"With a Heavy Heart, and in the UK's National Interest"

Am I really the only person who can see the elephant that fills the proverbial living room as we crank our necks around it to watch the dying throes of the UK’s longest ever election campaign on our television screens this evening?

Much energy has been expended discussing the prospect of anything between 35 and 59 SNP Members of Parliament holding the balance of power, and what an outrage it would be to have Scottish MPs that nobody in England voted for legislating for the whole of the UK in a way that only English parties that nobody in Scotland voted for should be permitted to do. In the constitutional fog that has been visited upon us from Alba we could be excused for forgetting that the Liberal Democrats had ever existed.

And yet in spite of their low poll ratings, the Lib Dems look good for maybe 25 to 30 seats as they fight a rearguard action in their areas of strength whilst remaining content to battle it out with Bus Stop Elvis in the remainder. Thirty seats of course is less than the SNP is expected to receive, but probably enough if combined with either of the major parties to be able to outvote the other one.

NEW DYNAMIC

It occurs to me that, with the SNP having pledged to do nothing to help put the Tories back into office, a new dynamic has been created which moves the hitherto forgotten Liberal Democrats very much centre stage.

Assuming (as we shouldn’t, but for the purposes of this article we must) an outcome tomorrow which is something akin to what we have been seeing in the opinion polls, a 30-seat Lib Dem premium added to either the Tory or the Labour total would, discarding for the moment other parties, give the beneficiary a numerical advantage over its competitor. For whatever reason the assumption would appear to be being made that the Lib Dems will line up with the Tories. But if the combined total number of seats won by Labour and the SNP was to exceed the combined total for the Tories and Lib Dems (possibly fortified by those of the DUP and/or UKIP) then both Tories and Lib Dems would suddenly find themselves powerless. And powerless is not what Nick Clegg aspires to be.

If, on the other hand, the Lib Dems were to throw their lot in with Labour in what would probably still be a minority coalition, it kind of dares the SNP to line up with the Tories or face being effectively airbrushed from the picture. Abstaining on votes would not be enough. In order to defeat the (Lab-LD) government on any vote the SNP and the Tories would have to join forces, if only on an ad hoc basis and strictly for the purpose of.

Would the Liberal Democrats abandon their present course and join with Labour instead? There are a number of catalysts which have the potential to unite to bring this about, the first being the Tories’ proposed EU referendum which is being touted as a red line issue for the Tories in any potential future negotiations. As the most Euro-friendly amongst the parties this cannot be an easy one for the Libs. Labour, taking the opposite position, may have more appeal.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

And then there is the question of proportional representation. A major negotiating chip for Nick Clegg in the coalition talks of 2010, he somehow allowed David Cameron to schmooze him into accepting the half-arsed Alternative Vote option as an acceptable substitute and then suffered the indignity of watching his coalition partner rubbish it as being, well, a half-arsed alternative, at the ensuing referendum. Although Labour is, on balance, opposed to PR (and for pretty much the same self-serving reasons as the Tories), there is a substantial body of opinion within the party – including, significantly, Ed Miliband – which sees things differently, looking upon PR as having the potential to rally progressive voting support under one roof, thereby providing a near-guarantee against a conservative majority at any time in the future.

Informed opinion has it that Nick Clegg, as Leader of the Liberal Democrats, is instinctively more comfortable around the Tories than he would be with the Labour Party. This could help to explain why reports from Clegg’s constituency in Sheffield Hallam are strongly predicting widespread tactical voting for Clegg from Tory supporters as a counter to a strong electoral challenge from Labour. But were Clegg to lose his seat, or were he to be ousted through an internal coup as soon as the new Parliament is formed, his successor might well be less wedded to the Tories in any event.

Other Lib Dem “red lines” might not prove insurmountable. Clegg has thus far promised more in increased funding to the NHS than has Miliband, but then Miliband has already told us he wishes to be a Prime Minister who “under-promises and over-achieves”. More spending on the NHS is unlikely to be a cause for violent protests from traditional Labour supporters. The Lib Dems also insist upon lifting more of the lower-paid out of tax, which is a euphemism for saying that for an ever-greater number of people wages should be kept so low that their tax contributions will not be missed. As we move towards a society in which “Minimum Wage” effectively becomes the wage that almost everybody can expect to earn, Labour is already doing its bit to manage expectations by raising it to a marginally more generous level.

LEGITIMACY

Which leaves Clegg’s obsession with “legitimacy”, a term which he treats as being synonymous with a party having won the largest number of seats, surely a peculiar position for an opponent of First Past The Post to take. Most of the polls seem to have the Tories slightly ahead in this regard, although unlike Ed’s promises it is far from being carved in stone. But his policy is only to speak to the largest party first, not necessary to ally himself with that party. If a better deal can be made with the second largest party we can bet our bottom euro that is where the Lib Dems will be heading.

When all is said and done the clincher could well be that by allying himself with Labour, and in so doing rescuing Ed Miliband from the indignity of having to depend on the hated SNP for support, Clegg could consider himself to be “acting in the UK’s national interest”, much indulging his penchant for striking a lofty pose. The elephant in my living room tells me that this is a prospect he will find difficult to resist.

Meantime the reaction of the Scottish voters to having been stitched up a second time is unlikely to differ very much from the first. The case for independence will become incontestable. The case for change moves ever forward.

Is Zero Hour Approaching for the Royal Mail?

As an employee of the Royal Mail I would assume that I am under some kind of contractual obligation not to discuss the workings of the company, and I’m cool with that.

Not that I am privy in any way to its inner dealings or the strategies being followed by those whose job it is to set the direction of the business, of course. Indeed many of my colleagues would probably argue that they are usually the last to know anything that is going on, but upon that I couldn’t possibly comment. I am, presumably, entitled to express a view on those things that are in the public domain, and to have an opinion on where the mail service in the UK is likely to be headed over the next few years or so.

UNIVERSAL SERVICE OBLIGATION

The Royal Mail, uniquely, is committed by the terms of its charter to honour what is known as a USO, or Universal Service Obligation. This compels it to undertake deliveries to every address in the United Kingdom six days a week, no matter how remote or difficult to access they may be. In doing this it must operate a common charge to all customers, whether a letter is being sent to one’s next door neighbour or to a hermit living on the top of a Scottish mountain or in a tent in the middle of Dartmoor. That is the deal, from which the service is not permitted to deviate.

It would seem the political establishment has decided, in its wisdom, to introduce the principle of competition into the world of mail delivery. On the surface of it this may not seem unreasonable; competition can be a healthy thing which challenges the complacency that comes with monopoly and offers the customer a choice. Competition can bring out the best in the provider of a service and ensure that it ups its game.

The problem with what is being offered in this particular instance is that that competition will not be operating on a level playing field. Unlike the Royal Mail, potential rivals such as TNT/Whistl are under no obligation to deliver to less profitable destinations, but rather will be able to pick and choose where they deliver, and when, and at what cost to each particular area. Whilst the Royal Mail must use at least some of the profit it generates from the service it provides in the more populated regions to subsidise the losses it will inevitably make in more remote parts of the country, competitors will have the freedom to operate in the more lucrative areas whilst leaving the rest to the Royal Mail. The outcome must inevitably be that the Royal Mail will lose income in the towns and the cities, making it more difficult to provide the necessary subsidies to rural destinations.

EFFICIENCIES

This case has been put, thus far unsuccessfully, by Royal Mail’s management to the government. In rejecting the case, the government is insisting that there remains scope for the Royal Mail to introduce more efficiencies into the service it currently provides.

There is always, of course, room for improvement in any organisation. I am sure there are ways yet to be discovered in which the current service can be redesigned and realigned to provide more bang for its buck. But to achieve the massive changes that will be needed to allow it to compete on anything approaching level terms with the newcomers who are being given every encouragement to enter the field the service will need to be completely transformed on an absolutely fundamental level. Thus far all concerned parties have steered very well clear of any mention at all of this particular elephant in the living room.

The Royal Mail is an industry which has developed organically over a period of almost 500 years, having first appeared in an admittedly primitive form under Henry VIII. Today it employs over 150,000 staff, is unionised and pays its workers a reasonable wage as well as offering holiday and sick pay. Inevitably there are grumbles from the shop floor from time to time about the treatment of employees - some justified, others less so - but anybody who has worked in the “hire 'em, fire 'em” environment much favoured by successive recent governments, as I have, will know just how reassuring it feels to enjoy some kind of protection in the workplace. Under the present conditions it is very likely that competitors will be minimum wage employers, possibly operating zero-hours contracts, and under terms which sidestep the requirement to provide even the most basic of employment protections and benefits. When the Royal Mail is being told it has room for further “efficiencies” which will enable it to compete with all comers, it doesn’t take a genius to work out where the powers that be are looking to take us.

REDEPLOYMENT

My guess is that once competition opens up, possibly as early as next year, the Royal Mail will be forced into a position where it will need to try to compete on similar terms. The unions will not - cannot - accept the redeployment of their current members on vastly inferior terms so it is perhaps inevitable that a large-scale diminution of its current workforce will follow, initially and hopefully solely through the use of voluntary redundancy payments, accompanied coterminously by the redesignation of those who remain, and the simultaneous employment of new staff (possibly sub-contracted) with different job descriptions, different uniforms but essentially a replacement for the traditional postie.

For those who think I am being sensationalist, I have seen this happen before - indeed I have been part of the project. As a Duty Manager at Skycaps at London Heathrow Airport I was paid considerably less than the shop-floor former porters whose jobs the company had replaced, and who had been reassigned to other duties. It happens.

Just how much dedication and loyalty these dispensable, ten-a-penny, untrained (some untrainable), high turnover, completely unmotivated employees will have for the company I will leave to the imagination of the reader. But old King Henry must be turning in his grave.

The British Left is Janus-Faced on Remembering our War Dead

Having finished a stint of poppy selling at a local(ish) supermarket today I felt moved to approach a stall that had been set up by three young* lads (*it needs to be said that most people are young to me these days) in support of the Socialist Party. This of course is the socialist party which was once the Militant Tendency within the Labour Party, but is now a separate entity very much outside of same.

The trio were collecting a petition for a £10 minimum wage in London, as well as selling their newspaper "The Socialist".

Feeling cheerful after a fairly successful sale I signed the petition, bought a paper and made a small donation to the cause. One of the lads thanked me and engaged me in conversation, first about the petition he was collecting but then about the poppies he had watched me selling. Generally it was small talk, but he asked me how well I'd done and wished me luck. In a separate short conversation one of the others expressed his solidarity with those who had given their lives in the fight against fascism during the Second World War.

It struck me that probably not much more than half an hour earlier I had been finger-pointed and shouted at by another young chap of a roughly similar age who had seemed to assume from the fact that I was selling poppies that I was pro-war and ipso facto supportive of the military interventions instigated by recent Labour and ConDem governments. Something was said as he walked away to the effect that I was a murderer and a fascist.

The shouter had no connection to the Socialist Party activity but it occurred to me that he would probably have considered himself to occupy a roughly similar place on the political spectrum. And yet their respective views on the whole concept of remembrance could not have been more opposite. An interesting dilemma for the British left to try to resolve.

Incidentally, for the benefit of anybody who is interested my position is generally anti-war, although I am not a pacifist as I acknowledge the case for military action in self-defence. Only very tenuously can this card be played in respect of recent offensive actions in the various Middle Eastern theatres of war in which we've been engaged. My policy is to mourn the victims, respect the service personnel who risk and sometimes give their lives under orders and detest the financiers and politicians who send them to their deaths under sundry nefarious pretexts. Clearly not everybody shares my view.