Some disconnected thoughts on the present discontents:
David Cameron’s merciless, if tiresomely and unnecessarily repetitive, dismembering of the prime minister in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) over the latter’s obstinate refusal to admit to Labour’s plans for stiff future cuts in government capital spending has been widely remarked on. Gordon Brown’s apparent fixation with his favourite slogan, “Labour investment versus Tory cuts” has long ago ceased to cut any ice. Everyone knows that whichever government is in office when Britain begins to come out of recession will have to act to reduce the huge volume of debt incurred as a result of the measures taken to deal with the financial and economic crisis. Obviously even a gradual start to paying off this unprecedented and unsustainable amount of government debt will entail higher taxes and big reductions in government spending. Why Brown should have persisted for so long in his claim that government capital spending under Labour would actually increase in the next three years, when the government’s own published figures show that it will fall, is a mystery. Another recklessly conceded own goal! Is there no-one in the prime minister’s entourage with the guts to tell him to stop telling porkies — if not in obedience to his much vaunted ‘moral compass’ as a ‘son of the manse’, then at the very least because of the utter certainty that he will be instantly found out? Hasn’t Peter Mandelson warned him of these elementary truths? Perhaps he has, but the prime minister can only hoist in advice that he wants to hear. A sure recipe for the kind of humiliating disaster that struck him on Wednesday.
* * * * *
It’s doubly regrettable from Labour’s point of view that Gordon Brown should have handed the Tories such a weapon of mass destruction when he could easily have deployed an effective and truthful attack, pointing out that the Tories sneered from the sidelines at the radical measures taken by the government at an early stage of the crisis, both to prevent the collapse of the banking system and to provide a sharp fiscal stimulus to prevent the economy descending from recession into slump; and that the government’s measures have been widely praised as correct and courageous by international economists and governments. Cameron and Osborne have throughout been loudly calling for immediate cuts in government spending, while the country is still in recession, which could only make the recession deeper and more prolonged. The recession itself forces any government to spend more (on social security for the increased number of unemployed and homeless) while seeing its tax revenues sharply reduced (because of the falls in profits, earnings and spending), thus increasing the deficit in a double whammy — the so-called ‘automatic stabilisers’, unintentionally ironical term. Large-scale borrowing has thus been necessary and right if total calamity was to be avoided. Labour can credibly claim that that under a Labour government, when the time comes for cuts in spending, the most vulnerable and most heavily dependent on basic public services will be protected as far as possible, with the well-heeled bearing the heaviest burden in higher taxes. The Tories, by contrast, are already committed to embarking on expenditure cuts far too soon, even before we have begun to emerge from the recession, and to applying them in a recklessly indiscriminate way, with flat rate cuts apparently to be imposed on almost all public services except the NHS and overseas aid. But it’s probably too late now to launch that kind of offensive: the prime minister’s credibility has been shot to pieces.
* * * * *
Coming back (reluctantly) to Wednesday’s PMQs, I found it impossible to watch and listen to the proceedings without squirming in shame and embarrassment at the tribal baying, the pathetic planted questions (memorably called ‘Dorothy Dixers‘ by the caustic Australians) and their pre-paid replies, the feeble attempts at point-scoring, the ludicrously over-acted audience reactions — raucous laughter, theatrical groans, squeals of approval, frantic nodding like those toy dogs in the back windows of cars — and the almost universally contemptible level of the debate, if one can call it that. This was the display of tantrums of the nursery, not even the quarrels of the primary school playground. Will the new Speaker be able to do anything to restore PMQs to its place as a forum for MPs of all parties to seek information (including potentially embarrassing or revealing information as appropriate) from the head of the government? By my calculation PMQs were more than half-way through before the first such question was asked.
There were a few encouraging signs: Speaker Bercow delivered one especially memorable appeal to an over-excited Member: “Order. Mr. Fabricant, you must calm yourself. It is not good for your health. I call Paul Farrelly.” He interrupted one interminable intervention in mid-flow and invited the PM to reply, even though no question had at that point been asked; and he reminded another questioner that it was out of order to ask the prime minister questions about Conservative policies. Perhaps in due course he will stop the practice of MPs delivering long speeches converted at the last moment into questions by the addition of “Does the prime minister agree?”. He might even stop the prime minister answering every other question by lambasting the Opposition, reminding him that he is there to provide information about the government’s actions and policies, not anyone else’s. Cameron is principally to blame for these weekly displays of bear-baiting, but Brown is almost as much to blame for unfailingly taking the bait; and almost all MPs on both sides of the House are certainly to blame for the childish baying and general tribalism. The expenses scandal isn’t the only reason for sensible people of all political persuasions to despair of both politics as currently practised, and all too many of the present crop of politicians. And, like poor Mr Fabricant’s excitement, this disillusionment with politics and politicians isn’t good for our collective health. It’s quite a short step from this to some form of populist fascism.
* * * * *
One dimly encouraging sign is the new Speaker’s appearance in the Chair in an ordinary business suit and tie, in ordinary shoes, his special status marked only by a black academic-type gown of the kind worn by American judges. OK, it might make him look like a rather diminutive schoolmaster, but better that than the absurd pantomime costume affected by his predecessors. Some of the fake-medieval flummery attending his ritual procession through the lobby at the start of each day’s proceedings could helpfully be dispensed with, including his train-bearer, hardly necessary now that there’s no train to bear. The exotic language used by MPs in debate to refer to each other could usefully be brought up to date. Is it really necessary for every utterance to have to pretend to be addressed to the Chair? Why on earth do members have to waste hours of everyone’s time by trooping through the lobbies to vote when quite simple electronic voting systems are used in most comparable assemblies and have been available for years? Why is the order paper unintelligible to anyone who hasn’t studied the arcane mysteries of Commons procedures for at least ten years? Why are the parliamentary ushers, who show visitors to their seats and shush them when they make a noise, dressed like warders on loan from the Tower of London, or possibly toast-masters? Even more radically, what’s the benefit of a layout in the House of Commons that accentuates the adversarial element in our politics and actually encourages the sort of infantile tribal behaviour seen at its worst in PMQs? Why not a horse-shoe-shaped seating arrangement that would reflect the nuances of members’ political positions instead of a Manichean in-versus-out, us-versus-them dichotomy? There’s plenty to be done, Mr Speaker.
* * * * *
Even the choice of John Bercow as the new Speaker was basically an act of political tribalism, estimable though he might be — certainly preferable to the majority of the other candidates. But there’s no disguising the fact that although he is, or was until elected Speaker, a Conservative MP, the great majority of his fellow-Conservatives cordially dislike him (mainly apparently because his political views have shifted from far right to slightly left-of-centre since he very sensibly married a socialist). Virtually the whole of his support, in an unprecedented secret ballot, came from Labour MPs who still of course have a comfortable majority (for the time being, anyway). Were those hundreds of Labour votes cast for Bercow based on a sober assessment of his Speaker-like qualities of patience, courtesy, gravitas and natural authority, long experience in the House, and acceptability to a wide range of opinion on both sides? One would like to think so, and that Bercow voters were behaving like grown-ups. Or was this one last chance to cock a snook at anti-Bercow Tories, using their majority to impose him on his unwilling party colleagues before the Labour majority disappears from under them some time within the next eleven months? If so, how will a likely Tory majority in the next parliament be tempted to get its revenge? Business as usual, sadly: all the brave talk of the need for change and reform was strictly for the birds, all along.
Brian
In his statement in the house of commons on 10 June 2009, the prime minister set out a 5-point programme of possible constitutional reform:
1. Reform of the house of lords, with 80-100 per cent of the members elected.
2. Consultation on a written constitution.
3. Devolution of more power to local communities: e.g. local Government and city-regions.
4. Review of the electoral system.
5. Increasing public engagement in politics: how to get more people registered to vote, and interest young people in politics – including whether to lower the voting age.
The objectives of all these items are worthy and it’s too early in the promised consultation process to dismiss any of them out of hand. But there are snags in each, and above all none is related to any overall vision of a better and more democratic society:
1. We can nearly all agree that the house of lords should be an elected body. But should it be merely a “revising chamber” to tidy up loose ends left to it by the house of commons? Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own parliament and government, has moved us (whether or not intentionally) into a semi-federal system, with the parliament and government at Westminster now trying to function as quasi-federal organs with limited powers in respect of those three devolved nations. But federal systems around the world use their federal second chambers to protect the smaller units in the federation from domination by the larger ones. That’s why tiny Vermont and North Dakota have the same number of representatives each in the US Senate as gigantic California and Texas: two Senators each, regardless of population or area. Similarly little Tasmania has equal representation in the Australian Senate with big New South Wales and Victoria. This prevents the big boys from being able to override the interests and wishes of the tiddlers in adopting legislation and approving policies. In the UK, with its huge discrepancy in size between England on the one hand and the other three nations on the other, the need for such protection is obvious: and it’s equally obvious that the place for that protection is the second chamber at Westminster. We shall need to turn the house of lords into a federal Senate with the same number of Senators elected from each of the four nations. But this can only be done as part of the process of completing devolution by moving to a full federal system. This is going to be unavoidable sooner or later: it’s in the logic and DNA of devolution. It will be a waste of time and energy “reforming” the house of lords now, while leaving its limited functions as they are, when a much more fundamental reform is going to be needed, perhaps within a decade, to give it a necessary and genuine role as part of a federal system.
2. Much the same applies to the proposal for a written constitution, but with even more force. The question should not be whether we need a written constitution, but what should be in it. Our existing constitution is riddled with anomalies and injustices. Despite limited devolution, our system is hopelessly over-centralised. We still await a suggested answer to the West Lothian Question — why should MPs at Westminster elected from Scottish constituencies vote on matters exclusively affecting England when English MPs can’t vote on the same subjects affecting Scotland if the subject has been devolved to the Scottish parliament? What constitutional reforms does the prime minister propose to meet the challenge posed by pressure for Scottish independence, a secession that would mean the disintegration of the United Kingdom? Why should the Westminster parliament and government try to combine two utterly separate and incompatible functions — as quasi-federal organs for the whole UK on subjects not devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and simultaneously as a parliament and government for England, for which their composition is wholly unsuitable? What justification can there be for denying to England the devolved powers transferred to Scotland and the other two nations? (I have referred earlier to the need for a more radical reform of the house of lords than merely making it an elected chamber.)
It would be utter madness to set all these defects, challenges and anomalies in concrete by embedding them in a written constitution now, when our constitutional arrangements are in transition: that could only make it much more difficult to address the problems they create and gradually to make the constitutional changes they demand. Once a federal system is in place, it will inevitably require a written constitution, justiciable in the Supreme Court, defining the powers and relationships of the constituent parts of the federation. But to try to produce a written constitution now would be hopelessly premature: and, worse than premature, actually damaging to any hope of future reform.
3. Decentralising power by pushing it further down to the people is certainly necessary, but merely increasing the powers of county and borough councils won’t go nearly far enough. What’s needed in the first place is devolution of virtually all powers, with the major exceptions of foreign affairs and defence (which would remain the responsibility of the Westminster parliament and government), to the governments and parliaments of the four nations, including England — as in every functioning federation throughout the western world. It would then be for the four nations’ governments and parliaments to push power still further down to local and regional level, according to the wishes of the people in each nation (which won’t necessarily be the same in all of them).
4. My comments on the proposed ‘reform’ of the electoral system are here. Before we decide whether, and if so how, to change the electoral system for the house of commons, it would surely be desirable to look at the future role, functions and (drastically reduced) responsibilities of the commons as a federal organ (which in many respects it already is), producing a federal government, in the brave new world of full devolution: subsidiarity made flesh. Let’s agree on what we’ll be voting for, before we decide what kind of vote we want for it.
5. The way to get more people, including young people, engaged in politics is to give each of the four nations real power over ordinary people’s lives at a much more local level, by completing the half-finished devolution process and moving to a full federal system. Anything less will be purely cosmetic and ineffective. The idea of giving votes to children (i.e. anyone under 18) is such obvious nonsense that it doesn’t need to be discussed.
The point, then, is that all Gordon Brown’s five points are premature. They would saddle us with a permanently unsatisfactory and anomalous constitution when what’s plainly needed is first to sort out the anomalies in a coherent, long-term process, so that each of the five points falls into place as parts of an overall and radical reform. To tackle each item piece-meal is doomed to failure. Without vision, the people perish. Power to the people!
Brian
In a major Commons statement today (10 June 2009) introducing a national debate on constitutional reform, the prime minister included the system of elections to the House of Commons in his five constitutional topics for debate and possible reform:
[L]ast year we published our review of the electoral system and there is a long-standing debate on this issue. I still believe the link between the MP and constituency is essential and that it is the constituency that is best able to hold MPs to account. We should only be prepared to propose change if there is a broad consensus in the country that it would strengthen our democracy and our politics by improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of both Government and Parliament; and by enhancing the level and quality of public representation and engagement. Mr Speaker, we will set out proposals for taking this debate forward.
The Alternative Vote
The new system beginning to emerge as front runner for Commons elections is AV — the Alternative Vote. Under AV the voter ranks all the candidates in a single-member constituency — or as many or as few of them as he wishes — in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc. If no candidate receives 51% of the first preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first preference votes is eliminated and his second preference votes are distributed to the rest. This process continues until one candidate has received 51% or more of the votes — his own first preference votes plus eliminated candidates’ second and third etc preference votes allocated to him. That candidate is then declared elected. It’s important to remember that AV is not a form of proportional representation (PR). There’s some dispute among the experts over whether AV is likely to produce a more proportional result than First Past the Post (FPTP) — i.e. whether the proportion of seats won under AV will be closer to the proportion of votes cast for each party. In some circumstances it’s argued that AV might actually produce a less proportional result.
In a post today (10 June 09) on Labour List, the General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, has written a persuasive case for a combination of AV for the House of Commons and some kind of PR for the House of Lords, or whatever an eventually reformed second chamber turns out to be called. Katwala includes extremely useful links to a number of other online documents describing and assessing the various systems available, including Katwala’s own Fabian Essay of autumn 2007 which argues the case for AV in greater detail. He regards it as less than ideal but the change most likely to command wide acceptance.
I can’t myself see a lot of point in AV. A candidate who fails to win 51% of the first preference votes in his constituency can’t credibly pretend that after transfers of some (not all) preference votes from other candidates he has somehow magically acquired more than 50% support when in sober fact he hasn’t — the majority of the voters actually voted for someone else. Second preference votes are manifestly not the same as first preference votes and there’s something slightly absurd about pretending that they are, by adding both kinds together in order to produce a desired result. Anyway, why transfer to the candidate with the most first preferences only the second preferences of other candidates who have been eliminated, who by definition will always be those with the least support of all? Why give special treatment and effectiveness to all the least supported candidates’ second preferences and ignore the second preferences of, say, the candidates who came second and third in the first count, were never eliminated, but failed to get elected? (At the time of the London mayoral elections, held under a simplified form of AV, I had great difficulty in convincing several friends, none of them politically illiterate, that if they were casting their first preference votes for either Livingstone or Boris Johnson, it was a waste of time recording a second preference vote for anyone else, such as the LibDem policeman, because obviously neither Ken’s nor Boris’s second preferences would ever get redistributed.)
There’s a lot to be said, at both constituency and national level, for a straightforward system under which most of the time the winner is the candidate (or the party) which has won more votes (or seats) than any other — as FPTP does. There have only been two elections since the second world war when a party winning the most votes nationally has not also won a majority of the seats in the house of commons, once benefiting the Tories and the other Labour (so swings and roundabouts…). There’s nothing especially significant about 50% in either context. Is 48% unfair but 51% somehow fine? Since 1935, not a single party has ever won 50% or more of the national vote. It can be said of every single government since the war that more people voted against it than for it. So what? Almost invariably the government won more votes than any other party and that should be good enough — and vastly preferable to any form of PR, under which the LibDems (or Labour, if it becomes the third party!) become permanent ex officio king-makers with the power to decide, by demands and threats in a private horse-trading session, which of the two biggest parties gets the keys to No. 10, along with a messy compromise policy programme forced on it by the minority party in negotiations after the polls have closed as the price for their support, a programme for which not a single voter can have voted. Katwala’s Fabian essay puts the case against PR in a nutshell: the advantage of FPTP or AV “is accountability: voters choose governments, rather than minority party leaders in some smoke-filled room having disproportionate power to decide who governs.” [Emphasis added]
The Jenkins Commission recommendations for PR
In October 1998 Lord (Roy) Jenkins, former Labour home secretary and later breakaway Social Democrat, and his colleagues, published their report and recommendations on possible changes to the electoral system for elections to the House of Commons. They proposed a complex scheme under which voters would have two votes: one under AV for a constituency MP, and another for a party top-up list that would produce an overall result of seats more nearly in proportion to votes cast. You can read the full Jenkins report here (if you have the time and the intestinal fortitude; it’s quite hard work).
Among the voices currently calling for “electoral reform” as the centrepiece of a series of mostly disconnected proposals for constitutional change, there have been suggestions that we should go back to the Jenkins report and adopt his suggested system. In my view this would be a mistake. I spelled out my reasons for this view a month after the report was published, in a commentary on my website (here). Among the principal objections to Jenkins are two, each in my view decisive: first, that it would almost always produce unstable coalition or minority governments with unpredictable compromise policy programmes for which no-one could have voted in the election; and second, that it would entail two classes of MP, one class elected in and accountable to individual constituencies and the other in effect appointed by the party machines on the basis of wider areas, different from the AV constituencies.
As I said in my commentary on Jenkins, all electoral systems have their defects and injustices: none is perfect. Any system involves a trade-off between ‘fairness‘ — ensuring that the distribution of votes is accurately (or reasonably accurately) reflected in the number of Commons seats: and pragmatism – ensuring as far as possible that most elections produce a stable government with a sufficient overall majority to put its election manifesto into effect without having to negotiate deals with other parties in order to get into and stay in office. Whether you attach more weight to stable and accountable government than to theoretical fairness in the make-up of the House of Commons, or vice versa, will always be a subjective decision. It’s common ground, even with Jenkins, that the principal function of the Commons, that which most heavily influences most individual votes at election time, is to generate and sustain a government. Personally I dislike the idea of endless coalitions in which a government which has received more electoral support than any other party is permanently at the mercy of potentially fickle and wayward minority parties (look at Israel, to quote an extreme example): not a recipe for sound (or radical) government. So I remain convinced that the alternatives to FPTP (or AV) for a government-generating chamber are worse. PR is fine for a debating chamber that doesn’t create governments, like the House of Lords.
One member of the Jenkins team, Lord Alexander, disagreed with the majority recommendation for AV, giving his reasons in a minority report, still available here. His arguments against AV seem to me a lot more persuasive than those in the majority report in favour of it. Among other things he makes the cogent point that under FPTP, whether or not a candidate gets 50% + of the votes, once elected he serves all his constituents, regardless of party — a valuable convention that would be destroyed by an STV system involving multi-member constituencies, inevitably resulting in MPs regarding themselves as serving only their own party supporters and being answerable only to them. That would surely be very retrograde. Unfortunately Lord Alexander does, however, support the Jenkins proposals for a second top-up vote to produce a form of PR.
Incidentally, we should all be campaigning against the vicious system of party lists foisted on us for European elections — more control freakery from Westminster.
It’s going to be a long and difficult national conversation!
Brian
With the agreement of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, I have put on my website the text of a confidential despatch that I sent to the then Conservative Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary in early 1991, at the end of the last of my African and Africa-related postings, going back to 1957. The full text of the despatch is now at http://www.barder.com/1772. The senior official in the FCO then responsible for our relations with Africa had invited me to write some valedictory reflections on that continent before I finally moved on elsewhere (to Australia and then into retirement).
It’s interesting to compare attitudes to Africa and development aid as reflected in and prompting my despatch in 1991, with attitudes now, in 2009. In 1991 a Conservative government was actively engaged in one of its rounds of severe cuts in government expenditure. Africa had largely ceased to command the attention of senior ministers following the completion of British decolonisation, the end of our responsibilities in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1980 and the recently initiated dismantling of apartheid (in which we had been internationally seen as complicit). So aid to Africa, and the maintenance of embassies or high commissions in a wide range of African countries, seemed obvious targets for spending cuts. In the mid 1980s, famine in Ethiopia, forced into public awareness and concern by Michael Buerk, Bob Geldof, and others, had created an awareness of poverty and suffering in Africa and a constituency for humanitarian aid to relieve it. But there was at that time little public pressure for longer-term development aid, and as the Ethiopian famine subsided, so Africa again slipped down the media’s agenda.
For these and other reasons, in 1991 Britain’s development aid record was lamentable — apart from Austria’s, the lowest in the whole European Economic Community; and there was little or no pressure for increasing it substantially, if at all. Africa was anyway being radically down-graded in the British government’s system of priorities. It was alarm and concern over this dismal situation that prompted my despatch.
The despatch, perhaps predictably, was frigidly received in Whitehall. It was given a far more strictly limited domestic and global distribution than was then customary for this kind of document. The sentiments it expressed seemed controversial, even provocative, in the climate of the time; there was some suggestion (as I learned later on the grapevine) that when I wrote it I must have forgotten that there was no longer a Labour government in office at home.
Fast-forward to 2009. Africa’s poverty and pressing development needs have been deep personal concerns of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both of whom have translated their commitments into positive action. Problems aired in my despatch such as the mountain of African debt to rich western countries, and the shortcomings of IMF structural adjustment programmes, have been tackled and largely resolved. Others, such as restrictions on African exports imposed by the CAP and other aspects of EU and global trade policy, while not resolved, are widely acknowledged and there is pressure to address them. Britain now has widely respected aid and development policies and an enviable record of growing and increasingly effective development aid, especially in Africa. Almost nothing in that 1991 despatch would now be regarded as controversial.
However, there are two alarming features of the current scene which echo the concerns in the despatch. First, there is currently a campaign of active scepticism about the efficacy of all western aid to Africa. Dead Aid, a widely read and much praised book by a young African woman economist, Dembisa Moyo, not only asserts that aid to Africa does more harm than good: Ms Moyo actually calls for a decision to terminate all such aid in five years’ time. The book and Ms Moyo’s campaign have incurred damaging criticisms from informed development economists who have demonstrated on the basis of numerous studies, ignored in Dead Aid, that development aid has made a substantial contribution to economic growth and social welfare in Africa and that aid is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for accelerated development. Yet Ms Moyo’s campaign has achieved considerable traction: it obviously resonates with those who would indolently write off Africa (and almost a billion people who live there) as a basket case, and who assert that aid to Africa simply sends good money after bad — preferring to dismiss an abundance of research studies that demonstrate the contrary. The case for aid as one part of a sustained campaign against poverty in Africa, the case which I tried to make in 1991, now, sadly, needs to be made once more.
Secondly, the global recession and the huge levels of government debt being incurred in bailing out collapsed banks and in Keynesian fiscal stimuli of deflating economies will soon force western governments, including Britain’s, to reduce their expenditures and increase taxes in order to reduce unsustainable debt and to preserve creditworthiness. Debt reduction should begin only after it has become clear that we are beginning to emerge from recession: but the UK Conservative opposition, almost universally expected to win a general election within the next 12 months, strongly advocates cutting government spending immediately. Mounting (even though ill-informed) scepticism about the usefulness of development aid to Africa, combined with an incoming Conservative government committed to immediate swingeing cuts in government spending, looks set fair to reproduce in 2010 some of the conditions and attitudes denounced in my 1991 despatch. Fortunately the current Tory shadow international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has publicly declared that a Conservative government will spare development aid from cuts, and committed himself to continued bipartisan approval for the good work of the UK Department for International Development. Let’s hope that my despatch won’t need to be set as compulsory reading for Mr Cameron or Mr Osborne if and when they move across to the government benches in the house of commons some time next year.
Brian
Note: This is the text of a despatch to the then Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary, Douglas Hurd, which I sent in January 1991 shortly before the end of my posting as British High Commissioner to Nigeria, my last African posting and the end of my involvement in African affairs which had begun in London in 1957. The despatch was classified CONFIDENTIAL. It has been declassified by the FCO and released to me under the Freedom of Information Act. I have put some comments on the despatch and on the contrast between the policies and attitudes in 1991 which it describes and those now, in 2009, on my blog: please see http://www.barder.com/1784.
______________________
BRITISH HIGH COMMISSION
LAGOS
7 January 1991
The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd CBE MP
LONDON
Sir,
DOES AFRICA MATTER?
1. Next month I leave Lagos and complete 17 years’ involvement in African affairs, 10 of them dealing with west Africa or southern Africa in London, and 7 as head of mission in the two most populous countries of black Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Tidily, I end where I began, with Nigeria, whose constitutional and political problems I first tried to grapple with as a new entrant in the Colonial Office In Great Smith Street a third of a century ago. I leave Nigeria with many of the same problems unresolved – not, I think, for any lack of effort by ourselves as the colonial power or by the Nigerians themselves, but chiefly because of the inherent difficulties we bequeathed when we gummed together such a big, unwieldy entity in such a casual manner 90 years ago.
2. As I leave the continent, Africa ranks at Its lowest in any British Government’s scale of global priorities for 100 years or more. There are intense pressures, from Ministers downwards, for sharp cuts in the resources we devote to Africa in money and manpower; and for some reduction in our commitments in Africa (although, illogically and characteristically, these are unlikely to be as sharp as the cuts in resources). As I shake the African dust from willing feet, it is natural to wonder why this down-grading of Africa is taking place; whether it Is politically and economically justified; and what might be the implications for British interests.
Why at we demoting Africa in our priorities?
3. There seem to be 5 main factors:
(a) Decolonisation fatigue. Shedding our colonial responsibilities In Africa has been a long, wearing process, bringing us more obloquy than ovation and often yielding more disappointments than evident successes. For 3 decades, completing this process – especially in Kenya and then Rhodesia – and ridding ourselves of the international incubus of our involvement in apartheid South Africa have been our overriding aims in the continent. Now that they are achieved (or, in the case of South Africa, within sight of being achieved), it is natural to feel that we are entitled to turn our attention elsewhere. To recognise, define and substitute new needs and objectives requires an effort of imagination and will that does not come easily to the exhausted.
(b) Humanitarian fatigue. For decades we have given aid to Africa – sometimes generously, sometimes not. We have responded to famines with humanitarian relief aid, although often without the development aid needed to avert renewed famine in the future; and to poverty (in countries where we have recognised special responsibilities) with development aid. Yet we see a situation in Africa where poverty and need are as great as ever: in some places, greater than ever. It is understandable enough that some should begin to see Africa as a bottomless pit, and resources directed to Africa as wasted – understandable, but profoundly misguided. It is a short step from this to the conviction that Africa’s failure to make better use of the aid it has received is Africa’s fault: a notion with a big enough germ of truth to be all too plausible, especially in the eyes of those who are charged with cutting public expenditure in all directions. (It is remarkable, though, that despite the widespread acceptance of the sentiments described, Britain’s aid to Africa has not so far gone under the knife, and indeed is if anything growing. But, at a time when the staff resources to manage the programme are being cut, this may not be durable; and recently where new aid resources have been provided they have been for eastern Europe or the victims of the Gulf crisis rather than for Africa.)
(c) The end of the cold war. As long as the Soviet Union and its erstwhile allies were competing for third world hearts and minds, the west perceived the penalties of turning its back on the more western-oriented of the developing countries as unacceptably high. That constraint has gone.
(d) The lack of an obvious economic role for Africa. Until relatively recently, Africa has been regarded as a useful — even necessary — source of cheap raw materials, and a worthwhile market for the developed world’s finished products. But as cheaper artificial substitutes for Africa’s raw materials have become available, as well as for other reasons, the terms of trade have turned against Africa, with disastrous consequences for the continent’s earning power; and thus for its value as a market for the west’s exports. The process has been further aggravated by corrupt and incompetent management of production processes, leading to falls in the quality and reliability of African traded goods. Africans well understand the need for them to diversify their economies into new areas where world demand will rebuild export earnings. But they lack the resources (or the credit-worthiness required to borrow them) which they need if they are to undertake such a massive transformation of the economic systems inherited from their colonial masters. Meanwhile Africa seems – is – of declining economic relevance to the rest of the world.
(e) Perceived mismanagement by Africans of their own affairs. Again, undeniably true, although some at least of Africa’s most pressing problems are not in fact attributable to the short-comings of African leaders. However, the issue is not who is to blame for the African mess, but whether we can safely and cheaply afford to ignore it.
It is evident that all 5 factors have substance. But the striking thing which they have in common is that they explain growing indifference to Africa: they do not justify it, nor do they demonstrate that indifference is necessarily our own interests.
Are we politically or economically justified in reducing our commitment to Africa?
5. Africa certainly has little commercial significance. In 1988 it accounted for a mere 2.61% of world trade (but nearly 12% of the world’s population). Central and south America were responsible for almost half as much again as Africa (3.5%): Japan alone for 7.7%. As already noted, Africa’s importance and reliability as a source of traditional raw materials have declined. However, the African countries which produce and export oil (and gas, now or soon), while relatively few in number, include Nigeria, which alone contains almost a quarter of the population of black Africa; and energy supplies from an area which is not subject to the stresses and conflicts of the Middle East are not to be sneezed at. Already Nigerian oil is important to the United States and some western European importers. Western oil companies have very large and growing investments in Africa. Southern Africa will also remain, for the foreseeable future, a major source of vital metals and minerals. Of course this is as much of concern to other western countries as it is to Britain. But our investments in oil and minerals are great and our own reserves of oil are already declining.
6. Politically, the end of the great confrontation between international Leninism and western liberal values makes Africa more, not less, relevant to the kind of world we and our children are going to live in. The remaining global fault-line is that which separates the rich white (and, increasingly, brown or honorary white) section of humanity from the poor and mainly black. It is this division more than any other which now threatens future conflict, insecurity, violence and destruction. How this explosive incongruity comes to be resolved – bloodily or peacefully – will depend significantly on events in Africa. The escalating clash between western values and radical Islam, which is in part a function of the rich/poor, white/black divide, will also play itself out in Africa among other areas: the seeds of that conflict have already been planted, the first shoots manifestly appearing. It is difficult to see how a western country which aspires to a global role can contemplate even partial withdrawal of interest from one of the two or three most pressing issues of our generation; disclaim its responsibility for carrying its share of the burden; or seek to reduce its ability to play a part in bringing about a resolution of the next act in the drama.
7. Finally, we have to consider the potential for a wide-spread economic and social collapse in Africa. Recent events in Ethiopia, the Sudan, Somalia and (especially) Liberia are a grim warning. The west, through the IMF and World Bank, has proved unexpectedly successful in coaxing and threatening a string of African governments into adopting programmes of structural adjustment, designed to remedy the most glaring deficiencies of economic management and distortion. But as experience of structural adjustment in Africa grows, it becomes increasingly apparent that without some early and perceptible benefits for ordinary people, these programmes rapidly become politically unsustainable: and that early and perceptible benefits can be produced only with extensive outside assistance. Our admirable policies of encouraging responsible and democratic government in Africa actually reduce the chances of African governments having the necessary tenacity or political backing to sustain painful austerity programmes over the length of time required for them to succeed. There is at last in Africa an almost universal realisation of the calamitous mistakes and
mismanagement of the decades since independence and a willingness to put things right. But it becomes more and more evident that Africa’s problems simply cannot be solved by Africa’s own unaided efforts. Structural adjustment (as I have argued in an earlier despatch) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of economic recovery. A very large-scale transfer of real resources to the poor countries of Africa is an absolute necessity if Africa is to stand any chance of overcoming the enormous problems of declining demand for its raw materials and agricultural products; foreign indebtedness; environmental degradation; and population growth at rates which outstrip the increase in both national income and labour productivity. All these problems can be overcome, but not without western help on an unprecedented scale.
8. If that help is not forthcoming, the prospect of a general collapse, although still only a worst case scenario, is bound to become much more real. We cannot always base our plans on the gloomiest assumptions, but we need to be clear about the possible consequences of the policies we adopt. Increasing impoverishment and unemployment in the towns, spreading break-down of basic services (including health, communications, food distribution networks), failure of the security forces to contain violence and theft, growing inter-tribal and inter-regional conflicts – all this can already be seen in embryo in many parts of Africa; and if it becomes general, it will cause a swift descent into massive starvation, disease, violence and collapse. These will in turn prompt significant movements of populations in search of food, safety and a future for their children. A disaster on such a scale could not be quarantined inside Africa. The rest of the world could not turn its back while more than half a billion people were exposed to an experience of this character. But once the collapse begins, the cost of arresting it will rapidly become immense. Prevention is cheaper as well as better than cure.
Implications for British Interests
9. These may be considered in the context of our national domestic interests, our interests as a member of the European Community and our global interests.
Domestic
10. The Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 demonstrated that public opinion in Britain is capable of being aroused by the spectacle – especially on television – of human starvation and poverty. The effect was to compel government to be seen to be responding on a scale which went a fair way towards satisfying what the electorate clearly demanded. Similar constraints on the freedom of action of governments have been imposed through television in the past by the Biafran conflict (in Britain) and Vietnam (in the United States). It is true that efforts to arouse public opinion again over subsequent famine in Ethiopia have largely failed, but there are several factors at work here which would not apply to a general spread of hunger and starvation over much of Africa. Even if economic failure in Africa were to fall short of a spectacular collapse, and took the form of a gradual increase in poverty, disease and hunger, it seems unlikely that British public opinion would acquiesce indefinitely in the apparent indifference of its government. The fact that we have a substantial community of black (not to mention Muslim) compatriots, and a slowly growing number of black MPs, would tend to raise the political cost of inaction, or of a merely token response, by government.
11. Even if public opinion failed to compel a response, the reality of mounting poverty and degradation in Africa will force itself on the attention of the west. Failure of employment possibilities and of secure food supplies will compel large numbers of Africans to migrate in order to escape from the growing nightmare. There might well be a wave of economic refugees which will make the boat people seem like tourists. Because of Britain’s historic connections with so much of Africa, the pressure on Britain to open its doors to African immigrants on a very large scale would be intense.
12. Meanwhile in Africa itself large parts of the continent face the prospect of gradually degenerating into festering slums, breeding international drug trafficking, terrorism and disease, accompanied by inter-tribal warfare and endemic violence of all kinds. AIDS is already a multiplying plague. it will be impossible to screen Britain, given its intimate connections with so many of the most populous African countries, from the effects of these highly infectious conditions.
13. The cost of retrieving a situation of this kind in Africa would be exorbitant; certainly incomparably greater than that of acting now to arrest the decline and to bring current problems into the realm of the manageable. In the eyes of much of the world, modern Africa is more the creation of Britain than of any other single country. Britain could not hope to escape the obligation to contribute a significant share of the global cost of either a rescue operation after a disaster, or remedial action to forestall it. There is an overwhelming case on financial grounds alone for acting sooner rather than later, collectively, to provide the resources required for removing most of the debt burden from African countries (provided that they are committed to active economic reform), for arresting environmental degradation, and for restoring the physical and human infrastructure sufficiently to permit diversification of economic effort and its re-direction into areas that will eventually become self-financing – as well, incidentally, as making a more positive contribution to world economic activity.
European Community
14. In a post-communist world increasingly divided into continental trading blocks, Africa has no developed area to turn to as trading partner, aid donor and protector, other than western Europe. Latin America and the Caribbean are natural elements in the North American sphere of influence. Asia and the Pacific Rim are rapidly becoming an economic force in their own right, powered by Japan and the other newly developing economies, and also closely linked to the United States. Africa, almost entirely made up of former European colonies and still condemned to live within the borders drawn by Europeans, is bound to be the protégé of western Europe. In some respects this seems to have been more readily accepted by our EC partners than by ourselves, even though it is Britain and France, followed at some distance by Italy, Germany and Belgium, which have had much the closest historical connections with Africa and still maintain the greatest interests and influence in the continent. The aid performance of the 17 major donors, including the Twelve, in 1987 tells, from our point of view, a sorry story. Britain’s aid as a percentage of GDP was the lowest of any of the 17 apart from Austria (an anyway embarrassing analogue) and the United States (whose total aid programme was more than 4 times as big as ours). Although a healthy share of the aid which we do give is allocated to Africa, the size of our aid in total is not something to be proud of. The promise of some increase is welcome, but nothing so far envisaged comes near to matching the scale of the need or the extent of our responsibilities as Europeans.
15. Any move by Britain to reduce the scale of its representation in Africa by any significant amount would be seen by our European partners as further evidence of our refusal to accept the implications of our own and Europe’s history. Without an adequate and effective diplomatic presence in each of the main countries of this diverse and splintered continent, we could not hope to manage an adequate aid programme; nor to exercise the influence over the policies of African governments which is an inescapable condition of our ability to ensure that the aid we give is put to optimum use. Since Africa of all continents (with the possible exception of Europe and the Middle East) is the home of the world’s most intractable and menacing problems, we would be doing ourselves a powerful disservice – not least in the eyes of our fellow- Europeans – if we deliberately deprived ourselves of the eyes and ears we need to monitor events, to assess them in terms of British interests, and to manage our response to them. We cannot rely on others who have far less knowledge and understanding of Africa than we to do this for us, without serious damage to our status as a significant world power and to our ability to behave like one.
16. These are not questions of guilt or compensation for past wrongs, real or imaginary. They relate to real, practical problems in an area with which we have special connections that imply special responsibilities. It seems inconceivable that the Community as a whole would be prepared to turn its back on a human tragedy in Africa. If we are serious about our determination to play an active part in Europe, we must face the consequence for our contribution to a European effort in Africa, which indeed we are uniquely well qualified to inspire and lead (as anyone who has participated in the EC’s Africa Working Group, or in discussion of African affairs in an EC Heads of Mission meeting, can testify).
Global Interests
17. In 1987, national income per head was £6,537 in Britain, £10,056 in the United States and £15,058 in Switzerland. In Nigeria – by no means the poorest country in Africa, but much the most populous – it was £170: 2.6% of that in Britain, 1.13% of that in Switzerland. The charts in Annexes A-C, attached, tell a vivid story.
18. This cannot be a sustainable situation, even in the medium term. Such grotesque disparities in the human condition are an inevitable source of conflict and instability. It is a century since British people ceased to be willing to tolerate massive inequality of wealth and income within their own society. The time has surely come when we should tackle an even more offensive situation in the global village.
Conclusions
19. Nothing that is likely to occur in the foreseeable future in central or south America, in Asia or the Pacific, is likely to impinge half as directly on British and western interests as the danger of degeneration or outright collapse in Africa. Only events in Europe itself, and arguably in the Middle East, should be rated as of obviously higher priority for Britain; and whereas in the rest of Europe and in the Middle East Britain is not the principal player, in most of Africa we are; no other country has the close links, historical ties and depth of understanding with Africa that Britain has built up in the past 100 years and continues to enjoy (if that is the right word). Our influence in Africa and capacity for understanding its dynamics are important elements in our international standing. This is a national asset which, once thrown away in a fit of instant cheese-paring, could never be retrieved,
20. Against this background, for Britain to start a process of disengagement from Africa, principally for reasons of’ financial stringency, would be widely and justifiably seen as implying at best a sad failure to understand and accept our own history; and at worst as a betrayal of that history which others in the world, and many among our own compatriots, will neither understand nor forgive.
21. I am sending copies of this despatch to the Minister for Overseas Development and to HM Representatives or High Commissioners at Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Pretoria, Accra., UKMIS New York and UKREP Brussels.
I am
Sir
Yours faithfully
[Brian Barder]
ANNEXES:
_______________________________
SUMMARY
1. As the High Commissioner ends 17 years’ involvement in African affairs, he wonders whether HMG is right to relegate Africa to the bottom of its priorities and reduce its commitment: is this in Britain’s interests? (paras 1-2)
2. Reasons for demotion: decolonisatlon and humanitarian fatigue, end of the cold war, lack of an economic role for Africa, African mis-management. Reasons but not necessarily justifications (paras 3-4).
3. Political and economic pros and cons of reducing our African commitments. Africa commercially unimportant, but significant as oil producer. Africa’s place in the rich/poor, white/black divide. Risk of widespread economic decline or collapse in Africa and its serious implications for Britain and the west. Cheaper to avert than to rescue (paras 5-8).
4. British domestic interests: public opinion in face of sharp decline or collapse in Africa. Risk of mass migration, with UK as prime target. Effects on Britain of Africa as slum: drugs, terrorism, disease, violence, instability. Implications for Britain’s standing In the EC of our disengagement from an area where we have assets of historical connection, influence and understanding. In new world of continental trading blocks, Africa clearly a western European responsibility. Britain’s poor aid record compared with EC partners: as chief protagonist in Africa, we should remain equipped to play an active part. Not a question of guilt (paras 9-16).
5. Global interests: gross disparities of wealth and income between Africa and the developed world a main source of future conflict and instability: not sustainable in medium term. Britain qualified to act as a principal player in Africa more than in any other major global issue. To reduce our diplomatic presence, cut resources allocated to Africa and significantly to disengage would betray our history and throw away an irretrievable national asset
(paras 17-21).
______________________________________________
I had been almost persuaded by the relentless drum-beat of Guardian editorials and columns that Gordon Brown is finished and should step down now, if only so as not to prolong the party’s and the country’s agony — well, embarrassment, if not agony. Almost persuaded, but not quite. Following recent traumatic events — the resignations, the largely involuntary reshuffle, the defiant press conference, the county council election results, the sure prospect of even worse to come in the European parliament elections — I have come to the reluctant conclusion that Gordon should stay on until a general election next year.
I say this out of absolutely no admiration for Brown’s style of government and politics. The widely reported briefing by the attack dogs working out of No. 10 Downing Street against fellow Labour parliamentarians, including ministers, is scandalous: loyalty should be a two-way street. The over-reliance for advice on a small coterie of personal and political cronies — Ed Balls prominently among them — is harmful and undemocratic, especially when the prime minister has a huge range of ministers, back-benchers, and above all experienced and savvy civil servants to sound out and listen to. He sticks doggedly to policies which are heartedly disliked by a large section of the party at the grass roots and probably even in parliament. He looks and sounds terrible on television and seems unable to present his ideas and policies in a convincing or attractive way. He allows himself to take the bait at PMQs when Cameron insults and taunts him, losing his temper instead of acting the serious statesman above the party political fray. I don’t believe that Labour under Brown can win an election, whenever it is held.
In spite of all these negatives, I believe that the balance of advantage for the country, and therefore also for the Labour party, lies in rallying round Gordon Brown and supporting him right up to the spring or early summer of 2010 — even though I don’t believe he can win it for Labour then either. Here are seven good reasons:
1. If the party elects a new leader and prime minister now (or very soon), there will be intense pressure for a general election almost immediately. The country can’t be expected to tolerate a second prime minister who has never led his party to an election victory, or even gone into an election as party leader, but who seems set on occupying Downing Street for nearly another year.
2. It is neither in the country’s nor in Labour’s interests to have a general election — and a change of government — before there has been a chance to see signs of success for Gordon Brown’s bold and far-sighted measures to minimise the effects of the recession, to help stimulate the economy so that recovery may begin earlier rather than later, and to lead and coordinate corresponding action by much of the rest of the world. It’s unrealistic to expect that there will be convincing evidence that these measures are succeeding until the end of this year or early next year, at the earliest. To hold an election before Labour can demonstrate that the government’s anti-recession policies are succeeding is to hand the Tories a golden opportunity to denounce them as financial profligacy, doomed to failure, in contrast to Conservative promises of tough measures to cut “wasteful” government spending (details not specified) and to bring other expenditures back “under control”.
3. A Tory victory at an early election would mean the new government immediately embarking on savage cuts to government spending even before we begin to recover from the effects of a deflationary recession. Quite apart from the effects of such cuts on essential public services such as health and education, and on benefits introduced by Labour to help shield the most vulnerable people in society from the effects of the recession, general cuts in government spending while we’re still in the depths of the recession would inevitably delay recovery from it, further aggravate unemployment, prolong the collapse in government revenues caused by the recession and thus bring forward the need for increased taxation — which in turn would further prolong the recession. Millions would suffer unnecessarily as a result. Cuts in government spending and increases in taxation are going to be unavoidable sooner or later, whichever party is in power: the really significant difference between the parties is over the timing. Labour rightly wants to defer these essentially deflationary measures until we have started to recover from the worst of the recession; the Tories want to start them immediately — in part, probably, because of their instinctive liking for cuts in spending on public services which the better-off rarely use, and for cutting taxes on the rich. Economic illiteracy may also play its part. Anyway, for all our sakes, the measures already taken by the Brown government need and deserve time to work. The Tories would reverse some and scrap the rest.
4. An election held before the late autumn (and a change of leader now would probably entail an election in the summer or very early autumn of this year) would almost certainly be won by the Tories, who would accordingly come into power before the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty and therefore before the treaty will have been brought into effect following ratification by all 27 EU governments. The Tories are firmly committed to holding a referendum on the treaty immediately after winning a general election if the treaty has not yet come into force, and they would undoubtedly act accordingly. Since Britain has already legally ratified the treaty, it’s difficult to see what options could usefully be offered in the referendum except a very vague and general question such as “Do you approve or disapprove of the Lisbon treaty?” Indeed, the temptation for the Tories to misrepresent the treaty as “the new EU constitution” in the referendum might prove irresistible. Either way, many voters, perhaps a majority, encouraged by both the government and most of the print and television media, would treat such a referendum as an opportunity to register a vote for or against UK membership of the EU, rather than on the much narrower question of the Lisbon treaty, whatever the precise wording on the ballot papers: and the outcome could well set in train a series of events culminating in our forced departure from the European Union (as I have argued elsewhere, e.g. here). The key point is that an unnecessary and divisive referendum on the EU would do even more harm to British interests, and represent an even graver threat to our continuing interests and role in Europe, than a demand by a Tory government, after the Lisbon treaty has been brought into effect, that the treaty should be re-opened and re-negotiated. Such a demand would win little if any support from our EU partners and with luck would be drowned out by their contemptuous laughter. This would be humiliating, but not necessarily seriously damaging. This is a weighty argument for deferring a UK general election until after the second Irish referendum, ratification by the few remaining governments that have not yet completed their ratification processes, and the coming into effect of the treaty. And deferring the election means not changing the party and national leadership now.
5. To plunge the Labour party into the all-absorbing arguments and personality competitions of a leadership election, and thus inflict on the country a period of several months of government inactivity and distraction, all at a time of almost unprecedentedly grave national crisis in the worst economic recession for three generations, would both be, and be seen to be, an act of grossly self-indulgent irresponsibility. There is still a vast amount of day-to-day work to be done in further protecting the poorest from the effects of the recession and speeding up our recovery from it. This is no time for the government to take time off for a huge internal wrangle over the succession to Gordon Brown.
6. There is no evidence that Alan Johnson, or any other credible candidate for the succession to Brown, would change existing government policies in any significant way: no-one who’s in with a chance is offering to scrap part-privatisation of the post office, ID cards, Trident, control orders or the other assaults on our freedoms introduced by successive Labour home secretaries under cover of the “war on terrorism”, so-called; no-one promises to withdraw from an unwinnable and misconceived conflict in Afghanistan; no-one has any idea how to answer the West Lothian question or to complete the process of devolution of all domestic powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or to remedy the glaring inconsistency whereby England alone has no parliament or government of its own or to give the second chamber a useful democratic function or to head off the threat of Scottish secession from the United Kingdom or to reverse the poisonous centralising tendencies of all governments for the last 20 years or to revive local government. Moreover, it’s not as if Alan Johnson, or any other likely candidate to succeed Gordon Brown, appears to possess such magnetic charisma and personal popular electoral appeal as might hold out a hope of reversing the precipitate decline in Labour’s fortunes. How many UK voters, shown a photograph of Alan Johnson, would be able to put a name to it or him? A change of leader now would risk being no real change at all either in policies or even of personalities.
7. The result of an early election — before the autumn, say — would almost certainly be a catastrophic defeat for Labour. A spring or early summer election in 2010, when with luck the first green shoots of recovery from recession might be starting to show, demonstrating a decent prospect of success for Brown’s economic management of the recession, and when (with even more luck) memories of the MPs’ expenses scandal may have begun to recede with the allowances rules having been drastically reformed, might hold out the prospect of a reasonable performance by Labour, even if the Tories (as seems likely) still won it. The more Labour MPs and candidates manage to survive the next election, the greater the chances of a reasonably early recovery by the party in opposition. And that means an election later rather than sooner.
Seven powerful reasons for letting Gordon soldier on until towards the middle of next year, and closing ranks now to give him united support in the meantime, whatever one’s private reservations about some of his policy intentions and personality traits. Not everyone will agree with all seven. But it’s hard, surely, to dismiss them all. Can anyone really suggest seven cogent reasons for plunging into a leadership contest now without risking any of the harmful consequences described above?
Brian
