So the BBC proposes to do an edition of Songs of Praise from the Calais refugee camp. So what, you may think. The Daily Express is not so sanguine, splashing the story on its front page complete with quotes from Nigel Farage.
You don't have to read what he says. You can imagine very easily.
Is the BBC right?
Let's start by agreeing that migration is a sharply political issue. People (and parties) are divided about how much immigration we should have, and who should decide how much we should have. The issue of our continued EU membership might well turn on the question. We're also divided about the issue of African refugees. How should we treat them? How many should we take? Should we help them cross the Med? Should we round them up and send them straight back? Should there be a formal allocation across EU countries? What is the best way to help Africa become a continent people want to migrate to instead of from?
Against that background, a programme which humanises and makes poignant the plight of those who have risked their lives to cross Europe in the hope of a better life (even if many of them are economic migrants) has an unmistakable political resonance. Sympathy for the migrants is easily equated to sympathy for migration.
Of course the BBC can't be above politics. It is imbued with it. And the political outlook of its staff is reflected every day even in the non-news programmes it makes. I've been arguing for years that if you tend to employ humanities graduates you'll tend to get a certain type of political outlook. A long succession of current and former BBC staff have confirmed this suggestion of emergent group-think (the phrase is Andrew Marr's).
As so often with the question of BBC bias, the most compelling signs are of the dog-that-didn't-bark variety. Where are the current and former BBC staff complaining of right wing bias? There aren't any. None. I've never heard of one.
I wrote quite recently here about the film Pride (W1A, Pride and the BBC). This, readers will remember, is the BBC backed film which followed the tribulations of gay men and women from London trying to help striking miners in the (fiercely socially conservative) South Wales valleys. I enjoyed Pride, but I couldn't help asking myself whether BBC Films would have put its money behind a film which took the other view.
"Would it", I wrote, "have backed a film showing Arthur Scargill as an evil communist intent on bringing down the democratically elected Thatcher government? Or about Jack Jones taking money from the KGB? Would it have put money behind a story about dutiful women of South Wales Chapel righteously upset about the promiscuous Aids-bearing homosexuals from the capital? Even to ask the question is to realise how laughably unlikely that would be."
And so with Songs of Praise. By all means go to Calais and do a programme humanising the awful tragedy taking place there. By all means show the plight of the migrants. But do the other thing as well. And that's the problem. The BBC wouldn't. Pace Pride, can you imagine Songs of Praise going to, for example, an unemployment blackspot in the North East and showing the plight of people who say they can't get jobs because the local industries are now the province of East Europeans? Can you imagine them doing the programme from places where people can't get their kids into schools because of the pressure from migrants and their families? Or from places where the local health service is facing bankruptcy because of increased demand?
Me neither. The BBC would just never do it. Why not? The most obvious answer is because it tends to employ people who tend to think that immigration doesn't have a downside. I'm not suggesting that, to use the Songs of Praise example, there would be a production meeting in which the possibility of going to an area of East London frequented by the gay-hating Muslim Patrol (see internet for details) was mooted and rejected. I'm saying the possibility would never occur to them. The Corporation just doesn't employ people who think like that.
You have to ask yourself, at a time when Charter renewal is only a few months away, with a newly installed Conservative government confident in its diagnosis of BBC bias, in a context where alternative funding arrangements which could replace the licence fee are increasingly accepted across the industry, how could they be so stupid as to present their enemies with such a simple tap-in?
I hope the Government doesn't throw out the BBC baby with the bathwater. But if they do the Corporation will only have itself to blame.
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Monday 10 August 2015
How Jeremy Corbyn could win (Yes, really).
At the time of writing it looks as if Jeremy Corbyn has quite a decent chance of becoming Labour Party leader. The last time I voted Labour in a General Election was in 2005, so I don't on the face of it have much interest in the outcome of the party's leadership contest.
The tactical point made by Blairites and political journalists alike is that the electorate opted for the Tories when offered a choice last May between Centre Left and Centre Right. People are, the argument runs, unlikely to turn out in large numbers for a Labour Party further to the Left. Thus if Corbyn wins, Labour is bound to lose.
I actually think this is wrong.
The most obvious reason is the inherent uncertainty of politics. No one knows what's over the horizon. Harold Macmillan's "Events, dear boy, events", if you like. It's perfectly possible that a disaster so fundamental could overtake the Tories that Jeremy Corbyn would seem quite attractive by comparison.
But even in the absence of some Black Swan event, as Billy Bragg (one of Corbyn's celebrity endorsers) tweeted the other day, it's perfectly possible to calculate that if Labour shifts to the Left it will gain enough voters (particularly among the young) to win. It's a defensible tactic.
As it happens I think that Bragg has set his terms too narrowly. Yes, Labour will gain some otherwise apathetic first-timers. But, faced with the prospect of a Far Left government, some Labour voters will turn elsewhere (perhaps the Lib Dems or UKIP), lazy Tories will turn out who might not otherwise and some Lib Dems will vote tactically to keep Labour out.
Moving Left may be a gamble worth taking, but it's a bigger gamble than Billy Bragg realises.
If a Corbyn-led Labour Party isn't bound to lose, it nevertheless probably will, and to that extent as a former Labour voter I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The overwhelming majority of Labour supporters, and a good many of its professional politicians, think that the financial crisis was all the fault of the City, that Labour did not overspend whilst in office, that Britain is suffering the yoke of Tory austerity, and that any alleged black hole in the public finances can be filled by taxing the rich a bit more. For them public spending should be limited by compassion, not affordability.
Then there is a group which understands that Gordon Brown's tinkering with the regulations gave the City more freedom to misbehave, that Labour ran substantial deficits during the 2000s which left the Treasury ill-prepared to deal with the downturn, and that if the bankers had behaved responsibly the lending spree which Labour rode with such ill-disguised glee ("No more Tory boom and bust") would have come to an end much sooner. They grasp that, despite alleged Tory austerity, public spending actually continues to rise and that the trouble with taxing the rich more is that there aren't very many of them, they don't on the whole get their money in an easily traceable PAYE cheque at the end of the month and they can afford accountants. These people also grasp that, ultimately, you can only have the public services you can afford.
The second group is a very small minority within Labour, and one largely grouped within the parliamentary party.
If you had to choose a demographic in Britain likely to contain the smallest number of people who took this second view, the Labour party membership would be a pretty good contender. Which is why polls show Liz Kendall lagging a distant fourth in the leadership race. That's the crushing irony. The people charged with deciding who is best placed to lead Labour back to power are those least likely to understand what's necessary to do so.
Labour can regard its election defeat in two ways. It can say that the electorate was wrong, and that all it needs to do is keep on persuading enough of us to change our minds.
Alternatively it could say that perhaps the electorate was in some respects right, and work out how it might change its pitch accordingly.
Unfortunately for Labour the first response requires nothing special. It merely requires its supporters to behave the way most people do faced with rejection. I was right! How dare they be so stupid! The second response on the other hand requires something exceptional - humility and openness. Since so many more of us are all too human it's not surprising that the first response has overwhelmed the second amongst the Labour faithful.
What makes it all the harder for them is that if the electorate were right, where does that leave Labour? If the days of the blank cheque are over, what is Labour for? The point of Social Democracy is that government taxes the surpluses capitalism produces, and uses the money to make a compendious safety net for the poor. But what if there isn't enough money to do that in the way Labour wants? How does it appeal to the electorate then? If it accepts Britain must live within its means, how does it differentiate itself from the Tories or Lib Dems?
This is the appeal of Corbynism. Rather than position itself as a Tory-lite party, the temptation is for Labour go the whole hog and stand proudly on the Bennite Left. The Blairite response to this proposition is, "But you will never win a general election". "Ah", say the Corbynites loftily, "but what is the point of winning when doing so would make us just as bad as our enemies?"
As I said, it's almost funny.
I can readily imagine circumstances in which I might vote Labour again. I think Liz Kendall is an incredibly impressive candidate. A good leader and some sensible policies might do it.
But Jeremy Corbyn? Come on.
In my lifetime Labour has gone on a journey which reflects both the vaulting ambition of its statism and the undermining of the industrial base which might once have been used to pay for it. It has gone from being the party of tax and spend (Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock), to the party of tax, spend and borrow (Blair and Brown). Corbyn proposes a further transformation to the party of tax, spend, borrow and print money. Not on your Nelly.
The tactical point made by Blairites and political journalists alike is that the electorate opted for the Tories when offered a choice last May between Centre Left and Centre Right. People are, the argument runs, unlikely to turn out in large numbers for a Labour Party further to the Left. Thus if Corbyn wins, Labour is bound to lose.
I actually think this is wrong.
The most obvious reason is the inherent uncertainty of politics. No one knows what's over the horizon. Harold Macmillan's "Events, dear boy, events", if you like. It's perfectly possible that a disaster so fundamental could overtake the Tories that Jeremy Corbyn would seem quite attractive by comparison.
But even in the absence of some Black Swan event, as Billy Bragg (one of Corbyn's celebrity endorsers) tweeted the other day, it's perfectly possible to calculate that if Labour shifts to the Left it will gain enough voters (particularly among the young) to win. It's a defensible tactic.
As it happens I think that Bragg has set his terms too narrowly. Yes, Labour will gain some otherwise apathetic first-timers. But, faced with the prospect of a Far Left government, some Labour voters will turn elsewhere (perhaps the Lib Dems or UKIP), lazy Tories will turn out who might not otherwise and some Lib Dems will vote tactically to keep Labour out.
Moving Left may be a gamble worth taking, but it's a bigger gamble than Billy Bragg realises.
If a Corbyn-led Labour Party isn't bound to lose, it nevertheless probably will, and to that extent as a former Labour voter I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The overwhelming majority of Labour supporters, and a good many of its professional politicians, think that the financial crisis was all the fault of the City, that Labour did not overspend whilst in office, that Britain is suffering the yoke of Tory austerity, and that any alleged black hole in the public finances can be filled by taxing the rich a bit more. For them public spending should be limited by compassion, not affordability.
Then there is a group which understands that Gordon Brown's tinkering with the regulations gave the City more freedom to misbehave, that Labour ran substantial deficits during the 2000s which left the Treasury ill-prepared to deal with the downturn, and that if the bankers had behaved responsibly the lending spree which Labour rode with such ill-disguised glee ("No more Tory boom and bust") would have come to an end much sooner. They grasp that, despite alleged Tory austerity, public spending actually continues to rise and that the trouble with taxing the rich more is that there aren't very many of them, they don't on the whole get their money in an easily traceable PAYE cheque at the end of the month and they can afford accountants. These people also grasp that, ultimately, you can only have the public services you can afford.
The second group is a very small minority within Labour, and one largely grouped within the parliamentary party.
If you had to choose a demographic in Britain likely to contain the smallest number of people who took this second view, the Labour party membership would be a pretty good contender. Which is why polls show Liz Kendall lagging a distant fourth in the leadership race. That's the crushing irony. The people charged with deciding who is best placed to lead Labour back to power are those least likely to understand what's necessary to do so.
Labour can regard its election defeat in two ways. It can say that the electorate was wrong, and that all it needs to do is keep on persuading enough of us to change our minds.
Alternatively it could say that perhaps the electorate was in some respects right, and work out how it might change its pitch accordingly.
Unfortunately for Labour the first response requires nothing special. It merely requires its supporters to behave the way most people do faced with rejection. I was right! How dare they be so stupid! The second response on the other hand requires something exceptional - humility and openness. Since so many more of us are all too human it's not surprising that the first response has overwhelmed the second amongst the Labour faithful.
What makes it all the harder for them is that if the electorate were right, where does that leave Labour? If the days of the blank cheque are over, what is Labour for? The point of Social Democracy is that government taxes the surpluses capitalism produces, and uses the money to make a compendious safety net for the poor. But what if there isn't enough money to do that in the way Labour wants? How does it appeal to the electorate then? If it accepts Britain must live within its means, how does it differentiate itself from the Tories or Lib Dems?
This is the appeal of Corbynism. Rather than position itself as a Tory-lite party, the temptation is for Labour go the whole hog and stand proudly on the Bennite Left. The Blairite response to this proposition is, "But you will never win a general election". "Ah", say the Corbynites loftily, "but what is the point of winning when doing so would make us just as bad as our enemies?"
As I said, it's almost funny.
I can readily imagine circumstances in which I might vote Labour again. I think Liz Kendall is an incredibly impressive candidate. A good leader and some sensible policies might do it.
But Jeremy Corbyn? Come on.
In my lifetime Labour has gone on a journey which reflects both the vaulting ambition of its statism and the undermining of the industrial base which might once have been used to pay for it. It has gone from being the party of tax and spend (Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock), to the party of tax, spend and borrow (Blair and Brown). Corbyn proposes a further transformation to the party of tax, spend, borrow and print money. Not on your Nelly.
Tuesday 14 July 2015
Arvo Part - any good?
In the 1980s when I was having lessons with John Tavener, he played me part of a piece by Arvo Part. "People say he's like me. Or the other way round", the sage of Wembley Park said in his scratchy patrician voice, "I don't hear it myself though". I remember some chugging strings, fairly static; then an abrupt gear change. Then John turned the music off and we went on to other things.
A year or so later Part's Second Symphony appeared on the Proms programme. I went along. It sounded to me like an Estonian Vaughan Williams. I was somewhat against Vaughan Williams at the time and thought the piece dull; duller anyway than the brief snatch Tavener had played me.
While I was still at College I went to the British premiere of Part's St John Passion, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble. As I remember this piece meandered on for an hour or so in A minor, ending rather strikingly in a blaze of A major. I wasn't totally sure it was worth the wait.
Then that was that for a while. I remember people talking highly of a piece Part had written as a memorial to Britten, but heard nothing more of his music until the chance discovery of the cello version of Fratres, a slow meditative piece which the composer has arranged for many instrumental combinations. This I really liked - simple, but with a masterly grip of musical architecture.
So last Sunday's all-Part Manchester Camerata concert was the immersive experience for part-timers like me. What was it like?
Interesting and enjoyable. We got Fratres again, this time in a string orchestra version; I prefer the one for cellos, because the thumb-stopped harmonics at the start of the piece have a special unearthly quality that high violins can't match, but it's still very striking. There was a nice little unaccompanied choral piece sung by Vox Clamantis. Then the choir and the Camerata did the Stabat Mater, a longer and more substantial work, harmonically static, perhaps G minor this time, but often richly decorated. After the interval we had Da Pacem Domine, a minature version perhaps of the same idea, and then a much bigger orchestra arrived - triple woodwind no less - for Como cierva Sedienta, a solo motet for high soprano.
Como cierva Sedienta was perhaps the least successful performance, sometimes overscored and with the soprano inaudible in the lower register. I thought there was too much instrumental colour, like a pastiche of Richard Strauss with all the gorgeousness removed. Moreover the musical language seemed to reach back to the duller more romantic idiom of the Second Symphony. Music essentially lives and dies by the quality of its invention, and there was nothing in it I found memorable or interesting.
In the other more obviously liturgical pieces, scored for strings only, Part's ideas seemed to be better served by a narrower and more focused range of sounds. Their language suited his particular version of minimalism better too. You might describe it as Neo-Baroque if that didn't call to mind Stravinsky's hyperactive take on that idea nearly a hundred years earlier. It's less reliant on melodic ideas than Como cierva Sedienta, much more on Part's ability to spin extended musical paragraphs which sit there looking at the view.
Is Part a minimalist? Kind of. You could certainly walk in and out of the longer pieces without missing much. Perhaps that's the intention. My wife didn't think it was static music, but harmonically most of it is, very much so. Fratres was much the most inventive harmonically of the strings only pieces, but rests on a grounding open fifth in the basses; its tonality is never in doubt. The liturgical pieces had surface movement, but rested for very long periods in the same key. I was interested to find Part paying attention to the little orchestral details which composers use to help maintain the audience's interest. There were pizzicato punctuations in the Stabat Mater placed structurally in exactly the same way Elgar uses them in Nimrod. This was not ruthless minimalism of the Philip Glass variety, but minimalism in which the composer is doing his best to make sure the audience doesn't nod off.
But Part, like so many post-war composers, is either not very good at writing fast music or not very interested in it. I find a lot of Tavener's music too rooted in contemplation to make a whole evening's worth, and when Part did get busy in a couple of places in the Stabat Mater it was in brief flurries of elaboration rather than because the fundamental pace of events had quickened.
When conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy, doing a fine job as usual, gestured towards the audience at the end, it took a moment for me to grasp that Part was actually there in the hall. I had no idea he was still alive, let alone in Manchester. To see this elderly chap, frail but still sprightly, make his way onto the stage was particularly moving. For one thing it was there that I last saw Tavener, only a few months before his death. But Part has made a great contribution to European music, and it was fantastic to see the hall - packed for contemporary music people like (as opposed to all the other stuff they don't but which gets foisted on them anyway) - rise as one in acknowledgment of his achievement.
Part, like all elderly composers, bore the marks of his struggle to produce great art, but also looked totally chuffed to receive the cheers of his admirers. As well he might.
A year or so later Part's Second Symphony appeared on the Proms programme. I went along. It sounded to me like an Estonian Vaughan Williams. I was somewhat against Vaughan Williams at the time and thought the piece dull; duller anyway than the brief snatch Tavener had played me.
While I was still at College I went to the British premiere of Part's St John Passion, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble. As I remember this piece meandered on for an hour or so in A minor, ending rather strikingly in a blaze of A major. I wasn't totally sure it was worth the wait.
Then that was that for a while. I remember people talking highly of a piece Part had written as a memorial to Britten, but heard nothing more of his music until the chance discovery of the cello version of Fratres, a slow meditative piece which the composer has arranged for many instrumental combinations. This I really liked - simple, but with a masterly grip of musical architecture.
So last Sunday's all-Part Manchester Camerata concert was the immersive experience for part-timers like me. What was it like?
Interesting and enjoyable. We got Fratres again, this time in a string orchestra version; I prefer the one for cellos, because the thumb-stopped harmonics at the start of the piece have a special unearthly quality that high violins can't match, but it's still very striking. There was a nice little unaccompanied choral piece sung by Vox Clamantis. Then the choir and the Camerata did the Stabat Mater, a longer and more substantial work, harmonically static, perhaps G minor this time, but often richly decorated. After the interval we had Da Pacem Domine, a minature version perhaps of the same idea, and then a much bigger orchestra arrived - triple woodwind no less - for Como cierva Sedienta, a solo motet for high soprano.
Como cierva Sedienta was perhaps the least successful performance, sometimes overscored and with the soprano inaudible in the lower register. I thought there was too much instrumental colour, like a pastiche of Richard Strauss with all the gorgeousness removed. Moreover the musical language seemed to reach back to the duller more romantic idiom of the Second Symphony. Music essentially lives and dies by the quality of its invention, and there was nothing in it I found memorable or interesting.
In the other more obviously liturgical pieces, scored for strings only, Part's ideas seemed to be better served by a narrower and more focused range of sounds. Their language suited his particular version of minimalism better too. You might describe it as Neo-Baroque if that didn't call to mind Stravinsky's hyperactive take on that idea nearly a hundred years earlier. It's less reliant on melodic ideas than Como cierva Sedienta, much more on Part's ability to spin extended musical paragraphs which sit there looking at the view.
Is Part a minimalist? Kind of. You could certainly walk in and out of the longer pieces without missing much. Perhaps that's the intention. My wife didn't think it was static music, but harmonically most of it is, very much so. Fratres was much the most inventive harmonically of the strings only pieces, but rests on a grounding open fifth in the basses; its tonality is never in doubt. The liturgical pieces had surface movement, but rested for very long periods in the same key. I was interested to find Part paying attention to the little orchestral details which composers use to help maintain the audience's interest. There were pizzicato punctuations in the Stabat Mater placed structurally in exactly the same way Elgar uses them in Nimrod. This was not ruthless minimalism of the Philip Glass variety, but minimalism in which the composer is doing his best to make sure the audience doesn't nod off.
But Part, like so many post-war composers, is either not very good at writing fast music or not very interested in it. I find a lot of Tavener's music too rooted in contemplation to make a whole evening's worth, and when Part did get busy in a couple of places in the Stabat Mater it was in brief flurries of elaboration rather than because the fundamental pace of events had quickened.
When conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy, doing a fine job as usual, gestured towards the audience at the end, it took a moment for me to grasp that Part was actually there in the hall. I had no idea he was still alive, let alone in Manchester. To see this elderly chap, frail but still sprightly, make his way onto the stage was particularly moving. For one thing it was there that I last saw Tavener, only a few months before his death. But Part has made a great contribution to European music, and it was fantastic to see the hall - packed for contemporary music people like (as opposed to all the other stuff they don't but which gets foisted on them anyway) - rise as one in acknowledgment of his achievement.
Part, like all elderly composers, bore the marks of his struggle to produce great art, but also looked totally chuffed to receive the cheers of his admirers. As well he might.
Greece, Simon Schama and putting the cool people in charge
In November 2011 I wrote on this blog, "I can't see any way in which Greece will still be in the Euro by the end of 2012".
So that prediction went well.
What I had not then realised is that those who get to the top in the Game of Euros are by definition committed to the Project. They'll do pretty much anything to keep the show on the road. So the bail-outs, the interminable conferences, the late night agreements, the postponement of appointments with reality, the can-kicking forever and ever.
But in the last four years I have become wiser and thus am not terribly surprised this morning, 14th July 2015, to find that Greece is still in the Euro, 48 hours after its premier Mr Tsipras finally caved in to the Eurogroup's demands and agreed to take them back to Athens for ratification by the Greek parliament.
At the heart of this shambles is a problem of democracy. The Greeks desperately want to be in Europe - Tsipras said he had a mandate for rejecting European demands but not for leaving the single currency. The German government on the other hand answers to an electorate which is fed up of paying for Greek failure.
The electorates of both countries are deluded. The Greek people don't seem to have noticed that it's being in the Euro which is one of the prime causes of their troubles, or that you don't have to be in the Euro to be part of Europe (look at Britain). The German electorate on the other hand doesn't seem to have realised that not every country can be like theirs - not every country can have a strong economy whose exports have benefited enormously from having a currency lowered by its association with weaker economies like Greece - and that for every creditor nation there must by definition be a debtor nation.
Both Mrs Merkel and successive Greek leaders have lacked the guts to tell their electorates the truth.
And the consequence of all this? Greece has had it. It has apparently signed up for outside supervision and interference in the running of its economy. It must run a surplus. If it doesn't run a surplus it must cut spending further, thus guaranteeing its economic nosedive will steepen. It must find 50 bn Euros of state assets to sell, and put the money into a fund beyond Greek control to pay off its debts. And if it jumps through all these successive hoops then there might in future be a discussion of debt relief, at least in the form of extended maturities.
There seems absolutely no prospect of this plan working. Greece owes too much money. Some of it needs writing off. And while we wait for conclusive proof that the plan isn't working Greeks face a future of bleakness unimaginable to Britons.
What does this tell us about Europe? Firstly, that Germany is boss. Even though France apparently wanted kinder terms, their ridiculous bespectacled penguin of a leader was unable to face the Germans down. It tells us that all the talk about the club of nations, about solidarity, about co-operation is just so much flannel. It tells us that Euro area is not a currency union at all, but merely a hard currency peg from which smaller nations slip at their peril. The ECB, remember, pulled the plug on funding Greek banks a couple of weeks ago in what may well be a breach of its duty to ensure financial stability. That was a political act as much as an economic one.
None of the European leaders come out of this well. Mr Tsipras overplayed his hand. He gambled the Germans would give ground. They didn't. He made no preparations for a return to the drachma and when the banks had to close he had nowhere left to go. He ended up with a deal significantly worse than he and Varoufakis could have got five months ago, and significantly worse than the one his countrymen roundly rejected in a referendum.
That's what happens when you put the cool people in charge.
On a superficial analysis Mrs Merkel got what she wanted. But the plan she wanted won't work and we'll be back here again, perhaps within months. And that's even if the Greek parliament ratifies the deal. Moreover the watching world has learned things about the dynamics of Europe and the Eurozone which are exceptionally unpalatable. Essentially its partners were willing to let Greece go to the wall rather than face down their own electorates.
After so many earlier failures I am wary of making predictions. Better leave it to others. And here's a stonking great hostage to fortune. Two days ago Simon Schama wrote on Twitter, "If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum beginning of end of EU".
That's a big claim.
So that prediction went well.
What I had not then realised is that those who get to the top in the Game of Euros are by definition committed to the Project. They'll do pretty much anything to keep the show on the road. So the bail-outs, the interminable conferences, the late night agreements, the postponement of appointments with reality, the can-kicking forever and ever.
But in the last four years I have become wiser and thus am not terribly surprised this morning, 14th July 2015, to find that Greece is still in the Euro, 48 hours after its premier Mr Tsipras finally caved in to the Eurogroup's demands and agreed to take them back to Athens for ratification by the Greek parliament.
At the heart of this shambles is a problem of democracy. The Greeks desperately want to be in Europe - Tsipras said he had a mandate for rejecting European demands but not for leaving the single currency. The German government on the other hand answers to an electorate which is fed up of paying for Greek failure.
The electorates of both countries are deluded. The Greek people don't seem to have noticed that it's being in the Euro which is one of the prime causes of their troubles, or that you don't have to be in the Euro to be part of Europe (look at Britain). The German electorate on the other hand doesn't seem to have realised that not every country can be like theirs - not every country can have a strong economy whose exports have benefited enormously from having a currency lowered by its association with weaker economies like Greece - and that for every creditor nation there must by definition be a debtor nation.
Both Mrs Merkel and successive Greek leaders have lacked the guts to tell their electorates the truth.
And the consequence of all this? Greece has had it. It has apparently signed up for outside supervision and interference in the running of its economy. It must run a surplus. If it doesn't run a surplus it must cut spending further, thus guaranteeing its economic nosedive will steepen. It must find 50 bn Euros of state assets to sell, and put the money into a fund beyond Greek control to pay off its debts. And if it jumps through all these successive hoops then there might in future be a discussion of debt relief, at least in the form of extended maturities.
There seems absolutely no prospect of this plan working. Greece owes too much money. Some of it needs writing off. And while we wait for conclusive proof that the plan isn't working Greeks face a future of bleakness unimaginable to Britons.
What does this tell us about Europe? Firstly, that Germany is boss. Even though France apparently wanted kinder terms, their ridiculous bespectacled penguin of a leader was unable to face the Germans down. It tells us that all the talk about the club of nations, about solidarity, about co-operation is just so much flannel. It tells us that Euro area is not a currency union at all, but merely a hard currency peg from which smaller nations slip at their peril. The ECB, remember, pulled the plug on funding Greek banks a couple of weeks ago in what may well be a breach of its duty to ensure financial stability. That was a political act as much as an economic one.
None of the European leaders come out of this well. Mr Tsipras overplayed his hand. He gambled the Germans would give ground. They didn't. He made no preparations for a return to the drachma and when the banks had to close he had nowhere left to go. He ended up with a deal significantly worse than he and Varoufakis could have got five months ago, and significantly worse than the one his countrymen roundly rejected in a referendum.
That's what happens when you put the cool people in charge.
On a superficial analysis Mrs Merkel got what she wanted. But the plan she wanted won't work and we'll be back here again, perhaps within months. And that's even if the Greek parliament ratifies the deal. Moreover the watching world has learned things about the dynamics of Europe and the Eurozone which are exceptionally unpalatable. Essentially its partners were willing to let Greece go to the wall rather than face down their own electorates.
After so many earlier failures I am wary of making predictions. Better leave it to others. And here's a stonking great hostage to fortune. Two days ago Simon Schama wrote on Twitter, "If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum beginning of end of EU".
That's a big claim.
Friday 12 June 2015
Chris Addison, George Osborne and how the lofty are undone
A few years ago I wrote a post about the Guardian journalist Aditya Chakrabortty. Entitled - imaginatively - Valuing Aditya Chakrabortty, it explained how the paper's chief economics leader writer had misunderstood the nature of value in the context of the Government's sale of its stake in Northern Rock, the failed building society.
For people like me there is not much hope that the powerful will read what we write, but a couple of weeks later Chakrabortty did return to the subject with a snarky reference to nitpickers, so I like to think that at the very least he does Google his own name from time to time.
Now this may seem like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it's worth repeating these arguments every now and again, and this time the culprit is the bouffant Left wing comedian Chris Addison.
Actually comedian may not be the right word for Addison, because I don't know if he is actually funny in person. He appears on game shows I don't watch and I know who he is only because of his acting role as a hapless special adviser in The Thick of It, a programme which is funny but rests on the premise that all politicians are venal and stupid, the implied subtext being that if its Left wing actors and writers went into politics they'd be much cleverer and more sensible.
If they could be bothered.
So what has Addison done to get my goat? He has repeated what I like to call the Chakrabortty Fallacy. You may have noticed that the Government is proposing to sell off part of its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, the bank that had to be rescued in 2008 by a £37 billion injection of UK taxpayers money. At the time the shares were trading at about £5 each. They're now trading at £3.50.
Enter Chris Addison. Yesterday he Tweeted "If George has a share worth £5 and George sells that share for £3.50, explain why George is Chancellor of The Exchequer. Show working".
I'm sure you get the picture. Why is stupid George Osborne proposing to sell some of Britain's RBS shares for less than they're worth, losing the taxpayers billions in the process?
But Addison, like Chakrabortty, doesn't understand what value is. Something is worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it in an open market. But firstly Addison is failing to look at the upstream end of the equation. Yes, RBS shares were trading at about £5 in 2008. But the bank was essentially bust, and if the then Labour government had waited for this to make itself manifest in the hope of paying less, RBS might have crashed, with knock on effects in the British and global banking systems which don't bear thinking about. At the time RBS was one of the biggest banks in the world.
The figure of £5 per share didn't represent an ordinary open market price then. If the markets had known RBS's true situation the shares would have been worth much less. In fact in the following January the shares were trading at 10p each, a fall of some 97%. And that was after HMG had bailed it out.
So the Government paid a price which didn't represent ordinary open market value - it paid a price which represented, as with Northern Rock, the cost of preventing the British banking system from collapse, and the buyer was no ordinary one but perhaps the only party with both the means and the urgent will to stop that happening.
Moreover George Osborne does not, contra Addison, own shares "worth £5". He never has. As I've explained, the shares weren't even worth £5 then, at least not to the ordinary buyer. So in what way are they worth £5 now?
Actually Addison is too stupid to realise he has answered his own question. We know what the shares are worth. They're worth £3.50 because that's what people are willing to pay for them in an open market today. A journey, incidentally, upwards from 10p that looks nothing short of a minor miracle.
If Addison weren't so set on joining the general Leftist condemnation of George Osborne (who continues, annoyingly, to be a capable and cunning Chancellor), he might have put a more thoughtful and pertinent question.
"If HMG bought a share for £5, why is it now selling it for £3.50?".
This is the kind of question which every unsuccessful stock market punter has had to face from time to time. The best answer I can give is that the money has already gone, and the only way of getting it back is to gamble that the share price will recover in time and we will end up making some money. But this would be a gamble because we don't know how RBS will do in the years to come. No-one does.
And in the meantime the UK is borrowing nearly £2 billion every week just to stay afloat, and is paying billions in interest on its borrowing every year. In that context cashing in some assets to lower the deficit is a perfectly defensible strategy. It may turn out to be wrong in the long term, but no-one knows that, least of all Chris Addison. Making these sorts of decisions is precisely the kind of thing we elect politicians to do. Does anyone really think Osborne would have ordered the sales now in order to make less money than he could later?
What depths of plonkerdom has Chris Addison plumbed. His Tweet invites followers to share his disdain for the Chancellor and laugh at Mr Osborne's stupidity. To date about 5,000 people have favourited or R/Td it. Oh how they must have laughed! And yet it turns out that, despite his lofty tittering, it's actually Addison, failing to understand one of the most basic priniciples of economics, who's made an idiot of himself.
For people like me there is not much hope that the powerful will read what we write, but a couple of weeks later Chakrabortty did return to the subject with a snarky reference to nitpickers, so I like to think that at the very least he does Google his own name from time to time.
Now this may seem like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it's worth repeating these arguments every now and again, and this time the culprit is the bouffant Left wing comedian Chris Addison.
Actually comedian may not be the right word for Addison, because I don't know if he is actually funny in person. He appears on game shows I don't watch and I know who he is only because of his acting role as a hapless special adviser in The Thick of It, a programme which is funny but rests on the premise that all politicians are venal and stupid, the implied subtext being that if its Left wing actors and writers went into politics they'd be much cleverer and more sensible.
If they could be bothered.
So what has Addison done to get my goat? He has repeated what I like to call the Chakrabortty Fallacy. You may have noticed that the Government is proposing to sell off part of its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, the bank that had to be rescued in 2008 by a £37 billion injection of UK taxpayers money. At the time the shares were trading at about £5 each. They're now trading at £3.50.
Enter Chris Addison. Yesterday he Tweeted "If George has a share worth £5 and George sells that share for £3.50, explain why George is Chancellor of The Exchequer. Show working".
I'm sure you get the picture. Why is stupid George Osborne proposing to sell some of Britain's RBS shares for less than they're worth, losing the taxpayers billions in the process?
But Addison, like Chakrabortty, doesn't understand what value is. Something is worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it in an open market. But firstly Addison is failing to look at the upstream end of the equation. Yes, RBS shares were trading at about £5 in 2008. But the bank was essentially bust, and if the then Labour government had waited for this to make itself manifest in the hope of paying less, RBS might have crashed, with knock on effects in the British and global banking systems which don't bear thinking about. At the time RBS was one of the biggest banks in the world.
The figure of £5 per share didn't represent an ordinary open market price then. If the markets had known RBS's true situation the shares would have been worth much less. In fact in the following January the shares were trading at 10p each, a fall of some 97%. And that was after HMG had bailed it out.
So the Government paid a price which didn't represent ordinary open market value - it paid a price which represented, as with Northern Rock, the cost of preventing the British banking system from collapse, and the buyer was no ordinary one but perhaps the only party with both the means and the urgent will to stop that happening.
Moreover George Osborne does not, contra Addison, own shares "worth £5". He never has. As I've explained, the shares weren't even worth £5 then, at least not to the ordinary buyer. So in what way are they worth £5 now?
Actually Addison is too stupid to realise he has answered his own question. We know what the shares are worth. They're worth £3.50 because that's what people are willing to pay for them in an open market today. A journey, incidentally, upwards from 10p that looks nothing short of a minor miracle.
If Addison weren't so set on joining the general Leftist condemnation of George Osborne (who continues, annoyingly, to be a capable and cunning Chancellor), he might have put a more thoughtful and pertinent question.
"If HMG bought a share for £5, why is it now selling it for £3.50?".
This is the kind of question which every unsuccessful stock market punter has had to face from time to time. The best answer I can give is that the money has already gone, and the only way of getting it back is to gamble that the share price will recover in time and we will end up making some money. But this would be a gamble because we don't know how RBS will do in the years to come. No-one does.
And in the meantime the UK is borrowing nearly £2 billion every week just to stay afloat, and is paying billions in interest on its borrowing every year. In that context cashing in some assets to lower the deficit is a perfectly defensible strategy. It may turn out to be wrong in the long term, but no-one knows that, least of all Chris Addison. Making these sorts of decisions is precisely the kind of thing we elect politicians to do. Does anyone really think Osborne would have ordered the sales now in order to make less money than he could later?
What depths of plonkerdom has Chris Addison plumbed. His Tweet invites followers to share his disdain for the Chancellor and laugh at Mr Osborne's stupidity. To date about 5,000 people have favourited or R/Td it. Oh how they must have laughed! And yet it turns out that, despite his lofty tittering, it's actually Addison, failing to understand one of the most basic priniciples of economics, who's made an idiot of himself.
Thursday 14 May 2015
Mark Carney, Robert Peston and Jonathan Portes: immigration and inequality
So now we know. The Governor of the Bank of England thinks that immigration is helping to keep wages down.
Mark Carney said yesterday, "In recent years labour supply has expanded significantly owing to higher participation rates among older workers, a greater willingness to work longer hours and strong population growth, partly driven by higher net migration. . . These positive labour supply shocks have contained wage growth in the face of robust employment growth. Wages have grown by around 2 per cent in the past year - less than half the average rate before the global financial crisis - and a key risk is that these subdued growth rates continue."
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever thought for more than a couple of minutes about the effect of migration. If you provide more of something, the price tends to go down. Specifically, if foreign workers are arriving in the UK at a rate of about 250,000 per year (for this is the current rate of increase), employers are less likely to have to compete for staff by raising wages.
And to be clear, the general point that an influx of workers from abroad represents a weight on the pay of the indigenous population is a statement of the overwhelmingly obvious: it is simply a version of the law of supply and demand that the price of anything falls when supply rises relative to demand.
Anyone in any doubt about this merely needs to ask themselves why it is the Confederation of British Industry is so keen on immigration.
For me the truly perplexing thing is why so many on the Left are still so keen on open borders. As the pay of people at the bottom end languishes, so the gap between high and low pay widens. It's called inequality. But the Left is against this too, and for them the two realities grate against one another with a kind of political dissonance which induces denial, anger and - all too readily - name calling of people who point it out.
If you really want to make yourself unpopular, draw attention to the fact that British people trapped in low wages tend to have brown skins. They're the children and grandchildren of former generations of immigrants. Because naturally no bien pensant likes to think anyone on the Centre Right might actually be occupying the moral high ground on the subject of race.
To be fair, it's not all bad news. European immigrants are often better educated, better motivated and more skilled than the UK residents against whom they're competing for jobs. Unlike immigrants from the Asian subcontinent they're more likely to buy into Britain's basic post-Christian ethos. By keeping wages down, they also help to keep inflation down and interest rates down, making British goods more competitive and keeping the economy ticking over.
One of the most persistent and articulate of the pro-Immigration Left wingers is a man called Jonathan Portes, head of the NIESR. Portes used to be an economic adviser to Tony Blair, which is instructive. He is bullishly in favour of immigration, having no truck with the argument that immigrants take jobs from British workers (many of them black). Portes' case is that immigration helps the economy grow, which is undoubtedly true. The question is how much it helps, and whether the upside outweighs the down.
I had a Twitter spat with Portes recently, in which I tried to get him to confirm that he believed 100 migrants begat 100 jobs, so there was no net loss. Portes refused to answer this question and I suspect has now blocked or muted me. The difficulty for all participants in this argument is that it's impossible to do a control test. We all fall back on theory because practical tests aren't possible.
Incidentally Jonathan Portes' response to Peston was to Tweet - "I'm afraid first few paras are wrong, both theoretically and empirically". Who'd have thought it.
Since it's most unlikely that 100 extra workers create exactly 100 extra jobs, the likelihood is that every 100 extra either takes jobs from British people or creates some extra. The first problem for Portes is that not every migrant gets work. Different communities have different profiles, but whilst most Europeans find jobs, that isn't true of other migrants; the worst-performing are Bangladeshis at only 35%; the rest are presumably on benefits.
Moreover if Portes is right, and 100 migrants create 125 jobs, for example, the number of job opportunities would be rising faster than the numbers of workers, in which case you would expect wage inflation to be much higher than the current estimate of 2%. In fact for much of the last twenty years wage growth has been sluggish or negative.
Home Office research from 2012 suggests in fact that in times of recession there's a net job loss, and that every 100 immigrants probably create only 77 jobs, meaning 23 are taken from British people. Although to some extent they support my case, I think these figures are speculative and dubious and I prefer to rely on the fall in real-terms wages, which is suggestive of an excess of supply over demand for staff.
Incidentally, you have to wonder why Portes isn't arguing for migrants to be paid to come here. After all, if migrants create more jobs than they take, it would surely be cheaper to pay for more to come and push unemployed Britons into work.
According to more reliable figures from the Bank of England, in the last eighteen years the number of European workers has quadrupled to two million, accelerating in the mid 2000s as Labour opened the door to the populations of poor East European countries. If Jonathan Portes is right, this two million strong influx has created more than two million extra jobs. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly at - as it happens - just under two million. And in real terms wages are stagnant, particularly at the bottom end.
No wonder we have a housing crisis. No wonder the health service and schools are struggling to meet extra demand. No wonder Britain is such a crowded country. We have accommodated an extra one and a half million people from Europe alone in the last eighteen years.
How did the BBC report this story? Like this. "Carney: UK productivity not harmed by foreign workers". Not sure what Robert Peston thought of that, but Mr Portes will have been pleased.
Mark Carney said yesterday, "In recent years labour supply has expanded significantly owing to higher participation rates among older workers, a greater willingness to work longer hours and strong population growth, partly driven by higher net migration. . . These positive labour supply shocks have contained wage growth in the face of robust employment growth. Wages have grown by around 2 per cent in the past year - less than half the average rate before the global financial crisis - and a key risk is that these subdued growth rates continue."
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever thought for more than a couple of minutes about the effect of migration. If you provide more of something, the price tends to go down. Specifically, if foreign workers are arriving in the UK at a rate of about 250,000 per year (for this is the current rate of increase), employers are less likely to have to compete for staff by raising wages.
And to be clear, the general point that an influx of workers from abroad represents a weight on the pay of the indigenous population is a statement of the overwhelmingly obvious: it is simply a version of the law of supply and demand that the price of anything falls when supply rises relative to demand.
I should confess that I lifted that last paragraph from Robert Peston's piece today on the BBC website.
For me the truly perplexing thing is why so many on the Left are still so keen on open borders. As the pay of people at the bottom end languishes, so the gap between high and low pay widens. It's called inequality. But the Left is against this too, and for them the two realities grate against one another with a kind of political dissonance which induces denial, anger and - all too readily - name calling of people who point it out.
If you really want to make yourself unpopular, draw attention to the fact that British people trapped in low wages tend to have brown skins. They're the children and grandchildren of former generations of immigrants. Because naturally no bien pensant likes to think anyone on the Centre Right might actually be occupying the moral high ground on the subject of race.
To be fair, it's not all bad news. European immigrants are often better educated, better motivated and more skilled than the UK residents against whom they're competing for jobs. Unlike immigrants from the Asian subcontinent they're more likely to buy into Britain's basic post-Christian ethos. By keeping wages down, they also help to keep inflation down and interest rates down, making British goods more competitive and keeping the economy ticking over.
One of the most persistent and articulate of the pro-Immigration Left wingers is a man called Jonathan Portes, head of the NIESR. Portes used to be an economic adviser to Tony Blair, which is instructive. He is bullishly in favour of immigration, having no truck with the argument that immigrants take jobs from British workers (many of them black). Portes' case is that immigration helps the economy grow, which is undoubtedly true. The question is how much it helps, and whether the upside outweighs the down.
I had a Twitter spat with Portes recently, in which I tried to get him to confirm that he believed 100 migrants begat 100 jobs, so there was no net loss. Portes refused to answer this question and I suspect has now blocked or muted me. The difficulty for all participants in this argument is that it's impossible to do a control test. We all fall back on theory because practical tests aren't possible.
Incidentally Jonathan Portes' response to Peston was to Tweet - "I'm afraid first few paras are wrong, both theoretically and empirically". Who'd have thought it.
Since it's most unlikely that 100 extra workers create exactly 100 extra jobs, the likelihood is that every 100 extra either takes jobs from British people or creates some extra. The first problem for Portes is that not every migrant gets work. Different communities have different profiles, but whilst most Europeans find jobs, that isn't true of other migrants; the worst-performing are Bangladeshis at only 35%; the rest are presumably on benefits.
Moreover if Portes is right, and 100 migrants create 125 jobs, for example, the number of job opportunities would be rising faster than the numbers of workers, in which case you would expect wage inflation to be much higher than the current estimate of 2%. In fact for much of the last twenty years wage growth has been sluggish or negative.
Home Office research from 2012 suggests in fact that in times of recession there's a net job loss, and that every 100 immigrants probably create only 77 jobs, meaning 23 are taken from British people. Although to some extent they support my case, I think these figures are speculative and dubious and I prefer to rely on the fall in real-terms wages, which is suggestive of an excess of supply over demand for staff.
Incidentally, you have to wonder why Portes isn't arguing for migrants to be paid to come here. After all, if migrants create more jobs than they take, it would surely be cheaper to pay for more to come and push unemployed Britons into work.
According to more reliable figures from the Bank of England, in the last eighteen years the number of European workers has quadrupled to two million, accelerating in the mid 2000s as Labour opened the door to the populations of poor East European countries. If Jonathan Portes is right, this two million strong influx has created more than two million extra jobs. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly at - as it happens - just under two million. And in real terms wages are stagnant, particularly at the bottom end.
No wonder we have a housing crisis. No wonder the health service and schools are struggling to meet extra demand. No wonder Britain is such a crowded country. We have accommodated an extra one and a half million people from Europe alone in the last eighteen years.
How did the BBC report this story? Like this. "Carney: UK productivity not harmed by foreign workers". Not sure what Robert Peston thought of that, but Mr Portes will have been pleased.
Wednesday 13 May 2015
Why did Labour lose and what should they do now?
As previously suggested, no-one knows why Labour lost the election. But here's a guess.
Political times change. I remember the 1970s, when one industry or another seemed to be perpetually on strike. I remember the three day week, the oil crisis and eating dinner by candlelight. There were strikes by miners, dockers, bin men, British Leyland, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Union leaders, men with severe glasses and raincoats which barely covered their bellies, appeared on TV news going in and out of Downing Street. From smoke-filled rooms people were sent out for beer and sandwiches.
My Dad's response to this was characteristically pithy. He said, "They're pricing themselves out of jobs".
Globalisation has put a stop to most of this nonsense. Many years ago a majority of the British public realised that they were competing against people in the Far East who were willing to work in a factory for a dollar a day. They realised that if they were going to keep their jobs they had to remain competitive. Productivity was part of this, and so was wage restraint. Economic reality killed union militancy just as surely as Mrs Thatcher's reforms. No one in Britain can imagine now a return to the bad old days of disruption.
But if this is partly because of an irreversible shift in British attitudes, what if another shift is slowly taking place, making another hole in Labour's intellectual and moral armour?
I think you can divide Britain into two groups. The first believes that in the long run you can have what you can afford to pay for. The second believes that you can have what you deserve, and that if you tax rich people a bit more the numbers will work out for themselves. Most of this first group votes Tory. Most of the second votes Labour.
The nightmare for Labour might just possibly be that the first group is growing and that the second finds itself shrinking and isolated. Certainly the response to defeat last week sounded like a howl of cognitive dissonance, as the liberal commentariat struggled to come to terms with the inconvenient verdict of the electorate.
Some Conservative pundits have criticised this response on the basis that it amounted to "Why are voters so greedy / stupid / ill-informed / selfish?" Personally I don't mind abusing the electorate. An awful lot of voters are staggeringly ignorant, and that includes many who voted Tory. But at a gut level I think that people are reasonably savvy. More of them understand what the deficit is now than was the case in 2010. That's bad for Labour, which thrives on the plausibility of its spending promises. It's just possible that the more we understand the economic realities, the harder it will be for them to get back into office.
It has taken a long time for signs of understanding to creep into Labour discourse. In the 2010 campaign Gordon Brown told the electorate there was a choice between "Labour investment and Tory cuts". After Brown lost, Ed Miliband told us austerity was unnecessary and that there would never be any growth under George Osborne. Then when it turned out the economy was growing and there never had been a double-dip recession (let alone a triple dip), Ed Balls said it was the wrong type of growth. Finally there was an admission that bringing the defecit down was necessary after all, and that we should vote Labour because it would mean "fairer deficit reduction". Against a backdrop of such intellectual foot-dragging, Labour's boast that it had become the "party of fiscal responsibility" just looked bizarre. For this big lie alone Ed Miliband deserved to lose. And when in a TV debate he denied that Labour had spent too much in office, the audience's sharp intake of breath spoke eloquently of public contempt.
I've been asking for years, what does a Social Democratic party do when economic circumstances force the end of generous spending? It seems to me that Labour's fate will be determined by its response to this question. But if there's one location where people in the second group above - the ones who believe public spending is only limited by compassion - tend to be found, it's in the Labour party. When those people believe that the majority of Britons are wrong and they are right, how likely is it that they will change tack?
After the Tony Blair landslide in 1997 I got the 73 bus one glad confident Islington morning down the Essex Road to work, a Labour voter delighted after all those years of Tory sleaze. In the paper the Grauniad's star columnist, Hugo Young, gave his considered judgment. The Tories were out of office forever, he wrote.
Even I, at the high water mark of my infatuation with the People's Party, knew this was bollocks. The Tories would be back. It's hard to finish off a political party. Even the Lib Dems aren't finished, not even now (in fact in some ways it's easier to see a return to power for them than it is for Labour). But if Labour aren't finished, and common sense suggests they're not, they're nevertheless going to have to do some hard thinking in the next few months.
Political times change. I remember the 1970s, when one industry or another seemed to be perpetually on strike. I remember the three day week, the oil crisis and eating dinner by candlelight. There were strikes by miners, dockers, bin men, British Leyland, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Union leaders, men with severe glasses and raincoats which barely covered their bellies, appeared on TV news going in and out of Downing Street. From smoke-filled rooms people were sent out for beer and sandwiches.
My Dad's response to this was characteristically pithy. He said, "They're pricing themselves out of jobs".
Globalisation has put a stop to most of this nonsense. Many years ago a majority of the British public realised that they were competing against people in the Far East who were willing to work in a factory for a dollar a day. They realised that if they were going to keep their jobs they had to remain competitive. Productivity was part of this, and so was wage restraint. Economic reality killed union militancy just as surely as Mrs Thatcher's reforms. No one in Britain can imagine now a return to the bad old days of disruption.
But if this is partly because of an irreversible shift in British attitudes, what if another shift is slowly taking place, making another hole in Labour's intellectual and moral armour?
I think you can divide Britain into two groups. The first believes that in the long run you can have what you can afford to pay for. The second believes that you can have what you deserve, and that if you tax rich people a bit more the numbers will work out for themselves. Most of this first group votes Tory. Most of the second votes Labour.
The nightmare for Labour might just possibly be that the first group is growing and that the second finds itself shrinking and isolated. Certainly the response to defeat last week sounded like a howl of cognitive dissonance, as the liberal commentariat struggled to come to terms with the inconvenient verdict of the electorate.
Some Conservative pundits have criticised this response on the basis that it amounted to "Why are voters so greedy / stupid / ill-informed / selfish?" Personally I don't mind abusing the electorate. An awful lot of voters are staggeringly ignorant, and that includes many who voted Tory. But at a gut level I think that people are reasonably savvy. More of them understand what the deficit is now than was the case in 2010. That's bad for Labour, which thrives on the plausibility of its spending promises. It's just possible that the more we understand the economic realities, the harder it will be for them to get back into office.
It has taken a long time for signs of understanding to creep into Labour discourse. In the 2010 campaign Gordon Brown told the electorate there was a choice between "Labour investment and Tory cuts". After Brown lost, Ed Miliband told us austerity was unnecessary and that there would never be any growth under George Osborne. Then when it turned out the economy was growing and there never had been a double-dip recession (let alone a triple dip), Ed Balls said it was the wrong type of growth. Finally there was an admission that bringing the defecit down was necessary after all, and that we should vote Labour because it would mean "fairer deficit reduction". Against a backdrop of such intellectual foot-dragging, Labour's boast that it had become the "party of fiscal responsibility" just looked bizarre. For this big lie alone Ed Miliband deserved to lose. And when in a TV debate he denied that Labour had spent too much in office, the audience's sharp intake of breath spoke eloquently of public contempt.
I've been asking for years, what does a Social Democratic party do when economic circumstances force the end of generous spending? It seems to me that Labour's fate will be determined by its response to this question. But if there's one location where people in the second group above - the ones who believe public spending is only limited by compassion - tend to be found, it's in the Labour party. When those people believe that the majority of Britons are wrong and they are right, how likely is it that they will change tack?
After the Tony Blair landslide in 1997 I got the 73 bus one glad confident Islington morning down the Essex Road to work, a Labour voter delighted after all those years of Tory sleaze. In the paper the Grauniad's star columnist, Hugo Young, gave his considered judgment. The Tories were out of office forever, he wrote.
Even I, at the high water mark of my infatuation with the People's Party, knew this was bollocks. The Tories would be back. It's hard to finish off a political party. Even the Lib Dems aren't finished, not even now (in fact in some ways it's easier to see a return to power for them than it is for Labour). But if Labour aren't finished, and common sense suggests they're not, they're nevertheless going to have to do some hard thinking in the next few months.
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