On the Johnson Farage Dilemma

[danieldwilliam]

These remarks were thought about before Farage decided that discretion was the better part of valour. I’m mainly posting them up here because they are too long for a Facebook comment typed on a touchscreen on a smartphone and because Patrick Hadfield asked me to expand on a shorter comment I’d made.

At the time of thinking (mid to late last night) there were suggestions that both Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson would stand in the Newark by-election. My initial thoughts were that this would be a hilarious contest to watch from another country and that I couldn’t decide which would put the wind up the Cameron government more, Nigel Farage MP, or Boris Johnson MP redux.

Then I got to thinking that a bit of crude game theory suggested that whilst both men were in the state of  probably-going-to-stand neither man would. It’s a sort of version of the Prisoners’ Dilemma This unpacks thus…

Both Johnson and Farage would like very much to be MP’s . Both gain considerable advantage from the threat they pose as potential MP’s. Johnson because he is seen as a likely and strong challenger to Cameron as Tory leader and Farage, well for much the same reason but in a more roundabout way. However, neither needs to be an MP *now* in order to translate that advantage into a stronger position and / or the ultimate achievement of their goals later. The advantage they have *now* is that they are perceived as being likely to win later. There will be another chance, a better chance, later.

Clearly losing a by-election in a secure centre-right seat would significantly damage the perception that they are likely to win later. Perhaps to the point where it destroys both their current threat and the chance of them securing their ultimate ambition. Johnson would have to return to the mayoral challenge of stealing Ken Livingston’s policies and Farage would return to being the sort of person I avoid in the pub whilst muttering the words Dunning-Kruger to myself.

The pay-off to winning Newark now is not much greater than the pay for winning another seat later. The cost of losing Newark now is considerable, perhaps making it impossible to win another seat later. Newark is a tricky seat for both men *if* the other one is standing.

The thing most likely to prevent each man winning the Newark by-election is if the other man is standing against him – and thus splitting the “honest, plain speaking, hail fellow well met, man-of-the-people iconoclast” vote. So, whilst Johnson might stand if Farage wasn’t and Farage might stand if Johnson wasn’t the threat that losing poses to both men’s ambition is such that neither can risk standing against the other. Absent some coordinating cartel or signalling mechanism and a way of rewarding the other chap for doing the decent thing, a protracted will they won’t they dance is likely to end up with both men giving Newark the swerve and continuing to keep their powder dry and their fleet in being.

I’m not sure how the very quick Farage stand down affects Johnson’s decision to run or not.  Problematically for him, he’s on record as saying he wouldn’t cut short his term as Mayor of London to seek re-election and the Conservative candidate in Newark has been selected for some time. I expect he’ll also keep his powder dry and his promises kept.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It's not fully clear to me that Boris wants to be an MP. I agree that he is highly political, ambitious and much more Machiavellian* than the persona suggests, but he's also lazy and disorganised.

* why is this not spent Macchiavellian? The Internet seems pretty clear that it isn't, but it should be.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

You might well be right about being (and knowing himself to be) too lazy and disorganised to be a government minister or PM.

(Lazy and disorganised keeps many of us from high public office.)

In which case the payoff for him being perceived to be a threat is actually relatively higher. In that, he gets the press coverage he wants by being a potential entrant but doesn't actually want to enter. So he needs to preserve his status as potential entrant for as long as possible.

But, of course, he would, under no circumstances actually enter.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think at the moment the payoff of being the prince over the water is higher either way. Now isn't an obviously advantageous time for him, as per your post.

Is lazy and disorganised what keeps you from public office? The answer to that is internal infrastructure. It is for Boris as well.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

At least partly what keeps me from aspiring to high public office.

Lazy in the sense that often my aspiration to complete the work is not very well matched to my capability to undertake the work – leading to all sorts of issues.

But also lazy in the sense that given a choice between working till ten pm or picking up the Captain and spending an hour looking at cherry blossom with him I actaully would rather do the latter. It’s part of the reason for my interest in deliberative democracy. It separates being able to participate and influence from having to flog your guts out on electioneering.

I fear, I greatly fear, that, in the short term, the internal infrastructure that would best work for me is basically MLW and I don’t want to be that guy (or one of those many guys) whose career is basically being the acceptable front of their wives capability.

Longer term I am working on improving the internal infrastructure.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Infrastructure has useful meanings on more than one level.

I am too tired to think properly about this at the moment, but I might come back to it, or we can chat at 4am one day later this month.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

4 am for the win.

No need to expend your resources on this right now but if you have the energy when you are up then i would value your wisdom.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Basically my proposed solution for you would be identical to my proposed solution for Boris, which is (a) figure out what you want to achieve, (b) which bits of it you actually want to do and would enjoy and find energising and be good at, and (c) get other people to do all the rest, working together in an organised way. Your comment reminds me that there are other useful ways to build infrastructure, though.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Excellent use of “prince over the water” btw. I’m almost tempted to re-write my post to include it.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Why would you be expecting Machiavellian to be spelt with two cc's?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It's the right spelling.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

How so?

Machiavelli appears to only have one c.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't. If it were spelled correctly, it would have two. I think. I guess Renaissance spelling shouldn't be expected to conform to modern standards, though, and also my vocabulary might be too narrow here and there might be conventions of which I am unaware.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I see, your objection is that Nicoli Machievelli, politician, writer and award winning dramatist is doing his own name wrong?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

No, I don't hold him responsible. He's never put anything on the Internet.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

So he would have you believe.

[matgb]

One 'c' is how it was spelt on printed editions of the time, although I've never seen his signature so it's hard to judge how he himself spelt it, but given it predated Shaxsper who never spelt his own name the same way twice, was standardised spelling common in Florentine vernacular Italian of the 16thC? Or even early rennaissance latin?

I merely studied the text (in three different English translations for reasons I now forget), how he spelled the words used wasn't really discussed (the translations of those words were, especially Virtu, but not how he wrote them). Turns out Dietz's interpretations of his motives for writing it are still not completely accepted by the scholars of the field, it'll take time...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Plus isn't it at the moment looking quite likely that the Tories have a fair crack at winning the next election anyway? If Cameron was at threat of losing it, then I think Boris would have more urgency about becoming an MP again.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I don't think they have any prospect of winning the next election.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I saw an opinion poll chart yesterday that still had them a few percentage points ahead of Labour?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Because of the demographics of Labour and Conservative votes the Tories need to be something like 4-6% ahead to get the same number of seats as Labour. The Tories win a lot of seats by tonnes and tonnes of votes. Labour win more seats with a comfortable but not over-massive majority. Those with a tendency to vote Labour have, in recent years, been moving out of the city centres into more marginal suburban seats. Hence the attempts at boundary reform.

UKIP are taking votes off the Tories much more than they are off Labour despite UKIP’s chat to the contrary. Even if their vote falls sharply back after the Euro elections they are still, currently, likely to cost the Tories a few seats. Quite a few Tory – Lib Dem marginals.

The Tories might end up the largest party if the economy booms.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I suspect they probably need more than the what, 0.05% growth figures that were released this week?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

They were 0.8% for the quarter, giving an annualised growth rate of 3.2% which is about 1% above long term trend growth of between 2% and 2.5%.

(Still a bit less then the growth figures I think we ought to be expecting.)

Depends where it is and who gets a payrise politically.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

This from Political Betting gives a flavour of how difficult the Tory position looks.

http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2014/04/25/stand-by-for-eds-next-unlikely-election-victory-con-win-most-votes-lab-win-most-seats-even-possibly-a-majority/

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Interesting scenario. Do you think the voters are ready to forgive New labour though?

[matgb]

Many are, depends on location and similar, but I live in a tight swing marginal normally considered a bellweather seat, and Labour voters are back out in force—it's not necessarily that people switched away from Labour to elsewhere in large numbers (although they obviously did to some degree) but also that a lot of former Labour voters had simply been staying at home, I suspect turnout will be up substantially in 2015 and a lot of that will be Labour.

Plus, in the Euros, 2009 saw a massively low Labour turnout, most other parties got the same number of votes but much higher %aga (hence I have a BNP MEP). Lots of voters still blame Labour for the mess, but many more hate the Tories more and are being reminded how bad they are in Govt, etc.

The big question is how well the Tories will be able to squeeze UKIP back in 2015 given they'll know where the marginals are and how well they'll do. Lots of people will switch back for the GE, but they won't tell anyone they're going to until they put their X in the box.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It really does horrify me the thought that we might wind up with a Tory/UKIP coalition at the next parliament.

I wonder how much that specter might be driving the Scottish Yes vote.

[andrewducker]

Some :->

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/04/why-ukip-matters-in-the-scottish-independence-referendum/

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

UKIP is pretty much entirely one man, and his image as posh English toff is never going to sail in Scotland.

I wonder if they've deliberately kept their public image as Just One Man, because the rest of the party is such a cesspool of crazy bigotry.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Well also that the UKIP analysis of the world (that things are getting worse and the UK has less power because of Europe) is very different from the SNP analysis of the world (that things would be getting better if we were able to participate in Europe and we can have more power.)

He certainly appears to the only senior member of UKIP who can mention foreigners or homo-sexuals without retching or women without honking their boobs.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And I rather suspect this just makes him a slightly better actor than the rest of his party.

[matgb]

Y'know, that hadn't occured (partially, of course, Yorkshire based Devonian, still not actually even visited Scotland despite many invites).

However, the odds are tiny as a) they're unlikely to get any seats, let alone enough to be worth it and b) they won't want to compromise stuff and know they benefit from the protest even more than the LDs did and c) the Tories wouldn't want a coalition at all if they can avoid it.

I can see them agreeing to a confidence and supply agreement with a minority Tory administration insisting on a referendum and a few other basic things in return for votes on key issues like the budget. But in order for that to be even viable, they'd need at least 5 MPs, which is, well, unlikely, they don't have a single target seat except possibly Eastleigh.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, first past the post... UKIP are unlikely to reach the post aren't they. Much more likely to just split the Tory vote and let Labour in.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yeah – they need to get somewhere above 15% nationally, probably closer to 18%, to stand a good chance of picking up seats. They might be able to generate some local concentration and pick up some seats on a lower national vote share but so far there vote seems fairly evenly spread around the country.

I think one of the things they will be looking for on 22nd May is whether they are getting a geographic concentration and whether this is translating into local council seats – which are correlated with winning Westminster seats later.

[matgb]

Thing is, the "splitting the vote" thing is a lot less common than people think (especially than Tories think) and is less likely to apply in tighter marginals. In safe Tory seats I expect UKIP to do well, possibly even take a few of them, but in the really tight marginals I expect them to fall back after the dust has settled at the end of the month, the Tories will know where they need to push and who they need to push and will attempt to squeeze them a lot.

The real question then is how sticky their vote is (there's a technical term but I forget what it is) and how many of their voters would otherwise simply not have voted, which appears to be a reasonable proportion. I really don't picture a 1983 style meltdown, but I've been wrong in the past—a Canadian style Tory wipeout would be amusing but horrific in the longer term, if we must have a right wing party of Govt full of idiots, I'd rather it was the current Tories than a Tory/UKIP merger like the Canadians now have.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’m not sure that the amount of vote splitting has to be large to cost the Tories a few dozen seats.

For a start it’s not a problem they’ve faced so I wonder how good they will actually turn out to be at not splitting the vote.


Only one way to find out - wait for the election and see what the result is.

[matgb]

Traditionally, Tories have been harder to squeeze than Labour, but it's (in England at least) normally only been Lib Dems trying to squeeze them and a lot of Tories used to view the LDs as Labour-lite. But they are squeezable. Assuming that the only UKIP voters that are squeezable anyway are people that used to vote Tory, then in tight marginals I suspect most will switch back to the Toris if UKIP did relatively badly there in the Euro vote and the local Tories are on the ball enough to get that message strongly across.

However, the media and a lot of Stupid Party members will assume that all UKIP voters in a given seat would otherwise have voted Tory and therefore that any seat the Tories lost by a smaller margin than the UKIP vote was lost due to vote splitting—this will palbably be Not True for many of them but not all of them. As an example, the Totnes 1997 result is one I know well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totnes_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29

Totnes is a safe Tory seat, always has been, but that result makes it look like a tight marginal, because 2K Tories were so fed up with Steen they voted for the Local Conservative, a well known local businessman (in Brixham, the largest of the towns in the seat). The LDs threw the kitchen sink at that one in 2001 and look where it got them (guess where I grew up BTW).

There will be some seats where the vote is split and it makes a difference. But the number of them will be far smaller than a lot of pundits, including academic types, will acknowledge, because a lot of UKIP voters wouldn't have otherwise voted Tory, many wouldn't have voted at all, etc. It'll be interesting to watch tho. Especially where I now live, which might even become a 4-way marginal, almost unheard of in modern England.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And I'm quite certain the closer we get to the election, the more and more stories will come out exposing UKIP to be a collection of genuinely vile people, which will hurt them quite badly. I mean, the ConDems are mad if they haven't been stockpiling intel about them for a few years now.

And given the crap UKIP members are coming out with left right and center, there has to be a lot of juicy party-destroying crap under a few stones.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm sure we will see lots of stories exposing / painting UKIP candidates as vile people.

I'm not sure this will hurt them much electorally. I think many people who vote for UKIP quite like the fact that the media and the established parties are having a go at them. It proves that they, the voters, are right.

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2014/04/27/why-blaming-the-media-or-calling-them-racist-wont-deal-with-the-ukip-problem/


What vile things could UKIP have done, out of power, that members of the Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative Parties haven't done whilst in power.

Jings, we've just had a party leader of an established party arrested for murder.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And I can't make up my mind if the timing for that arrest is designed to hurt him in the polls by his enemies, or if his own side might have dobbed him in themselves, in order to help him in the polls.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It seems to be linked to the recorded evidence coming out of the Boston Colleage recordings of former IRA members released after they had died.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yep. I wonder if the recorded testimony of an IRA killer will be enough to charge him.

I mean, I strongly suspect Gerry Adams has a lot of blood on his hands. But they've always avoided going after him until now.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The official campaign doesn’t make much of it. In fact it doesn’t much directly mention the prospect of a Tory government. It does occasionally make a reference to governments we didn’t vote for which I think is a code for a Tory government. Unofficially, a Tory government gets mentioned quite a lot and the prospect of a parliament containing a significant number of UKIP MP’s also comes up informally a bit.

The prospect of no more Tory governments ever is certainly one of the drivers of me being a Yes voter and it’s something that seems to open left-leaning No voters to the idea of voting for independence.

So, officially, it doesn’t get a huge amount of airplay. Unofficially, I think it is a factor and one that is likely to become more significant as we get closer to the referendum and a) Sturgeon is less concerned about labelled anti-English and b) the General Election 2015 is much closer and the Tories start electioneering for that and UKIP keep going on about their victory on 22nd May.