UK election: Newspapers make their point

One of the best aspects of UK politics is how the papers are overtly political and unashamed about taking a thoughtful position based on an overarching philosophy. Whether you agree or disagree, at least it is refreshing to see journalism that involves some thinking.

So what are they saying?

The serious papers are comprised of the Telegraph, Times, Independent, Guardian and the FT.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday and Sunday Telegraph today are supporting the Conservatives. Hardly surprising, but it is worth looking at the editorials which make some similar points:

"If you examine the Government's record, there is no doubt that the top-down, target-driven, statist approach has reached a dead end." Quite, although I don't trust the Conservatives to do anything other than stop the growth of it. The Telegraph always supports the Conservatives, so no surprises here.

The Times and the Sunday Times have been more fluid. In 2005 both supporting Labour, although with some reluctance. Now it is clear:

"A Chancellor who had proclaimed an end to boom and bust embarked on a spending spree of remarkable improvidence. Public sector staff now earn £2,000 a year more on average than their private sector counterparts. Spending rose, over the Labour years, by an extraordinary 54 per cent. Productivity lagged behind. Gordon Brown savaged the private pensions industry and sold off the bulk of Britain’s gold reserves much too cheaply. In short, Labour squandered the boom."

It continues: "Mr Brown’s pitch at this election is that voters should not risk the recovery by backing the Conservatives. He does not seem to realise that the greatest threat is more of the same. Yes, the economy is in peril. Mr Brown is the danger.”

The Sunday Times echoes this "As the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, Britain had the biggest rise in public spending among 28 OECD countries in 1997-2010, moving from 22nd highest-spending nation to sixth. When most western countries saw their tax burdens fall, Britain’s went up substantially; only those of South Korea, Hungary and Portugal rose more steeply."

So both support the Conservatives given "Amid the sound and fury, a fundamental philosophical difference has emerged: the Conservatives want to reduce excessive public expenditure, the Labour Party wants to keep on ratcheting up benefits, tax credits and other forms of state spending."

The Guardian is traditionally a supporter of Labour, but this time is more measured. It even complements David Cameron for reforming the Conservatives but concludes "A Cameron government might not be as destructive to Britain as the worst Tory regimes of the past. But it is not the right course for Britain." So funnily enough, the Guardian supports the Liberal Democrats? Why? Because the LibDems are more socially liberal, and more fundamentally leftwing than Labour "The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country's destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq".

Demonstrating how the Liberal Democrats are the new inheritors of the left in the UK.

The Observer naturally agrees.

The Independent on Sunday agrees saying "the best outcome of this election would be a Lib-Lab coalition." so is calling for a vote for the Liberal Democrats where that party could win, but Labour when it could not, as it supports electoral reform.

The Mail on Sunday, which rails against immigrants and criminals, and says the war in Iraq was a mistake, supports the Conservatives, cautiously, although Christian columnist, Peter Hitchens, says no - because he fears the Conservatives are TOO liberal.

The Sunday Express also supports the Conservatives, it cites a long record of failure of Gordon Brown such as "remember how in May 1999 the then relatively new Chancellor Gordon Brown decided to sell more than half of our national gold reserves; a total of 395 tonnes. At a time when the price of gold had slumped, our precious metal sold at an average price of $275 per ounce. This weekend gold was being traded at $1,162.20, more than four times as much. It’s quite a record and it speaks for itself. " It supports the Tories to reform immigration and welfare, but I suspect it expects too much.

The Sun, usually fascinated with tits, is supporting the Conservatives, having supported Labour last time "the real story of the Labour years is one of under-achievement, rank failure and a vast expansion of wasteful government interference in everyone's lives… At the 2005 election, we and our readers believed Labour had many failings but gave them one last chance over a lacklustre Tory party. They have had that chance and failed. That is a fact Gordon Brown cannot escape, for all his rhetoric yesterday - his rewriting of history, his absurd caricature of the "heartless" Tories, his tired promises to solve problems he has had 12 years to solve."

The Mirror by contrast is lock, stock and barrel Marxist. "On one side we have a man of enormous experience hailed throughout the world as the leader of the fightback against a recession which could have plunged into depression. On the other there is David Cameron and his vacuous sidekick George Osborne. Could there be a more terrifying thought than that these two may be entrusted with the nation's finances? “

Now vacuous sidekick is very true indeed, but Brown is now leader of the “fightback”, a “fightback” that means needing to address a massive deficit. Overspending didn’t save Greece, and it isn’t saving Japan, but the Mirror isn’t exactly the repositary of the highly educated. The Mirror is still engaging in class war, thinking the Conservatives “They always think of the demands of City fatcats and business leaders first rather than the needs of ordinary workers”.

So it remains the ONLY major national paper still supporting Labour.

So overall, it looks bleak for Labour. The Mirror is all that is left, the other leftwing papers are supporting the Liberal Democrats, and the rest are all with the Conservatives, along with the Economist.

As for me? Certainly a Labour or a Liberal Democrat influenced government would be a leap backwards, but the Conservatives? I think it would be a case of slowing down the rot, and not much more. I don't want to vote for tax increases. What do I want?

UK election: Economist backs Conservatives

The Economist has declared it is supporting the Conservatives winning the UK election. Why?

Well according to Conservative Home (which has a preview of tomorrow's editorial) on Labour:

"it praises Brown for keeping Britain out of the euro, yet on the economy states that "a prime minister should not get too much credit for climbing out of a hole he himself dug as chancellor", describing the budget deficit as a time-bomb which Brown is "ill equipped to defuse"."

Quite.

On the Liberal Democrats: "Whilst stating that it has been "looking for a credible liberal party in Britain for nigh on a century", it is swift to dismiss the Lib Dems with their enthusiasm for the euro, flirtation with scrapping our nuclear deterrent, desire to abolish tuition fees, opposition to nuclear power and policies on business which are "arguably to the left of Labour's": "Mr Clegg has been a delightful holiday romance for many Britons; but this newspaper does not fancy moving in with him for the next five years".

I suspect the TV debate tonight will see Clegg exposed on the LibDem past support for the Euro. The Liberal Party it is not.

So Conservatives? Hardly a ringing endorsement but it:

"praises David Cameron for modernising the party and stamping out social illiberalism. It also congratulates George Osborne for not giving in to the demands of the Right for tax cuts and for committing the party to an austerity programme

Stamping out isn't true, since there is little sign of tolerance on issues like drugs and censorship. Moreover, the Tories are supporting tax increases, on a more limited scale than Labour. The liberalism of the Economist isn't really holding true in ignoring this.

"More than their rivals, they are intent on redesigning the state. They would reform the NHS by bringing in more outside providers; their plans to give parents and teachers the right to set up schools are the most radical idea in this election. Centralisers under Margaret Thatcher, they now want to devolve power to locally elected officials, including mayors and police chiefs. Some of this is clouded in waffe about a Big Society. Other bits do not go far enough: it is foolish to rule out letting for-profit companies run schools and wrong to exempt the NHS from cuts. But Mr Cameron is much closer to answering the main question facing Britain than either of his rivals is. In this complicated, perhaps inevitably imperfect election, he would get our vote."

OK, the education policy IS worth a tick. That is about it. The insouciance about the failures of the entire NHS model is disappointing, and I don't trust locally elected officials more than centrally elected ones.

However, the endorsement is understandable. A clear Conservative victory is preferable to a hung Parliament or a Labour victory. A hung Parliament will inevitably mean electoral reform that will mostly favour statist parties like the Liberal Democrats, Greens and the BNP. Labour victory will simply be unjust.

UK election: Winner will be out of power for a generation

According to US economist David Hale, he said "I saw the Governor of the Bank of England last week when I was in London and he told me whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be"

Edmund Conway in the Daily Telegraph, who quotes this says that few understand the scale of the deception that politicians are engaging in on the amount of austerity needed.

In essence, if you believe the state should NOT grow, it means drastic spending cuts, which will have to include education, welfare and probably health.

If you don't care about the size of the state, it would mean some of that, but also tax increases that will deeply affect the competitiveness and image of the UK internationally.

Conway continues:

We have been insulated from the full pain of the financial/economic crisis so far by unprecedented low interest rates and by the bank bail-outs. At some point, the anaesthetic will wear off and we will face a period of austerity that may well make the ruling party so unpopular that it effectively becomes unelectable for decades. There will be strikes; there will be stagnation; there will probably be a double dip of some variety. But this time the pain will be unmistakeably imposed by the politicians.

Gordon Brown should bear most of the blame for this. He ran deficits in the "good times", ran up massive increases in state spending with little to show for it, and cheered on an economy propped up by cheap finance, property speculation and state spending. Now it's all the fault of the greedy bankers, and we should all feel lucky he was in charge.

No Gordon, you screwed up. The only fair result is that the Labour Party comes a distant third to the Conservatives and the new leftwing major party, the Liberal Democrats. It is only because it spreads such fear among those it has made dependent on its big state, that it has any chance of power today. If the Conservatives win, and have to engage in massive spending cuts, Labour will take the opportunity to moan about it, and offer nothing in return.

Gordon Brown's place in history will be one of utter disgrace.

(Hat Tip: Edmund Conway, Daily Telegraph)

UK election : Vote BNP if you're not white British?

The Independent reports that the BNP is proposing to GIVE £50,000 in resettlement grants, per person, to "non white British" residents of the UK to leave. I suspect the BNP feels its core vote of racist envy dripping malcontents is drifting away.

As someone who would undoubtedly be classified as "white British" given my parentage, I'm outraged.

For if the BNP ever got into power, I'd happily want to take £50,000 and flee to a country that wasn't being run by knuckle dragging, semi-articulate, barely literate incompetents. Of course, if that was a real possibility, the £ sterling would already have plummeted to parity with the Kiwi drachma.

UK elections: So how about UKIP?

I have seriously flirted with voting for UKIP, until tonight.

Why UKIP? Well it helps that Googling UKIP comes up with "Libertarian, non-racist party". Beyond that there are many policies consistent with wanting less government:

- Flat tax of income tax of 31% and income tax free threshold of £11,500;
- Abandon the European Union, but retain free trade and investment with the EU;
- Reject carbon taxes or carbon trading as it rejects interventionist policies on climate change;
- Allow people to opt out of the NHS with a tax credit scheme;
- Introduce school vouchers and allow free schools to be established;
- Abolish regional assemblies.

OK, not too bad. However, then it gets a bit more tricky. It isn't just the typical war on crime stuff or the rather odd massive increase in defence spending, it means policies that frankly are contrary to freedom:

- Amend takeover code to prevent "foreign interests" gaining control of "strategic British companies". In other words, outright socialist nationalism;
- A socialist style public works programme of nuclear power stations and high speed rail lines;
- A 5 year freeze on ANY immigration for permanent settlement, effectively shutting out the world's best and brightest regardless;
- Zero tolerance on crime, "three strikes and your out" without removing victimless crimes;
- Expand NHS coverage and keep it free;
- Ban BAA (a private company) from expanding Heathrow runway and terminal capacity;
- Build more social housing, ban greenbelt development and introduce democratic planning controls;
- Ban the burkha and veiled niqab in"certain private buildings" (quite why you need to on private property is a bit odd)
- Oppose GM food production and retain farming subsidies.

Of those, it is the amendment of the takeover code, the ban on immigration, irrational ban on GM food production and the belief in more state spending that make UKIP unpalatable.

On top of that, I asked my local UKIP candidate how he would cut the budget deficit. He said, among other things, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would help. Apparently Afghanistan reverting to the Taliban and the Taliban spreading to Pakistan shouldn't be a concern! In addition, the other answers were partly trite (cutting the ID Card while laudable wont save money already spent!).

The ONLY reason to vote UKIP is a protest vote to rattle the Conservatives, which is safe since UKIP really only has a chance in one seat (not mine). UKIP says to them to not take their core voters for granted, and that for many the European Union remains an issue. However, do I really want to be associated with a party that is so vehemently anti-immigration? Do I want to be associated with being hardline on crime, including drug and censorship "crimes"? Do I want to give moral support for public works programmes and banning some foreign investment? Finally, more specifically, do I want to support a candidate who opposes UK involvement in Afghanistan (and doesn't know the UK has already withdrawn from Iraq)?

My conclusion is, no. The candidate himself is not worthy of my moral endorsement.

So I am left with the Conservative candidate, of whom I know little. He's next in the questioning...