Leftward Ho!

How do you talk about it?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 00:27:00 +0000

How do you react to terrifying events without sounding shrill, crazy, over-the-top? How do you express fear without being dismissed? How do you make the people you are scared for, and of, understand?

Refugees are flooding into Europe, and the response has been such that I worry about using the word ‘flooding’. My Prime Minister described them as "swarms of migrants", a newspaper columnist compared them to cockroaches. So maybe ‘flooding’ is too emotive, too likely to be used to paint refugees as a destructive event to be resisted.

Let me try again.

Thousands of people, fearing for their lives in countries racked by bitter civil wars exacerbated by western powers, have fled from persecution, bombed out homes, and the deaths of loved ones. They have made their way, often in desperately unsafe ways, towards the countries that have persisted in telling them that their way of life is better, safer, more moral.

And we are meeting them with razor wire and internment camps.

A central European country, run by a party who wants to end liberal democracy, is blocking people from entering that country, and so the EU, in defiance of international law. But it's too easy to point at Hungary as being the problem - they have closed their border, yes, but so has Austria, and even Germany has reintroduced border checks theoretically abolished within the EU.

Meanwhile, the home affairs ministers of EU countries met in a crisis summit earlier this week, and failed to agree on sharing the pressure of refugees around the EU. Instead, countries opposed to taking refugees proposed major 'processing centres' in Italy and Greece. These would assess asylum claims, and remove anyone whose claim was found to be lacking.

Farcically, they even considered what to do when returning a refugee to their own country wasn't feasible (though no explanation of how it could be both that a refugee wasn't 'genuine' and that returning them home was infeasible was given). In that case, they would be transported to purpose built camps, outside the European Union - and thus away from EU citizen's view.

Watch this video for how Hungary is treating refugees in one of their camps - flinging food at a mob of refugees penned in by fences. There are also reports of refugees being tricked onto trains they are told are going to Germany - only to be stopped near migrant camps Hungary has set up.

Today, Hungarian police fired water cannon and tear gas into a crowd on their border with Serbia - fired into Serbia - to prevent refugees crossing. Men, woman, and children who have fled from bombs and bullets have been met with razor wire and tear gas. Serbia has protested, but appears to have been ignored.

Europe is building razor wire fences and detention camps. We're saying we're full. We're saying we're Christian, and need to defend that.

I read an article today, one of those 'long reads' that has become so fashionable. There was a section in it that went like this:

[H]umans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present. Under enough stress, or with enough skill, politicians can effect [...] conflations [...]: between nature and politics, between ecosystem and household, between need and desire. A global problem that seems otherwise insoluble can be blamed upon a specific group of human beings.

I encourage you to read it all - it talks about how defence of living standards can come to be seen as defence of life; how the destruction of states, the creation of stateless people, can lead to atrocities against them; and about how easily we can all fall into that trap.

The article is called “Hitler’s world may not be so far away“. I didn't tell you that before, because I was worried I'd sound shrill, or crazy, or over-the-top. That my fear would be dismissed. That you wouldn't understand.

North and South - What Jeremy Does Next Pt2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 09:30:00 +0000

So, the great, glorious day has finally come - and gone. An avowed socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party, elected on the largest democratic mandate any leader has ever had.

Now what?

Corbyn faces significant challenges, including political opponents inside and outside Labour, building an electoral coalition, and getting a fair hearing from our media. None of these are going to go away just because he won, or by the use of a good hashtag. They need to be faced and addressed. In this brief series of posts, I'll give my own ideas on how we do this. Here I look at dealing with Labour's political opposition.

Labour faces two major opponents to a Labour Government: the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party. In England, Labour gained seats in 2015, whereas in Wales, we lost ground slightly. Broadly, Labour suffered from the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, while the Conservatives capitalised.

In Scotland, however, the SNP gained votes all over. An anti-politics (or rather, anti-Westminster politics) and anti-unionist mood combined with a party espousing left-of-centre policies to give a near clean sweep for the SNP.

Much discussion took place in the leadership election about attracting converts from the ranks of Tory voters, with relatively little discussion on how to do so with SNP voters. I believe this was a mistake, and a symptom of the lack of fresh thinking in what was the Labour mainstream - essentially, they felt they knew how to fight Tories, so were happy to talk about that, but had no idea how to fight anyone else.

Tories first. We can't rely on appeals to morality, justice or fairness over welfare cuts, public service cuts, and so on. People are worried over their own finances, and the persistently weak state of the economy. Even if sympathetic to the plight of others less fortunate than them, they also need to have confidence they can keep their own body and soul together.

That's why we need to take the initiative on the economic argument. We have run away from it for two elections now, preferring to capitulate completely to the Conservative framing of both the financial crisis and the appropriate response. The hope seemed to be that if we owned up to something we didn't do, people would forgive us, and we could move on. Well, it turns out they didn't, and actually we do have to have that hard conversation about the real causes and problems. No, it isn't going to be easy - complicated economic arguments will just turn people off. But we have to try - the alternative has failed dreadfully for us.

So, for example, make the case for quantitative easing and investment - make the point that the size of the economy is a measure of money flowing through it. It gets bigger when you spend the tenner in your pocket to buy groceries, because the grocer uses it to buy stock from the wholesaler, and the wholesaler pays his suppliers, and his suppliers pay their staff, and their staff put it into a bank, and the bank lends it to a business for an investment in new machinery, and the machinery manufacturer pays it to you for your wages, and you then go and buy groceries... Getting that money flowing is vital, and at the moment, banks aren't lending, and that flow just stops. So we will invest in infrastructure ourselves - and that money will flow out into the economy, instead of getting stuck in banks. The economy grows, we have a proper recovery, and as profits go up, tax take increases, and we pay down the deficit.

Make it snappier, though.

My point is that we used to have the courage and belief to make these arguments - don't give up just because it doesn't fit into a 5 second sound bite.

It may also be useful to highlight the constantly shifting goalposts of Osborne - his dates for deficit reduction keep moving back, and he ends up borrowing more and more. It would be worth testing to see if this attack actually has legs - that Osborne borrows to keep the lights on, whereas we'd borrow to build a power station, or words to that effect.

Then we have the SNP. I think for this group of voters a softer line is needed - while the push for economic competence will make inroads here, I think we have to accept there is also a big cultural move going on here. The rise in support for independence was, I believe, greatly helped by a feeling of despair among Scottish voters who lean to the left that there was no chance of getting a truly leftwing government in the UK. It is for that reason we need to highlight the strong leftwing policies of Corbyn - against welfare cuts, for example.

But as well as showcasing ourselves, we must go on the attack. The SNP have been in power in the Scottish Parliament for many years now, but have made little progress in areas they say are their priority. Remember, they have tax-raising powers, so if they truly believe a service is worth protecting, why haven't they taken advantage of them? Or is it that they like complaining, but don't really believe in implementing solutions?

Polling in Scotland shows, I believe, that support for the SNP is soft. Yes, the headline figures are horrifying - 62% plan to vote SNP in the constituency ballot, and 54% in the regional. But if you look past that, only 25% think they've done a good job on the economy, 34% on the NHS, 30% on education, and 23% on crime and justice. These are not the figures of a party running rampant - they are the figures of a party with weak opposition. We now have the chance to change that.

In this regard, the hysterical comments by the Labour old guard during the leadership campaign and afterwards will be a help - they help define a clear difference between the Labour Party that many Scots turned their back on, and who we are now. This is turn gives us the opportunity to gain a new hearing - and we must make use of it. Attack the SNP's record in government, and promote, for example, Labour's position on PFI in the NHS, on mental health funding, on social care, and on the National Education Service. Crime and justice looks like an area advances can be made also.

Crucially, Labour UK need to take the Scottish Parliament more seriously. For too long, Scotland was taken for granted, and Scottish Labour weren't given the intellectual freedom or the resources to fight the battle in front of them - the SNP. It's not enough to call them "Tartan Tories" and think the same old attacks against the Tories will work against the SNP - that is not how they are perceived. Nationally, we need to be more comfortable with allowing Scottish Labour to not only use a different emphasis on policies, but also to develop their own, more suited to devolved matters in Scotland.

Finally, we have the minor parties - Greens, UKIP, Liberal Democrats. Throughout the leadership campaign, there were persistent stories of Green Party members or voters becoming Labour registered supporters to get a vote. I don't think they were nefariously trying to influence the election, I think they were happy to have a candidate they supported in Labour. I suspect the Green surge will fall dramatically, to Labour's benefit. This is not to say we can afford to be complacent, but the policies Corbyn is espousing are likely to attract them naturally.

The Liberal Democrats are discredited in traditional Labour seats, and many others, due to their coalition with the Conservatives. Unfortunately, this means we can't rely on them to take seats away from the Conservatives. On the other hand, it is unlikely there will be a significant exodus from the right of the Labour Party to their banner. (Now there's a hostage to fortune if you ever saw one...)

UKIP is more interesting. I think they have taken advantage of a general mood against politicians and politics, but that this isn't the whole of the story. Insecurity over work, family finances, access to public services, and so on, has been manipulated by UKIP (and, to an extent, the Tories) into blame directed at immigration. By reducing the insecurity many of these voters feel - policies supporting welfare, tax credits, stopping cuts in public services, etc. - Labour can attract back many of these voters. Even just demonstrating Labour is a mass movement party that listens to its members is likely to assist in this.

Of course, the big caveat around UKIP is the EU referendum. A vote for out may mean UKIP falls apart, its purpose achieved, or it may morph into a partnership with the Conservatives, or try to reconstitute itself as a generalised protest party against the modern world. A vote for in may, just as with the SNP in Scotland, reinvigorate it as an expression of cultural connection. I don't know, and I wouldn't like to guess.

The (hopeful, but no doubt ill-informed and naive) advice in this post basically boils down to: have the courage to promote leftwing policies. Focus not on outrage over the suffering of the poorest (though it must be mentioned) but on the better economic performance investment in the country will bring. Wheel out friendly economists to agree - there are lots of economists who do. (Whether they are friendly or not, I don't know...)

And, ultimately, attack the record of incumbents. I was amazed that the Tories are still viewed as competent, given the sheer incompetence of some of their ministers in the last government. I don't mean in their policies - my disagreeing with them is not a sign of incompetence. I mean in terms of how poorly they manage their departments, or deliver their policies. The poster boy for this is, of course, Iain Duncan Smith.

For too long, we allowed ourselves to stay on the defensive. The moments Ed Miliband went on the attack - over Murdoch, over the hatchet job of his father, on Syria - he was successful, and popular. Defence doesn't defeat a government - we need to attack.

Observer Observation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 22:50:00 +0000

Minor, I know, but I rather suspect esteemed members of the media may need to double-check some of their usual phrases and descriptors. Going through the Observer's comment on Corbyn's election, I noticed the sentence "Labour’s mainstream must learn from the Corbyn campaign". With nearly 60% of the party supporting him, Corbyn's campaign is the mainstream. I assume, however, that the Observer is actually referring to the people who lost. New term needed, clearly. Centre fringe, perhaps?

Securing Corbyn - What Jeremy Does Next Pt 1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 19:56:00 +0000

So, the great, glorious day has finally come - and gone. An avowed socialist has become the leader of the Labour Party, elected on the largest democratic mandate any leader has ever had.

Now what?

Corbyn faces significant challenges, including political opponents inside and outside Labour, building an electoral coalition, and getting a fair hearing from our media. None of these are going to go away just because he won, or by the use of a good hashtag. They need to be faced and addressed - and for some the need is urgent. The Conservatives are desperate to frame the wider electorate's perception of Corbyn now, and we don't have a lot of time to counter them.

Urgent one first, then: countering the immediate Tory push.

The aim is clear: firstly, to ensure that the Labour Party as a whole is associated with the attacks, rather than just Corbyn, and secondly, to smear quickly and irreversibly. While this tactic has provoked ridicule and revulsion from many, we have to remember the echo chamber effect online - just because we see lots of people mocking this line, it doesn't mean other groups aren't seeing it approvingly. Basically, we can't ignore it.

The most serious charge here is, clearly, that Labour is a threat to national security. (The economic security argument is one I genuinely believe the Tories don't want to have, and they are hoping the national security charge will distract attention from it, so I'll come on to that later.)

I think we need to go after this attack head on. We do this by shifting the attack from theoretical situations to actually existing ones. So, right now, instead of getting bogged down in a discussion on our nuclear deterrent, focus on the situation in Syria. Ask what Cameron actually wants to do about this festering wound in the Middle East, and propose our solution - one of international action against arms sales to all sides in the conflict, and steps to cut off the supply of money to violent groups.

While Cameron may want to posture as a hard man by pushing for bombing, it will be worth reminding the electorate that two years ago he sought parliamentary approval to bomb Assad's forces, and now he appears to want approval to bomb forces attacking Assad's forces. Is there anyone in Syria he doesn't want to bomb? Does he have a plan to find a solution to the chaotic and often barbaric situation on the ground, or is he just interested in pictures of explosions on the evening news?

I firmly believe that the public is still against military adventures overseas, particularly with no clear exit strategy. A strong alternative plan, pushed by Labour, will mean that if the Tories continue pushing the national security line, they will simply end up looking like warmongers who refuse to try a peaceful solution - not a good look.

Economic security, and the security of YOUR FAMILY (insert hysterical scream here) then. Like I said, I don't think the Tories really want to have this argument. The fleeting glimpses of what is behind this appear to be that, shock horror, Corbyn thinks taxes should be increased. Well, so do the electorate - there is broad public support for a 50p tax rate above £150,000. Corporation tax is already lower than the US - hardly the home of tax and spend.

And, frankly, people don't feel economically secure now. The Tories have been walking a tightrope of raising fears of imminent financial disaster if they don't slash public services, while at the same time asking for credit for saving the economy. Talking up financial disaster means hard questions for them about what the hell they have been doing for the past five years, and why it hasn't worked. And that gives an opening for the anti-austerity alternative to be promoted.

Not surprisingly, I think this position can actually win people over. It won't be easy, and we need to develop clear and simple narratives instead of slightly tortuous economic arguments, but we shouldn't be afraid of it - after all, the apparent success of the austerity argument has come about because there was no-one disagreeing, except on matters of degree.

If they go on to talk about People's Quantitative Easing, ask if they think the £375bn given to banks was also a mistake, or is QE just a bad idea when it goes to building infrastructure assets like roads and bridges we can all use, instead of banker's pockets? It may be crude, but it is effective.

So, rebuttal of the initial Tory attack line: Put forward our plan to deal with the Syrian situation, and attack the Tories bombing plans - with ridicule if necessary. I think this on its own is enough to deter this whole Tory 'security' attack line, but if they continue with the economic security argument, argue for higher taxes on the wealthy and businesses to support vital services like the NHS, and make the Tories defend cutting taxes for the rich. Finally, QE that improves the country, instead of the bank's balance sheets.

(And if they start screaming about uncertainty over Trident, just remind them Michael Fallon refused to say Tory MPs would vote for Trident in the event of a Labour minority government - he was willing to play political games with something he now says is so vital even uncertainty is a threat to national security.)

The other challenges... will have to wait for my next few posts.

SNP show true colours

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 10:42:00 +0000

Amongst the predictable hysterical Tory attacks and toys-out-of-pram screaming from New Labour grandees, it was interesting to see the SNP trying to get a few hits in on Corbyn.

Given the SNP's positioning in the independence referendum as the only chance Scotland had to get anti-austerity, anti-Trident, and equality politics, it was interesting to see Nicola Sturgeon using the election of Corbyn as Labour's alternative Prime Minister, someone who espouses all of those policies, as... uh, another reason for independence.

It demonstrates, again, that the SNP is not really interested in any of those policies - they are interested in Scottish Nationalism. The clue is in their name. They will grasp on to any policy which is currently popular to try to advance their anti-British case, but make no mistakes as to their commitment to those policies. After all, one of their key post-independence offers was to massively reduce corporation tax. Hardly progressive.

I would like to think a reinvigorated Labour under Corbyn would be joined by the SNP MPs in Westminster to block the worst excesses of this Conservative government, and would certainly call on the SNP to do so. Reining in this rabidly ideological Tory party is in the best interests of the British people - including the Scots. But make no mistake, the SNP will do what is best for their true cause - the breakup of the UK.

The SNP's first instinct after the general election was to position themselves as the 'real' opposition to this government, as a way of showing Scotland would be better off on her own. But now they will have to face the possibility of working with an anti-austerity Labour to actually win votes - to block bad bills, or even to pass good amendments. And if they did that, it would show the UK Parliament really does work for, and represent, Scotland, as part of the UK. And the SNP may make the calculation that that isn't in their best interests, and the interests of Scottish people can go hang.

Touchy-feely

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 03:30:00 +0000

My last few posts have been about the technical and professional political arguments against Corbyn, for want of a better way of phrasing it. These have either been attempts at rebuttal, or setting out an alternative view of issues around electability, and so forth.

But, of course, politics isn't really about the technical or professional side - they are just tools to be used. After all, while there may be a few thousand professional politicians in the country, a general election is about asking the millions of people who don't live in that world to cast a vote.

And that is what I'd like to address in this post. It is policy light - I've already posted about the main policy reason I voted for Corbyn - and instead looks at the softer side, the image, perception, and, for want of a better term, the mood music around Corbyn throughout this campaign.

Let's get the obvious bit out of the way: hope. Corbyn's campaign has been about hope. In the early days, it was the unrealistic hope of the Labour left, volunteering for the campaign while everyone was writing Jeremy off, not really believing ourselves that we would achieve anything more than a mild ripple in the contest.

But then something curious happened - the gentle patronising of the other candidates didn't work. Usually, that would crush the hope in all but the die-hards, but instead other people started to listen. The mocking reports of Corbyn's throwback policies, like progressive taxation, and abolishing tuition fees, weren't doing what was expected - people were actually starting to agree with them, instead of calling them naive. (OK, OK, sometimes they did both, but they didn't give up straight away.)

Corbyn expressed the idea that we could build a better society, together. While the other candidates also tried to say this, they were too technocratic, hedged their remarks, demanded we accept small steps, tiny victories. They were facing someone calling for decent homes, better jobs, fairer taxes, an end to cuts. Simple themes, touching the concerns of many who didn't feel they were benefiting from economic recovery, but that Labour hadn't been offering them a better alternative to the Conservatives.

(Favourite snippet from IPPR research on the election? Of those who felt they had not, and would not, benefit from economic recovery, less than half voted Labour. "Rather than a failure to win over the support of relatively affluent, more 'aspirational' middle-class voters, the Achilles' heel of Labour's campaign appears to have been a failure to convince those who were sceptical about the Conservatives' economic record that Labour offered an attractive alternative." - John 'Exit Poll' Curtice.)

We all hope for a good job, and a decent home. But what I think the other candidates, and the PLP as a group, failed to grasp is how out of reach those things have come to seem for very many people - not just young people, but people my age. Anecdotally, the majority of my friends do not feel secure in their jobs. I know people who work at places that seem to go through a reorganisation every year - and make sure their staff know everyone's position is on the line. Owning a home feels out of reach for very many, certainly without support from parents, and buying with a partner. Instead, they live with family, or in precarious rented accommodation, while working at jobs that feel like they could disappear tomorrow.

Corbyn spoke to this group. He argued against zero-hour contracts. He argued for a massive house-building programme. He argued for fairness and justice at work for all. He argued for a world where money wasn't the winning argument, and lack of it wasn't a ticket to failure.

Yes, he inspired hope. But I think he has also inspired a new awareness, a more open-minded viewing of society. He has made it possible for a lot of people to hear, for the first time, someone arguing that the world doesn't have to be like this, that the structure of society isn't immutable, but can be changed.

And Corbyn has had an effect I think we won't fully appreciate until later. He has been attacked pretty relentlessly, once it became clear he wasn't failing as scripted. Newspapers on the right and the left have attacked him for being a dinosaur, for being unrealistic, for being a disaster for the Labour party. Members of the Labour establishment have denounced him. The BBC has run a hatchet job on him.

But he's still been popular. As John Harris put it in one of his videos from a Corbyn event, the interesting thing was that the room was packed with people who, despite all the establishment (for want of a better term) attacks on him, had still turned up. It was packed with people who weren't doing what they were told.

The usual tools to limit the debate, to decide on the acceptable boundaries of thought, aren't working at the moment. If this lack of faith in the main media vehicles continues, we could be set for interesting times. Will it continue outside of the, uh, 'excitement' of a leadership election? I really don't know. But it will be interesting to find out.

Finally, he's been explicit about something I think more politicians needs to be: morality. He has argued, for example, that for a country as rich as ours to have people reliant on food banks is immoral. Too often this kind of argument gets bogged down in numbers, and costs, and equivocations. Sometimes, however, things are just wrong.

That means you have to work against them. Yes, that means donating to food banks, but it doesn't mean claiming the growth in their numbers is a good thing. It means working not only to relieve the symptoms of hunger, but to root out the causes.

Look, I get that not everyone is going to agree with my moral judgement. I get that others could make strong moral arguments for the other side. That's fine - but we need to have that argument. Instead we let people get away with shrugging their shoulders at the sad inevitability of people starving in Britain - but it isn't inevitable. It is the result of choices people have made, and we need to start making people justify them. Politics is, amongst other things, a moral argument, but we often seem scared of framing it in those terms.

So. Hope, awareness, (very civil) disobedience, and morality. Those are the effects I think Corbyn brought to this campaign, and I think we're better for it, regardless of the final result tomorr... uh, later today.

Yeah, I'm kind of nervous about it. I'm going to go and try to get some sleep.

How The Leopard Got His Spots - And Why We Need To Change Them

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:17:00 +0000

A lot of the argument against Corbyn has been with regard to his electability. It is presented as a choice: principles, or power. I'd argue not only that this is a false choice, but that the side arguing against Corbyn will lead Labour to irrelevance, not power.

The political strategy of New Labour was a product of the British electoral system. It made sense to, essentially, take a large number of Commons seats for granted, and focus the party's policies on the small number of swing voters in a small number of seats. This strategy paid dividends, and enabled Labour to win with percentages of the vote in 2001 and 2005 that were smaller than that achieved by the Conservatives in 1979, 1983, 1987, and 1992.

The problem is, however, that this strategy relied on the assumption that you could take a large number of seats for granted - that the Labour voters in those seats would keep voting Labour, as they had nowhere else to go. As long as that assumption held, the strategy could continue.

That assumption no longer holds. Enough of those voters to make a difference found somewhere to go, be that the SNP in Scotland, UKIP in areas of the north, or simply staying at home instead.

To get a majority in 2020 Labour need to win about 100 seats. This seems to leave Labour in a bind - the policies to win current Conservative voters in England are likely to alienate former Labour voters in Scotland, and current Labour voters in the north of England. Currently, three of the leadership contenders seem to be reacting to this by simply ignoring Scotland - meaning it is likely Labour would need a double digit poll lead over the Conservatives to win enough seats in England. This doesn't appear credible.

The answer is to realise that Conservative voters are not the only source of more votes.

From 1945 to 1997, every general election had a turnout of over 70% (71%, actually). After 1997, no general election has. The impact of this is generally overlooked, with commentators instead focussing on the decline in the vote share of the two parties of government - a common narrative is that the electorate is splintering, and voters are turning to smaller alternative parties. The problem is, that narrative isn't true.

Figure 1 shows the reality. What I have done here is show share not of votes cast, but of the total electorate - I have included non-voters. (Yes, you're reading a blogpost with graphs in it. I am profoundly apologetic about this, but pictures help.) The green line is the sum of Conservative and Labour electorate shares, the orange line is the sum of Liberals and others, while the black line is the share of the electorate that did not vote.

If voters were turning away from the main two parties, the share of the electorate voting for others should increase - other than a rise from a very low share in 1970, the 'others' share of the electorate remains relatively stable. Instead, we see non-voters increase dramatically in 2001, and remain high. If this was due to voters for all parties being less likely to vote, then we'd expect to see a decline both in the electorate share of the main two parties and the other parties, but we don't.

The conclusion is clear - voters are walking away from the two main parties. The strategy of focussing on a small number of seats, and a small number of voters, has led to them both being unable to reach out beyond that small group.

Put it another way - since 2001, the biggest share of the electorate hasn't gone to a party, it has gone to non-voters. A party that can actually reach out to this group, and gain their votes, at least gains the possibility of a dramatic change.

Figure 2 shows the rise of non-voting, and the decline of both Labour and the Conservatives. It is, perhaps, instructive to note that even the landslide of 2001, when the Labour Party gained 62.5% of seats in parliament, was only won with 24.2% of the electorate - slightly less than the Conservatives received in 2015.

Of course, one reaction to all of this information could be "So what?". After all, if the point is to get to power, what does it matter if turnout falls, so long as you still get the biggest slice of the people who actually vote?

I'd argue that it is in fact harder to do that - convince Conservatives to switch to Labour - than it is to convince non-voters to vote. This decline in voting for the main parties hasn't just affected Labour - the Conservatives had their collapse in 1997, just one election before Labour, and haven't really recovered. (21.9% of total electorate in 97, 24.4% in 2015.) This means, just as Labour is left appealing to their die-hard core vote, so are the Conservatives - and those are precisely the people least likely to switch from one to the other. It seems far more likely that they will switch to not voting (as figure 1 suggests) or, at best, to an alternative party.

In fact, we have an example of what a difference an increase in turnout can make - albeit when combined with other factors. The turnout in Scotland for the 2010 general election was 63.8%, and Labour won 41 seats, the LibDems 11, and the SNP only 6. The turnout in 2015 in Scotland went up to 71.1% (the low end of the pre-2001 national turnouts), and the SNP took 56 seats, with Labour, the LibDems, and the Conservatives sharing the other three between them.

Yes, other factors were most definitely involved, but take, for example, Gordon constituency. This was held in 2010 by the Liberal Democrats, with 17,575 votes, a majority of 6,748, on a 66.4% turnout. In 2015, the absolute number of LibDem votes went *up*, to 19,030 - but the SNP took the seat with 27,717 votes, a majority of 8,687 on a turnout of 73.3%.

Conversely, we can also see what not addressing this fall in turnout means. A frequent line that comes up in anti-Corbyn arguments is that he risks a rerun of the 1983 general election, a terrible showing for Labour. (It could be argued this was more due to the right of Labour breaking off to form another party, but that is a debate for another time.) If we look at share of the total electorate, we see this truly was an awful drubbing for Labour - only 20.1% of the electorate voted Labour. But it turns out we've already had a rerun of 1983 - 20.1% is what Labour got in 2015. Which was, in fact, an improvement over the 18.9% in 2010. Two of the current leadership contenders were in the cabinet or shadow cabinet for those elections.

The old strategy doesn't work. Trying to rehash it for another run in 2020 isn't going to work. Labour needs a different strategy, one based on reaching out to non-voters - and you can't do that by offering a subtly different version of what the other parties are offering. Those policies are what has turned people off from the two main parties.

Ultimately, you can't do it by listening to what (you think) voters are telling you - because the very people who we need to attract aren't voting. Instead, you need to look at the campaigns and organisations that are attracting members - and at the moment, they are to the left of Labour.

(Data sources: Political Science Resources UK General Election data, and Wikipedia for Scottish turnout and Gordon constituency results.)

The Pushmi-pullyu, and other fantastic beasts

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:46:00 +0000

Putting aside specific policies for the moment, the argument of the centrists (or moderates, or Blairites, or sensible ones, or right of the party, or whatever particular phrase you want) to those on the left (or hard left, or Bennites, or Trotskyists, or morons, or whatever particular phrase you want) has been that if they want to see any part of their principles enacted by a government, they have to stop campaigning for what they actually believe in, and start campaigning for a position close to "the centre ground", where the bulk of voters are.

An addition to this argument, perhaps to sweeten the pill, is that once a centre-left party has got into government, it can start to shift the centre ground leftwards. The LabourList article of Luke Akehurst's I looked at last time gives this argument:

"My vision for the country I’d like to live in is I know, somewhat to the left of most voters, but I hope not so far to their left that they couldn’t gradually be persuaded of it through incremental evidence of successful governments"

This is what I call the push argument - that you get into power, and then start pushing the centre ground to the left by implementing policies just slightly to the left of centre.

An alternative view is held by some on the left. This is that it isn't right to compromise on any of the positions, not (or, perhaps, not just) because of a moral belief against compromising, but because they believe by doing so, they can get more of their policies implemented more quickly. Their argument is that by arguing forcefully for their policies, they can begin to move the centre ground towards them.

This is what I call the pull argument - that power is at the end of the process, not the start, but that throughout you will be pulling the centre ground to the left by causing whoever is in power to compromise their position, and implement more leftwing policies to prevent the draining of their voters away.

It can be seen that, in an ideal world, these positions can be complementary - the crazy idealists provide a tension towards the left, while the sensible pragmatists get into power and implement slightly leftish policies to try to reduce this tension.

(Naturally, a similar argument would be taking place on the right, so the centre is under tension from both sides.)

In fact, this process can be seen most clearly in countries which use proportional representation - with the added benefit of the crazy idealists and sensible pragmatists having relatively open negotiations on the policies to be implemented if they are forming a government.

However, we don't have PR, as you may have noticed. Thus we have the Labour Party, a very broad church, which includes people from both the push and the pull positions. For a long period, the push side has been ascendant, arguably since the purge of Militant.

(For the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not saying Militant were the pull side. They were genuine entryists.)

However, up until the election of Blair, the usual push and pull tension carried on. Blair seemed like a continuation of the same, but instead of the usual way of reducing tension (that of making some compromises) he took a different path - he started to reorganise the party to remove the ability of the pull side to create any tension.

Hence the steady removal of democratic methods of holding the leadership to account, the hobbling of routes for the grassroots to direct policy, the change of national conference to a rally, and so on. In this way, tension couldn't grow from the pull side, as they had no way of being able to push their point of view - the democratic structures were removed.

So what happened? Membership fell. New parties were started, but failed. A purge without a purge happened - as the pull position came to see they could not influence the party, they naturally began to leave, thinking "why pay to be a member of a democratic socialist party which doesn't seem to want to be socialist or democratic?"

This isn't to say these people disappeared. Instead, activists of the pull position ended up finding other structures to work within. This could be: a single issue campaign, such as UK Uncut; a broader opposition to austerity, such as the People's Assembly; trade unions; smaller left parties, such as Left Unity or the Greens; or even a very focussed party, such as the National Health Action party.

While these groups did have some effect (the issue of tax avoidance was forced on to the mainstream political agenda by UK Uncut, for example) they were all hamstrung by their separation from the party political process, and by the British electoral system. So, for example, the People's Assembly could have huge meetings, but there was no-one for them to vote for that could implement their agenda. The National Health Action party could raise awareness, but people don't vote on just that one issue.

In other words, the pull position left, so there was no tension on the push position to bring them to the, uh, left. This would seem to be good for them - they could concentrate on winning votes in the centre.

Except...

Without the tension from the left, the push position could go further right, reducing the difference between them and the main opposition. After all, getting into power was the important thing - without it, no policies could be implemented. But the centre wasn't, and isn't, fixed. And the pull side on the right still existed, bringing their push side further to the right.

So the push side on the left keeps edging to the right, and the push side on the right keeps going to the right, and we end up with a Labour leadership who won't defend tax credits, who won't vote against making poor people poorer.

The leadership election, particularly following the changes made by Miliband, is one of the few democratic ways remaining for views different to the current leadership (and central party structure) to be expressed. The easy extension of the franchise to registered supporters was originally supported by the push side as they made the mistake of thinking that the people they crafted policies to attract were the same sort of people who would sign up, or join a political party.

They won't make the same mistake again. This is the opportunity for the pull side to actually exert some pressure, some balance. Even if the only thing Corbyn does is help rebuild the democratic structures of the party, he will have left a party better able to make genuine positive changes in the country.

But I don't think that is all he will do. I think he will actually provide a better electoral position for Labour than his opponents, and that is what my next post is about.

How the pendulum got his swing, and other stories

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 23:32:00 +0000

Well, I thought about writing this response the first time I read Luke Akehurst's post We've already tried Jeremy Corbyn's alternative electoral strategy and it didn't work, but decided I far preferred reading in the sun. However, a friend has pointed at his post as evidence for why not to vote for Corbyn, and so, here goes:

Akehurst's post is bunk.

I originally typed "whole post" but I was being unfair - I do agree that the distribution of political views is, probably, a normal distribution, with the occasional bit of distortion from specific policies.

Then it goes wrong. The second of his self-evident truths is arguable, but we'll skip over that, and look at what he tagged on to the end of that assertion - that a party is chosen for government by being 'sensibly' centrist, that being what the electorate want. While a nice Just So story, it is just as easy to tell a different one - that the electorate wants a centrist government, but only on average, over time, and this is achieved by voting for a party to one side of the centre, and then, after a period of time which may consist of multiple elections, the mood of the electorate shifts, and they decide they want a party on the other side of the centre to balance things out. Call it "How The Pendulum Got His Swing".

The important things to note about that story are: a) it explains the swinging of power between Labour and the Conservatives, and also suggests why the avowedly centrist party, the Liberal Democrats (and predecessors) haven't been in power (on their own) for quite some time - they don't provide enough of a balance to whichever party was in power before them, and b) I just made it up - I told a plausible(-ish) story to fit the observed facts, just like the story Akehurst presents as a self-evident truth.

There is also slightly more evidence for my fairytale than there is for Akehurst's - and it comes from the survey he cites.

To bolster his argument that Corbyn, Livingstone and (as far as I can tell) Miliband were too far left, he points at the political spectrum polling done by YouGov. Voters in 2015 put themselves, on average, at -7.1 on a political spectrum - i.e. just left of centre. But, horror of horrors, Labour (before the election) was seen as at -36.4, with Miliband, the closet Trot, at -40.1! No wonder Labour lost! Clearly the Conservatives were seen as more centrist!

Er, no. The same poll put David Cameron at 45.8 - further from the apparent centre than Ed Miliband. The Conservative Party was seen as even more right wing, at 50.7. When you take into account the average GB voter put themselves at -7.1, David Cameron was 52.9 points to their right, while Ed Miliband was 33.0 points to their left. Or, in other words, Miliband and Labour were, according to that survey, closer both to the average GB voter, and to the absolute centre.

What can we learn from this? People lie to pollsters. People are happier to say they are leftwing than to say they are rightwing. And, maybe, just maybe, we learn that simple divisions of left and right aren't a fantastic way of looking at the spectrum of political views, or how people will vote. (No matter how nice your Just So story is.)

But that was just the preamble, the poorly argued assertions that came before the main, monster, assertion: that a Jeremy Corbyn general election campaign in 2020 would be similar to the Ken Livingstone London Mayoral election campaign in 2008.

Edit: Sharp eyed readers will have noticed I start talking about the 2008 mayoral election, when the linked article is talking about the 2012 election. This is because I am an idiot. I'll leave the original blurb here, but struck through, and you'll see another edit after it where I try to correct my error! Edit ends.

First things first: we don't know what a Corbyn campaign would look like. The assertion that it would have the same strategy as the Livingstone campaign in 2008 is just that - an assertion, not a fact. But, even accepting the broad premise for the sake of argument, there are other issues.

Secondly, turnout. I'll be coming back to turnout in a later post, but for the moment, just this - turnout was 45.33%. Goodish for a local government election, appalling for a general election. In essence, we can expect more people to vote in a general election, and, broadly, that tends to favour Labour. (But only broadly.)

Thirdly, Livingstone was the incumbent. Yes, he had a lot of publicity for the previous few years - but he was up against someone who wasn't short of a bit of publicity himself. In which case, you get someone who has to defend a record, against someone who can promise everything for the future.

Finally, and importantly, you may recall some pretty major events around 2008. We were in the middle of a bit of a financial brouhaha. You may remember it. It was in all the papers.

The Labour Party's poll rating tanked. The poll published just before the election for national voting intentions put Labour at 26%, while the Conservatives were on 40%. While it may be nice to think that the electorate in London would have calmly put aside the slow motion collapse of the global financial system, the panicky headlines, and the opportunistic finger-pointing of the Conservatives, and instead focussed only on bus fares and rubbish dumps, it seems rather disingenuous to claim the spreading disaster didn't figure at least slightly. In which case, with a result (on first preference votes) of 37%, Livingstone, as a proxy representative for a government he was not part of, outperformed expectations.

Edit: The 2012 mayoral election was fought in different circumstances to the 2008 one. The financial crisis was still rumbling on (as, indeed, it still does today) and Labour had not challenged the narrative that they were to blame. Ken Livingstone was no longer the incumbent, losing both the advantages and disadvantages this gave in 2008, but was, now, someone who had been previously defeated in an election for this position - yesterday's man, if you like. In addition, London was gearing up for the 2012 Olympics, an event causing some excitement, and which Boris Johnson had been able to personally associate himself with (while still being able to hold himself blameless for the levies on council tax payers to help pay for it).

Significantly, the coalition was now in power, and this had a clear effect on the Liberal Democrat vote - it more than halved between 2008 and 2012 in percentage terms. Turnout was also very low, at only 38.1%. All of these factors had some effect. It is, however, worth noting that Livingstone did in fact increase the share of the vote Labour received, suggesting the impact of the campaign strategy was, in fact, positive. End edit.

All of which is to say that each election is unique. Can some lessons be learned? Of course. But can definite conclusions about a possible election five years in the future be drawn from a different type of election seven years in the past, completely divorced from the circumstances it was held in? No, of course not.

If your fear is that a Corbyn general election campaign would just be a repeat of a Livingstone mayoral campaign, rest assured that isn't the case. The differences are far, far greater than the similarities.

And, if I haven't managed to convince you of that, consider this: Livingstone won the first two.

Politicians are all the same - except the ones that aren't

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:03:00 +0000

We've all heard, whether on the doorstep, on tv, or online, that politicians are all the same. It's not a bad shorthand, to be honest - general elections became about winning over a few thousand swing voters in a small number of constituencies, and naturally the two main parties began to adopt similar styles to try to attract them.

But that isn't the whole story. Remember Clegg-mania? Before the coalition, the Liberal Democrats had the freedom to be different. No-one, not even they, believed they were going to be in government any time soon (a hung parliament was considered a remote possibility) and so they didn't have to chase that few thousand voters - they could just be themselves instead, and it won them seats.

And then there's UKIP. They have traded extensively, and effectively, on not being like the rest. They're the authentic voice of the people, the only ones not in the Westminster bubble, not a part of the establishment, and so on. Most of these claims are absolute rubbish, but they are perceived as true, which is just as important.

Labour and the Tories, however, are seen as being pretty much the same. It's an understandable position - when one party announces they will follow the same spending plans as the other (as Labour did before 1997, and the Conservatives did in 2007), it's clear there is at least some similarity there. When you add the more recent capitulation in the argument about the causes of the government deficit and debt by Labour, leaving both sides apparently agreeing on the cause, and the solution, only differing on the details (pace, timing, marginal differences in scale of the cuts) it looks like they are more alike than not.

Don't get me wrong, I think an Ed Miliband led government would have been better for the country than this David Cameron led one, but it is easy to see how the vast majority of the electorate, who have only a passing interest in politics at election time (or no interest at all, given the number of non-voters) could think there isn't much difference.

The thing is, this is a product of the tactic of chasing the few thousand swing voters, and I no longer think that tactic is valid, certainly not for Labour. Targeting a few thousand swing voters in England is not going to win back the hundreds of thousands of voters we need in Scotland. Sounding like the Tories is not going to win back the disaffected "none of the above" voters in the north of England, many of whom voted UKIP. And if we can't keep hold of, or win back, those voters, the votes of a few thousand swing voters in the Midlands and South of England are irrelevant.

The thousands of swing voters tactic only works when the two parties are close in terms of seats. The brutal truth is that, having tried that tactic again last time, we are now over one hundred seats behind the conservatives. That doesn't call for a tactic designed to shift ten or twenty seats - it calls for a step change. It calls, in fact, for an attempt to fundamentally shift the parameters of the debate, much as the SNP managed in Scotland, much as UKIP are starting to do across England.

We're in a time of flux, and we need to win votes across the entire UK - in Scotland, to regain what we have lost, in northern England and Wales, to keep what we have, and in the Midlands and the South of England, to get back to power. The way to win those votes? By showing that we're different from the Tories. By showing that we don't think people should be criminalised for being poor, punished for being on benefits, or sanctioned for being sick. By showing that we do believe in investing in our young people, in our infrastructure, and in our country. By showing that when it comes down to choosing between the rich or them, we're on their side.

In short, by being Labour, by emphasising our differences rather than diminishing them, and, yes, by making the case for our positions, even when the electorate (currently) disagrees.

Not so funny after all...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 02:16:00 +0000

Remember #ToriesForCorbyn? A little bit of schadenfreude, we were told, the Tories enjoying the spectacle of a Labour Party leading themselves into the wilderness, disappearing off into the desolate lands of socialism. Apparently Tory entryists were going to sign up as Labour supporters, just so they could lumber us with a dead-weight as a leader.

It doesn't look like it is working out that way.

A new group of Tories have arrived, the unoriginally named #ToriesAgainstCorbyn - because they think a Labour Party led by Corbyn could be a threat to them.

Oh, they still argue there is almost no chance of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, only to then go on and so how terrible it would be for the UK if any of a strange variety of circumstances meant he was (though, of course, every set of circumstances includes Corbyn winning a general election, which we are told is impossible...). And even if he doesn't become Prime Minister, they still argue it would be bad for the Tories. The guy who started it, Oliver Cooper, writes in The Telegraph:

In short, Labour being Labour, they’ll still have the same platform, no matter how bizarre their leader’s views. The only difference is Corbyn’s views will be more left-wing, so will shift the entire political debate to the left. Long-term, so long as Labour and the Conservatives remain the two major parties in the UK, the only way to make progress is to persuade Labour to accept our position. Our ideas don’t win just when our party does, but when the other party advocates our ideas, too.

The amazing thing about this is it directly attacks the implicit argument of the Anyone But Corbyn campaign, namely that Labour can only win from the centre ground, and that the centre ground is fixed. The Tories know it isn't - after all, they have been dragging the centre ground to the right for years, and, some would argue, so has New Labour. After all, the triangulation used by Labour over the past twenty years has sought to move the party to the existing centre ground, and force the Tories right. It's almost as if it worked too well...

Corbyn has already caused the two other main candidates to shift leftwards, even if it only amounts to a change of rhetoric. Burnham has started advocating noisily for increased taxes for his National Care Service, for graduate taxes, and for not being scared of the Tory press.

Political positions are relative. On the one hand, this can be depressing - the Labour Party, as the main leftwing party in the country, choosing to abstain on welfare cuts, for example. But on the other hand, it is inspiring - we can move the centre of debate leftwards.

Don't get me wrong, it won't be easy. But by presenting clear policies which people support, and explaining them in terms which challenge the current (for want of a better word) neo-liberal consensus, the Labour Party can begin to move the centre ground leftwards again.

Corbyn is already doing this - for example, a focus on investment in education, on the grounds of not only productivity and individual economic success, but because a well educated population is a common good, something we all benefit from. You can include public ownership of railways, Royal Mail, utilities - on the grounds that we all already subsidise them massively through our taxes, so why don't we get the benefits as well?

The arguments are there to be made. The centre ground is always mobile. We need to remember this - and realise that the Tories are worried about these ideas getting a wider airing than they have been.

Investment too low, says cranky lefty

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:16:00 +0000

You may recall that in my last post I briefly mentioned the low productivity in the UK, and how it is thought to be at least partly due to low investment. Just to prove it's not just me saying this, here's the Bank of England's chief economist saying something similar - business investment has been too low for many years, and it is bad for the UK economy.

From the article:

[Andy Haldane] welcomed the Government's productivity plan to boost UK growth, but noted that increasing investment was a major part of that policy and argued that an examination of UK company law may be needed.

While the UK and US systems give a prime position to shareholders in the governance of companies, other models are available. Mr Haldane noted that other systems of corporate law give greater weight to other stakeholders - such as employees and customers - than the UK system.

In the short term, and throughout the financial crisis, it has simply been cheaper for businesses to hire more low paid staff than it has been to invest in machinery to improve the productivity of existing staff. On the one hand, yay! employment! On the other hand, boo! low wages!

The UK can't continue to compete on the basis of low wages - not only is it simply not going to work in a global economy, with millions of Chinese workers, or, closer to home, Eastern European competitors, but it is also, well, not a good thing. It will increase inequality as more and more low paid jobs are created, often the only replacement for middle income jobs which are being cannibalised. We need to invest to bring back middle income, skilled work - but the short termism in UK business is a problem.

How you tackle it is up for debate, of course, but it seems inevitable that to do so successfully you have to intervene into businesses in some way, whether through increased taxation to pay for training and investment via the state, increased regulation to compel some investment by business, or a more wholesale change in the legal structure of business. None of these is likely to be popular with those who are currently making money out of this system, even if it will ultimately make business more profitable in the long run.

Jeremy Corbyn? My heart's not in it

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 17:33:00 +0000

"A vote for Corbyn is a retreat to our comfort zone." "Electing Jeremy as leader would be suicidal." "The problem is that members are voting with their heart, not their head."

None of that is true. I'm voting for Corbyn, and it isn't because of an outbreak of sentimentality. It isn't because of the strong moral case he is putting forward. It isn't misplaced nostalgia for an age I wasn't even alive in.

No, I'm voting for Corbyn with my head, not my heart. I'm voting for Corbyn because the economics is with him. That's not what you'll hear from, well, pretty much anyone. The story goes that he's an unreconstructed throwback, demanding horny-handed sons of toil take over ownership of non-existent shipyards, or some such. In fact, his main message is one that is simple, and that pretty much all of us can agree with: austerity isn't working.

This is self-evidently true. Just look around you. But let's look at some of the figures:

GDP per capita (i.e. per person) is still below the level of 2008 - people are still worse off than they were before the financial crisis
The pace of recovery from the recession caused by the financial crisis has been the slowest ever in British history
Productivity remains below the 2008 peak - believed to be at least partly due to low investment by business

The surprising thing is that none of this should be a surprise. In fact, these effects of austerity could have been, and in fact were, predicted. Why? Because it is standard, textbook economics.

The economist J M Keynes realised back in the 1930s that to get economies out of recessions quickly it was necessary for someone to step in to boost demand. The only body capable of doing this was, and is, the state - the government can borrow money to invest, and by doing so help stimulate the economy, shortening the recession, and making it less deep. Following that, you get a strong, growing economy - fewer people end up needing the support of the state, so the benefits bill goes down, and businesses make more profits, so tax revenues increase. You can use this influx of money to pay back the debts you incurred getting the economy going again.

The idea of needing greater demand isn't disputed - even the austerity advocates believe this. But their argument was that a business wasn't going to invest now because of fear of taxes in five years time. They proposed cutting spending, to shrink the deficit and, ultimately, pay down government debt, and that this virtuous behaviour would somehow convince businesses to spend, spend, spend now, content that taxes would be low in the future.

The Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman called this belief in the "confidence fairy" who would make everything better.

The truth is that Keynesianism has been a staggering success for the majority of the last seventy years. It isn't perfect, but for getting economies out of difficulties, it is unmatched. The astounding shame of the Labour Party is that they have been unwilling to argue for the most successful economic theory, on the grounds of wanting to appear economically credible.

To re-use an old phrase - I'm not interested in ideology, I'm interested in what works. Keynesianism works. Investment by government in a weak economy works.

That's why I am supporting the only candidate offering a strong economic position, one based on investment to generate growth, one based on fostering strong and sustainable growth through tried and tested methods, one based on economic experience, not wishful thinking.

That's why I'm supporting the economically credible candidate, Jeremy Corbyn - with my head, not my heart.

Democratic Socialism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 01:26:00 +0000

There has been a (to me) surprising and disappointing aspect of the rather frothing reaction of the Anyone But Corbyn campaign to the YouGov poll on Tuesday night. John McTernan, in a Newsnight snap reaction, said that the MPs who had made sure Jeremy Corbyn got on the ballot were "morons". Mary Creagh, in her New Statesman article, decries the idea of having a left-winger in the contest in the interests of a debate.

There are other examples, and the link is that they share one idea: that MPs should have made sure that the 43% of the party who are supporting Corbyn didn't have the option. In other words, they think democracy is fine, so long as the choices offered are limited.

This is astounding - Labour describes itself as a "democratic socialist" party. There are no doubt arguments about how far "socialist" can stretch if it covers both Dennis Skinner and Chuka Umunna, but surely there can be no argument that not allowing members to have a choice would have been profoundly undemocratic?

Clearly I have a dog in this fight - I support Corbyn, and want him to win. But that doesn't mean I think Liz Kendall shouldn't have been allowed on the ballot because I think she's too far to the right, and her policies will lose us significant amounts of votes and seats. She, and her supporters, have a right to put their arguments forwards, and try to convince other members.

The truth is this: we're all Labour. We all want the Tories out of government, and us in. We all want to make the lives of ordinary men, women, and children in this country better. After the election, regardless of the result, we'll all need to work together. We need to start remembering that, and try to bring a bit more civility to the contest.

English Fairness

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 01:22:00 +0000

Originally written 22nd September 2014.

We have heard a lot about fairness from the Conservatives over the last few days. They say it is unfair that Scots MPs get to vote on English matters. They say it is unfair that some MPs get to have a say on things which won't affect their constituents, but will affect others. They say that change has to come, and the change that is needed is English votes for English laws. They say this is the only way to make sure the English are treated fairly.

I want us to be treated fairly. I want us to have the same powers and rights as the Scots, as the Welsh, as the Northern Irish.

The Scottish Parliament was set up after a referendum in 1997 when the Scottish people were asked if they wanted this. The Welsh Assembly was set up after a referendum in 1997 when the Welsh people were asked if they wanted this. The Northern Ireland Assembly was set up after a referendum in 1998 when the people of Northern Ireland were asked to approve the Good Friday Agreement that set it up.

In each case, the people under it were asked if they wanted it. It was an expression (rare and contradictory in a constitutional monarchy) that power was derived from the consent of the people. It was an admission that how those people are ruled is their choice to make.

But somehow the English aren't even being asked if they want a referendum. They aren't being asked if they want an English Parliament. The government is simply telling us how we will be ruled, and telling us this is fair.

In Scotland: the people decided. In Wales: the people decided. In Northern Ireland: the people decided. In England: David Cameron and William Hague decide? Is that fair? Is that right? Is that making sure the English aren't treated worse than the other nations?

Demand fairness. Demand the choice. Deciding how we are governed is our right, not theirs.

Mind the dust

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 01:13:00 +0000

Don't mind me, just clearing up a bit, airing the place out. It's been six long years since I posted anything here, but I'm going to put a couple of things up here - something I wrote about the Scottish referendum, just for historical interest to myself, and some musings about the current Labour leadership election.

I don't think it will all be staying here - I'll probably move it to a new host, and probably get a new name, as I see an earnest young chap has taken the leftwardho.co.uk domain name - it's not as if he could have expected this thing to rise like a zombie... Anyway, I'm probably talking to myself anyway, so enjoy a few bits and bobs over the next couple of months.

Fascism in the UK - All Labour's Fault?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:39:00 +0000

I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. That's not a good feeling. But like it or not, the BNP now has as many MEPs for the North West as the Liberal Democrats. Over in Yorkshire, the former leader of the National Front was elected, giving the BNP the same number of MEPs in that region as Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

The various talking heads have said how awful this is, how the BNP will claim this gives them and their views legitimacy. And, well, the BNP will claim that. And, well, they'll be right.

You see, that's the point of democracy. Sometimes it throws up results you don't like. But that doesn't make them illegitimate - much as I may dislike it, the BNP put themselves up for election, and of those that voted, enough of them agreed with them for them to win seats.

But the key phrase there is "of those that voted". And that was a depressingly low number - in places. Overall turnout was 34.3% - down by 3.9% from 2004's 38.2%. But those figures mask the variation across the country.

In fact, in some areas turnout was up, though only marginally. The East of England, the South West, and the South East all went up by about 1%. But these aren't regions the BNP managed to do well in. The regions the BNP did well in have been traditionally associated with Labour. Obviously the proportional nature of this electoral system changes that a bit, but the ability of the BNP to claim seats must be seen, primarily, as a failure of not all parties, but of one - the Labour Party.

Let's look at the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber regions. In the North West, turnout went from 40.9% to 31.7% - a fall of 9.2%. In Y&H, turnout went from 42.6% to 32.3% - a fall of 10.3%. Put it this way: about a quarter of the people who voted last time didn't bother this time. That's pretty awful.

It gets worse for Labour. In hard numbers, about 470,000 fewer people voted in the North West - and Labour lost about 240,000 votes. In Y&H, about 363,000 fewer people voted - and Labour lost 183,000 votes. Half of the people who didn't vote had been Labour voters. In terms of their share of the vote, Labour lost 7% and 7.5% respectively - about a quarter of their share.

(Remember, even with a falling turnout, the share of the vote would stay the same, all else being equal. A declining share of the vote means, in this case, and in my opinion, that former Labour voters are overwhelmingly more likely not to have voted than those of other parties.)

These figures illustrate a catastrophic collapse of the Labour vote in these areas. In comparison, the Tory vote stayed relatively stable - in fact, their share of the vote increased by only 1.5% in the North West, and dropped by 0.2% in Yorkshire and the Humber. This wasn't a flight to the Tories - they stayed pretty much the same.

A very fair point to make is that the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber were all postal votes last time round. The other two regions that were all-postal last time were the North East and the East Midlands. This time, their turnout dropped as well. In fact, the North East's turnout dropped by more than Yorkshire and the Humber - it went from 40.8% to 30.4% - a fall of 10.4%. The East Midlands, however, had a more modest drop - from 43.4% to 37.1%, a fall of 6.3%.

But I think clinging to the hope the drop in Labour's vote is due mainly to the change from an all-postal ballot is wishful thinking. For a start, the drop in turnout was significantly larger in the areas Labour had previously been stronger - the East Midlands saw a much smaller drop. But, much more significantly, it ignores Wales.

Wales didn't have an all-postal ballot last time. But they saw the biggest percentage drop in turnout this time round - from 41.4% to 30.4%, a massive 11%. About 239,000 fewer people voted - and about 159,000 fewer people voted Labour. The Labour share of the vote went from 32.5%, the second highest of any region in the UK, to 20.3%, the fifth. And, for the first time since the Labour Party became a national party, Labour were beaten in Wales. And beaten by the Tories.

This wasn't a change from an all-postal ballot depressing turnout. No, this was the Labour vote not turning up. There could be many reasons for this. Anyone who has read my past few posts will know I think policy is a main one. Others will point to the expenses scandal hitting Labour harder than the other parties.

I think it's that we have reached a tipping point. And I don't know if Labour can recover from it.

More than 5 years ago, I gave a speech at the final hustings to become the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a safe Labour constituency - my home. And because I cared about my home, and because I was worried about the path the Labour Party was on, I gave an honest assessment of where I thought we had been going wrong - ignoring our grass roots, not pursuing policies that would create a fairer society, introducing privitisation into health and education, and so on.

And I told my fellow party members that I wasn't worried about Labour winning in that constituency at the next election. But I was increasingly worried about the election after that, and the one after that. Because I felt the central Party had made a decision that they could safely ignore their heartlands, because they had nowhere else to go, no-one else to vote for.

And, you know what? They are right. The heartlands don't have anywhere else to go. But these European results show that they don't have to go anywhere to cause problems for Labour. They don't have to go to another party. They don't have anywhere to go. So they just stay at home.

(Incidentally, the other place strongly associated with Labour is Scotland. They, however, had a strong opposition to Labour that wasn't the Tories - the SNP. Turnout fell by only 2.4%. Labour lost about 81,000 votes. Coincidentally, the SNP gained about 89,500 votes. In Scotland, former Labour voters do have somewhere else to go.)

Now, I know that European elections are different from general elections. People vote differently, they protest, or they just don't care. But this election, the Labour heartlands have learnt an important lesson - they don't have to vote Labour. They can just... not vote.

That's why the BNP won seats - the Labour vote collapsed. In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour needed only another 10,270 votes to have stopped the BNP getting a seat. In the North West, Labour would have needed another 60,000 or so - but their vote had fallen by about 240,000. (UKIP would have needed only another 2,449 votes, or the Greens would have needed 4,962.)

No, the election of the BNP isn't a failure of all parties. It's not a failure of the political system. It's not even a sign that the country is becoming racist. It's a sign that the Labour Party is failing, that the Labour Party cannot energise its core vote, that the Labour Party vote is collapsing.

It's a sign that the Labour government needs to start listening to what its party members and voters actually want them to do.

But because they didn't, because Labour failed, I am now represented in the European Parliament by Nick Griffin. For the next 5 years. Thanks a bunch.

Disconnection (Part 4)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:47:00 +0000

This is the hardest post I've had to make in this series.

Over the past few days, I've been able to write almost as an observer, discussing what I think is going wrong, but without it really affecting me. Yes, I've managed to whip myself up into the odd bit of righteous anger, but that's about it.

This post is different though. This one is personal. This is about my own disconnect.

Two years ago, I wrote a lament for English socialism. In it, I told of my sorrow that what was left of socialism in the Labour Party couldn't even mount enough of a challenge to Gordon Brown to make him face an election rather than a coronation.

But I didn't leave the party. To do so would have been unthinkable. This is the Labour Party, for heaven's sake. This is the party of Keir Hardie, of Nye Bevan, of Tony Benn. They are owed my loyalty. They demand my loyalty.

And so I resigned myself to forever being disappointed in what the Labour Party did, of making steady compromises with myself to continue voting for them, telling myself that at least they weren't as bad as the Tories.

But things just got worse. After an impressive start, the Brown government started to fall apart, in style as much as substance - and this was before the banking collapse. Last year, I wrote a series of posts about the Brown government, including whether I could vote for Labour again, and what I thought was wrong with politics. And ultimately, I copped out on deciding whether I would vote for them again - but I clearly stated I could never vote for another party:

I am a tribal animal. It is a terrible flaw, but there you go. And my tribe is Labour. I am Labour. Always will be. The Liberal Democrats are inconsequential, the Tories beyond the pale. Neither could ever get my vote.

I was so sure of my commitment, of my connection to Labour, to my tribe. But...

I suppose deep down inside, I wanted to believe that some of the people at the top of the Labour Party were like me. They too had had to compromise remorselessly, steadily moving away from what they believed in their heart to something that would get them elected, elected so they could achieve at least some good.

But then came the financial crisis. When the Telegraph is calling for bank nationalisations, but the Labour government is resisting, you know something has gone very wrong with the world. To the surprise of nobody but me, it turns out it really wasn't a government of revolutionaries reluctantly turned bureaucrats. The lines they had been peddling about the superiority of the market, about its magical efficiency, about how it should be trusted, they really believed them.

The financial crisis shattered the last of my dearly held illusions about the Labour government. Once upon a time, I could believe in their financial competence, rather than them just being the beneficiaries of blind luck and bad decisions made in America. Once upon a time, I could believe that deep down inside, they believed in the same things as me. Once upon a time, I could believe they wanted to change the world.

But once upon a time ended.

And so my certainty that I was Labour through and through, tribal to the end, has been shaken. And, finally, slowly, it has collapsed.

It's so hard for me to express the pain this causes me. I suspect it is like a priest losing his faith - the one clear, definite, fixed point of his life has been destroyed, the one certainty he could cling to no matter what, the defining part of who he is is gone.

But it is worse than that. Because this collapse in my belief also means that now, finally, I can think about voting for someone else. It feels like I am betraying a dear friend, that I am cheating on a spouse, that I am lying to my parents.

The only thing I can point to, the only experience that this feels close to, is the empty, icy-cold feeling inside when your lover leaves you, when the person you had shaped your life around shrugs her shoulders and walks away. It sounds melodramatic, but the hollow devastation is all I can compare it to. But thinking I can vote for someone else means I am also betraying her, that I am the one in the wrong.

Betrayal is the only word I can use, the only one that seems to get over the shock and hurt I feel at where the party has gone, and the shame I feel myself for thinking of going elsewhere.

And I tell myself I shouldn't feel this way, that it may once have been the party of Hardie, Bevan and Benn, but that it isn't anymore. That the party moved away from me, not the other way round. I tell myself this, but it doesn't really help.

I'm grieving for the party as it used to be.

I'm not the first to feel like this. The Labour Party has been leaking members for years. Always I felt they were making a mistake, that sure, not everything was perfect, but that's what politics is all about. And then my father left the party. Secretly I believed he'd end up going back, that he couldn't possibly turn his back on the party.

But now I am seeing more people who have been committed to the party for a lifetime leaving, quietly, unobtrusively, sadly. I know of people who have been lifelong supporters and members, people who have been councillors for decades, people who have devoted a good portion of their lives to the party, simply slipping away.

These are not people who would make a fuss about it - they still have too much respect for what the party used to be to do that. But when we meet each other, then we can share our private grief. We can talk about what used to be, what we still believe, and what we wish would change.

And all this before the revelations on MPs expenses. That will drive people further away. Further away from all parties, but I can't help but feel that Labour will suffer most.

Because, regardless of the truth of the matter, many traditional Labour voters, people like me, would always have expected Tories to be out for themselves, out to get every penny out of us that they could. But not our MPs, not Labour people, surely? But their venality has been lain bare, the dramatic difference in lifestyle they demanded between how we live, and how they do. And they will suffer.

I feel sorry for the honest MPs out there, the ones who have only claimed what they must, those who claimed little. Those who didn't take advantage of the system, regardless of what the rules were. Because now they are tarred with the same brush. Already politicians were viewed as untrustworthy, and now they are viewed as greedy, venal, criminal. A plague on all their houses, primary and secondary.

And so, this is the final disconnect. A personal disconnect. One I have found very hard to write about. Because my party has betrayed me, in thoughts, in words, in deeds. And I have betrayed my party, in my mind if nowhere else yet.

I can't forgive the party. It remains to be seen if I can forgive myself.

Disconnection (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:59:00 +0000

The Labour Party was created to represent labour. It was set up to provide a way for the working class to have a voice in parliament. It was set up to enable the poor to find their own voice. It was set up to fight for the interests of the lowest in society against those who would seek to deny them.

Most importantly, it was set up because the slow increase in the franchise meant there was a large pool of voters who didn't feel they were being represented by the Tories or the Liberals. There had been attempts by the Liberals to position themselves as the natural party for these voters, but they were caught in a terrible position - their original supporters may have been sympathetic with the new voters, but they were pushed too far by a party seeking new votes, and began to fear socialism. At the same time, the restraining affect of these original supporters meant the party couldn't go far enough to capture the new votes. Ultimately, over a period of years, the Liberal Party collapsed.

This meant the Labour Party was the only voice of the left in British politics worthy of note. And over the decades they used this position to great effect. A dramatic increase in the welfare state, the creation of the NHS, the formation of the Open University, the liberalisation on many social issues, all of these came about with Labour.

They took their belief in a better society, a fairer society, a more equal society, and they worked damn hard to try and make it come about.

But there's no doubt that things got tougher for them. A period of economic difficulties, and yes, workplace agitation, set the scene for the Thatcher government that was to be so destructive and damaging to British society.

The failure of Labour to react effectively to the changing social climate, the failure to vocalise the anger and frustration so many were feeling, the failure, in fact, to represent the people it was set up to represent meant a series of humiliating and demoralising defeats.

And these defeats deeply affected the psyche of the party. They had seen a Tory government which gave every indication of being deeply unpopular beat them repeatedly. They began to wonder if there was any way they could win. They began to wonder if there was any hope left.

Which meant the party was only too happy to turn to someone who offered them victory, someone who told them they could gain power, someone who told them they would make it possible. The party was only too happy to give a little, to change a little, to compromise a little.

But doing that was the start of the disconnect of the party from the people they were supposed to be fighting for. The compromises, the steady compromises throughout the years, slowly moved the party further and further away from their original supporters. The party was desperately trying to grab and hold onto the voters of the middle, move to occupy that ground. But like the Liberals before them, doing that meant abandoning the people who used to vote for them, the people who used to be members.

Find yourself a member of the Labour Party. Ask them what they were most proud of the Labour government doing, and they'll likely answer "National Minimum Wage", or maybe "Sure Start".

Then ask them for something not done in the first term.

Labour's plan of triangulation, of moving towards the position of the Tories, of moving to the centre, has meant they have moved further and further away from the natural position of their traditional supporters. This was a deliberate and cynical plot, because the party machine knew that their traditional supporters had nowhere else to go.

And they were right. The traditional support didn't have anywhere to go. Turns out, they didn't even have to go to the polling station. They just stayed at home. Cue falling turnouts, politicians decrying voter apathy, and postal vote systems open to abuse.

But the disconnect between the Labour Party and their traditional support has continued. And this is a bad thing for all of us.

It was widely believed that the existence of the Soviet Union forced the capitalist countries to pay more attention to social inequality. Simply by existing as an alternative model to capitalism, communism forced western governments to keep the poorest in society provided for, looked after, treated with respect.

And I believe the same argument held for the Labour Party. Even when out of power, they were there as an alternative. It meant that, for example, the Tories never tried to privatise the NHS. They knew the howls of protest would lead to a Labour election victory.

Not true for New Labour, of course. There was no-one to the left of them who provided a credible electoral threat. So move on with bringing the private sector into the NHS! Call it reform, call it efficiency, call it 'what works', but let the private sector make a profit from the sick.

And move on with bringing the private sector into education. Call it reform, call it bringing in business talent, call it improvement, but let anyone with cash control what our kids are taught.

And move on with privatisation of air traffic control. Call it essential, call it bringing in fresh funds, call it being free from ideology, but let someone make money out of it.

I don't want this to turn into a litany of what I think the Labour Government has got wrong - though heaven knows I could go on about that for a long time. I am trying to show that there are things that they did which were dramatically against the natural instincts of their traditional support.

All of this created a disconnect between what the traditional support believed, and what the Labour Party did. For a while, this didn't matter to the party - they would still vote for Labour. But I believe we may be reaching an irreversible tipping point.

And it is this tipping point which I will talk about tomorrow.

Disconnection (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:47:00 +0000

The biggest disconnect in our society now is surely the gaping chasm between the richest and the poorest. During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, income inequality increased massively in the UK. The old post-war consensus was shattered, and the result was a society that went through dramatic upheavals and pain, in a way that is still seared onto the psyche of anyone who was around in that period.

And it is these upheavals that are important. Across countries, there is a broad correlation between higher levels of income inequality and higher levels of property crime, and murder. Societies which are more unequal are more dangerous.

I believe that what this shows is that these societies begin to fall apart, that different sections of that society become disconnected from each other. Because of this process, sections of society begin to psychologically and physically separate themselves. The poorest become chavs, the richest become fat cats, and both groups hold the other in contempt. In this way, the process accelerates.

So you would hope that a Labour government, one committed to reducing inequality, and producing a fairer society, would have begun the work of reversing the changes of the long Tory government of the 80s and 90s. But it turns out, they didn't. In fact, the levels of inequality got worse.

Income inequality is now greater than at any time since 1961.

Or, to put it another way, income inequality is at its highest level since records began.

So, society has become more unequal. Combined with this, it appears that social mobility, how easy it is for someone to rise up through society, or indeed to fall, hasn't changed since 1970. And this low level of social mobility is amongst the worst in any advanced nation.

If you're born poor, you're likely to stay poor. And with the income of the lowest 10% actually falling in real terms since 2005, you're likely to get poorer.

This can't be how we want our society to be, can it? Surely a world where the bottom 10% of society have an income of £147 a week, while the top 10% make do with £1,033 a week isn't right? When the poorest 20% see their income fall by 2.6% at the same time as the richest 20% see theirs rise by 3.3%, something must be wrong?

I'm sorry to step away from the gentle cultured arguments about the effect of economic strategies, to slip into the language of black and white, right and wrong. But this is a simple binary matter, it is a matter of right and wrong. There comes a point when the impact of the economic choices we make cease to be a matter for gentle discussion over brandy and cigars, and become a bigger issue, a more important issue. There comes a point where these decisions become moral decisions, because these arguments start to affect the very lives people get to live.

When the one of the best indicators of a child's future social position, wealth, educational attainment, health, longevity and is the amount of money their parents' earn, something is wrong.

Recently, Harriet Harman launched a new equalities bill. She said that as women in general lived longer than men, it showed something was wrong that the poorest women died earlier than the richest men - and so we had to work for equal pay across the genders. This is a laudable aim, but seems to be missing the point entirely - the problem is that you will die earlier if you are poor. The money you earn decides how long you will live.

Yes, this is the language of class warfare. But the casualties are all on one side.

(To be fair, also in this bill are proposals to impose on public authorities a duty to work to reduce class inequalities. But this will only affect public authorities, leaving the rest of society to get on with the work of increasing inequality. The measures are too weak, too little, and too late.)

And yet we all seem to try very hard not to acknowledge that, turning our heads, averting our gaze, closing our eyes. We want to believe that sop to middle class sensibilities that we live in a era of 'equality of opportunity', a meaningless phrase that the statistics on social mobility to be a lie. Some of us pretend we live in a meritocracy, but isn't it odd that merit seems to be hereditary?

We used to have a political party that would point this out. We used to have a party that wouldn't help everyone ignore the effects economic policy was having on the most vulnerable. We used to have a party that would have shouted from the rooftops about inequality rising to such obscene levels. We used to.

And that is the disconnect I want to talk about tomorrow.

Disconnection (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:58:00 +0000

I'm worried. Worried about all of us, worried about the path we are on, worried about where we will end up. And I'm worried that no-one else seems to be worried.

Firstly, I'm worried about the police. The aftermath of the G20 riots has been raked over all over the media by now, but without seeming to get to the core of the problem.

It seems obvious by now that at least one police officer paid a contributory part in the death of Ian Tomlinson. Numerous others at best failed to prevent a criminal assault, and at worst were complicit in an attempt to hide it.

But focusing only on this one horrendous crime threatens to make us overlook the more widespread problems. I've already written about the threat to civil liberties in the UK that some police tactics have become.

When police are surveilling political protesters and journalists, using pychological warfare techniques on protesters, and recruiting informers in protest groups a reasonable person may begin to suspect they are going too far. But when police arrest over a hundred protesters before they protest it becomes clear they are.

And when the protesters are released without charge, but with excessive bail conditions, it becomes... worrying. (Interestingly, the bail conditions said those arrested couldn't communicate with each other, either directly or indirectly. Which their lawyers advised them meant they couldn't talk to the press about it, either, as that could count as indirect communication.)

But it's not just these techniques that are the problem, it's also the justifications that are rolled out by the talking heads of the police. As well as the touchstone claim of fighting terrorism, they talk about how this is just how policing should be, that they know best how to do the job, that we should just leave them to it.

And it is the point of view of view betrayed by this attitude, that the police are somehow apart from society, that is the real problem. Because when the police start to see themselves as separate from society, society starts to view the police the same way - as heavy-handed, as authoritarian, as the enemy.

That can't be good.

But the police are not alone in seeing themselves as somehow disconnected from the rest of society. There is another group that appears to see themselves as above it.

National politicians have given the impression of being aloof from society for what seems like a long time now. By its very nature, politics tends to be clannish, but that tendency appears to have grown in recent years to include politicians of all parties in one over-arching group, the Westminster Village if you like.

Part of this is natural. Parliament is an exclusive club, and members of it have much in common with each other. But the most insidious thing they have in common is that they, and they alone, have control over how much they are all paid. Recent revelations on expenses suggest their general opinion is it's not enough.

MPs have been wary of rousing public opinion by increasing their basic salary. But they have been more than happy to vote for more and more generous, and lax, expenses allocations. They have used this as a roundabout way of getting more money into their pockets.

This attitude seems to have led to our MPs viewing expenses as their right, as a system to be abused to increase their take home pay. They developed a profoundly different way of looking at their expenses system, at their pay, at their job than any of the rest of us are able to do with ours.

But it is not only in their venality that our politicians stand apart. There is often talk of a Westminster Village, of an insular grouping of politicians, excluding the rest of the world. But this is not just the natural process whereby members of a group begin to identify with the group first. Part of it is deliberate.

There has been a move over recent years, pushed by the public, to have full time politicians, people dedicated solely to Getting Things Done once elected, people who aren't distracted by anything else. Hence the attacks on MPs having second jobs, and so on. But the laudable aim of having committed politicians has had an undesirable side-effect.

Because when we start to demand politicians treat their work 'as a real job', well, they start to do so. They start to expect promotions, a clear career path. They start to turn the role into a profession. And the things with professions is that they are designed to exclude people who don't meet the entry requirements.

And so we get Special Advisers who rise to the highest ranks of government without ever having to step outside of the Westminster Village from the start of their career. We get career politicians, who start off working for a political party, then get put up in a nice safe seat, then settle down on the backbenches to wait for a call to some junior government post.

I've seen this happen in the Labour Party. There was much hard work done to professionalise the party machine, the central party itself. And, of course, once you have the professionals running the party, it's obvious that they know best what should be done. So take policy making away from the party members. Make the party conference an empty talking shop, stop it passing motions that you don't want. Control the party from the top - because the professionals are in charge, and they know what is best.

The obvious end result of this cronyism and insular attitude is typified by the current fuss over Georgia Gould. Just 22, she is the hot favourite to be selected in Erith and Thamesmead, a nice, safe Labour seat. Her qualifications for this role seems to be graduating from Oxford, and studying for a Masters at the LSE. And, of course, her experience gained from a part-time job for Tony Blair's Faith Foundation.

You may assume that for someone so young to get to work for the Faith Foundation, she must show some stellar ability. Possibly. I don't know the girl, I couldn't say. But some may suspect she landed the job because she is the daughter of Blair's old friend, and Labour Party pollster, Lord Gould.

Politics isn't about professionalism. This may seem heretical, but it isn't. Do I want the delivery of public policy to be professional? Absolutely - and that's precisely why we have a civil service. Their entire reason for existing is to provide a trained, educated, professional group of people to carry out whatever policies a government chooses. They need to be professional. Politicians need to be inspirational.

By demanding professionalism from our politicians, we've created a situation where they practically have to see themselves as apart from the rest of us. We have created the sense of disconnect between us and them. They are no longer the brightest and best of us, the people we want to represent us, to lead us. They are an external other, a group who imposes their will upon us, a group that seems more and more similar to each other, regardless of the party colours they wear.

The disconnect of politicians, and of police, from the rest of us are just two small examples of a fracturing society, though. There is a much bigger problem out there, one that affects us all. And that's what I'll talk about tomorrow.

UAW union may take over Chrysler

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:13:00 +0000

I admit it, I find this both amusing and satisfying. My unreconstructed socialism coming out again, no doubt.

UAW union may take over Chrysler (from The Guardian).

Anger and Apathy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:17:00 +0000

So, then, the G20 summit has passed. Maybe it's saved the world, maybe it hasn't. I'm not going to pretend I can make an educated judgement about the likely success or otherwise of the new attempts to restart the global economy when even economists are holding their breaths. I don't know. I just don't know.

The other hot topic is the way police treated the demonstrators. There are questions to be answered about exactly what happened around the death of one man, Ian Tomlinson, especially as it looks like he wasn't even part of the demo, just someone trying to get home. The tactic of 'kettling' is coming under renewed scrutiny, as thousands were kept in one place for hours. And the behaviour of the police towards peaceful protests is causing concern, after allegations that the Climate Camp protest was violently broken up once the TV cameras had gone home.

(You know the police tactics and actions may have gone too far when The Times starts to question them.)

But that's not what I want to talk about today. There are no doubt thousands of shrill voices across the internet making their views felt on these issues, and I won't add my own to them.

No, instead I want to look at another side of it. It happened only slowly, as the news media started to get a little disappointed. Despite their dire predictions of mass riots in the capital, of a re-run of the Poll Tax riots, of the imminent collapse of Western society in an orgy or rage and violence, the protests themselves were rather quiet.

I mean, the police bottled up approximately 4,000 protesters right outside that symbol of the collapse of the banks, and the unrestrained greed that started it, and seems to continue still, RBS. And they broke 3 or 4 windows. A revolution, this was not.

And all told, we're looking at at most 30,000 protesters This was not the population taking to the streets. Now, I have no doubt that part of the reason for this is the dire predictions the media were making - surprisingly, when the media repeatedly refers to possible violent clashes, riots on the street, and such like, a lot of people won't go. The police must have been overjoyed at the scaremongering by the media.

But some commentators have been proudly claiming this shows that there just isn't that much anger out there, that we know it's tough for the government, but have faith they will do everything they can to get us out of this mess.

Part of me would really like to believe this.

But this doesn't match with what I'm coming across out there. I'm not seeing burning rage, certainly, but I am seeing a sullen resentment. I'm meeting people who are confused as to why we can't spend billions to fix the pensions hole in the Post Office, when we've spent far more than that on bailing out banks. They don't see why we're closing libraries when we're creating money to pour into the financial system. They don't understand why the same MPs demanding new financial prudence from banks are also claiming thousands for second homes.

They don't see why they are suffering when those at the top seem to be carrying on as usual.

And it doesn't take much to trigger them from resentment to anger. Just ask them about Labour - suddenly the rage is evident. Maybe it's worse because Labour is supposed to be the party that protects them. Maybe. Maybe it would be just as intense whoever was in power. Maybe.

Regardless, they're not going to vote Labour. All this talk about the polls turning round if we start to see signs of recovery, how the support for Cameron and the Tories is soft, how we can still make it, sounds more and more like wishful thinking.

And the reason is simple: I don't think the people I'm talking to actually think the Tories will do better. They don't think they'll do worse. They don't really think about that at all. No, the reason they will vote for the Tories is to punish Labour. And I don't think that desire to punish them will go away even if Gordon Brown does magically bring us to a land of milk and honey within a year.

Because, and this is where it links in with why people haven't been protesting, I think far, far too many people just think they can't have an effect. Nothing will change. As the old saying goes, it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

I think the perception, true or otherwise, that the three main parties are essentially saying the same thing with slightly different spins hasn't helped. People are beginning to think that voting doesn't really make a difference. So we have falling turnouts, attempts to shore up turnouts with postal voting (because we can't convince people to walk a few hundred yards down the street to vote), and the rise of smaller, more extreme parties - ones that at least offer something different.

But if you didn't think voting made a difference, there was always protest.

I remember, way back when, marching against going to war in Iraq. Maybe it's because I was young and idealistic, but I really thought we could make a difference. I looked around at the sea of people I was part of, stretching across Hyde Park, and I thought "Surely this means something? Surely no politician can just ignore this?".

Like I said, I was young and idealistic.

It wasn't just me. No matter whose particular estimate of numbers you want to go with, the two marches against the war that took place in London attracted huge numbers of people, a vast amount who believed that they really could make a difference, that they could make their voice heard, that their protest would have an effect in a democratic society.

But we all know how that story ended.

Now, I'm not saying that this means the UK isn't democratic - ultimately, MPs voted to go to war. It was a democratic decision, regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

But I am saying that decision had an effect on democracy. The marches were an incredible occurrence. A vast coalition of people from all walks of life came together to be heard. News reports described it as historic. Everyone seemed amazed at the size of these events.

And they failed. That's the important point - despite mobilising more people than anyone possibly imagined, they failed. Regardless of the rights and wrongs, regardless of whether it was democratic or not, millions of people were able to see on TV that protests didn't work.

So, when people think the parties are all the same, that protests are useless, what do you get? Apathy. Or at least it looks like apathy - people simply stop taking part. They make what seems a rational decision not to waste their time on something that will make no difference.

And that apparent apathy is what I think is the real threat, the real way that society can break down. People really are angry. Yes, they're keeping a lid on it (heavens, we are British, after all). But that doesn't change the fact that it is there.

Along with that anger, they feel powerless. They feel as if the people at the top will just keep on doing whatever they want, regardless of what everyone else wants them to do. They feel that voting makes no difference, that protesting makes no difference.

They feel they are ignored.

That's a dangerous combination. Anger, and powerlessness. Because as that anger grows - and it will, as the recession continues - as it grows, it has no way of being let out, no safety valve. Which means it builds up, until finally something, some spark, some event, something we can't predict, something happens that causes it to burst free.

What I worry about, what I'm scared of, is that we're not seeing a population happy to give the government the benefit of the doubt, but that instead, we're just seeing the calm before the storm.

That's what I'm scared of. I'm almost certain it won't happen. But that 'almost' is still scary.

Worrying about liberties

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:05:00 +0000

It's tough worrying about civil liberties in the UK.

Obviously it's a lot harder in other countries. I mean, worrying about civil liberties in Russia, where journalists are being murdered to shut them up, is a lot tougher, to say the least. Or in China, where those who complain are whisked away and imprisoned, never to be seen again.

Granted, it's not that tough. But it is kind of tough - because no-one needs to put pressure on you to be quiet. You feel it all on your own. You bite your own tongue. Or at least I do.

I mean, let's look at this sensibly. I see a report of behaviour by the state that seems to infringe civil liberties, such as the police surveilling political protesters and journalists, and I think to myself "This is terrible! They are treating people going about lawful activities, such as political protest, or reporting upon it, as potential criminals. Worse, they are being overt and aggressive in their filming, which surely can only be to try to intimidate the public."

Well, generally I don't think in quite such clearly defined sentence structure, but you get my point. On the whole, I think This Is A Bad Thing, and that Something Should Be Done.

But then some other thought processes kick in. Thought processes that are part of me because I am a polite, middle-class Englishman. Those thought processes which instinctively try to damp down rebellious instincts.

For example, I think to myself "Well, these police officers are just doing their jobs. They don't get to choose whether they follow their superior's instructions or not." And I think "After all, they're not doing anything illegal - I mean, taking photographs in a public place is perfectly allowed, and something I should be glad about." And I think "Surely they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a good reason? Maybe there really are ne'er-do-wells in these groups, people we should be keeping an eye on."

And by these steps, I start to dampen down my initial outrage, blanketing it in a cloak of possible justifications, or polite evasions of the unpleasant reality. All I am left with is a sense of disquiet at the events, a slight sense of disappointment in myself, and a rather bitter taste in the back of my mouth.

But, of course, that sense of disquiet never quite goes away. It lingers.

Which means that when I hear of another event, such as the police using 'psychological operations' against protesters it becomes that little bit harder to deaden the outrage. The disquiet grows that little bit greater.

This is all very odd for me. Because, well, how can I really worry about civil liberties in the UK? It's far too embarrassing. I mean, this is England, for heaven's sake. We have a long tradition of enlightenment about rights. Don't we? Surely I'm being foolish for worrying.

And I desperately want to believe that. I want to believe that the good old fashioned sense of British fair play will stop all these attacks on liberty. I want to believe that there is no chance a government could get in which would use all these new laws brought in to 'fight terror' to fight whoever opposes them.

I want to believe it, but I'd be foolish indeed to do so.

The UK isn't somehow immune from oppression. Bad people have used bad laws to silence their critics before. Hell, good people who passionately believed something we now think is abhorrent used bad laws to silence their critics. Unions were put down. Workers were abused. Millions were denied the vote, and threatened with violence for demanding it.

My golden vision of a UK filled with fair play is concocted from films and books that ignore those who weren't the right sort. I think of good, upright English chaps, doing the right thing because it is the right thing. But this sort of cosy image was pushed by an Establishment already fighting a losing battle - so they project an image of their sort as the right sort, who can always be trusted to act in the best interests of all of us.

Because that's the thing - I don't think Labour are really trying to put in place all the tools an oppressive government would need. I don't even think the Tories would do much different. They're just politicians, making the best decisions they can, given the information and guidance they are offered.

And the guidance they are offered comes from a group who are part of what we nebulously call the Establishment. High up civil servants, advisers, career politicians, they all end up working to maintain their control over the country, over society. Oh, not because they're a comic book evil villain, scheming to subjugate us all. No, because they really believe they know best how to run the country, how to make sure we all benefit in some way.

But this is where they're wrong. We live in a democracy - imperfect and flawed in many ways, yes, but one in which each of us has at least some say in the way our country is run. And over the years, we have become more sophisticated, more knowledgeable, we have learned more. We have earned the right to be trusted to make decisions for ourselves.

Which means that, actually, they don't have the right to keep tabs on us for our political activity. They don't get to tell us inquests can be held in secret, because a minister or a judge says so. They don't get to tell us we have to tell them before we travel abroad. They don't get to tell us we have to give them all the information on us they want, forever, and to buy a card confirming it. They don't get to decide what is best for us.

There never was a golden age of liberty in the UK. Things have often been worse than now, but it wasn't that long ago that they were better, either. So let's work to try and make some more progress, let's work to keep traveling along the road towards greater freedom, greater liberty. Let's stop trying to justify the actions of the state for them, imagine ways in which what they are doing could be right.

In my case, let's stop being quite so... British about it.

What a headline

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:36:00 +0000

From The Times: Prince Charles warns that Britain faces dementia catastrophe. Insert your own joke about the heir to the throne here.