country with a history of little else than totalitarian regimes would be quick to embrace liberal democracy, free speech and human rights was foolish. What the best approach would have been in hindsight is still unclear, but it seems to profit from post-soviet Russia whilst at the same time treating it as a potential military and political threat has not led to a good outcome.

The invasion that began just over two months ago will have a profound impact on global politics for many years. The conflict is unlikely to end quickly and will take a toll on everyone involved. In the end, it will likely result in a military defeat for Russia and humiliation for Putin. This could mean a much more volatile situation in dealing with a state that has a permanent seat on the UN security council and has nuclear weapons. Much of Europe currently relies on Russia for oil and gas and moving away from this will cause considerable economic upheaval. And Ukraine will take years to recover from this invasion even once the conflict has ceased.

How is Boris Johnson still in Number 10?

I answer the question posed in the title by returning to what I wrote on my blog when Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019:

Make no mistake, Boris Johnson has talent. He knows how to make a stirring speech and can tap into people’s hopes and fears as a politician My blog post written shortly after Johnson became UK Prime Minister

Now one might think being the Prime Ministers of the worlds fifth-largest economy requires a great deal more than this, and indeed it does. It requires a mixture of luck, animal cunning and being able to use both to maximum effect.

Above: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Chief Advisor Dominic Cummings

My last post in December outlined some of the issues the Conservative Government in the UK had been having in the latter half of 2021. Yet the position still seemed quite recoverable, indeed only a few months earlier, the former Red Wall constituency of Hartlepool had been won by the Conservatives. Local Elections in May 2021 also were very positive for the Tories. Things were bad by the end of 2021, very bad in fact, but it still did not seem fatal. 2022 was not the start of the year the government were hoping for. Despite repeated denials that there was party’s at 10 Downing Street during the lockdown, further evidence emerged that there were, including a photo showing the Prime Minister with staff sitting in the garden at 10 Downing Street having “a work meeting” where there was wine and cheese in May 2020, when social gatherings were illegal in the UK. This was at a time when people could not visit dying loved ones and the public were told not to socialise in this way.

The Prime Minister in the garden at 10 Downing Street in May 2020.

The investigation by Civil Servant Sue Gray found that there were “failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of Number 10 and the Cabinet Office” in allowing these events to occur, and then a number of these events are now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police. None of this was made better by the Prime Minister’s response that nobody had warned him that these parties were against the rules, rules that he had announced as Prime Minister in March 2020. Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major has said that Johnson broke the rules by holding these parties and believes he should resign. Others close to the Conservative Party including financial donors have also called on him to go. As Conservative polling takes a hit and MPs get increasingly restless, it is still a surprise to many that Johnson stays on. Indeed most other PM’s would have resigned by now. So why does Boris Johnson stay on and why do the Conservatives let him. For Johnson, he knows if he leaves office now, he’ll likely never return. Having only served in the role just over two and a half years and most of that time leading (badly) during a pandemic, he has to try and stay on. But why on earth do the Conservative Party let him? Because despite everything, including the quite serious long term damage to the reputation of the party and indeed of the United Kingdom, he is probably still their best chance of winning an election. Boris Johnson does not play by the normal political rules. Many claim Johnson uses the Trump playbook, and his election outcome in 2019 certainly benefited from Trump’s intervention which helped get the Brexit Party not to stand against the Conservatives in crucial leave voting constituencies, specifically the so-called Red-Wall. Yet Johnson plays by his own rules, which include fast and loose morals, including talk of beating up journalists. He has a level of confidence that has helped him get away with things other politicians simply would not. His clown reputation and building the brand “Boris”, the clown who got stuck on a zip wire at the 2012 London Olympics during his time as Mayor. Johnson won the London Mayoralty by seeing an opportunity, specifically that London voters were tired of Ken Livingston. Further, the clown reputation meant Johnson’s opponents underestimated him in not just one but two London Government elections. His ascent to the Conservative leadership was far from smooth, with his first attempt in 2016 being undermined by Michael Gove. His record as Foreign Secretary was also far from successful, especially regarding the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe issue. Yet his stance on Brexit, specifically undermining Theresa May’s attempts to negotiate a withdrawal agreement, paid off. He proved ruthless in his first few weeks as the leader, withdrawing the Tory whip from 21 MP Conservative MPs who would not back his Brexit plan, including his own brother. His decision to prorogue parliament when he could not get MPs to agree to a general election ultimately worked for him. Despite losing legal challenges to this prorogation, eventually, he got MPs to agree to an early election, winning the best result for the Conservative Party since 1983. His victory in 2019 was due to two things, tapping into the hopes and fears of those frustrated by attempts to thwart Brexit and a deeply divided opposition. His performances as an orator during this campaign were far from his best work, and despite arguable receiving fairly favourable press coverage during the campaign, felt the need to hide in a fridge to avoid doing a media interview days before the election. Those who in recent weeks, having previously supported Boris Johnson, now believe he is not fit to be prime minister seem to have only just worked out what he is really like when the signs have been there from the start. One of Johnson’s strengths throughout his career has been his ability to bring people in that can carry him. Dominic Cummings, loathsome as many may find him, was a driving force behind the Brexit campaign in 2016 and the 2019 Conservative election victory. There were of course plenty of others, including some who have been with him since he was mayor of London who has recently quit. The problem with being an advisor or a ‘back roomer’, is that ultimately the candidate will not always do what you wish they would. It is immensely frustrating to feel you are the brain behind the power, yet never to get credit, and worse to have your clever strategy ignored. The other issue Johnson faces is that despite his show of strength, for better or for worse, in getting Brexit done, he is not ideologically in step with much of the traditional Tory base. This in part explains his appeal to voters who traditionally have not voted Tory, certainly, this proved the case both in London and in the 2019 election. For many Conservatives, winning a strong majority and remaining in power was worth the compromise, even if it meant accepting a level of what the late Margaret Thatcher would have decried as corporatist policy. The recent decision to increase National Insurance has certainly tested the tolerance of many Conservatives who subscribe to the Thatcherite philosophy of low taxation and small government. As I have written earlier, social care has been a blight on the political landscape and one that neither Labour nor Conservative governments have adequately addressed. With demand for social care increasing, governments have been under pressure to increase funding. Both Blair’s New Labour and Cameron’s Conservative Governments lacked the political courage to increase taxes to pay for social care. Whilst there are strong arguments against the way the government have decided to increase taxes, specifically that rather than an across the board increase to National Insurance there were other options whereby the heaviest burden would have fallen on those best placed to contribute, nonetheless, an increase in taxation to pay for social care was inevitable. Any serious analysis of relying on the private sector and savings to address this need show this is not viable. Is it a coincidence that the announcement of the National Insurance increase in September 2021 happened just before the government and in particular Boris Johnson started having problems? It would be a mistake to think that the open civil war within the Conservatives under Theresa May was only about Brexit or that the 2019 election result put these to bed. It is quite clear that the stories of lockdown parties and other scandals have been disclosed by people within the government. Plenty of Tory MPs would be quite happy to see Johnson fall or to apply maximum pressure on him so he backs down on the National Insurance increase. Boris Johnson may not be a Thatcherite ideologically, but so far it does seem he is not for turning and understands that doing so would ultimately be more harmful. For small-government laissez-faire Tories, a leadership challenge may not serve them well. Were Johnson to go, the likely successor would be Rushi Sunak who talks free market but in practice has been one of the most interventionist Chancellors in modern times during the COVID-19 crisis. It is unlikely that Sunak as PM would reverse the National Insurance increase, given he has been its main advocate thus far. The rights favoured candidate, Liz Truss, is simply not credible. Boris Johnson remains Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He does so, for now, due to the lack of a strong viable alternative within the Conservatives. Despite everything, he is still the leader most likely to help the party regain support, despite him now being severely damaged. Some in the Conservatives may be thinking it best to leave him in place at a time when the cost of living is increasing significantly when the May Council elections will likely not be good for the Conservatives (the particular boroughs having elections this year are less favourable to the Tories, but a backlash to “party gate” will likely play a role) and the National Insurance increase. Better to find a new leader nearer to the election. But this is a risky strategy, as the Prime Minister has damaged not just his reputation, but that of the Conservatives and the government he leads. His attempts at statesmanship during the Ukraine crisis may have helped him a little, but his reputation on the global stage is also tarnished by what has happened at home. Boris Johnson, should not on balance still be Prime Minister and in the long term, the Conservatives risk being severely punished for not removing him. But despite everything, he remains in post and still, we cannot write him off.

Tory Sleaze – sequels are often a disappointment

The year was 1993 and the British Conservatives had been re-elected for a rare 4th term in office. The then Prime Minister John Major used his conference speech in Blackpool to announce his government’s Back to Basics campaign promoting family values and calling for a return to ‘old core values.’ This speech was soon subject to criticism and ridicule after a series of scandals that became known as Tory Sleaze. The most famous of these was the Cash for Questions scandal where it was alleged that two MPs were bribed to ask questions on behalf of Mohamed Al-Fayed the owner of Harrods. However, it was not just financial impropriety that rocked the Government, a series of sex scandals rocked that Government. In 1994 Conservative Eastleigh Stephen Milligan was found dead wearing only stockings and suspenders. Milligan’s death was blamed on Autoerotic asphyxiation whereby the practice of sexual self-stimulation while causing oneself to experience hypoxia. The other notorious example of Tory Sleaze at that time was Heritage Minister David Mellor after being caught having an affair with an actress.

Back in the 1990s when Tory Sleaze rocked John Major’s Government.

These financial and sex scandals in addition to internal divisions within the Conservative Party over Europe contributed to the party losing the 1997 general election and Tony Blair’s New Labour coming to power.

The current accusations of Tory sleaze began earlier this year with opposition party’s hoping that once again a Tory Government could be brought down through allegations of sleaze 25 years later. Owen Peterson, the former MP for North Shropshire was forced to resign after being found to have repeatedly lobbied the government on behalf of two companies that were paying him more than £100,000 a year. This was followed by revelations that MP Geoffrey Cox has continued to work as a lawyer and has earned more than £5.5m while continuing to work on his legal career since becoming the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon in 2005. This was made worse by allegations that he did this legal work from his parliamentary office.

For most of 2021, the Tory’s have enjoyed a commanding lead in the polls as has Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In recent weeks these scandals have begun to hurt his polling numbers. This will likely get worse for him after today’s announcement that the refurbishment of the Prime Minister’s flat at 10 Downing Street broke electoral law. The Electoral Commissions today ruled that the Conservatives were negligent in failing to “fully report a donation of £67,801.72 from Huntswood Associates Limited in October 2020,” the proceeds of which were used for the flat renovations.

The accusations that a Christmas Party was held at 10 Downing Street in December 2020 at a time when COVID-19 restrictions made such gatherings illegal has probably been the most damaging to the Government. Whilst not proven, a clip has emerged of NO 10 officials joking about holding a lockdown Christmas Party. The Government’s handling of the pandemic in 2020 was a disgrace, and I have written about their terrible track record on this blog before. However, to date government has managed to remain ahead in the polls in no small part due to the weakness of the opposition in the last 18 months. The Government has become increasingly arrogant, with one Tory MP claiming that it was “really grim” living on a salary of £82,000 a year and justifying MPs working second jobs. A turning point in the Christmas Party scandal came when it was mentioned on I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here, which may have done more to hold the government to account than anything the opposition has said to date.

The attitude of the Government shows arrogance and contempt for the British public. But is it really sleaze? One can see why Labour, trying to win back some of the “swing” voters it gained in the 1990s might want to revisit the Tory Sleaze tagline. Aside from the fact that voters under 40 generally won’t recall what happened back then, it’s also a lazy attack line. The fact that journalists have also copied it without question shows the weakness of the fourth estate at this time. In fact, what is happening is the governing party have a strong sense of entitlement and do not believe they have to obey the same rules as everyone else.

The likes of Peter Mandelson may enjoy reliving their hay day with Tory Sleaze 2, but it fails to describe what is happening. In 2019 some of the poorest constituencies in the country, particularly in the North East of England, voted Tory for the first time in many years, believing their promises of delivering Brexit and the expected benefits of this. Further, many voters trusted the “one nation” rhetoric and believed the cliche that the Conservatives would govern for all. Many of these voters would have had family or loved ones in care homes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic who were needlessly exposed to the virus due to lack of testing and PPE. Most would have been unable to celebrate Christmas with friends and family in 2020 due to coronavirus restrictions. Very few of these “red wall” voters who helped the Conservatives win in 2019 would earn anything like £82,000.

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock may have lost his job after photos emerged of his kissing an aide and this was a breach of social distancing rules. But this pales in comparison to the taxpayer money wasted on a track and trace system that didn’t work or discharging patients from NHS hospitals to social care settings in March 2020 without doing COVID-19 test, causing thousands of preventable deaths. An unlawful Christmas Party at 10 Downing Street may well do lasting damage to Prime Minister Boris Johnsons tenure in office, but again this is minor compared with failing to act earlier to stop the spread of coronavirus in 2020 during both the first and second wave, and again now by only just implementing ‘Plan B’ enforcing mask-wearing and vaccinations passes in public spaces to stop the spread of the Omicron variant. Kissing aides and Christmas Party’s are the straw that broke the camels back for many voters, to win back their trust a there will need to be a change not only in the style of political leadership but also the substance.

In 1993 the Conservatives back to basics campaign backfired as it raised the moral bar by which its MPs were expected to live and inevitably many fell far short of this standard. By contrast, Boris Johnson never tried to place himself on a moral pedestal so talk of sleaze will not have the same impact. Voters in the UK are increasingly tired of this government, what they are looking for is a credible alternative whether from within the Conservatives or the Opposition. When Boris Johnson first became UK Prime Minister I wrote a blog post acknowledging his talents. The Prime Minister is a strong campaigner and even now could well go on to win the next election. This thing that will stop him winning is not sleaze and scandal, but a viable alternative.