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The amount of bile and accumulated bitterness that has poured over Rover in its demise astonishes me. It`s as if the columnists, economists and commentators hated manufacturing and wanted to see it dead as soon as possible on the grounds that the British can`t hack it.
We’ve run the economy on high interest rates and a high exchange rate, both of which damage manufacturing. The City has always hated those who make things, particularly metal bashing, and prefers to invest elsewhere. The bright young have always gone into accountancy or the law and never manufacturing. The culture of business has been for the top people to reward themselves excessively and to concentrate more on hyping earnings than on investing and building for the long term. Then when the car industry fails we blame the workers.
Rover has been a paradigm for all that’s wrong with Britain. None of which you get in France where they’ve retained their own marques and their own firms and are bigger manufacturers than us because they don’t close firms down at the first sign of trouble. Perversely the British now think they`re leading the world because they`ve closed more production than any other country.
The paradigm continued even in death with the new owners looting millions and giving themselves a £20 million pension scheme while the workers` pensions were a black hole. Companies are there to enrich the top dogs, not to compete and make things. Rover will be kept going until after the election. Then it will close and all the commentators will say “Old Hat”. “Had to Go.” “Basket Case”. The new wisdom is that closure of manufacturing is leading the way to the new economy. My question is if we don’t have manufacturing what do we export, how do we pay our way in the world? What do our people do for work?
A spectre is stalking the election. It’s called the Electoral Commission. This campaign the diminishing band of party workers is having to learn new rules and a new terror stalks poor old agents who have to see that everything is OK and the law is observed.
The law is now much more complex. New laws require us to have written permission for every photograph used, and, in the case of kids, the permission of the parents and teachers too. However impossible it is to get them. Pamphlets need new accreditations with different wordings. Offices, phones and committee rooms have all to be accounted for. Staff paid by the House of Commons mustn`t touch electoral work or politics, even though their continued employment depends on the re-election of their boss.
Agents are becoming terrified of visits inspections and undercover observation by the Electoral Commission. Which makes it slightly amazing that the postal vote fiddles which made Birmingham an inspiration to President Mugabe were allowed to occur and continue undetected by the Commission. Until the parties began to snitch on each other. Which was the old way of enforcing rules, ensuring that they never got enforced. Everyone was cheating so they colluded to conceal.
Since 1997 the electoral playing field has sloped against the Tories. The decline of city centre populations and the drift to the suburbs means that Labour seats now have about 6,000 fewer votes than Tory seats. It’s a sad but lamentable fact but I`m not worried at all. The slope has been the other way for so long with a bias against Labour that a period the other way seems perfectly fair to me.
This, coupled with the fact that Labour is ahead in every poll, means that there’s no great air of excitement. Indeed if the parties were neck and neck in the polls Labour would still win. Since most people have already made their minds up anyway a great poll reversal, such as occurred in 1970, doesn’t seem likely. Tony Blair isn`t widely popular but by l970 Harold Wilson was positively hated. It wasn’t mistrust of the type Tony suffers from. It was deep discredit.
The parties appear to be sleepwalking to inevitability. The big question hanging over this election is what on earth is going to kick start it into some life? No wonder so many politicians rushed off to be cheered up by the Pope’s funeral. It was a positive relief from the election so it`s surprising that they’ve not gone to Prince Ranier’s too. No wonder the all look so miserable now it`s up to them to keep us interested from here on in without the distractions of Royal Weddings, Wimbledon or the Booker Prize. They`ve no idea how to do it.
I had thought Michael Howard would produce an endless string of hate objects but asylum seekers, gypsies, yobs have all emerged one by one and no-ones particularly frightened while none of the reviled has come forward to bop him one. Kilroy Silk has lived with the gypsies and survived. Going to live with the Moslems doesn’t seem likely. Tony and Gordon haven`t squared up to each other at a press conference or fallen around fighting in lumps. Margaret Becket hasn’t crashed her caravan into a Royal Rolls.
So what on earth is going to rescue this election from its enveloping boredom of inevitability? Send for John “Slugger” Prescott. Quick.
Seventeen years ago when Rover was privatised by the Tories I was Labour`s Industry Spokesman under Bryan Gould.
I got the job of replying to the debate. In those days front bench teams made up their own policies. With Bryan`s agreement I concluded my speech with a ringing commitment that if Rover failed in the private sector a future Labour Government would take it back. We would never see it fail.
Should I write to Tony Blair now and remind him that this was a Party promise? |
