Filling a vacuum in a post-Brexit world with thoughtful centre-right political commentary from a senior political adviser who is founder of an international marketing and media relations consultancy.
Author: Julian Samways
Julian is a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate who now runs an international marketing and media relations consultancy for leading financial services companies, working predominantly with asset managers on all aspects of global political, business and investment trends. He undertakes a role advising the Conservative Party on candidate selection and training and took an active role in the ‘Remain’ campaign understanding the potential impact of Brexit on international businesses who have chosen the UK as their route into Europe. He periodically comments on current affairs for a range of media outlets as an independent contributor with an inside track on centre right politics.
A comfortable majority of Americans do not want Donald Trump as their next president. It is very clear on any trip to the US. The problem is a similar majority don’t want Joe Biden either. The only candidate each one could beat is each other, which is why they both need a Biden versus Trump fight.
Biden failed last night…
Last night’s presidential debate just made it harder for Biden to win. All the fears that he is in cognitive decline and simply too old for a second term came to the fore. This was Biden’s chance to put such concerns to rest. Indeed, the debate so early in the campaign was his idea. He flunked it.
Biden is a decent man and has actually been a reasonable president. Democrats have consistently performed better in elections than opinion polls. Since Trump was convicted in the hush money trial, Biden had been drawing level in polls. Trump has become wilder and more dangerous in his views and has his own cognitive decline problems at 78.
After last night, none of this is now enough. Biden must step down, or Trump will almost certainly win.
The problem for Democrats is that Biden might not agree with this analysis and, if he does and reluctantly steps down, they are left with the deeply unpopular Vice-President Kamala Harris. Trump may win on this scenario, too.
If Trump is a mess of the Republicans’ own making, Biden is now a mess of the Democrats’ own making.
At stake is the future of American democracy, the integrity of its legal system, a triumphant Putin, the NATO alliance to name but a few issues…
Democrats better come up with a solution to the Biden/Harris conundrum fast. Otherwise, America and the wider world will enter a very dark phase indeed.
This seems a strange thing to say. Labour has run a relatively smooth election campaign so far. Starmer is looking confident, and the shadow front bench is campaigning competently. The tax issue has not blown up in their faces and the gap with the Tories remains at c20%.
And yet…, and yet… Labour’s share of the vote has been very slowly falling. Poll trackers have the party down from 45% to 41% and some more recent polls are recording figures below 40%. Labour has lost a little ground to Reform and the LibDems but remains so far ahead due to the Tories’ almost complete implosion.
Things look rosy for Labour now but could get very tricky very quickly after July 4th…
On the subject of the Tories, each week is the worst one since, well, the previous one and their ability to shoot themselves in the foot will become the stuff of legends. Today, having clung to the untenable position of not suspending candidates caught up in the election date betting scandal, the Tory Party under huge pressure has now withdrawn support from them. The worst of all worlds. A week of excruciating pain with their opponents honing arguments around Tory sleaze and a sense of entitlement, only for the Tories to throw in the towel at the last minute and abandon these sorry figures. Their campaign is the gift that keeps giving…
But back to Labour. The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) is excoriating about the ‘conspiracy of silence’ around both major parties’ spending plans. Significant cuts have been built into public service provision outside core areas such as the NHS and Education over the next few years and, for Labour, having ruled out NI, income tax and VAT increases, none of its other identified tax measures will close the gap sufficiently. The party is avoiding a discussion on capital gains tax increases for example and other initiatives to fund services by clinging to the mantra that ‘growth’ will float future ministers off the rocks. Quite a few more voters might think this is dishonest come next Thursday.
Labour will win next week in terms of seats and win handsomely but what about its mandate if its share of vote continues to fall? If it is forced to raise a host of taxes not outlined in its manifesto there will be uproar or at least a huge amount of cynicism. And that is before the new government explores other areas where there is that conspiracy of silence such as social care and closer alignment with the EU.
Why does this matter? It matters because life in government for Labour could get very tricky very quickly and if the new administration is perceived not to have a sufficient mandate to be radical, solutions open to it to solve the already formidable visible challenges (let alone the hidden ones) will be somewhat restricted. Disillusionment amongst voters towards the political class will be rife.
On the other hand, a massive majority in terms of seats courtesy of a crushed Tory Party might mean Labour, at least for now, really doesn’t care.
That is if they survive, of course… Incredibly, the election continues to get worse for the Tories. The latest opinion polls, on average, have them winning just a hundred or so seats maximum with Labour’s majority being 250 plus. Reform UK may scrape a few seats, but only the LibDems seem to be the ones having some FUN. I won’t hear it against Ed Davey. His stunts are getting him publicity, and his role caring for his son has really resonated. They may surprise on the upside, adding to the Tories’ woes in the South/Southwest.
If they don’t self-destruct, the Tories become interesting again… on a 10 year view…
This blog feels the Tories will do a little better on the night as former Tory voters peer into the abyss and pull back from Reform. They will at least remain the second largest party, but it is pretty clear Labour is on course for a huge majority. The interest on election night will be less about the outcome and more about the scale of the Tories’ defeat and results in individual seats.
The Tories will be out of power for a generation and deservedly so. Attention will initially be on the new government and some actual policies, but Labour will have an opaque mandate, and over time the focus will switch to a decent Opposition holding the government to account.
So, back to the Tories. Despite relative moderates being well represented in parliament on most election outcomes, courtesy of its inglorious members, the Tory Party will almost certainly move to the Right. Moderate MPs, who are usually hopeless in leadership elections, will not be organised enough to block this and will get tripped up by the membership if they were. But therein lies electoral oblivion. A move back to centre ground beckons second time around on a long-term view. The question is who can be bothered to wait?
In the meantime, there is Farage/Reform. They will not merge with the Tories, and if they did, the Party would irrevocably split. Incidentally, if Boris Johnson tries his hand at leadership again, it would be the same result. No more Tory Party. Whilst new centre ground parties have a terrible record of succeeding, the total defenestration of the Tories would present unique territory for them to thrive.
So, on the basis that the electorate will want a competitive political landscape, attention will eventually turn back to the Tories or, if they self-annihilate, their successors. Whatever path is taken, the Opposition will probably have a good 10 years to even draw level.
I have an idea to rejuvenate the Tories’ election campaign. They should adopt Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign tune, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:Ream on the basis things can’t get any worse…
The Tory campaign has been a disaster and it showed in Sunak’s body language in the Sky News interview last night. He looked utterly dejected and gave the impression he couldn’t wait for the whole awful experience to be over. California beckons whatever Sunak says.
Unfortunately for Sunak and the Tory Party, Sunak is no politician…
What has gone so badly wrong? Well, the obvious reasons are launching the surprise campaign in the rain on an unprepared Party, flinging untested policies into the arena such as National Service and then the D-Day debacle. Sunak’s colleagues are not with him, and he paints a lonely campaigning figure. He may be the most decent Tory leader of recent times (not much competition there), but he is a hopeless politician. Why an earth didn’t he wait? By November there would have been at least one interest rate cut and Rwanda flights which never resonated with the electorate anyway (only Sunak knows why he tied his future to this ridiculous policy) may or may not have taken off. It wouldn’t have really mattered. Sound stewardship of the economy, proving he was on top of its recovery would have been his best bet. Unless, of course, he thinks economic news will only get worse over the summer, a point not lost on the electorate.
And then there is Reform UK and the dog whistler, Farage. The Brexit referendum in the first place, the populism of Johnson, the disastrous tax cutting Truss, Rwanda and countless other nods to the Right including the initial appointment of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary were all meant to assuage these folks and see them off. As one surveys the wreckage of the Tory Party, you wonder how the Foreign Secretary feels… Sunak, coming at the fag-end of a long Tory administration, was always going to have a tough time but he should have tacked firmly to the centre on day 1 and faced down his right-wing critics. The more you give, the more they take… We are now in the position where Reform are snapping at the heels of the Tories and Farage has a reasonable chance of becoming an MP before ‘taking over’ a defenestrated Tory Party.
Incidentally, the fight for the soul of a shrunken Tory Party after the election, ex-Sunak, should be one Tory moderates relish. There are many blogs on this to come…
Then bizarrely today, we have a Sunak aide being investigated by the Gambling Commission for pre-election betting on the date of the General Election. A case of insider dealing it seems… but why only place £100 at 5:1? A win of £500 does not seem sufficient compensation for a ruined career… Tory advisers can’t even get this right.
In the meantime, Starmer and the Labour Party generally look confident. They have barely put a foot wrong, and their safety-first approach gives the appearance of a government in waiting. It appears a largely effortless march to power. Of course, there are dangers in this but not too many.
Week 3 to Labour then. In fact Week 3 to almost everyone except the hapless Tories.
The only place that makes you pathetically grateful for the level of political debate in the UK is America.
It’s an extraordinary comment you might think, but viewing things from the perspective of a business trip to New York, politics is dire over here. Two presidential candidates almost nobody wants; one a convicted felon, the other feebly tottering through public life, resting heavily on cue cards.
Two candidates few voters want but Trump is the real danger to America’s future…
The real difference, however, is that Biden is a decent man who has actually had a successful presidency, with the exception of the lack of border controls that might do for him in the end. The economy is booming, partly powered by green investment initiatives, and much needed infrastructure rebuilding is finally happening. He is also managing the Middle East crisis and Ukraine as best he can.
But Biden gets no credit. The impact of inflation, not his fault, still lingers, and illegal immigration dominates public discourse even with Democrat voters I have spoken to. This is now being addressed through an executive order, but it should have been a priority from day one. Biden looks and sounds too old for a second term, and moderates are in despair at the gamble Democrats are taking with him that may let Trump triumph.
As for Trump. He is a grotesque. Nothing truthful comes out of his mouth. He is a narcissist who doesn’t care a jot for the institutions of state or, for that matter, democracy and the voters who vote for him. He is setting community against community and voter against voter. Think an extreme version of Brexit. Yet he is marginally ahead of Biden in the polls and has just raised US$140m in donations on the back of his conviction.
You just despair for the future of this amazing country. Voters are taking for granted all they have, and it feels we are witnessing the start of the collapse of an empire. cAD400 all-over again…
Trump and Biden need each other as they only have a chance of winning against each other. But it comes at the expense of the extreme polarisation of public discourse and the fracturing of American society.
Democrats are campaigning weakly, Republicans have shamefully been taken over by the cult of Trump’s personality.
America is looking into the abyss and there is only one way, at least in the short-term, for the country to save itself from itself.
For all Biden’s faults, America must reject Trump in November.
There is so much to write about… The ANC has lost its majority in South Africa and Trump has been criminally convicted on all 34 accounts in the hush-money case. More on the latter topic next week when I am based in New York for a few days. I can’t wait!
Now to the General Election in the UK. It has been another good week for Labour which has extended its lead in several opinion polls. Despite indications that the public likes some of the Tories’ new policy ideas such as National Service, they are making no impact on the party’s fortunes. Why is this?
The electorate has simply made up its mind. It is time for a change, and it would have to be a truly momentous incident for this settled view to be revised. Sunak is campaigning like an underdog opposition leader bouncing around with new ideas to try and attract attention. Starmer, meanwhile, is saying very little and campaigning more like a prime minister. Very wise and the contrast in styles has not escaped the notice of voters to Starmer’s benefit.
Looking and sounding tough on the hard left whilst reinstating Diane Abbott…
Of course there will be bumps in the road for Labour but one of them is not the row over whether Diane Abbott should be a formal Labour candidate or not. Actually, it has just been announced she can stand as an official Labour candidate in her constituency. A not very insightful column from Stephen Bush of the FT suggests all this brutal factionalism is showing Labour’s not very nice, machine politics side. Nonsense.
Labour has always been criticised for being too nice, not ruthless enough. Hence the Tories’ never-ending election success. The deselection of Corbyn and the row over the suspension and reinstatement of Diane Abbott just shines a light on how tough Starmer has been in clearing out the hard left. It reinforces the narrative that Labour has changed under Starmer, and nothing will get in the way of it attaining power. In other wording, despite whinging from the sidelines by a few journalists and Labour activists, Starmer emerges stronger from all this.
So far, the election campaign has been thoroughly boring. Only the TV debates and the last few anxious days in the run-up to election day will liven things up. In the meantime, round 2 to Labour.
I was a parliamentary assessor in 2017 when Theresa May called a snap election. Many seats did not have Tory candidates and we worked round the clock to get them selected, preparing for the landslide that never materialised. The lack of preparedness was understandable when an election was not due until 2020 and Mrs May had categorically ruled out an election until that walking holiday in Wales changed her mind…
But there is no excuse this time. There was always going to be an election this year so how come the Tory Party apparently has no candidates in place in 150 seats? Crazy. Of course there are always safe seats which become vacant at the last minute which is very helpful to drop in well-connected, favoured Party stars but the Tory Party essentially starts this campaign with about a third of seats unfilled. Hopeless. It shows there is a fundamental disconnect between No. 10 and the Party organisation.
Then the National Service announcement, already being watered-down. This policy is not without merit but it sums up the Tories’ problems of being in office. If it is such a good idea, why wasn’t it thought of earlier? It has surprised the Tory troops trying to get a grip of the detail. And we know how well that goes down. Just ask Theresa May about the social care policy dropped on a surprised Cabinet at the start of her 2017 campaign.
A decent man all at sea…
Starmer sounds confident, the Labour campaign appears slick, the LibDems are buzzing around Surrey and the South West. Gove, Leadsom, Redwood, all Brexiteer anarchists leaving a mess behind them, have jumped ship. Sunak sits in pubs but does not drink, breakfasts in cafes but does not eat and pops up in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast. What is he doing there FFS? There are no votes to be had in Northern Ireland.
Of course it could all change… at least a little. A 6 week campaign is a long time in politics… But, today, it is round 1 firmly to Labour.
You have to give it to Rishi. He is a political risk taker. Bringing back Cameron whilst pleading change, cancelling HS2 to Manchester when in… Manchester, getting the government off people’s backs whilst banning smoking. It has worked so well so far… not.
So now the big election gamble. He announced the date in the rain, looking faintly ridiculous whilst also really irritating his colleagues with the surprise. Speaking to some Tory MPs, their mood is furious as their careers are cut short by four months for no perceivable election advantage.
Meanwhile, Starmer stood in a dry room draped in the British flag, looking like a slightly dull but competent PM in waiting.
An inauspicious start…
And yet, and yet… you never know. Elections can be unpredictable. Just ask Theresa May. But this election feels different. After 14 years in government when the Conservative Party has often conducted itself disgracefully, the desire for change is palpable.
And, outside campaign surprises, what will be the main themes that will shape the election? They are straight forward. The debate will centre on that theme of change versus the devil you know but, sadly, for the Tories, not the benefits of their economic stewardship.
As Sky News explained clearly yesterday, despite falling inflation, prices are still rising, and the cost of living has risen 20% during Sunak’s premiership. It will take much longer than 4th July to feel any improvement. Just look at Biden’s languishing poll ratings in the US where, despite a booming economy, the longer-term impact of rising prices still dictates the political narrative. Unlike Sunak, however, who has just closed the door on this option, at least the President has until November to turn things around and see off his opponent.
The public is heartedly sick of the Tories, and it won’t be the credibility of Labour that is at stake but the credibility of the Tories. Against this background, Starmer will win. Only the scale of victory is in doubt.
P.S. We have just heard that no flights will take off to Rwanda before the election. The timing of the election just gets worse for the Tories…
In The Times yesterday, surveying the wreckage of the local election results, Rishi Sunak was quoted as saying Britain was heading for a hung parliament at the general election with a Labour government having to be propped up by smaller parties. Nice try, Rishi, but you have got to be joking…
It could barely have been worse for the Tories…
The results were a disaster for the Tories. The fact that Labour only got 34% of the vote is irrelevant, being obscured by all sorts of local factors that won’t be repeated at a general election. Labour won almost everywhere they had to, often very comfortably and the LibDems and Greens had good results too. What was remarkable is that Labour, in particular, for the first time in a generation, are distributing their votes efficiently rather than simply piling them up in inner cities where they were already doing well. That is a very, very bad omen for the Tories.
The clear message is that most voters are heartedly sick of the Tories and will go to any lengths to get rid of them. It really doesn’t matter how relatively unpopular Starmer is versus Blair in his hey day. It is time for a change and the huge anti-Tory coalition will swing into place ruthlessly in the Autumn voting tactically to wreak the most damage; LibDems in the South/South West and Labour everywhere else including Scotland which of course wasn’t voting last week. Reform UK will undercut the Tories from the Right, everyone else from the Left. Oh dear indeed…
This blog currently predicts not a hung parliament but a Tory wipe-out. They will be lucky to survive with a 150 seats.
And only some while after the next election will the Tories get interesting again. Every government needs a decent opposition and Labour with an inherited economic mess and no clear mandate in terms of policy commitments will quickly become unpopular. There may at least be some curiosity about what lessons the Tories have learnt from their defenestration.
The problem is that, today, there are very few indications from leading Tories they will learn anything. With rumours of a Johnson/Farage realignment of the Right of politics using the vehicle of a hugely weakened Tory Party a year or too hence, with good moderate Tories going/gone (the former West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, being one of these) and the existing left of the Tory Party seemingly (self) defeated, the Labour Party regardless of their competence may be in power for a very long time.
Time for a new centre-right party you might think. Well, however laudable, we have been here before and it seems as likely as one of Sunak’s unintended jokes about a hung parliament.
The blog has been quiet for a while. Western politics generally has been transparent if unedifying, particularly from afar, and there has been little new analysis to add. This will change as we run run up to the two big events, elections in the UK and US. Although, one shouldn’t ignore Modi’s likely win in India and his increasingly autocratic tendencies. Or the potential success of the Far Right in Europe. But another time.
The past month has been spent on a mini sabbatical across South America with a few days in Miami at the end. It is sadly over but the travels were constantly fascinating for where else can you find extreme mountain, desert, and jungle conditions lying cheek by cheek. Oh, and great wine, of course…
And then the people. As I crossed Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and now Columbia, what did I find from chatting to all and sundry?
The consistent themes in lively conversations were pressures from corruption, climate change, and migration, but also optimism as these countries increasingly embrace and celebrate social diversity.
First corruption, the fuel of inequality. Why don’t leaders just take 50 million dollars out of the system rather than billions and genuinely transform their country, leaving a legacy money can’t buy?
Argentina’s leaders, whether past military or civilian, with so much resource, have squandered billions over decades, buying off parts of the poorer electorate in the process to hold power. The banking system is screwed, and nobody keeps their money in the country if they can avoid it (even my guide had a Costa Rican bank account for tips!). One perfect example of corruption is the railway system. Sold off in the 1990s by the faintly ridiculous President Menem to corrupt property speculators, most of it was promptly shut down. With similar ‘initiatives’ elsewhere, you can really only travel long distances in South America by plane.
Many voters in Argentina have now turned to the extreme libertarian president Milei to unravel a bloated, bankrupt state, but he has no majority in Congress and frankly seems a bit of a joke. His victory according to those I spoke to comes out of despair…
Corruption in Chile is also rife, but with a better functioning economy based on a middle class, that has survived past army rule (although Pinochet’s son still runs land and companies given to him during his father’s reign!). The current left-wing president, Boric, who, like Milei, can also get nothing past Congress, now has rumoured corruption problems of his own.
Columbia’s recent past is in many respects, surprisingly similar to Chile and Argentina. Often extreme left and right participants but with the added unique twist of a history rooted in drug related guerilla and paramilitary warfare, now hugely moderated, corruptly fight over the spoils of an otherwise upwardly mobile country. A corruption scandal involving the son and brother of the current, first leftist president Petro, an ex M-19 guerilla member, linked to guess what, drug related finance, is currently unfolding.
Almost without exception, everybody I have conversed with seems cynical and weary of politics and politicians, knowing that if anything gets done properly, it is unlikely to be by the government.
In passing, I mentioned to the guides on my tour that there was a huge corruption scandal in the UK. The deputy leader of the Labour Party allegedly defrauded the taxpayer of £1500 ten years ago. The incredulity on their faces…
Then climate change and migration. The continent in many places I visited is drying out and not simply due to the El Nino effect, as temperatures rise. Unseasonal water shortages are now common. Migration is also a huge problem, particularly from basket case Venezuela. Oh, for the firm smack of a Rwandan policy… It is causing pressures everywhere, as are economic disparities between countries generally. Fertile ground for the drugs trade, although its impact has fragmented and crossed borders, notably now causing chaos in Ecuador rather than Columbia.
Finally, diversity and inclusion, an upbeat note on which to end. All countries I visited have benefitted from protests by younger generations over the past two decades or so, sick of corruption, violence, and repression. Notably, in Chile and Columbia, in different measures, the fight back has led to a focus on women’s rights, gay rights, articulated through a vibrant arts scene, all driven by enlightened political discourse.
For all the lost opportunities and challenges this continent faces, the mood is largely upbeat, and mostly thanks to the efforts of the younger generation, the future looks bright.
South American politics comes to the USA…
A postscript on Miami… Whilst there the Trump ‘hush money’ court case began in New York plus Trump’s challenge to guarantee full presidential immunity unfolded in the Supreme Court. Incredible that this man is still ahead in the polls with the latest one giving him a 6% lead. Only the hush money trial will now be heard before the election, so you really have to hope it resonates and that in the end Americans vote with their heads not their hearts. Otherwise, we are all up the proverbial creek without a paddle…
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