The First Step Towards Tomorrow's Two-tier Society
Yesterday morning Brian Law, the iconic anti-war campaigner who has been camped outside parliament since 2001, was arrested on ‘suspicion of obstructing police’. Was this responsible and fair work by the authorities to a man exercising his democratic right to freedom of expression?
This question is significant because it can be metaphorically linked to the Queen’s Speech. Freedom, fairness and responsibility are the buzz words this new coalition will look to bond over and yet it’ll ultimately be over the pursuit of these ends that the two sides are likely to have their most serious disputes.
It’s David Cameron’s view that you improve public services by freeing them from state controls. This tactic is believed to encourage innovation, improve standards through greater responsibility and create the new products being demanded from the local community.
However, whereas this may work in the commercial work, public services are to be paid on-merit for their relative success (and/or failures). This will inevitably lead to a further widening of good services for the rich, neglect of the poor and an increased definition of Britain’s two-tier society. With freedom and responsibility does not always come fairness.
This government was formed to be stable – but stability does not come in political ideology (this is and must maintain the capacity to alter with the times), it comes in numbers. For the time being then, it appears that on the whole, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats appear happy to fiddle their views in order to keep the peace.
However, nothing lasts forever, and as the familiarities of working together begins to breed discontent it will become more clear that in fact this year’s Queen’s Speech is going to fast fade away. This government is not going to be remembered for what it said today, but for how it maintains a workable relationship when future clashes of thinking arise.
(pictures courtesy of UK Parliament @Flickr)
Winning twelve seats in the European Parliament at the 2009 elections, coming second only to the Conservatives in England, was a breakthrough for the party. Naturally, after that boost, UKIP wants to be taken seriously as an electoral force, and a viable alternative to the status quo on all political issues, not just through the anti-European Union stance for which the party is best known.
This aspiration is reasonable enough. Many parties have started out as pressure groups, standing in elections to make a point, to bring a particular issue into the political spotlight. The Green movement in Europe, the Northern League in Italy and the Bloc Québécois in Canada have all successfully morphed from single issue campaign groups into parties with a comprehensive manifesto and a desire not just to influence government, but to be part of it. UKIP has clearly decided these are the examples it must follow.
The problem is that once UKIP has made that choice and resolved to become a party campaigning on all issues, it has to see it through, and start taking itself seriously on that basis. The paperwork is there; the party’s manifesto contains pledges on seventeen different policy areas, from the NHS to pensions to transport. And whatever you think of the policies themselves (you can read a summary of the manifesto here - http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/1567-ukip-manifesto), most of the bases are covered.
But politicians and activists within UKIP just aren’t communicating this new identity effectively. In this election season, the party is coming across as a ranting, raving, aggressively anti-European group, still obsessed with a single issue. We’ve already seen Nigel Farage’s bizarre tirade against the European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, in February. However outraged he is that an unelected politician is so influential in Europe, Farage’s outburst seemed unprofessional, hysterical, and against the politeness which UKIP identifies as “part of Britishness” in its own publications (http://www.ukip.org/media/pdf/Britishness.pdf).
Now Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who replaced Farage as leader of UKIP in December, has given on the BBC’s Campaign Show. Lord Pearson was completely unwilling to discuss much of his own party’s manifesto, such as their policy on crime, because he wanted to focus only on Europe, which is UKIP’s safer ground. When he was pressed on the manifesto, Lord Pearson implied that he hadn’t developed most of the policies himself, and though he did claim to have read the manifesto in full, his unwillingness to defend it made for a less than convincing party leader.
UKIP must stop playing games with the electorate. It is the party’s right to choose whether to be a protest group or an alternative government. But if they pretend to be something they’re not, UKIP politicians can expect voters to leave them out in the cold.
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