Falkirk – an unlikely Falklands

It is part of modern British political mythology than Mrs Thatcher only won the 1983 election because of the resurgence in her popularity which followed the favourable outcome of the Falklands campaign in 1982. For David Cameron to be confident of securing a Conservative government after the 2015 election, he needs something similar (to see the size of his problem put Con 40% Lab 35% and LD 13% into Electoral Calculus). For the moment Cameron is having a good try at hanging the trade unions around Miliband’s neck, particularly after the shenanigans concerning Labour’s candidate for the forthcoming Falkirk [by-election] reselection.

Will it do the trick? At PMQs on 3 July Cameron mentioned the Unite union 8 times and Unite’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey, 6 times. On 10 July it was 8 and 2 times respectively, but by then Miliband had taken appropriate action both tactically with regard to Falkirk and more widely in floating the idea of a new relationship between Labour and the unions.  Miliband also moved onto the offensive at PMQs, asking some pointed questions about Tory funding. Unlike the Falklands, union funding and Falkirk do not seem the sort of issues which move substantial numbers of voters’ minds and, moreover, there is a slight risk that Miliband may come out of it well as a strong reformer and avoid being labelled a weak placeman of the unions.

Anyway the whole thing seems just a bit stagey. Of the four volumes of Alastair Campbell’s Diaries, the first, Prelude to Power 1994-1997, concentrates on the task faced by the Leader of the Opposition as an election approaches. It’s also the one which covers the time before Campbell became a civil servant (of sorts) so presumably its content was determined entirely by his judgement rather than being subject to the official protocol which would have applied to the later three. Pugnacious by nature, Campbell had no hesitation in recording the combative relationship which prevailed most of the time between Blair, Labour’s last permanent Leader of the Opposition, and the PM of the day, John Major. But he also mentions the mysterious occasions when Blair disappeared for discussions with the PM. Either Campbell wasn’t told what these were about, or he didn’t choose to write about them. He reports that on one occasion Major threatened to publish private correspondence between himself and Blair – again we are not told what about (page 380).

Almost certainly that’s the way things have always been done and there are good reasons for such arrangements continuing. For example, recently it was reported that Miliband had attended the National Security Committee (not for the first time) in late June for a discussion on Syria and why not? However, perhaps the lesson to be drawn is that governments and oppositions from time to time make common cause without necessarily telling the public or the media all about it. I can’t help wondering whether in this case the cause might turn out to be that of funding political parties out of taxation – the main ones of course.

McCluskey is an interesting man who seems to like SW France. Described by Rachel Sylvester in The Times (£) on 10 July:

Mr McCluskey — an opera buff, who loves attending Glyndebourne and visiting French vineyards (“St Emilion is my favourite wine and such a beautiful village”, he told me when I interviewed him a couple of years ago),

he is a left-winger but with right bank tastes, and tastes which extend beyond red wine according to the Spectator’s Steerpike on 13 July:

The wine waiters at Claridges are taking a keen interest in the investigation into malpractice in Falkirk. And they’re hoping that Unite will be fully exonerated. Len McCluskey likes to celebrate political victories at the hotel bar with a glass of pink champagne. His most recent visit was in July 2011 after Rupert Murdoch’s ‘humblest day of my life’ admission before a Commons select committee. McCluskey toasted the press mogul’s self-lacerating words by downing a bottle of pink fizz with his old mucker Tom Watson. As they say, nothing’s too good for the workers to subsidise.

(Actually it was “most humble day of my life”.)


UPDATE 13 JULY

A few hours after this was originally posted, a typically elegant article by Matthew Parris for today’s The Times appeared on their website, Guess who’s going to pay for politics? You!  He expands on the theme that “The political parties will ask the taxpayer to pay their bills once unions and tycoons have walked away” and that:

The very notion will be massively unpopular. There will have to be a tacit deal between party leaderships not to break ranks and exploit public indignation.

My notion was that the “tacit deal” is rather nearer than he seems to think. Parris is, of course, much better–informed than I am, just as he is a much better writer.


UPDATE 11 SEPTEMBER

Matthew Taylor was Tony Blair’s Chief Adviser on Political Strategy when he was Prime Minister and then became Chief Executive of the RSA in November 2006. On 9 September he posted on his blog Party funding – the future is out there (no thanks to me). This extract describes a past attempt at a “tacit deal”:

Back in 2006, working for Tony Blair and having previously written a think tank pamphlet on party funding, I was asked to explore a new funding settlement. The precipitating factor was the cash of honours allegations which led to several Labour advisors being arrested and placed on police bail.  

Although the negotiations were behind the scenes, agreeing a basic package with the Conservatives (newly led by David Cameron who was keen to show his statesman-like credentials) proved relatively straightforward. Although historically the Tories have relied much more than Labour on high value donations, Cameron knew how toxic this issue had been for his own Party and how dangerous it could one day become again.  

… The deal we had careful put together was sabotaged by anti-Blair elements in Labour’s ranks. There is little doubt that they did so on the instruction of those around Gordon Brown – who was at the time keen to grasp any stick with which to beat the Prime Minister.

Poor Jack and Harry

By the time David Cameron made his ‘you do the fighting and I’ll do the talking’ remark about the senior military at the PM's Press Conference on 21 June, he would almost certainly have given his approval to the recommendations in Lord Levene’s Defence Reform report published a few days later.

Descriptions of the proposals as the most far-reaching since Haldane’s reforms to the Army after the Second Boer War, and Fisher’s to the Royal Navy in the same period, are almost certainly overblown, but the changes probably amount to the biggest setback for the three single services since the removal in 1946 of their individual Secretaries of State from the Cabinet. In particular, Levene has recommended what is in effect the merger of the single Service Chief and respective Commander-in-Chief posts and their ‘rustication’, together with hangers-on, to service headquarters. Back in the MoD Head Office in London, a new Defence Board, answerable to the National Security Council, will consist of eight civilians and only the Chief of the Defence Staff to represent the views of the armed forces.

Something like this has been building up for a while. The cover of the Spectator on 11 June led with:

Who’s in command?

Sherard Cowper-Coles says politicians have let the top brass get too big for their boots

although his article was titled:

Breaking rank

Years of timidity from politicians have left our military commanders dangerously overconfident

and ‘too big for their boots’ was not an expression used by Sir Sherard (SC-C hereafter). SC-C was the UK’s senior diplomat in Afghanistan to 2010, and on the basis of his experience, he concludes:

A trend has set in where an overconfident and under-managed military machine fills a vacuum left by politicians, civil servants and diplomats unable or unwilling to provide firm strategic direction. The military is not just doing the fighting, but increasingly it is allowed to decide the overall direction of the campaign. Now that Barack Obama wishes to hasten the withdrawal from Afghanistan, with obvious implications for Britain, the military is protesting. In my view, this is a sign of a deep imbalance in the relationship between the military and the state. ...
Politicians with little or no military experience were being pushed by a confident and enthusiastic military lobby into doing things against their better judgment. War-winning armies need to be incurably optimistic, unquenchably enthusiastic, institutionally loyal, and — to some extent — susceptible to groupthink. The problem comes when the politicians, and the civil servants who advise them, don’t have the courage, knowledge or confidence to push back against pressure from one of the most effective special-interest lobbies of them all. ...
The civil servants in the MoD are clever and courageous, but have great difficulty asserting themselves over their professionally and personally confident colleagues in the uniform branch. The military now have much better academic qualifications than they did in the past. ...
Little wonder the British military are so assertive. They have the media and public on their side, they control the MoD and they are facing a political class that stands in bewildered awe of men in uniform. But with time and money running out, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are at last starting to take charge, and give the military the firm strategic direction they need — in their own interests — in a democracy.

In the article, SC-C paid tribute to the bravery and sacrifices of the UK’s armed forces in Afghanistan. Anyone who doubts his sincerity should read the Diplomatic Telegram, Tribute to the Fallen, recording the ‘ramp ceremony’ prior to the repatriation of Corporal Damien Lawrence of the Yorkshire Regiment in 2008, to be found at the start of his recent book, Cables from Kabul. The criticisms in the article were directed at the senior levels of the military, men in their late forties and fifties, who no longer have to engage in combat but have turned to fighting in the corridors of Whitehall.

The word military, either as an adjective or noun, is nowadays applied to all three forces (RN, Army, RAF) although historically it would have been applied to the Army, with the Senior Service being responsible for matters described as naval. While SC-C’s general point about weak political control of the armed forces is probably correct, arguably it is the British Army which should be bearing the brunt of his criticisms. A post here in April summarised the views of a well-placed insider on the relationship between the last government and the top of the Army, and a post in May gave a typical example of the adeptness with which retired senior Army officers lobby using the media. All this is with a greater confidence and assertiveness, to use the traits identified by SC-C, than has been shown in recent years by the other two services. Why should this be?

Obviously, since the end of the Cold War, land operations in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan have been the main preoccupation of the MoD. Also, the Army is larger in manpower terms, top to bottom, than the other two services – see below. But, as always in the UK, there is the issue of class. It has been said of the three services that the Army is led by gentlemen trying to be officers, the Navy by officers trying to be gentlemen, and the Air Force by neither trying to be both. This is unkind, but comes with an uncomfortable element of truth. Certain elements of the Army, the Guards regiments in particular, have always had a substantial intake of officers who come from the highest levels of society. That is not to say that the Navy and RAF are devoid of senior officers with an upper-class background, but not to the same extent. Substance for this assertion was provided by the Public Accounts Committee in 2007:

20. Of the 10 most senior staff in each Service, nine out of 10 Army officers, six out of 10 Royal Navy officers, and three out of 10 Royal Air Force officers were educated in independent schools. … The [MoD] sees the current officer intake to the Advanced Command and Staff Course as providing an indication of the likely composition of the future leadership of the Services: 58% of the intake of Army officers went to state schools; as did 70% of the Royal Navy officers; and 75% of the Royal Air Force officers.

It is hardly surprising that some Generals feel that they have a natural affinity with the Conservative party and correspondingly little identification with Labour. As most senior officers in their outlook are at least a decade behind the mainstream of British society, their vision of the Conservatives probably tends to be pre-Cameroon and non-detoxified, and of Labour, old rather than new. But they should have realised that, whatever their allegiance, Kipling’s observation on ‘The Ladies’, ‘For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady, Are sisters under their skins’, could apply equally well to politicians. In the nature of their trade, they are never slow to spot a ‘useful idiot’ and make use of him in pursuit of office, but once in government will take any steps they can to prevent erosion of their own power.

Now, defence in general and the positions of all three services have been weakened because of the way the Army chose to make its case in recent years, though the Army will probably come out of it all in relatively better shape. As James Kirkup blogged in the Daily Telegraph on 28 June: ‘Sacking soldiers makes for bad headlines; the PM is said to be especially squeamish about taking the axe to the posher, shinier bits of the Army.’ Which may leave the other two services like Sassoon’s Harry and Jack, casualties of the General who ‘did for them both with his plan of attack’.

Under the new arrangements, the occupant of the CDS post will be the prime source of advice on behalf of all three services, but will have been drawn from only one of them. The charts below show how this has worked out in practice since the inception of the post in 1957.

The second chart shows the different patterns of occupancy during the Cold War and afterwards. The RN's predominance in the Cold War period is largely due to Mountbatten’s exceptionally long period of service as the second CDS. Since the end of the Cold War, the Army has provided the CDS for the majority of the time (the charts assume the present incumbent remains in post for 1000 days).

Following the Levene reforms, it might be expected that the MoD will attempt a more balanced rotation of the CDS post, as was the case in the later part of the Cold War. If so, as the next chart shows, the proposed Defence Board Appointments Committee will be faced with a marked imbalance in the backgrounds of the senior service officers from whom it will have to make its choices.

  (See Daily Telegraph for source data (April 2011) and explanation of *s and ranks)

In the corporate world, which will presumably be familiar to some of the Non Executive Directors on the Defence Board (one of whom will be chairing the Appointments Committee), it is now common practice to look for top talent internationally. While it seems inconceivable that an overseas national could become CDS, the prospect of a Canadian or Australian, let alone someone from the US Marine Corps, even being considered, might concentrate 'assertive' minds wonderfully.

Libya and the Iraq Inquiry

An earlier post about the Iraq Inquiry wondered what issues its report would address that hadn’t been covered in 2004 by Lord Butler and his comments on the machinery of government. Now the Inquiry is faced with the problem that what will be known as the Chilcot report (after its Chairman who is likely to present it to the Prime Minister this summer) seems to have been overtaken by the UK’s becoming involved in the conflict in Libya. It’s worth repeating the Inquiry’s terms of reference:

"Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."

Seemingly the Inquiry is not an academic or legal exercise but is aimed at assisting the current Coalition and future governments to deal with Iraq-like situations in an optimal fashion (note ‘best’, ‘most’ and ‘best’ again in the last sentence) from start to finish. However, lessons about ‘sofa government’ seem to have been applied anyway. According to Anthony Seldon:

… Cameron was equally clear that his premiership would see a return to formal Cabinet government. Cabinet meets for between an hour and a half to two hours each Tuesday. Regular meetings include the National Security Council [NSC], which he established at the outset.

and

On Libya, he [Cameron] is relying on Ricketts’ [Peter Ricketts, National Security Adviser] advice daily, not least at the daily meeting of the NSC’s Libya committee.

So presumably the making of judgements about the UK’s developing involvement in Libya is being very properly documented. This should please contemporary historians in years to come when (or if) the NSC files are released by The National Archives. They may even be able to conclude whether the formality of the decision-making made much difference when, inevitably, there were major uncertainties as to the course of the conflict and the nature of post-conflict Libya.

Arguably, the UK’s involvement in Libya is putting into practice ‘liberal interventionism’. This was the subject of an earlier post which looked at the contribution of Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the Iraq Inquiry Committee, to Tony Blair’s Chicago speech in 1999.

ADDENDUM JUNE 2011: This later post might also be of interest..