/ 30 April 2010

Failing all else, people must do it for themselves

What do Langa, Hanoi and the British general election campaign have in common? Well, frankly, not a lot. But when you are searching for a moderately interesting way to start a column, this is as good a question as any.

In Hanoi last week I was struck by the industry and obvious entrepreneurial zeal of the poor and working class. Everywhere you wander people are making a buck, selling this or that; old and young women cooking little pots of (delicious) food on the street; tiny house-fronts opened up to render possible makeshift shops.

The Vietnamese are actively taking advantage of economic liberalisation to lift themselves out of poverty. I realise how much of a Thatcherite this makes me sound. It was her gruesome lieutenant, Norman Tebbit, who infamously proclaimed that the poor should stop whingeing and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”.

It was an incendiary comment, deliberately intended to enrage those of us on the left who believed in an interdependent society, where the poor and vulnerable are caught by the safety net of the welfare state.

But what if the state is unable, or unwilling, to provide? In Langa the residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement have been waiting nearly a decade for a satisfactory outcome to their plight. One planning cock-up after another has added salt to the wounds of socioeconomic exclusion; only now are their views being listened to properly.

But, driving through Langa, the contrast with Hanoi was telling: So little activity in comparison, so little apparent energy or entrepreneurial enterprise.

So there I go again, in my new-found “the lady’s not for turning” outfit. Yet, it is a nagging thought: increasingly it seems clear that this government is not going to deliver — it’s not capable of it and certainly not on the scale and with the urgency needed. And, increasingly, it is far too distracted by its project of personal accumulation, not to mention the petty, self-indulgent infighting of the ruling party.

People must stop waiting and become active citizens, not just in their demands for fairness and equality and accountable governance, but also in economic terms.

Vietnam, like China, has enjoyed exponential growth rates over the past decade — despite or perhaps partly because of its autocratic, one-party-state government — but without attracting the same level of international attention as its adjoining northern neighbour; and the curious hybrid of state socialism and market capitalism reminds one of Hungary circa 1985.

Which brings me to the British election, where the big idea of the Tories is to replace big government with a “big society” (notwithstanding the role that the state played in saving “their” establishment merchant banks). There are several problems with the idea.

First, Britons are too indolent: A big society requires a huge amount of political activity and most Britons are just not interested. As Oscar Wilde said: “The problem with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings”.

With the good fortune of an economic boom, Labour has made Britain a better place to live in the past 13 years — for most people. But it has not made the case for social democracy with sufficient clarity or conviction — and the bad luck of a grim global recession has brought that into sharper focus — and it has not closed the inequality gap.

So now Labour is vulnerable to that great British political tradition: Johnny’s turn. The British get bored and tend to vote for change when they sense a government has got stale, even when they know it has improved things.

Talking of who’s turn it is, a man called Jonny Oates, who spent two years in South Africa as part of a parliamentary democracy-building project around the turn of the century, is a leading Liberal Democrat strategist who pushed hard for the television leaders’ debates that are on course to change British politics forever. And not because of the debates themselves — compelling though they are (at least to the political cognoscenti) — but because they have provided the Liberals with the opportunity that the British electoral system denies them: Fairness.

Britain has clung to its outdated, extreme version of the winner-takes-all/first-past-the-post constituency system, just as the ANC appears now to be determined to cling to South Africa’s extreme system at the other end of the spectrum, “pure” proportional representation — despite the accountability downside of having no direct, constituency electoral connection whatsoever.

This means that at the past election in 2005 the Liberals could win 23% of the vote but fewer than 10% of the seats.

But Liberal leader Nick Clegg’s strong showing in the television debates has ripped Tory leader David Cameron’s “change” message from under his feet. Now Clegg and the Liberals are the “change” candidates, as he cheekily brands Labour and Conservatives as the “old parties” (the Liberals were around long before Labour was a twinkle in Keir Hardie’s eye).

I can see them getting 10% or more votes than in 2005. The question, however, is where these votes will come from — Labour or Tory — and in which constituencies? A “hung” Parliament and a coalition government are increasingly likely. Whether it is Con-Lib or Lab-Lib (as in the last such occasion in 1974) will depend on who gives the Liberals what they need to be back in the game properly for the first time in a century — electoral reform based on proportional representation.

As with the English premiership, the final victor is still uncertain after a long campaign of unexpected twists and turns. While in that case, alas, the brilliant but mercurial Arsenal failed to break the suffocating recent red-blue stranglehold of Manchester United and Chelsea, in the political realm it is the late run of the “third party” outsider that could prove in a week’s time to have gained the most.