Politicians and experts: austerity, Brexit and the pandemic

 

I’ll be talking about fiscal policy during and after the pandemic at a Resolution Foundation/MMF event in a week’s time: https://www.mmf.ac.uk/resolution-foundation/

I have written quite a few posts on the relationship between policy and expertise, and between expertise and the media. The better ones are in my book, but they were all written before the COVID pandemic. How does the relationship between experts on the one hand and politicians and the media on the other that we saw with economists over austerity and Brexit play out with medics and the pandemic?

All three cases are different from each other. Although the evidence set out in my book suggests that the majority of academic economists opposed austerity (a majority that got larger as time went on), this plurality had no impact on either the media or the politicians pushing austerity. A few well known academics who supported austerity got a lot of publicity, but this was because they supported a policy pushed by politicians and the media, and not because they were influential in driving the policy. An obvious example in the UK was Ken Rogoff, who supported protecting public investment from any cuts while the government did much economic harm by cutting public investment.

The most notable feature of austerity was the almost total disregard by the media of the views of the majority of academics. As Alan Winters in his analysis of experts and Brexit points out, it was David Henderson who said in his Reith Lectures of 1985 “There is no doubt that the policies of governments … are influenced by economic ideas. But … these have not necessarily been the ideas of economists”. This applies with equal force to the media. The media appeared to apply the logic of the household to governments, so that the necessity of paying back debt as soon as possible became common sense, even though saying this would be a fail for any first year economics undergraduate. For that reason I called it mediamacro.

The power of media narratives should never be underestimated, as the Labour party has experienced many times to its cost. Austerity was just another example. It was a particularly devastating example, because in this case the media’s common sense did terrible harm to the economy, and the media was ignoring what it should have regarded as a key source of knowledge, academic macroeconomics. Needless to say, media organisations have never examined their own mistakes in this regard.

Brexit was different in two respects. First, what was a plurality over austerity was an almost total consensus on Brexit. Making trade more difficult, which almost any form of Brexit did, would cause considerable harm to the economy. The second difference compared to austerity was that the broadcast media had less of any common sense to appeal to, and so they played the ‘two sides’ game. On the one hand was the overwhelming consensus of academics, together with all the major economics institutions, and on the other was a handful of pro-Brexit economists the most noticeable of whom was Patrick Minford. (A few media outlets, and particularly the Financial Times, did follow the academic consensus.)

In defence of the broadcast media, this ‘two sided debate’ format is their default on most issues, and it doesn’t normally matter what the expert consensus is (which is typically not mentioned). However as we saw with austerity, there are exceptions. Whereas the exceptions should be based on the expert consensus, they instead seem to be based on common sense narratives. As with austerity, the media has never examined its own mistakes in relation to Brexit. As the referendum was very tight, the actions of the broadcast media in treating the overwhelming consensus of academic economists as just one opinion could well have influenced the result.

This trivialising of expert opinion is not inevitable. Strong pressure from academic bodies can yield results. The obvious example is climate change. When broadcasters began to increasingly ‘two-side’ the climate change issue, academics and others protested, and the BBC trust acknowledged that on this issue the expert consensus had to be followed. Not all BBC programmes have subsequently respected the Trust’s findings, but nevertheless you will generally see broadcasters treating the need to reduce man made climate change as a fact, and not as a controversial opinion.

The obvious difference between austerity or Brexit and climate change is that the former involves economists and the latter involves scientists. Actually the difference in methodology between climate change scientists and economists is not that great: both attempt to predict in a highly stochastic environment, and neither can easily conduct experiments. There are differences in public perception, of course. Besides the insight of Henderson noted above, there are various myths about economics that are part of the public debate. But the most relevant difference in my view is the absence of institutional pressure on the media from economists that matched the pressure over climate change.

Another academic discipline that has similarities to economics is medicine, and more specifically public health and epidemiology. The story of COVID-19 initially appeared to be more optimistic than austerity and Brexit. In many European countries, including the UK, governments took scientific advice, although in the UK with a short delay that probably cost tens of thousands of lives. But as Alan Winters notes, that optimism has been short lived. In most countries in Europe, including the UK, the second wave has been far worse because politicians ignored the expert advice.

The rationale they have given for ignoring the medical experts has been to balance health with the economy. The irony is that once again most economists I have seen who have studied this issue have agreed with me that there is no meaningful trade-off between the economy and health beyond the very short term. Once again academic economists are ignored, this time where lives are directly at stake.

The media have faithfully echoed the excuses for ignoring the expert advice, seemingly ignorant of the fact that they have little basis. From what I have seen they have given air time to experts and particularly politicians pushing the ‘lockdowns do not work’ nonsense, as if this is just another opinion. I suspect once again this is because it is ‘common sense’ that there is a health/economy trade-off, because most people do not think in dynamic terms. I have not seen government politicians questioned in interviews for not following expert advice in a similar manner to the way Labour politicians were questioned for doubting Osborne’s austerity.

Why did politicians initially say they were following the science of how to deal with the pandemic, while the same politicians ignored economists on Brexit? It is not because medicine is a science and economics is not. As I have argued elsewhere, the two disciplines have many structural similarities. Henderson’s point about prior beliefs is undoubtedly one reason: not many non-medics thought about pandemics before there was one. For politicians another reason is ideology. With austerity and Brexit it was ideologically convenient, and perhaps even necessary, for its proponents to discount expertise. Initially there appeared to be little ideology involved with controlling a pandemic, beyond libertarian instincts.

One reason attitudes to medical experts changed among government politicians between the first and second wave was the emergence of ideology dressed up as science: the Barrington Declaration and all that, and the influence that has had on many Conservative MPs. Once again, it became in the interests of those politicians to ignore expertise, just as they did with Brexit. The correlation with pro-Brexit and anti-lockdown views is no accident. The lesson is simply not to elect politicians who can so easily cast aside expertise.

Unfortunately that is less likely to happen as long as the media fails to tell viewers what the consensus among experts is. I have made this point before, but I think the lesson of climate change is instructive. The media are not going to change what they do, particularly when some feel their existence may depend on keeping certain politicians happy. What changed the media’s approach to climate change, at least in principle, was pressure from science itself. The reason academic economics gets ignored is that academic economists don’t organise to apply pressure.

I have seen so many accounts of why economics was ignored over Brexit that blame themselves: things should have been presented more clearly, economists should have been more open about uncertainties, and so on. All have some truth, but none will make any difference as long as the media treats the consensus among academic economists as just another opinion. For the media to do otherwise requires the strongest pressure from groups who represent academic economists. At the very least, we need institutions representing economists telling the media what the consensus view (if any) is on particular economic issues. [1]

I suspect that some medics will be beginning to ask similar questions about the pandemic: why did politicians ignore consensus advice, why did anti-lockdown politicians get so much airtime and so on. The answers I suspect are similar to those I have just given for economics. Medics have one big advantage over economists: the bodies that represent them are used to applying public pressure. They should apply that pressure on the media if they want to avoid expert views about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines to be treated as just one opinion to set beside the opinion of anti-vaxxers.

[1] When I make this point I often get comments along the lines that I’m trying to impose conformity, and the public should be told about mavericks opinions because (very occasionally) they turn out to be right. I’m doing neither of those things. What is missing from the media is any sense of what the expert consensus is, and for politicians who depart from the consensus being interrogated on why they think they know better than the expert consensus.

The othering of Jeremy Corbyn

By othering I mean treating Corbyn (or more generally the Labour left) as beyond the pale in terms of conventional politics. Othering implies that because of his past or current beliefs, associations and actions Corbyn should not be even considered as fit to be an MP, let alone a Prime Minister. Other politicians can be evaluated in conventional ways, but this does not apply to those who are othered. Othering has a number of distinctive, and potentially useful, features. Let me list two.

First, those who associate in any way with those othered are themselves regarded as questionable. I discovered this myself when I joined Labour’s short-lived Economic Advisory Committee, as I discuss here. This can be a potent threat. Second, those who are othered can be discussed in terms that would not normally be used to discuss politicians. After Johnson compared Corbyn to Stalin, Andrew Neill asked a Tory MP if he thought Corbyn would have the wealthy shot. “I do not know”, the MP replied.

Sometimes othering may be a valid position to take. I still remember the days when the far right was othered by the mainstream media, rather than being invited on Newsnight to discuss the latest bit of far right terrorism. I think that othering was helpful in ostracising racism, and its absence today is reflected in the rise of hate crime. But no such justification applies to the leader of the opposition, elected by hundreds of thousands of people, who is the only alternative to our current Prime Minister.

For othering to be justified those being othered have to have some attribute, or have done some things that are uniquely bad compared to their fellow citizens. The BNP were racist, and it is quite right that racism is ostracised. If we are talking about politicians, the same has to be applied to individuals. Is there something these politicians have done that is uniquely bad compared to other politicians.

Corbyn fails this test. There is nothing Corbyn has done that is uniquely bad compared to the obvious person to compare him with, his opponent Boris Johnson. Corbyn is not racist, which is not surprising as he has a lifelong history of fighting racism. Yet the media, almost without exception, has done its best to suggest otherwise.

The most obvious example of othering is the way the media have handled antisemitism within Labour. Labour has a real problem with antisemitism, but the media have acted as if Labour are the only party with a racism problem. In contrast Johnson is not constantly asked why he called Muslim women letterboxes and bankrobbers, and whether he will apologise for the increase in hate crime that followed that article.

As a result of this media othering of Corbyn, there are plenty of voters who say they cannot vote tactically because of Labour’s antisemitism, seemingly without any thought that they are therefore keeping in power someone who has actually made racist statements, and was part of a government that instituted some of the most discriminatory pieces of legislation of recent times that goes by the collective term hostile environment. Any outside observer would conclude that for UK society as a whole, including its media, Islamophobia is considered acceptable.

When I make these points some people accuse me of whataboutery, or in trying to minimise the problem of antisemitism in Labour. Both claims are false. The whole point about othering someone is that their alleged behaviour must be unusually bad compared to their comparators, so othering is all about whataboutery. And of course none of this is minimising Labour’s very real problem of antisemitism. Yes antisemitism exists in all parties, but there are reasons (like support for the Palestinians) why antisemitism may be worse in the Labour party, although the evidence is still that this is a problem among a very small proportion of Labour members. But equally there are also good reasons why Islamophobia and racist views will be relatively worse in the Tory party.

Then we come to terrorism. Corbyn is said to be too friendly towards terrorists, and therefore a unique threat to the UK as Prime Minister. I’m not going to defend Corbyn’s foreign policy views, some of which are dubious in my opinion, but are they uniquely bad? To say so is a hard position to defend when the UK participated with its closest ally in a pointless war in Iraq which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, a war which Corbyn opposed.

In terms of current threats, we recently had an act of terrorism in Salisbury committed by Russian agents. You would think, in response, that the Conservative party would be particularly keen to publish a select committee report on Russian interference in UK politics. Why Johnson has decided to delay the report we can only speculate on, but what we do know about is the links, sometimes financial, between the Tory party and Russians with close links to the Kremlin. Or maybe it is because Johnson does not want people to know about the extent of Russian interference in our elections.

Corbyn shares a left view of foreign policy which rarely gets much space in the media, but given the failures of past UK foreign policy and the very dubious situation of the Conservative party on Russia (again, just like their Republican counterparts in the US), there is no case for othering that view or a party leader who proposes it. The idea that a Corbyn minority government would somehow make the UK a less safe place is ludicrous when a former Tory Prime Minister is advocating people vote for just such an outcome.

Of course there is every reason for the Tory press to try and other Corbyn. Once you regard him as a perfectly normal and respectable politician, the arguments against voting for him are slim indeed. The Tory record on the economy is terrible. All they have to trumpet is employment growth, but that just reflects an appallingly (and unprecedentedly) bad record on productivity, and therefore living standards for workers. Labour’s policies for the next five years are mostly popular with the public, and even though it will cost a lot of money the cost is much less than the Brexit that will happen if Johnson sticks to his commitments.

On an individual level Corbyn seems far more preferable to Johnson as a Prime Minister, for the simple reason that Corbyn clearly cares about other people whereas Johnson cares only for himself. Corbyn shows real empathy for others, which we saw clearly after the Grenfell fire, whereas Johnson has the attitudes typical of the worst of his class. The way of hiding all that from people is to other Corbyn and his party, which virtually the entire mainstream media has done.

I understand why our current government and their supporters in the press would do that, and I have respect for those MPs (past and present) who have got out of that boat. I find it much more difficult to respect some of those in the centre, who normally pride themselves in taking a balanced and reasoned view, that are prepared to see the most right wing UK government in living memory continue to destroy the economy through Brexit, continue to cause misery for many decent people and threaten our constitution by proposing to give the executive complete control over parliament.

The othering of Corbyn will probably win the election for Johnson. But we should never give up hope, so please vote tactically on Thursday to keep Johnson out and allow a second referendum on Brexit.

Will UK voters really vote for the Republican party and our own Donald Trump?

There is so much about today’s Conservative party that is very similar to the Republican party in the US. To establish this, there is no better place to start than our future Prime Minister for the next five years, if polls are to be believed.

Trump and Johnson are both inveterate liars. They lie when they have no need to, just for effect. To take some recent examples. He told Andrew Marr that the Tories don't do deals with other parties, when everyone can remember the Coalition government and the DUP. (Marr, as so often with interviewers, let that pass.) Johnson has said that the extra money he has allowed for the health service is the biggest boost for a generation. In fact it is smaller than the increase in spending from Labour from 2004 onwards. There are many like this. He has lied all his life, and been sacked from jobs twice for doing so. He lies about lying! No UK politician in living memory has lied like this.

A consequence of that is you cannot trust a word he says. When he and his ministers say that the NHS will not be part of any trade negotiations with the US, it means nothing. Brexit puts the UK in a very weak position because the political costs of walking away, while the costs for the US are zero. So of course the NHS and things that affect the NHS will be part of any trade deal.

When he says that he will get a trade deal with the EU in just a year he is lying. It is just not possible given the reasons the Conservatives want to leave the EU. So voters will have to decide which lie he will choose: to break his undertaking not to extend the transition period or to leave with no deal.

Like Trump, Johnson treats the economy, and the consequent wellbeing of everyone in it, as a plaything for his own ends. With Trump this involves imposing tariffs because of his 15th century understanding of economics. With Johnson he chose Brexit on a toss up about what would advance his own ambitions. He then championed the hardest of Brexits because it appealed to those who would vote him leader of his party. But there is a difference: Brexit is far more harmful than anything Trump has managed.

Where Trump wants to increase coal production in the US, Johnson wants to stop any increases in fuel duty. Johnson didn’t attend a leaders debate on climate change.

Johnson, like Trump, is totally lacking in empathy for others, and is only interested in himself. Johnson thought nothing of helping a friend beat up a journalist. His personal life matters because it reflects the kind of person he is.

Like Trump, he has no time or respect for people who disagree with him. He shut down parliament because it was getting in his way. In his manifesto he now threatens to curtail the ability of the law to stop him doing what he and his party want. Johnson and the Conservatives, like Trump and the Republicans, are a threat to democracy.

Like Trump, he and his party want a totally compliant media. They have put so much pressure on the BBC that parts of it now do what they can to flatter Johnson and the Conservative cause. They have threatened Channel4 because they put a block of ice in his place when he failed to turn up to that leaders debate on climate change.

Like Trump, Johnson hates scrutiny. They both would much rather talk to an adoring party faithful than take part in critical questioning. In this election, Johnson has avoided questions from the press as much as he can, has avoided debates, and is avoiding an interview with one of the best interviewers around.

One reason they both hate scrutiny is their inability to concentrate on the details, the kind of details he got wrong such that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remains in jail. This is one reason they sent Gove rather than Johnson to do the climate change debate. Johnson is as mentally unsuitable to be Prime Minister as Trump is to be President.

Republicans in Congress with few exceptions defend Trump. Conservative MPs do the same for Johnson without exception, now that the few Conservatives with some attachment to One Nation Conservatism have been driven out of the party. The Republicans never pretend to govern for the whole country, but just for what some of them call Real America. The Conservatives with Brexit have adopted the same policy. A narrow victory for Leave, obtained in the most dubious referendum ever, has become a mandate for the hardest of Brexits, and with a referendum on the final deal ruled out.

Both parties adopt divide and rule tactics, yet play the nationalist card for all its worth. To conceal and distract from far right economic policies designed to help the 1% wealthiest in the population, by a party financed by the even wealthier, they focus on attracting votes from the xenophobic and racist. The Conservatives have seen off the threat from the Brexit party by adopting the Brexit party. It was probably the votes of ex-Brexit party members that helped secure Johnson his leadership.

The Republicans play the race card and the Tories play the immigration card, something they have done since the turn of this century. Once you do that, it is inevitable that you end up with a party leaders who are themselves racist. Whatever you think about Corbyn, it is Johnson who has expressed racial slurs like calling Muslim women letterboxes, talked about black people as 'piccaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles', Nigerians as money obsessed. (Not to mention his homophobic and sexist comments, and his description of working class men as drunk, criminal and feckless, and what he originally wrote about Hillsborough victims and single mothers.)

In the US Trump gets away with his behaviour among many because of his money and fame, and in the UK Johnson gets away with it among many because of his class and jokes. Both are where they are because they were given huge head starts, Trump through inheritance and Johnson through class, and have subsequently had careers which are dotted with failure. But once you see beyond the fame and jokes, they are both authoritarians who see nothing wrong in stoking fears about minorities to get the majority to vote for them, and in abusing the constitution to get their way. You might say that it is Trump not Johnson who is threatened with impeachment, but I have lost count of the legal cases about his actions that have been conveniently postponed for this election.

What too many commentators on this election fail to see is the potential irreversibility of this decline into right wing authoritarian rule. With most newspapers pushing out propaganda for the Conservatives and the BBC successfully tamed, the Conservatives now have a sufficient block to any real scrutiny of their policies or behaviour. In the next five years their manifesto suggests they hope to tame anyone else who gets in their way.

The Conservatives have ensured that enough people in this country see and read want they want them to see and read. Soon we will see attempts to introduce nationwide voter ID simply because it helps the Conservatives. It is wishful thinking to say ‘if only we had another Labour leader they would be miles ahead’ - just remember Ed Miliband who lost an election because the media conveniently decided austerity was good economics. [1]

Next year the people of the United States will have their chance to get rid of the worst US president in living memory. We have the chance to stop our own Trump, Boris Johnson, before he gets five years in which he could do irreversible harm to our economy, our democracy, our union and our civil society. The danger in both countries is that they keep their Trump/Johnson, and get locked into permanent authoritarian right wing rule similar to what we see in Hungary and Poland.

Alarmist? Johnson shut down parliament to get his way! When Brexit fails to be the promised land Johnson has promised and when the UK’s potential fails to be unleashed, who will the Conservatives blame for their own failure? How much will they give away to get a US trade deal? Johnson, like Trump, is in the words of a BBC interviewer in braver times a ‘nasty piece of work’, whose only interest is in helping himself. It says a lot about what the UK has become that he looks like getting elected to be Prime Minister.

[1] Of course there were other reasons Miliband lost. He was unpopular, like every Labour leader over the past 40 years has been unpopular except the one who did a deal with the Tory press. And in the final days he was said to be in the pocket of Alex Salmond, even though the SNP have said they will never put a Tory PM into power so their bargaining strength is zero. The broadcast media went with the Tory's SNP story rather than Labour highlighting the (we now know very real) threat to the NHS. 

How to disguise a really big lie? Put it on a bus.

The Tories, and particularly their leader, lie all the time. It is quite shameless. But there is a corollary to this. If your whole campaign is based on one big huge lie, make it your main slogan. Because, even today, many voters still think you wouldn’t dare lie about something so important. Unfortunately recent history suggests otherwise.

We all remember the £350 million for the NHS lie in the 2016 referendum. It was famously on a bus. Except it seems that a good part of the voting population has forgotten the reason that slogan is notorious. It was a huge lie, the opposite of the truth. The have forgotten because the Tories have a new bus with a new slogan that a lot of voters appear to believe. In reality it is as big a lie as the one made during the referendum.

Also consider the key Tory slogans in the last two elections. In 2015 it was “Strong Leadership, A Clear Economic Plan And A Brighter, More Secure Future”. Within a year the ‘strong leader’ had resigned, businesses were unable to plan and the UK’s future was anything but secure. In 2017 who could forget “Strong and Stable”. May lasted two years but no one would call those years stable.

In 2019 we have “Get Brexit Done”. I can confidently tell you that this is in the true tradition of the earlier slogans. A more truthful slogan would be “If you liked the last three years of Brexit deadlock, vote Tory”. Here is why.

It is true that Johnson will get enough MPs to pass the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) if he wins the General Election. But the truth that much of the media has hidden is that the WA was always going to be easy if the UK government was prepared to put a customs border in the Irish Sea. Johnson got that agreement because he capitulated on a red line that he, his fellow MPs and the DUP had forced on Theresa May. Why did the ERG allow Johnson to get away with that? Because they saw a brand new opportunity for a No Deal exit at the end of 2020.

What the WA does not specify is the nature of the trading arrangement between the EU and the UK excluding Northern Ireland. This relationship has always been the sticking point in getting the WA done, and why it has taken so long. The WA does nothing towards saying what that relationship will be, except that it is unlikely to involve being in the EU’s Customs Union or Single Market. Johnson says he wants a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU, but FTAs normally take over 5 years to negotiate.

Johnson has given himself just a year, until the end of 2020. On that date the transition agreement, where we stay in the EU in everything except name and voting rights, comes to an end. Johnson has pledged to not seek an extension beyond 2020, even though one is on offer. That pledge was the basis for getting Farage to withdraw his candidates from Tory seats. The problem is that no one will be able to negotiate an FTA within a year.

Here is the ERG’s big hope, and why Farage withdrew. If Johnson keeps to his word, we face a new cliff edge at the end of 2020. Unless he breaks his word, we will drop out of the EU with no FTA at all. (The great Michael Dougan puts it very clearly here, although I’m not sure about the shirt.) This would be disastrous for the UK economy, but it is what the ERG have been trying to get since 2016. If he breaks his word expect all hell to break loose within the Tory party. If he decides on No Deal, all hell will break out in the Tory party, and parliament might well try to force an extension on him. In other words the next year will be just like the last three.

More generally negotiating an FTA is difficult and time consuming stuff, because it involves UK interests of various kinds that will be trying to get the government’s attention. It will mean that Brexit remains constantly in the news and taking up politicians’ time. This is partly because the government has not thought a lot about how to deal with the many difficult problems an FTA presents, preferring as usual to pretend any difficulty does not exist. Once again, as Chris Grey notes, the EU are much better prepared.

I know I go on about the media a lot, but all this should be common knowledge beyond those who research these things. It clearly is not, with plenty of voters prepared to vote Conservative despite all Johnson’s failings because they believe he will end the Brexit turmoil. This is not about journalists taking sides, but stating facts. I have heard plenty of journalists ask Conservatives whether it is credible to get an FTA done in 1 year, but with little or no follow up.

As just one example, I heard a Conservative MP (I think it was Vicky Ford. Chelmsford) defending the FTA in a year nonsense by saying most of the deal was already done, with no follow-up by the interviewer. What she appeared to mean is that we currently trade with no tariffs with the EU so that will be the basis for negotiations. But of course that is nonsense. The negotiations will start as if the UK was a country with No Deal with the EU, and the UK will have to make the case for moving towards our current position as a member of the EU.

That case will involve all kinds of complications which Tory ministers will find it hard to resolve. For example zero tariffs will only be possible if the UK agrees to adopt all the regulations the EU has which could influence competition, which is most EU regulations. The Tory government wants to get rid of many of those regulations. That means the UK cannot have zero tariffs, because the EU cannot allow an outside country to undercut their own producers because of weaker labour or environmental regulations.

Then there are all the specific thorny issues, like fishing. Tony Connelly brilliantly fillets the complexity here, but in essence the UK cannot exclude other countries from its waters (the dream that led many fishermen to vote for Brexit) and still expect to sell most of its fish to the EU tariff free.

So as far as Brexit is concerned passing the WA is the beginning not the end. If you really want the issue over with, Labour are the much better option. The deal Labour are likely to negotiate within 3 months of taking office will be much softer: almost certainly staying in the EU’s customs union and something close to being in the Single Market, if not in the Single Market. That is why it can be negotiated quickly. We then have a new referendum on that deal within six months.

The contrast between Labour and the Conservatives is clear. Under Labour Brexit is settled by the people in the Autumn of 2020. Under the Conservatives we face a new cliff edge at the end of 2020, and possibly negotiations for another five or more years, or alternatively a No Deal Brexit with all the consequences that will bring. If you want to get Brexit done, don’t vote Tory.

The Tories will never undo the impact of austerity

One of the impacts of 2010 austerity we saw again last week. Widespread flooding ruining hundreds of homes, and costing a life. Can we say those floods were caused by climate change? Not with certainty, but climate change has made this kind of flooding more likely. Can we say the lack of spending on flood defences under a Tory government made the recent floods worse? Not with certainty, but lack of spending has increased the damage flooding does more generally.

In 2007 the Labour government commissioned from Michael Pitt (no longer available on a government website, but available here) which stated:

“The scale of the problem is, as we know, likely to get worse. We are not sure whether last summer’s events were a direct result of climate change, but we do know that events of this kind are expected to become more frequent. The scientific analysis we have commissioned as part of this Review (published alongside this Report) shows that climate change has the potential to cause even more extreme scenarios than were previously considered possible. The country must adapt to increasing flood risk.”

The Labour government responded to this review by substantially increasing central government spending on flood prevention. It reached a peak in 2010/11, the last year of the relevant spending review. Subsequently the coalition government, as part of its austerity policy, cut back on spending, going directly against the spirit of the Pitt review. (More details can be found in my book, The Lies We Were Told.)

Flooding is a very visible example of what happens when a government cuts back on spending communities desperately need. There are hundreds more. Cutting Sure Start centres leading to growing pressure on the NHS. Squeezing local authorities so they cut provision for young people, together with less police officers, helping the spread of knife crime. Squeezing the NHS and local authority health provision leading to premature deaths. And so on.

Sajid Javid and Boris Johnson want people to believe they have begun to reverse the disaster of Osborne’s cuts. They have plans to return the number of police officers to 2010 levels, which leads to good headlines because the media always neglects to account for population growth, with the odd laudable exception from where the chart below comes.  

The number of GPs per head of population have also been falling in most of the UK, when they should be rising to cope with people living longer. Here is a chart from the Nuffield Trust.

Again the Conservatives have announced plans for more GPs, but they have done that before and they have failed to materialise. The basic problem is that they are failing to train enough doctors, too many doctors go overseas because of poor pay and working conditions in the UK (remember the doctors strike), and their hostile environment policy and Brexit discourages doctors coming from abroad. I could go on and on.

But it is worse. We have to have severe doubts that the Tory spending plans, inadequate though they are, will be fulfilled. There are two basic reasons. The first is Brexit, which I talked about in a recent post. The second is taxes. Tories hate putting up taxes in any way people will notice, and really like cutting taxes. During the austerity period they cut income taxes and corporation taxes. This is simply no longer possible.

The reason why is health spending. The trend in health spending per person, or as a share of GDP, is relentlessly upwards. The trend in the graph above illustrates this. It reflects many things which cannot be reversed: not just increasing life spans but also technical progress in what can be treated, and the fact that the better off we are the more in proportion we want to spend on our health. For a time this upward trend was offset by the peace dividend reducing military spending, but that has come to an end. It has nothing to do with a free at the point of use system being inefficient - in fact the opposite is true.

Both factors, Brexit and taxes, reflect the influence of extreme neoliberalism in today’s Tory party. There are some Brexiter MPs who really just want to return to the days of Empire, or who just don’t get the idea of shared sovereignty, or want to keep foreigners out. But the key reason for the dominance of Brexit in today’s Tory party is a belief that a society free as far as possible of taxes and regulations and state ‘interference’ in the economy is a good society, and the EU is a barrier to that. The same ideology wants to reduce the size of the state way beyond what most of the public wish, and still calls for slashing red tape despite Grenfell and while greatly increasing red tape for trading firms because of Brexit.

Their neoliberalism has become extreme because they have, with Brexit, started working against the interest of UK business. The party of business has become the party that ignores business. The Tory neoliberalism has become so extreme that they think they know what is good for business even though they are told by business that it is disastrous. A former Tory business minister writes “I was aghast that a Conservative government, of which I was a member, had brought the world of business so low.”

Should we be grateful that the Tories have finally agreed to end years of growing cuts and in some areas start to reverse austerity? They really had little choice. I think we should credit the new Chancellor with stopping Johnson announcing tax cuts (at least for now), and for increasing public investment. But for the reasons I have outlined the Tories will never be able to substantially reverse the damage they did with austerity, because they remain wedded to an extreme neoliberal ideology.

Corbyn and Antisemitism

There is no doubt that the Labour party has an antisemitism problem. But the figures (see below) suggest it involves a tiny minority. Claims that the party is “riddled with antisemitism” are a deliberate lie. What makes antisemitism claims against Labour powerful is that they are associated with Jeremy Corbyn. In particular many have suggested that Corbyn himself is antisemitic. And if you present the evidence is a certain way the claim looks like a strong one.

I am no Corbyn fan, and actively campaigned against him in 2016. My problem with him was not antisemitism, but Brexit, and my fears came to pass this summer. But I could see immediately that there was something odd about the evidence produced to suggest Corbyn was antisemitic. With a couple of exceptions, they all related to his championing of the Palestinian cause. And with possibly one exception, none of them involved him actually making any antisemitic statements.

As the volume of attacks against Labour and Corbyn himself increased, I thought I should look at some of this evidence against him more carefully. I also had some very personal reasons for wanting to find the truth. It is a long post I’m afraid, but if you want to do justice to the issue it has to be.

Evidence against Corbyn

I will restrict myself here to four of the most common pieces of evidence quoted.

1. Saying Zionists don’t understand English irony, despite “having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives”.

This is the only example I can find of Corbyn making an allegedly antisemitic statement. “When he implies that, however long they have lived here, Jews are not fully British, he is using the language of classic pre-war European anti-Semitism” said a former Chief Rabbi, But, as with so many of these claims, the context is rarely given.

Corbyn was commenting after the Palestinian ambassador to the U.K., who was born and raised in Jerusalem, had made an ironic statement. Corbyn made the observation that when the ambassador had made the same comment in his address to parliament, some Zionists in the audience “berated” the ambassador for what he said.

He said that those who berated the ambassador “don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either.” By comparison, Corbyn went on, “Manuel does understand English irony, and uses it very effectively.” So Corbyn was not making a remark about all Zionists, let alone all Jews, but a few in particular - those who had misunderstood the ambassador’s remark at the time. There is no hint of any generalisation from a particular group of Zionists to all Zionists in the UK.

This is a classic example of how remarks, taken out of context, can be given a different and much more sinister meaning.

2. Corbyn once invited a preacher who has peddled antisemitic myths to tea at the House of Commons and introduced him in a flattering way.

This is one of many examples where Corbyn is accused of antisemitism because he has had some brief association with people who are antisemitic. But in none of these cases did the association arise because the person was antisemitic. Instead these associations typically result from Corbyn’s support for the Palestinian cause. Now you can fairly accuse Corbyn of not being careful in who he associates with. He also famously invited IRA members to Parliament, and has appeared on Iran state TV.

There are many similar allegations to this example, but much the same allegations can be laid at the door of Benjamin Netanyahu. The Conservatives tried this guilt by association tactic when attacking Sadiq Khan in the London mayor elections.

3. He is alleged to have laid a wreath to honour terrorists.

The context. He was attending a ceremony at a cemetery in Tunis to commemorate those killed in Israel’s 1985 airstrike on the PLO HQ, which was condemned by the UN, Thatcher and Reagan. But others are buried at that cemetery, one of whom is accused by the US and Israel of being strongly linked to terrorism. Was a wreath laid on his grave during the ceremony? Was it as well or instead of the graves of those killed by the internationally condemned Israeli airstrike? If it was laid at the grave of the alleged terrorist, did Corbyn knowingly lay that wreath? None of that is known.

If you say that Corbyn laid a wreath at the grave of someone who spilled innocent Jewish blood, it sounds very bad and certainly would make you worry. But the context is Corbyn’s support for the Palestinian cause, which is why he was at that cemetery. Context is important. If you think anyone who supports Palestinians to the degree that Corbyn does is antisemitic, I would suggest that is a dangerous conclusion, particularly as I note above his level of commitment is similar to his involvement in other causes.

4. He failed to recognise an antisemitic mural for what it was

Context. In 2012 on Facebook Corbyn supported an artist who was being forced to take down a mural because it was antisemitic. On seeing the mural again after Labour MP Luciana Berger, who has since joined the Lib Dems, raised the issue, Corbyn agreed the mural was antisemitic and apologised.

Corbyn’s initial failure to call the mural antisemitic was clearly a mistake, but was it a sign of antisemitism? Some comparison here is useful. When YouGov asked a represented sample of people for their views on seven statements involving common antisemitic tropes about Jewish people, 40% of men agreed with at least one. Conservative party members were more likely to agree with one than Labour voters. Does this mean that 40% of UK men are antisemitic? Obviously failure to recognise antisemitic tropes does not make you antisemitic. Knowingly using them does.

The evidence no one talks about

I think it is clear that the ‘irony’ quote was not in the least bit antisemitic, which means that Corbyn has never made any antisemitic statement. That means he is either not antisemitic, or has incredible self control. But consider the following, which are never mentioned by the media:

1. He took part in a campaign to overturn a decision by Islington Council to allow a Jewish cemetery to be sold to developers
   
   
2. In 2002 he led a clean up of a Finsbury Park Synagogue after an attack
   
   
3. In 2010 he supported an Early Day Motion (by Dianne Abbott) calling for the UK govt to resettle Yemeni Jews in the UK. There are scores of similar motions supported by Corbyn that condemn antisemitism, holocaust denial and so on.
   
   
4. The many people who know him well and do not necessarily support his politics, some of whom are Jews, who say they do not think he is antisemitic. John Bercow, for example said “Known him 22 years, never detected even a whiff of anti semitism” and added “I haven't experienced one incident of anti semitism from anyone in Labour”.

Not the kind of things you would expect of someone who is antisemitic. People can make up their own mind on the basis of this or other evidence, but what I see are the action of a lifelong anti-racist and supporter of the Palestinian cause who is sometimes less careful than he should be when pursuing the causes he supports, and is not nearly critical enough of people who he believes are on the side of the poor and oppressed.

Media influence

There are I think two additional things that influence a lot of people. The first is the poll suggesting that 87% of Jewish people think Corbyn is antisemitic. The second is that all they ever see in the media are negative stories about Labour antisemitism. That must have come from somewhere people think. The two claims are linked, so let me deal with them in reverse order.

It is certainly the case that the media is full of stories about Labour antisemitism. You will find it hard to find anything like the kind of account presented here. It is of course exactly what you would expect from the right wing press. But in papers that are not right wing, or from the BBC, you will also find the allegations against Corbyn with little or (more often) no defence or attempt at balance. Furthermore the media talks about Labour antisemitism far more than it talks about the, at least as serious, problem of Tory Islamophobia (see below).

The left would say this is because everyone is biased against Labour. I think there is more to it. Claims of antisemitism against Corbyn are newsworthy because they come from current or former Labour MPs. Does that make them more credible? Here we have to talk about agendas. Ever since Corbyn got elected there have been some within Labour who wanted above all else to bring him down, and in their eyes ‘get their party back’. Just as with the press, they have no problem with criticising their leader. . 

But there is another reason. Journalists are impressed by the 87% figure for Jews who believe Corbyn is antisemitic. The same poll found that 39% of the UK public thought the same. Let me start with the second figure. Why do a large proportion of the general public think Corbyn is antisemitic? Because they read articles in a Corbyn-hostile press and reports on the BBC. They see the evidence presented above put in an incomplete way such that it appears to make a strong case.

Exactly the same is true among Jewish voters except more so. A Jewish Chronicle poll before the 2015 election had 69% of Jewish voters voting Conservative. Mainstream Jewish papers like the Jewish Chronicle are strongly hostile to the Labour party when the Labour party supports the Palestinian cause, as it did under Ed Miliband. The Jewish Chronicle's editor, former Express and Mail writer Stephen Pollard, is no friend of the left, having written in 2006 "The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy." The Chronicle has run a relentless campaign against Corbyn, and other Jewish papers have followed the Chronicle’s lead. What information do most people have about Corbyn's alleged antisemitism than the media they read? 

Unfortunately some on the right of politics today do tend to smear any opponents of the current government of Israel with the charge of antisemitism. Just look at the US. Right wing politicians have been free with charges of antisemitism against the two Muslim Democratic members of Congress, with little or no cause. This is how the political right in the UK and the US, and their media supporters, now behave.

Am I saying that most Jews call Corbyn antisemitic because they don’t like his support for the Palestinians? No. I’m saying that they see the evidence presented in a way that deliberately paints Corbyn as antisemitic and follow that evidence. In addition some of that evidence presented in this way will be much more potent if you feel a connection to Israel. I think this point is made rather well by Jack Shamash.

One final point is that it is not true that the entire Jewish community think Corbyn is antisemtic. There are plenty of Jews in the Labour party, and some Jewish candidates for Labour in the coming election. Many Jews support Corbyn, and he has been supported by some rabbis. (Incidentally and perhaps revealingly the only source I could find for this after an extensive search is one I would not normally rely on, but this article suggests it is correct.)

Antisemitism in the Labour party

There remains the issue of the extent of antisemitism within Labour, and whether the leadership is indifferent to it. There is no doubt that Labour have an antisemitism problem within its membership. Indeed, given much of the left’s stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict and Labour’s ‘for the many not the few’ slogan, it would be rather surprising if antisemites, who believe the conflict is a convenient way of expressing their antisemitism or who believe conspiracies about Jewish bankers, were not attracted to be Labour members. 

I also think there is a regrettable tendency of a few who support Palestine to go over the top in their criticism of Israel. Calling for the end of the Jewish state is antisemitic in my book, and comparing Israel’s actions to anything done by the Nazi’s is shockingly insensitive as well as being inaccurate. If they are confronted by statements of that kind, it is not surprising that Jewish members feel very uncomfortable. But given all that, it is also worth noting that one survey suggested that in the UK and US there was less antisemitism on the left than the right, and less antisemitism than average among those critical of Israel.

But hearing about cases of antisemitism in a biased press is a terrible way to assess its extent. The data we have suggests around 300 Labour party members have had credible complaints of antisemitism made against them. No doubt the way the Labour party deals with these complaints should be improved. But 300 out of nearly half a million is not a large number. A recent nationwide poll of what voters thought put the proportion at 1 in 3, which is over 500 times too large. It is the same phenomenon as people hugely overestimating the extent of welfare fraud, and indicates the sheer amount of press misreporting of the issue. Labour is not riddled with antisemitism, but the media is riddled with reports of Labour antisemitism that lead people to think it is.

Has Corbyn or his team interfered with the complaints procedure. We shall find out from the EHRC, but I would be pleasantly surprised if they hadn’t. It is what politicians do, unfortunately. For just one example, see the Lord Rennard affair for the LibDems. That does not excuse Corbyn’s reluctance to deal with this issue, which is in some ways the consequence of his uncritical attitude to people he sees as allies I noted above.

The election

To say that Labour and Corbyn should have been more proactive in dealing with the issue is one thing. To suggest that should influence the way people vote is another. Voting is always about comparisons. If anyone uses Labour’s antisemitism problem as a reason for not voting tactically to prevent a Johnson government, then they have to make comparisons between parties and not look at Labour in isolation. Our next Prime Minister will be Johnson or Corbyn. Which has the better record on racism?

Just compare how Labour has dealt with antisemitism to how the Tories have dealt with Islamophobia. Did the Tories adopt a code to help assess whether statements were Islamophobic, like the IHRA code now adopted by Labour? No. (Labour’s reluctance to initially adopt all the IHRA examples was a serious political mistake, even if it was done for understandable reasons.) Do we know all the statistics about the complaints there have been about Islamophobia in the Tory party? No. 

Baroness Warsi, ex-chairman of the Tory party, said recently the climate for Muslims in the her party was hostile. While Corbyn has made no racist statements, the same cannot be said about Johnson. One longstanding Muslim Conservative left the party when Johnson was elected. Even if you think Johnson is not a racist, what he says empowers those who are, which is why attacks against Muslims rose after he called some Muslim women letterboxes.

This does not mean that we should ignore Labour’s very real antisemitism problem, still less stop putting pressure on Labour to get things right. Labour cannot use the obvious bias in the media as an excuse for inaction. All political parties will contain racists of some sort and those parties will require constant pressure to expose and end it. But to suggest we should prefer Johnson to Corbyn as our next PM because of Labour’s antisemitism is complete nonsense. Labour have an antisemitism problem which they are dealing with, and the Tories have an Islamophobia problem which they are trying to ignore. Unlike Corbyn, Johnson has made a number of racist statements.

I know feelings run high on this issue. Based on past evidence I know that some people will say I must be antisemitic to suggest Corbyn is not. But the real tragedy here is that serious antisemitic attacks are on the rise across the world. Among the population the far right is far more antisemitic than the far left, and the physical attacks come from the extreme right rather than from the left. Rather than focus on a party leader who as far as we know has never made an antisemitic statement in his life, we should be focusing on fighting the far right, and those in the Conservative party who seem happy to tolerate, and use, racism to gain themselves votes.