When David Cameron proclaimed that ‘money is no object’ in the wake of flooding in the south-west, was he doing so out of naked political self-interest? Matt Wood argues that though that may be part of it, there is also the reflexive desire to intervene in situations of genuine human need. The floods highlight a more general dilemma the government is facing: between its economic crusade for fiscal discipline and the moral imperative to rescue those facing genuine impoverishment.

Andrew Neil’s quip on a recent episode of This Week about the government’s concern for ‘floating voters’ in south-west England was among his best. Like a lot of good jokes, it resonates with an unacknowledged truth. This winter’s extraordinarily prolonged period of storms and flooding has turned the political weather vanes round dramatically. David Cameron’s headline quote is illustrative:

Money is no object in this relief effort. Whatever money is needed for, it will be spent. We are a wealthy country, we have a growing economy. We will spend what is necessary

What a difference to his speech just last November at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on austerity:

We are sticking to the task. But that doesn’t just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound. It means building a leaner, more efficient state. We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently.

How can we understand this dramatic turnaround, when, as angry Scunthorpe residents highlighted earlier that night on Question Time, despite similar floods in northern England in December we heard nothing about ‘spending what is necessary’? Neil’s pun lampoons the obvious explanation: Cameron is doing this out of naked political self-interest. Whereas the Conservative party has little interest in responding to crises in northern areas with fewer electoral seats, these floods are causing havoc in Tory heartlands. So the dramatic change in rhetoric is, apparently, down to naked electoral self-interest.

Voters floating or floating voters?

I think, though, there is more to Cameron’s about-turn than this, for two reasons. Firstly, natural disasters aren’t really key vote changers. Sure, governments want to be seen as acting competently, and terrible misjudgements can be debilitating, as George Bush found out after Hurricane Katrina. Yet, as Barack Obama’s experience after Hurricane Sandy demonstrates, voters usually expect such crises to blow over (excuse the pun) fairly quickly, and perceptions of candidates and economic conditions are more important in determining party choices in elections themselves.

Secondly, while blame games do go on (as Lord Smith, Chair of the Environment Agency, found out), communities generally pull together during disasters. Research on foreign policy crises shows a ‘rally round the flag’ effect when unpredictable events like terrorist attacks create patriotic outpouring which politicians can benefit from. My own study of floods in 2007 shows how a potentially debilitating crisis early in Gordon Brown’s premiership actually enhanced his reputation. Generally, voters see floods as ‘acts of God’ that politicians can only respond to, rather than stop. This was the case in 2007, and looks similar in 2014. Even last Thursday’s angry Question Time audience accepted politicians can’t control the weather, but should stop the ‘blame game’ and ‘get on with the job’. Robert Winston summarised the mood, arguing that ‘it’s not a political issue at all’ and no amount of dredging would have helped. In other words, flooding becomes a depoliticised issue. People expect politicians to pick up the pieces rather than trying to hold back the tide King Canute-style.

The Rule of Rescue

So if electoral self-interest doesn’t explain what’s going on here, what does? Here I believe the coalition government is dealing with a fascinating dilemma in reconciling their austerity agenda with the reflexive desire to intervene in situations of genuine human need. This dilemma I call the ‘rule of rescue’.

Put simply, the rule of rescue is a logic that states governments must do everything possible to rescue human life and property in imminent danger. The term was coined by medical ethicist Albert R. Jonsen:

Our moral response to the imminence of death demands that we rescue the doomed. We throw a rope to the drowning, rush into burning buildings to snatch the entrapped, dispatch teams to search for the snowbound … The imperative to rescue, is, undoubtedly, of great moral significance (p.174)

Jonsen argued that doctors need to intervene in situations where patients’ health is most seriously endangered, so they cannot always do what’s ‘cost effective’. During flooding this logic can also apply to governments, when there is a permeable sense that normal rules about fiscal discipline can be thrown out the window. Keynesian economics makes precisely this point: during economic downturns governments should borrow money to protect the vulnerable from the effects of recession. Arguably, the rule of rescue, as a Keynesian-style logic or ‘ideational legacy’ of the welfare state has created a dilemma for ministers seemingly committed to permanent fiscal discipline. On this occasion, the coalition government seem to have become unwitting hostages to this logic that those in greatest need deserve our greatest attention, regardless of the money involved.

Logics and Interests

Political analysts like understanding political action by deconstructing the logics behind justifications and rhetoric. Alasdair Roberts’ book The Logic of Discipline defined a logic that has permeated public policy for the thirty years, wherein ‘technocratic guardians’ are preferred to politicians as allegedly ‘unbiased’ rule-makers. This logic underpinned coalition reforms such as the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility, a depoliticised, technocratic body aimed at permanently curtailing fiscal expenditure. But there seems to be a genuine clash or ‘splintering’ of logics during these floods. Returning to ‘floating voters’, the ‘floating’ imagery in Neil’s pun is arguably as important as the ‘voters’ image. Appeals for intervention to protect human security often persist, even at great fiscal cost.

Clearly, both interests and ideas are important, and influence when and where intervention happens. Just like during the global financial crisis government intervened to rescue multinational banks, but was less willing to prevent large-scale manufacturing job losses, intervention in flooding is also uneven. In 2007, the military was deployed to tackle flooding in wealthy Gloucestershire, while government was slow to react when working class Hull was inundated. And yet, there is a sense the 2014 floods are about more than simple electoral or class politics. The coalition is facing a dilemma between its economic crusade for fiscal discipline and the moral imperative to rescue those facing genuine impoverishment. The question is whether a potential Labour government uses the floods to expose this paradox of austerity and argue for an alternative.

Note:  This article originally appeared on the SPERI Comment blog and gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting. 

About the Author

Matt Wood is a Postdoctoral Associate and Deputy Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield Department of Politics. His recently completed doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Depoliticisation, Crisis and Governance’, and was funded by the ESRC. You can follow him on Twitter @woodpoliticshef.