Hurt the BBC and TUC and risk losing voters to tub-thumping nationalists
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Version 0 of 1. It was only to be expected that the Tory newspapers and tweeters would do a celebratory war dance as David Cameron’s cabinet gathered for the first time and Ed Miliband (can this really be true?) slunk off with Justine for a break in Ibiza. But the Mail’s “Tories declare war on the BBC” headline is as unsettling as it is predictable. As for Sajid Javid’s confirmation on breakfast radio that, as the new Vince Cable, he has early plans to further curb already shrunken trade union rights to strike, that rash talk is not easy to square with the PM’s one nation comments at the weekend (“Thatcherite Javid to spearhead business push,” says the FT splash). Cameron is clearly trying to make a pitch to improve the Tory appeal to northern and working-class Britain, blue-collar workers who could become “Reagan Democrats”. Admittedly, Dave sacked Eric Pickles, their only authentic representative in cabinet, though the white and working-class north deserved better representation than that lazy rascal, so it may be progress. Related: David Cameron lays out plans for 'blue-collar Conservatism' as cabinet meets Evidently stung by charges of running a posh “chumocracy”, Cameron has promoted comprehensive school educated MPs – Javid, Priti Patel, Greg Clark and David Mundell. As deputy chairman, he now has Harlow’s Robert Halfon, who apparently joked that the Tories should rebrand as the workers’ party. Halfon is one of the few Tory MPs with the credentials to make that sort of joke and Cameron’s plans to boost apprenticeships or excise daft red tape is fine, too. But No 10 should beware of attacks on the Beeb and the TUC. So should voters who shrug or cheerfully hoist an early G&T on hearing the news. It can’t be stressed often enough that BBC-bashing in the press usually reflects both a popular blue-collar prejudice and a direct commercial conflict of interest: newspapers are in the media business, too, and media is fast converging in ways that are hard to predict. We are all looking for a niche. The conflict of interest is most obvious in the case of that natural monopolist Rupert Murdoch – Britain’s biggest media player these days. He is genuinely offended that the BBC’s existence, supported by the licence fee, restricts his capacity to screw even more money out of Britain’s blue-collar TV audience and ship as much as possible of it abroad. “Cameron’s shot across the bows to the BBC,” is the Times’s obliging splash headline (paywall) on Tuesday. Reading the day’s account of how cross the Tories are with BBC bias against them (those pollsters, eh, all lefties, even the ones with Tory peerages) you might not realise that commercial broadcasters, including BSkyB, were party to the election TV debates shambles. They were debates in which Lynton Crosby’s tactical demands largely prevailed. Related: Tories not at war with BBC, says business secretary Fortunately, I suspect most of Tuesday’s talk of “payback time” (the Sun is rarely subtle) is worthless, not least because the new culture secretary, John Whittingdale, is a wily and cautious old bird. Nor is he driven by ambition and head-turning flattery like Javid, who had the job before him. Ditto Tony Hall, the BBC’s own wary boss. Both are on their last big job. The BBC’s own No 10 briefing on reported threats to the licence fee was calmer. Even the Times admits – in the small print inside – that it’s likely to be safe for another decade, though the BBC Trust is probably doomed (and rightly so). On both sides everyone will get enjoyably overexcited until the BBC charter is renewed in 2016. But the Beeb is not the only national institution under attack. I do not share leftwing alarm over the evolving shape of the NHS and nor do all but the shroud-waving elements in the medical professions and trades. Nor, I suspect, would Andy Burnham if he hadn’t been running to be Labour’s post-Miliband sheriff almost non-stop since 2010. After all, as Jeremy “Keep calm and carry on” Hunt likes to point out, he has been using Labour legislation to diversify the service a bit. But trade unions matter as important intermediate institutions in our society, deeply unfashionable though they currently are. They can still occasionally be a nuisance in terms of strikes, which are hard to justify beyond a narrow sectional interest and often not even then. Big but token one-day strikes against Post Office modernisation and reform of prison officers’ pay in 2007 did neither interest much good, though they may have made the lads feel better in a non-monetary way. Here’s the recent UK record. Like the imperfect BBC, the TUC, for all its collective faults, is a sheet anchor in our fast-changing society But anyone who can recall the shop-floor militancy of the 60s and 70s (the Boulting Brothers comedy I’m All Right, Jack – still worth catching – was actually made in 1959) or its brutal fall against Thatcherism in the 80s knows that union power in this country has been broken. However, many of the defects in British industrial output once blamed on the unions – some of them correctly – are still there in the shape of low productivity linked to underinvestment, sloppy management and inferior products that are not marketed or sold abroad in sufficient numbers. It is capital that is usually on strike these days. And it is the casino practices of its staff, so long tolerated by overpaid investment bankers, which have done so much damage to the UK economy since 2008. Not the unions’ flea-bite strikes. So George Osborne should focus on more important economic reforms than goading his protege Javid into token union-bashing. Yet ministers are being urged on by Boris Johnson, who is irritated by flea-bite militancy in London’s transport system – the impact of which diminishes with every misuse of Tube drivers’ power. In response they plan to raise the bar on strike ballots, which are already held in highly restrictive circumstances. The irony is so obvious that even TUC leaders have spotted it. The Tory majority government, elected on 39% of the votes cast last Thursday, wants to restrict strikes to ballots supported by 40% of those eligible to vote. This is mainly a public sector issue nowadays and public sector employees can be foolishly out of touch with private sector realities, as their 2011 strike against pension reforms confirmed. Related: David Cameron's new cabinet lineup But unions retain an important role in speaking up for organised labour, as well as the disorganised low-paid kind, those on fragile or zero-hours contracts, those easily bullied by junior managers, who are easily bullied in turn. The vast majority of employers are decent people doing their best. But the cowboy minority get too easy a ride. Miliband was right about that bit and a high-flying ex-banker like Javid, even one from a modest Oldham background, could not be expected to understand. Thatcherites tend to be naive about markets. Like the imperfect BBC, the TUC, for all its collective faults, is a sheet anchor in our fast-changing society. They are two among many intermediate institutions which stand between the individual, the market and the state. Weaken any of them and you risk driving bewildered voters into the clutches of tub-thumping nationalists of one colour or another for solace and solidarity: Ukip, SNP or “English-nationalist light” Tories. That’s one disturbing lesson which Friday morning’s election map starkly illustrated: mostly yellow in Scotland, blue in England. Not healthy. Cameron says he gets it, but does he? |