Are Lib Dem ministers happy with a “wogs go home” message?

Yesterday came news of the government’s latest wheeze to reduce illegal immigration. The Home Office is planning to send large billboards round six London boroughs on the back of advertising vans, carrying the slogan “Go home or face arrest”.

For the full sordid details, read Caron Lindsay’s report on Liberal Democrat Voice, the report in last night’s London Evening Standard, and a statement issued by Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, which is worth quoting in full:

This is the latest in a string of Home Office announcements that are designed to make the Government look tough on immigration. But I fear that the only impact this deeply divisive form of politics will have will be to create tension and mistrust towards anyone who looks and sounds foreign.

Instead of trying to grab cheap headlines, the Government would be much better advised to tackle the real issues that undermine confidence in the immigration system. Home Office statistics show that decision making by officials is extremely poor and leads to a quarter of initial decisions to refuse asylum being overturned on appeal. And many of those people who the Government are targeting with these policies are either those whose case has been mishandled by the Home Office, or who Ministers acknowledge cannot be sent home because they wouldn’t be safe.

Vulnerable individuals who are fleeing persecution and violence are treated with disbelief and a complete lack of compassion in a rigid and inhumane system. But rather than tackling these problems head on, Ministers are choosing to once more crank up the anti-migrant rhetoric.

These adverts are nothing less than straight forward intimidation and can only have bad consequences for communities like those I represent in Brent, where people from all faiths and races have mixed for decades. We will all be much poorer for it.

Well said, Sarah. The question is why there have been no similar utterances by any Liberal Democrat minister. After all, this is not merely some mildly unpleasant concession the Liberal Democrats have made as part and parcel of the coalition agreement. This is a fundamental issue of principle, where the Tories are indulging in blatantly racist and provocative tactics. It’s not even a practical policy; these billboards will have no impact on immigration but they will help increase racial tension. Any self-respecting Liberal should publicly disown this policy. Instead, not a word.

Might this be the explanation? In yesterday’s Guardian, John Harris noted how all the proud talk of Britain’s diversity we heard during last year’s London Olympics has been dropped by the government. He reported:

Ten days ago, the former Lib Dem education minster Sarah Teather broke cover, and talked not only about initial Tory intentions to restrict the bringing-in of non-European spouses to people earning £40,000 a year or more, but a new subcommittee of government called the Inter Ministerial Group on Migrants’ Access to Benefits and Public Services. No cabinet ministers attends its meetings, but it apparently includes such figures as the Lib Dem education minister David Laws and the Tory immigration minister Mark Harper, and its fingerprints are all over many of the proposals above.

What on earth is David Laws doing participating in such an exercise? Did he consult Liberal Democrat colleagues before agreeing to these racist policies? The man is a complete and utter disgrace to the party.

And why has Nick Clegg failed to respond to criticisms from within his party? In this instance, he would be well advised not to resort to his usual tactic, which is to patronise internal critics as naive children who don’t understand the practicalities of government. Party members already understand perfectly well what nasty game the Tories are playing – the question is, does Clegg?

Postscript: See Liberal Democrat Councillor Lester Holloway’s blog post: “Theresa May and her ministers and officials know full well the impact of this billboard will be on multicultural communities in general rather than the odd illegal immigrant who might be passing by. It reads like a message to the whole community, an attempt to divide communities and harvest the racist vote from UKIP.”

Sarah Teather: the revolution starts here?

Last Saturday’s Guardian included a remarkable interview with Sarah Teather MP about the coalition government’s immigration policy.

The interview is remarkable because no Liberal Democrat MP, not even the usual suspects, has previously made such a trenchant public criticism of government policy. Moreover, Sarah Teather has never had a reputation as a radical but has generally been regarded as a loyalist (although she has been increasingly critical since losing her ministerial job last year). If such fierce criticisms are coming from such a normally moderate source, it makes you wonder how much more dissent is bubbling under the surface of the parliamentary party.

In the interview, Teather explains at some length why the government’s new immigration policy is unworkable, even if you accept its dubious objectives. But then she gets to the heart of the matter:

The idea that these policies will save money is “patently nonsense”, she argues, looking torn between dismay and incredulity. “So what are we trying to do? To drive down the total number of immigrants, irrespective of what’s good for Britain. Everything is about getting the net immigration numbers down. That’s what’s driving this, nothing else. Even though it’s obvious that a lot of these people are not a burden on the taxpayer.”

When the spousal visa proposal came before the home affairs cabinet committee, she reveals that Tory members strongly argued for the minimum income threshold to be £40,000. “That would put you in the top 15% of national income!” Part of the problem, she concedes, is the gulf between the life experience of her coalition colleagues, and the reality of the lives they are legislating for.

During discussions to increase the delay in benefits eligibility for the newly unemployed from three to seven days, “there was a general idea that people would have their redundancy payments to get them through”. She allows a dry chuckle. “I’m not sure that my constituents coming out of short-term, low-paid work are getting big redundancy packages.” But she doesn’t believe that ignorance born of privilege is the real problem. “No. I think it’s more nakedly political than that. It’s about short-term tactics – and I’m deeply uncomfortable with a type of politics that is deliberately using people who are already relatively vulnerable, as outsiders, as a tool to demonstrate how tough we are. I don’t like that type of politics.”

If the problem were merely Tory ignorance, she says that would be relatively easy to solve. “What alarms me is that the immigration proposals feel as if they’re hewn from the same rock as welfare earlier in the year, where a lot of that again was about setting up political dividing lines, and trying to create and define an enemy. It’s got to a stage where it’s almost unacceptable to say anything else, and it bothers me that there is a consensus among the three party leaders that they are all making, well not quite the same speech – there are differences, significant differences – but there’s a consensus. It’s stifling the rest of the debate, making people afraid to speak. If you get to a stage where there is no alternative voice, eventually democracy’s just going to break down.”

The coalition’s flagship benefit cap has nothing to do with getting people back to work, she maintains. “It’s populist. It’s a headline. Just look at the evidence. You’ve got first the overall universal benefit cap, then you’ve got a 1% welfare cap, and then you’ve got the big macro welfare cap. So they’ve found something, a message that works in polling, it’s called a benefit cap. And then they’ve invented policy around it three times.”

This government policy reveals two fundamental problems. First, the subordination of policy to short-term public relations objectives, where unworkable and unethical policies are pursued to mollify popular prejudices irrespective of the financial or human costs. And second, the competition between all three main party leaders to mollify the same set of popular prejudices.

And this reveals Nick Clegg’s main failing as Liberal Democrat party leader: his fallacious belief that most voters basically agree with one another, therefore that the party’s strategy should be to compete with the Conservatives and Labour for this imaginary ‘centre ground’.

But there is no such thing as the ‘centre ground’, no opinion that “most people think”, no mass in the middle you can mollify to win power. Yes, every poll result shows an average, but an average is not necessarily normal or typical. As Brian of Nazareth famously declared, “You’re all individuals!” Every Liberal should know that.

To understand why Clegg’s belief in the ‘centre ground’ is so utterly, catastrophically wrong, it is worth studying the Cultural Dynamics system of mapping of people’s different values. Basically, people divide into three broad categories: ‘Settler’, ‘Prospector’ and ‘Pioneer’, each sub-divided into four ‘values modes’, 12 in all. Take the test here to see where you fit.

The Liberal Democrat heartland is among ‘Pioneers’, and in good times expands into ‘Prospector’ territory. Support is negligible among ‘Settlers’, even when the party’s poll ratings are high. The voters who are nervous about immigration are concentrated in the ‘Settler’ group and never vote Liberal Democrat anyway, so why on earth does Clegg imagine he has to mollify such people when he has no chance whatever of winning their support? It can only be because he imagines that the electorate is essentially homogeneous, hence his repeated references to the ‘centre ground’. It cannot be overstated what a disastrous illusion that is. It explains why Clegg is alienating the party’s natural base while predictably failing to encroach on UKIP’s territory, hence Liberal Democrat poll ratings remain stuck at 10%.

Despite Sarah Teather’s warnings, the party will probably have to learn the hard way why Clegg’s ‘centre ground’ strategy is so disastrous. Even then, will there be enough party activists left after 2015 to rebuild support among ‘Pioneers’?

Postscript: In a blog post for the Centre for European Reform titled Don’t let England’s poujadists kill London’s golden goose, Simon Tilford argues why pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment is wrong. Since anti-immigrant sentiment is concentrated among older people who never vote Liberal Democrat anyway, the Liberal Democrats have nothing to lose by attacking their ignorance and bigotry.

‘Unease’ about Osborne is not good enough

“Lib Dems attack Osborne for ‘playing politics’ over Philpott” says the front-page headline in today’s Guardian.

But the story beneath does not justify the hype. What does this “Lib Dem attack” actually consist of? According to the Guardian:

A coalition rift was blown into the open when the Liberal Democrats condemned George Osborne for “playing politics” with the deaths of six children after the chancellor highlighted the Mick Philpott case to raise questions about high welfare payments.

Amid deep unease among senior Lib Dems – up to and including Nick Clegg – over the Conservatives’ use of the deaths of six children to make the case for controversial welfare reforms, the party went out of its way to distance itself from the chancellor’s remarks.

Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, who is usually careful not to criticise the chancellor, made clear his unease. “The Philpott case is an individual tragedy,” he said. “Children have died in that case. I think that is where we should let that case lie. I would not want to connect that to the much wider need to reform our welfare system.”

So this is not an attack, merely “deep unease”. Furthermore, only one Liberal Democrat minister (Danny Alexander) has gone on the record, and his remarks are guarded. The only evidence we have for the “deep unease” of other ministers “up to and including Nick Clegg” is unattributable briefings. This doesn’t much sound like “a coalition rift was blown into the open” or that “the party went out of its way to distance itself from the chancellor’s remarks”. In fact, it doesn’t amount to much at all.

The Guardian’s report includes only one genuine Liberal Democrat attack:

In the most hard hitting remarks by a Lib Dem, the party’s former Treasury spokesman accused the chancellor of playing politics with the deaths. Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay said: “You can forgive George Osborne’s immaturity and inexperience as chancellor but not this calculating, callous cruelty. If he can’t see it is wrong to play politics with the death of six children, he is not fit to be chancellor.”

Oakeshott, who acts as an informal adviser to the business secretary Vince Cable, often does not reflect the thinking of the leadership. But Cable is understood to feel that vilifying people on benefits in the way Osborne has done is misplaced.

That’s more like it. Except that Oakeshott is not a member of the government but an outspoken backbench peer known for his off-message remarks. The only other prominent Liberal Democrat to condemn Osborne publicly is Sarah Teather – again, not a member of the government but an ex-minister.

Osborne’s statement is morally disgusting and has poisoned discourse on a controversial subject. Yet the best that Liberal Democrat ministers can do is express their “deep unease” or feelings that Osborne’s view is “misplaced”, and only then via their spokespeople’s unattributable briefings.

If Liberal Democrat ministers had openly expressed their revulsion in similar terms to Matthew Oakeshott, the Guardian’s headline would have been justified. As it is, we must conclude that there is no “rift” in the coalition, barely a ripple.

Left Foot Backward

In today’s edition of the Left Foot Forward blog’s ‘Look Left’ newsletter, Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather has been named as ‘Regressive of the Week’ for voting against gay marriage.

No mention of the 22 Labour MPs who voted against gay marriage, then?

Gay marriage – never mind the Tories, what about the Labour and Lib Dem rebels?

Most of the media attention regarding today’s House of Commons debate on gay marriage has focused on the behaviour of the large number of Tory rebels. Relatively little attention has been paid to opponents in other parties.

The Huffington Post is one of the few media to cover this angle. For the latest data, however, one must check the Coalition for Equal Marriage’s list. 15 Labour MPs are currently known to be against gay marriage, while at least three Liberal Democrat MPs (Gordon Birtwistle, John Pugh and Sarah Teather) are also opposed. A further seven Liberal Democrat MPs have yet to declare their intentions, so there could be more (those undeclared are Alan Beith, Annette Brooke, Duncan Hames, Charles Kennedy, Greg Mulholland, Robert Smith and John Thurso).

Well it’s a free vote for MPs of all parties, so they can do as they please. But given that the Liberal Democrats (and the pre-merger Liberal Party) pioneered gay rights policies long before they became fashionable, the decisions of any opponents are hard to justify and undermine the credibility of the party on LGBT issues.

John Pugh’s explanation in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s World at One earlier today was incoherent and unconvincing [listen online here – zap forward to 13:30]. It was not at all clear what his call for more “gradual” reform would mean in practice. If he opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he should just say so, instead of waffling apologetically in a way that will impress no one on either side of the debate.

Gordon Birtwistle, meanwhile, simply asserts that gay marriage is “not on” – whatever that means. Why Sarah Teather opposes gay marriage is anybody’s guess.

Those Lib Dem rebels in full

The New Statesman has published a helpful, detailed guide to the six Liberal Democrat MPs who rebelled yesterday against the government’s Welfare Uprating Bill.

Four MPs voted against the bill (Julian Huppert, John Leech, Sarah Teather and David Ward), while two others formally abstained (Andrew George and Charles Kennedy).

This being the Statesman, the spin is that four of the six rebel MPs represent Labour target seats.

POSTSCRIPT: The New Statesman omitted to mention Adrian Sanders, who abstained (but not formally), with a threat to rebel at the 3rd reading stage if amendments are not secured in the meantime.

A turn up for the books

Sarah Teather is interviewed in today’s Observer and is highly critical of the coalition government’s welfare reforms.

Sarah was never a radical and always seemed a rather conventional loyalist, so if she is this unhappy, it makes you wonder how other Liberal Democrat MPs are feeling.