Bailouts won't change a thing...

Whilst most people are increasingly likely to greet news about Greece with a sense of fatigue, the main battle lines appear to criss-cross political camps. The arguments have been rehearsed endlessly so I spare you another repeat. However, there is one aspect that receives less attention. It's the ability of the Greek government to reform as opposed to its willingness to do so.

Much of the discussion hinges on whether Greece can get the breathing space through another bailout (or a long term debt relief) to reform its economy and become competitive in the world markets again. This assumes however that the Greek government has the wherewithal to actually carry out reforms at this stage. It seems to me that this is a huge assumption to make given the parlous state of its tax system and the traditionally low levels of administrative governance in the country. So, despite all talk about the pros and cons of bailouts, even if Greece would be afforded some space and time, it is unlikely to emerge any time soon as the all new and shiny South European twin sister of Germany.

This aspect shifts the perspective from what the Greek government is willing to do (triggering nasty discussions about blame) to what it can and can not do, prompting a realistic calculations of the chances to reform. It is that realism that should guide politicians on Monday what to do about Greece, rather than indulging in fantasy scenarios.

The end of UKIP

The UK general election delivered several earthquakes at once. So far, most of the commentariat focused on the second largest party, Labour, and its demise in Scotland and England (incidentally, Labour also lost long held seats in the Labour heartland of Wales).

Yet, UKIP was also thrown into turmoil in the aftermath of the election. Nigel Farage, true to his word given prior to the election, resigned from the leadership, only to be acclaimed again as the new leader by the party's national executive. 'Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!'

Whilst Farage himself is likely to survive this self-inflicted de-thronement, the chances of survival for his party in the long term look marginally more bleak. It appears to me that UKIP, despite netting an unprecedented number of votes, has only one way to go: downhill.

The reasons are manifold but the central issue is salience. Political scientist regularly establish rankings of issues in people's minds through polling evidence. Whatever comes high up on the list has high salience, i.e. has the capacity to sway people's votes in future elections. The issue UKIP is most associated with is the European Union and immigration from the European Union. As part of a 'de-toxifying' effort, Farage clearly distinguishes between immigration from the EU (uncontrolled, hence bad) and from overseas (controlled, hence good). This means the party has consistently focused its policy attention on the EU and is wedded, for good or ill, to the European issue.

Evidence from polling however also consistently shows that Europe itself ranks low on people's minds, in other words, Europe has low salience. Once politicians are seen to be addressing the European issue (renegotiation of benefit tourism and gaining approval for changes through a referendum), voters' attention to Europe is likely to decline even further. I have previously argued that the dominant mode of thought for British voters about Europe is one of benign neglect rather than exasperation as to any alleged lack of urgent action.

This spells problems for UKIP. Being asked at Question Time what the purpose of UKIP could be once the referendum is done, Farage pointed out that the raison d'etre of Scottish Nationalists was similarly questioned after the Scottish Independence referendum but they seemed to have survived it rather well.

Yet, as Farage is undoubtedly aware, the SNP always had a proper agenda for social and economic change. Their purpose did not exhaust itself in bringing about an independence referendum. The reason they are in government in Edinburgh is exactly because the policies they formulated relate to a broad range of issues with high salience for people across Scotland, from unemployment, poverty to health care. For all its willingness to change, UKIP is still a one man show and a one issue political party. That's why it is hard to see it making inroads with voters beyond 2016. GE2015 might just have been the last squeak of the UKIP mouse.

The move to the left that never happened

When Ed Miliband was selected as the new Labour Party leader, the cameras picked up his brother David mouthing to a colleague: 'He will crush and burn.' That's exactly what has happened. So where did it go so wrong?

Part of the problem was that Miliband's analysis of post-crisis Britain was fundamentally wrong. Miliband thought that the country has moved to the left. He took the chit chat about inequality in academia and the Westminster village as reflecting support for socialist principles. He was wrong and anybody who wanted to listen carefully two or three years ago, could have known this. The second miscalculation was that Labour believed their own rhetoric that the Conservatives had moved to a soulless ghoulish right of the political spectrum. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite all the noise from the Polly Toynbees in the intellectual elite, the election has shown that policies of Tories resonate with people in the electoral centre ground.

The fascinating thing is to step back and look at the defeat of Labour in a wider (European) context. The party may lick its wounds for months to come, and may shift even more left as a consequence, yet if they afford themselves a good look across Europe they would see that any social democratic party that relinquishes the centre ground loses elections.

Today, it may look like a disaster has befallen Labour, but my feeling is that even more pain will be felt until they challenge the Conservatives in the centre ground.

Ed Miliband's lack of self-confidence

I told myself that I was not going to comment any further on the General Election 2015 on this blog. But Ed Miliband has a way of twisting people's arms. So, I have to confess: I can't resist saying something on his latest blunder, the 8ft stele Ed wants to install in No 10 Downing St (if he ever gets to live there).

Mil(l)stone around their neck or gravestone of Labour's campaign?

The stone slab that lists some of the most vacuous 'commitments' in Labour's electoral history was presented to the media last week and already induced laughter and derision (as well as despair) from friend and foe. It is not so much the question 'what he was thinking'. What astonishes me is that neither he nor anybody in his immediate election campaign team raised alarm bells. Did really no one say: 'Hold on, what are we doing here?' The slab ostensibly speaks to a lack of common sense and judgement in Labour's team, a point that did not go unnoticed by commentators.

The contrast between the utter malleability of the pledges and their alleged 'permanence' through the choice of material adds an ironic twist to it, reflecting the gulf between Miliband's motivation and his inability to say anything committal in this campaign. In this sense, Miliband has done the country an enormous service with this gimmick of Gordon Brownian proportions. We now know: the more he insists, the less sure he is of himself.

The most boring time in the political cycle

I admit that I am a bit of a policy wonk. Questions about what to do with public money, who gets what and when, are infinitely fascinating to me. My suspicion is that I am not so much gripped by the mundane fights for resources, but more by an instinctive feel that most issues of public policy are ultimately unresolvable. Still, the debate about what's the best solution to a tricky problem is exciting stuff.

Yet, whilst I am glued to the BBC Parliament Channel as other people are to Wolf Hall or Game of Thrones, election times are an utter bore to me. It's not that this general election is one with the lowest stakes (what's the difference between Ed Ball's and George Osborne's budget plans? Answer: 0.6 per cent!). And one with the silliest drama: Will the Greens get one seat or two? Does Miliband have two kitchens? (who knows... who cares...) What really annoys me is that general elections are basically times of careful choreography and control, rather than genuine political debate.

Pundits called psephologists (is that a rude word?) tell us that most people switch on to party political broadcasts only in the last two weeks. By then I have well and truly switched off. Trotting out well rehearsed formulae about who means catastrophe or salvation in whose book are as exciting to me as watching a wrestling match between Ham the Clam and Chilly McFreeze (apologies to pro-wrestlers named such). So, there we are: as the electorate finally wakes up to political debate, the real debate about policy has long been had.

The final blow in the theatre called GE2015?

So, can somebody please let me know when this spectacle called general election is over and we can talk proper politics again?

Inconvenient history

The BBC programme 'Who do you think you are' has been immensely popular with UK audiences and its US counterpart 'Finding your roots', whilst occasionally nodding to mind numbing US documentary formats, has also enjoyed good viewing figures on PBS. The editor of the US series, Prof Henry Louis Gates (of none other than Harvard University) has now walked into a minor media storm when an email exchange was revealed between himself and Sony in which he voiced his concerns that one of Sony's superstars Ben Affleck, who was a subject of one episode, asked Gates to suppress information about his ancestors that the research team unearthed. The information Affleck did not like to see in the public domain was that one of his forebears had been a slaveowner, presumably something that ran counter to the carefully crafted liberal (leftist) image of himself.

As the email exchange shows Gates was unhappy about the request and appeared to be minded to reject it, but then agreed to a version that left out the controversial finding. In a piquant detail, PBS warns Gates that if it became public that he sanitised the historical record of one of his subjects upon request, he would risk his scholarly reputation. Still, Gates obviously bowed to pressure from Affleck.

Ben Affleck - A liberal for good times only

Photograph: Startraks Photo/REX/Startraks Photo/REX

Gates is now engaged in a media battle to salvage his reputation, releasing a press statement pointing out that he retained complete editorial control over the episode. As Gates knows full well, keeping editorial control is key to his scholarly reputation. Yet the email exchange shows otherwise. He came under pressure from Affleck and yielded. To put this into perspective, imagine a pharmaceutical firm would run a trial and suppress findings about the deleterious side effects of the medication tested upon request from the firm's CEO.

Affleck does not come off much better in this story. Interestingly, the programme revealed that his mother was active in the civil rights movement. The information about slave owning ancestors could have shed some fascinating light on her personal motivation for political action yet, suppressing the inconvenient detail of slave owning clearly deprived her story of political engagement of any meaningful context.

It is hard not to see this as some sort of voluntary Orwellian cleansing of personal history based on the (mistaken) assumption that we are born of impeccable liberal convictions. What we should
celebrate instead is the ability of human beings to reflect, learn and change their ways. That fundamental point gleaned from history appears to have escaped bother Gates and Affleck.

Are we bothered by inequality?

One of the central electoral campaign themes of the Labour Party is inequality. Economic and social inequality has certainly figured prominently in the public debate over the last couple of years, spurred by discussions about bankers' salaries and bonuses for CEOs. The Miliband camp argue that attitudes of British people have fundamentally shifted from the Blairite cavalier approach ('Not bothered about the filthy rich') to significant levels of concerns about wage inequality. But is this true?

In the journal Political Insight, a team of authors published a summary of the research on British political culture. Their study investigated whether political culture fosters specific social attitudes over the long run. Whilst their results reveal some interesting correlations between longitudinal shifts in attitudes and potential changes in political culture, some findings from the British Social Attitudes Survey can also be read with Miliband's claim about shifting views on economic inequality in mind. The figure below shows the responses stratified by age of respondents and year of survey to the question: 'Thinking of income levels generally in the UK today, would you say the gap between those with high incomes and those with low incomes is (1) too large; (2) about right; or (3) too small?'

Is the gap between the rich and poor too large (high values agree) Britain 1983–2012, by age

From:The British Social Attitudes Survey, 1983–2012.

The diagram clearly shows that there has been widespread concern about income inequality across all age groups in the 1990s, then largely petering out during the Blair years. Interestingly, looking at the years 2010 and later, there is no reversal in the aggregated responses to the high levels of concern under Thatcher and Major. The survey results appear to indicate that, with the exception of the age group between 55 and 70, concern with income inequality remains low. Moreover, the younger generation registers the lowest levels of concern with the issue of income inequality compared to all other age groups, a finding that contrasts sharply with the anecdotal (ostensibly wrong) evidence of young people on barricades (and in occupy camps) in the UK protesting against income inequality.

This has also implications for the campaign of the Miliband camp. If income inequality does not appear to be a major concern of people in Britain, it is unlikely to be a major motivating factor to vote either.