davywavy | [Politics (yes, again)] The rise of extremism.

I've recently been reading Stuart Sutherland's excellent book Irrationality. I'd recommend it. It's a look at how our assumptions and prejudices are usually pretty much wrong and if you want to acheive good decision making it's always a good idea to look at statistical analyses rather than relying solely upon your own brain.
One section of it which really caught my eye was on elections, voting behaviour and decision making. You see, I'd always rather blithely assumed, in a smug educated middle-class sort of way, that when it came to things like understanding issues and being informed about the policies of political parties and their effects upon life the best people at that would be people like you and me, dear readers. i.e smug educated middle-class folks. In that it turned out I was dead wrong.
I spend a lot of time reading about and investigating politics and I'd always assumed that others did something pretty similar, but it appears not. Instead, as a general rule, during elections the people who are best informed as to the policies of political parties and the effects they will have are the people at the bottom of the heap; the poorest. I was surprised but when when you stop and think about it that makes sense, as even marginal differences in social and economic policy will have the greatest relative effects upon their lives and so it is in their interest to be up to speed on what those policies actually are. People are acting in their own self-interest, really.

I got me to thinking about this in the light of the recent results in the European elections and the shock many people felt about the election of a few BNP members. Looking at the results it seemed pretty clear that the Conservatives lost a lot of their traditional voters to the UKIP, and Labour lost theirs to the BNP; if you're unconvinced, take a look at the historic election returns in the wards where the BNP made gains and tell me which parties lost out to them. You can do that here and here. I've seen some people in the media and on LJ suggest that it's teh ev1l Toriezz voting with the nasty racists, but the evidence shows that where the BNP was elected Labour lost seats whilst the Conservatives and LibDems maintained their share of the electorate in those wards, by and large.
A glance at the YouGov poll taken in concordance with the European elections offers some key insights as to who backed them, and why. Nationally, professional workers outnumber manual by 20 per cent to 18 per cent. Among BNP voters the proportion is 11 per cent professional to 36 per cent manual workers. 61 per cent of BNP voters are male. A third read the Sun or Daily Star, compared with just a fifth of the country at large, and only 6 per cent read the upmarket Guardian, Times, Telegraph etc. The average BNP voter’s wage is below the national average. They are, essentially, what once formed the backbone of traditional Labour support.

It's very easy to demonise views and belief systems with which one does not agree, and it's also very easy for lazy thinkers to accuse any attempt to understand those views as being in some way condoning them; look at the time Cherie Blair said she understood why the Palestinians were detonating themselves. She didn't say she condoned or agreed, just expressed understanding, but this was still seized upon and she was forced to make a ritual political apology. However, if we are to stop people acting in a way we find abhorrent or unacceptable, it is important to understand why they're doing it in the first place. As Sun Tzu observed in the Art of War almost two and a half thousand years ago, Know your enemy, know yourself, and you shall not be defeated in a thousand battles. As such, I decided to look into why people felt that the BNP were a sufficiently attractive prospect to start electing them. What I found was interesting.
The fast reaction of many to the prospect of people voting BNP is that this was done out of stupidity or ignorance, but if Sutherland (above) is correct, then this simply cannot be the case. If the poorest are the best informed on issues, and they're the ones voting BNP (i.e. the Labour party's core vote deserting them), then they must be doing so for reasons which seem to them to be both rational and most importantly in their own interest. I had no idea what those reasons are, so plainly there was something going on here that I wasn't aware of.

The primary claim of the BNP is, simply, that 'They're coming over here and taking all our jobs". It's the age-old cry of the knee-jerk reactionary - all we need is for them to add "And women" and it'll be like an episode of Love thy neighbour. This has always struck me as suspect; at the height of the boom back in 2005, Gordon Brown claimed that an additional 2.2 million jobs had been created in the British economy. Even assuming a certain amount of political hyperbole here, anything like that number of created jobs would have had a remarkable effect upon the unemployment figures, and so my next step was to check that out.
The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) keeps figures of people classed as 'out of work and claiming benefits'. That is, the total number of unemployed and not just the ones claiming the dole or whatever it's called this week. Ever since the convenient political charade of shoving the long-term unemployed onto the incapacity benefit register was started in the late 1980's, this total figure has been the one to watch and investigating that led me to this remarkable chart:

In spite of all the 'new jobs' having been created in the last decade, unemployment in the UK has remained steady. In fact, at no point in the last decade has the number of people out of work and claiming benefits dropped below five million. This took me aback. We've just lived through the greatest economic boom in recorded human history, but in spite of that and all the untold billions spent, sure start places, initiatives, targets and training schemes, UK unemployment hasn't budged.* Instead, it appears that a migrant workforce has taken up the slack.
Now, speaking personally, I'm a big fan of open borders and people being able to move where the work is. If intelligent, educated and diligent Poles with big knockers** (for example) want to move here to work then I'm all for it.
This is not the whole picture either; the image of the unemployed as being either incapable of working or workshy is also simply not true. Of the 5.3 million unemplyed and claiming benefits, the best part of half are classed as lacking but wanting paid employment'; however, it seems they simply being outcompeted by the migratory workforce.

It's here that the BNP have found their niche; despite having invested billions in public services in the same way that I invested four pints up against the garden wall on my way home from the pub the other night, Labour has comprehensively failed their core supporters - indeed, the very people whom the Labour party were created to represent - the working class. Instead, not only there are just as many people on benefits as there were over a decade ago, but many of those genuinely want to work but simply cannot compete in the job markets. More astonishingly, since the 2005 election the incomes of the poorest 10% of the population have actually fallen in real terms. If you combine these factors, the rise of the BNP becomes understandable; a disenfranchised sector of the population who as a whole actually got poorer during the greatest period of economic expansion we have ever known, and who want to work but find themselves out-competed and out-performed by migratory workers makes for a potent brew of disaffection.
I remember railing back in 2005 about the declared public sector liabilities of £38bn; Of course, this was back in the good old days when thirty eight billion quid was a lot of money - since then those liabilities have gone over £720bn and are still growing. This £720bn doesn't take into account unfunded public-sector pension liabilites and PFI commitments*** so you have to admit that Labour's record has been less than stellar; the last time we were this much in debt we at least had punching Hitler squarely on the nose to show for it, but despite that they've not reduced total unemployment by more than can be accounted for by statistical variation and instead made those self same people actually worse off. So much for the 'third way'.

I know there are a number of Labour fans out there on my f-list, so there you are. I've solved your problem for you. The reason the BNP are making gains over you is because you've so alienated and disenfranchised your core electorate over the last ten years that they see voting for the Nazis as preferable. You've shown them what jobs are, but made sure they won't get one and made them poorer instead. If you plan on making a stand at any elections any time soon, you might care to do something about it.

Gosh, that was all very serious, wasn't it? I'll tell some jokes tomorrow, promise. The voices in my head told me some pretty funny ones over the weekend.

^{*Moreover, thesee figures are over a year old. Since they were compiled, unemployment has risen by somewhere in the region of a million, and if projections are anything to go by the total number of 'unemployed and claiming benefits' will top 7 million people by the end of next year.
**Shout out to ditzy_pole here.
*** If those showed up on the figures they'd read £2,000,000,000,000, so it's understandable that ol' prudence brown is keeping schtum.}

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

You know we're between a rock & a hard place here - p!55 poor education, a generous welfare state, and open borders do not make happy bedfellows. This will break us.

What to do? Our immigration policy is deictated by teh 'EU', (as Tony decided not to copy France & GErmany & shut out workers from teh accession states) and I rather like having a welfare state.

I must say, I'm flummoxed.

From:

davywavy.livejournal.com

I think it is an education thing. You need an educated and motivated population to compete in an open market, and the Comprehensive system doesn't provide us with that.

From: (Anonymous)

I've always thought the purpose of a left wing party must be the emancipation of the workers through removal of obstacles preventing their access to legitimate opportunity. It's very much how and why the Rochdale pioneers came to be.

Could this be the rebirth of a genuine grass roots left wing movement, the Labour party having lost the plot? Or is it just the lurch to ultra-nationalism Hayek predicts?

From:

davywavy.livejournal.com

It did strike me as I was writing the above that emancipating the poor isn't actually in the interest of the Labour party, as the Thatcherite sale of council houses deomstrated quite unequivocally that making people property-owning workers makes them aspirational, and aspirational people vote Conservative.

From: (Anonymous)

"... aspirational people vote Conservative..."

Unless the economy is doing well & they're starting to feel guilty - then, as the 1997 election shows, they might vote New Labour as a sort of attempt to sub-contract out their social obligations.

Stephen Fry actually wrote an essay in the mid '90's on "Why I want to Pay More Tax." And for once, looks like the government listened

H

From: (Anonymous)

That's very cynical. I voted Labour 'cos Bliar was promising to do something about endemic unemployment. I hoped he'd do a bit more than banish Frank Field to the back benches as soon as he had the temerity to talk sense, but I expect no more from teh Tories.

Back from the dead. One night only.

[Politics (yes, again)] The rise of extremism.

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