Common Decency

Canvassing for Votes, one of a series of four wonderful paintings by William Hogarth about the corruption of parliamentary elections in the 18th century, depicts agents for the Tories and the Whigs flourishing banknotes at an innkeeper in an attempt to bribe him.

Would never happen today, of course. Payment in cash or kind in exchange for a vote –the practice that used to be called “treating”– is strictly illegal. Anyone caught doing it will likely wind up in jail. That’s an obstacle for vote-hunting politicians at election time. Fortunately for them, the law has a loophole. And that loophole is massive. There is nothing on the statute book that says a politician can’t offer a bribe so long as it is directed at lots of voters. Individual bribery is a crime; mass bribery is entirely legal. Which is a good thing for David Cameron and Ed Miliband. If mass bribery were not allowed, both would be facing prosecution for the promises they have been making in the past few days.

The Tory leader has been digging into his pocket – or rather digging into other people’s pockets – and waving wads of cash at older voters. “Roll up, you wrinklies! Free stuff here!” I paraphrase Mr Cameron, but only by a little bit.

For as long as he is prime minister, he has promised, all pensioners, even the most affluent, will retain all their welfare perks. The free TV licences, the free bus passes, the winter fuel allowance, whether pauper or billionaire, the lucky pensioner will keep the lot. He has also pledged to continue with the “triple lock”, which guarantees increases in the state pension regardless of what is happening to the economy or how other segments of the population are faring. This is his latest instalment in a series of cash offers to those at the upper end of the age scale.

The least subtle of the Tory inducements is an extension to the “silver bonds”, which give a preferential rate of interest on savings – a subsidy to more affluent pensioners, paid for by the government from the money of other taxpayers. That is so close to being a straightforward cash bribe to vote Tory that it might have been more efficient for the Treasury simply to stuff the money in brown envelopes and mail it out with Conservative campaign literature.

One consequence of the goodies promised to older voters is that all the further welfare cuts planned by the Tories will fall on the working-age population. There are even Tories who privately think this can’t be right, intellectually, economically and in terms of inter-generational fairness. There are quite a lot of wealthier pensioners who question whether they should be treated so generously compared with other age groups.

What does bother me is the risks they are taking in making politics so explicitly and crudely transactional. The overall impact could be to make an already disenchanted electorate even more cynical and sour.

It is confusing the messages that the parties are sending to the country as a whole. One Tory election slogan is: “Britain Living Within Its Means”. Stick with us, they say, because the job of paying down the deficit is only half done. At the same time, they are claiming to have loadsamoney to bung in the direction of favoured groups of voters. Their biggest – and totally uncosted – election bribe is more than £7bn of tax cuts. Which is the Tory pitch? Stick to a hard but worthwhile road? Or, money grows on trees? Tories privately express anxiety that their message has become contradictory and confused.

As for Labour, it has been trying to burnish its fiscal credentials by saying it won’t make lavish promises and acknowledging that it would have to make spending cuts, if less severe ones than those planned by the Tories. “Big reform, not big spending” has been one of Mr Miliband’s slogans. I see the big spending in his promise to cut tuition fees; I don’t see much by way of big reform.

There’s something dispiriting, narrowing and lowering about parties so obviously targeting selected segments of the population rather than trying to broadly appeal across the nation. Our polity is already fractious and fragmenting. Brandishing cash sweeteners so squarely directed at different age groups opens another fracture along generational lines. Those voters who aren’t being offered bribes are likely to feel resentful. Even those favoured groups who are having banknotes waved at them may end up feeling cheapened by this descent into cash-and-carry politics.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/01/tories-labour-bribing-voters-pensions-tuition-fees