Clingendael 1 LibDems 0

"Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road..."

With a group of eager-to-learn postgraduate students on an MA Programme in International Relations, I recently undertook a one-day crash course in negotiation at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations at Clingendael.

Here’s what I learnt.

First, zero-sum negotiations are hard. What you gain, I lose - and trust is a problem. It’s like buying a second-hand car from a stranger. What we really want is positive-sum or ‘integrative’ negotiation. I trade what I value less for what you value less and vice versa. We package different issues so that we can both win. That’s all pretty straightforward.

Slightly less intuitive is the route to optimising the outcome when the negotiating partners have unequal resources. The weaker party may maximise their own benefits by allowing the stronger party to take more. Looking for equality may be sub-optimal for the weaker party.

For all of this to work, however, there are some background conditions that need to be secured: a clear negotiating mandate, clear priorities, commitment to a relationship that extends across time, measurable outputs. Could any of this help Mr Clegg on the neatly-chiselled points of his painful dilemma?

It’s clear that the junior partner in any negotiation can overplay his hand – and end up with nothing (or, rather, nothing more than he began with). But, of course, the senior partners also have a very great deal to lose in walking away.

Uncertainty has a place in any real world negotiation but in Mr Clegg’s circumstances this is multiplex almost to the point of bewilderment. It’s possible to lose and the stakes are very high but the value of a win may justify some very high-risk behaviour.

Would you buy a second-hand car from Mr. Clegg? In the end, it depends on how desperate you are to get on the road.

Professor Chris Pierson

“Were you up for Balls?”

"So it is a fifteen-times-in-a lifetime event – and there are not many of those! Perhaps in these anti-political or post-political times, we still think that somehow it matters..."

“Were you up for Portillo?” became a sort of catchphrase in the aftermath of the 1997 Election. Those who could say ‘yes’ were deemed to be those who really cared. Hah! The Enfield result was declared at 2.41 a.m. Barely past bedtime.

My son was up for Portillo – and he was five at the time! “Were you up for Freeman?” (Kettering; Friday, 1.37 p.m.) is a much more real benchmark. Only at this point could the committed really consider turning in (expect for those in Northern Ireland, whose vigil still had some way to run).

Why do it? Personally, I was convinced that if I went to bed at any time on 1st/2nd May, 1997, I would wake to find that I had dreamt up the whole thing. Perhaps elections still have a rarity value? I calculate that the average British adult may get to vote in about fifteen General Elections.

So it is a fifteen-times-in-a lifetime event – and there are not many of those! Perhaps in these anti-political or post-political times, we still think that somehow it matters.

We may be deeply disillusioned about what we get but we may still reckon that it’s important, even if we are not quite sure how and why. Perhaps, we just like the human drama or the catharsis that comes when the mighty are fallen. “Were you up for Cameron?”

That’s one that would really make you pinch yourself!

Professor Christopher Pierson

Politician in sex denial shock

I watched the last of the prime ministerial debates with a group of lively postgraduate politics students in a hotel in Leuven, the beautiful medieval town twenty miles from Brussels. No-one showed much interest until David Cameron turned to the subject of inheritance, when he delivered this gem: “passing your family home on to your children” is “the most natural human instinct of all”.

This unrepresentative sample of the British electorate could think instantaneously of at least three human instincts that were by any measure more natural than passing on the family home, at least one of which was also much more fun.

Gordon Brown made much in the debate of the Conservatives’ proposals on inheritance tax as a millionaire’s charter. But none of the mainstream parties can claim to have promised to do very much on the question of inheritance.

As they huffed and puffed to make much of the fag-paper’s breadth that divides them on this as on many other issues, it was clear that no-one in the political mainstream will seriously address this question of the transmission of privilege (and disadvantage).

In fact, and at least for three or four years after 2000, Labour’s record on the reduction of (especially child) poverty was not at all bad (though it has slipped back since then, as the recent Joseph Rowntree Trust report made clear.

In its early years, it introduced Sure Start and the Child Trust Fund. But these were overwhelmed by the traffic carrying income inequality in the opposite direction. On social mobility, the record is one of grim under-achievement; made to look tolerable only by the still worse record of the Tories who preceded them. For just the latest depressing round of evidence, see the Marmot Review.

Inheritance is not natural. Some of the keenest defenders of private property throughout history have scorned the idea that we have a right to that which our parents earned (or stole or themselves inherited).

Seneca and St. John of Chrysostom provide two classical sources. A thoroughly modern liberal like John Stuart Mill was a severe critic of inheritance. It was once regarded as in the mainstream to argue that the increment in land values that adjacent development brought belonged not to the lucky landowner but to the community at large.

But such a view now seems to be off-limits, at least to politicians; though, by contrast, see Phillipe Legrain’s recent article in the Financial Times.

And yet more, much more of a radical stance on questions of property is required of us if we are even to pretend to takes seriously the issues of environmental change and is social consequences which stand before us as an inconvenient (if still, for some, an unproven) truth.

But we have almost certainly lost the capacity to think this big. We don’t want to address questions of social mobility because we hope to be able to transmit such advantages as we now have to our own children in what looks like a very uncertain world, one in which we have largely lost faith in our capacity to forge effective collective solutions.

When we hold up our politicians for ridicule for their small-mindedness and unwillingness to think of the long-term and the big picture we should remember this. If there was a real popular will to address these things, there’d be a politician to stand for it. When we see our politicians, we are not just viewing a screen or a gazing up at a podium, we are looking in a mirror. Who is to blame if we don’t like what we see?

Professor Chris Pierson

They think it’s all over…

"Could Clegg win the World Cup? If ever there was a moment to ask that question, just perhaps … it is now..."

With poll after poll putting Labour in third place, it is surely time for those bunkered in Labour HQ to reach for their secret weapon: the FIFA World Cup.




Although political science lacks many truly iron laws, it is indisputably the case that England has only ever won football’s most cherished prize under a Labour Government. Indeed, the same truth holds for the Rugby World Cup (snatched from under the very noses of the Australians in 2003). With the South African tournament just a few weeks away, Labour may well feel that this is the best shot left in its locker.



Of course, it’s not such a clear vote winner outside England, though a variant could be prepared for use north of the border: the only party ever to have presided over Scotland’s defeat of the World Champions at Wembley with a rather cheeky performance from Jim Baxter. More recently, we might recall that the great Ashes win of 2005 (‘the finest test series of all time’) was preceded by New Labour’s third successful electoral outing.



Of course, it’s not all one-way traffic. Credit for Margaret Thatcher’s win in 1983 is often attributed to her success in the Falkland’s War (a claim the psephologists have long played down) but too little attention is surely given to Botham’s Ashes win of 1981.



And who fails to notice that the decline of England’s test fortunes against the old enemy in the 1990s neatly coincided with the long electoral decline of the Conservative Party?

At the same time, no-one over fifty will fail to recollect that the unbearable humiliation of England by West Germany in Mexico on 14th June 1970 was followed just a few days later by Heath’s surprise win over Wilson.



What are the precedents for the Liberal Democrats? Well, they are not entirely encouraging. Last time we had a Liberal government we were still inventing games for the colonies. Hobbs (Jack rather than Thomas) was opening the batting for England and tennis was being run by a bunch of amateurs. North of the border, little has changed: the Scottish Football League had just been won by Rangers from Celtic (or vice versa). The Liberal Democrat leader is an untested force. Could Clegg win the World Cup? If ever there was a moment to ask that question, just perhaps … it is now.

Professor Chris Pierson

“I feel like I win when I lose”

"No-one (in their right mind) would want to find themselves governing in the scorched earth years that lie ahead of us. Not so much a poisoned chalice as a barrel’s worth of the stuff."

A familiar part of any electoral spring is the appearance of our old and counter-intuitive friend – “it’s a good election to lose”.

In varying forms, it has already made an appearance in The Guardian, The Independent and the London Review of Books courtesy of Messrs. Legrain, Lawson and Lanchester, respectively.
For Legrain and Lawson, the gist of the story is that it’s 1992 all over again. What appeared at the time, to some, to be Major’s surprising win was just the prelude to the rise of Blair and the New Labour decade.

There’s a curious parallel in Australia’s electoral experience. After a decade in power, Paul Keating won a surprise victory for the incumbent Labor Party in 1993 – the one he said was for ‘the true believers’ - but his exhausted administration just about limped its way through to 1996, a thumping electoral defeat and ten years’ long march through the political outback.

For Lanchester, the story is rather simpler. No-one (in their right mind) would want to find themselves governing in the scorched earth years that lie ahead of us. Not so much a poisoned chalice as a barrel’s worth of the stuff.

In general, the belief that ‘it’s good to lose’ rests on a conviction that a tired old government is best put out of its misery and the incumbent party given the chance to undertake ‘a period of renewal’ in opposition.

Suitably refreshed and revised, and with a new leadership, the party will be well placed to seize back the reins of office and stride confidently into the future. But then that’s what some Tories thought in 1997 and certainly what many in the Labour Party imagined in 1979.

But ten years (or thirteen or, indeed, eighteen) is a very long time in politics. I was at university with young men who thrilled to the bright, fresh morning of Thatcherism but found themselves entering the House of Commons just as the long shadows of night were descending on the Conservative Party.

By the time that Cameron is in Number Ten (should he get there), it will be too late for them. Most politicians just can’t afford to wait. That’s why it’s always hard to find a politician who (really) thinks it’s good to lose – at least before the event.

It may be better to govern in good times than in bad times but it’s always better to govern than to oppose.

Once you’ve made all the accommodations and compromises and signed up for all the half-truths, what is there left but to win? And what ambitious thirty-nine-year-old imagines that a glittering prize will still be waiting for him or her as they crest their fifties?

But for those of us who have a little less at stake, the question remains: can there be a good election to lose and could this be one of them?

To retrace our steps just a little further, it depends upon whether you think this is 1979 or 1974 (always remembering that while Marx might have gotten some things wrong, his claim that history only ever repeats itself as farce was bang on the money).

The 1970s was also a decade of economic crisis (albeit one that is crudely mis-recollected). For all that Labour may have been a bit unlucky to lose in 1979 (more bad timing), Thatcher certainly had a plan (of sorts). Between 1974 and 1979, Labour went on trying more or less what had worked (or not really worked) before.

Do Cameron and Osborne have a plan for something very different from what has gone before? If so, it is cunningly concealed. Could Labour be back in 2015 with a radically rethought political economy? Maybe. Perhaps in 2010, there’s not really going to be a winner at all.

Professor Christopher Pierson

Queen sacks PM: You Heard it Here First

"...not everyone is aware that there is a precedent for the Crown to sack a sitting Prime Minister..."

Whenever the prospect of a hung parliament comes to mind (and given the many column inches and acres of cyberspace that must be filled in the run-up to an election, it always does), the question of the Queen’s constitutional role is never far behind. If there is no outright winner, must she summon the leader of the single largest party? Or (if it is not one and the same person) must she allow the sitting Prime Minister the opportunity to seek to form a government (of all the persuadable talents)?

But not everyone is aware that there is a precedent for the Crown to sack a sitting Prime Minister, despite his being duly elected and able to command a majority in the lower house, and to install the leader of the opposition in his place. The luckless victim of this manoeuvre was the venerable Gough Whitlam (then Prime Minister of Australia and Leader of the Australian Labor Party) and the lucky beneficiary, Malcolm Fraser, leader of Australia’s Liberals (i.e. Conservatives) and one of a small but distinguished band of politicians to have lost his trousers in mysterious circumstances.

The story is one of labyrinthine complexity, bad timing and enough duplicity to make even Machiavelli blush. Following a death and a resignation in the upper house (the Senate), Whitlam’s government no longer had control and the opposition was refusing to vote supply. Whitlam had already lost his Treasurer, Jim Cairns, who was accused of trying to negotiate an off-the-books loan of petro-dollars from the Middle East and of having an affair with his outrageously glamorous private secretary, Julie Morosi. The Queen’s representative in Australia then (as now) was the Governor-General; at that time, Sir John Kerr. On 11th November, 1975, at the beginning of a meeting requested by Prime Minster Whitlam and held at the Governor-General’s residence (a few minutes drive from the parliament building in Canberra), Kerr dismissed Whitlam. Fraser was waiting in an adjoining room. He was immediately commissioned as Prime Minster, returned to parliament, had supply voted through the Senate (before the Labor Party knew what had happened), secured the dissolution of parliament and the calling of fresh elections which his party duly won. On the steps of Parliament House, Whitlam delivered (entirely off the cuff) the most famous speech in Australia’s political history: ‘Well may we say “God save the Queen”, because nothing will save the Governor-General'. Kerr was indeed left a broken man. He resigned in 1977 and died in 1991.

Could it happen here? Probably not. Although Fraser’s tactics were unconventional, the Senate had a sort of popular mandate that the House of Lords could never claim. Did it change anything? Well, it certainly brought to a close what was by some way the most exciting period in Australia’s political history. It made Gough a folk hero (for some at least) and Fraser a pariah (for the same folk). Many thought it would hasten the coming of the Republic; but that is still awaited. Above all, it gave Labor the will to play as hard and dirty as its opponents. Under Hawke and Keating, Labor was to turn Fraser out of office (in 1983) and to go on to win five consecutive general elections. There’s a lesson Labour would like to have learned.

Professor Chris Pierson