Cassilis

It can't be fun being a Labour supporter or blogger at the moment - no matter what your politics you'd need a heart of stone not to have some sympathy given what the last week has brought. By my reading there's a fairly standard sort of line being taken by Labour blogs at the moment:

This is bad but it's cock-up not conspiracy (here) - Tory glee is misplaced because they're just as bad if not worse, we introduced the transparency rules (here) - let's get some perspective, this isn't 15% interest rates or soaring unemployment and waiting lists (here) etc. etc.

And if I'm honest most of these objections are reasonable enough. If there's a moral high ground in party funding then it's been a helluva long time since any of the three main parties paid a visit. And given the other problems the UK faced by the mid-90's the idea that Brown's government has reached the same dizzy heights of incompetence as Major et al simply doesn't stack up. So Labour supporters are entitled to ask why the public don't buy these explanations and why polling since this row broke out has been so unkind. Here's why.

We all know the public have a ludicrously low opinion of politicians. This is moderated a little in that they'll forgive 'their lot' more than their opponents but not much - at root the 'they're all the same' attitude is incredibly prevalent, certainly among the politically inactive masses. This should mean that funding scandals or sexual misdemeanours etc. barely raise an eyebrow among the public since there's no great expectation of anything else. But here's the rub - the public I think do get very irked by blatant hypocrisy or overtly preachy politicians. They're prepared to turn a blind eye to the married politician shagging their secretary or lining their pockets with dodgy cheques provided that same bloke hasn't been lecturing me about morals or integrity when he's not getting his end away. This is what done for Major in the mid-90's - it wasn't really the sins of Mellor, Hamilton, Aitken et al. that pissed off the public, it was the fact that they took place against a backdrop of their party uging us to get 'back to basics' (that and the fact that the economy was shot). Pre-1997 Labour never missed an opportunity to set themselves up as 'above the fray' - they more or less claimed inhuman levels of probity and banged on again and again about integrity and trust etc. Remember 'whiter than white' and suggestions that 'even the appearance of wrongdoing' was unacceptable? I remember at the time being a bit uneasy about this even from a Labour point of view - understandable in terms of raising immediate political capital but talk about hastening the prospect of being hoist on your own petard!?

Well, that's exactly what's happening now. Yes this is cock-up not conspiracy and no, there's no evidence yet that Ministers knowingly engaged in illegal activity but Labour didn't ask to be judged on those broad terms. They asked to be judged very harshly on appearances not just the facts, judged by a different standard from days gone by. Crying 'well we're all at it' now may be true but the other lot didn't set themselves up as 'holier than thou'...

One final bit of pontification from me that occurred as I write this. Governments lose office because of two things acting together - the general loss of public trust & affection and one (or more) major screw-up or policy disaster. Arguably the Iraq war should've counted as the latter but because Blair's administration retained the former they still won in 2005. Brown will recover a little from his current woes but I think even loyal Labour supporters would have to concede that the general public trust / affection thing is gone for good. That means Brown's government is probably one major policy screw-up away from certain defeat come the next election. Iraq was effectively neutralised by the 2005 poll and I don't think the HRMC disk thing was it (although I could be wrong). I'm guessing ID cards will be scrapped for fear of being just that mistake - like the poll tax they'll impact almost everyone and that's dangerous territory for a government whose store of public affection is already spent.

Labels: Politics