The ‘Conservative-led’ Coalition Government, to apply Sir Winston Churchill’s oft-quoted comment on Russia, is nothing short of ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. Nevertheless, we can can try to decode its behaviour in both ideological terms and its necessary translation into action-oriented public policy positions. It shouldn’t be hard. The Economist recently described the Cameron Government as the ‘West’s most radical government’. The formation of the Coalition, to use the jargon of political science, was potentially an ‘inflection point’ in British politics. It has, even with a limited two-year perspective, the potential to be as seismic a political benchmark as the 1945 landslide victory for Clement Attlee’s programme for democratic socialism or Mrs Thatcher’s 1979 election victory for Tory nationalism. The formation of the Coalition created a profound moment of opportunity for the Conservatives under David Cameron. For Andrew Gamble, the Coalition allowed Cameron:

‘to achieve what Tony Blair had failed to achieve, a realignment of British politics, a big tent involving the full participation of two of the three national parties. The realignment of the centre left which had been the aspiration of so many progressives had been transformed by Cameron into a realignment of the centre right.’

However, the novelty and radicalism of the Coalition’s ideas, policies and general character is in doubt two years after its formation because of a sequence of hesitations, mistakes, ‘u-turns’, vacillations and false starts it has, inadvertent or otherwise, committed. The directionality and coherence of the Coalition’s vision, mission and overall raison d’etre is in question. There are those on the Right who believe the ineptitudes and follies of the Government are attributable to the nature of coalitions per se. As opposed to addressing the concerns of ‘the people’, the Conservative elites’ first priority is propitiating to the Liberal Democrats. For the Left, the Coalition is firstly vicious: this viciousness is played-out through an ideological commitment to a smaller state, an emaciated welfare system and a conceited uninterestedness about inequality. And it is secondly seen as ‘incompetent’ and failing to achieve its own self-described objectives. Even the Cameronite coterie are discontented. The initial radicalism and buccaneering spirit of the first few months in office, they claim, has given way to political timidity, moderation and harmful bargaining. To use George H. W. Bush’s maladroit catchphrase, the Coalition, from multiple perspectives, has lost that ‘vision thing’!

Cameron’s Coalition started off both bold and brazen. Cameron in June 2011 said the reforms and public spending reductions executed by his government would change Britain’s ‘whole way of life’ for a generation and its impact would be felt everywhere. Both Cameron and Nick Clegg in May 2010 declared the Coalition would ‘take Britain in a new historic direction’ and the Coalition, they claimed, ‘has the potential for era-changing, convention-challenging, radical reform’. Another minister in the Coalition said grandiosely that the reforms and cuts proposed presented a ‘unique opportunity to redefine the horizon of expectations’ of the British people. Two years on the prose of policy has substituted the poetry of ideas. How effective has this translation or action-orientation of ideas been? The passage of the Health and Social Care Bill marked the biggest reform of the NHS since its creation in 1947. It has substituted state insurance provision for top-down state delivery. GPs now commission services instead of working in partnerships with Primary Care Trusts, which are being eliminated up and down the country. On education, Michael Gove’s alacrity for supply-side reforms has taken shape in a comprehensive programme of Academisation of secondary schools and some primary schools. The free schools programme, despite suggestions that it would fuel social divisions and undermine local democracy, now has the tacit support of the Labour Party. There are now twenty four, with an additional 79 that will proceed to open in September 2012 for the new academic year. Iain Duncan Smith at the Department of Work and Pensions had introduced radical welfare reform after failed attempts by the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments. The ‘Universal Credit’ is a the new welfare benefit that will replace the miscellany of six of the main means-tested benefits and tax credits between the period 2013 to 2017. It is effectively designed to make the incentives to work ubiquitous regardless of personal circumstances but not too crude as to push individuals and their families into poverty. Reforms to the NHS, education and welfare, even though not without their problems, are areas where the Coalition Government has remained and continues to be bold. Other areas have been less bold and impressive.

Deficit reduction however and the management of the economy remains the stated central priority of the Coalition Government. The accelerated deficit reduction programme, which, if successful, will wipe out the bulk of the structural deficit by 2017. Within this seemingly technocratic, pragmatic and essential policy, there is an ideological commitment to shrinking the size of the state and thus limiting the liabilities of the state. The economic theory on which this plan is based is highly-contentious and given the continuance of the deterioration in the nation’s (and Europe’s) finances, it is being challenged by the alternative strategies like never before. The deeply contentious economic policy of the Osborne Treasury is premised and dependent on the concept of ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’. Otherwise known as ‘expansionary austerity’, EFC predicts that a major reduction in government expenditure will change the future expectations about taxes and government spending and will thus create the space for the expansion of private consumption, which, will in turn, revive the fortunes of the economy. It is the corollary of Ricardian equivalence (i.e. the existence of a deficit deters increases in private consumption because consumers anticipate spending cuts/revenue increases in order to bring down the deficit, thus curtailing their propensity and ability to spend privately). The ‘double-dip’ and return to recession has challenged this strategy. Commentators talk about ‘plan A+’ (i.e. bringing forward infrastructure programmes, deregulating the economy, supply-side measures in employment law, etc) or ‘plan B’ (i.e. Labour’s plans for a temporary reduction in VAT, a N. I. holiday and a deceleration of the public expenditure reductions). Many on the Right of the Party (i.e. David David, John Redwood, Christopher Chope, etc) are convinced Osborne needs to go further (the Right point correctly to the fact that fewer than 10% of the spending reductions have been made yet with less than three years to go before the next General Election) and they point to the record borrowing figures (estimated at £15.2 billion in net borrowing) and the need to tear down the barriers to faster growth. On the Left, Ed Balls and other neo-Keynesians like David Blanchflower argue that short-term extra borrowing will stimulate growth, which in turn will help bring down the deficit by having more tax receipts due to the consequent drop in unemployment (currently above 2.7 million). The Budget of March 2012, for all its controversies and there were many, sent perhaps one single message: there is no alternative to plan A and there is no change from the broad plan and vision set out in the first Coalition Budget in June 2010. The Budget was ‘fiscally neutral’ insofar as where taxes were cut they were increased elsewhere. Added to this was the perennial non-stories of a ‘granny tax’, a ‘pasty tax’ and a ‘caravan tax’. What was symbolic and presentationally problematic was the cut in the top rate of tax for those earning over and above £150,000 from 50% to 45%. It was seen by many, especially the social democratic centres of British politics, as a ‘Millionaire’s Budget’. For the Coalition, it was an embodiment of their belief in aspiration and shrinking the state’s reach in the pockets of individuals and their families.

There is no question that ‘Osbornomics’, as we stand, is in trouble and unpopular. Nevertheless, there are positive precedents for sticking to the original plan however. Geoffrey Howe’s 1981 Budget is oft-sighted as the acme of fiscal prudence and austerity, which was punitive and unpopular in 1981, but for Thatcherites it ensconced a taxation system and a restraint on public spending that ushered in the ‘age of prosperity’ in the mid-to-late 1980s. There is also a precedent of where u-turns in economic policy have not only vitiated the economy but toppled the government and that is the ‘u-turn’ of the Anthony Barber Treasury under the Heath Government in 1972. Barber’s deregulatory and proto-Lawsonian economics by 1972-73, due to international pressures such as the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, had broken down and interventionist policies were followed in its place. Nevertheless, a u-turn may not be a complete disaster. The Lawson Treasury under Mrs Thatcher abandoned monetarism for a more traditional and less esoteric concern for sound money policies. Nevertheless, no u-turn is contemplated as things stand. Cameron and Osborne look back to the past to find that austerity has delivered Conservative governments re-election. Their raison d’etre has become deficit reduction and they will largely stick to that regardless of the outcome. Who said ideology was dead?

Given this bleak backdrop for the government, what should we make of the Queen’s Speech delivered in May 2012? A Queen’s Speech is the apposite opportunity for government to renew itself, to reassert old commitments and introduce new ones. The programme for Coalition 2.0 is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, the Coalition programme for government, published in 2010, has almost been completed and fully implemented. Even as early as May 2011, ministers announced that two-thirds of the 1,276 actions had been completed and 31% were in progress. Given this, the Queen’s Speech needed to be replete with bills to fill the time of the next parliament and reinvigorate the purpose of the Coalition. The fact that there was only nineteen bills (15 bills and 4 draft bills) does not bode well. Secondly, the bills that are in the Queen’s Speech are highly contentious. The Coalition Government let it be known that it intends to plough ahead with reforming the House of Lords as part of a legislative programme for the years ahead that places ‘economic growth, justice and constitutional reform’ at the heart of its agenda. Other proposals include: measures to support families; a change in employment law; reform to public pensions; break-up of the banks; and a proposal to remove the UK from any liability for future EU bailouts. The Tory side of the Coalition will almost unanimously, apart from the uber-modernisers, oppose Lords’ reform and the Liberal Democrats will oppose changes to employment law. Again, the legislative programme here does not bode well for the Coalition Government and its dearth of policies on growth is alarmingly complacent.

Given these problems, it might be interesting and perhaps important to evaluate, from this short-term perspective, how the Cameron Government compares to previous Tory administrations. It may help us ascertain what kind of Conservative Cameron and his coterie of ministers are. In the run-up the General Election of 2010, The Spectator editor, Fraser Nelson, asked, ‘Is Cameron a Heath or a Thatcher?’ Of course, Cameron might not be like either of these two former Tory prime ministers. Nicholas Watt, of The Guardian, suggested Cameron’s political hero is Harold Macmillan, and Ben Jackson and Gregg McClymont suggested Stanley Baldwin was the influence. David Marquand’s innovative ideological map of contemporary British politics provides a solution to the Cameron puzzle. In his majestic book, Britain since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy, he divides the events, ideas and individuals of British politics into four ideological types: Democratic Collectivism (i.e. Aneurin Bevan); Democratic Republicanism (i.e. Roy Jenkins); Whig Imperialism (i.e. Edward Heath), and Tory Nationalism (i.e. Marquess of Salisbury). It is the latter two typologies in which (most) Conservative politicians bifurcate into. For Marquand, the Conservative Party under Mrs Thatcher represented a revival of the Tory national tradition, which stresses authority in society and the state. ‘In calm periods’, Marquand writes, ‘when authority seemed secure, tory nationalist voices were rarely heard. In times of trouble, when it was under threat, they were clamant and even raucous.’ For Marquand (and Danny Kruger, a former speechwriter to Cameron), Cameron is best understood as a ‘whig imperialist’. Like other notable Whig imperialists such as Stanley Baldwin and Edward Heath, Cameron sees himself as one of the ‘practical men of the world, genially tolerant rather than self-righteously shrill. They were repelled by dogmatic absolutes and believed that the subtleties of practice would not be captured in any theoretical formula of a neatly packaged creed.’ Therefore, the Whig imperialist tradition, which is Cameron is said to emanate from, is adaptive and self-consciously appealing to ‘practice’. In this respect Cameron can be seen as the ‘heir to Heath’. Heath, for Marquand, ‘was a whig imperialist of sorts’; he did his awkward best to practice the politics of inclusion, power-sharing was one the central themes of his statecraft and he sought to run the economy on a more explicit form of social partnership, embracing the state, organised labour and business. But beneath Heath’s whig imperialism lay a streak of democratic collectivism. Heath was not necessarily dirigiste but he adored the idea of a professionally-run state. This is self-evidently not Cameron and yet they share the whig imperialist tradition, which is distinct from the ideological crusading Conservatism of the Thatcherian 1980s. Stuart White, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, explained this peculiar paradox of Cameronism: his personal approach and style of politics is whig imperialist and yet he’s ostensibly pursuing a Thatcherite agenda. For White, the adaptability of Cameronite Conservatism, as expressed in whig imperialism, explains the ease of his adoption to Thatcherism as Thatcherism represents the prevailing ‘common sense’ in early twenty-first century British politics. The ‘common sense’ of the ‘climate of opinion’ of the Coalition Government is in essence Thatcherite: ‘the state is the problem, markets work, taxes should be lowered, unions should be weak’. The doctrinaire and exasperating nature of Thatcherism was its insurgency disposition on the politics of the 1970s; Cameronism is making adjustments and acculturating the British to that ‘common sense’. For Marquand, both traditions, Thatcherite Tory nationalism and Cameronite Whig imperialism, seek ‘to defend and sustain authority, social and political, but they saw that task in profoundly different ways’. In short, the Coalition Government pursues different means to the same end it has always sought to achieve.

Many on the Right of the Party disagree however. They see Cameron’s style and substance of politics to be alien and extrinsic to the Tory tradition. They believe, to quote Tim Montgomerie, that instead of creating a ‘blue collar conservative’ Party, Cameron and his ‘metropolitan clique’ have created a ‘white collar liberal’ Party. This may be true to an extent, but it is doubtful whether the Right’s prescription for Conservatism and electoral success in 2015 would achieve better results. Cameronism, as it were, is the only game in town. The marrying of social liberalism to Tory dryness on economics is the Conservatism espoused by Boris Johnson in London and the Coalition Government in the country. If the Right of the Tory Party think that the Party is losing the battle of ideas because it is insufficiently Right-wing, the the eight years of modernisation under Cameron and the three election defeats between 1997 and 2005 has been lost on them. The Britain of the 2010s is a much more socially liberal and tolerant country to the one that the Tories governed in the 1980s. Attitudes towards sex, gender, homosexuality, race, abortion and drugs have moved towards a more liberal, social democratic position. Furthermore, there are two problems the Conservative Party faces in the next few years, possibly even beyond that, which will confront them regardless of the creed or type of Conservatism espoused.

The first is the nature of the period of politics between 2010 and 2015. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, in April 2010, perhaps Delphically, suggested that whoever were the victors of the election in May 2010, given the austerity they’d have to inflict upon the nation, would be ‘out of power for a generation’. So, will the austerity programme of the Cameron Government make the Tories unelectable for a generation? I think this is quite possible. There are many indicators to suggest this. One of the most forceful indicators of this is that the period of austerity being administered, seven years, is simply unprecedented in its length and severity. At the time of the General Election of 2015, the Tories, along with the other parties, are going to have to promise the nation another round of killer cure austerity!

The second problem is much more fundamental and testing for the Conservative Party and Conservatism more largely. In the US, political commentators have designated their two dominant parties, Republican and Democrat, either ‘minority’ or ‘majority’ party status at different points in time. For example, the Republicans were the majority party from 1868 to 1933 and the Democrats the majority party from 1933 to 1980. In Britain, given the that we change our governments more frequently and do not have a separation of powers, these designations are not easily translatable. Nevertheless, the Conservatives, especially under Mrs Thatcher, often referred to themselves as the ‘natural party of government’. Right-wing think-tanks in the 1980s circulated slogans such as ‘Labour will never rule again’. Harold Wilson in the mid-1970s referred to Labour as the ‘natural party of government’ too. Is anybody the ‘natural party of government’ today? I believe that to be Labour. Over the last twenty years, Labour has won three elections and the Conservatives just one. The Conservatives have not won an outright majority since April 1992. Over this time, Labour have become a more ‘one nation’ Party and the Tories are more a regional, rural, Southern-based Party. Labour have only been out of power for two years, having left Britain with the biggest deficit in the OECD, and yet YouGov polling throughout the early half of May 2012 have put Labour between nine and thirteen points ahead of the Conservatives, giving Labour a more than comfortable majority at the next General Election. This polling data evinces the changed political climate and concomitant change in language and values since the announcement of the Budget in 2012. The 2012 Budget not only damaged the Coalition but simultaneously benefited and advantaged Labour’s standing. Prior to this, the deteriorating economy had done very little to improve Labour’s economic competence ratings. Ben Jackson, Fellow of University College, Oxford, and Gregg McClymont MP , UK shadow minister for pensions, published a stunningly percipient paper, Cameron’s Trap, at the end of 2011 on how Labour need to change the politico-economic narrative in order to achieve a majority at the next General Election. Their central argument is that when austerity and Conservative governance have been intertwined, namely in the 1930s and 1980s, both Baldwin and Mrs Thatcher respectively presented their Tory prescriptions for recovery as ‘common sense’. So, despite persistently high employment in these periods (seen as a ‘price worth paying’ for low inflation), living standards rose for the majority of the populations in the 1930s and 1980s. Furthermore, both Baldwin and Mrs Thatcher effectively demonised the Labour Opposition as ‘profligate’ and ‘incompetent’. Miliband must try and avoid these two narratives from embedding themselves in the collective consciousness of the British people. For Jackson and McClymont, shifting the discourse away from ‘austerity’ and public spending reductions will mean Labour can fight the election on their terms. Arguably, the happenstance of dreadful local elections results for both Coalition parties and the presidential election victory of Parti Socialiste candidate Francois Hollande shifts both British and European politics respectively to the Left. The Tory ‘common sense’ of austerity, efficiency and responsibility, which has prevailed as the dominant discourse of the prognosis of economic recovery since 2010, has given way to the social-democratic tropes of ‘growth’, ‘investment’ and ‘demand’. It is my contention here that the Tory prescription for the future is now designated and consigned ideological minority status. At the height of the Tory Party’s ‘majority status’ position under Mrs Thatcher, it was said that ‘Conservatism swims like a fish in the sea’ and any Labour vote is therefore a ‘deviant one’. The national culture was Tory. This is much changed. Max Hastings, in an article in The Guardian in 2006, aptly summarised the dilemma for Cameron and the Conservatives in post-Thatcher Britain: ‘Britain is now a social democratic country’. It is the Conservatives who are the radical outsiders. Miliband, from the standpoint of mid-2012, can focus on the underperformance of the economy and decline of living standards, all presided over by an aloof Tory elite. So, the Tories have not only, temporarily, lost the future but also the past. The dangers of this don’t need pressing. For George Orwell, ‘who controls the past controls the future’.

Cameron, like Mrs Thatcher before him, will continue the demonisation of the Labour Party as the Party of the ‘profligate’ and ‘incompetent’, but he must present, if he has any real expectation of reelection, a positive Tory vision of the future, which is flagrantly missing in the emphasis on austerity. Mrs Thatcher communicated the ‘vision-thing’ aspects of Thatcherism by celebrating Britain’s imperial past; a return to ‘pre-progressive’ morality, and the blossoming of ‘popular capitalism’. In Cameron’s case, the Big Society provides this. One might sensibly ask, ‘what happened to the Big Society?’ It has barely been mooted in 2012, despite it being the only positive dimension of contemporary Conservative thinking offered by this generation of Conservatives. Maybe Cameron and his acolytes suffer from temporary amnesia, but as far as I can tell, the once lauded ‘big idea’ has died a quiet but quick death. This is illustrated by Steve Hilton’s unaccounted for departure from Cameron’s team. The Public Administration Select Committee found that many were still confused over the Big Society’s message, and warned that two years into the government there was still no clear implementation plan for the policy. Nevertheless, the abandonment of the Big Society has big risks. The Big Society for the Coalition is for the Conservatives what Michel Foucault called the ‘regime of truth’ – it provides coherence to what looks like dissonant and fragmented ideas and policies. Alas, the abandonment of the idea is what looks like is taking place. Cameron has riskily and wrongly placed all of his political chips on the desire to ‘rebalance’ the economy in a desire to abandon the growth model of the ‘New’ Labour years and promote manufacturing and export-led recovery in the regions. Cameron is aware of the outside dangers to his leadership of the Party and the country. P. B. Shelley reminded us in his sonnet, Ozymandias, of the perishability and inevitability of decline for both leaders and the states they govern. The same fate applies to all leaders, however great, strong, virtuous or cunning. What should give Cameron and Conservative Party some comfort is that most governments face tough times in their second year over tax and spending issues (Attlee in 1947; Wilson in 1966; Heath in 1972; Thatcher in 1981, and Blair in 1999). Nevertheless, the problems the Conservative Party faces today are simply unprecedented. This may be the last Tory-dominated government for a generation given the reasons adumbrated in this article.

Photo credit: Politico

Last week, whilst teaching a course at Colorado College, I wrote a piece for The Economist about a bill to allow civil unions in the state, which was combined with reporting on Obama’s announcement in support of gay marriage and that passage of North Carolina’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This larger story – Colorado is rather small beer, to be fair – meant that my piece went from 500 words to about 150. Given that I am an infrequent freelancer, usually I’d be gutted, but this meant a few lines in an article written for the most part by Peter David, the Washington bureau chief and Lexington columnist, who I just found out died tragically in a car crash last Thursday night, the day the article went to press.

I am too stunned to write much about this. Clive Crook, formerly with The Economist, who knew him far better than I did, wrote a wonderful tribute about a first rate journalist and one of the gentlest intellects one will ever come across. His colleagues added their condolences and remembrances to a piece written by Politico. Peter was my neighbour when I lived in Washington (I occupied an attic; he a house), and while he perhaps did not know it, was a very influential figure to me in a, shall we say, transitional period in life. He would be too modest to admit that his advice held significant weight. It did. In an age of a so-called dying trade, Peter was very sympathetic and supportive to a young writer trying – maybe a little too hard – to crack into journalism. One time he said, “Blake, relax. Keep in mind that I was once writing in a magazine about house plants.” And apparently he did – or perhaps he was trying to make me feel better. Nevertheless, he was one of the biggest proponents of my current adventure at Oxford and always had time to hear about what I was working on – even taking the time last September to have a coffee with me when up against a impending deadline.

The gay marriage article was certainly not his main assignment last week. Everyone has rightly encouraged all to read his last column: a bit of optimism about America amidst so many predictions of impending doom. That piece is so David. I always felt better after talking with him. I’ll keep my glass half-full on his advice – and will always be cheered that I got to share a few sentences under his (hidden) byline.

A Blake Ewing is a DPhil student at Oxford University and the Graduate Editor of Politics in Spires. 

Featuring a variety of scholars and leaders in the field of peace and conflict studies, international development and theology, the conference aimed to “deepen the understanding of the paradoxical role of religion and spirituality in the contemporary social and political context, and its potential to shape global governance.”

The first panel, entitled “Religion, Civilization and Globalization”, began with a presentation by Katharine Marshall, Senior Fellow at the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. Reflecting on her former role as Director of the World Bank in Mauritania, Professor Marshall spoke on the topic: “Bringing Mind, Heart and Soul into Globalization.” She emphasized the challenge for development practitioners and civil society to complement the undeniably central role played by faith-inspired organizations in the political, social and civic lives of communities in many parts of the world.

Stating that ‘secular’, ‘spiritual’, ‘religion’, and ‘faith’ are “all loaded terms”, Marshall contrasted the scepticism of the secular community towards faith-inspired groups with the doubts of religious organizations towards projects lacking a spiritual affiliation. While the former camp is wary of religion for its propensity to be divisive and proselytizing, an entirely negative characterization of the latter would ignore the important contributions of faith-inspired communities to peacebuilding, conflict resolution and social cohesion.  Of course, NGOs and the civil sector have reason to be apprehensive, given the legacy of religious groups in perpetuating conservative views on gender roles, reproductive health, and women’s leadership; in many circles, religion is perceived as counter to the goals of development. On the other hand, Marshall remarked that the tendency towards overly technical approaches to humanitarian work by multilateral organizations is often seen as sterile and impersonal by aid recipients (the majority of whom come from traditional, religious backgrounds).

Regardless of one’s perspective, Marshall reminds us that worldwide membership to religious organizations dwarfs civil society in terms of numbers; given this reality, her efforts to bridge understanding between communities of faith and non-believers is particularly relevant to promoting human development. Similarly, the rest of the conference shed light on the critical, yet complex relationship between spirituality and statecraft in today’s increasingly global world.

For more information on the conference, including a list of speakers, visit the CIS website.

Cailin Crockett is a second-year MPhil in Political Theory at Oxford University, and a Graduate Ambassador for PoliticsinSpires.org 

Photo credit: Flickr

In the national and international imagination, Oxbridge is the ideal type of British higher education. ‘What it does is amplified, domestically and internationally. “That’s unfair, says Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, speaking at the Race Equality Question Time held at Oxford University. ’It’s unjust that the world’s eyes are focused on Oxford…but that’s the price to pay for being at such a good university.” For issues like race, this is especially acute.

But Oxford’s ‘image problem’, and how this image may embody inaccessibility is not just a ‘black issue’, it’s a social issue. It is unacceptable that out of c. 3000 new undergraduates this year, only 32 will be of black or mixed-race origin. But this does not mean Oxford is racist, nor that the admissions policy should be made favourable to those of African Caribbean origin. Problems of access apply in various measure to worthy and intelligent white, black, Asian, and other working-class or disadvantaged people.

The Oxford Race Equality Question Time, held by the Runnymede and the Oxford African Caribbean Society (May 3^rd), brought to the fore repeated concerns (but in a progressive light) – suggesting that things can, and things are, being done.

To potential BME applicants, and to the wider public, Oxford is not proportionally representative of society, nor does it seem that worthy, criteria fulfilling applicants are receiving deserved offers. Racist? Misleading? Society’s fault, not ours? In this, we risk the wrong analysis, leading to the wrong diagnosis, and the wrong prescription. The issue of black access to Oxford (and for that matter, Russell Group universities), is not of admittance policy, but symptomatic of inequalities within wider society. It is a matter of primary and secondary education and, more broadly, the issue of social inequality.

Three key questions emerge: a) are black students achieving top grades? b) are they applying for Oxford? c) if applying, are they getting in? Most recent admittance figures (cf. Guardian (18/12/11) – “14% increase”) focus upon question (c) without considering more broadly the roots of acceptance percentages and the wider picture.

Unequal educational experience across different bands of society reflects socio-economic and structural inequalities across Britain. These inequalities, in large part, determine the opportunity structures, knowledge, advice, quality teaching, access, funding, referential role models and encouragement available for disadvantaged students. BME candidates, despite often very similar – or even better – academic credentials than their more privileged, or white, counterparts, will fail to get in, as they may lack the soft skills and range of experiences necessary to make the ‘right’ impression.

Blatant ‘positive discrimination’ to keep the numbers up, however, is the wrong prescription. In my view, Oxford only has the responsibility to keep the application procedure fair for all of those who apply regardless of ethnic origin, sexuality, gender, [dis]ability or background. This does not take the university off the hook, for this fairness has yet to be achieved. Ultimately, however, Oxford can’t change the opportunity structures and education standards in the cities, boroughs and schools which BME students and applicants come from. These are deep-rooted and historic social issues immanent within trajectories of class and immigrant cultures that society must seek to address.

Taking steps

I do, however, believe, that one factor rarely accounted for is the personal decisions made by tutors deciding those who are and are not admitted. As Trevor Phillips pointed out, studies have indeed shown that ‘[w]hen black students present themselves, they ARE less likely to be admitted.’ Indeed, it was only four years ago that compulsory training for interviewers was introduced. Calls for universities to embrace the notion of ‘potential’ given differential social capital is one proposed solution. But such changes and training does not ‘wipe’ prejudice. This does not wipe what an individual finds more amenable in any applicant, be it the way they speak, look, argue, reason. Training does not stop very personal decisions being made.

The fact is that society is self-perpetuating. These inequalities of access and opportunity exist and take their toll long before a black (or, for that matter, ‘relatively disadvantaged’) potential applicant even comes to think about applying. That said, Oxford and its tutors can learn to appreciate potential and be reflexive about the personal decisions admissions tutors make. As a product of these choices, Oxford then suffers from an even further problem, one often elided – that of life experience in a community where there are only another 31 people ‘like you’. If young BME people don’t see representation, the weighty pejorative image will be hard to shake. Something has to change.

Joshua Oware is a student at Jesus College, Oxford and Vice President of the Oxford University African Caribbean Society. 

Insulza’s call comes on the heels of the adoption in Cartagena of Mexico’s proposal to create an Inter-American Centre for Coordination against Transnational Organised Crime. It is clear that dealers in drugs, arms and human trafficking (these items increasingly the wares of the same criminal merchants) do not limit their activities to the confines of national borders.  And as Mr. Insulza noted, “criminals cross borders much more easily than we do.”

While a cursory look at the “Americas” section on either the BBC or the New York Times websites would tend to corroborate his stance, I can’t help but wonder if zoning-in on organised crime represents a band-aid solution to the regions problems, instead of a holistic approach to dealing with the security issues posed by these organisations across the region. This approach seems more palatable for not only the English (and French) speaking North, but also for the Latin American governments who have a lot more than organised crime to clean up at home.

Mexican army, at the ready (Flickr)

The security problems that face the citizens of the Americas, especially those in the Andean and Central American regions, are very real. Organised crime in the north and along the coasts in Mexico has resulted in open gunfights between the army and the drug cartels, and fuelled the exploitation and mass murder of transiting migrants and the proliferation of extortion and corruption. Central American countries too have suffered, as their territories have become the main transit routes to the northern consumer markets. Increasing levels of violence, gang membership, kidnappings and extortion are all reflections of the pervasiveness to which organised crime has penetrated these societies.

Yet monitoring, tracking and coordinating responses to organised crime are only part of the solution – and in your blogger’s opinion, the least important. The summit meetings in Cartagena made headlines last month across the continent because the leaders of the Americas recognised that the U.S.-led ‘War on Drugs’ is a failure. Not only did many Latin American Presidents call for its end; some of them, led by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, pushed for decriminalising illicit drugs. Even President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed that the War on Drugs had failed. Indeed, like any other rehabilitation programme, recognising that there is a problem is the first step.

Yet, what worries me is what comes next. Even though the U.S. has demonstrated a willingness to open the drug war agenda to regional discussion, President Obama (supported by Canada) has flat-out refused to even consider decriminalisation as an option. This stance will be sure to cause a rift in hemispheric relations as countries who have suffered the brunt of the violence for what they see as a demand related issue. Leaders in both Mexico and Guatemala are calling not only for the decriminalisation but maybe even the legalisation of drugs in order to weaken the cartels. Given the U.S.‘s insecurity over its southern border, we can only imagine how it would react to legalisation and decriminalisation policies from its southern neighbours.

At a recent talk, Gary Cohen, the co-founder of Healthcare without Harm, noted that in Western medicine we tend to “try and treat the victim once they are already drowning instead of asking why they fell into the water in the first place.” I think the same can be said about creating a Centre for Coordination on Transnational Crime in the Americas. It’s reactive, when what is really needed is preventative care for the problem.

The issues surrounding transnational organised crime run deeper than coordination efforts. While I grant that the acknowledgement of the failure of the War on Drugs is an important first step, security will not be achieved in the Americas until we take seriously the issues that create the environment suitable for insecurity – a weak rule of law, punitive judiciary systems and the inability of many members of society to achieve a dignified standard of living, among others.

Transnational organised crime concerns the whole of the Americas and it can only be solved through a regional solution. Thus, if the United States and Canada truly internalize the Summit’s title “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity”, they need to actually listen to and try to really understand the plights of their southern neighbours in a holistic and open-minded fashion in order to achieve a genuine partnership that will ensure prosperity for all of the hemisphere’s citizens.

Karina Gould is an MPhil Student in International Relations at the University of Oxford

The opening statement is interesting for how it frames the campaign, as well as for the substantial ask–

I want to thank so many of our Neighborhood Team Leaders for being here today.  You guys will be the backbone of this campaign.  And I want the rest of you to join a team or become a leader yourself, because we are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way — door by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

This campaign is about people (that’s part of the framing). He wants you to join the Obama army (that’s also a substantial ask, because the campaign needs help to get out the vote). And if you join, you will be asked to walk door to door to talk to voters, make calls, organize your neighborhood etc.

That may sound old-fashioned, as the President suggests, but there is a twist to it. Field operations and volunteer efforts these days are completely intertwined with a whole range of digital tools that are anything but old-fashioned.

So you’ll also be asked to enter data into VoteBuilder, the Democratic Party’s digital voter file, whether you have a smart phone to keep in touch with the campaign, to do distributed phone banking from home via an online integrated platform, and to lend data and profile updates from your social networking profiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc) to the campaign.

This is the (new) old-fashioned way honed to perfection in 2008 and refined ever since rather than the (old) old-fashioned way, blending traditional organizing with various new digital tools appropriated from corporate marketing or in some cases developed for the campaign. Romney’s campaign will be working along the same lines, as they too will be worried about turnout amongst traditional Republican base voters.

I’d love to be on the ground to follow these campaigns as they are operating “between door-to-door and databases” (an earlier working title for my book Ground Wars). Ten months with two congressional campaigns in 2008 was absolutely fascinating, and to spend just a few with a Presidential campaign working with the same tactics on a much larger scale would be a blast.

That’ll have to wait for some later election, however, as I’m bound in Europe working on other stuff… Till then, I’ll stalk the campaigns via coverage from the usual sources, I’ve grown particularly fond of the Financial Times‘ Richard McGregor, who reports a lot from the ground and pays attention to campaign mechanics like few other journalists, and of course continue to follow Sasha Issenberg’s great work at Slate.com and various stuff from TechPresident to keep up on the technology side of things.

My book, Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns, deals with how American political campaigns mobilize, organize, and target their field operations, using large numbers of volunteers and paid part-timer workers to contact voters at home at the door or over the phone. It has just been published by Princeton University Press and is available on Amazon.

(cross-posted to rasmuskleisnielsen.net)

France's Mrs Thatcher?

Elections are incredibly symbolic political events and no more so than in France. While groups of the French Left were celebrating the election victory of the Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in Place de la Bastille; the home of Right, Place de la Concorde, was empty. Exit Sarkozy. Nicolas Sarkozy was, for the first time since 1945, an unashamed President of the Right in France, campaigning in his successful 2007 presidential bid for a ‘rupture’ from France’s ‘failed’ economic and social model. Sarkozy saw his mission as reviving France from the mediocrity of the Jacques Chirac years by implementing unequivocal Rightist ideas. It is no wonder that Hollande has vowed to be a ‘normal president’. Hollande’s platform in many respects was defined through negation; he was going to roll back Sarkozyism. Indeed, Hollande is the figurehead for a cultural phenomena that has been germinating in France known as anti-Sarkozyism. Hollande is avowing to return France to normalcy after a period of five years of rupture. But what is it that was so ‘exceptional’ or different about Sarkozy’s presidency? Is it the self-styled ‘hyper-presidency’ that constitutes the aberration or something more fundamental in his ultra-conservative dirigiste ideology?

As it stands, Sarkozy remains one of the most unpopular and controversial presidents of France’s Fifth Republic. He is the first French leader not to be re-elected for a second term since Valery Giscard d’Estaing in 1981. His ‘Bonapartist’ policies and personality only ever appealed, at most, to half of the French nation. Like other dominant politicians of the European Right, he was unashamedly critical of the Left’s failures. Like Mrs Thatcher, he despised the more ‘moderate’ and ‘spineless’ members (i.e. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Dominique de Villepin, Alain Juppé) of his own Party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for Popular Movement, UMP).

Sarkozy was presented, perhaps unfairly, as the ‘President of the rich’ after taking illegal cash donations from the heiress to the L’ Oreal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt, and a penchant for yachts, expensive watches and glamorous parties. From this perspective, it is no wonder he was dubbed ‘President Bling Bling’. When Carla Bruni, his Italian supermodel spouse, suggested that her and Sarkozy were ‘modest, simple folk’ they were mocked and derided, both on the Left and the Right, mercilessly. Whilst an important and overlooked aspect of politics, this is all presentational. Sarkozy is largely a signifier for a collection and ensemble of ideas that have revived a Right wing populism in France. So, what are these ideas and did these ideas change the ‘climate of opinion’ or mentalitie of France?

In an interview with Le Figaro on 17 April 2007 Sarkozy suggested that he was going to try and engineer a political hegemony out of ideas from the Right: ‘I have made [Antonio] Gramsci’s analysis mine: power is won by ideas. It is the first time a rightwing politician has fought on that ground.’ Arguably, this attempt at building a hegemony out of Sarkozyism failed as of yesterday with the first election victory for the Socialists since 1988. Some of have suggested that Sarkozy’s conservatism resides not in a belief in the iron law of the market, as many conservatives in Britain and the US adhere to, but in the power of the state. The French presidential election of 2012, unlike the election in the US between a Mitt Romney pro-market restorationist Republican ticket or a Obama neo-Keynesian Democratic ticket, was between a dirigisme (and ‘austerity’) of the Right and a dirigisme (and ‘growth’) of the Left. Sarkozy’s estatisme was a reaction, albeit an unconvincing one, to the crisis of finance in 2008 and the ensuing global recession. In response to the global financial criss, Sarkozy, unlike Anglo-American conservatives, promised to punish speculators and advocated an ‘active state’ in the economy. However, if one goes back to the glory days of Sarkozyism he was offering a French Thatcherism! Indeed, George de Menil, author of Common Sense: Pour débloquer la société française, suggested that the Thatcher reforms of labour markets were a source of inspiration to the Sarkozyists. Sarkozy, in his high-charged first hundred days, introduced a fiscal package implemented by the Fillon Government, which introduced a more flexible work contract, making it easier to hire and fire. Furthermore, it promised to reform the Jospin Government’s 35-hour week, by relaxing the cap and altering the tax system to encourage overtime (paid 25% higher than normal hours in all companies) and home-ownership. Sarkozy also gave generous tax cuts to the wealthiest in France through almost complete elimination of inheritance tax and a tax shield of 50% on income tax. The retirement age was raised from 60 to 62, which President-elect Hollande plans to reverse. Sarkozy granted the universities more fiscal autonomy, which some saw as an attack on public education and the unfair enforcement of higher fees and tougher entry requirements. The fiscal package is called loi TEPA, referring to the law in favour of labour, employment and purchasing power. Ideologically, the series of measures addressed reducing the fiscal burdens on businesses, liberalising the labour market and avenues for stimulating investment.

Like Thatcherism, Sarkozyism was deeply anxious about national decline, decline caused by restrictive labour practices, high taxes, uncompetitiveness, powerful trade unions and a bloated public sector. Unfortunately, unlike Mrs Thatcher, the French are more hostile and anxious of change than the British and the climate of opinion, because of the onslaught of the financial crisis and the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism, was not with the French Right. But, like Mrs Thatcher, he was loathed and detested by a substantial proportion of the French population. The intellectual Left loathed him. The Marxist thinker, Alain Badiou, saw Sarkozy as a representation of the Fascist, ‘Pétainist’ tendency in France. His election victory in May 2007 is a manifestation of surrender to the historical current of counter-revolutionary reactionary conservatism (incepted in 1815), which is nothing more than a fear of disorder and chaos. Badiou, using one of Freud’s patient nicknames, called Sarkozy ‘Rat Man’. Nevertheless, Sarkozy had his supporters, but these were weakened by a revival of support for the Socialists and a continuing strong showing for the Front National under Madame Le Pen.

So, what was Sarkozyism? It was broadly consistent with the Gaullist principles of the primacy of law and order, which is explicitly evinced in his attitude towards the rights of immigrants, strikes and, towards the end of his presidency, Islam. In the election campaign he stressed the virtues of work, family and national identity. It believed in a strong and concentrated role of the state in social affairs. It was, as is contemporary conservative ideology on economics, schizophrenic on the role and scope of government in the economy. His largely laissez-faire approach in the 2007-08 era gave way to a dirigiste, paternal approach as a consequence of the financial and banking crisis (i.e. €20 billion stimulus package to fight the economic crisis). Nevertheless, his initial self-conscious radicalism was a departure in French politics; a figure and symbol of the Right utilising a language of radicalism to further the cause of Right wing politics. It is for the Socialist candidate of consensus, Hollande, to play the part of the conservative now after five years of radicalism under the candidate of conflict, Sarkozy.

But is there any reason to think that these results will be repeated at the next election? As I discussed in my last post, there are very good reasons to think that they won’t. But opinion in the media is mixed. Channel 4 picked up on my research to argue that Labour hasn’t done enough to win the next election, whilst the BBC’s Nick Robinson wondered whether this election might be more than a case of the usual ‘mid-term blues’ and a signal to an increasingly unpopular government that they will be kicked out at the next election.

Predicted vote share

Is Nick Robinson correct in this speculation? Does the fact that Labour won the most votes in this election mean the coalition government is heading for certain doom? Using the BBC’s estimates in my model predicts a vote share as follows: Conservatives, 36.6 (±1.3); Labour, 34.05 (±1.4); and Liberal Democrats, 23.3 (±2.3). This points to an increase of about 5% for Labour, with hardly any change for the other two parties.

My secondary model also predicts a very high probability that the Conservatives will win the largest share of the vote at the next election (76.24%) whilst Labour only has a 15.35% chance. Are these predictions valid? The fact that this government is a coalition means that it is unlike any other post-war British government and we should be cautious when making any claims based on previous elections. There is good reason to take the Lib Dem predicted result in particular with a grain of salt: they have not been in government before and so the model assumes the effect of incumbency is the same as the other two parties. We have no way of knowing whether this assumption is valid.

Putting the Liberal Democrats to one side for the moment, the election results for Labour and the Conservatives are not at all unusual, and in no way indicate a certain Labour victory at the next election. During the Thatcher years, for example, Labour outpolled the Conservatives in 7 out of 10 local elections; yet they failed to win the 1983, 1987 or 1992 general elections. In 1985 the Labour-Conservative local election lead was almost the same as this year’s results (39-32), but the Conservatives won the 1987 general election 38-32. An even more dramatic example, though, is the 1990 local elections when Labour outpolled the Conservatives 44 to 33 but went on to lose the 1992 general election 46-30.

Additionally, if we use the results of the local elections in 2011, when the Conservatives received 35% of the vote, Labour 37% and the Liberal Democrats 15%, the results of the predictions are very similar. My model predicts 38.7% (±1.2) for the Conservatives, 33.5% (±1.4) for Labour, and 22.7 (±2.3) for the Lib Dems. Of course using different local election results produces different predictions, but note that for all three parties the confidence intervals of both predictions overlap. Statistically at least the results are basically the same.

Predicted seat share

Assuming that these predictions give us at least a general idea of what might happen at the next election, what might the next Parliament look like? Alas, predicting seat share from vote share is incredibly difficult. The British electoral system produces very disproportionate vote share to seat share outcomes and trying to account for local factors adequately is nigh on impossible. Adding to this difficulty, the next election will be conducted with fewer constituencies and with revised boundaries. Nonetheless, several different ways of predicting seat share have been developed. To make my predictions here I have used Electoral Calculus, probably the leading vote/seat predictor on the internet and one that has performed with reasonable accuracy in the past. Using my base predictions, Electoral Calculus predicts 268 seats for the Conservatives, 265 for Labour, and 43 for the Liberal Democrats. These results would leave both the Conservatives and Labour short of a majority but either party could form a majority coalition with the Liberal Democrats. This would certainly produce an intriguing moment of party diplomacy once again.

Even using the ‘best’ predicted outcome for Labour, using the upper end of the confidence interval of the predicted Labour vote (35.45) and the lower end for the Conservatives (35.3) and Liberal Democrats (21), leaves Labour 18 seats short of a majority. But similarly the ‘best’ prediction for the Conservatives leaves them 5 seats short of a majority. In each case only one party has enough seats to form a majority coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Even if we ignore the precise numbers, which are almost certainly going to be at least slightly different on election day, the results do give one fairly clear indication: the most probable outcome of the next general election is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives win a majority of seats and the Lib Dems will remain political kingmakers.

Chris Prosser is a DPhil student in Politics at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. 

The election of Hollande will have another major ‘east-west’ effect. Contemporary Germany is surrounded by friendly states and shows little signs of engaging with the threat of Russian power; it is also – as the British defence secretary Philip Hammond pointed out only yesterday – failing to pull its military weight within Europe, let alone overseas. Hitherto, this has been somewhat compensated by President Sarkozy’s grater activism, for example over Georgia and Libya, but it is hard to imagine Hollande in the same role. The result of this will certainly be an even greater sense of nervousness on the European and Nato periphery – especially Poland and the Baltic states – especially since President Obama has indicated his intention to concentrate on East Asia over Europe. In short, whether east, west, north or south, Europeans are now finding themselves confronting each other rather than their common challenges, a situation which the European Union was supposed to bring to an end, and which the French election result will almost certainly aggravate.

Brendan Simms is Professor in the History of International Relations. POLIS, Cambridge

How will people cast their vote?

Today voters in 181 local authorities and councils across the UK will cast their votes to elect their local representatives. There are also elections for the London Assembly and three Mayoral elections, most prominently the election for the Mayor of London. Although officially concerned with local issues and local government, local elections in the UK are frequently taken to be large scale opinion polls on national political parties. When the results are announced they will inevitably be described by politicians and political commentators as (depending on the actual results, party affiliation and political inclination): a ‘triumph’, ‘disaster’, ‘bloody nose’, ‘strong message’, ‘resounding verdict’ and various other political clichés.

Are politicians and commentators actually justified in making these statements? Do votes in local elections actually reflect votes in general elections? There are many good reasons to think they are: the parties running are generally the same and vast amounts of evidence from political science suggest that voters use ‘second tier’ elections to express their opinions about national level politics. However, there are also several reasons to question the validity of local elections as a proxy for national elections: they are conducted across varying regions, turnout is typically much lower, the number of uncontested seats is much higher, they are increasingly conducted under a wide variety of electoral systems, and they are at least notionally ‘local’.

The actual numbers give mixed support for the idea that local elections tell us how well a party will do at the next election. Nearly two-thirds of the time the party that receives the most number of votes at local elections goes on the get the most votes at the next national election. On average estimates for the national level vote at local elections are different from the results of a subsequent national election by nearly 5%. These figures suggest that local election can give us a general idea of how well a party will do at the next election, but one that is only a rough estimate at best.

Predicted and actual votes at next general election by party

However using fairly straightforward statistical techniques it is possible to improve the predictive power of local elections quite substantially (the statistically minded reader can find the data and methodology here). Running a linear regression model that includes only the votes a party receives in a local election and dummy variables indicating whether it is an incumbent government party and controlling for the party being the Liberal Democrats improves the predictive power of local elections by 40%, reducing the average difference between the predicted and actual outcomes to 2.8 percentage points. The graphs of the predicted vote share illustrate the predicted results of the model and the actual results of the subsequent national election and show the predictive power or the model is fairly accurate.

Predicted probabilities of being the largest party at the next election

Using the same data a logit regression model improves the predictive power of local elections to tell us who will win the most votes at the next general election, making correct predictions 86.21% of the time. This graph, illustrates the predicted probability for an incumbent and non-incumbent party winning the next election according to how much of the vote they receive. The graphs illustrate a strong incumbency bias in British elections: opposition parties need to perform better at local elections than incumbent parties to have the same probability of winning the most votes at the next election.

The results of my analysis are fairly clear. Using the right techniques local elections can give us a pretty good indication of how well parties might do at the next national election. Inevitably however most analysis of the results will simply reflect how many votes were cast for each party on the day and commentators will imagine what parliament will look like if the same results were for a general election. So as the results are released after the elections on Thursday remember to take them with a grain of salt: history suggests that on average they are likely to be different by 5 points come the next national election.

Chris Prosser is a DPhil student in Politics at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.