Theresa May has fatally undermined any Conservative claims to moral authority

Theresa May decisions as a leader, to do deals with the DUP and keep out of the public eye after he Grenfell fire, have severely undermined any Conservative claim to moral authority

When talking about British politics, there is a note of caution to keep in mind about the Westminster system: the rules are more like traditions that can be interpreted to suit the situation and that this happens mostly to protect the status quo.

It's that favouring of the status quo that Theresa May will be clinging to right now. Even though May won the most seats and votes, she staked the house on winning a majority and she failed. That result hurt her hopes of remaining leader, but it shouldn't have fatally undermined the party.

Yet the Tories are teetering. Theresa May's leadership has taken the party from dominance amidst struggling opposition, and it has been the result of poor decisions and poor leadership.

There were the absurd decisions on the campaign like avoiding the public and staying away from debates. But her failures have been most stark in the past ten days since the election.

The decision to seek a coalition for the DUP has antagonised, divided and provoked - even putting the Good Friday Agreement at risk. In fact it has done everything except what the forming a coalition is supposed to do: bring stability. It's also a choice in stark contrast to her own, and her supporters', rhetoric.

Then came the Grenfell fire, symbolising everything wrong with the austerity creed that May has continued. The working class left in unsafe homes by profiteering landlords protected by Tory deregulation. And her response, in this moment that cried out for leadership? Absence.

Theresa May's administration has form when it comes to disappearing. When the Right-wing press launched an attack campaign on the entire principal of judicial independence, the government went quiet. It would be days before a small, quiet statement of support for the judiciary would emerge.

As the working class died or were left homeless, Theresa May was working on a working on a reponse, undoubtedly. But she was invisible. Moving about under the shelter of police protection. Hidden behind closed doors. Hidden from the people suffering through the tragedy.

As the poor response of the Bush Administration to the disaster left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina undermined confidence in the GOP, Theresa May has damaged public confidence in the Conservative & Unionist Party with her very public absence during a time of crisis.

Combine that with the divisive decision to try and go into government with an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, morally extreme party with historic connections to paramilitaries, and you have a toxic brew.

As hard as it is now for May to lead, she has been left little other choice. The Tories made their election campaign one dimensional. It was all about the leadership qualities of Theresa May. That may well continue to backfire well beyond the present crisis.

May campaigned for a personal show of support. The largest number of votes and seats in Parliament was won, not under the brand of the "Conservative & Unionist Party", but under the brand of "Team May". As difficult as May's position is now, it's hard to see anyone else from the Conservative benches having an easier time. They could not even claim to represent the mandate, however limited it may be, won on 8th June.

If the Conservatives see sense and listen to concern about the DUP deal, and if Theresa May stands down, the most votes and seats may not be enough to keep them in government. Their poor response to the Grenfell fire has done more than hurt public confidence - it has fatally undermined their claim to hold moral authority.

Without it, no ministry can hope to govern for long.

Theresa May's leadership has weakened the Tories profoundly, but her personal mandate and her negotiations with the DUP is all that's keeping them in office. They still need her - and as long as they do, the Westminster preference for the status quo may yet save her and her party.

However, from the morning of 9th June, Labour have told anyone who would listen that they were ready to run a minority government. They may soon have to.

Arts of Leadership: Part 3 - Language of Leaders

In the last issue I spoke about the idea of 'stability', an idea thrown about a lot during the election. It is in terms of language that I want to talk about stability in this issue.

Some theorists have sought to put language at the centre of political struggle. The Russian theorist Voloshinov spoke about language in terms of a 'struggle for meaning'. For him, the meanings of verbal signs act as an arena for class struggles (Voloshinov, 1973). Any society's elites or rulers try to control the meanings of language, signs & utterances; in order that they might control the ideas expressed with them.

In this way, the Conservative Party and their supporting media outlets gained control of the language of the 2010 UK General Election before it even began. So firmly were they in control that they were able to break a Liberal Democrat poll charge before it ever really took off. The major tool they used here, in tandem with their major opponent, the Labour Party, was the word 'stability'.

I discussed last week the lack of evidence behind the Tory stability claims and their use instead of ambiguous statement instead. Mr Cameron has also made good use of language tactics to manage his image, even back during the race for the Conservative Leadership against David Davies (New Statesman, 2010). But this image control was moulded by time on the opposition benches observing a true master of self image, Mr Blair (YouTube, 2006).

Mr Blair's well-documented ability to control the language, and there-in image, of the party under his control is no better observed than in his book. Michael Meacher, speaking to The Mirror, described Mr Blair's book as:

'delusional" and "abounded with his self-righteousness, his constant spin to gloss over his real motives'.
                (Beattie & Lyons, 2010)

As Ferdinand de Saussure explains (de Saussure, 1916) language creates 'ways of organising the world'. It is this world of signs, contexts and determining through them the meaning of the world, that Voloshinov proposed the 'struggle for meaning'.

As Mr Blair seeks to do with memoirs, as Mr Cameron achieved in his Election Campaign, a political message must be crafted through careful manipulations of signs, as in words, phrases and utterances. All of this must be used in relevant contexts to create a coordinated image of the world for followers to buy into. It is through these slights-of-hand, bringing together all the misdirections and confuscations previously mentioned; that leaders try to control not just the debate, but the arena in which the debate takes place.

All of this is crystallised in the managed lines of political clashes, packeted pieces of quote-worthy one-upmanship. It is this political point-scoring approach that is the pinnacle of the word by word political battle. It is also the source of much disgust with politics, such as Rufus Hound's response to how susceptible the crowd at a Young Voters Question Time were to such tactics (BBC, 2010).

However language is integral to leaders in the current era. We live in the information age where the sound bites and point scoring that annoys many is none-the-less an astoundingly effective tool. As long as it works, politicians will see no reason not to do it, because a politician who isn't trying to sell you their ideas, isn't really doing their job.

It is then up to you, dear reader, to maintain your own vigilance against these methods.

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References:
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+ Valentin Voloshinov's 'Marxism and the Philosophy of Language';
Harvard University Press, 1973.

+ John Parrington's 'In Perspective: Valentin Voloshinov';

+ Time Trumpet's 'Blair vs Cameron' on YouTube; 2006;

- The Conservatives and Conservative Media talk Stability:
 Calum Ross's 'Conservative Leader Pledges Stability'
 Peter Oborne's 'Amoral spiv or true traditional Tory?...'
 BBC's 'Cameron pledges 'dynamic' economy'
 Robert Winnett's 'Coalition government deal Promises Stability...'

+ New Statesman's 'David Cameron, 2005';

+ Jason Beattie & James Lyons' 'Tony Blair book A Journey attacked as "delusional and bonkers"';

+ Tony Blair's 'A Journey';
 Hutchinson, 2010. [Paperback - A Journey] [Hardback - A Journey]

+ Ferdinand de Saussure's 'Course in General Linguistics';
 Peter Owen, 1916.

+ Samantha Ashenden's 'Structuralism & Post-Structuralism';
 in Austin Harrington's (ed) 'Modern Social Theory: An Introduction';
 Oxford University Press, 2005.

+ BBC's 'Young Voters Question Time'; 20 October 2010

Arts of Leadership: Part 2 - The Fallacy of Stability

Subjective truths, by their nature, are difficult to argue with. They are also a useful tool of persuasion. Attempts to draw grand conclusions from ambiguous statistical observations are a sure sign that someone is trying to convince you of something they can't (or couldn't be bothered to) provide evidence for, or they're trying to sell you something.

The essential factor in such statements is context.

'We've got an economy mired in debt and we badly need to get it growing... Now ask yourselves, who is going to get that job done?... Is a hung parliament going to get that job done? A hung parliament will be a bunch of politicians haggling, not deciding, they'd be fighting for their own interests, not fighting for your interests.'
(Cameron, 2010)

In some fields, it is impossible to avoid arguments such as these. In politics half of everything is justification for ideologies. But as any good Sociologist could tell you, the difference between honest and crooked uses of them are in the clear signposting of all such assumptions and biases. In this instance, the assumptions made about the stability of a hung parliament against a majority, and the evidence that such a claim is based on.

This brings me to the great fallacy spun during the elections that I feel needs to be addressed. The great argument, from all ends of the political spectrum, was to avoid hung parliaments at all cost. The reasoning given is that it chokes off chances for stability. I'm afraid I have have a bone to pick with that argument.

'In the 50 years since the World War ended, Italy had an equal number of governments. Thus, governments in Italy lasted on average barely a year. Yet, Italy today is among the most industrialized countries in the world. This, if nothing else, should make us wary about drawing any facile conclusions about the effects of political instability on the economy.'
(Thakurta, 2008)

'(In) Nordic countries and the states of northern Europe, election days there are seen as just the beginning of a frequently protracted negotiating period over the composition of the next government. This is normal. The sky usually doesn't fall in.'
(Tisdall, 2010)

First, a question. In what way has the first-past-the-post, two party dynamic, in anyway, offered the British people 'stable' government? We have spent the years since the great wars lurching from one extreme to the other; the Labour Party nationalising everything in sight on the one side, before the Tories return five years later to privatise it all again.

And so this pattern went, until Mrs Thatcher decimated the power base of the Labour movement opposition by crippling the nation's industrial base. Even now, as a Conservative Government sits again, the effects of the Thatcher administration's focus on economy based solely on financial speculation is being felt.

In Europe by comparison, they have had no shortage of stable governments despite having an average of five mainstream parties, each covering five relatively concrete positions across the political spectrum. Now while this might not produce majority governments, it does encourage stable government, because potential coalition partners don't have to face the enormous task of overcoming huge political differences. Instead stable yet co-operative government is encouraged by the room for agreement to be found.

'It's clear that, in my view and in our experience at A.T.Kearney, European companies tend to take a longer term view of world and global developments; they're less likely to react very quickly and be constrained by daily events and quarterly earnings statements... which could serve them well on the one hand, and on the other hand create a certain lack of flexibility or dexterity...'
(Paul A. Laudicina, 2010)

The tendency for the Euro area countries to lean towards coalition offers companies a fair degree of stability in economic policy, not just thanks to negotiation between parliaments for moderate policy, but between nations themselves. These systems of cooperation and negotiation foster respect for aspects of 'tradition which... cannot be substantially changed', again forging an area of stability that allows business to act in a long term fashion (De Benedetti, 2010).

A simple means of demonstrating stability might then be through competitiveness. In the Global Competitiveness Ranking of 2009, in Business Week, showed that nations with coalition or minority governments dominated the top ten.

1.SWITZERLAND, 2.United States, 3.Singapore, 4.SWEDEN,
5.DENMARK, 6.FINLAND, 7.GERMANY, 8.Japan, 9.CANADA,
10.NETHERLANDS,... 13. Britain.

The nations in bold all possess coalition or minority governments, with the major majority government in the top ten being the United States, whose economy has the stigma of instability. The quotation from Mr Laudicina, above, was in comparison to the US approach, where businesses are forced to be flexible in order to survive in a market that lacks the long-term stability afforded to European business (Laudicina, 2010).

Even these brief statistics suggest that the two party arguments are off the mark. This system has stifled our democracy with partisan fears of a return to a 20 year Conservative Majority, or elective dictatorship as majority may also be read. This fear has forced a tolerance of excesses from Labour Party leaders who have been quick to exploit the trust of their supporters; in exchange for remaining a watchdog, a bastion against the right that leftist voters fear. This cows the voices in the Labour movement from speaking out against their own party's excess in case it brings the house of cards down.

This all forces the lines between social movements and populists to blur, forcing the use of contemptible politics in order to hold onto the shifting middle ground. This means resorting to tactics of coercion, of negative reinforcement, and negative out-group stereotypes. My concerns are that:

+ First, this narrowing of our political options is leading to a 'trickle-down' system of policy for a party's taken for granted voting core.

+ Second, that these bi-partisan swings are damaging to the nation's economy, preventing businesses from making long term plans, which in turn prevents any kind of long term employment plans.

+ Finally, that all of this serves only to exacerbate my fears that the two party majority system is marginalising even democracy itself, by making parties less diverse but policy more radical and unpredictable.

This is just one example of an issue that is easily manipulated in the public imagination. The scary thing is how little effort it takes to shift polling results from the UK general election debates to election night on an issue like this. During the debates, Mr Clegg was widely shown to have won at least one and polls reflected this by putting the Liberal Democrats a competitive second, at least. By election night this expected turn out had shifted with a drastic speed, following campaigning by both ends of the spectrum to avoid the centre.

Next week will be the third and final part of this short series about leader 'tricks of the trade'. Last week covered misdirection, this week we have had confuscation and next week will be looking at how the language of leaders can be used as a weapon to control image, identity and choice.

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References:
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+ David Cameron, addressing a Crowd in Gloucester; April 17 2010;

+ David Cameron, dismissing talk of a Lib Dem deal; May 7 2010;

+ Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's 'Political instability and Growth'; 2008;

+ Simon Tisdall's 'Coalitions are the norm in democracies';

+ Paul A. Laudicina of A.T.Kearney at 'European Companies and the Great Recession: A view from the trenches'; October 5 2010;
+ Carlo De Benedetti of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso at 'European Companies and the Great Recession: A view from the trenches'; October 5 2010;

+ Global Competitiveness Ranking in Business Week, 2009;