In her speech, Rayner said ministers would be banned from lobbying jobs related to their briefs for five years. No more aspirant Patricia Hewitts doing the health minister's job and then catching a private medicine consultancy after retiring from the big house. There's also a change in who gets to makes the decision about launching a standards investigation, It's taken out of the Prime Minister's hands and will be in the gift of that old favourite - an independent panel. This ethics and standards commission could be given powers to determine the punishment of those who fall foul of its remit, though Number 10 will be given a final say.
This ticks a couple of boxes. For the wonks and the self-styled modernisers it wraps up several ad hoc committees and appointments, making for a more efficient process not (immediately) beholden to the politics of the day. It might create a bit of a headache for Keir Starmer down the line. But it's also smart politics, and not just because Tory bad behaviour is right now winning votes for Labour. Because of the scale of Tory corruption, any current ministers who survive the coming deluge will have to spend some time concentrating on and laundering their records and reputations instead of opposing a Starmer-led government. And it would serve quite a few political purposes four or five years hence to remind the punters about how corrupt and lawless the Tories have been.
But constitutional fixes can't mend politics. That comes from the ebbs and flows of the struggle itself. The problem Starmer has is despite claiming the mantle of Mr Rules and Grown Up in the Room, his performance as Labour leader has been brazenly shameless in its dishonesty. At Unite's conference today he said he won't make any apologies for doing what is necessary to win. In that context he was obviously referring to the dumping of high profile policies. But as Labour Party watchers know, this has gone hand in hand with the exclusion of undesirables from candidate lists and the membership without the pretence of natural justice or recourse to the rule book. Lies are frequently told by leading Labour figures about his predecessor, and Starmer himself can get very evasive about his recent record. That the media has largely let this slide doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Indeed, there is a burgeoning cottage industry of left wingers cataloguing all of those misdeeds.
And here is the trouble. Are we supposed to believe this behaviour will cease when Starmer enters Number 10? That the trumpeting of a new quango for overseeing ministerial conduct means an end to making misleading statements in the Commons, duplicity, and cashing cheques from moneyed interests? I doubt it very much, and what that means is when the commission is set up whatever remit it has will be tightly circumscribed by the every day dishonesty of doing political business.
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6 comments:
It would be useful to start examining what 'independence' means in an independent body. It gives good cover to set them up and the media uses the description when reporting on their work.
But where is the 'independence'? They are selected by a Minister, advised by senior civil servants and political adviser on who is sound and safe. Their terms of reference are carefully defined by the same group, witnesses identified, evidence taken and a report produced several years after the issue has ceased to be salient.
It would be a inept Minister who ended up with a really independent group - though Sunak seems to have managed it recently.
How would you get true "independence", though? That's like searching for someone who has no cultural conditioning at all.
The odd thing is that despite appearances, there are people in the corridors of power who are moral and take their responsibilities to the public with the utmost seriousness. Mostly in Whitehall, but sometimes they wander into the Houses of Parliament by accident too. These people are not necessarily right about anything, but they do try to be. They're not only in it for themselves. These are the people who you want in an "independent body".
«Tory bad behaviour is right now winning votes for Labour. Because of the scale of Tory corruption»
That is not "winning votes for Labour". it is winning votes for abstention or "don't know". Perhaps it will happen like in 2001 or 2005, when the New Labour vote collapsed but the Conservative vote collapsed even more, with lots of voters choosing abstention or the LibDems (the latter is unlikely this time). It is less likely that the New New Labour will increase substantially over the high levels of 2017 or even 2019.
Starmer's entire electoral strategy seems me to be based on hoping that many tory-whig voters will switch to abstention or the LibDems rather than voting Conservative while holding their noses merely to prevent a win for the "genocidal trots".
«would serve quite a few political purposes four or five years hence to remind the punters about how corrupt and lawless the Tories have been.»
Most tory and whig voters are fully persuaded that all politicians are corrupt, and are themselves corrupt in their work lives too, so they don't care much about that.
But they care a lot about the softening property market, because their living standards utterly depend on property gains every year. Sure BTL speculators are doing very well as rents (in the south) are ballooning, but many tory voters are missing their usual remortgaing round.
"Are we supposed to believe this behaviour will cease when Starmer enters Number 10?" Yes, but it will not, It will become ever more deceptive.
"At Unite's conference today he said he won't make any apologies for doing what is necessary to win." This is also a lie. His aim has been to remove any opposition to himself and policies for those he serves (not the majority). It will have diminished his support but the Tory mess is so huge even Satan would win.
«It will become ever more deceptive. "At Unite's conference today he said he won't make any apologies for doing what is necessary to win." This is also a lie.»
Tactically yes strategically he has been very consistent that his core constituency (and his core politics) are kipper property owners. As to this Larry Elliott in "The Guardian" wrote something that would be a funny euphemism if it were not so sad:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/12/economic-tories-labour-general-election-britain-keir-starmer
“let’s be realistic. There will be no radical economic departures from a Starmer government, and if it went into the next election proposing anything that seriously challenged the orthodoxy – Bank of England independence and tight control of the public finances, for example – Labour would probably lose. Sometimes you have to win – and govern – ugly.”
Where “ugly” is an euphemism for the “orthodoxy"of "kipper thatcherism".
«His aim has been to remove any opposition to himself and policies for those he serves (not the majority). It will have diminished his support but the Tory mess is so huge even Satan would win.»
I am not sure about that “would win” because:
* The Conservatives are still 60 seats ahead, all they have to do is to keep half of them, while New New Labour has to take seats from both them and the SNP.
* There have been big changes in seats in the past only after a property price crash (mid 1990s, end of 2000s), and at those times indeed the vote was just "throw the bums out" and any opposition leader would have won big.
* There has not been yet a property price crash, just a small fall after a fantastic post-pandemic rise, and the establishment plan is to keep nominal interest rates way below inflation and for inflation to go down to below 2% during 2024, with nominal interest rates going down to around 0%.
It is vital to note that both electricity and gas prices in the UK have fallen by a factor of 3-5 since the peak and are now at the same level as in late 2021, well before the USA sanctions against the Russian Federation made them balloon, and that they never rose that much in many countries from which the UK imports (which are other elements that suggest that the current high inflation is a policy to ensure that real wages become significantly "more competitive").
Most tory voters vote their money interests more than anything else, and if nominal interests rates are low and property profits rising by end of 2024 they may not want to risk switching their vote to kipper-thatcherist "team B".
«electricity and gas prices in the UK have fallen by a factor of 3-5 since the peak [...] if nominal interests rates are low and property profits rising by end of 2024»
Currently CPI inflation in the USA (and several EU countries) is 3% and in the PRC it is 0% or slightly negative.
https://www.economist.com/economic-and-financial-indicators/2023/07/13/economic-data-commodities-and-markets
But these changes are mere details compared to the much more important stories of gotchas and personalities (whether BBC or government) prominent in the corporate media. :-)
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