giroscope

Greece: taking the long and painful road towards default

2012-02-13T07:39:00.007Z

It's often been said that socialism is the long and painful route to capitalism and in the case of Soviet-style state capitalism that is probably right (although equally one could say that capitalism is the long and painful route to environmental catastrophe, followed quite possibly by socialism - if anyone is still alive long enough to enjoy such a state of affairs). But the economic torture which the EU and the IMF is putting Greece through in the name of "fiscal responsibility" is the long and painful route to bankruptcy and default. There is not a hope in hell of the savage austerity measures insisted on by the "troika" - including minimum wage and pension cuts - delivering budget balance; instead, they will deliver an ever-shrinking economy and a need for yet more savage cuts a year or so down the line.
The sheer insanity of the economic policies being followed in Greece at the moment is painfully obvious. This story ends in one of three ways:

fiscal union in the Eurozone. If the EU had a central budget and fiscal transfers between higher-income and lower-income states (like the US) for example, the Greek debt would be a relatively minor issue. The EU would be able to issue "Eurobonds" at relatively low rates of interest to fund the Greek deficit. This is unlikely to happen because Germany doesn't want Eurobonds. It wants a "fiscal compact" to bind member states into austerity but this is not at all the same thing as fiscal union; rather, it's a measure to outlaw "structural deficits" which, if anything, will exacerbate economic depressions by making Keynesian counter-cyclical spending harder.
Greece as a technocratic colony. This is the option that Germany and the IMF want - bypassing the Greek electoral system and putting "yes men" in place who will enact austerity measures for "as long as it takes" - perhaps in perpetuity - in a (probably futile) attempt to meet fiscal targets through spending cuts and tax rises.
Greece in default. I think this is the most likely option now. It's no longer a question of if Greece defaults, but rather, when it does.

I would be very surprised if plans were not afoot behind the scenes for a Greek default and the return of the drachma. (The return of the drachma is not inevitable - it is possible that Greece could default and stay in the Euro - although that raises a host of issues, for example regarding contagion, and how to stop the same thing happening again to Greece a few years down the line). But being kicked out of the Euro is more likely than defaulting in it.

It is important to make clear that although default is the best available option for Greece it is by no means an easy option. The drachma will collapse in value in the short run and Greece is likely to experience high inflation as the cost of imported goods rise. Much of the debt held by Greek consumers and businesses (as opposed to government debt) will be Euro-denominated and so its value relative to Greek GDP will increase greatly in the event of the drachma reappearing. This will most likely lead to a wave of secondary defaults in the business and household sectors.

However, readopting its own currency would give Greece the necessary flexibility to work its way back to economic health. Tourism would boom hugely as Greece would suddenly become a very attractive cheap holiday destination. The reduction in the wage and price level relative to the Euro would make Greece a much more attractive location for foreign direct investment by foreign-owned businesses. Greek exports would be much more competitive than before... and so on.

So, for me, given that a US-style European fiscal union is off the table, default followed by economic rebuilding from a vastly lower exchange rate looks like the best option for Greece.

But what does Loukanikos, the world-famous riot dog, say?

I shall have more to say on this matter in February...

2012-01-30T21:46:00.003Z

...and so it turned out, that just after I'd dismissed the anti-Ed Miliband faction as a "bantam menace", Ed started to get into real trouble when he was (to quote the old Magazine song) "Shot By Both Sides" - getting it from the left as well as the right.

Fortunately, the Stephen Hester bonus fiasco seems to have saved Ed for now, at least - but this one will run and run. I've been too busy to post during the second half of January, but will hope to get back to regular posts in February. Keep it real people.

Ed Miliband Episode 1: The Bantam Menace

2012-01-15T16:52:00.002Z

(episode 1 in a series of "Star Warped" Ed Miliband posts)

Part of the fun with the recent gaggle of "Ed Miliband is under attack" media stories is how lame the hacks writing this shit are. If you have a look at them, what have you got?

Dan Hodges: ex-New Statesman blogger, dropped by that august outlet for repeated hysterical and incoherent attacks on Ed during Labour Party Conference. Now part of the gang of right-wing payroll bloggers at the Daily Telegraph.
John Rentoul: Independent columnist, Blairite among Blairites. One of these guys who think you can stick a red rosette on any Tory nonsense and it suddenly becomes a sensible Labour position.
Wintour and Watt: the Guardian's "dynamic duo" of political lobbyists. Specialise in lazy rewrites of any statement made by anyone you've ever heard of in the Labour Party (and many you haven't) so that they look like attacks on Ed.
The brain-dead politics hacks at the BBC (particularly Nick Robinson) who take orders from Tory HQ, on pain of the BBC losing even more funding than the 16% it's already being cut (in nominal terms) over the next 5 years.
whoever it was at the Sunday Times who thought it would be a good to run a poll on whether Ed Miliband is too ugly to be PM.

It's a good job for Ed that the people writing his political obituary week after week are so lightweight.

What's more, the potential challengers in the Labour party for the leadership are chicken. If no-one was prepared to get rid of Gordon Brown when Labour were 15 points behind the Tories, what's the betting that anyone will get rid of Ed Miliband when Labour is ahead, or at least level pegging, in most polls? As has often been pointed out, historically Labour is much more crap at getting rid of leaders in mid-term than the Tories are. Even poor old Michael Foot was allowed to soldier on until the 1983 election.

That's why I call the plotters against Ed The Bantam Menace.

Stay tuned for more in this ongoing series.

Cameron's playing it clumsy in Scotland (possibly deliberately?)

2012-01-09T20:46:00.002Z

Dave Cameron has chosen an interesting tactic in response to the Scottish National Party's plans for a referendum on Scottish independence. He has said that the Westminster Coalition government supports the idea of a legally binding referendum - on two conditions:

that the referendum is held by summer 2013;
that the question format is a straight Yes/No choice on full independence for Scotland versus staying in the UK, with no third option of "devolution max" (whereby Scotland would still formally remain in the UK, but with pretty much all domestic policy - including taxation - delegated to Scotland).

Both these conditions run counter to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond's preference, which is for a referendum in 2014 or 2015, with "devolution max" as an option on the ballot. Having said that, the restriction to a two-question referendum without devolution max will probably be more of an issue for Salmond than the timing issue. After all, if Scotland were likely to vote for independence in 2014, it'd probably be pretty much as likely to vote for it in 2013. Polls at the moment show a slight shift in favour of independence but in a two-choice referendum, "Yes" is still only running at around 32 percent or so. That isn't necessarily a guarantee that a two-choice referendum would produce a "No" vote but Salmond must know the odds are against it - unless there is some kind of game-changer between now and the referendum. Oddly enough, that game changer could be Dave Cameron.

As an English "Tory Toff", quite why Cameron would think that clumsy top-down intervention in the referendum process would make people in Scotland more willing to listen to him and less willing to listen to the SNP - who have a far stronger mandate in Scotland than the Tories do at Westminster - is hard to fathom. Given that Dave is no imbecile, my guess is that he knows the intervention will piss Scotland off, and is actually hoping to get shot of them somehow. After all, Scotland is pretty much a Tory-free zone and getting rid of it from the UK would make it easier for the Tories to win outright majorities on a relatively low vote share. It can't be said often enough: breaking up the Union is a good deal for the Tories. Of course they are the "Conservative and Unionist Party" and a few Tory peers and grandees would be slightly miffed were Cameron to preside over the break up of the Union: but so what? A few Tory peers and grandees are miffed about going into Coalition with the Lib Dems, but from Dave's point of view it was a masterstroke. If he loses Scotland but wins 3 general elections in a row and secures Tory hegemony, who on earth is going to care?

From Alex Salmond's point of view, my advice would be: just carry on doing what you were going to do anyway, and use Cameron's intervention to promote support for full independence. Cameron is trying to argue that any referendum later than 2013 would only be advisory, but if Scotland does hold a vote in 2014 or 2015 and the result is Yes to independence, I'd advise Salmond to make a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. If support is that strong then there would be nothing the Westminster government could do about it, short of sending in the army, arresting the Holyrood parliament, and declaring direct rule from Westminster. And who the hell thinks that is going to endear the Tories to the Scottish people? In short, I think there is a good chance Scotland will have gone fully independent by 2020, however this pans out. And although it's a shame for the people left in England who are more likely to suffer the Tories as a result, I have to say good luck to the Scots really. At least they don't elect insufferable ConDems like Dave Cameron, George Osborne and Danny Alexander... oh, wait.

Ed Miliband: skating away on the thin ice of the new year?

2012-01-05T20:12:00.005Z

(with apologies to Jethro Tull)...

news is rather thin this new year, so it must be time to put the boot into Ed Miliband. The usual suspects have been at it of course: for example the celebrated 'false flag' blogger Dan Hodges is barely able to write about anything else (although he did produce an excellent blog on the Lawrence killer sentences this week).But the new specialists in anti-Ed propaganda is the Guardian, which has been orchestrating a series of attacks on Ed that are as blatant as they are clumsy in their distortion of what political commentators are saying about the poor guy. Two obvious examples of this tendency, just so you don't think I'm making it up:

a Policy Network report by centre-left academic Ben Jackson and Labour pensions spokeman Gregg McClymont which presented the evidence from previous Labour election defeats in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s as a cautionary tale for Labour today was spun by the Guardian as an attack on Ed's leadership.
an article yesterday in the New Statesman by Labour peer and Ed 'guru' Maurice Glasman which, if anything, was criticising Ed Balls rather than Miliband, and not very coherently at that, was, similarly, spun by the Guardian as an attack on Ed (Miliband)'s leadership.

Crappy journalism like this lowers the Guardian to the 'broadsheet gutter' zone of journalism occupied by the Times, and maybe below that, to the mid-range gutter of the Mail and Express. I was naive enough to believe that the departure of arch-Tory Julian Glover from the Guardian to Cameron's speech-writing team earlier this year would mean a significant reduction in the amount of pro-ConDem, anti-Ed bias in the paper's editorial line, but sadly the opposite seems to have been the case.

Although well known ConDem sympathiser Martin Kettle may have some role in this, I think the main instigators of the Guardian's anti-Ed vendetta are Chief Political Editor Nicholas Watt and Political Editor Patrick Wintour. This "dynamic duo" have recently embarked on a mission to oust Ed Miliband at any cost. It may be that they have been against Ed from the beginning; they may be on the payroll of the very well-funded LINO pressure group Progress; or David Miliband may have promised them advisory jobs in his private office after he replaces Ed (in his dreams!) Their precise motivations are (for the moment) a mystery, although I am working with contacts at the paper to find out what I can.

So is Ed Miliband on thin ice? I honestly don't think so. Labour's poll ratings have been improving (albeit slowly) over the last month as the Cameron "veto bounce" fades. I can't remember a single instance of a leader getting the boot if their party was in front in the polls. Certainly when IDS was forced out in the autumn of 2003, the Tories were miles behind Labour. The normal rule of thumb is that, to be replaced mid-term as an opposition leader before even getting the chance to fight an election, you've got to be doing really badly. And Ed is doing just... so-so. In fact, on some measures he's actually doing rather well; Labour is currently running at about 12 percentage points above its share of the vote at the previous election. 18 months into a parliament, I can't remember a Labour opposition leader ever doing as well as that; not Foot in 1980, nor Kinnock in 1984, nor John Smith in 1993.

What's more, the "critiques" of Ed are either not really critiques at all (e.g. the McClymont/Jackson Policy Network report, which is actually quite supportive of what Ed is doing), or they're critiques of Ed Balls rather than Miliband (to the extent that I can make coherent sense of it, the Glasman article falls into this camp), or they're right-wing LINO or ConDem hackery with no real traction in the Labour Party (Hodges, Rentoul, Kettle). There has not been any mainstream Labour voice saying Ed is crap. As Eoin Clarke of the excellent Green Benches website points out, Ed has probably lost some grassroots support by not delivering on to the (slightly) radical stance of his leadership election campaign. And my belief is that if he were more radical he would do himself a big favour. But none of that has any bearing on whether he survives in the job or not.

For better or worse (I think overall for the better), Ed Miliband is safe in the job. Ignore any hack who tries to tell you otherwise.

And so to the US 2012 Presidential Election: initial predictions

2012-01-01T19:33:00.003Z

Yes it's that time again, as thoughts turn to the 2012 elections in the US. I covered the Republican primaries in quite a lot of detail in 2008, which turned out to be not quite as exciting as Mike Huckabee's win in Iowa portended; in the end, John McCain came out as a clear winner.

This time round there has already been an excellent analysis of most of the candidates by Van Patten a few months back. What's happened since then has been described by the FT's Gideon Rachman as a "circular firing squad" on the right of the party; a minibus-load of right wing candidates including Gingrich, Perry, Bachman, Cain, Paul and Santorum have been jostling for position in rotation, with a frontrunner emerging periodically only to be mown down by a combination of negative campaigning by the other candidates and their own obvious inadequacies. A month ago it looked like Gingrich was out in front on the right. Now it looks like Rick Santorum is surging. And Ron Paul has been steadily gaining support in Iowa with an uncompromising libertarian message seriously at odds with anything else on offer in the GOP.

However, given that the majority of primaries are winner-takes-all first past the post, it seems to me that the fragmentation of the right will be its undoing. They simply can't agree to unite behind a single candidate to defeat Mitt Romney on the left (this is a very relative "left" - Romney would be extreme right in most other countries). And so, despite the fact that Romney is few people's idea of a great candidate, and mistrusted by huge swathes of Republican voters, I would at this point put money on him to win the nomination, although if one of the first few primaries throws up a clear right-wing winner who then goes on to organise and win a few more of the early-to-mid primaries then an upset is wholly possible.

Paradoxically, in many ways a strong performance by Ron Paul in Iowa would probably damage the right as he is unlikely to gain traction with the wider GOP voter base and could probably not win any more primaries after that, leaving the field open for Romney to dominate. On the other hand, if Santorum wins in Iowa then the outlook for the right is a bit better although he has very little organisation or money at present - however, there are some very loaded people out there on the right who can bankroll an 'astroturf' operation at short notice, so nothing is ruled out at present. My prediction for Iowa, for now, is for a narrow Ron Paul win which goes on to mean sweet FA in the ensuing weeks as Romney builds an unassailable delegate lead despite never looking totally convincing.

Assuming Romney does get the nomination, I would say that the November election is too close to call at present. In the end I would back Romney to win - narrowly - more due to voter fraud and deregistration shenanigans by Republican state legislatures in key swing states than for any other reason. We are entering the early stages of Banana Republic America, and the consequences for the USA - and therefore the world - may be pretty dire. If anyone except Romney gets the GOP nomination then I think Obama will win on a similar vote share to last time. Another scenario where Obama could win it would be if a well-funded Tea Party wingnut ran a 3rd party campaign - a long shot, but not impossible, given the level of mistrust of Romney as RINO (Republican In Name Only). Lastly, a Tea Party 3rd party candidate plus a far-left 4th party candidate (please stand up Bernie Sanders!) begins to make for something interesting due to the ludicrous First Past the Post winner-takes-all state-by-state electoral college system. You could conceivably end up with Ron Paul as President under that scenario... at least life wouldn't be dull. But I don't think the Left will run its own candidate this time round following the Ralph Nader/Al Gore debacle of 2000.

Lastly, the Senate and House battles are arguably more important than the Presidential race this time round. On the Senate, given that the Democrats are defending gains from 2006 which was a very strong year for them, and the current voting strength is 53-47 in favour of the Dems, they will do well to hold it at 50-50. As for the House, I don't know enough to make an estimate of that yet: I will have to bite the bullet and buy a New York Times subscription to get full access to fivethirtyeight, a free access site last time round but now part of the NYT stable.

Anyway, fun times ahead for political junkies - "Let's Rock".

Best of 2011

2011-12-31T11:14:00.002Z

Very briefly, before I head off to an extended New Years Eve party which will be a valediction to alcohol for at least 2 months, some bests of the year:

Best blog post - Chris Brooke with Nick Clegg - Liar. Simple and to the point.

Best political blog: Richard Murphy

Best economics blogger: Duncan Weldon

Best political satire site: Nick Clegg looking sad

Best political columnist (Left): George Monbiot

Best political columnist (Right): Peter Oborne

Special award for ConDem apologism: Martin Kettle

Special award for 'false flag' assistance to Ed Miliband by offering a 'straw man' critique which Ed gains strength every day by knocking down: Dan Hodges

The worst of everything (at least in this country) award goes to 'Slasher' Osborne.

Have a great remaining 12 and a half hours of 2011, and see you in the next cycle.

A tablet for (just after) Christmas

2011-12-30T17:49:00.003Z

Over the last few months I've found myself strangely attracted to the idea of a tablet - not ibuprofen (although that has its pleasures), but the dinky little oversized phones with large touchscreens that are the biggest growth area in the computer market ever since Apple brought out the iPad almost 2 years ago. It's interesting, and largely unpredictable, what takes off and what doesn't in the computing world. Most of the pundits shared my initial opinion that the iPad would be a flop because at the end of the day, what was it? An oversized phone that doesn't make phone calls. But in fact, it was a huge success, on the back of very slick marketing, the excitement of the app store, and the integration with iPhones and Apple computers.

I haven't bought an iPad for several reasons, the main one being that I consider Apple kit somewhat overpriced for what you get - they are to computing what BMW is to cars, although I am pleased to report that Apple owners don't try to run you over in the same way BMW owners do. The iPad 2 is undoubtedly better value than the iPad 1 but there was still something about the £500 price point that didn't say "value" to me. £200 says value to me - I don't know why, but if there's a piece of kit that's less than £200 I am so there... if it's more than £200 I have to think carefully. This number is arbitrary and takes no account of inflation, but still... that's the way it is for me.

The other thing that pisses me off about Apple is the Stalinist approach to software and media management. I do have an iPod nano (2009 edition) because I got it free with an Android phone (hilarious irony!) One day I decided I'd like some MP3s on the iPod. It appears on my Windows PC as a USB hard drive, but can I copy across MP3s by drag and drop in Explorer the same way I can with any other MP3 player on the market? No, sir... I have to use iTunes which is the crappiest piece of software (at least on a PC) imaginable... Charlie Brooker called it a "binary turd" and that was being kind IMHO. Apple doesn't trust you to be able to get music on your device the way you want... you have to do it their way, or not at all. Similarly, Apps have to be approved by Apple before being placed on the App Store. This takes the free-for-all open approach which was the foundation of success for the internet and replaces it with a digital North Korea (I'm borrowing terminology from Van Patten here, but in this case the analogy is a good one). Contrast this with Google's Android platform where you can use any damn music player (and file format) you want and there is no central oversight to the application repository - anyone can get out there on the Android market. This probably means a higher percentage of shit applications but hey, I'm an intelligent consumer and I'll take my chances.

So why haven't I bought an Android tablet yet? Two reasons. One is that Android wasn't really tablet-ready until version 3.0 (Honeycomb) and Google reckon that it won't really be fully optimised for tablets until version 4. The other reason was the price of a good tablet. Any fool can sell you an el cheapo tablet held together with string for £150 or so, but the good stuff starts at about £330 with the Asus TF101 Transformer - and at that price point ol' tight wad comes into play again. It feels expensive and not at all an impulse buy. So again, at this point Android didn't feel quite ready for me - nor I for it.

What about other options? Until about 48 hours ago my response to that question would have been "ho ho ho", in the seasonal spirit. The main competition is RIM's Blackberry Playbook. At this point the tech-savvy among you will have fallen about laughing, so [in-joke alert] if your name is Foley let me return you to the floor by reminding you about the biology lab microscope.... :-) But Blackberry. Are you serious? The platform that gives you 72 hour outages because they didn't spend any money on infrastructure? An App Store less well populated than the Outer Hebrides? Hello?

Well, yes. Why? Two reasons, both the converse of why I rejected Apple and Android. One, cost. At its launch price of £400, the 16GB Playbook was really no better value than Apple, considering it is a 7-inch tablet rather than 10-inch. But PC World have now discounted it to £170 and at that price, in hardware terms, it's a steal. God bless underselling products.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this is a "stealth" Android tablet. The Blackberry App Store remains woefully underpopulated (although RIM have released a utility for easy conversion of Android apps to Playbook apps which has helped a bit), but with version 2.0 of the Playbook OS (due in February 2012), there will be a built in launcher application allowing users to run Android apps on the Playbook! Furthermore, the tech-savvy among us can install the beta version of the 2.0 OS, root the Playbook, and - with some hacking about - install the Android Market on the Playbook, thus gaining access to (slmost) the full range of Android apps (subject to some library compatibility issues which will no doubt be sorted out down the line in any case).

An Android tablet with high build quality for £169? It's a reality. OK, if you believe the hype from the late great Steve Jobs that 7 inch tablets are crap then this won't be for you. But I don't - in fact, for me the iPad always looked a bit unwieldy. So rock on with the Playbook into 2012, kids.

Ed Miliband: 2012 HAS to be better than 2011

2011-12-30T16:55:00.004Z

The last few days of the year seem to have passed extraordinarily fast and I'm now conscious of the fact that 2012 is almost upon us.

For followers of the left the year could best be described as frustrating. About the best I can say for UK politics is that Ed Miliband is still in the job... and likely to remain so, despite ongoing mutterings about the quality of his leadership. He is vastly helped by the fact that most of his critics are unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery, as the "vote Labour - get Tory" LINO pressure group Progress proved with their completely inept contribution to the Yes To AV Campaign. Other maverick anti-Ed LINO forces like Dan Hodges do Ed a favour on balance by catalysing support for him more than they damage him - leading to my continuing belief that Dan is secretly in the pay of Ed's office. The classic "useful idiot".

However, just because Ed is still in the job doesn't mean he's doing a particularly good job in it. The hope with Ed was that we would see finally someone getting the Labour leadership job who combines the drive and single-mindedness (if not quite the charisma) of Tony Blair with the ideological backbone of previous Labour greats like Attlee and Wilson. What we have had so far, instead, with some honourable exceptions, is a slightly more approachable rehash of the Gordon Brown leadership style - i.e. not leadership at all; more just sitting in the middle of events waiting for something good-ish to happen. There is a memorable sequence from James MacIntyre and Mehdi Hasan's autobiography Ed where Ed goes on a radio phone in (maybe Radio 5 Live?) sometime in the new year of 2011, and the only thing callers are really interested in talking about is how he "knifed his brother in the back" to become Labour party leader. Twelve months on, if Ed were to go on the same phone in show, I'm sure much the same would happen. And after 12 months of these insane ConDem austerity measures and economic failure, that's simply not good enough. Labour ends 2011 in no better a polling position than it began - indeed, in the wake of the "veto" farce, Cameron's personal ratings have actually improved substantially. This is, to put it mildly, bad news.

To turn things around, Ed needs to observe one very simple maxim of politics; it's hard for a leader to be successful unless he/she is prepared to get out there and bloody LEAD. I have heard a story - which could be apocryphal, but it rings true, so I'll tell it anyway - that when Alan Johnson resigned as Shadow Chancellor Ed locked himself in his office for 2 hours not talking to anyone because he was so depressed that he'd have to give Ed Balls the job. Apparently because Ed Miliband is scared of Ed Balls. What does that tell us, if true? It tells us that Ed Miliband needs a kick up the backside and to grow back the spine that was so in evidence during the summer 2010 leadership contest. Listen son, Ed Balls is a washed-up also-ran in leadership terms. Tony Blair was scared of Gordon Brown because the two of them chose a stitch-up deal over a leadership contest in 1994 - enabling Brown to argue, however implausibly, that he had been denied the crown that was rightfully his. By contrast, Ed Balls fought as a candidate in the Labour leadership election - and was absolutely f***ing WALLOPED, finishing a very poor third. This guy, in Labour leadership terms, is HISTORY. I can understand Ed M being worried about a possible leadership challenge from his brother David, still sullen and watchful on the sidelines. But Ed Balls? No bloody way.

So Ed (M) is the leader... and so he needs to lead. That means not being scared of Ed Balls and it means refusing to bow down to the inflated paper tiger that is Progress. In practical terms, what does this mean Ed should do in the new year?

Firstly, he should make a number of keynote speeches fleshing out his very promising but underdeveloped ideas from the 2011 conference speech for a (much) better capitalism - squashing predatory businesses to open up space for the real producers. That has to mean a much smaller financial sector and much more for manufacturing, green jobs, the creative industries, and hugely underfunded sectors like social care. Together with a tax and corporate governance system system focused strongly on redistribution of income, wealth and power in favour of working people - the "squeezed bottom and middle", ambitious moves to increase gender equalities, and subsidies for education and innovation. Basic, obvious, centre-left stuff, articulated well by the left pressure group Compass, the Green Party, and academics like Martin O'Neill of York University. If Labour can't support a moderate social democratic programme along these lines there really is no point whatsoever in the party.

At the same time, he needs to accuse Progress of being a right-wing analogue to the extreme-left infiltrators of the 1980s - Militant et al - whose main objective is to destroy the Labour party. If this results in a handful - or even a few thousand - of the most ardent right-wing LINOs jumping ship to the Coalition, oh happy day! Labour's hard right is a huge albatross around its neck and probably the biggest internal hurdle to its return to power.

Thirdly, Big Guns need to be fired at the Coalition on a pretty much daily basis. This is happening a bit at the moment but in a far too reserved manner. Tony Blair had some good lines of attack in the mid-1990s which can be dusted off here - the weird thing is that although New Labour was largely a failure in policy terms, the rhetoric 1994-97 was actually pretty good. For example, "tacking the bills of social and economic failure" is a phrase that resonates completely with Ed Balls's critique of the Osborne austerity measures - which are fatally damaging Britain's economic capacity.

Lastly, there desperately need to be some big policies which the Labour Party can hang its message on. Again, New Labour had some totemic policies despite being weak on detail - windfall tax on privatised utilities, minimum wage, smaller class sizes, etc. The Labour Party policy review seems to have produced nothing of value so far and with Liam Byrne at the helm that was always the risk - indeed I now believe that the whole operation was a ruse by Ed to divert the energy of the Labour right into the minutiae of policies that would never see the light of day while he ran a parallel operation in his own office. But if that is what has happened, the parallel operation needs to produce concrete results very soon. As far as I can see there are two reasons that few people trust Labour on the economy; firstly because they presided over the worst recession since the 1930s (in fact recent data show that in the UK it's actually worse than the 1930s), and secondly because Labour has given no indication of how things would be any different in future if they were returned to power. Giving a clear indication of how Labour would do it differently this time round is an absolute prerequisite for standing any chance of winning the next election; and the greatest failure of Ed Miliband is that, over a year into his leadership, almost nobody has any idea how a Labour government would make life better for people in the UK or elsewhere. That is something he has to address in 2012. If he doesn't, I think he'll still survive in the job until 2015; but he'll be out on his ear after an election defeat.

(note: reading this back I'm very conscious that there are no links etc., mainly because it was stream of consciousness stuff and I had to motivate myself to write fast, or not at all. I'll try to put some links in tomorrow... if I get time. Otherwise, you know where Google is.)

That which survives.....(Part 1)

2011-12-19T21:28:00.008Z

Family being in New York City prior to Xmas means I've been off the airwaves so it looks unlikely my co-author and I will make the requisite 100 posts by year end - however, in another Star Trek entitled post, on a day when the world pondered the end of one of its worst tyrants whilst still in mourning for one of the greatest statesemen of the last three decades , it's worth contemplating their respective legacies.

Friends credit me with a near obsession with the small South East Asian country North of the 38th parallel, so the messages have been flooding in regarding the death of Kim Jong-il. A spat with Guardian journalist Owen Jones will be raised in a latter post, but I'm compelled to write by an extraordinary article by Neil Clark in The Guardian which has provoked a mixture of anger and utter bewilderment across my Twitter colleagues.

The Left is at some pains, (and I include the co-author of this blog)to distance movements such as the soon to be defunct Occupy, UK Uncut, and even Ed Miliband's Renewed Labour Party from the USSR. I am confident thus, we'll see people disavowing Clark and hoping that his truly mindbending article can be attributed to shaaring the same grief we see on the brainwashed citizens of the Korea DPR. Based on my co-author's comment to Telegraph writer Ed West:

'Can Imagine the uproar if a Telegraph comment piece contained the words, fascism, for all it's faults'

which drew:

'I thought that was pretty much what the Telegraph does say day after day'

I'm not that hopefulful. For anyone, thinking I'm exaggerating, please feel free to head to Tallinn, Vilnius, Riga, Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Podgorica, Ljubljana and the rest and translate this piece which you have to reread multiple times to quite take in:

'Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.'

And who said Kim Jong- il was the last communist on Earth? - it would appear we have one right here in our midst - 'That which survives'.....

Tories hoovering up UKIP and in the lead

2011-12-13T22:16:00.003Z

Following my previous post today, YouGov has come out showing the Tories with a 2 point lead (41%, their highest polling since 2009 I think) while UKIP sinks to 3%. Labour, on 39%, is marginally down on where it has been polling recently, but the real story here is the transfer of voting intention from UKIP to the Tories. The question is: could a very Eurosceptic Tory party manage to hoover up most of that UKIP vote while hanging on to more pro-European voters in an election campaign, and thus building the kind of 40%+ coalition that could perhaps win a general election majority? Are there in fact any pro-European Tories left, or have they all died or signed with Nick Clegg? And what the f*** is Nigel Farage gonna do now the Tories are parking tanks on his lawn?

I remain of the feeling that this is a short-term bounce... but on the other hand, the long term is in many ways a series of short terms, so further convulsions in the Eurozone could allow Dave to run and run with this. Are we having fun yet?

Labour post-"veto": the Kool-Aid drinkers return

2011-12-12T18:36:00.004Z

Jeez Mick, if you want a bunch of professional doom-mongers, go to any Labour party blog and hang out there awhile. 72 hours after an initial euphoria at the stupidity of David Cameron's "veto" on the EU treaty, bloggers on the left are now doing their usual Kool-Aid act. Of course we'd expect to find ultra-LINO Telegraph blogger Dan Hodges doing his normal anti-Ed wail ("Miliband stranded in the middle of the English channel" indeed), but we've also got relatively sane people on Twitter - e.g. Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy - saying that Labour's been outmanoeuvred by Cameron.

Is this correct? I identified this possibility pretty early on, and I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure, but overall I think probably Ed Miliband is actually in a much stronger position than his critics, although Cameron certainly could get lucky out of this.

The truth is, the veto has achieved nothing in concrete terms at all for Britain as long as we remain in the EU. Some kind of deal will proceed with Britain excluded from the negotiations. The terms of the treaty on issues like financial regulation will cover Britain as an EU member. There will be some more legal shenanigans but the EU will be able to negotiate these. Cameron achieved no concessions or quid pro quos whatsoever. In short, as a negotiator Dave was a disastrous flop. Ed pointed all this out - very effectively - in the Commons today.

But as political theatre, Thursday's "veto" was a brilliant stroke. It gives Cameron, not a very popular PM to start off with, a big political boost based on the rabid anti-EU print media reporting that he's fighting for Britain's interests - the old "bulldog" line. Dave's doing no such thing of course: he's fighting for the rogue state which is the City of London, and none too effectively at that. But a poll for ComRes apparently shows that 57% support the PM's "veto" decision (I'd like to link to that but it was an unlinked source from Twitter). John Harris quotes similar statistics in an excellent Guardian article.

That backs up what I said in my last post - anti-EU jingoism is popular. At least, initially. John Harris's line is that Europhobia is now the mainstream majority position. On headline polling, yes: but I'm not sure people really give a shit enough about it one way or the other to turn out in droves and vote the Tories in with a majority based on this one issue. If that is the case why isn't UKIP way out in front in the polls rather than on about 7% max? The post-"veto" polling shows a small swing to the Tories but based on a transfer of support from UKIP rather than any wider movement of support - which is what I'd expect. And given that most of the business community appears to think the "veto" was crazy, in an election campaign I'd expect centrist support to fall away from the Tories - leaving them with William Hague's rump vote of 2001 once again.

There is one situation where Dave might see long term benefit from "the veto": if the Eurozone falls apart, and maybe the EU with it, Dave can say "I told you so" and become a kind of visionary. That would be a powerful argument. But I think it's still a long shot, although possible; more likely is that treaty change will force the ECB into becoming a proper central bank prepared to do QE to save the Eurozone, combined with fiscal union further down the line.

In the meantime, Ed Miliband can strengthen his position by coming off the fence and openly saying he would have signed the treaty - and then worked within the treaty framework for Britain's interest. That's what all previous PMs including Thatcher and Major would have done and it's a strong line which effectively exposes Cameron as a seat-of-the-pants amateur. Ed could also add that getting on board with the treaty is the UK's best chance of helping avoid a Eurozone breakup, which gives him the opportunity to say to Dave, "it's your fault" if the Euro does fail.

But yeah, I'm beginning to wonder whether I should send leading Labour bloggers boxes of anti-depressants - and I'm not even a Labour party member or supporter. Cheer up guys, for f***'s sake.

Europe: has Cameron played a blinder by accident?

2011-12-09T09:45:00.005Z

The general consensus reaction to the EU treaty negotiations last night is that they were a disaster for Dave Cameron and for Britain. Having vetoed changes to the Lisbon Treaty which would have started to move the Eurozone toward fiscal union, Cameron was then sidelined as the Eurozone states - plus 6 other countries - opened negotiations for a new deal outside the treaty framework which would create a "two-tier" EU with the UK on the outside track. According to the FT,

Several diplomats said Mr Cameron emerged from Friday morning’s negotiations deeply wounded, angering fellow EU leaders and getting no trade-offs for British interests.

But was it really a disaster for Cameron? Or could it in fact be the start of his biggest triumph? It seems to me that - although he didn't go into the negotiations wanting this outcome, and Europe has been a constant headache for him this year - Cameron may have accidentally come out of this summit in a strong position. With Britain isolated at the negotiating table, Dave now has the viable option of calling a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU - which he could well (if current opinion polling is any guide) win. We know that the majority of grassroots Tories, and many of the MPs, want to leave the EU. This would be Cameron's opportunity to shore up his position and delight the right of the party, who have been in the ascendancy since the 1980s at least.

The Lib Dems would probably leave the coalition if Cameron decided to go for a referendum on Europe (although who knows? They've swallowed much more bullshit than that without complaining in the last 18 months) but if so, Cameron would be tempted to call a general election on the EU issue. As far as I know the fixed term parliament bill is not on the statute book yet so he remains free to ask for a dissolution should he so wish... CORRECTION: Chris Brooke points out in the comments that it IS on the statute book so he can't ask for a dissolution immediately (but see comment thread below). Maybe 2012 will turn out to be an election year? Stranger things have happened.

The Deadly Years

2011-12-07T22:22:00.004Z

Having been recommended two links by my erstwhile Co-editor, Hal Berstram, time for another Star Trek entitled post. The first was a superb BBC Documentary detailing the denouements of events at the Royal Bank of Scotland: RBS: Inside the Bank that ran out of money was a quite staggering tale of hubris, arrogance and a group of people who believed their own hype, not realising that their strategy was effectively a giant house of cards. Notorious former chief executive Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin is arguably the biggest bastard revealed in the course of the documentary but effectively the entire board failed utterly in its duty of car to the customer and the investor. That they have all been rewarded quite handsomely for the failure speaks volumes about the state of UK finance today. The second link was another acerbic, and very timely piece by Larry Elliott, Economic editor (and arguably the best columnist) in the Guardian, describing the current economy as like something out of a George A.Romero Production

What lessons can we learn about the Best way forward? Arguably the closest historical parallel in recent times (as opposed to the 1930s) is offered by the Japanese experience. Since the collapse of a massive commodity boom at the tailend of the late 1980's, Japan has experienced at least one, and some commentators would say two 'Lost decades' with anaemic growth rates, ongoing price deflation and general economic stagnation. The reason why the Japanese example is, for me, so relevant today, is I, and I'm assuming a ,lot of other 'normal' Newspaper/online news junkies have lost count of the number of 'stimulus packages' or 'deficit reduction programmes' which have been produced or mooted to bail out the Eurozone. It is eerily reminiscent of Japan during the 1990's where a succession of governments whose initially lukewarm reception sank to usually single digit poll ratings put stimulus package after stimulus package forward, and nothing seemed to have any impact. Elliott's 'zombie banks' phrase originated in the land of the Rising sun, although it was applied to any enterprise (not just bank) which was considered 'Too Big to fail'. A small recovery was only possible (in the latter part of the 1990s and early in this century) when a reforming Finance minister basically forced his country's banks to confess up the scale of their losses. Given the globalisation of the economy in the last decade, increased external pressure has meant, like every other G30 economy Japan has been buffeted by the ongoing global economic crisis, and the March tsunami has also caused major structural damage, both literally and in an economic sense for a manufacturing economy highly sensitive to production delays, but nevertheless, they are well ahead of the West on this particular curve.

The worry for Western policymakers is that having visited Japan, and seen their country's infrastructure, organisation and efficiency as immeasurably superior to almost any European country I have visited (Aside from maybe Germany, Norway and Denmark), one wonders how long it will take the UK and the rest of Europe to recover from a similar toxic scenario of wildly inflated asset prices (UK housing anyone?), massive debts and economic sclerosis. Lest we forget the Japanese savings ratio is significantly higher than the UK, their populace is amongst the world's most educated. They are culturally somewhat 'old school' and work hard, with minimal expectation of the state providing for them in the event of an emergency. Their 'Deadly Years' have already lasted for almost two decades. Given the damage wrought by 5 decades of Socialist education policies, the level of dependency created by Labour in the period 1997 to 2010 and the collapsing state of UK infrastructure, how long will our own 'Deadly Years' endure for?

The importance of watching whole interviews: a salutary lesson

2011-12-01T20:58:00.002Z

I'm glad now that I didn't go with my kneejerk reaction to contact the Met Police regarding Jeremy Clarkson, as the release of the full transcript of his One Show appearance shows that basically he was trying to be funny. Reproduced below:

Matt Baker: Now, at the end of a day where Britain has seen some of its biggest strikes, what we need is someone calm and level-headed.

Alex Jones: Yep, a guest with balanced, uncontroversial opinions, who makes great effort not to offend.

Matt Baker: And we've got Jeremy Clarkson!

[studio laughs]

Jeremy Clarkson: Thank you very much.

Matt Baker: So Jeremy, schools, hospitals, airports, even driving tests have been affected. Do you the strikes are a good idea?

Jeremy Clarkson: It's been fantastic. Seriously, never had … London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you could whizz about, your restaurants were empty.

Alex Jones: The traffic actually has been very good today.

Jeremy Clarkson: Very light. Now airports, you know, people streaming through with no problems at all and it's also like being back in the 70s, it makes me feel at home somehow.

Alex Jones: Do you know anybody who …

Matt Baker: [interrupts – inaduiable] – being on strike today?

Jeremy Clarkson: What, in public service? Of course I don't. No, absolutely. We have to balance it though, don't we because this is the BBC.

Alex Jones and Matt Baker: Exactly.

Jeremy Clarkson: Frankly, I'd have them all shot!

[studio laughs]

Jeremy Clarkson: I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean how dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?

Matt Baker: Well, on that note of balancing an opinion of course those are Jeremy's views.

Jeremy Clarkson: I just … ! I was just giving two views for you!

Alex Jones: Well, we will be talking to Jeremy more later.

This is a textbook example of what is called "attitudinising" - adopting a particular position as a posture. Jeremy Clarkson doesn't strikers, I'm fairly sure. And he has a fairly duff line in comedy. But he's not seriously calling for the adoption of Chile's Pinochet regime in the US.

And next time I'll do my homework better before posting stuff off Twitter. I'm trying to up the number of posts but it's no excuse for writing complete cack. Sorry, people.

The High Ground

2011-12-01T19:12:00.005Z

Which was the title of Star Trek: The Next Generation's 60th episode, but an appropriate one for the response to prize clown Jeremy Clarkson's highly contentious comments on an early evening chat show yesterday, where he called for the Striking workers to be 'taken out and shot' in front of their families. This has caused the customary furore, no better illustrated than my co-blogger pressing for Clarkson's prosecution for 'Hate Crimes', amongst a variety of 'Twitterati, New Statesman bloggers and Guardian journalists, as well as the Unions behind yesterday's industrial action. In fairness to him, he confesses to 'severe misgivings' over hate crime legislation, and in the wake of UNISON deciding to use its membership fees to press for police action against the presenter, he has ceased the action.

There are, however, strange Double standards at work for the Left here. One of the most prominent Leftist 'Twitterati' member is the New Statesman blogger Sunny Hundal, who in this entry bemoans the fact that the remarks 'weren't comedy' and parrots the line that the BBC 'is overwhelmingly right wing'. Given Star Trek's Liberal use of alternative dimensions and parallel universes you could be forgiven for thinking you've stumbled into one here. Possibly in comparison with the
KCNA website, their output might be characterised as right of centre but otherwise it's certainly well to the Left of any political spectrum bar, perhaps an ILEA one of the mid 1980's wherein Trotskyites were defined as 'the Right'. Perhaps, most telling, is his comment that 'Let's not have Tories complain about 'PC gawn mad' and 'have a sense of humour' when they get so uppity at 'small jokes' themselves'.

This echoed my reaction on this blog to the interview given by mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone to Total Politics magazine where he equated the coming mayoral election with World War Two: (and implicitly, if not directly, Opponent Boris Johnson to Hitler) Strangely Hundal was noticeably silent on that issue. But why stop there? Prior to that point, Livingstone had also compared his rival's chief of staff to Serbian War Criminal Ratko Mladic , and subsequently, he remarked to Hammersmith and Fulham councillors proposing the redevelopment of a Council Estate, that they should be 'burned in hell with their flesh flayed by demons for all eternity', and called for the execution of Chancellor George Osborne. That's the trouble with this kind of thinking, it invariably escalates, and for the Left, the trouble as I tried to point out in my post on the Johnson/Hitler comparison, is that if you take vicarious offence on behalf of every 'minority' and try to censure the terms of the debate, then you'd better be pretty secure on the moral high ground or you'll come tumbling down. As it stands, all they've done, really is to make themselves look both priggish, petty, small-minded , and probably increase sales of 'Top Gear' DVDs by about 100,000 heading into the Xmas period.

It is worth quoting arguably one of the greatest politicians of the last 30 years, Lord Tebbit, who gives a sense of how both sides of the political fence today come across as Latter-day Neros - the fact that Mr.Ed sought to force Cameron to 'disown' the ludicrous Clarkson remarks, is on a par with Hague and Blair in 1998 debating the fate of Soap character Deirdre Rachid.:

'There are plenty of other matters crying out for attention. Despite all the promises and protestations, immigration is unchecked. While the Left wrings its hands at the appalling unemployment figures, it hides its face from the truth. Last year the number of UK nationals in work fell by 280,000. The number of foreigners rose by 147,000.

Perhaps it is time we asked why our own people are not finding work when people from overseas do. Is it our schools that are failing to produce young men and women with the skills, aptitudes and self-discipline needed to find work? Is it that the benefits culture has become so deep-rooted that idleness is the preferred option?

Whatever it is, the cost is appalling and stretches out into the future. Not just the economic and social costs of those unwilling or unsuitable to work, but the huge cost of providing infrastructure to support an ever increasing army of immigrants and their dependents. Schools, hospitals, roads, water and sewage works, power stations – none of which we would need if our own people took the jobs that are there for the taking.

The papers, but not the BBC, report on a daily basis the bizarre decisions of judges who fail to punish criminals with long records of crime, and others who think it is their duty to ignore the interest of we taxpayers who pay them. They’d rather allow foreign criminals to stay here to pursue their lives of crime.

Wherever one looks, be it Parliament, the Civil Service, the judiciary, local government or indeed the top management of public companies, the hired help behaves as though it were the owners, not the servants of the true owners, of the institution that pays their wages.'

In the context of the litany of woe above, a man known as someone 'whom the Hard Left feared'(and I would say, still fear) spells out the real issues facing us. Is it any wonder people like Sunny Hundal would have us worry about trivial, ridiculous comments?

Jeremy Clarkson: hate criminal?

2011-12-01T07:09:00.004Z

After a severe lack of postings in November, I'm going to start as I mean to go on in December - with at least one post a day. To kick us off here's something truly horrible - Jeremy Clarkson calling for striking public sector workers to be shot in front of their families.

I've contacted the Metropolitan Police hate crimes unit to ask them to investigate Clarkson for hate crimes.

It's worth noting at this point that I have severe misgivings about "hate crime" legislation as it can easily be used to clamp down on free speech. But as the Tories are fond of pointing out, if a crime has been committed then arguably it's my duty to ask for an investigation - my personal feelings on the matter are irrelevant.

(Plus there is the fact that Clarkson is a fascist bastard and it'd be nice to see him banged up. But I didn't let that interfere with my judgement on this matter. Oh no...)

Update, 5pm 1 December: As UNISON have announced they're taking legal advice on the Clarkson issue I've decided not to bother with the Met complaint - I'm sure UNISON has more resources than I have.

Another update, 9pm 1 December: the BBC has now released this transcript of the conversation which, to be fair to Clarkson, makes it clear that he was joking. (He was trying to give two extreme opinions to wind the audience up). Case closed as far as I'm concerned.

Is there in Truth no Beauty?

2011-11-23T16:41:00.004Z

Continuing the theme of Posts with Star Trek episode titles, my attention was brought by blog progenitor Hal Berstram to an article by George Monbiot in the Guardian this week. Normally based on 'the Great Moonbat' (as he is known in Climate Change Sceptic circles) and his previous outpourings I would have readily dismissed it as the usual half-baked Socialist waffle, most likely being funded from one of two South East Asian countries. However, proving the old adage 'even a blind squirrel stumbles across the odd acorn' true, it's an impressive argument, one of the best I've ever seen from a Guardian journalist.

The central point, and it's pretty hard to argue, is that what the financial sector, especially has become bears only the most passing resemblance to 'Free market capitalism'. Taking aim in his first few paragraphs at one of the easiest targets amongst the so-called '1 percent', Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, Monbiot lays bare the level of subsidy given to Formula One, both globally and in the UK. Avid readers of this blog may have seen mention of my passion for Formula one racing, but whilst admiring the spectacle of such advanced technology and the drivers' skill, Formula One has been a political football since really the Early 1970's, and the scandalous decision by Blair to campaign for an exemption for Formula One from an EU ban on tobacco sponsorship, laid bare the links between Ecclestone and senior politicians of both Parties. For anyone thinking the Conservatives were any better, the funding of the Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire was the subject of some very murky 'offshore tax planning' which it used to effectively run at a loss and gain sole proprietorship of the British Grand Prix amid rising safety concerns which eliminated rival Brands Hatch from the picture from 1987 onwards.

Monbiot then hits out at another sitting duck, James Purnell's Private Finance Initiative or 'PFI', a device whereby Private Sector companies would invest in much-needed infrastructure projects. First touted at the fag end of the Thatcher administration (I think the idea was a Keith Joseph brainchild in the 1970's but it took until 1992 for its first implementation), the idea was that the 'more efficient' Private Sector would be able to deliver services and infrastructure more efficiently than if they remained in the Public Sector. Despite opposing it under Smith, Labour under Blair became an enthusiastic user of PFI in the next thirteen years, most pointedly because PFI liabilities could be disguised 'off balance sheet'. I admit that my source for much of the PFI information is satricial magazine Private Eye, whose continued exposure of this scandal remains one of the greatest journalistic public services of our age. Suffice it to say, to be 'enticed' into these deals, all the risk had to be transferred from the Private Sector provider to ultimately, in the last resort, the taxpayer. Current PFI liabilities, according to Government figures released in November LAST YEAR stand at £267 billion with that figure likely to rise.

Continuing his them of shooting fish in a barrel, Monbiot then exposes Free market advocate Matt Ridley, a former Telegraph journalist whose admirable 'Acid Test' columns sit proudly in my cuttings file. One in particular 'Dihydrogen monoxide - there's a real killer' exposed how just by changing a substances name, single issue campaigners can create a storm in a teacup. Turns out he's less then keen on the rigours of the Free market when they apply to him, as Northern Rock, of which he was the nominal chairman had to be baled out by the taxpayer, his risky strategy of going after NINJA homeowners provoking the first run on a UK bank in over 120 years. I have often maintained this was a political decision by Brown (to shore up Labour support in the North East) and that had the bank been called 'Southern Rock' and based in say, Guildford, it would have been thrown to the wolves. Nevertheless, the fact that such rank hypocrisy has been exposed by Monbiot is wholly admirable.

Arguably not such much a sitting duck, as a tranquilised flock of geese, the EU's CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) is a scandal of such long standing it often escapes attention. Suffice it to say, I don't know anyone, of any political persuasion, who supports its continuance in its current form. The level of fraud is so great as to almost defy calculation, and the truth is the last estimate were that its cost to the taxpayer equated to around £2400 per head per year. Furthermore, a looming deadline of 2013 for Poland's full admission to the CAP on the same terms as the French, which due to the Polish agricultural sector's surprising resilience is estimated to increase that figure by nearly £1700, will also lead the EU to face imminent bankruptcy. (assuming the Euro crisis doesn't finish it off)

It's a truly searing critique. What we have is nothing I, or any advocate of a free market capitalism would recognise as a capitalist democracy. Call it what you like, kleptocracy(government for the benefit of the ruling class), plutocracy (government of the wealthy) or Oligarchy (government by a ruling class) - one thing it for sure as hell isn't is a democracy. The problem with his diagnosis, is what is the overarching issue for the British Left, because the one group omitted from the analysis is highly paid Council Officials, European Commission servants (for example) and other bureaucrats who also need to be exposed as basically a parasitic 'rentier' class above and beyond the ordinary people of the UK. Perhaps, what's needed is a coming together of the dispossessed from both sides of the political spectrum to unite and smash the cosy alliance of both Private Sector plutocrats and their Union Baron and Senior bureaucrat counterparts from the Left. I look forward to it....

In the Shadow of Zuccotti...

2011-11-20T17:05:00.006Z

Echoing my erstwhile co-author's comments regarding a lack of posts - Acting as a 'de facto' Tour guide for vistors to New York City seems to be taking up an inordinate amount of my time, so have been off the radar, even with a number of issues that really do cry out for attention. Arguably one of my all-time favourite Television Series of any genre is the Science Fiction Saga, Babylon 5 , a multi-layered self -contained Universe which ran, despite not really having anything like the financial backing of it's Paramount financed Rivals in the Star Trek franchise, for five years in the 1990's. The chief antagonists of the series first three years are a race known as the Shadows, whose basic philosophy appears to be that strength and progress come through conflict. Without doubt my favourite character from the entire run of the series was arguably the main villain, the Shadows' human emissary Mr. Morden , whose Wikipedia description bears repeating:

'Although outwardly polite and courteous, he represents a dangerous hidden agenda'

His first question to anyone he meets is the simply phrased: 'What do you want?'

This came back to me in my consideration of the ongoing protests at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy LSX, as well as, it has to be said the around 70 other protests ongoing across the globe. I am particularly admiring of the doughty group of protestors who have chosen to occupy a square in that famous centre of off shore finance, Newport, Isle of Wight, but I digress. I have to ask the protestors 'what do you want?' because one of the issues facing the movement is that it's demands seem so desperately unclear and unfocused. Whilst some see this as a source of strength, for me, if they are to move beyond first base (using American parlance) in offering what my colleague Hal Berstram calls 'a new paradigm' it's imperative that they get a coherent list of goals. On Twitter, where arguably much of the energy that should be put into this blog is now dissipated, the much disparaged 'astroturfing right-wing trolls' pointed me out this link which lists the latest minutes of Occupy LSX's loftily entitled General assembly. When I stopped laughing, I took the time to examine more closely this document, to gain some greater insight into what motivates these protestors. In spite of their failure to remove the Soviet banners from their encampment, I am continually informed that recreation of the defunct USSR is not the true agenda, so let's see if we can find out what it actually is.

'Well established. Working Groups can have a room each down there. National Occupy conference will take place at OLSX on Saturday and BoI on Saturday. Want books to start library, food, paint, tools, people, lamps / lighting equipment.
Most probably know building is owned by UBS. They were subject ot $60bn bail-out from Swiss government. Evidence of corruption. They gambled millions of pension money. It’s appropriate that we open this bank'

So the invasion of Private property goes on - a repudiation of one of the fundamental building blocks of human freedom. Quite what business the policies of the Swiss government is of these people is anyone's guess, but nevertheless, I am assuming they object to UK firms using UBS as a Pension fund manager? The lack of understanding of basic finance again shows through. There is no such thing as a 'risk free investment' I'd argue any Pension fund manager who invested in low risk deposit accounts with interest rates at 0.5% and even instruments like Guaranteed Equity bonds paying post-tax returns below inflation was being negligent but that's again a moot point.

'People’s assemblies are good because the the government has centralised everything. Everything on a local level would not have need for centralised government – we can achieve everything locally, through face to face contact with people – you’ll know people, they’ll be easy to contact and talk to – that’s where I will be hopefully'

This actually did intrigue me somewhat as ideally I'd be in favour of much greater 'localism' - one of the problems we see, though, is the inevitable ill-informed articles about 'postcode lotteries' in provision of such staples as old-age care and Health provision. these are stoked by the press on both sides of the political divide. Much centralisation under every government since Thatcher (and possibly arguably even prior to that there were tendencies) has been in response to such criticisms. By allowing real Local democracy, the risk is run that provision of services will be very unequal. Also, is there anything to stop say, Far-right or Islamic extremists implementing policies which to the Left would be distasteful in the extreme(banning on Eating pork or preferential housing for Whites) The proposal also shows a distinct lack of historical awareness. A number of Local authorities (most famously the GLC under Livingstone, but also Liverpool under , say Hatton) took it upon themselves to deliberately stoke up taxation and set themselves up in opposition to the then elected government. Much centralisation in fields such as education was a response to provocation from people whose extreme left wing ideology was signifcantly more important than their concerns for local ratepayers. Hence the eventual abolition of the GLC and widespread use of 'rate capping' during the 80's and into the 90's. How would such tendencies (And regardless of what Occupy believe I assume some Conservative councils would still exist? If not that's another matter entirely) be curbed under the dispensation proferred here?

'One way to spread the occupy movement is to bring in the trade unions, to appeal to as many as possible. On 20th November, 3 million public sector workers are on strike in support of their pensions. It’s an important day, you can really appeal to them. People should occupy workspaces so they can decide for themselves their conditions, working hours, benefits, and pay'

So, what I can glean from this is that workers should come in and 'Occupy their workplace' - fine. What happens then? As workers have 'decided for themselves their pay and conditions and their working hours' what will happen. I know a number of my former colleagues who would vote themselves a salary of 250K and working hours of zero, as well as a pension linked to the 2008 inflation rate in Zimbabwe. Whether any business that ran in that fashion would be able to stave off bankruptcy for even one hour would be questionable. As for enlisting the Trade unions, it seems astonishingly myopic not to recognise their agenda. UNISON and especially the RMT exist to promote the interests of their membership, not the wider society at large. Do you think Union poster boy Bob Crow gives two hoots about the commuters into all manner of industries (not just the LSX) when he calls his latest stoppage by his outrageously well-renumerated drivers over the flimsiest pretext? I'd argue not.

In fairness, a number of 'Occupy' supporters have pointed out these are 'minutes' - and I recognise that. But again we return back to the question I posed earlier in the post - 'What do you want'? The minutes read like a Student Union meeting, and if the Occupy movement want to be taken seriously, thney need to move beyond this initial stage and quickly. As New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica points out the naysayers dismissing these people as 'dope fiends and sex fiends' were lying from the start and that generalisation remains a lie. Nevertheless, he makes the point that their moving to blockade Subway (underground!- going native!) stations and block traffic for Commuter buses is unlikely to have any impact on Senior personnel at Citibank or JP Morgan, as I can vouch from a degree of personal knowledge, these guys don't take the bus or subway. On the other hand literally thousands of chefs and kitchen workers (for example) do and any sympathy they had for the movement will have been diminished by an already possibly 2 hour journey to the Outer boroughs being made an hour longer!

In short, 'What does the Occupy movement want?' remains the question, and rest assured, despite the protestations of my erstwhile colleague Hal Berstram, I remain 'outwardly polite and courteous' and there is no hidden agenda, just a willingness to perhaps find out what the 'real agenda' actually is!

Lifted from CiF

2011-11-17T07:48:00.002Z

In desperation over the last few days I've taken to reading the comments on the Guardian's Comment is Free again. Free is the operative word; few people would pay for the kind of rubbish you see below the line on CiF every day... particularly from the astroturfing right wing trolls.

However, this comment on the usual €zone panic story "Eurozone bond markets in turmoil" was a classic, courtesy of one 'boydungood':

So here we have it....
The radio this morning tells me how I can make a 9p sandwich with toast in the middle, with salt and pepper - the cheapest meal
I million kids between 16 and 24 out of work or training
An unelected government imposed in Italy (used to be called a coup)
And this papers poster boy Clegg silent on everything, and this paper silent on the Clegg

An all time classic there - and managing to work in Nick Clegg as well... sums up where this country has got to.

Dropping off the radar

2011-11-16T07:45:00.001Z

Sorry for lack of posts over the last few weeks. Just been far too busy... normal service should be resumed around next week.

In the meantime keep watching the Euro crisis for "entertainment."

The Conscience of the King

2011-10-24T12:46:00.003+01:00

Which is the title of the 13th episode of the TV series Star Trek's first season, but also could refer to the behaviour of all three Party Leaders in reference to the forthcoming vote in the House of Commons on whether to hold a referendum on EU membership (in whatever format)As already stated by Hal Berstram when I took over co-editorship of this blog, 'readers could look forward to discussion of the intelligent case for leaving the EU' - with Europe once again pushed into the forefront of the political landscape, at least as far as the political class are concerned.

Arguably the finest journalist in print today of any newspaper is Christopher Booker of the Sunday Telegraph. The original editor of the satirical publication, Private Eye, he is still contributing material both to its investigative section 'In the back' as well as the innumerable small jokes, often in cartoon format that litter its pages. Better known on the Left nowadays for his scepticism over Climate Change (or Anthropogenic Global Warming), he first came to my attention as one of the only (if not the only) journalists to focus on the EU's forays into the public sphere in the 1990s and early 2000s. He has been consistently vindicated on every aspect of his European observations, not the least of which was criticism of the common cross party consensus that the EU was a 'good thing'. I'd hazard this is one of the main reason why, he , like I smells a rat, when Climate Change proponents say 'the science is settled' and 'there is general consensus' , telltale phrases that imply a vested interest in something which is in many cases quite lucrative. I feel confident that, as global temperatures continue to fluctuate and fall in many cases, Booker's stance will be vindicated again. However, this is not the main thrust of the post.

In one searing work, the Castle of Lies , he and co-author Richard North (an admittedly single-minded campaigner who destroyed his photocard EU license because it had the EU's 'ring of stars' emblem on it and who went to prison for a day for withholding the 'policing' element of his Council Tax for his local force's failure to deal with a burglary epidemic in his part of West Yorkshire) laid bare the EU's true nature for anyone who was willing to see it. In the sequel, The Great Deception, they looked at the EU's roots and exposed its deliberately anti-democratic nature, as well as the fiction that British War Leader Churchill ever intended the UK to be part of such an organisation. In all honesty, I'd find it hard to nominate a journalist who has done more to influence my political beliefs in a positive, as opposed to a negative way.

Thus, I can only echo the sentiments of my co-author here on the blog in his call for a referendum. Very interesting to see the attitude of the man who he believes will be PM in 2015, who has described people calling for a referendum as 'barking' and a 'reckless distraction' thus destrying the ground his conference speech had gained him in the eyes of many Eurosceptics. whilst it's true that to agitate for a referendum at a time of global crisis might seem something of an unwanted diversion, such a diagnosis fails to recognise that the issue goes to the core of what type of governmental system we want.

What I fear is two things:

A/ The phraseology of the referendum question - will it be a loaded question to try and appease the 'Fib Dems' (who on this issue I agree with Hal are 'spineless collaborators') or will it be the question which the UKIP want:

'Do you wish Britain to remain in the EU, a deeply corrupt, utterly undemocratic institution whose cost outweigh is benefits by about 100 to 1 and which is widely believed to be run covertly from Beijing and Pyongyang?

B/ The possibility of a 'third option' on renegotiation, which as former Icelandic PM , David Oddsson (who kept Iceland out of the EU) pointed out wouldn't be offered to the UK. Indeed, I'm not even sure the preferential treatment afforded to Norway and Switzerland would be offered. that's the greatest fear for the otherwise dominant UKIP, that the 'fear factor' will drive either a 'Yes' or a vote for option three.

Thus whilst I disagree with Hal's vision, which given the lack of linguistic or cultural commonality would simply not work in countries as diverse as the EU membership, I'll stand happliy on the plaform with him and other anti-globalisation protesters and Greens who normally I would be looking to expose as in the pay of certain hostile powers to say that this issue cannot be ignored. If you truly care at all about our democracy - you need to be writing to your MP, regardless of his politics, and ask him or her why they aren't supporting democracy by defying party whips to vote in favour of it. I'd be especially pleased if any readers who might live in Doncaster North especially could ask.....

Europe: the case for a referendum

2011-10-22T07:43:00.002+01:00

Some considerable excitement going on (in relative terms) in the House of Commons on Monday, where several dozen Tories (mainly from the right of the party) and some maverick Labour MPs, plus Caroline Lucas, will be voting in favour of a referendum on staying in the EU.

All three main party leaders will be whipping their MPs against the motion. (I note in passing that the Lib Dem manifesto contained a pledge to hold an in/out referendum on Europe. We can safely assume that that pledge went the way of all their other pledges, then? Well done, Fib Dems.)

My view is that there is a very clear case for a referendum. Opinion polls show very strong support - often a majority - for leaving the EU. At the last Euro election, the UK Independence Party came second in terms of vote share, and many Tory party and Green party members are also in favour of leaving. Circumstances have changed hugely since the last referendum in 1975. So for me, the case is difficult to argue.

As for what the result of a referendum would be... it's very hard to say. The case of the AV referendum shows that the initial opinion polling may bear very little relation to the final result. The "Yes" campaign would be hugely well funded and would be able to use the three main party leaders and front benches in its campaigning (actually, looking at them again, maybe that's a handicap rather than an asset). As in the AV referendum and the 1975 campaign the "No" campaign would suffer from being a mix of left and right wingers with few affinities with each other; the combination of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn on the "No" platform in '75 probably created a negative crossover effect whereby each turned off the other's supporters, and you can imagine the same thing happening with (for example) Nigel Farage and Caroline Lucas this time round.

But part of the reason for holding a referendum would be to find all this out. Therefore, I will be emailing my MP (the extreme Tory right winger Priti Patel) to recommend that she vote in favour of a referendum.

The obvious next question is: If there were a referendum, how would I vote? Probably I'd vote "no" although not for the same reasons as most of the "no" group. I'm basically a Eurofederalist who wants legislative matters decided by an elected European Parliament with Westminster relegated to the kind of role that a county council has in England at the moment. I'd abolish the European Commission and run the whole system through parliament with a European Prime Minister and a figurehead president. The various national heads of state would be kept on for ceremonial purposes.

But the current EU isn't anything to do with this vision. The European Parliament has very limited powers and most decisions are taken by unelected commissioners. To be frank (and there is a danger of sounding like Van Patten here but I'm going to say it anyway) the current EU governance structure is closer to China than any parliamentary democracy. And that's very dangerous.

So, I'd vote to come out of Europe for the moment, but if a true federalist Europe could be constructed either by renegotiation of existing treaties or by reconstruction from the ground up, I'd be an enthusiastic supporter of British re-entry.

One other point: There is the possibility of a 3-option referendum with "renegotiation" as the 3rd option. if this were the question, I'd be wary of voting for renegotiation because it's too fuzzy and allows too many opportunities to sell the voters out. In the 1975 referendum, Harold Wilson made it clear that a yes vote was a vote for renegotiation of the terms of the UK's membership - but in the end almost nothing was changed. One can imagine Cam/Clegg or Miliband doing much the same thing.

So, any MPs reading this: please do the right thing by your constituents and vote yes to a referendum on the EU on Monday 24th.

The demise (?) of Dan Hodges

2011-10-10T20:24:00.006+01:00

Once I had stopped throwing my Blackberry around the train for not working properly today and remembered that I had a perfectly functioning Samsung Galaxy S as backup, Tweetdeck dealt me the sad news that Dan Hodges had left the New Statesman.

For those who have never read his stuff (and there can't be many of you on the left, nor apparently among the Tories), Dan is a maverick blogger with strong Blairite tendencies. He is no great fan of Ed Miliband most of the time, and according to the (usually less than reliable) Guido Fawkes, Ed's office was instrumental in securing Dan's dismissal from the Statesman after such classic anti-Ed fodder as "Ed Miliband has a strategy - it's called Ralph Nader", "No one likes Ed Miliband - but he doesn't care" and "Ed's hit himself with a hammer. Why is he surprised it hurts?"

The Statesman itself issued a tweet saying that Dan had resigned rather than being fired, and there has been no word - yet - from the man himself, so it's not at all clear what happened yet. The Guido Fawkes view is that Dan was forced out because of his anti-Ed Miliband views. However, there are a lot of anti-Ed views expressed on the site and only some of them have come from Dan. Until recently the Statesman had Lib Dem Olly Grender on the books, and they also have the dreadful Tory Graeme Archer, the small 'l' liberal legal specialist David Allen Green, the hard left (ish) activist Laurie Penny, and economist David Blanchflower (the British Paul Krugman); none of these are sycophantic Milibandites. The only real hardcore pro-Ed voice on the Statesman's main writing team is Mehdi Hasan.

It also seems unlikely that Dan's persistent attacks on Ed are well crafted enough to prompt a nasty phone call from the Ed team saying "get rid of this geezer". Basically, Dan writes two kinds of articles; the Ed is Crap Article and the Article About Something Else. Sometimes the Article About Something Else is worth reading (e.g. his recent post on the Tories' problems over whether to abolish the 50p rate or not was excellent.) The Ed Is Crap Article is, and always has been, desperate Blairite trolling replete with all the tricks of the trade - asides from unnamed "cabinet ministers", the "concerned insider" saying "we really don't know what Ed's doing anymore", Tony Blair lurking in the background tutting disapproval, and some guy Dan meets up for a pint with every fortnight who doesn't know the names of any contemporary politicians at all but thinks Enoch Powell had the right idea in sending 'em all back home. Or something like that. I do computer programming sometimes and I'm thinking of producing a piece of software that will automatically write a generic Dan Hodges "Ed Is Crap" Article at the press of a button, using randomisation to generate slightly different copy each time (along the lines of the early web classic the Post Modernist Essay Generator). Maybe I could sell it to the Statesman and they could carry on as if all was well.

Actually I'm being slightly unfair on Dan here - recently he did discover a third type of article - it was the Ed Balls Is Crap article. File under "slight variation of the formula."

Despite the fact that I rarely agree with Dan (although occasionally I have enthusiastically endorsed his writing), and that I think his anti-Ed stance is tired and one-dimensional, I'm nonetheless sad to see him leaving the Statesman, partly because I enjoyed commenting on his articles (usually either to accuse him of being a Tory plant or a plant from Ed Miliband's office designed to offer only token and thin criticism to make Ed look good), partly because - as evidenced by his Twitter feed - he does have a great wit at times, and partly because even though he's mostly wrong, he's often interestingly wrong - unlike someone like John Rentoul for example, who is just annoying. And also because it probably means he'll be doing more on Labour Uncut - the right-wing Labour blog started by Mr Webcameron himself, Sion Simon - which is full of people with views similar to Dan, but who express them much less articulately. To the extent that I can't be bothered to visit the site: Labour List is as far right as I go, and even then rarely.

€-zone - the end of the beginning...

2011-10-04T20:46:00.005+01:00

Well it's now around 18 months since the Eurozone crisis first erupted with the initial Greek bailout, and the can has been kicked down the road so many times that I've lost count. Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy have all been dragged into the widening vortex, the politicians and central bankers wrangle interminably, and now the private banking sector begins to unravel with the news that the Belgian/French bank Dexia needs recapitalisation.

It is difficult to avoid the feeling that this whole slow-motion car crash is coming to a close. In the words of the late William Burroughs, we may now be reaching "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

It is hard to predict exactly when total economic collapse will occur. There were 14 months between the freezing of the interbank credit market in July 2007 (the first hard evidence that something was dreadfully, terribly wrong in the financial system) and the collapse of Lehmans in September 2008. The European sovereign debt crisis has been going on for longer than that now.

Things are a little scary. In the initial wave of the collapse the initiative was taken by Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling. Although Mr Brown's reputation has suffered a bit under a wave of Tory propaganda, and he failed in any way to capitalise or build on the momentum from the initial banking bailout, that you are reading this at all, rather than scrabbling for food in a looted shopping centre in a real life version of Mad Max, is probably down to him, and if there were any justice, he would be remembered as perhaps the greatest prime minister of the last fifty years, despite all his (many and deep) failings.

Do not expect any salvation from the UK this time round - the morons have taken over the pitch. Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Clegg have not an iota of economic capacity between them. More worryingly, there appear to be no other world leaders with much of a clue either.

It is impossible to predict where we will end up if the global economic system does collapse (and I still sincerely hope a way through can be found) - my only advice is as follows:

stockpile tinned food.
get down the allotment.
If you join a militia group make sure it is the left wingers, not the EDL, and use violence only as a last-ditch self-defence measure.
It will not be wise to identify yourself as a Liberal Democrat even after the political system has collapsed. Folks have long memories
12-string guitar may have added poser value for buskers.

That is all for today. Good luck.

The new men in the High Castle....

2011-10-04T14:16:00.005+01:00

Further greetings to those diehard followers of the blog, once more from inside 'the Bunker' in NYC, this time due to some literal teething problems that have exposed me to the much maligned US healthcare system - which as I expected, was excellent, if a little pricey. Anyhow, it will not have escaped people's notice that arguably the greatest symbol of Capitalism, New York's Wall Street has currently been 'occupied' by protesters for about 3 weeks. This has excited significant media attention across the world. Some ill advised forays against the NYPD, whose admitted partial over-reaction has instead of dousing the fire, roused it, has intensified the spotlight. With the protest showing no sign of being over, despite the Police actions, perhaps it's best to look at the protestors somewhat myriad demands in a little more detail. Helpfully, veteran Leftist Richard D Wolff, a supporter of similar popular protest movements in countries such as Cuba ( at least until 1959) and Vietnam (at least until 1975) has outlined what he hopes will be the end result in today's Guardian

'Let me urge the occupiers to ignore the usual carping that besets powerful social movements in their earliest phases. Yes, you could be better organised, your demands more focused, your priorities clearer. All true, but in this moment, mostly irrelevant. Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion.'

Leave aside the fact that approximately 5000 protestors is dwarfed by the population of one Manhattan street, but the message is not that objectionable. However much I disagree with denizens of the Hard Left in any form, they are free to express their opinion (although like some other right wingers I notice this tolerance does not extend from some on the left to anyone deemed 'right wing' especially in regards to race) - Thus we see, thus far a gathering of a whole raft of single issue pressure groups and Left wing activists, which is all well and good.

However, with the ensuing paragraphs, the true agenda becomes clear:

'So permit me, in the spirit of honoring and contributing something to this historic movement, to propose yet another dimension, another item to add to your agenda for social change. To achieve the goals of this renewed movement, we must finally change the organisation of production that sustains and reproduces inequality and injustice. We need to replace the failed structure of our corporate enterprises that now deliver profits to so few, pollute the environment we all depend on, and corrupt our political system'

So the red fist within the Green glove becomes clear - we are to replace the existing 'economic system' and replace it with what precisely, Richard?

'We need to end stock markets and boards of directors. The capacity to produce the goods and services we need should belong to everyone – just like the air, water, healthcare, education and security on which we likewise depend. We need to bring democracy to our enterprises. The workers within and the communities around enterprises can and should collectively shape how work is organised, what gets produced, and how we make use of the fruits of our collective efforts'

A classic paragraph - and seemingly ignorant of the history of the past century. Richard, Newsflash for you, my old son - There was a country that did exactly what you suggested. Perhaps you've heard of it - comprising much of the landmass of Europe and Asia, and stretching across 11 time zones, it lasted from bloody beginnings in 1917 for 74 years and was so vast, even it's dismemberment into 15 separate 'official' states left it's largest statelet as the world's biggest country - it was called the USSR. As I say, I'm assuming with your academic background, you've encountered it? Ah, but anticipating that objection, what's this we see?

'We all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of "socialism" from the usual predictable corners. The tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory. The audience for that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long.'

So the rhetoric is 'tired and faded' is it Richard? I'd suggest you visit Russia, or more enlighteningly for you, The former COMECON states of Eastern Europe to see just what their memories (and I agree they are fading all too quickly) of genuine socialism are - I'm not sure you offering to recreate it will win you many friends in Vilnius, Tallinn, Riga or indeed even Tirana or Skopje.

However, let us assume, for a moment, that like some political alchemist, you can manufacture a system that doesn't go down the lines of every other collectivist regime I've ever seen, and grant that what happened in Eastern Europe was a long and disastrous anomaly, - what then?

'Humanity learned to do without kings and emperors and slave masters. We found our way to a democratic alternative, however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains. We can now take the next step to realise that democratic project. We can bring democracy to our enterprises – by transforming them into cooperatives owned, operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them and all the residents of the communities who are interdependent with them.'

I'd argue this paragraph betrays such a misunderstanding of human nature, it's hard to know where to begin. Ask the people of another socialist icon (although unlike Cuba and Vietnam this seems to be 'persona non grata' for the Left over here and in the UK - perhaps it's too close to genuine socialism for comfort - the truth can be very painful), the Korea DPR, whether humanity 'has learned to do without Kings and Slave masters', as a third generation of hereditary tyrant is groomed for power, with a network of gulags at his disposal. Indeed, in fairness, you could look to autocratic regimes across Central Asia of an ultr-nationalist bent in Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Turkmenistan and see much the same. As for your demand that the economy be transformed into 'cooperatives owned, operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them' it's been tried before, and the results weren't pretty.

However, despite it's blatant flaws, I'm grateful to this article for revealing who the intellectual influences behind the 'Occupy wall Street' protesters really are - vicious, retread socialists who were thwarted in their desire for Global Socialism two decades ago, but have seized on the admittedly dire economic situation, and taken advantage of many Americans profound ignorance of the world outside the USA, to reiterate the old rhetoric 'of democracy and economic freedom' , knowing what the actual reality was and, in places like Cuba and North Korea, still is. One of my favourite works of 'alternate history' is the Philip K. Dick novel, The Man in the High Castle, a dystopian novel posited in the alternate future wherein the Axis WON World War Two and a new 'Cold War' had developed between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. If we follow Wolff's prescriptions, I think some future writer might posit a future whereby the USSR Won the Cold War and the World lived under primarily Communist rule. My greatest fear is that the naive 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters are doing their utmost to make that less of a dream, more a reality......

Ed Miliband - pissing off the right people (most of the time)

2011-09-30T07:37:00.003+01:00

As was the case last year, Ed Miliband's Labour Party conference speech just keeps getting better the more I look at the reactions to it.

One outcome of the speech (and in particular the very warm reaction that Ed's line "I'm not Tony Blair" received) has been that the Blairite hard right of the Labour party is utterly demoralised. After the disappointment of their assumed shoo-in candidate, David Miliband, losing to Ed last year, the hard right had hoped that Ed's poor personal approval ratings would somehow contrive an Iain Duncan Smith 2003 situation where Ed would be persuaded to fall on his sword to be replaced by David, or another Blairite (if they could find anyone suitable). The phone hacking scandal, and now Ed's gutsy speech, has made his replacement a very remote prospect this side of an election. You could still - just about - argue that Ed might be vulnerable if Labour does badly in the 2012 local elections, and in particular if Ken Livingstone fails to beat Boris Johnson in the London mayorality rematch; but this is clutching at straws for the Blairite hard right, who seemed to spend most of the conference crying into their beer as they realised the game is up for them.

Typifying this resignation among the hard right was an interview I saw on Channel 4 News last night with the preposterous right wing New Statesman and Labour Uncut maverick blogger Dan Hodges, and the shadow transport minister John Woodcock - who appears to be a cross between Andrew Adonis and a mannered automaton. Hodges was desperate - "Ed's embarked on a suicidal strategy", he wailed. This is very good news. The downbeat mood (reportedly) at the hard-right Progress rally at the conference was very good news. The fact that pain-in-the-ass uber-Blairite journalists like John Rentoul don't like Ed is also very good news. Demoralisation, ceasing and desisting, and - hopefully - leaving the Labour party altogether, would be the best things that could happen to the handful of Blairite ultras who have been trying to orchestrate a coup to take back the Labour leadership for the last 12 months. Note that most of the people who backed David Miliband for the leadership last year are not uber-Blairites and are happy to fall into line behind Ed's strategy. We're talking about a handful of people - just as damaging in their own way as the Trotskyite Militant tendency were in the 1980s. They are demoralised and they are on the way out. All Very Good.

That said, Ed doesn't always piss the right people off - sometimes he pisses off people he needs in the tent with him. This was most evident in the ludicrous part of his speech which attacked disabled benefit claimants as if they were all scroungers - a simple piece of Blairite triangulation totally at odds with the rest of his speech. Tim Nichols of the Child Poverty Action Group has a brilliant post on Left Foot Forward totally demolishing this part of Ed's speech - he badly needs to develop a new progressive narrative on social security (NOT, for F***'s sake, this godawful US word "welfare"), or risk alienating millions of benefit and tax credit claimants whose votes he needs to win next time.

But in general, with some severe reservations, I'm a lot more optimistic about the future of the Labour party now than I was a week ago. Hey, if Ed dropped the bullshit about demonising benefit claimants I might even rejoin, having not been a Labour member since 1992 when I resigned claiming that John Smith(!) was "selling us out". I'm in the Green party at the moment - ideally I'd like to be in both the Green party and the Labour Party, and perhaps it would be useful if such a facility could be introduced. F*** tribalism, yes to pluralism.

Some quick reflections on Ed's speech

2011-09-28T07:10:00.006+01:00

Van Patten has actually done a remarkably good and fair minded job on Ed Miliband's speech already, and I'm pushed for time, so I will just offer up a few "thunks" in the manner of BHappy:

1) delivery started well but fell off rapidly. I tweeted in the first 5 minutes of the speech that Ed was far more assured than last year, but that was only true for those first few minutes. After that, his pacing was glacial, and too often he sounded like he was reading the phone directory. I've seen Ed give some barnstorming speeches at places like the Fabians and Compass where he's spoken without notes, walking around the platform, and I think he should do that next time. As Cameron has shown, it's just a far more relaxed style of delivery.

2) there needs to be a proper investigation into what went wrong with the live TV feed. Apparently someone plugged a kettle in where they shouldn't have, it fused the electrics, and the whole thing went down. Why was no back-up available? And was it Blairite sabotage? Questions need to be answered.

3) the basic idea - that the current economic system was unacceptable - was sound, although it needs a lot of fleshing out.

4) nonetheless, too many concessions to the Tories. there needs to be an end to demonisation of benefit claimants, more commitment to reverse most of the ConDem cuts, and the commitment to sell off the banks is dangerous IMHO - it will just get us back to exactly the same problems we had in 2008. The problem at the moment is that Ed is reaching for a new broad vision - but on specifics he's still very timid. This will result in huge inconsistencies as we get nearer the election unless it's addressed.

5) The speech pissed the right people off. For example, if John Rentoul doesn't like what Ed's saying, he's definitely saying the right thing. Likewise Dan Hodges in the New Statesman.

6) Nice to see some attacks on Nick Clegg. Some commentators have said that Labour is focusing too much on hitting the Lib Dems and not enough on the Tories. I think it needs to hit both hard, but the Lib Dem vote is softer, and so hitting them gets more "bang for the buck". Remember that if Labour gets (say) 12% of the electorate transferring from the Lib Dems to Labour next time, while the Tory vote is unchanged, Labour wins the election by 5 percentage points. It's as simple as that. The Glib Dems are fair game, and emphasising that the only way to get a left-of-centre government is to vote Labour is exactly the right political strategy.

So: 7/10 for content, 4/10 for delivery. Not great, but a better average than your average Tony Blair speech (0/10, 9/10) or Gordon Brown (4/10, 2/10). Ed was also helped by the fact that the delivery of most of the other platform speakers this week has been even worse (Ed Balls and autocue: never the twain shall meet.) But yes, better delivery next time, please.

The horse that talks the talk - but can he walk the walk?

2011-09-27T21:30:00.005+01:00

For those diehards watching the Party conference season back in the UK (and a slight dose of a winter virus has left me tied to my NYC abode - no sympathy expected), today it was the turn of Ed Miliband to step up and deliver his keynote address. Reaction has been somewhat muted, ranging from predictable responses from right wing commentators in the blogosphere , and the usual suspects in the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph . Further criticism has been forthcoming from what my host, Hal Berstram tells me are equally habitual moaners in The Guardian and the New Statesman.

By common consent, the weakest Political Leaders in the last three decades, (at least excluding the Liberal Democrats) have been Michael Foot, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith (IDS). For many on the Right, Ed Miliband was the heir to that tradition, and indeed his public persona has been one that has struggled, for me to look Prime Ministerial. I am reminded, by a most unlikely source, that a number of previous Prime Ministers have struggled to gain credibility with the media. Indeed arguably the two 'greatest' post war Prime Ministers (and for Leftists I'll sub the word 'influential' for the latter) would in one instance as Toynbee points out, have been a non -starter (Clement Attlee) and in the other instance the Lady concerned struggled to the extent that she had her own party calling for her head as late as 1977. So the pundits calling this Ed's 'Quiet man' moment can safely I think either be accused of playing to the gallery, at least for the Mail and Telegraph contributors, or in the case of Glover and Hodges, as my man Hal Berstram posits, having an ulterior motive.

Nevertheless, it's worth looking more closely at what Ed's speech contained. For me, he is not a natural orator, and often looks ill at ease, at least in comparison with Blair, or indeed Cameron. As Hal points out, it's possible that Cameron is much more about style than substance, and indeed Ed has done rather better in the set piece exchanges at Prime Minister's Question time than I thought he might have. the worry for Labour Party supporters is that Hague, in particular, regularly trounced Blair across the Dispatch box only to come out with one of the worst electoral performances in history

So to the speech itself, and it started with a couple of somewhat flat jokes. However, for me, more worrying was the lack of content. In comparative terms, the Conservatives first term in opposition was defined by Ken Clarke's comment on Hague's obsession with how he was perceived: 'Where's the beef?' in terms of looking for clear policies with which voters could connect. Reading through the speech, we can come up with the following:

1/ Education - a priority of the Blair years, and it seems Miliband wants to cap the tuition fees at £6K rather than £9K. Furthermore we will see a concerted effort to ensure that people from the lowest achieving and most difficult schools are guaranteed a place at one of the UK's 'Top 30 universities'

2/ Social policy - it seems that Social housing will be allocated in the first instance to people who are working, rather than on the basis of need. How in line with the Human Rights Act this is, I'm not sure, and it seems to sit ill with contending to care for the poorest and most vulnerable.

3/ Health - it seems that Labour will reverse the NHS reforms, because the 'Tories can't be trusted' - in terms of the details, er.... that's it?, unless by the credit card reference he means the nationalisation of the Private Sector - that would be genuinely radical!

4/ The economy - an introduction of employee representatives to decide boardroom renumeration. In fairness, works councils involving employees are a staple of several continental economies - but it's not a tradition the UK has. Also, the differentiation between producers and 'predators' with the former being supported and the latter penalised. Quite who decides what is what is not made clear but it's true this might strike a chord with people who have been the victims of some of the more unscrupulous Private equity forms operating in the murkier sector of the Financial Services industry.

Beyond that, much generalisation about certain values he wishes to embody, but on Europe, an issue for me of the utmost importance, only one sentence, which given how much of our legislation comes from it, is deeply concerning.

So, a train wreck? - not really, indeed for a conference speech, which of late have tended to shy away from concrete commitments precisely for fear of offering hostages to fortune, I thought it wasn't a bad effort. However, as the old saying goes, the Devil is very much in the detail, and I think when he delivers his speech next year, assuming his poll numbers remain steady, I'll expect much more detail of just how a reversion to almost a pre 1979 vision is going to extricate us from the very real issues facing us. Nevertheless, 'the worst speech in 20 years?' - do me a favour!

The same old story... and the same old mistakes

2011-09-27T13:27:00.006+01:00

It's part conference season over in the UK, and following the so-called 'Fib Dems' last week, it's the turn of Her Majesty's official opposition, whom following a successful campaign from the last conference to get their stalking horse candidate in, now find themselves fronted by a talking horse.

A post on Miliband has been 'in the works' for several months now, and to Conservatives he remains the coalition's greatest asset, although the redrawing of the electoral landscape under the previous government, due to a huge increase in the Public Sector workforce, unlimited immigration and a significant increase in the number of welfare claimants, means he actually stands with a healthy lead in the polls, as Hal Berstram takes great pleasure in reminding me. More on him later, for sure, but pending the arrival of Compass latest offerings, it's time to examine another blog from the Democratic Left, Left Futures

It's an interesting name, given that for many the Left has no future, but the latest post in response to the Shadow Chancellor's remarks made yesterday, is worth looking at, if only to point out to people opposed to the anticipated 'cuts' in Public expenditure, some of the logistical issues with their preferred solution. The speech by Balls was, it has to be said, something of a tour de force, quite brilliantly summed up by one of the men who is under no illusion about the dangers posed by the Hard Left, Norman Tebbit here. I've never been overly enamoured by Balls ever since he was memorably skewered by then Deputy PM Michael Heseltine, with the memorable line, 'It's not Brown, it's Balls', and even in a political age where Chutzpah is a stock in trade, the speech took some beating. Arguably the most outrageous claim was made when he blames the many issues caused by immigration, which was deliberately encouraged by his government for political purposes (to 'Rub the right's faces in diversity') on one country in particular, Poland.

Now, at this point , I must declare an interest, my previous employer's workforce profile was very much geared to take advantage of the previous government's decision to 'open the borders' in 2004 to the 8 former Warsaw Pact countries which joined the EU in May of that year. I would hazard that around a third of the workforce, even 7 years on, remains Polish, with healthy minorities from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary and Lithuania. I'd probably now number around 40 of those former colleagues as people I would consider reasonably close friends, all from Poland. Having some contact (usually in the form of insults) with the extreme right, I'd hazard Eastern European immigration is somewhat less objectionable than many other types, due to the ethnicity, religion and background of those immigrants. They are primarily White and Christian, but Balls, deeply conscious of previous statements from Conservative Leaders that were described by members of his own Party as 'the road to Auschwitz' and 'having the whiff of the gas chambers about them' chose instead to demonise people from Poland, rather than the somewhat more concerning, from an integration perspective, immigration from the Islamic world. As I said, shameless courting of the lowest common denominator.

Nevertheless, taking that consideration aside, the Left futures blog post posits the issue with Balls' prescription is that it doesn't go far enough! The core 'solution' provided in the blog is not new, but once more the details are wanting. Let's examine the core text.

'The key problem is not indebtedness, it is lack of demand. The Tory government policy of massive cuts in public expenditure and benefits, plus the VAT increase, is drastically worsening the problem of lack of demand without hardly reducing the deficit at all because of falling tax revenues and rising unemployment. The alternative – the only way to get out of slump when the private sector contracts – is a public sector-driven jobs and growth strategy, getting people off the dole and thus hugely reducing the cost of benefits, and into work so that regain their independence as well as then being able to contribute to tax revenues.

Keeping a million people on the dole costs £7bn a year. For the same amount of money 400,000 jobs could be created. And the country gets a double whammy: jobs are created in areas where they’re urgently needed in housebuilding, in improving transport and energy supply, and in creating the new green, digital economy. And the deficit is cut faster as growth slowly but steadily begins to take off again.'

This prescription, as already mentioned is reminiscent of the film Groundhog Day. there's the uncanny feeling we've been here before. Let me just state for the reader's benefit, that my background is in Logistics, which, simply put is the 'art' of ensuring resources are in the correct places. So what logistical difficulties does this plan present?

I agree a demand stimulus would certainly help the economy. As Tebbit posited when commenting on Balls' original speech, had the previous government not created a coterie of 'Non - jobs' for its own placemen, it's arguable that the necessity to cut wouldn't be there. The problem for Balls, and by extension the Labour Party, is that such people are almost to a person Labour voters, so to jeopardise that constituency would almost certainly mean losing the next several general elections. That would be suicidal, so the bloated payrolls of Local authorities (of all hues, incidentally) and his power base in the non-productive Public Sector remain untouched.

Let's now examine the proposal to create 400,000 jobs , which the blogger suggest will be in housebuilding, transport, infrastructure, and creating the new 'green,digital economy'. Let's deal with the last of these first, shall we? The one thing adepts of the Green economy fail to tell me is what this new 'Green,digital' economy will comprise. It's adherents, men like Chris Huhne , and people like Caroline Lucas, specialise in the production of prodigous quantities of hot air so my first thought was that, but in all seriousness, what are these 'creators' doing - if it's simple IT related tasks, then Ok, there might be sufficient unemployed with those skills to simply get them into a job, but I haved some reservations. Being charitable, let's assume its in the role of facilitation, and thus creating perhaps new cabling and broadband infrastructure, a key 'enabler' if britain is to gain widely based prosperity geographically.

The issue I find fault with, and it's not the first time I've pointed it out is that the writer seems to have zero understanding of either the construction industry or the logistical difficulties faced in facilitating this work. A cursory tour of the few remaining building sites in the South East will quickly reveal:

A/ That the job is skilled not unskilled - you can't just shoehorn 400,000 people into jobs as carpenters and bricklayers. The training even to get to a basic standard is at least six months and for more skilled workers like electricians or engineers a good deal longer than that! I believe this wider ignorance about almost any aspect of either Public Sector 'frontline' or Private Sector Production, Distribution and Construction industries is partly a function of the increasingly narrrow field from which many potential political figures come. That's as much true of the Coalition, as it is Labour.

B/ That, in a great irony, it is Poland that provides a huge number of these workers. This is due to a strong traditional work ethic, and also, as many of my colleagues have said, the need to engage upon massive reconstruction after the devastation of the Second World War. Ironically, the legacy of a command economy is that there were significant numbers of skilled workers, a tradition which due to an almost Stakhanovite work ethic seems to have been passed to a younger generation. These workers manage to undercut indigenous Labour and, as many will testify, manage to do the work to a much higher standard. So unless the Labour Party is willing to echo it's former Leaders call for 'British jobs for British workers' , which would be illegal under EU law, the expenditure welcome though it may be, is likely to be dissipated by some of the money being sent in the form of remittances to Szeczin, Rzesow, Wroclaw, etc

Leave aside the merits of the funding in the penultimate paragraph, with the discredited Tobin Tax again posited , and a move to the Dennis Healey levels of taxation circa 1979, we're not left with much of substance. Sadly, reality hurts and I think the road ahead will be long and somewhat painful!

The "Glib Dems" - from spineless collaborators to willing collaborators?

2011-09-24T21:45:00.004+01:00

Despite being on holiday this past week, the fact that we stayed in the UK meant that I was exposed to more of the Liberal Democrat conference than I'd have liked to. As far as I could tell (which is mainly from Channel 4 news bulletins), the mood of the conference was rather different in 2011 than 2010. Last year there were significant rebellions against coalition policy - particularly on free schools. This year, a threatened rebellion against the NHS privatisation bill didn't get off the ground (the motion to hold a debate on the bill got more than 50% of delegate votes but didn't get the two-thirds it needed to pass).

There appears to have been a shift in how most of the Lib Dems are perceiving and positioning themselves. Last year, they were a sell-out and a prop for the Tories and they knew it. The squirming embarrassment of Vince Cable over tuition fees was the foremost example of this. The party looked to be heading for some kind of collective brain seizure.

But now... it's rather different. Sure, Huhne and Cable's speeches hit out tokenistically at the extreme right of the Tory party but overall there was suprisingly little criticism of the Tories. Instead, all the most stinging criticism was reserved for Labour. Clegg was particularly scathing - something that Ed Miliband will welcome, I think. After all, the experience of the AV referendum shows that these days the public normally does the exact opposite of what Nick Clegg says.

Last year I had pigeonholed the Lib Dems as spineless collaborators, unable to speak up for their progressive instincts because they had signed a Faustian pact with those bastard Tories. But now... they're still collaborators, but for the most part, WILLING collaborators. They actually BELIEVE in the shit policies they are foisting on the public.

Even Vince Cable - who give a similar cardboard cut-out "radical" speech to last year - is pursuing an extreme right deregulatory agenda at BIS. And Vince is certainly the extreme left wing edge of Lib Dems in government. The others are much worse.

Are the activists swallowing this shit? I think, by and large, they are. There is disquiet (as the NHS vote showed) but not enough to upset the applecart (again, as the NHS vote showed). The Social Liberal Forum - which is the social democratic fringe of the Lib Dems - doesn't have the numbers or the parliamentary leadership to challenge Clegg, and seems reluctant to split off from the rest of the party. There is probably also a sample selection effect going on here; many of the Lib Dems who were pissed off with the decision to go in with the Tories left in May 2010 or soon after, to join Labour or the Greens. Likewise, the Lib Dems claimed that thousands of new members signed up in the wake of the coalition deal... these will have been right-wingers, almost certainly. (I don't know what's happened to Lib Dem membership recently... some people said the conference hall looked a bit sparsely attended but that could have been because they'd hired a bigger venue than previous years? I don't know).

So basically, this is becoming (or has become) a right-wing party indistinguishable from the Tory mainstream except for a few issues: Europe, civil liberties, and maybe crime and national security.

Which means, more or less, that the advent of the "ConDems" has moved us from a political system with one right-wing party and two centre-left wing parties to a system with one left-wing party(at least in theory) and two right-wing parties. (Plus the Greens, UKIP and the Nationalists, of course). Under first past the post, it seems to me that Labour is the likely beneficiary of this shift. The Lib Dems will find it very hard next time round to take any votes off Labour from the left of the spectrum, as Charles Kennedy did with some success in 2005. Nor will they easily be able to rely on the more nebulous "new politics" schtick which produced the Cleggmania bubble of 2015. Instead, they will be out there at stage right, fighting to make the Tories look as reactionary as possible while copying their economic arguments and anti-Labour rhetoric...

So, from "Fib Dems" to "Glib Dems" it is, then. The Lib Dems have made their choice... it's a right-of-centre party from now on. They have gambled on shifting the political centre of gravity so far to the right that there will be room for two right-wing parties to co-exist successfully in future elections. Can this strategy work? The polls at the moment suggest there's no way in hell (and that's without boundary changes, of which more another time). But there is still a long way to go before 2015, and my new prediction is that the coalition will last until then... because many of the people in the Lib Dems who could take it down have already left.

On holiday - like the Lib Dems' collective brain

2011-09-18T18:08:00.003+01:00

Having a nice time up in west Norfolk - a great area of the country for foodies and beach walkers, for sure. This keeps me away from mischievous activities like watching the Fib Dem conference - although not from Twitter, where I have been enjoying regular dialogue and argument with left and right.

The most amusing aspect of the current Fib Dem exercise in mass self-delusion is the feeling that somehow they have turned the corner - despite the fact that their YouGov opinion poll rating is around 9%, unchanged from where it was in January - and Nick Clegg is still enjoying staggeringly low ratings with the electorate. And so the party faithful (those that haven't walked away in disgust) console themselves in a fantasy.

The set piece speeches are a cross between George Orwell and Monty Python: Tim Farron telling the members to "stop complaining" - i.e. be happy with your lot, acting as as appendage to the Tory Party. Simon Hughes - who gave a good speech at the Compass conference back in June, to be fair - saying that the Lib Dems were reining in "extremist" Tories. Strange then, Simon, that key Tory policies like savage spending cuts - and even key Tory policies that weren't in their manifesto, like NHS privatisation - are being nodded through. And the ministers - Clegg, Teather, Alexander - are even worse than that. We will no doubt see the standard left-wing football rattle speech from Vincent Cable later in the week - at the same time that he is attempting to dismantle the employment regulation structure of Britain. And all along, these bastards will be claiming that they have "taken poor people out of tax" when in fact they have slapped a 2.5% VAT increase on the poorest in society, cut benefits for the poorest in society, and only a tiny proportion of their £17bn income tax personal allowance increase actually helps the poor. Not for nothing do they carry the tag "Fib Dems".

But I don't hate all Lib Dems - and that differentiates me from some of the more tribal Labour Party types in the blogosphere. For example, I think Evan Harris is a fine upstanding left-wing secular rationalist who should be the party leader. Sadly, he lost in 2010 - mainly because he was a shit constituency MP and pissed off too many people. That was an idiotic mistake to make; but his profile is nonetheless very high, and if he walked out - perhaps to start a new left wing party (the Progressive Liberals? The Social Liberals? Plenty of possible names out there), possibly to join Labour or the Greens - he could take a lot of people with him. There is a thing called the Social Liberal Forum who are trying to take back the Lib Dem party from the Orange Book right wing nutters who have taken it over. We have already seen a fightback against right wing extremism in the Labour party, in the shape of Ed Miliband (although the process is still incomplete) and it is possible that Social Liberal Forum could pull off the same trick in the Lib Dems. What they lack at the moment is a high profile leader - it seems that all the potential Lib Dem leadership contenders, even the more left wing ones, are biding their time. Or maybe there just aren't any left wing Lib Dem MPs any more.

But I am in regular contact with several fine upstanding left-wingers in the Lib Dems - and my friendly message to these people is, GET OUT NOW. You are doing the Tories' dirty work for them, destroying an honourable political party, and tarnishing your own reputations. PULL THE FUCKING PLUG, form a new party (or join one of the others) and start living the real deal rather than a lie. The country will thank you for it, and you'll feel much better.

After the five year mission

2011-09-12T06:30:00.003+01:00

I checked back to the start of this blog and it turns out that Giroscope was 5 years old last week - we started off with an inauspicious post on 7 September 2006 about the Chappel Beer Festival. (I didn't go to Chappel this year because I didn't have time).

While Bill Shatner and crew retired after only 3 years of the original 5-year mission (being brought back for special occasions and toupee fittings once in a while), this blog is more like the Next Generation (or indeed Ed Miliband's "New Generation") - a "continuing mission" with no fixed end point.

As a special treat I'll be returning to the blogs from "Hal's Friday evening blog review" which was an early feature back in the 2006 days, to see what has happened to them in the last 5 years - or if, indeed, they still exist. I'll also be seeking out some new random blogs for extra comedy.

October should see the redevelopment of the Golf Ball and perhaps even some new activity on Groscope - certainly grew plenty of stuff this year, so time to write about it.

Keep it real, people.

Wisdom from beyond the ages....

2011-09-11T16:06:00.003+01:00

Now writing, albeit far too infrequently from New York City, my sojourn here has led me to study in somewhat more depth the History of this influential country, perhaps with a view to understanding more of the roots of the massive issues facing it and by extension the entire world. Whilst reasonably familiar with US history, at least up to the end of the Napoleonic wars and during the Civil War, the remainder of the period up to the end of World War I remained something of a murky one. I was inspired by a picture of president Obama working at a desk. The history of this desk, The Resolute desk, was that it was given to arguably one of the least well-known presidents (at least for British audiences) Rutherford B. Hayes , the 19th President of that country, by Queen Victoria during a period of gradual closening of relations between the two countries, carved from the hull of a ship, H.M.S Resolute which had been lost in the Arctic Circle and recovered by the USA.

Studying Hayes, a Republican from the 19th Century, I was struck by how sensible he seemed, and how this speech could provide a wake -up call both for Tea Party extremists who claim to represent the 'authentic' Spirit of the US, and Left wing extremists who think that any 'DWEM' 'Dead White European Male' (Hayes would be classifed as European on the grounds of being White) has nothing to tell us:

"In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger—the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Some are strong when they portray the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for this remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property'

Food for thought , certainly..

Darling vs Brown

2011-09-04T20:12:00.004+01:00

Been incredibly busy recently so not much time to blog, but I just wanted to say something about Alastair Darling's forthcoming and much-trailed memoirs in which he reveals sordid details of his life at Number 11 Downing St when Gordon Brown was at Number 10 - by all accounts, a very difficult three years.

Of course, we know already - primarily from Andrew Rawnsley's excellent The End of The Party - that Brown was a notorious bully, extremely difficult to work with, often chronically indecisive, and finally unable to present the kind of decisive break from the Blair years which might have enabled Labour to win a fourth term in 2010. In personality terms, my sympathies have to be with Darling - by all accounts a likeable and easy-to-work-with guy who had been a close friend of Brown for years, but found himself a target of the most appalling dirty tricks operation from the Brown henchmen when he dared to confide to the Guardian that the economic situation really was very bad indeed. Brown's insistence at the time that the financial crisis would blow over in 6 months now looks totally ludicrous (although to be fair to Brown, in summer 2008 when Darling observed that things were the worst they'd been for 70 years, most expert opinion didn't really believe things were that bad. The realisation came in autumn 2008, when the world banking system suddenly began to unravel completely.)

And yet... there's blame on both sides here. Having suddenly become the saviour of the global financial system (with able assistance from Darling) in autumn 2008, for my money Brown showed more political nous in 2009 than did Darling, but was ultimately done in by the fact that most of his cabinet hated him and didn't believe in him anymore. One of the reasons James Purnell resigned from the cabinet in Summer 2009 was that Brown refused to talk about the dreaded "c-word"... cuts. But I think the reason Brown didn't talk about "cuts" until autumn 2009 was that he realised that it would be pretty much impossible for Labour to win an election promising a slightly moderated version of a cuts agenda dictated by George Osborne and the Tory party. Brown realised that the economic battle has to be about Labour investment versus Tory cuts in order for Labour to have a cat in hell's chance of winning. The plan that Darling and the Treasury delivered going into the 2010 election was for cuts almost as bad as what the Tories were promising - this made it EXTREMELY hard for Labour to develop a coherent economic narrative in the 2010 election, a fact that Darling has acknowledged himself in interviews this weekend. Labour was left looking like an ersatz version of the Tories (which is, by the way, what the idiots in the Labour Right want Ed Miliband to do in 2015, and it'll have about as much success.) It was also patently clear during the election that Brown didn't believe his own economic narrative.

So in the end it is Alastair Darling that is partially responsible for Labour getting 29% of the vote in 2010. Only partially, because the other main reason for Labour's failure is because Gordon Brown was the hardest of hard sells by then. An exhausted, unlikeable and tragic figure on the doorstep, who should surely have been knifed hard by one of his senior cabinet members in 2008 or 2009. And this is the other reason why Darling takes his fair share of the blame for Labour's failure... because, along with Miliband, Johnson, Straw and all the other potential alternative leaders, he didn't have the balls to twist the knife in. There is one guy in British politics who has had the guts to take down a political frontrunner in an open contest... that guy is Ed Miliband, lest we forget. And anyone on the Labour right sniping about Ed needs to remember that Ed would probably never have become leader if any of the people in a position to oust Brown before the election had actually done it... at the end of the day, you have to put up or shut up. And while I have immense sympathy for Darling's plight at the hands of Gordon in 2007-10, both of these guys are just an irritating distraction at a point when the ConDems are trying to destroy the country. And really I should be blogging about the collapsing economy, or the death of the NHS, and I will do... it's just that I'm a junkie for a political spat, sad man that I am.

Reminding myself how good "War on Terror" is

2011-08-25T21:53:00.004+01:00

Not the concept as copyrighted by Dubya Bush (obviously)... the board game.

I was doing a session with Burning Lodge last weekend (next month I really must reactivate Brother Typewriter's Golf Ball - lots of music-making and equipment to discuss) and after recording some fine tracks we ended up playing "War On Terror", which I was bought several years ago as a present when leaving my previous job.

It's an all time classic, it really is. One of the good things about the game is that you're almost hoping you're going to be crap at the start and go bankrupt or be stopped from expanding your empire by dastardly other players, so that you can become a terrorist. Playing the terrorist is a lot more fun than being a "normal" player.

I want to get the follow-up game from Terror Bull Games - "Crunch" - soon. It's billed as "the game for complete and utter bankers" and apparently contains "the collapse of capitalism (more fun than it sounds)" [hard to see how that would be possible, as the collapse of capitalism is what most of us are waiting for at the moment, but there you go].

Expect more breaks from politics in some of the future posts, as I need to broaden out the variety a bit... taking a break before the conference season (or possibly during it!)

Once more unto the breach, dear Friends....

2011-08-19T12:40:00.003+01:00

Have been kept, somewhat embarrassingly away from the mundanities of blogging by having to take care of administration on my new abode on the other side of the Atlantic,so have been on 'silent running' for a couple of weeks. however, despite a backlog of about seven posts (events never stop in the real world) a story from the UK necessitates comment. Several months back I referred to Labour's mayoral candidate, Ken Livingstone as the Jason Voorhees/Freddy Krueger of British Politics for his tasteless comparison of opponent Boris johnson's Chief of Staff, Eddie Lister, to Bosnian Serb commander and suspected war criminal, Rlatko Mladic. In this stunningly hamfisted interview in Total Politics, he goes one better than that by equating the coming mayoral struggle with the fight between Churchill and Hitler in World War Two.

The blog entry by the controversist, Toby Young, author of How to lose Friends and alienate people posits that Livingstone, through a combination of frustration and possibly premature senility has become unhinged, and several commentators on the post take him to task for not realising that what was said was Ken 'being drole' or making an attempt at humour. Whilst I would also agree this could be an interpretation, the problem for him is that, of arguably any politician in the last 30 years, Livingstone is a master of taking vicarious offence on behalf of the many 'minorities' (women, non-caucasians, homosexuals, LGBT, even famously the Irish in the height of the troubles) that comprise his 'rainbow' coalition. To illustrate the point, can one imagine the reaction of the Labour Left, the Guardian, Independent and the BBC (funded by a £155 stipend on every TV watching household in the country) had Johnson made the quite accurate remark that the election were 'reminscent of Korea and Vietnam'? - a statement which given Livingstone's quite self -evident links with both the Northern parts of those two countries' proxy allies during the conflicts in question is really quite unobjectionable to anyone without a vested interest in this man's election.

The issue is ,when you take an innocent remark out of context and, even though not part of the 'minority' in question, call for people to resign or apologise, it is rank hypocrisy to expect others to turn the cheek to the most odious and outrageous calumnies,even if they are said in jest. Having fallen foul of this with a tactless comment comparing a Jewish Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard, I'd have thought Livingstone would have known better.

The sadly departed from the Telegraph, Simon Heffer, summed up the position quite admirably following the furore over Cameron's rather crass remarks to Labour shadow Minister, Angela Eagle. The Left's very 'thin skin' and the basic paucity of many of their arguments mean that the reflex weapon of howling 'racist' or 'sexist' or 'homophobe' is often the only weapon in their armoury. however, unless one wishes to fall foul of Livingstone's rather curious 'sense of humour', I would strongly urge anyone reading this who is able to vote for Johnson next year, lest you find yourself tagged as a member of the Waffen SS and subject to 'denazification' or 'war crimes trials' (just joking on the latter of course, Christ, don't you people have a sense of humour?)

Meanwhile in America...

2011-08-15T06:31:00.002+01:00

Quick update on Van Patten's posts from a few weeks back about the likely Republican challengers for 2012. It now turns out that Rick Perry is definitely running, while Tim Pawlenty has dropped out after a poor showing in the very weird Iowa "straw poll".

It's probably going to be one of Perry, Bachmann or Romney for the GOP nomination to take on Barack Obama's "GOP-lite" ticket in 2012. That's assuming of course that Obama can get re-nominated, but I'd be surprised if it didn't happen. Michael Moore is apparently backing Matt Damon for President - I must admit I've never actually seen any of Damon's films, but I've seen several of Moore's. I still think an independent left-wing challenger to Obama is more likely than a successful primary challenge within the Democrats. Still holding out hope that Bernie Sanders will step up to the plate.

In terms of Obama's chances, running on his "GOP-lite" policy platform will be a huge demotivation to the voting base which handed him the election in 2008. My prediction is that if the Republicans nominate Bachmann, Obama will win, but if they nominate Romney or Perry, he'll lose. This despite the fact that Perry's platform is likely to be closer to Bachmann's than Romney's: I think Perry has more cross-over appeal to non-Tea Party Republicans than Bachmann does, and that will make the difference. A Romney presidency will be pretty much indistinguishable from Obama; a Perry presidency will be the end of US democracy as we know it. Four years ago I compared Mike Huckabee (a comedy version of Rick Perry in many ways) with Stillson from The Dead Zone: with Perry, the comparison seems even more apt.

Future historians (if we survive that long as a species) will look back and wonder how, after the euphoria of November 2008, the USA managed to get itself in just such a mess. I blame the fact that the entire US political process is controlled by Wall Street. Politicians with guts could still stand up to multinational corporate power... but they are in short supply, seemingly everywhere.

Into another abyss...

2011-08-09T06:54:00.005+01:00

I'm writing this a bit dazed, frankly, after three nights of terrible and escalating violence on the streets of London, and now Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool. It turns out that, even as stock markets around the world continue to tank, the main story making headlines in the UK hasn't been that. It's been the riots.

The whole thing seems to have got very out of hand almost by accident on Saturday in Tottenham... a peaceful demonstration demanding answers from the police over the death of a local resident, Mark Duggan, earlier in the week was followed by a wave of violence directed against property in the Tottenham area, which the police were slow to respond to. The perpetrators of the violence seem to have discovered two inconvenient truths: (1) looting shops, once you've broken down the shutters/windows/etc. is very easy; (2) with only 1400 police immediately deployable in London (that is a figure from a recent interview with London Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse), the more disturbances there are, the less the police are able to keep order at each one (although reinforcements have been drafted in from other areas). What we've seen on Sunday and now Monday night, with escalating violence over a wider range of target areas, is opportunistic exploitation of thinly stretched police resources.

Some points on this:

Firstly, while the Metropolitan police have tried hard to change the image of a force described as "institutionally racist" in the MacPherson report of 1999, and there has been some progress, it's clearly not enough. A delegation of family and friends who had gone to Tottenham police station after reading in the local newspaper that Duggan died as a result of a police bullet were stonewalled and kept waiting by police for hours; it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that police decided that they weren't worth bothering with because they were black, or working class, or both. The Met's stock is pretty low anyway at the moment after revelations that officers were in cahoots with News International in the phone hacking scandal, and also the absurdly heavy-handed policing of the student demos last November and the Fortnum & Mason occupation this March. As this excellent article from Stafford Scott points out, given the Met's poor record on interfacing with so many citizens, it's hard to be surprised when something like this happens.

But at the same time, none of that excuses looting or violence against shops and other businesses which are employing people in extremely deprived areas. A Lewisham councillor sent out a tweet last night that said something like "please don't riot because our budget is being cut by 30%, which means if you smash Lewisham up we don't have the money to put it back together again". Spot on, that man. This is violence against communities who were already very hard up against it, suffering disproportionately from the ConDem cuts and now suffering a hell of a lot more because people - many of them, it seems, operating in well-organised criminal gangs - decided it would be a good idea to raid high streets and shopping centres for TVs and trainers. Now, Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell are right to point out that our current brand of turbo-capitalism sets a really bad example, and the bankers are engaged in looting of their own, but at the end of the day smashing up working class neighbourhoods does nothing to change society. Political activism (perhaps in the Green Party, the only political party opposing the cuts at present) is the way forward for the people who are losing out from the ConDem cuts.

Thirdly, the cuts aren't purely responsible for this situation because (a) we're only in year 1 of a 4-year cuts programme, and (2) even at pre-2010 staffing levels, the police wouldn't have been able to cope. However, the cost of the clean-up from these riots shows the folly of making deep cuts in police numbers or in other community services. The cuts could end up costing much, much more than we save. Conversely, it may be that by increasing public spending in some areas we can actually *save* money.

Fourthly, people calling for the army to be sent in need to remember Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972. Personally I have no wish to head towards a "death squad" model of society where people are shot without trial. Tom Watson MP's suggestion that the army be used as backup and escorts for emergency services workers (e.g. protecting firefighters and ambulances, etc., freeing up the police for frontline duties) seems like a good one.

That's all for now. If you are living in London or one of the other affected cities then I hope you are safe and well... all my thoughts are with you.

The edge of the abyss?

2011-08-05T18:52:00.002+01:00

As I write this it appears that Stage two of the Global crisis is already under way, and indeed appears to be gathering pace. The FTSE has been sent tumbling by more than 550 points, it's third worst fall in history. The Dow Jones' slump has been partially arrested by some surprising 'good news' on the jobs front, but it seems highly likely this is a 'dead man's bounce', Hal Berstram is already advising people to stockpile tinned food, and this seems pretty good advice. The trigger for the crisis appears to have been, once again issues with the Eurozone (the subject of several earlier and one stillborn post - the phrase 'Greek tragedy' is just too good to resist)

It appears the contagion evident in Portugal, Ireland, Greece (and also little Cyprus) has now spread to Italy and Spain. The ECB seems unwilling (or perhaps unable to intervene) and it is revealed that the EFSF (European Financial Stability Fund) is expected to be increased to £440 billion to anticipate issues in those much larger economies. In the meantime, hang on to your hats, as the chickens are definitely coming home to roost. More on this later - but in the meantime, invest in John West and Princes, if you want to put your money anywhere!

Mad, bad and dangerous to know

2011-08-03T19:16:00.007+01:00

Following this blog's originator onto Twitter , I was intrigued by the admittedly entertaining 'Moronwatch', evidently someone of leftist thinking, he does however seem admirably open minded, including Islamic extremists and members of the extreme Left on his list of 'following'. This became all the more alarming when this piece by the dreadful Polly Toynbee appeared on the airwaves in the wake of the admittedly contentious 'agreement' on the US budget deficit ,decried as yet another 'sellout' to Radical Republicans, basically the culmination of a 3 year retreat before the fissiparous 'Tea Party' and its acolytes since those heady days of November 2008.

However, the piece's significance is perhaps part of a greater struggle from the Left, a struggle which followers of American 'Higher education' will be familiar with from the Early 1990's and 1980's when the movement for Political correctness reached its apogee in US academe. Whole rafts of European authors were effectively removed from circulation or became 'samizdat' across many institutions, due to their alleged racist, sexist or homophobic viewpoints(part of the 'amputation of the time dimension from our culture' to quote Sir Ernst Gombrich). Authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, Aristotle and Mill (to mention just five) were shoehorned into the category of 'DWEM' (Dead White European Male) and two decades of college students in departments such as English and especially the Social Sciences were in effect given a narrow, hardline marxist view of the world that anyone with the slightest nous (or indeed critically experience of the real world outside academia)could see was utter nonsense.

To the creditof academics in the UK, outside a few niche disciplines such as 'Women's studies' or 'Race studies' these views never gained much currency in the UK, and it perhaps testament to the relatively benign state of race relations comared with the US that such vicious thinking never did really make its way into the mainstream, save for a few extremist Labour politicians (The famous racist Lee Japser for example) on the left, and the motley crew of the National Front and latterly the BNP and EDL on the extreme right.

However, the left has always sought to control the debate, hence its stranglehold (despite 18 years of Tory government) on the education system. that's whay the Toynbee article, though vaguely ludicrous is perhaops an indicator of how the Left is looking to use the 'Phone hacking' scandal to circumscribe the terms of the debate. The article starts by offering the Tories a backhanded compliment, applauding them (probably very politely!) over their refusal to drift as far right as the 'Tea Party'. It then launches into two paragraphs regarding 'Climate change deniers' that make me ask whether the author's sanity should be questioned. The term 'Denier' is in itself grotesque, designed to elicit comparison with those who would deny the holocaust . the shockingly lazy formulation comes forth:

'for some reason they (referring to commentators in the Mail and Telegraph) seem to consider 'the warmists' a left wing conspiracy'

Whatever could have persuaded them of that? Is it that, almost without exception, environmentalists, many of whom are retread socialists, are in favour of: Greater government intervention, more regulation, more restrictions on people's activities, higher taxes, less freedom of movement, and the list goes on. Whatever would make me believe that such people are left wing? As for the ludicrous assertion that a 'scientific consensus' exists. Such 'consensuses' were used to prove the 'inferiority' of certain races less than two centuries ago, and when the implications for policy are so critical, I would have to examine the background and vested interests of anyone proposing such wide ranging changes as, for example, the Green Party as indeed they no doubt examine closely the links with certain Oil companies or other 'polluters' of the Climate Change sceptics. I note with some interest that Toynbee is a regular contributor and keynote speaker at various Compass conferences. Is this a taste of what's to come under 'Mr.Ed' - people's opinions being silenced by 'consensus' on Global warming/Climate Change?(note the lingustic shift from 'warming' in response to declining temperatures in certain areas during part of the last decade) What next to be judged 'subject to consensus' and no longer worthy of debate? - Immigration/The EU? I for one hope we don't have to find out.

Bernie Sanders for President

2011-08-02T06:33:00.005+01:00

And so the disastrous US debt ceiling deal passed - fairly easily in the end - with most House Republicans voting in favour, while the Democrats were split down the middle. I think Paul Krugman is right: the deal conceded far too much to the Republicans, and it's time for the Democrats to start playing much more hardline. If that leads to dysfunctionality and default - then, as so often, Han Solo is my political hero. "Bring it on! I'd prefer a straight fight to all this fooling around."

Basically, Democrats - who control the Presidency (if we can still classify Obama as a Democrat - that is doubtful) and the Senate - should have said, no debt deal with less than a 50/50 balance between tax rises and spending cuts is going to pass. It's no good talking tough after the event, like Joe Biden. He said that the Tea Party were "behaving like terrorists" - yes they have, but the Democrats have tamely capitulated to that terrorism. Which gives the Tea Party an incentive to behave even worse the next time... simply terrible political strategy from the Dems on every level.

Anyway, having thought about it for a couple of days, a key question I want to address in this post is: should there be a presidential challenge to Obama from the left? I think yes, there should be, and it should come from outside the Democratic primary system, not inside it.

Obama's move to a mainstream Republican position in recent months has meant that next year's presidential election will most likely be fought between a mainstream Republican (in all but name) and a Tea Party right winger - leaving a huge vaccuum on the left. Remember that, like the UK, the US uses the idiotic "First Past the Post" system for its elections. For the presidency, an electoral college operates whereby the votes in each state are tallied and then the electoral college votes in each state (which are roughly weighted by the number of voters in each state) are awarded to the winner. This means that in a three person contest it is not necessary to have anything like 50% of the votes to win a state: if your opponents' vote is evenly split you can win with a lot less. This is the reason that (for example) Caroline Lucas won in Brighton Pavilion in the UK in 2010 despite only having 32% of the vote.

A convincing left-wing challenger could hoover up most of the votes on the left of the US political spectrum, leaving the real Republican and fake Republican (Obama) candidates fighting it out for the right. Remember Bill Clinton in 1992? He won with only 43% of the vote because 20% of the vote went to the independent candiate, Ross Perot. What we could be looking at in 2012 is something very similar.

So who should run as that left-wing independent? Sadly, my ideal candidate - Hunter S Thompson - is dead. This is a real shame, because Hunter would have been a natural for this gig. He almost pulled off something very similar at town level when he was running for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, in 1970 with a shaved head on the "Freak Power" ticket. The only reason he was beaten was because the GOP candidate stopped campaigning and told people to vote for the Democrat to stop Thompson getting in.

The rebirth of Freak Power in 2012 would have been an all-time highlight of American politics, but Hunter shot himself in 2005, so in his place I'm going to suggest Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an independent "democratic socialist". Bernie is a fantastic speaker (see this speech on economic civil war in the US, for example - absolute classic, telling it like it is) and would absolutely kill both Obama and whatever moron the Tea Party nominates in the televised debates.

Fundraising would of course be a problem, but my guess is that, given that Obama has sold out so comprehensively to the right, the Obama fundraising tactic of huge numbers of small donations, which worked so well in 2008, could now be co-opted for a Bernie Sanders campaign. There must be millions - tens of millions - of people in the US who are so fed up with the path the country has taken over the last 30 years that there is a huge well of pent-up frustration and anger to draw on. A Google search for "Bernie Sanders for President 2012" produces some very interesting material - for example this post on the Irregular Times, where Sanders is closer to majority polling in the US on a number of key issues than either the new Republican incarnation of Obama, or the Tea Party.

So really, if it were to happen, there seems a very good chance that a Sanders bid for the presidency would be successful. Now of course, if Bernie did win it, he wouldn't be able to do that much except veto all GOP measures. But that in itself would be a huge advance on Barack Obama, who is the man who capitulates to the GOP. So the question for Bernie Sanders and the US left is: are you prepared to sit back idly while your country is destroyed? Or are you going to do something about it?

I will be sending a link to this blogpost to Bernie Sanders's office and I'll let you know if I get a reply.

US political crisis: the case for an "anti-tea party"

2011-07-31T07:36:00.006+01:00

As I write this it's still not clear whether there has been agreement between Barack Obama and both houses of Congress to raise the debt ceiling to enable the US Government to go on paying its bills after 2nd August.

But if an agreement is hammered out, it seems quite clear that in the course of reaching it, Obama will have given so much ground to the Republicans - and indeed the hard-right Tea Party faction - on the spending cuts vs tax increases mix, that it is unclear how his presidency in any way still reflects the priorities of the Democratic party.

The US budget deficit is caused by three policies in particular, two of which are the fault of the previous administration led by the election thief and war criminal George W Bush, and one of which is a bi-partisan failure over several decades. The bi-partisan failure is the decision by successive presidents and congresses to cultivate an unstable and unsustainable economy built on "junk" finance, which imploded twice in the 2000s: first in the "dot com" crash of 2000-01 and then (much more seriously) in the financial near-collapse of 2008. As Richard Wolff notes on CiF, no part of the US economy (save corporate profits) has recovered to any meaningful extent since 2009. The best that can be said for Obama's inadequate stimulus package of 2009 is that it stopped things getting any worse; but that is winding down now, and consequently the US economy is sinking deeper into a hole.

The fiscal crisis is exacerbated by two policies which were the mainstay of the Bush presidency: (1) huge tax cuts for the wealthiest few percent of the population, and (2) a vast increase in military spending to pursue the "war on terror".

As a clear election winner in 2008 (unlike Bush in his two election "victories"), Obama had a golden opportunity to reverse policy on all three of these fronts. Sadly, he has failed completely on all three. His only domestic policy success was on healthcare reform - admittedly an area where all his predecessors had failed - but even there, the reform which emerged fell well short of what is needed.

What he has managed to do, instead, is to preside over the birth of a movement, the "Tea Party", extreme even by the standards of the US right which takes some doing, which is systematically trying to destroy American democracy by creating the conditions for a coup by big business interests. This was last attempted during the Roosevelt administration of the 1930s by a number of industrialists sympathetic to fascism who believed the US could be reconstructed along the lines of Nazi Germany. It failed then, but it might succeed now; it is increasingly likely that China will be the model for a 21st century "Tea Party-esque" US, with elections suspended (probably on the grounds of saving money) and the Republican party installed as the de facto equivalent of the Chinese Communist Party. (In passing, I note that it is ironic that Van Patten claims that the 'left' in US politics - Bill Clinton, etc - are the "Chinese agents" when in fact what the Tea Party want to do is far closer to current Chinese political practice than anything you will find among the Democrats).

Barack Obama's reponse to the Tea Party threat - and the Republican challenge generally - has been to compromise so far with it that he has managed to completely alienate his own supporters. I would imagine that not since the dog days of the Carter administration in 1979/80 has the Democratic base been so demoralised and let down. And there is a severe danger for Obama that the result of the 2012 Presidential election will be very similar to the 1980 election. I still maintain, whatever the bullshit the right will try to feed you, that Ronald Reagan was a relatively weak Republican candidate who would have lost to any Democratic incumbent with a basic level of nous and competence; the tragedy for Jimmy Carter - probably the most thoroughly decent man to hold the Presidency since 1945 - was that, in 1980, he appeared to possess neither nous nor competence.

Barack Obama also appears to lack competence and nous, but in a different way from Carter. Obama seems to want to be the bipartisan statesman in an era where bipartisanship is impossible; there is pretty much no common ground between the Tea Party and your average liberal Democrat. By failing to stand up for a deficit reduction package which includes at least (say) a 50/50 mix between tax increases and spending cuts, Obama is making it more likely that the GOP will demand more and more crazy right-wing policy concessions - because he lacks the backbone to turn round and tell them to take a hike. If you're a hard right Republican congressperson, what is the downside to taking an extreme right wing policy stance? None, because the President will meet you half-way (or in fact 90% of the way) whatever you say. As of now, I expect a deal to be done on the debt ceiling at the 11th hour - and it will be disastrous for the Democrats.

Even so, it is quite possible that Barack Obama could still win re-election in 2012 - but only against an out-and-out wacko candidate, most obviously Bachmann. I think if the Republicans nominate Perry or Romney, Obama is toast. I'd love to be proved wrong on that, but - allowing for the temporary bounce from the announcement that bin Laden had been killed - Obama's poll ratings have been in freefall for 2 years now. And there is simply no sign of the economic bounce that might help him recover.

Bizarrely enough though, all is not lost for the Democrats at Congressional level if they can fight fire with fire - essentially by becoming the "anti-Tea Party". There is clear evidence from opinion polling that huge numbers of US citizens think that the Us political system has now broken down, and the country is now being run in the interests of a few wealthy bankers and industrialists. The Tea Party channelled anger at the banking bailout - which was viewed (to a large extent rightly) as a huge transfer of resources away from ordinary working people to a gang of exploitative and reckless overlords) - into a right-wing populism. The antidote to that - and the way to expose the Tea Party as a shameless "astroturf" operation funded by oligarchs like the Koch brothers - must be a left-wing populism.

The best way forward for the Democratic party would be if the 2012 Congressional elections threw up the biggest bunch of hard-left socialist Democratic candidates seen in America in modern times - pro-union, anti-Wall Street and anti big business. They would be extremely well-placed to ride a wave of anti-establishment - and indeed anti-Obama - feeling as the spending cuts bite and the economy continues to flatline.

If Obama does manage to get re-elected, an "anti-Tea Party" Democratic bloc in Congress could be a very useful mechanism for pushing him leftwards - particularly if the Democrats can recapture the House of Representatives. Conversely, if a Republican wins the presidency, it will be vital for the Democrats to provide a counterweight to the Tea Party which will undoubtedly be pushing even harder for extremist policies. Either way, the last thing the US needs is a "centrist" (read: hard-right) Democratic party following their President as he sleepwalks into whatever the next disaster is.

Jam today, Jam tomorrow.. (Part one)

2011-07-28T14:26:00.003+01:00

Time for a summary of events on what is for me, this side of the Atlantic, but for most readers the other side. At the moment the world is watching as the prospect of the United States defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history next Tuesday (2nd August). As I write this, the two sides are currently engaged in negotiations which seem by turns to break down or involve competing plans all of which seem to be rejected by the hardliners on both sides. As Telegraph business columnist Ambrose Evans- Pritchard puts it:

'I adamantly refuse to take sides in this dispute. Both parties have played their part over the past 50 years in bringing America to this pass. A plague on both their houses'

The sides, such as they are basically comprise President Obama (and the US treasury department), hero of the British Left and the Guardian/BBC/Compass contributors whose influence seems to be at its apogee following the 'phone hacking' scandal and the Republicans in Congress, whose Leader, John Boehner (pronounced Bay - ner rather oddly) is arguably less familiar than the 44th president to British readers, although sufficiently well studied for the co-contributor on this blog to style him and the GOP 'evil and incompetent' on Twitter. Basically the 'News' such as it is stateside, and very much dependent on your perspective (if you watch Fox you won't really get much blame attached to the Republicans - on most of the other networks, the blame is all theirs) consists of attempts at compromise from both sides being pretty much furloughed by extremists, more, I have to say, on the Republican side than the Democratic. Even Boehner's latest plan, hardcore though it is, is being stymied by Tea Party supported Representatives arguing it does not go far enough. Thus the politicians continue to bicker as a potential 'financial armageddon' looms, with surely greater impact for the world beyond the USA.

In a thoughtful article yesterday in the New York Times (The US equivalent to the Guardian) economist/columnist Thomas L. Friedman points out the defects in both sides of the argument, and its this article which has relevance for the UK. As I pointed out, somewhat uncomfortably for supporters of 'UK uncut' and others opposed to the Coalition's plans, Public spending continues to rise under this government although Local authorities are, admittedly choosing to cut items like Libraries and services for the elderly rather than look at the renumeration of Senior executives - in that sense I have some sympathy for the 'anti Cuts' protestors. Thus the UK's own moment of truth cannot long be delayed, especially as this government has continued the baleful legacy of the last one, in refusing to place items such as PFI spending on to the balance sheet. It's worth, therefore looking at the Friedman article, as it's perhaps a more thought-provoking assault on the need for cuts than one from a movement featuring Chinese agent Bob Crow (living in a Council House despite a seven figure income) as a poster boy.

His five prescriptions are summarised in the paragraph below:

'Yes, we have developed such a formula over the course of American history, and it is built on five pillars, educating the workforce up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world's best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world's most dynamic and High- IQ immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses, putting together the best regulations to incentivise risk-taking while curbing recklessness, and then let American innovators and Venture Capitalists pick off the most promising ideas for new businesses.'

which I would take as good advice for any sovereign nation, including the UK, although I might quibble with some of these suggestions at least in the details, let's look at their prospects under the 'pantomime horse' of the Coalition, or the genuine government by Talking horse should the unthinkable happen and opposition Leader Miliband E prevails in the next election.

1/ 'educating the workforce up to and beyond whatever technology demands'

This would seem, on the face of it to be an unarguable point - we need to better equip the young people of today for a future which is likely to be somewhat technologically different than now. However, before we do that, we have to recognise, I believe that the goal of putting 50% of young people through higher education is, at the minute, unaffordable. Nor have the Willetts reforms on Higher Education had the desired effect. Despite the advantage of having 'Two Brains' these appear to have come from an acephalous being - their net upshot being that such centres of scholarly excellence as Central Lancashire and Leeds Metropolitan University have taken to charging £9000 for some courses. In the meantime, we have a situation where approximately 50% of the workforce in an industry such as construction or 33% in Retail Distribution (in the South East) are imported, primarily from the former COMECON countries. These people (and I speak from personal experience here) are, with some exceptions significantly better educated, more motivated and, crucially able to be paid much less than people from the UK with a similar level of qualification. It is hard to overstate how much London's prosperity has been dependent on this since 2004. In the case of the largest country to join the EC from that region, Poland, the emigration boom has also helped solve some potential social problems
back in that country . Based on my own now fairly numerous Polish friends, whether they will all be content to continue doing relatively low paid work is open to question.

However, even assuming the desirability of the goal, whether the British education system is capable of equipping the workforce to meet the challenges of the 21st century is open to serious question. I recalled it will be August in less than a week so shortly we will be subject to the ritual pantomime, played out annually wherein the publication both of GCSE and 'A' Level results will show an inexorable rise in the number of Top Grades handed out. This has become as intrinsic a part of the British summer as 'The Last night of the proms'. On both sides of the divide, Educationalists will point to superior teaching, whilst columinsts such as Melanie Phillips and rentaquote Max Hastings (to use only two examples), neither of whom have been to a classroom in the better part of several decades will point to the 'exams getting easier', and declining standards'. Both are wrong or oversimplifying the issue.

The truth is exams now cover a much narrower frame of reference, with the result that students perform better in tests but their breadth of knowledge is much less. This is attributed to the dominance of the annual League tables, which is again true but only tells half the story. League tables were introduced to try and subvert the Hard Left Teaching Unions who were using education as a 'political football'. These people, sadly , haven't gone away and are normally seen at the annual Teachers conferences prading their idiocy to general applause. I have never understood why a teacher is legally barred from being a member of a far-right group such as the BNP and EDL yet is able to act as effectively an 'unconscious fifth columnist' through membership of such groups as the Revolutionary Communist Party or Socialist Worker's Party, all of which had links with the USSR and are believed to have current links, even if only as 'Useful Idiots' with both the PR China and in some cases the DPR Korea. Surely neither is an especially desirable association?

Thus we have the quandary, a number of elements within the teaching profession (and I speak here again from personal experience) have no interest in improving the educational standards of poorer children. the reason behind this is two fold - firstly, to Educate such people might 'deprive the proletariat of Leaders in the coming class struggle' - this from people whose own offpsring I might add, are usuaally educated in the finest state schools or privately (Diane Abbott, Harriet Harperson, Anthony Blair esq) and secondly the entire raison d'etre of Compass/ Labour is the profusion of ever greater state largesse, which requires a continuing stream of state supplicants, else the entire apparatus of the welfare state has no justification beyond providing continuing employment for its workforce. Hence if you educate poorer people, the odds are they may start their own business or at the very least be able to see the desirability, from a social perspective of paid employment rather than subsistence on welfare. this would pull the rug from under the Labour party's base, and can on no account be allowed to happen.

So, either way, the education system seems likely to be churning out a workforce that is, oddly , significantly inferior to those of even the Korea DPR in terms of literacy and numeracy, let alone the PR China. Again, why these countries should have so much less trouble in their schools is perhaps explained by a more authoritarian tradition, but nevertheless, the argument that cuts need to be avoided for fear of jeopardising our ability to educate the future workforce is somewhat blunted by the evidence that ever increasing expenditure on education in the UK has had a deleterious effect on standards, at least according to surveys conducted amongst business Leaders from the CBI and FSB.

2/ 'building the world's best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications'

Again this would seem an unarguable goal - and indeed is central to the 'Anti Cuts' lobby's message - that to reverse the growing possibility of a 'Double Dip recession' we need to invest in infrastructure, specifically relating to transport, although encompassing wider fields of housing and public services. I would again argue that this might be useful, if we had the necessary workforce. As already mentioned, much of the Labour involved in construction has to be imported from abroad, due to school Leavers being unable to hold down even Labouring jobs due to poor attitude and attendance. Again I speak as someone with experience ( mostly lacking from Labour supporters I find!) of environments in the Construction, Retail and Production industries. Jobs in such spheres, whilst not especially intellectual do require a level of discipline and a willingness to endure sometimes less than ideal conditions which is beyond the remit, in many cases, of products of the English state education, especially those with lower qualifications.

Thus we are again facing the issue of how we obtain the workforce for these projects. Also, (and more on this later in Part 2 of the post) even were we to put these projects into place, much current expenditure would be on such frivolities as 'Climate Change co-ordinators' , 'LBGT strategy directors', 'Lesbian outreach Equality workers' and suchlike - I doubt these people are likely to be putting scaffolding up or laying bricks, even had they the skills to do so. Moreover, Labour's policies of encouraging unlimited immigration for political reasons (to 'rub the right's nose in diversity') has meant the south East is now the most densely populated area in Europe. Whilst I, like many other commuters, present or former, bemoan the length of time taken on roadworks or the issues caused by Overground maintenance or works on the Tube, I have some sympathy for the Project Directors of such maintenance. Because of the volume of passengers (check out the Eastern end of the JLE or Southern end of the Northern line for a graphic illustration) any work has to be carred out in a two day weekend window. (thus putting Labour costs up by 50% immediately)Furthermore, the sheer density of the housing means you struggle to work overnight due to potential disturbance to the number of residents nearby! (this even on the M25!) The coalition's failure to repeal the Human Rights Act and put limits on immigration as a matter of some urgency have not helped stem the flow in. Furthermore, 2012 sees the ghastly spectre of the most evil man in British Politics, Ken Livingstone (Hal Berstram's favourite - don't notice you keen on moving back to London, though, Hal) coming back from the political dead like some scene from a Hammer horror movie - last time he called for 2 million more people in the city. Who knows what four years out of office have done to this most devious of minds? Given his relations with Network Rail and London Underground in his previous adminstrations, getting increased spending on infrastructure to actually yield anything other than cost overruns is likely to be tricky.

In short, though I would not question that expenditure on infrastructure is desirable, I would question the current administration's ability to deliver it, let alone Miliband E's. Also, it in no way precludes an examination of significant amount of current expenditure, especially relating to fields of political correctness.

I had originally intended a much shorter post - but this is now becoming so long, I'll need to return to it later......

Is Osborne deliberately undermining UK growth?

2011-07-27T07:10:00.000+01:00

The 2011q2 GDP figures came out yesterday and showed 0.2% growth. That's almost no growth at all, and is on the face of it, a disaster for George Osborne and the Tories (and indeed for their Lib Dem collaborators, whatever Vince Cable's protestations). Certainly the Telegraph - normally a loyal Tory supporting paper - ran a headline today that the Dave Cameron team was starting to get a bit jumpy with Osborne and had basically told him to "boost growth or else." I frankly don't believe that story - I'd be surprised if Cameron and Osborne weren't still best buddies - but there is no doubt that some of the Right, and their supporters, are starting to worry a bit. The conventional wisdom is that if a party screws up on economic policy it's very hard to win a general election, and conversely, if the economy's going well, it's very hard to lose. There are undoubted exceptions to this rule - the Tories won in 1992 in a recession, and lost in 1997 in a boom - but most of the other UK election outcomes since 1959 or so would bear out the hypothesis, in my view.

But is George Osborne that worried? I want to discuss two possible reasons why he might not be. One is my own theory, and the other comes courtesy of a Twitter discussion with my friend Chris Brooke of the Virtual Stoa.

My theory is that Osborne won't be that worried about slow growth for the next 2 years or so and he might actually be secretly pleased - provided that he does get strong growth after 2013 (at least until the election). This is based on my hunch that voters are more worried about the second derivative of output (i.e. whether growth is increasing or decreasing) than the first derivative (whether growth is high or low) or indeed the level itself (whether output is high or low). If Osborne has a choice between a scenario steady but anaemic growth from 2011 through to 2015 - at say 2 percent a year - and poor growth (or no growth at all) for 2 years followed by strengthening recovery for the next 2 years, by which time the economy might be roaring at 3 percent or more, my guess is he will take the second option. Why? Because the second option makes it MUCH easier to sell the story that "the pain is over and things are looking up" to the electorate. This was the trick the Tories pulled off in 1983, for example. The average growth rate in the 1979-83 Thatcher government was abysmal. But by 1983 there was a strong recovery in place and the narrative that the mess had been sorted out (admittedly combined with a severely divided opposition) enabled the Tories to romp home that year.

This is why the spending cuts have been "front-loaded" with the biggest reductions in 2011 and 2012 and it's also why Osborne has aimed to eliminate the structural budget deficit by 2014/15 rather than 2015/16 - to give himself an extra year of headroom to announce tax cuts. So Osborne is trying to "back-load" extra growth for 2014 and 2015 by depressing growth in 2011 and 2012. Cynical and manipulative? Of course. This is the Tories we're talking about here.

My personal view is that this won't work - at least not particularly well - because the hit to the economy from the austerity measures (which have still barely started yet) will be such a drag on growth - indeed, possibly turning it negative for a while - that it will completely derail Osborne's fiscal consolidation plans, probably increasing the size of the structural deficit and making tax cuts quite difficult without offsetting tax increases elsewhere. And if Osborne IS getting worried, it's probably because the (limited) fiscal consolidation so far has had such a negative effect on growth that he's genuinely terrified that more of the same will simply spend Britain spiralling into depression.

But now I want to examine Chris's alternative theory, which is that Osborne welcomes an extended period of low growth because it serves an important political purpose; in his view, it will convince the voters that tax-and-spend social democratic politics is simply unaffordable because the economy can't generate the tax revenues to make it work. And hence the small-state neoliberalism that Osborne wants will be the only game in town - so you'd better get used to it, suckers.

I can certainly see the argument for this - and it would fit with the narrative that the New Labour tax-and-spend approach was essentially a failure because it was fuelled by a horrendous and unsustainable rise in debt - first household debt (up to 2007), and then ballooning government debt (2008 and beyond). If the UK has - for some reason - hit some kind of plateau of permanently low growth, then obviously public spending, in the long run, would only be able to grow much slower than it did during the New Labour years. And Osborne's aim is to convince the voters that the only people who can be trusted to run an economy with low public spending growth are the Tories.

It's an intriguing hypothesis, and I'd go along with it to the extent that if growth does turn out to be paltry over the next five years, then Osborne and the Tories might try to turn a weakness into a strength by criticising Labour as unaffordable. There are echoes of the 1992 Tory election strategy - a surprise victory during a recession, remember - in this approach.

Having said that, I think this is a fall-back option for Osborne, not his first choice, for several reasons First, "this is the best we can do and we're the only people who can manage the economy in this situation of low growth" is harder to sell to the electorate than "things were in a mess and we've sorted it out - don't let the other guys ruin it again". Because of the implosion of Nick Clegg's "Fib Dems" - still flatlining at about 10% on YouGov - the Tories badly need voter converts, not just to maintain the 36% of voters they got last time. if the Lib Dems don't recover - or even if they recover, but only a bit - 36% is not going to cut it for the Tories. Unless they can pull off a true miracle of gerrymandering as part of the boundary changes and seat reductions, if the Tories get 36% next time and Labour gets 40 - or even, say, 38% - Labour's going to win. I don't think the defensive "social democracy is unaffordable" strategy will win many people over. A "V-shaped" recovery and 1983-style triumphalism stands a much better chance.

Second, Osborne stood up at the Budget earlier this year and gave us a load of guff about the economic recovery being "carried aloft on the march of the makers" or some such swaddle. At which point, according to q2 growth statistics, manufacturing promptly bombed, with all the q2 growth being accounted for by services. If you say you've got the policies to restore growth and then growth doesn't happen, after a while people cease to believe in you. Certainly Osborne has been parcelling out blame to almost anyone or anything he can find: global economic turbulence, trade unions, bankers, snow, hot weather, Kate'n'Wills, Nick Clegg, Internet Explorer 6, the guy with the grille on his head from ST:TNG, etc. But people look abroad and see that Germany is growing about 6 times faster than us and France 4 times faster, and they'll say "why the hell aren't the govt sorting it out?" which may well eventually lead to the possible further thought, "maybe they're just incompetent - and Labour could do better." So I think if George goes on blaming everyone except himself he just winds up looking ridiculous. Certainly on the Guardian front page this morning, Ed Balls is having a field day, and once Labour actually gets some policy together on the economy (come on guys, get on with it), I expect their economic competency rating to overtake Osborne's at some point before the next election.

Thirdly, a lot of the ConDem policy platform is based on "removing barriers to growth" - hence the rationale for tearing up the planning system, destroying employment rights, privatising most of our public services, etc. There's not much evidence that any of these changes will actually boost growth - although they will boost profits for the big private sector firms who fund the Tories. Actually, removing planning restrictions probably will boost growth in retailing due to economies of scale - but at the expense of killing traditional high streets and surrendering more of the countryside to huge "big box" buildings such as the Bedford Amazon depot. That could well produce growth in the Gross Domestic Product at the same time as a decline in overall well-being. But once again it's evidence of an attempt at a pro-growth strategy (admittedly from a very right-wing perspective), NOT a chancellor who doesn't care whether he gets growth or not. Otherwise why bother doing things like planning reform which (like the attempted forests sell-off) have the potential to severely alienate Tory voters in rural areas?

So overall, I think Osborne would very much like growth to happen - at least in the second half of the parliament - even though his macroeconomic policy is making it much less likely that it will happen. The reason for the contradiction between wanting growth and pursuing a macro strategy that undermines growth is simple: Osborne believes right-wing "voodoo economics". And in the end, that will probably sink him.

Now on top of this there is a very interesting long-run debate about whether growth at the post-war average (about 2 - 2.5 percent a year in real terms) is going to be possible in future, particularly given environmental constraints, and what that means for politics in the medium-to-long run. That's a very important issue but will need a blog post all of its own - and hopefully it will get one soon... bye for now.

Something rotten in paradise.....

2011-07-25T12:50:00.006+01:00

Coming back from another entanglement with US bureacracy, I turned on the news Friday only to see it dominated by a country which is very rarely in the news, and then normally only in the travel section, the Republic of Norway. According to the latest rolling news coverage, a gunman had opened fire on a camp being attended by members of the youth organisation of the ruling Labour Party. I must admit to almost thinking I had been watching an episode of Fringe and had missed out some of the details. This kind of thing simply does not happen over there. Indeed Norway is often used by a variety of Guardian and Independent journos as almost a counteraction to the contention that their policies will lead to the excesses of Zimbabwe, Cuba or North Korea. Usually in conjunction with it's fellow Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Finland, and to a lesser degree in recent years, Sweden, Norway is seen as proof that the Ed Miliband/Compass model of high taxes, ever higher public expenditure, and squeezing the private sector to pay for 'better public services' can work. As I often say to such people, this area seems to be almost the only part of the World where such a philosophy works. (very much including the UK!)You could include Canada and possibly New Zealand but I'd argue particularly in the latter, the relative liberalisation of agriculture in the 1980's presided over a much greater liberalisation subsequently in other sectors.

Nevertheless, a challenge even if made by people with records as chequered as many Compass supporters and Guardian writers remains a valid one. What is the secret of Norway's success? My first encounter with the country came in the realms of Sport. In 1982, then manager of the England football team, the late Ron Greenwood emerged from one of the most, if not the most bizarre qualifying group ever, to qualify for the World Cup finals of that summer in Spain. Comprising England, Hungary, Switzerland, Romania and Norway, the group featured most of the sides beating each other. England lost in Basel and Bucharest (Romania have not lost to England as of now for 41 years) but co-favourites Hungary were vanquished convincingly in Budapest. Perhaps the most notorious result was the defeat by the unheralded Norwegians in Oslo 2-1, a match immortalised by the commentary of the late Bjorge Lillelien , to then Prime Minister Thatcher that 'your boys took a hell of a beating' Subsequently, Graham Taylor's misfortune at the hands of the Norwegians some 12 years later, and that team's Manager, Egil Olsen's foray into Premiership management with Wimbledon further intrigued me. Norway was considered something of a backwater, albeit one with a very high quality of life. Visitors of my acquaintance had reported tales of beer being more than 7 pounds a pint (indeed a group of Norwegians with whom I worked insisted on a pub crawl in the less than salubrious environs of Basildon, Essex due to the beer being 'so cheap'!) and despite the economic illiteracy of every Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding smoking for the last 30 years, even our own legislators have not been as virulently anti-smoking as the Norwegians - tales of 8 pounds (now more than 11!!) for a pack of cigarettes again fairly legion.

So, what was the secret? Well, the discovery of North Sea Oil was a boon for the two countries under whose waters it was found, that being Norway and the UK. However, unlike the UK, Norway chose to reinvest its massive windfall into World Stock markets, establishing one of the first (indeed possibly the only) 'Sovereign Wealth fund' in Europe, currently the world's second largest. It is estimated that the country has sufficient founds already established to pay policing costs for the next five centuries, the army for the next 1000 years and other such statistics. It's Gini coefficient marking the disparity between the lowest paid and highest paid is also the lowest in the world. Foreign Policy magazine ranks Norway last of all on its 'Failed states' index, citing it as the most stable country in the World. Norway ranks high on every quality of life indicator one cares to mention. Indeed it was slightly jarring to find the Freedom House listing the country in its 'Human Rights' report at all, let alone making its listings incongruously alphabetic (think which country comes before it in the alphabet?) For those arguing that Norway acts as a model for the UK, however, bear in mind, it's significantly smaller population, much greater degree of racial hegemony and the fact it is not in the EU.( for me the crucial reason for its prosperity)

Hence it was strange to find tales of a gunman going crazy - immediately tabloid and press speculation abounded that the atrocity might have been the work of Al Qaeda, a supposition which turned out to be totally false, satirised quite aptly in yesterday's Guardian. It turns out, the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, was a far right extremist, whose 'manifesto' turns out to have been a bizarre collection of conspiracy theories, with much of its commentary plagiarised from a similarly slightly deranged figure from the Early 1990s in the States, the Unabomber . This has been seized on by supporters of multiculturalism and the end of the nation state as evidence that 'Nationalism' is arguably superior to Radical Islam as a clear and present danger to Western Society. It's worth looking at the tone of the Guardian article from Charlie Brooker. It almost relishes the fact that the wide supposition that the Norway tragedy was the work of Islamic extremists was off the mark. However, misguided the comments might have been, based on similar atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London, there was every reason to suppose it might well have been Islamic extremists who committed the crime. the fact they didn't is no reason to suppose the next time it might not be. As the admittedly controversial American writer Mark Steyn points out continually, according to any number of Jihadist websites, the West are 'all infidels'(and thus legitimate targets for Jihad) and whilst these extremists, I would agree constitute a minority of Muslims, they nevertheless pose a real threat to the West's stability.

The problem with this point is that it veers, at least for the Leftist dominated media, including the BBC (funded by a stipend from every household owning a TV in the land) and Guardian, dangerously close to racism. It is this failure to discuss the issue of whether unlimited immigration is desirable or even manageable which leads to the kind of unfocused rage which bred atrocities like Friday's. If a society such as Norway, on every measurable indicator wealthier, more stable and prosperous than the UK struggles to contain the pressures, what chance do we stand?

The picture has become murkier still, with a number of intrepid commentators pointing out that Breivik had links to arguably the sole remaining functional Far right organisation in Britain that comprises more than about 100 people, the English Defence League. This collection of beings, arguably appearing to comprise football hooligans with a vague political ideology is rightly opposed wherever it appears, invariably with the opposition coordinated through an organisation called 'Hope not Hate' which as the moniker says, is committed to 'celebrating Britain's diversity', and opposing extremists. All quite admirable, except that the organisation appears unwilling to countenance any extremism other than from the 'Political right' - look at its links to 'Hate groups' - only two: the EDL and the BNP. (nearly bankrupt and down to a rump of councillors)Any attempt to ask the organisation about its attitude to Muslim extremists merely produces the allegation that the person asking the question is a 'White extremist'. Sadly, until societies across Western Europe begin to examine whether it is desirable to have significant minorities who are wholly opposed to the concepts of Liberal democracies and indeed even a secular society, I fear that the Brevik tragedy will only be the first of many. To quote the late W.B Yeates:

' The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'

Replace Bethlehem with Bradford, Burnley, Blackburn or Birmingham, and that's my fear for the UK. In the meantime, my sincerest condolences to the people of Norway, steadfast friends for many centuries to the UK. And Glenn Beck is a moron......

Stop bugging me man - I'll kick your F**%ing teeth in...

2011-07-18T17:11:00.005+01:00

Or so said the character Nick Curran (played by Michael Douglas) in the Paul Verhoeven film from 1992, Basic Instinct. Thus bugging or hacking into phones for the purposes of providing journalistic exposes has become one of the most momentous (to paraphrase Hal Berstram) events in the country's recent political history. The rapid collapse and closure of the country's largest selling newspaper, the News of the World in a desperate attempt to forestall further fallout was truly stunning. Indeed it appears that the scandal continues to claim victims, with Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson following News International Senior executive Rebekah Brooks in resigning.

Over at 'Comment is free' they appear, to paraphrase Agent Albert Rosenfield from Twin Peaks:

'to have been snacking for too long on the local mushrooms'

and we see the frenzy in full force. What does it portend for the future of British democracy? A trip through the Guardian's comment pages appears to be reminscent of a trip through one of Star Trek's parallel universes. David Cameron's political obituaries have been written by various ex-Soviet sympathisers and veteran fellow travellers, and opposition Leader 'Miliband E' or 'Mr Ed' (named after a 60's American show involving a talking horse) is suddenly touted as a 'man of courage' for his sudden conversion (after being part of two administrations who shamelessly courted News International for the previous three elections) to greater transparency on media ownership. Prize chameleon Nick Clegg adds to his reputation for principle and veracity by shamelessly exploiting the scandal to try and shore up his collapsing vote. All we need now is something from Chris Huhne and the confusion will be complete.

So, is the Coalition finished and more importantly, is the phone hacking affair the figurative 'end' for Cameron? I think not but would agree that I had reservations about using as tarnished a figure as Andy Coulson in any kind of advisory capacity, especially given that the phone hacking scandal has been running in 'Private Eye' for at least the past eight years. Whilst I wouldn't want to see public policy dictated by Ian Heslop and co (they probably would be less than enthusiastic than I am) even a cursory glance at this journal would have raised (or should have raised) serious question marks about his suitability. Nevertheless, Coulson is no longer in position. The question becomes whether Cameron knew that he was involved in phone hacking when he hired him - at the moment that doesn't seem the case and I do not see how the pro Sino Guardian can have any indication otherwise.

The alleged phone hacking incidents took place during the period between 2004 and 2008, which unless I am very much mistaken, saw a Labour government in power. (and one of the worst ever seen in the country's history, of which 'Mr.Ed' was a key part) Thus the nauseous eruptions from Mr G.Brown esquire, returning to the Commons after a year's sabbatical rank as some of the most hypocritical ever put on the record in Hansard, as in deference to the Guardian's staff some of them have recognised.

Is the scandal damaging to Cameron, and by extension, the coalition? for sure, but a quick read through 'Comment is free' or indeed the BBC website will reveal the real significance of the scandal. Neither the Guardian nor the BBC have ever been enamoured of the greater circulation and currency of the News International publications. This is seen as an ideal opportunity to circumscribe the debate and significantly narrow the range of right wing viewpoints available to people. In a wider context, I'd argue the significance is in fact far greater, potentially in the US, where the New York Times (which I read most days over here)and, by extension the Obama White House, are sharpening the knives for Murdoch's Fox News channel. If, as has been speculated, there was hacking of 9/11 victims, then the consequences could be even more far -reaching than they currently are. However, in a UK context, let us not delude ourselves this is more than an aberration, and not an opportunity to limit political discourse to amicable discussion between acolytes of the Guardian and BBC.

apologies for continued outages

2011-07-17T16:28:00.002+01:00

Hello punters,

very pleased to see a stream of articles by Van Patten on here because I have had Zero Time (to quote Tonto's Expanding Head Band) to do any posts longer than a couple of sentences the last fortnight or so. Which is a shame, because momentous things are going on in British politics, which I would like to comment on... but it will have to wait until Thursday or Friday this coming week, at least.

In the meantime... enjoy the Murdoch bonfire.

There is no F**king coke......

2011-07-15T13:48:00.003+01:00

Or so says the character Dean Keaton in the Bryan Singer film ,'the Usual Suspects' played by Gabriel Byrne. Whenever I see someone from UK uncut on the TV, I feel like saying:

'There are - NO f***ing cuts'

As the excellent Christopher Booker points out:
in fact public expenditure has risen, continues to rise and this despite it having increased by more than 100% since 1997. Nevertheless, as Giroscoper suggests, David Cameron is facing an uphill struggle in convincing the electorate that his government is heading for anything other than being ignominiously turned out of office, despite the almost laughably inept Labour leader, Microblair II's attempts to alienate floating middle class voters by accompanying recent rioting protesters attacking BHS and Santander stores in Central London.

Perhaps the key to understanding why this is to reflect on the profound changes which have taken place in society and in electoral terms since 1997. For starters, since then nearly 1.2 million people have come into the country from across the globe, a policy deliberately encouraged by the previous administration for the express purpose of 'engineering a multicultural society' and 'rubbing the Right's nose in diversity', at least according to Speech Writer Andrew Neather. As a rule, immigrants are more likely to vote for Labour (although there are exceptions - the Ugandan Asians who fled Idi Amin in the 1970's tended to have seen real socialism in action, and didn't much like it)

Secondly, the constituencies were redrawn to give Labour a significant electoral advantage. Both Wales and Scotland, despite diminishing populations retained their representations, and as a rule smaller Northern constituencies were retained and the South East's got much bigger.

Thirdly, the public sector expanded by over a million people, providing Labour with a client state from which to draw support and which would also reward Loyal Labour supporters with salaries and pensions out of the reach of many working in the non-financial part of the private sector.

Postal voting was also made simpler, and with it resultant fraud has increased significantly. Two enormous scams were uncovered in the West Midlands. the judge commenting said that the practises were what might be 'expected in a banana republic'

All in all, it amounted to a significant uphill struggle for Cameron. The BBC (funded by a stipend from every TV watching household in the country) poured out incessant vitriol against the Conservatives and their supporters practically daily from May 2nd 1997. Even the Tories heavy defeats in 1997 and 2001 did little to stop the scorn. Of course hard left controlled state educators also clung to a narrowly left wing view of the world and woe betide anyone who challenged it. (I speak here from personal experience) In short, a number of commentators wondered if the Conservatives could ever win again. That Cameron managed to achieve the results he did last time round deserves some credit. Had David Davis won the race for the Leadership back in 2005 (and I backed him) it remains questionable if they would have been able to achieve even 307 seats.

Yet, as Giroscoper posits, the coalition seems to have hit the buffers, and is under fire both from the Left, and the right of the Tory party. What then, can he do?

1/ I'd abandon the attempts to reform the voting system to AV. Whilst as a UKIP supporter, the AV system would arguably benefit my party the most, what we need to look at is Franchise reform. Arguably not really tackled in over 65 years, what we need to look at is a way of ensuring that the left is never able to again build a coalition of government paid supporters to engineer a permanantly left wing regime again. Thus, we need to go back to potentially plural votes for those in the Private sector. They create the wealth, and thus should not be able to have an admittedly brilliantly created coalition of state supplicants deprive them of it. There would of course be exceptions for front line workers, but for the most part this would go a long way to stifling Labour's base.

2/ Cameron needs to take a harder line with the EU, and in this regard would have enormous support. It is telling that the next Treaty is unlikely to have even a single country put it to a referendum. Ireland having been told in no uncertain terms that for the next Treaty, the EC cannot risk having to rerun yet another referendum. UKIP seems certain to top the poll at the 2014 Euro elections, especially in the wake of UK funding for bailouts in Greece, and, as seems likely Portugal

3/ Cameron needs to address, as a matter of some urgency, the continuing anomalies of the 'West Lothian' question whereby, Scotland (and to a lesser degree Wales) continue to act as de facto independent states whilst continuing to provide nearly 40% of Labour manpower within the Commons. Recent revelations that Per Capita income in The north of Scoltand was below Slovenia and in West Wales, below Tianjin, arguably due to more than 60% of employment/income in both areas being dependent on the state makes this and Point 1/ even more pressing. In short, we have to consider whether the UK, and in particular the South West and South East of the country can continue to keep funding the less productive regions.

4/ Stop attempting to curry favour with the likes of Polly Toynbee, Gary Younge or other attendees of 'Compass' (sadly not the catering company - thos people I might cultivate!) conferences. These people despise the Conservative (nearly always renamed Tory in their writings) Party and everything it stands for. you aren't going to get them reconciled with your viewpoint, so your best bet is to ignore them, and if they go on the rampage, clamp down hard. It worked for Lady Thatcher in the 1980's.

P.S This post was originally written in April of this year, and as part of a 'house clearing exercise concomitant with sorting out my new abode on the other side of the Atlantic, I decided given the amount of original text already in the post it probably merited publication. A slightly more nuanced post on postulating why the apparent disjunction between, on the one hand 'savage cuts in public expenditure' and an ever increasing overall bill for public expenditure will await completion of my 'backlog' of posts

Requiem for a Heavyweight.....

2011-07-14T19:34:00.009+01:00

Final part of the trilogy on the Republican challengers for 2012. This is almost a 'wishful thinking' post, as all of these personalities might, by some reckoning have a strong chance of defeating Obama given the continuing economic woes in the US. Originally about four candidates, the latest from the Huffington Post has forced a fifth name into the reckoning, not least because the other four have declared (in one case categorically) that they are definitely not in the running.

The candidate who has not ruled himself out at some point over the last 18 months is Rick Perry, current Governor of Texas, (successor to George W Bush in the role) although it should be emphasised that he is not even at the stage of an exploratory committee as yet, so would have some major catching up to do were he to run. Perry's politics fit very much into the Southern Republican mould - he is strongly religious, and an advocate of smaller government. He is on record as mentioning he might look to repeal the 16th amendment to the Constitution. This enables the Government to raise Income taxes without distributing the proceeds evenly amongst the states. As is pretty much mandatory within Texan politics, Perry favours Capital punishment, and is on the record as challenging the legitmacy of 'anthropogenic Global Warming'. So far, so relatively predictable, but unlike his predecessor in the role as Texas gubernator, Perry lacked the familial connections, and is thus somewhat more intellectual than W (admittedly hardly the most pre-eminent of minds to hold the US' highest office) I don't think Perry would win in an election against Obama but he would be a more credible candidate than many that have thrown their hat in the ring. Texas alone carries now 38 electoral college votes (an increase of four to reflect population trends since 2008), second only to California and Perry, although not the candidate of choice for the Tea Party and some of the Christian right, is likely to be more popular with that base than say, Romney or Huntsman. He would certainly prompt the Democrats to sharpen their activity up, if nothing else.

A candidate who should be familiar to veterans of cuts protests and anti war marches (amongst other fellow travellers) is 'Jeb' Bushbrother of the former president and former governor of Florida. Could we see a third Bush in the White House. Leftists of all hues will be aghast at the prospect and surely, it would be pointed out that the somewhat chequered record of his brother would count as an insurmountable problem for him. Fortunately for those anti war veterans who considered the 43rd President a less desirable visitor to the UK than Nicolae Ceaucescu and Robert Mugabe the elder Bush has closed the door on the possibility of a 2012 run. Jeb's politics do differ somewhat from the Younger 'W''s and for many in the Us political scene he would pose far more of a challenge than him in terms of an opponent. He was the first Republican ever to win re-election to ther governorship of Florida, and his standing amongst Cuban exiles is likely to play well in other states with quite high Hispanic populations. Undoubtedly, the Left would rail against the coming of another Bush but I think even his detractors would argue he posed a serious threat to a second term.

Less well known to UK readers will be Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who has led the opposition to the Debt cutting plans of Obama in the House of Representatives, and trailed the 'Republican alternative' to Obama's plans, 'the Path to prosperity'. As with Jeb Bush, Ryan has ruled himself out of the running for 2012, but he has the advantage of relative youth (only 41) and being the 'Public face' of the opposition to Obama within the legislature. His position on social issues is relatively unmapped, although his Catholic faith might not play well with some of the 'Tea Party' fringe. The proposals he co-authored drew heavy flak from Liberal economists, foremost amongst them, Giroscoper's sage, Paul Krugman, as being uncosted and unworkable. Nevertheless, Ryan's Northern roots in what is a relatively Liberal state (Wisconsin) might have given him a more general appeal than the hotch potch of candidates who have declared.

The fourth candidate, and arguably one who would be second most dangerous to Obama is Chris Christie, current governor of New Jersey. Described as looking like Tony Soprano from the HBO series, Christie's success in winning the 'Garden state' has Democratic strategists worrying that his message is arguably the one most likely to resonate with the widest voter pool. Christie is of part Irish, part italian ancestry which should make him formidable in the Eastern states which are traditional locks for the Democrats. His governorship has been marked by cuts to Public spending and a refusal to raise state taxes. Nevertheless, unlike some of the more extreme candidates, Christie is relatively speaking, socially Liberal, and thus would make a dangerous opponent for Obama. Nevertheless, at this time, he has ruled himself out of the running.

The candidate who is described is the Republican 'Luke Skywalker' and arguably on ethnic grounds poses the greatest challenge is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Winning his seat in 2010 by a margin of 19 points, Rubio is hailed as the 'counter- Obama' although he has stated categorically that he will not run in 2012. Rubio is only 40 years old and his Hispanic roots would go a long way to mobilising support in what is the fastest growing constituency in the United states. One issue with those who perhaps get a little 'over excited' at the prospect of a Rubio presidential run, is that unlike 'African - Americans', Hispanic voters do not tend to vote 'en bloc' (Obama carried 95% of the Black vote in 2008) As a relatively recent entrant to the Senate, his political positions are evolving although he is socially Conservative. Nevertheless, were he able to unite the Hispanic vote along the same lines as Obama managed in 2008 with the Black vote, then he would most likely take 124 electoral College votes (California @ 55, Texas @ 38 and New York @ 31) which would, given the innate conservatism of many of the smaller states, make the winning post for the Democrats an insurmountable obstacle.

As pointed out, initially, this post was something of an exercise in 'wishful thinking' To date, even Rick Perry has not yet declared himself in the running. Currently, Mitt Romney remains the favourite, although he seems likely to lose in the somewhat eccentric state of Iowa, to Michele Bachmann! Either way, it looks like being a long 2012 for supporters of the Republican Party. Now where's the ghost of Ronald Reagan when you need him.....

You committed the crime, you gotta do your time

2011-07-10T13:52:00.003+01:00

One day very soon, I will get round to talking about phone hacking... just to say, for the moment, that the last 7 days of media coverage have been have been the most uplifting I can remember for probably a decade and a half.

But in the meantime, I have to say something about Paul White aka Lord Hanningfield, who has, fortunately, been sentenced to 9 months in prison for fiddling his expenses. The Essex Chronicle reports that Hanningfield is 'suicidal' and says "the only thing I can do is plunge a knife into my dog and then myself".

To which the response has to be: why kill a perfectly good dog?

We also learn from this Daily Mail piece that Hanningfield is still claiming £11,500 expenses allowance despite being in prison. He's entitled to do that until his appeal is heard later this month - but is it any wonder that people think the Tories are a gang of cheap, greedy killers when people like this guy are at the heart of the local Essex party? Funny how White wasn't suicidal when he was claiming for overnight accommodation during late-night House of Lords sittings he never attended....

Hanningfield was originally a pig farmer and presumably that's where he got addicted to walking through shit.

And death shall have no dominion.....

2011-07-07T16:54:00.006+01:00

Have just watched the superb documentary Senna, it's probably time to cogitate on how a premature passing away gives undue weight to the legacy of someone whose death is somewhat unexpected. Not only prompted by two old schoolfriends who had seen the film in the less than salubrious environs of Basildon, I felt it essential to watch this film, and I was intrigued by what I saw.

For those of you unfamiliar with my fascination, I must confess to a degree of annoyance with George Monbiot, , the main North Korean agent/'Global warming' sympathiser in the Guardian who has called for Formula 1 to be banned on what appear to be increasingly spurious environmental grounds, thus denying enjoyment to the tens of thousands who attend the sport over the globe, and the millions of followers on Television. However, the misanthropy/inadequacy or communist bent of the bulk of the environmentalist movement is not really the purpose of the post. The film comprises an amalgam of 'live' footage and contemporary interviews both with Ayrton Senna himself, and his principal rival of the late 1980s/early 1990s, Alain Prost , alongside others. As a mere Schoolboy in those far off days of 1986 to 1994, the film brought back many memories for me, and for that reason alone, I would presume anyone with even a vague interest in Formula 1 is likely to have seen it already. If not, I would recommend it unhesitatingly.

It would be very wrong to suggest that the film is without flaws, however, and these flaws are symptomatic of a wider tendency for society in General to perhaps magnify the virtues, whilst diminshing (or indeed ignoring altogether) the faults of people who have died prematurely or in tragic circumstances. To put the film into context, Formula 1 in the period 1970 to 1986 was an inherently dangerous Sport. 14 drivers lost their lives but prior to the fateful weekend in San Marino in May 1994, the last fatality had been Italian driver Elio de Angelis , killed during a testing session in France in 1986, primarily due to a scandalous absence of any safety marshals, an oversight rectified all too late for the talented veteran. Despite several major incidents in the succeeding seasons (two stick in my mind, Austrian Gerhard Berger in 1989 and Irishman Martin Donnelly at Jerez in the following season, which is mentioned in the film) until 1994 Formula 1 had been fatality free. Part of my interest in the sport during the years 1988 to 1994 was also the profusion of what can only be described as slightly shambolic teams at the back of the grid - such doyens of mediocrity and ineptitude as Rial, Zakspeed, Onyx, AGS, Osella/Fondmetal, Eurobrun, Coloni and both Giroscoper's and my all time favourites, Life (all showcased at the excellent F1 rejects site )which made qualification for the grid a somewhat more arduous process than is the case in the much reduced current Formula 1 field.

From that perspective, I had a keen interest in the period showcased in the film, and can recall quite vividly many of the races focused on and the titanic battles between Senna, most definitely portrayed as the film's protagonist and the more cerebral Prost, who is made to appear as the moustachioed (or in this case curly-haired) villain. Whilst there is an element of truth to this portrayal, the film take various liberties with the truth. The first error is to deliver the assertion that Prost's nickname 'The Professor' is because he would settle for fifth place if that was all that was required, in contrast to Senna, who would continue to race to win even if he had the Championship in the bag. This is a near travesty of the truth. Prost, an exceptional driver who held the record for race wins for the better part of a decade, was given the name due to his focusing on car set-up, enabling him to overcome people who were arguably a faster car-driver combination through judicious reduction in tyre wear or skilful driving. The film then focuses on the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix a race stopped 32 laps in due to heavy rainfall and dangerous conditions with Senna actually overtaking Prost just after the race had been 'red flagged' to indicate its cessation. This is then spun to imply that Prost 'could not handle the rain'. It conveniently ignores the fact that Prost, in Formula 1 for four seasons prior to Senna's arrival, had seen three good friends,Gilles Villeneuve ,, Patrick Depailler , and Didier Pironi killed or seriously injured, and as a result was understandably keen not to suffer the same fate.

I'll return to the treatment of Prost and could probably have lived with the near-libelling of one driver, but the film really annoyed me when it considered the 1992 and 1993 Formula 1 seasons, as well as the races prior to the fateful Imola Grand Prix in 1994. The 1992 season in which the Williams of Briton Nigel Mansell reigned supreme, is presented as being 'stolen' from Senna by electronic chicanery, and Williams having such a superior car that Senna could not touch it, in spite of being the best driver. This is the kind of false prospectus that in some less Liberal states could land the perpetrator a custodial sentence. Both Mansell, (the '92 champion) and Prost were exceptional drivers, as anyone who watched the sport would testify, and I would argue only hideous bad luck at Canada prevented Mansell from challenging in '91 when an admittedly brilliant Senna won his third title. Then, when considering 1994, the season of Senna's death, the film skates over the fact that Michael Schumacher had won convincingly in the first two rounds, attributing it once more to technical chicanery, and implying that the Benetton team of that season had somehow cheated by retaining some of the electronic aids from the previous season.

This diatribe may dissuade people from watching this film,which is not the intention - but as the book 'Senna versus Prost' by Malcolm Folley points out (and I would also recommend it), Prost is still around to account for his actions at the time, whilst premature death lends a halo to Senna that the Director of the biopic, Asif Kapadia seems unable to examine more critically. In his defence, the untimely death of someone does lend their achievements a gloss that prevents at time their achievements being forensically looked at. I was going to illustrate with three contemporary Labour Party figures - John Smith, Mo Mowlam and Robin Cook, but the point is brought home by arguably the most famous assassination victim of all time , John F Kennedy, and the First president of the Irish Free State, Michael Collins. Kennedy was instrumental in setting up increased American commitment to Vietnam, and his dubious connections with criminal elements would surely have led him to the same unfortunate defea0t in 1968 that his far more worthy Successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson suffered. Collins was a bloody, violent enemy of democracy, arguably only redeemed by the fact that his Republican enemies were if anything even more extreme. Nevertheless, their reputations remain enhanced by their premature passing. Let's hope nothing happens to Ed Miliband in the immediate future!

Public sector unions: Strikes vs negotiation vs revolution

2011-07-01T15:27:00.002+01:00

I was out on the picket line in Chelmsford with the "Big Society Breakfast" yesterday, and I hope that direct action enables the wider anti-cuts movement to build more bridges with the trade unions. The ConDem government is clearly looking to use the economic crisis as an excuse for slashing public sector pay and remuneration while their financial backers - a small group of very rich and powerful people - take a larger and larger share of the national cake. Clearly, in these circumstances it would be criminal not to support the strikers.

However, I do wonder whether the public sector unions are in danger of falling into a trap set by the government, which wants to use the strike action to turn public opinion against the strikers - as happened often in the 1980s (with strikes by teachers, for example).

The problem for the unions in the short run is that it is very hard to see the government backing down on this issue - they have bet the complete reputation of the government on this insane deficit reduction strategy which they can't U-turn on without looking like a complete bunch of fools. So, they will most likely pursue their current economic policy - which includes vicious cuts in public sector pay and conditions - no matter what. That means that, short of a change of government - either through the ballot box or through some kind of revolution - attempts to change the govt's policy through industrial action are unlikely to work.

Therefore my conclusion on the strikes is that they are justified but strategically naive. With strike action unlikely to force a better deal by itself, what other options are open to the trade union movement to secure a better deal for public sector workers (and indeed, in the longer run, also for private sector workers?) There seem to be two options.

One is for union leaders to do a behind-the-scenes deal with Ed Miliband - who, despite not backing today's strikes, is surely still the most instinctively union-friendly leader Labour has had probably since Neil Kinnock, at least. The deal could essentially be an update of Labour's 1970s social contract policy - for a future Labour govt to make alterations to pensions, terms and conditions, and industrial relations legislation after the next election the ConDem settlement after the next election which are more favourable to public sector workers.

At the same time, the next Labour government should legislate for better working conditions for workers in the private sector - who have been hit much harder than the public sector workforce by the neoliberal assault on workplace rights and the virtual eradication of decent pensions from the private sector over the last 25 years. It's the decline in private sector pensions that allows the govt to present an attack on public sector pensions as "restoring fairness" when in fact the fair thing to do would be to ensure that private sector workers had access to decent pensions rather than an ever larger share of profits going to top earners and shareholders.

That's the reformist option. The second option is revolutionary - and would have seemed ludicrous 5 years ago, but now seems increasingly plausible and perhaps inevitable. A revolutionary approach involves the unions organising on the ground while waiting for the ConDem economic policies to fail spectacularly (as they probably will), with the negative impact of the cuts on growth producing a debt spiral which may well drag the UK into the same deflationary vortex which has enveloped Ireland and Greece over the last few years. The sheer volume and frequency of demonstrations in Greece makes it look to me as if they are now very close to a revolutionary situation, and this article by Matina Stevis in the Guardian concurs with my assessment. (as does, reading between the lines, Paul Mason.) If a crisis like this were to develop in the UK - a real possibility in the next few years - trade unions need to seize the opportunity to overthrow the current economic system and replace it with one that puts workers' interests first.

These two options - working for progressive political reform through the ballot box via the Labour party, and working for revolution should the conditions arise - are in theory completely opposed to one another, but pragmatically I'd argue they're two sides of the same coin. A priori it's impossible to know whether conditions in the UK will deteriorate to the point where the current economic system breaks down. And realistically, I don't think public sector unions can force that to happen. However, it's quite possible that it WILL happen, without much further need for intervention on their part. And so they need to be ready. Meanwhile, in case it doesn't happen, they also need to be pushing for reforms through the current system so as to avoid being left high and dry if the revolutionary moment passes.

Some might call this strategy "hedging their bets". I call it insurance against most (though not all) eventualities.

Dammit - Ed got there before me!

2011-06-24T07:48:00.004+01:00

I've had the idea of a post on why Labour's system of shadow cabinet elections are a bad idea for some time now. The 2010 elections threw up mainly the members of the previous Labour cabinet who hadn't ruled themselves out or left parliament, plus a few complete no-marks. There were very few Ed Miliband backers in there and very little for him to work with, talent wise. A few of the top names have done OK - Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham. Most of the rest have been irrelevant or invisible. Meanwhile, there has been no mechanism for Ed to bring promising new MPs from the 2010 intake - e.g. Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umanna, Stella Creasy, Lisa Nandy etc. into the front line.
So the system is crying out for a change; and I was going to post at some point about this. When I got around to it. (?!)

But I don't have to make that post now, because Ed has announced that he wants to drop the system anyway. And Amen to that. There seems to have been a huge amount of support for this across the PLP, with two different groups coalescing around Ed. Neo-Blairites like it because they are in favour of centralised control anyway - that's why they dug Iraq etc. - and Ed's backers like it because it gives ED more control.

The main dissenters are hard left MPs like John McDonnell, who are arguing against the move on the grounds that it will reduce accountability. And if the Labour leader was just a parachuted-in appointment who couldn't be gotten rid of, I'd agree with John. But the leader is open to challenge. If Labour MPs, party members and affiliates don't like what Ed is doing, he can be replaced. THAT's real democracy. All the current system is managing to achieve is to minimise the chances of Labour winning the next election by lumbering Ed with a shadow cabinet team many of whom didn't vote for him and don't get on with him. That's in nobody's interests, really (except for the couple of people who think David Miliband could walk in at any moment and save the day).

This move shows that Ed is a skilled tactical politician - and if the PLP agrees to dropping shadow cabinet elections (as I think it will), we can expect a much stronger shadow cabinet team, very soon. Nice work, Ed.

Free time killed the Internet star

2011-06-22T16:29:00.002+01:00

Have been worryingly absent from the airwaves for ten days which given my voluntarily unemployed status really isn't an excuse. I can only say that anyone with editor access (which is only two people!) will be able to see a whole posse of posts lined up but in progress. I hope to return with possibly six or seven entries for your delectation then. In the meantime, keep it real!

My own advice for Ed Miliband

2011-06-12T23:00:00.002+01:00

Today's Observer interviews 9 "left-leaning thinkers" asking them each the same set of questions about what Ed Miliband should be doing as Labour leader. I found 8 of the 9 useful; even Robert Philpot of Progress (an organisation I am no great fan of, although to their credit they backed Yes2AV) manages to impart a certain wisdom to proceedings. The one person whose advice appeared to be completely worthless was Kitty Ussher of Demos, who appears to think that all that's needed is to copy Tony Blair, circa 1995, despite the fact that most of the collapse in Labour's vote total between 1997 and 2010 occurred on Blair's watch, and Brown ran in 2010 essentially on a continuation of the Blair agenda.

Anyway, I thought it would be good fun to offer my own take on the Observer questions in the hope that Ed might come across it at some stage. So here is my advice to Ed:

What is your verdict on Ed Miliband's leadership so far?
In terms of putting the mechanics in place to build a policy platform for 2015 (policy review, "Refounding Labour" consultation", etc.), pretty good. In terms of articulating a clear forward vision, we've had flashes of it (his initial leader speech at Labour Party conference in September 2010, his speech to Resolution Foundation on the "squeezed middle", etc.) but he needs to do a lot more of that to give "new generation Labour" more definition as a work in progress. Marks out of 10: 7.

What "big idea" in terms of policy/strategy do you think Labour should pursue in opposition?
Reforming the economy to provide a comprehensive alternative to neoliberal capitalism. In the first instance that needs fundamental reform of the financial system and corporate governance, much greater equality, and much more democracy across the economy. Quite simply, Labour needs to an updated version of its 1974 manifesto commmitment - "a fundamental shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of ordinary people (the "squeezed middle and bottom") and their families. And in many ways, a fundamental repudiation of New Labour.

Who should Labour be appealing to to win the next election? (Disaffected Lib Dems, soft Tory vote, the core vote?)
All these and more; "people who've never voted because they think all the parties are full of crap" would be another category. At the end of the day, rather than saying "we need this policy for group A and this for group B" it's much better to say "these are the policies we believe in and we think are best for the country, now how do we convince group A of this, group B of this", and so on? In other words do not try to assemble a ragbag of incoherent policies on the basis of a series of focus groups but try for something holistic and coherent (which can then be contrasted with the incoherence of the ConDem coalition).

What would be your top tip for Ed Miliband to give steel to his leadership?
Externally, start hitting Cameron a lot harder. I've seen speeches at places like the Compass conference by Ed where he's really set the room on fire and he needs to start doing that at PMQs. Angry, but razor-sharp.
Internally, you need to put the Blairites on a tight leash. This is meant to be a "spin-free" shadow cabinet. That means that leakers - if they are in the cabinet - are fair game to be sacked.

What slogan would you suggest for Labour?
I thought Maurice Glasman's suggestion - "Ed Gets It" - was pretty good.

Ed Miliband and the "bastards" who want Labour to lose next time round

2011-06-12T10:47:00.009+01:00

Now some of you kids out there may remember John Major... for the benefit of anyone under 30, Major was a Tory PM, sort of ran the country for several years in the 1990s, struggling with a small parliamentary majority against Eurosceptic backbench rebels, a growing reputation for sleaze and incompetence, and continual threats of a leadership challenge which led him to resign his own party leadership in the summer of 1995, securing a thumping re-election win against John "Mr Spock" Redwood.

At one famous meeting in 1993 Major referred to three of his Eurosceptic cabinet colleagues as "bastards". They were never officially named but they were probably Michael Howard, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo (then in his hard right phase).

Now, the "bastards" were not enough of a hindrance to Major to ensure that he lost the 1997 election, because the economic disaster of Black Wednesday (even though it was actually the start of a period of rapid growth for the UK economy) did that by itself. Even if there had been no "bastards", the Tories would have lost - pretty heavily - in 1997. What the "bastards" probably managed to do was turn a heavy defeat into a rout, making it impossible for the Tories to come back in 2001 and even in 2005.

But the Major era already feels like ancient history - so why bring it up now? Because there are "bastards" somewhere in the Blairite hard right of the Labour party and one or more of those bastards is gunning for Ed Miliband (and also Ed Balls). The spate of leaks in both the Telegraph (which we fully expect this kind of behaviour from) and the Guardian (for which it is a most unwelcome recent development) is strong evidence for some kind of anti-Eds plot.

In a recent post I was very uncomplimentary about Labour's hard right - some might call them the LINOs (Labour In Name Only) or the FOTC (Friends of the ConDems), among other names - in a recent post when I accused them of living in 1996. In fact, that is probably too modern - they're living in 1993. For them, Ed Miliband is John Major, they think he's crap, and they want to take him down.

But how? What is the mechanism? As Dan Hodges - surely a supporter of the plot, though unlikely to have the clout to orchestrate it - has pointed out, a new Labour leadership contest this side of the next general election is most unlikely. Even if the present parliament makes it to 2015 (which I'd only give 50-50 odds at best on), the Labour party does not really have the funds to spend millions of pounds on another 4-month contest. Also there is no obvious right-wing alternative candidate for leader apart from David Miliband, who I just can't see launching himself into a rematch against his brother.

But if there is no appetite for a contest, then there is only one way of changing the leader before the next general election: Ed Miliband would have to be persuaded to do an Iain Duncan Smith and step down in the party interest. It's worth thinking very carefully about how bad Ed's performance would have to be, and how bad the party's situation would have to be, for this to be seen as the best thing for him to do.

Based on 9 months in the job, I'd say Ed's performance is OK - neither brilliant, nor crap. I don't watch Prime Minister's Questions very often because it's dull repetitive knockabout, but based on collating all the evidence from media accounts and bloggers and allowing for bias, Ed seems to be pretty much even stevens against Cameron at the moment. I think he needs to point out that Cameron is a serial liar and that ConDem policy is in total disarray on several key fronts, but once he can start to land big hits like that, he'll be coming off best pretty much every week.

Ed hasn't managed to build on his September 2010 Labour conference speech to articulate a vision of "New Generation" Labour as much as he should have done - but he has got the policy review process going, and that's sensible and important. F*** knows why he put Liam Byrne in charge of it, but there you go. Ed has also managed to put the "squeezed middle" in the centre stage of public debate. Both Eds need to be much more visible in pointing out the failures of ConDem economic and social policies, and in articulating a clear alternative strategy, but the potential is there.

For Ed to be persuaded to resign, the Labour Party's situation would have to be hopeless with him at the helm and moreover, Ed would have to feel it's hopeless. The former scenario seems most unlikely, the latter pretty much impossible. Currently, Labour is regularly 5 to 8 points in front of the Tories on YouGov polling. The May local elections were not spectacularly good but nor were they a disaster for Labour (except in Scotland). Quite simply things are Not Bad Enough for a "Stand Down Ed" bandwagon to roll. And even if the situation did deteriorate somehow, from what we know of him so far, Ed is a tenacious cookie - as was his mentor Gordon Brown - and having secured this job, there's no reason to suppose he'd just walk away from it if the going got tough.

Now, unless the "bastards" are deluded they must know all of the above. So therefore, I conclude that their objective is not to force a leadership change before the next general election, but instead to destabilise Ed's leadership and the Labour party with the ultimate aim of replacing him AFTER the next election. For Ed to be replaced, Labour would certainly have to lose the next general election. From which, in turn, I conclude that the "bastards" are deliberately trying to make Labour lose the next election so that they can say "I told you so" and they can take over the Labour party.

As political strategies go, this is about as underhand, counter-productive and downright vicious as you can get. But it's also utterly predictable. No-one said politics was a nice business, and Ed showed he could handle this kind of crap - and dish it out in return - during the Labour leadership campaign.

It's tempting to call for Ed to round on his critics - perhaps with a "back me or sack me" appeal along the lines of what Major did in 1995 - but I think that would be extremely counterproductive at this stage because the plot really is not that strong, whatever the Sunday papers think. Far better to ride it out and stick to the main game plan, while also doing more to articulate that "Vision Thing" that so many of us want to see. 2012 will get easier for Ed IMHO because the economy will probably be in dire straits, Ken will most likely beat Boris for London Mayor in 2012 (a huge psychological boost - I'll post on the electoral logistics of this separately), and also there will be fresh shadow cabinet elections in autumn 2012 where a lot of the Blairite "dead wood" is likely to drop out in favour of fresher - and mostly more Ed-friendly - faces. In retrospect, 2011 will no doubt turn out to have been the high water mark of the anti-Ed rumblings. I think we have to suffer a few months more of the "bastards", but so what? They have a few high-level media contacts and leaked papers but not much else, and their bark is a lot worse than their bite. To paraphrase Blade Runner: "they're not police, they're little people".

That milk'll get cold on you...but it's getting warmer now

2011-06-06T16:52:00.011+01:00

About a month ago, I profiled the current contenders for the Republican nomination - fast forward four weeks and the picture has changed somewhat with Donald Trump'swithdrawal and the subsequent pullouts of Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels have narrowed the field somewhat - not helped by the fact that for all their flaws, both Daniels and Huckabee might have had a respectable chance of putting up a reasonable show!

The rest of the post will concentrate on those other candidates not mentioned in the original post who have or are rumoured to be on the verge of putting themselves forward. A subsequent post later in the week will consider the four potential candidates who could really give the Democrats a scare were they to declare themselves.

A definite 'Mos Eisley' addition to the field were he to announce his candidacy is Roy Moore. No prizes for guessing that Moore doesn't hail from either the West or East coast of the States. His most famous moment in the public eye came back in 2003 when he was removed from his office as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by a US district court instructing that he remove a granite monument to the Ten Commandments which had he had placed in the Alabama Supreme Court building. Extremely popular with the 'religious right', he would be expected to surpass the defeat of Walter Mondale if selected for the nomination.

Slightly more credible for moderate opinion is John Huntsman Jr. He served the Obama administration for 2 years as its ambassador to the PR China. Hunstman was a former governor of the Mormon state of Utah, arguably one of the most socially conservative in the entire Union. Nevertheless, his positions on Climate change and support of the economic stimulus plan suggested by the President make him one of the few candidates likely to have some appeal to moderate voters. however, as with a number of other runners, the likely upshot of his relative moderation is to make him UNACCEPTABLE to the extremes of the Republican base. He is also said to lack charisma and a degree of name recognition with ordinary Americans.

A somewhat unexpected runner entered the campaign in the form of former Pizza magnate Herman Cain. Perhaps the most interesting things about him are that he has never held elected office (which in an era when the US, just as much as the UK has been brought to its knees by 'professional' politicians is arguably not necessarily such a bad thing) and that he, like Obama is black. In terms of political positions, he is the usual pro-Israel, anti abortion and anti big government which seems to be the currency of many Republican candidates. His selection for the nomination seems unlikely.

Another candidate who has formally declared is former New Mexico Gary Johnson Johnson does have the commendable policy of legalising Marijuana across the board, and unlike many Social conservative commentators, from his former position in Santa Fe he would have had first hand experience of the violence accompanying the increasingly lucrative Mexican drug trade. His argument is that legalisation would undercut this trade and reduce violence levels. He is a costcutter proud of vetoing 750 bills to fulfill a campaign pledge not to raise taxes. I can see the drug policy being what the focus attaches to, however!

Two other candidates who may be familiar to readers are John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the UN under the previous administration of George W Bush. A fierce conservative, and indeed one of the leading 'Neocons' under Bush, Bolton was critical of supranational organisations such as the UN itself, the ICC and EU. whilst likely to endear him to many Americans, his links with the Bush regime are likely to prove highly problematic were he to enter the fray. He does attack the Obama administration , unusually, primarily on foreign, rather than domestic policy grounds.

George Pataki was the governor (as opposed to Rudy Giulani , who was the Mayor of New York City) of New York State during the September 11th attacks. A critic of the Quantitative easing policy of Obama, and fiscal conservative, Pataki's resume is relatively light on what he would do differently beyond reducing expenditur across the board (another cutter!) There is also a significant gap on social policy. It's relatively tricky in New York to appeal to the entire state given its racial diversity on a 'Tea Party' ticket, so these may be more moderate than some other candidates.

Another very much in the mould of Ron Paul would be Buddy Roemer , a former governor of Louisiana,and four term congressman, also representing that state. He last held office in 1992 before being voted out. His cornerstone appears to be to limit campaign donations to $100 per contribution - an element of self-interest surely not withstanding.

Thus, the crowded field of 17 candidates has now dwindled to 14 - to summarise:

OUT: Huckabee, Trump, Daniels
CONSIDERING: Palin, Bachmann, Pataki, Bolton, Roemer, Moore, Huntsman
IN: Romney, Gingrich, Paul, Santorum, Pawlenty, Cain, Johnson.

Thus seven candidates have thus far declared - of these the favourite were noone else to stand would surely be Mitt Romney - I doubt Obama's supporters will be overly concerned. The third part of this trilogy will look at four candidates who could seriously worry Obama - but look to be holding their powder dry for 2016.

A bit of June Christmas cheer for Private business!

2011-06-04T23:48:00.005+01:00

One of my correspondents has sent me arguably the best news since the start of the coalition government. It is reported by the BBC that the EHRC is going on strike . This is arguably proof that the coalition strategy is working. Let's hope many more of such agencies follow their example. The only noticeable impact of this collection of ne'er do wells, many of whom had significant and documented links with the USSR and its satellites has been to load up costs on the people that in the long run pay their wages. In the absence of the Soviets, Islamic extremists like Iran have picked up the slack in terms of funding their , in many cases fairly lavish lifestyles. Seriously, this piece has made my day. Osborne should say: 'Frankly, a permanent strike would be absolutely fine' - this strike is a catastrophe for the 'anti cuts lobby'. At a stroke it will reveal how much fat can be taken out of the system with absolutely no impact on the ordinary citizen. The only issue would seem to be whether Champagne producers can cope with the demand from every single private sector organisation that has had the misfortune to encounter this body! As the Pointer Sisters famously said - 'I'm so excited'!I'm also reminded of a quote from the now sadly departed 'X Files':

'You shouldn't play poker when you aren't holding any cards!'

The Jason Voorhees of British Politics

2011-06-04T08:55:00.005+01:00

For those unfamiliar with the character of Jason Voorhees, he is the primary Antagonist of the Friday 13th series of films. Anyone famiilar with these will know the drill. Voorhees appears and wreaks havoc, usual involving multiple homicides only to seem as though he has finally perished. Then the film usually leaves a degree of ambiguity as to his fate. The franchise's original 1979 instalment spawned an enormous 10 sequels, some of which are some of the most wretched examples of horror cinema ever seen, but still Jason survives. The reason for mentioning him is that with the elections for the London assembly and mayoralty in prospect next year, perhaps its time to focus on the man most like him in terms of his longevity and arguably his likely impact on the London scene, for he has once more been up to his usual tricks.

Former mayor of the GLC, and two term London Mayor before his surprise defeat in 2008, Ken Livingstone has compared his mayoral rival's chief of staff, Eddie Lister to the Recently indicted Serbian General Ratko Mladic . It's not the first time the man has made a tastelessly crass remark. Who can forget his comparison of Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (of Jewish descent) with a Nazi Concentration Camp guard?

The Voorhees analogy, no doubt distasteful to Livingstone's acolytes as his comparison of Lister (who has courted controversy for potentially charging children for access to public playgrounds) to a man accused of the genocide of 8000 people is however apt. Whatever else I think of him, following his defeat at the hands of Kenneth Baker in 1986, he bounced back in 2000 to defeat two candidates (including a rival from his former party) to win the mayoralty and held the position for 8 years. I hoped his defeat by current incumbent, Boris Johnson in 2008 had finally driven a metaphorical stake through his political heart, but terrifyingly the man has returned to once again cast his dark shadow over the London scene. As Giroscoper points out, chillingly, the London elections are not, as I erroneously thought conducted on an electoral college basis (ie borough by borough), thus the multiple defeats he suffered in 2008 in the outer London boroughs could be overcome by him piling up enough of a majority amongst the so-called 'Rainbow coalition' (composed of around 11 boroughs with heavy concentrations of ethnic minorities, students and public sector employees) which delivered him two election triumphs. Admittedly many more verbal gaffes such as this one, and the poll lead he has might start to look slimmer, but it is perhaps a reflection on the chaos wrought in the nation's capital between 1997 and 2010, that such a being can have the slightest chance of achieving high office after decisive rejection in 2008.

Cutting the rug from under Sepp Blatter's feet

2011-05-30T21:27:00.004+01:00

Been trying to take a break from politics the last couple of days... but of course all that happens when I do that is that I end up running into politics, just in a different form. Currently the Guardian headline is Sepp Blatter of FIFA doing a Jim Callaghan.

(Or at least, if you believe the popular mythology as put about by the Murdoch Press. Callaghan never actually said "Crisis? What Crisis?" - it was actually a Supertramp album title from 1975 (good album, thoroughly recommended, by the way). He flew back from some kind of economic summit in the Carribean in January 1979, appeared a bit clueless about the mounting industrial disruption at the time, and that was that. But I digress...)

Any interview with Sepp Blatter simply reinforces the guy's aloofness and his overwhelming feeling that he is untouchable. FIFA appears to be drowning in corruption allegations, and yet to quote one of my favourite Super Furry Animals songs, "The Man Don't Give A F***". David Conn of the Guardian sums the situation up succintly and accurately:

When repeating his overarching argument, that he regards Fifa as untouchable even by governments, accountable only to its own "family within", Blatter even came close to using the phrase "Crisis? What crisis?"

Asked if this is indeed a crisis for Fifa, with two executive committee members suspended and one, Jack Warner, threatening to unleash a "tsunami" against Fifa which began on Sunday night with allegations of impropriety against Blatter himself, the president said: "Crisis? What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis. We are only in some difficulties, and the difficulties will be solved within the football family."

Blatter's smug arrogance is typical of tax exiles operating international organisations - Switzerland and Dubai tend to be the most favoured bases of operations for these kind of rackets. And he's right that - as football's governing body is currently constituted - he's untouchable. FIFA has deliberately set itself up as outside national jurisdiction.

BUT... the operative clause here is "as football's governing body is currently constituted." FIFA may have a monopoly on organising association football at the moment, but there's no innate reason why that should be the case. If national football associations decided to disaffiliate from FIFA and establish a new, non-corrupt international governing body, Sepp Blatter would pretty soon find himself out of a job.

At the end of the day it's the national governing bodies who have the power. Simple as that. All they have to do is use it.

To that end, I will be continuing my sometime campaign, launched last year, for an alternative governing body to FIFA... and this is very relevant to current political situations more generally, as I do feel revolution could sort out a lot of our problems right now. It was the solution in Egypt; it's the solution in Greece (and I'll be responding to Van Patten's interesting, but wrongheaded, post soon); it's the solution in the USA; and it's the solution here. And maybe - just maybe - it all starts with FIFA.

Blatter is the sporting equivalent of the bankers in the real economy. And like the bankers, he desperately needs to be taken down several pegs, or maybe just taken down, period/full stop.

A tale of two cities..

2011-05-30T17:27:00.007+01:00

Football journalists (arguably on a par with politicians in my esteem) have been falling over themselves to heap praise on Barcelona for their performance and victory in the 'Champions League' final which took place whilst I had a very enjoyable wedding in France to attend on Saturday. No prizes for guessing whether I watched this 'classic encounter', the second final featuring these two teams in the last three years. However much I can admire (and I do admire them when wearing the Red and Gold of the European and World champions Spain)the skilss of Xavi and Iniesta and the talents of Lionel Messi, the entire experience leaves me (and I would guess most people who aren't fans of the 'Big four' clubs) pretty cold. Around 14 years ago I was introduced to a website by a then college friend of mine, who had printed out an article entitled 'The New Season' on a Watford fanzine then in its infancy which encapsulated in words far more passionate and germane than I could ever hope to achieve, just why the 'Champions League' is effectively a wholly fraudulent charade: It's worth quoting from directly:

I saw on the news last week that UEFA is to open up the European CHAMPIONS Cup to the runners-up of the eight most successful leagues in Europe. This is as a direct result of pressure from the likes of David Dein (Arsenal's vile vice-chairman).

Big deal, eh? Well, yes, actually. It's a very big deal indeed. Not only is this the final nail in the coffin for one of the world's most prestigious tournaments (the Champions League had pretty much finished it off already) since the actual premise of the thing (a competition between the champions of Europe) is now to be abandoned, it also represents the total capitulation of UEFA to the demands of the rich few.

UEFA is, in case it gets forgotten, supposed to represent the interests of all its members. Yeah, and I'm Elvis Presley. After the farce of Blackburn entering straight into the Champions League (apparently due to their outstanding record in European competition and not, for instance, the large amount of money being paid for coverage by British TV), we now have this abomination. A level playing field? Don't make me laugh...

As with almost all of the past ten finals (barring the one in 2004 where I was genuinely interested in what might happen) one of the participants should not have been on the field, as they were not the Champions of anything! Nevertheless, the situation since the article above, bemoaning the allowing of two teams from a country in, will as any football follower knows, has deteriorated still further with some countries getting four teams.

Which is an unedifying contrast with a belated tribute to the English football League's newest entrants, AFC Wimbledon who have within 9 years of their formation defeated the significantly larger and better supported Luton Town to make their way into the Football League. More than that single fixture, they have used a sense of powerful injustice at being (in the eyes of everyone it would seem bar the Football Association) the victims of what was effectively grand larceny to overcome the odds and bounce back. Their victory recalled that 1996 article well, and the sentiments once more would be appropriate today.

I hope every single English club in Europe gets utterly and totally bloody humiliated, just as I hope that Newcastle finish 10th in the Premiership (behind Wimbledon - who are complete heroes, for obvious reasons)

As with a number of Dons fans, I'm dreading to think that they might inject some life into the otherwise moribund 'Johnstone's Paint trophy' by pairing the new boys with this lot but that'll await the draw. In the meantime, I know which of the two matches mentioned above gives me more satisfaction, however ludicrous the hyperbole shown here , for example. COME ON YOU DONS!!!!!

I've seen Ed Miliband's vision of the future...and it's Greece

2011-05-30T17:24:00.001+01:00

This post is somewhat late in arriving , so it does lose some of its impact. It was provoked by the ongoing issues with the Eurozones self confessed 'Achilles heel' , Greece, facing what is, by common consent, a very difficult adjustment, and this article in the Guardian

Obviously my erstwhile host here, Giroscoper has decided to retire from 'Cif' (not the detergent spray but the Guardian's forum) for the foreseeable future. However, the germane response from this poster, which seemed so apposite for the 'Anti cuts lobby' in the UK is worth quoting from at length.

"• I live in Greece and ...... I think Hara Kouki is an example of a generation that has grown up thinking that the "state" or their parents are going to give them everything so they don't need to do very much. They complain there are no jobs when they also support a system and a political ideology that prevents jobs from being created. Not to mention, one wonders what jobs many of this generation could actually do. Too many of the "young generation" (not that Hara is that young, she is 32 and presumably has been a "student" for most of her life and intends to be one for the several next few years) actually have very few skills to do a job properly, aside from "delivery" or working in shops. In order to create jobs Greece needs to allow its private sector to function properly but the protests in Athens yesterday were actually about preventing that. The unions and the left thus wanted to show the visiting troika that, No! they will accept no sale or lease of public assets (although there is no register of public assets so no one knows what they actually are in order to be able to utilise them) or privatisation of completely useless state "enterprises" that are totally unproductive and lose millions of euros a month. Despite the fact that such sales or leases or privatisation could bring in tens of billions of euros that Greece desperately needs right now. The purpose of yesterday's riots and Hara's "threat" that may one day be a "mass reaction here in Greece, one that may be violent" were to say: No! No reforms! Do not privatise, do not sell off unproductive state-owned industries! Do not reform the public service! Make no changes, we want things to carry on as they are! We want to protect our vested interests, especially the unions and the syndicates that have brought Greece to its knees.
And, Germany isn't doing better because of the crisis. Germany is doing better because it has a thriving private sector, has companies and citizens who actually make things instead of expect to be given things, and is highly innovative and willing to change and reform when that is needed. This is the opposite of Greece.

The EU doesn't give loans, and certainly not to governments to build houses. Unless you mean the bailout, but that's gone to keep the country from collapsing in return for the government implementing reform. Unfortunately, there has been very little reform, either because the government is being prevented from implementing it by the vested interests that organise the protests, or because the state infrastructure is so weak and civil servants so incompetent they are unable to put the reforms into practice. And, no the people have not been starving because the government has stolen all the "EU loans", whatever they may be. What has happened is that the EU has literally given billions and billions of euros to Greece over the past 30 years for all sorts of projects, large and small, and much of these billions have been misused and wasted, not by the politicians but by the projects they have gone to fund. The EU is definitely to blame for creating a sense of "the EU will give us the money to do this completely useless project so we don't actually have to be productive or effective or even have a necessary product". This has also helped to strangle the development of a mentality where people actually innovate and create and realise the need to work properly, to take some responsibility for themselves and not expect that the state (and their parents, in the case of the 20-30 and even 30plus generation) will sort everything out for them. Hopefully, such EU funding will be better thought out in future.
And...if you're worried that
all governments have destroyed everything the state owns then perhaps the state shouldn't own so much or be involved in such micro-details of daily life. But, I bet you'd be one of the first to go and shout in the streets if such state ownership and state control was challenged.

For Natalie Hanman, where did you find Hara? I note she's a student at Birkbeck, so perhaps you found her through your pal Costas Douzinas. You know, the one that supports that fossilised, backwards hard-leftist ideology that has helped to destroy Greece. (It's not just the hard-left, this kind of garbage ideology also permeates right-wing populism in Greece.) You keep thanking them for supposedly giving insight into what's going on in Greece, when what they're actually doing is giving a distorted picture that only represents about 5% of what's actually going on and misrepresents most of the rest."

Several other papers have written some rather saddening articles about what is happening in Greece. According to the headlines and leftist commentators austerity measures imposed by both the EU (which is an irony given its profligacy) and the IMF have caused a contraction in their economy of an estimated 7% over the past two years. Whilst there is a shade of truth in this, in that the Greeks are the first people paying a very high price for the EU to try and keep the train wreck and vanity project that is the euro going, it ignores the underlying issues afflicting Greece's (and indeed almost every Western European) economy.

As the excellent commentator here points out, the phenomenon known as 'crowding out' is endemic in the Greek economy. The retirement age is 'tiered' between 57 and 61 and a substantial state sector (accounting for around 40% of the workforce) has reasonably generous pensions vis a vis the cost of living. Furthermore, the trend for young people is to avoid going down the route of entrepeneurship and either accept employment within the Public sector or else join the extremes of both sides (and he rightly mentions the economic illiteracy of the Greek ultra nationalists as well as their leftist counterparts) and prootest against any change in the status quo.

What struck me about the Greek protests was the significant similarity between those and the TUC supported 'March for the alternative'which attracted such favourable attention in the Guardian ,Independent and BBC (funded by a £145.50 stipend on every TV watching household in the country) In both cases a large coterie of people, most of whom were advocates or direct beneficiaries of state largesse were marching in support of economic ideas that they, in their heart of hearts, know go against the grain of almost every economic commentator in the mainstream press, (barring the curious Paul Krugman of the New York Times, of whom more in a later post) advocating that the way to solve the economic woes affecting the country was to raise a budget which had already been increased by more than 200% over the past 13 years. As this Greek gentleman seems to realise, sooner or later a reckoning has to come. As several have pointed out,Britain is not Greece, but floundering under the weight of our accumulated debt, at the moment (and as Giroscoper points out I need to see the Labour Party policy review before passing full judgement) the Leader of the Oppositions policy seems to be to reject every area of the budget being cut save Defence. One of my common statements when commenting on the disastrous Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 was that the road to Harare or Pyongyang was shorter than one might expect, and as 'Red Two' and Voller' point out that kind of exaggeration does a significant disservice to people enduring hardships that most in the UK would find unimaginable at the hands of this man and his comrade in arms . However, having travelled to Athens , it's less than three hours, and unless the economy recovers, the figurative road there could be a great deal shorter than both the Leader of HM opposition, and to a degree , the current Prime Minister think.

At Last The 1996 Show: deconstructing Labour's hard right

2011-05-25T22:17:00.013+01:00

It's now 8 months since Ed Miliband's knife-edge victory in the Labour leadership contest. I still can't quite believe he did it - and neither can the hard right of the Labour party. I define Labour's hard right as a strip of LINO (Labour In Name Only) hacks who, still unwilling to accept that their preferred candidate (Ed's older brother) lost, have taken it upon themselves to attempt to undermine Ed's leadership at every turn, with the eventual objective of replacing him with a clone of Tony Blair.

Note that we're not talking about the right wing of the Labour party here - which presumably comprises several tens of thousands of people, at least (given that most, though by no means all, of the right-wing votes in the Labour leadership contest went to David Miliband.) Many of the Labour right were unhappy with the leadership result - apparently the Progress (main right-wing Labour faction) "rally" at the party conference two days after the result was announced was more like a wake - but most of them have accepted it and are working with it. No, I'm talking about a small number of bloggers and journalists who are doing their best to whip up anti-Ed feelings and a sense of crisis so that he may be deposed at some point before the next election.

The most high profile print journalist in the hard right camp is Phil Collins - not the ex-Genesis singer/drummer and 1980s solo music criminal, but an ex-speech writer for Tony Blair of the same name. Which is a pity in many ways because the ex-Genesis Phil, for all his faults, is a far more likeable character and would probably have more insight on the future direction of the Labour party than ex-Blair Phil. He could hardly have less. I can't link to any of Phil Collins's Times pieces because they are behind a paywall. But you can get an approximation by reading any blogger or political commentator on the Telegraph website (Mary Riddell excepted). Now the Telegraph is of course a Tory paper. And that's why you can get an ersatz Phil Collins experience by reading the Telegraph - because Collins is a Tory as well! Which is of course WHY he was Tony Blair's speechwriter - because Blair was also a Tory. He started out in politics as a conservative and ended up as a Conservative.

If anyone disagrees with this assessment of Phil Collins, feel free to point me to something in his previous writings which contradicts it. I know that Collins now describes himself as a "liberal", not a conservative, but so does Nick Clegg, and we've seen what that means in practice - propping up a Tory government. Very appropriate. I find Collins more contemptible than even the Guardian's Julian Glover. Glover is one of the most odious columnists in British journalism, delighting in making poor people better off, smashing the state, and generally advocating a policy of making people's lives a misery by withdrawing essential public services from them so that they are "more free". But at least he doesn't make the pretence of supporting the Labour party while being viscerally opposed to all its policies. He's a bastard, but an honest bastard. Phil is a duplicitous bastard.

However, Mr Collins's efforts, funded by the Murdoch press as they are, are strict amateurism compared to the professional Ed Miliband sabotage operation being conducted by Dan Hodges of the New Statesman and Labour Uncut blogs.

Dan has emerged on the blogosphere over the last 12 months as Ed Miliband's leading self-appointed critic, with a simple modus operandi which involves cutting and repasting the same basic article with very minor cosmetic alterations and references to recent events, again and again and presumably being paid full whack for these minor alterations. The article template is always a desperate exercise in Blairite trolling, summarisable in a few bullet points, as follows:

Ed is performing badly.
An unnamed shadow cabinet member has recently told Dan that Ed will be finished unless his performance improves soon.
The party is demoralised.
(if there has been a recent election result) the results were awful. Labour was unable to capture any swing voters from the Tories.
Ed needs to drop all this "progressive majority" bullshit, stop chasing ex-Liberal Democrat voters, and start courting Tory voters - preferably by adopting policy positions that are indistinguishable from the Tories.
Tony Blair is pissed off with Ed trashing New Labour's record.
Tony Blair is the blueprint for future Labour success.

Now, I'm not going to say that Ed Miliband's performance as Labour leader has been extraordinary, or brilliant. But it is good - and it's improving. For what it's worth (not much in my opinion,but some of us set great store by set-pieces), Ed regularly gives Cameron a verbal kicking at PMQs. His set-piece speeches are excellent, if a little light on specifics at the moment (more on that later). He's set a policy review process in motion that encompasses 23 policy areas and will run for the next 18 months - which at this stage in the parliament is eminently sensible. He's got good people in most of the top shadow cabinet positions (after some hiccups at the start). What else would people like Dan have Ed doing?

The answer, of course, is that this has nothing to do with Ed's performance in the job per se, and everything to do with the fact that the Labour hard right can't accept that their man lost. As it happens, I think David Miliband's pitch for the Labour leadership, while to the right of Ed's, was not a neo-Blairite hard right platform. For example he showed an interest in active industrial policy which was completely alien to the Labour hard right, who are still in thrall to neoliberalism and still don't quite believe the economic crisis happened. This explains why David attracted considerable support from the soft left of the Labour party as well as the right.

But at the end of the day, David Miliband should have been a shoo-in for Labour leader, and he blew it with poor campaigning. It wasn't all his fault; the unsolicited endorsement by Peter Mandelson was deeply damaging. But David had every opportunity to distance himself from Mandelson - and indeed Blair - but chose not to, and paid the price for keeping the wrong friends. By contrast, Ed fought a brilliant guerilla insurgency campaign - so brilliant, in fact, that even he couldn't believe he'd actually won the contest. To me, that says something positive about Ed's qualities as a campaigner - and something negative about David Miliband's qualities as a campaigner - that has been largely ignored, and shouldn't have been.

But to the neo-Blairite hard right, all this is evidence that Ed is, in some way, a usurper - Labour's Richard III figure, complete with hunchback and funny walk. And so they won't be happy until he's been deposed and presumably shuffled off to some trade union convalescent home at Eastbourne, or something.

Of course, it's not going to happen. For one thing, as Hodges himself has pointed out, the Labour hard right has no obvious challenger. With David Miliband showing no appetite for the rematch, Jimmy Purnell retired, and other neo-Blairites laughably insubstantial figures (e.g. Jim Murphy, Pat McFadden) there simply is no-one out there to carry the flame. And even if someone did emerge, Labour has no tradition of knifing leaders before elections, by contrast to the Tories, for whom it's bread and butter (Thatcher, IDS). If the Blairites couldn't get rid of Gordon Brown before an election they stand sweet F.A. chance of toppling Ed, no matter what his poll ratings are.

Also the Labour hard right has no policy suggestions whatsoever - NONE - beyond tame capitulation to the Tories. Thus we see that on Labour Uncut (which seems to be the leading internal Labour right blog), ex-party chairman Peter Watt has recently called for Labour to endorse the Tories' cuts strategy lock, stock and barrel. This would be intellectual suicide, instantly allowing George Osborne to claim that he was dictating the terms of the economic debate and making Ed Balls look like an imbecile. Given the mounting evidence that the cuts are exerting a huge toll on the British economy, it's also economically wrong-headed. The real reason Watt is suggesting this is that Tony Blair accepted Tory spending plans in 1996. He didn't need to do it (does ANYONE - even Michael Heseltine - believe that the Tories would have won in 1997 if not for Labour accepting Tory spending plans?), it was a disaster in terms of the performance of public services (the extra 2 years of vicious squeezing of spending from 1997 to 1999 paralysed the NHS and state education for several years and made it much harder for Labour to get any improvements in those services until fairly late into its second term, if that), but hey, Tony Blair did it so it must be the right thing to do, right?

The basic point here is that the Labour hard right is still living in 1996. Their thinking hasn't moved on in 15 years. I'm not saying that Ed Miliband, or the soft left (or indeed soft right) of the Labour party, have all the answers - because they patently haven't - but the possibility exists, however faint, that they will Get It. Whereas the only place that following the advice of people like Hodges, Collins and Watt will get Labour is belly laughs and a walloping from a resurgent - and thankful - Tory party at the next election. The Labour hard right are ersatz Tories, bad losers, cheap punks and imbeciles to a man/woman, and their best course of action would be to shut up shop, think about why the hell they are in the Labour party, and if they can't reconcile their membership with their fundamental conservatism, perhaps best to retreat to the massed ranks of the ConDem coalition - where this sort of bullshit is looked on a good deal more kindly.

Comment is crap... why I've cut the CiF

2011-05-17T15:55:00.000+01:00

After a frantic period of almost totally inconsequential activity when I seemed to be posting comments on the Guardian's Comment is Free (CiF) site almost every day, I've now retired from such activity for the foreseeable future.

Why? Because it's a waste of time.

It's not that the CiF articles are especially bad. They are a true mixed bag, from brilliant to crap and every shade in between.

It's more that I get the impression that almost no-one who isn't either a troll or a counter-troll reads the comments - and hence, why bother commenting?

The comments on CiF split roughly 50%/40%/10% between:

Type 1: the "astroturfing" right wing trolls

These guys (if they are guys) make extreme comments of a liberatarian/fascist/homophobic/racist/sexist nature (sometimes all 5 at once, which is impressive in a frightening way). They do not engage with any alternative points of view except to reiterate their earlier points with more swearwords and venom. They use a variety of aliases but the posting style and phrasing is similar in most cases, which leads me to believe that the CiF right wing presence is a few people posting repeatedly under dozens of different names. This activity gives an impression of a grass roots movement where none really exists - hence the name "astroturfing". George Monbiot started to expose the astroturfing phenomenon in a very good article last December.

Type 2: the left wing countertrolls

These guys (again they mainly seem to be guys) have been emerging more and more over the last year or so, after a long period when CiF comments seemed to be one long loo-roll of right-wing bile. The counter-troll takes on the right-wing astroturf trolls head on, attempting to rebut their arguments. This isn't quite so easy as it seems as they often have no real argument to speak of in the first place and so the counter-troll is pretty much forced to descend to their level.

I speak from experience here - because I'm one of the counter-trolls. My contributions over the last six months have mainly been brain-dead endorsements of Ed Miliband, George Monbiot, Len McCluskey, Caroline Lucas, Yes to AV, the late Captain Beefheart, my friend Tom Clark who writes for the Guardian... pretty much anything except a rational argument. A good example is this piece by Ed Miliband "Yes to AV is yes to a fairer politics", where I actually managed to grab the much-coveted first comment slot with

YES YES YES... Ed tells it like it is. Vote yes people, for the biggest upset in electoral history... ignore the reactionaries, doom-mongers, naysayers, and CiF's "astroturfing" right wing trolls.

Great sentiments, but sadly little in the way of intelligent ideas. So far, 153 people have 'recommended' this inane comment. Did anyone take away anything of value from it - apart from the possible inference that I hang around on the CiF site refreshing every 30 seconds, waiting for new posts to come up? I don't think so. But such is the life of the counter-troll.

Type 3: genuinely interesting comments

These are the needles in a haystack that actually make it worth reading a CiF thread - intelligent pieces of analysis that don't just fall back on cheap political posturing (whether right or left) but make a point that somebody might not have heard before. But in your average CiF column such insights are few and far between. You get a few more like this on subjects that cut across conventional left-right boundaries, such as religious belief (although Andrew Brown, the editor of CiF Belief, is clueless at best, the comment thread on his posts is usually at least slightly interesting). But you also get even more vociferous nutters - both pro- and anti-religion - on any theological topics.

There is also a fourth type of comment - when the article writer visits the thread to comment on their own article. Some writers - George Monbiot for example, and also the wretched Julian Glover - are quite assiduous about this. Others are never to be seen... probably they've just given the whole experience up as a bad job. Which it pretty much is.

Comment is Free is not the only place on the web where blog comment has degenerated into a trollfest - most newspaper websites suffer from it to some extent. I've also occasionally posted on the Telegraph comment site, and that has a lot of right wingers - although due to the readership, it is more a case of boneheaded right-wing dogma interrupted by the occasional left-wing troll rather than the other way round. Surprisingly, I don't find the comment threads on the Telegraph any more unpleasant a read than the Guardian, really.

Political blogs are also handy hangouts for trolls. The leading centre-left blog sites - Sunny Hundal's Liberal Conspiracy, and Shamik Das's Left Foot Forward - are badly infested with them, for example. The Fabian's Next Left blog less so - partly because Next Left tends to get less trolls anyway, perhaps because the posting rate is a lot less per day. I've noticed that the more articles get posted on a blog, the more likely it is to get trolled. I very rarely read right wing blogs like Guido Fawkes or Conservative Home, but when I do, the comment threads there seem to resemble Mos Eisley spaceport on a very bad day... AVOID.

Some left bloggers have the patience to filter out the trolls manually - most obviously Richard Murphy at Tax Research UK. Richard used to get targeted by about half a dozen people who were just frankly a pain in the ass; once he blocked those people the readability of the thread and his overall traffic went up A LOT. But this kind of active filtering is time-consuming; Richard has had to turn off all comments twice in the last eighteen months because he couldn't cope with the sheer volume of shit coming his way if he was going to hold down any kind of day job at the same time. At the end of the day, that's why trolls rule the blogwaves; there are at least a few dozen trolls out there who seem to be doing it full time, and most blogs have only one moderator, doing it in their spare time.

As the web develops into its next phase it's quite possible that a move away from free-for-all comments and something a bit more like a round-table event - with a specific list of invitees for each post, or a meta-list of people cleared to comment on the site - is likely. This would be a shame in many ways as it would make the blogosphere less of a public good. But on the other hand trolls are a public bad, so maybe there's a tradeoff between openness and quality.

All I know for sure is that - for the moment at least - my CiF posting days are over. Hal Berstram's last CiF post occurred last Saturday, on a story about the ridiculously poorly attended "Rally Against Debt" - spoofed very effectively here. Good luck to the left-wingers on CiF - be they counter-trolls or otherwise - who continue to fight the good fight against astroturf, libertarianism and extremism. I just don't know if anyone is there to see your good work - and at the end of the day the marginal benefit from me continuing to write inane pro-Ed Milband propaganda is zero. So Goodbye To All That. You'll still be able to read Hal on Next Left, the Virtual Stoa, and maybe slagging off Dan Hodges on the New Statesman blog (some writers deserve to be trolled)... but not on CiF anymore. We live... and some of us learn.

J&B Straight and a Corona.......

2011-05-12T13:51:00.004+01:00

Worth taking a few minutes to look at the political situation across the Atlantic. Firstly let me explain a little behind the title of this post. For those unfamiliar with either the Bret Easton Ellis novel or the Mary Harron film American Psycho, the book is basically a very dark and at times quite violent satire on Reaganite America. The title of the leading contributors to this blog are both names based on characters from the film, but perhaps the relevance here is that the work's anti-hero, Patrick Bateman is obsessed with and a great admirer of the then property magnate, Donald Trump, perhaps better known now as the man who fronts the US version of the Apprentice.

What relevance has this to the political situation over there? Well, I was quite impressed with an article in today's Guardian which compared the Republican candidates' field for 2012 to the famous scene from Star Wars Episode IV in the Mos Eisley Cantina.
It says much for the paucity of options that currently Trump leads the field. So who are the men and women lining up for a shot at a President who prior to the recent killing of Bin Laden was not exactly lighting up the polls?

Donald Trump, the current front runner arguably needs no introduction: A property magnate, TV personality and billionaire 'self-made' man, he is perhaps the embodiment of 'the American Dream' or its nightmarish Reaganite manifestation anyhow. His sole 'qualification' for the presidency appears to be that he could run the country like a business but he has for me completely blotted his copybook(aside from some rather dubious activity during the 1980's) by what can only be considered an idiotic obsession with Obama's origins, taking pride in his 'forcing' the President to reveal his birth certificate. Say what you will about the Royal wedding, at least it would spare us President Trump as 'head of state'. His catchphrase (adopted by his UK apprentice counterpart Lord Sugar) is 'you're fired'. I think it safe to say in the unlikely event he did get the nomination, he'd be the one being fired.

Perhaps the candidate with even more global recognition than 'The Donald' is former VP candidate from 2008, Sarah Palin. Despite always being on the lookout for mentions of arguably the most influential Hard Leftist country, her lauding of the US' 'North Korean Allies' escaped my attention at the time, but whilst she undoubtedly has significant support from the 'Tea Party' side of the Republican Party this and a host of other gaffes (indeed some would argue her autobio 'Going Rogue' handily brought me as a Christmas present is one long gaffe) make her manna from heaven for any Democratic supporters.

Less familar but arguably even more of a wild card is the other female candidate, Minnesota congresswoman, Michele Bachmann. The kind of kook that gives conservatism a bad name, Bachmann's more sensible ideas include responding to Obama's floating the idea of a cap and trade policy to try and limit CO2 emmissions by telling Minnesotans to 'get armed and dangerous on this issue of an energy tax because we need to fight back'. Having never visited Minnesota but always had a soft spot for their American football team due to the kit(and them being one of my brother's favourite team's divisional rivals!) , I'm sure hoping she is somewhat unrepresentative of the state. Further political positions include support for Intelligent design and questioning the theory of evolution within state schools, opposing increases in the minimum wage and repeal of President Obama's healthcare Bill.

Another figure probably unfamiliar to UK readers is former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who feels motivated to run in 2012 because 'we need a new President of the United States' Well, whilst I'd probably agree with you on that Rick, the question is whether you are the man for the job - on that let's examine some of his beliefs. Arguably his most famous (or notorious) foray into the Public arena was when he stated:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

Thus any homosexual readers may be please to know they're bracketed by this candidate with practitioners of bestiality and necrophilia. However, his lack of public recognition means I probably wouldn't cancel any vacation plans to the States post 2013 just yet.

Rounding out the more eccentric candidates is Ron Paul , the Texas Congressman who also put himself forward in 2008. However, Paul is arguably the best of the five mentioned to this point. (not that the competition is especially stiff admittedly)He adopts a strongly Libertarian policy, and indeed was a Libertarian Party candidate from the presidency against Bush Senior in 1988. A philosophical Conservative, Paul opposed the Iraq war in 2002, and adheres to a non-interventionist US policy which would involve withdrawal from bases in Japan,Germany and Korea. A Free Marketeer in the economic sense and a disciple of the Austro German school of Hayek/Von Mises, he would abolish Income Tax and introduce a National Sales Tax. He is 'Pro-Life' although he does state that decisions should be left to the individual States rather than at a National level. All in all, something of a mixed bag with a few genuinely hardline conservative positions mixed in with an economically Liberal philopsophy. He has a hardcore of committed supporters and is almost as likely to criticise his Republican colleagues as the Democrats.

The more 'mainstream' candidates are arguably an equally uninspiring pool, not as with Palin or Bachmann for their lunacy, more for their somewhat lack of charisma. Arguably the best known is Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and another failed contender from 2008. Excluding Trump he currently leads the race. However, whilst it would probably make very little difference in the UK, his Mormon faith makes it highly problematic for him to actually get the nomination and to be honest, his campaign in 2008 was so unmemorable precisly because of his lack of public recognition. On most issue he seems to be to the left of the Republican Party but when you look at statements from the likes of Bachmann and Palin, that's not really saying much.

Another figure who may be familiar to more seasoned observers of the US political scene, is Newt Gingrich. Formerly Speaker of the House of Representatives during the latter part of the Clinton presidency,Gingrich announced his intention to run for president yesterdayand looking at the exploratory committee's first steps I must admit I would hope that someone in the UK Conservative Party could carry out his strategy of 'replacing the Left'. However, I don't necessarily think his candidacy could succeed if he were in the race against Obama. Nevertheless, his positions on certain areas are somewhat more nuanced than some of the other more 'out there' candidates. On immigration, especially his proposals to instigate some form of guest worker programme place him to the left of the Republican. that said, on an issue like 'climate change' he remains somewhat sceptical on proposals to use fiscal means of limiting pollution. However, along with Romney he remains one of the early front runners for the nomination.

Another person whom people may recall from the 2008 Primaries is Mike Huckabee, one of Clinton's successors as governor of Arkansas. One of my groomsmen quite seriously said that if Huckabee succeeded in winning the presidency, he and his American wife and daughters would almost certainly be headed back across this side of the Atlantic. The man himself does appear regularly on the US Murdoch mouthpiece Fox News, and he does seem somewhat reluctant to give up that quite lucrative number.
However, worryingly for those on the Left(and many on the right), current poll ratings pre bin Laden would put Huckabee ahead of Obama and in the so called 'NASCAR belt' he has strong support. His positions are the standard extreme right of the Republican Party on issues such as abortion (opposed even in the case of rape and incest), foreign policy (a strong defence and 50% increase in military expenditure and homosexuality (against same sex marriages and civil unions)Unlike Palin, Huckabee appears to be somewhat less prone to rhetorical gaffes, but he does remind me at least somewhat of the unsuccessful 1964 candidate Barry Goldwater whose tagline:

'In your heart, you know he's right'

was met with the riposte by then President Johnson's team.

'In your guts , you know he's nuts'

A figure beloved of certain Washington columnists, but who would have almost zero recognition over here is Mitch Daniels, current governor of Indiana. another state arguably relatively unknown and unvisited by UK tourists(Unless you're a fan of the Colts or NBA Pacers, or motorracing's Indy 500), Daniels seems by Republican standards quite moderate, but arguably this would probably cost him support in some of the more eccentric states. He does seem to be relatively moderate by the standards of some of the candidates mentioned here. However, by his own admission, he would probably need to better understand the national policy issues he would need to tackle as President. As with some other substantial candidates who I'll consider later on, he also probably thinks Obama will be difficult to beat in 2012 and is biding his time for a run in 2016.

One man who although not formally in the Race yet is widely believed to be on the verge of declaring his candidacy for the Republican nomination is the former governor of another Northern state, Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. However, in current polls he doesn't get much beyond single figure polling and his general lack of charisma is probably best illustrated by his website , and attempt to build some kind of credibility with younger voters who overwhelmingly voted for Obama last time by using the name 'T-Paw' a ploy that looks eerily similar to William Hague's 'baseball cap' gaffe in 1999. I think for different reasons to Palin, Democratic supporters would be licking their lips in the unlikely event he were to win the nomination.

So, a pretty uninspiring bunch to be sure. The question is - who can the Repuplicans find that might fare better than these guys and girls? This post has already taken arguably too long, and a later post will consider the candidates who would IMHO have a very strong chance of beating Obama. Another may also consider in response to the excellent Mehdi Hasan article, which creature within the Mos Eisley Cantina scene corresponds to which candidate.

One year on: what could the Lib Dems have done instead?

2011-05-11T17:03:00.001+01:00

On the first anniversary of the formation of the "ConDem" coalition government I want to take the opportunity to address an argument which is used by Lib Dems on the left of the party as to why they shouldn't be criticised for going into coalition with the Tories. This is an extremely long post, for which I apologise... just to warn you.

I went to a meeting earlier in the week with Dr Evan Harris - Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon until his very narrow defeat in May 2010 (for reasons brilliantly described by my friend Chris Brooke here.) Evan is probably about as left of centre as Lib Dem MPs get, and a very decent guy. His argument was that there was no alternative to going into coalition with the Tories in May 2010.

I don't believe that and I don't think it was in the best interests of the left of the Lib Dems to go into the coalition, but I want to explore in detail the options that were available to Nick Clegg in the wake of the 2010 result. This is usually skirted over in political discussion but I think it's really important to be clear - as, if it really is true that there was no alternative to this ConDem govt, it would be unfair to blame the Lib Dems for something they couldn't avoid doing. And I've been dishing out a lot of blame over the last 12 months, so I feel I owe it to any Lib Dems reading this blog to offer an explanation for why I feel they have let themselves and the country down.

There were three basic options available to Nick Clegg after the 2010 election results came through:

a coalition with Labour and minor parties (Greens, Plaid Cymru etc) - this has been called the 'rainbow' or 'traffic light' option.
Allowing the Tories to form a minority government.
coalition with the Tories.

Option 3 was followed. I want to look at the viability, and likely results, of option 1 and 2.

Option 1: rainbow coalition

At the time, I rapidly dismissed this as an option because the electoral arithmetic seemed not to work. The way I thought about it was that Labour had 258 MPs, plus 57 Lib Dems, making 315 - short of a majority. Adding in Caroline Lucas, plus 3 Plaid Cymru, plus 4 sympathetic Northern Ireland MPs (3 SDLP and 1 Alliance) made 323 - still short of a majority (just). On this basis, I dismissed the option as unworkable. However, it has since transpired that the 8 DUP MPs had indicated to Andrew Adonis, who was in charge of putting out 'feelers' for a Labour-led coalition, that they would abstain in the event that such a coalition was formed. This would mean that 323 would be a workable majority. It's possible that the 6 SNP MPs would have abstained as well. In the event, Adonis told Andrew Rawnsley in the updated edition of Rawnsley's book The End of the Party that a rainbow coalition could have "an effective majority of around 30" - bigger than John Major's actual majority in 1992.

That being the case, I no longer reject this option on the grounds of parliamentary arithmetic. Instead, I reject it on the grounds of Labour not wanting to do it. On the Monday after the election, when it was announced that the Lib Dems had opened formal negotiations with Labour as well as the Tories, several Labour 'big beasts' (e.g. John Reid, David Blunkett) got themselves onto the news to put the kybosh on the deal. With open mutiny of this sort going on, it's pretty clear that the Lib Dems couldn't commit themselves to any kind of deal with Labour (and in any case it looks in retrospect as if Clegg was using the Labour negotiations as a bargaining chip to get more concessions out of the Tories). So I think we have to concede that the rainbow coalition wasn't a viable option.

Option 2: Tory minority govt

Once the results started coming through, I was sure this was what would actually happen - because I severely underestimated the willingness of the Lib Dems to cut a deal with the Tories. I thought the sticking point would be electoral reform - which the Tories would not countenance in any circumstances. What I hadn't anticipated was that the Lib Dems would agree to a referendum on the Alternative Vote - not their preferred option, and not even proportional representation - so readily.

But was minority Tory government a viable option? Sure; indeed, if the coalition talks had broken down, it would have been the only option. There has to be a UK government, and if coalition talks fail, the convention is that the party leader with the most PMs gets invited by the monarch to form a government.

Minority governments in previous periods in UK history are normally allowed by the opposition parties (or at least those opposition parties that hold the balance of power) under 'confidence and supply' agreements, whereby the opposition agrees not to attempt to bring the government down on a motion of no confidence, and to allow budgets (i.e. the Finance Bill) to pass. However, this is a rather fuzzy area, and the exact shape of arrangements vary. For example, in the "Lib-Lab pact" of 1977-8, the Labour government negotiated a modified programme with David Steel and the Liberal MPs; the Liberals did not formally enter the government but this was a more wide-ranging arrangement than "confidence and supply". On the other hand, Budget measures were not passed through without amendment - basic rate income tax was cut from 35 percent to 33 percent in the 1978 Budget due to an amendment which the Lib Dems and Tories both supported. So in reality, there are a wide range of deals between a minority government and other parties which can be done, stopping short of full coalition while maintaining some influence on govt policy.

I'd argue that this was a viable option - and it's the one the Lib Dems should have taken. Agreeing to support the Tories - perhaps for a defined limited period, of (say) 2 years, rather than the whole 5 year term - on confidence motions, while retaining the right to vote down (with Labour and the other parties) legislation that they thought was not fit for purpose. A "Lib/Con Pact" in other words.

Such a deal would have allowed stable government whilst mitigating the worst excesses of the Tory government far better than what has in fact happened in formal coalition.

Option 3: the assessment

In terms of what has actually happened, for the most part, the Lib Dems have not really managed to make enough changes to Tory manifesto policies to make the last year much different from what a Tory government would look like. To see this, just look at the record:

the announced spending cuts are pretty much in line with what the Tories said they were going to do in their manifesto.
stealth privatisation of health and education has proceeded apace under Lansley and Gove respectively.
Huge cuts to benefits for working age people and reductions in funding for welfare-to-work programmes.
Royal Mail is being privatised.
Delibaretely starving the BBC of cash to weaken it compared with Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB.
The Lib Dems completely abandoned their pledge to eliminate tuition fees.
VAT has gone up 2.5%, at the same time that corporation tax has been cut.

The only specifically Lib Dem policies one could point to, which wouldn't have happened under the Tories, are:

The AV referendum (although this wasn't in the Lib Dem manifesto either - ironically it was in the Labour manifesto);
(possibly) scrapping ID cards (although the Tories may well have done it anyway to save money);
not implementing a few of the more bonkers Tory ideas (e.g. transferable tax allowances for married couples);
the above-inflation increase in the personal allowance - although bear in mind that this was considered by the Tories just before the 2005 election and abandoned because it's an extremely badly targeted way of reducing the tax burden for poor people (because most of the gain goes to better off people). In the leader debates before the 2010 election Cameron said that the policy wasn't affordable. This implies that the policy has been funded at the expense of greater spending cuts elsewhere - i.e. the Lib Dems may have shifted coalition policy to the right of what the Tories would have done on their own(!)

This looks like an extremely feeble return for being in formal coalition. The Lib Dems' structural role within the government is also relatively weak. They have only 5 secretaries of state and all the 'big four' are Tory (PM, Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary). The three main public sector reform departments - Health, Education and Work and Pensions are all held by Tories. Clegg's Deputy Prime Minister role is under-resourced and fuzzy in definition, as Andrew Rawnsley's Dispatches documentary this week pointed out. Progressive Lib Dems like Evan Harris point to the activities of the Lib Dems in the government as tempering the Tories' worst excesses, but have they really done this? Vince Cable - supposedly the grand old stager of the Lib Dem left - spends most of his time implementing an employment relations policy which seems to have been cooked up by the Institute of Directors. Danny Alexander sounds like a robot put together in the lab by George Osborne's special advisers. I'm not sure what Chris Huhne has actually done in policy terms. Michael Moore has a good, radical name but I don't believe I've ever seen him do anything, ever. And as for Clegg... he was talking sense on interns but that was about it.

All in all, I find it very hard to believe that a minority Tory government - with the Lib Dems combining with the opposition parties to vote down the most unpleasant Tory proposals - could have been more right-wing than the coalition has been. And the cost to the Lib Dems in terms of electoral prospects has been enormous. According to YouGov they are down to about one-third of their 2010 support levels, while even on ICM, where they poll higher, they've still lost almost half their support. Why? Because they're seen - slightly unfairly, but not completely unfairly - as spineless collaborators. This has been exacerbated by the fact that - until very recently - Lib Dems were deliberately tailoring their rhetoric to ape the Tories. So, for example, any Lib Dem politician making a speech on the economy sounded like the speech had been written by George Osborne. Given this assimilation of the Tory point of view, could anyone be blamed for thinking that the Lib Dems had lost the ability to think for themselves?

To summarise, next time a Lib Dem politician, activist or supporter tries to tell you that there was no alternative to the ConDem arrangement, give them the double whammy. (1) a Tory minority govt, with the worst excesses of the Tories voted down by the opposition parties, was probably a better option in terms of delivering less of the Tory agenda and more of what's sensible for the UK. (2) the coalition option has so far been disastrous for the Lib Dems, and could conceivably end up destroying them as a national party. Don't let them tell you that There Was No Alternative, as there was - and it would have been better for them, and for the country.

Finally, note that this post only really covers the first year of the coalition between May 2010 and May 2011. The second phase - which according to Nick Clegg, will find him carving out a clear and distinctive political position rather than operating as a Tory bag-carrier - is still too recent for reliable comment. But rest assured that I will be following up on that over the summer once the lay of the land is a little clearer.

The long road back could be coming to a close

2011-05-10T17:07:00.005+01:00

Having spent much of the weekend mulling the increasing predictability of what passes for top flight football in the modern era, it's taken me somewhat too long to pay tribute to AFC Wimbledon and an unexpected two goal victory in deepest Lancashire against Fleetwood Town in the semi final of the Conference playoffs. One of the problems with the playoff system since its inception is that the side that finishes third (or second in this case) almost invariably does not get promoted. Having lost out to arguably the least popular team I have ever heard of in Non-League football, the Dons have nevertheless surprised me in most welcom fashiontaken a huge step toward possibly making their way into the League, less than a decade after having to reform due to their team being stolen from them. As the saying goes, 'Many a slip twixt' cup and lip and neither Fleetwood nor likely final opponents Luton Town will be pushovers, but the prospect of the 'Real Wimbledon' returning to the League is nevertheless a refreshing one, and one that many fans of other clubs who have been unstinting in their support for the Dons will also relish.

Rights and wrongs - could he be right?

2011-05-07T13:20:00.006+01:00

In common with the originator of the blog, I've not always had a significant amount of time for the current Prime Minister, and whilst thoroughly enjoying the ridiculous overreaction from various humourless feminist prigs to his put down of the appalling Angela Eagle, his performances in the Commons have generally been well below that of even William Hague in the first post landslide Parliament of 1997 to 2001. That combined with his concessions to leftist opinion, attempting to woo the likes of Polly Toynbee had many of us concerned that he wasn't really a Conservative at all. Indeed very few UKIP supporters who have defected from the Tories since 2006 or ex Tories who were eligible then, of my acquaintance didn't vote for David Davis in the Leadership election that brought Cameron to prominence. Nevertheless, despite what appeared to be a disappointing performance in last year's General election, where faced with the worst government in recorded history possibly anywhere in the world, he failed to deliver an overall majority, being forced into a coalition with political opportunists par excellence the Liberal Democrats perhaps it will be the man from the Bullingdon club who has the last laugh. Although with serious misgivings in the end I think most reasonable people probably gave some thanks for his ending 13 years of quite literal hurt at the hands of the Blair/Brown administrations and reinstating a government which comprised at least a majority of Conservative MPs.

However, as some Leftist bloggers pointed out yesterday, he may have played the proverbial blinder, and it would appear to be his critics on the right who have misjudged both him and the public mood. Consider that even with a 400,000 strong march against the cuts(before they diverted to bash in the Local Santander), huge swathes of the populace dependent on state aid (either directly or indirectly), and a massively hostile media (at least the portion of it being funded by a £170 stipend on every household in the land) Cameron's vote has held steady. With the economic clouds worsening, he looks to have come in with 37 per cent of the vote. Given the state of the Tory Party even after Michael Howard's sterling efforts in 2005, this is no mean achievement, and even the most churlish naysayer has to acknowledge that the party probably wouldn't be here with Howard, Duncan Smith or Davis at the helm.

So, the question is, has Cameron's lurch to the left actually been a masterpiece of strategy? By inviting the Liberal Democrats into government he has enasured that they have acted as a lightning rod for much of the criticism from the usual suspects on the hard left. If I had one comment on the wisdom of his strategy, it was that he has spent far too much time trying (at least whilst in opposition) cosying up to the likes of Polly Toynbee and indeed the entire 'democratic left'. As Thatcher learned, basically trying to appease these people from a conservative standpoint is frankly as fruitless as trying to placate a crocodile by offering it your hand. The organisers of the so-called 'march for the alternative' would have us believe that a small group of malcontents were responsible for the violence that seems to accompany every such march in London. However, I think anyone studying Marxism or indeed Leninism as a historical philosophy will know that the use of criminal elements to undermine the existing system is a key aspect of Hard leftist philosophy, especially if the forces opposing the violence are 'reactionary elements'

Anyhow, Ed Miliband's dismal performance in Scotland gives Cameron an opportunity to press ahead with urgent redrawing of the constituencies maps to redress the balance which was skewed massively in favour of Labour over the past 13 years. One of the ironies of the left's portrayal of this government as extreme right is it suggests they see politics through the prism of the 1980 Inner London Education Authority, an organisation so barking that Trotskyites were considered 'the right'. If Cameron looks carefully at trying to limit the franchise, and adopts a more cautious policy towards Europe bringing disaffected UKIP supporters into the fold he might well be able to break the 40% mark, and as the aforementioned Miss Toynbee suggests:'A long period of Conservative hegemony' . One can only hope that this might indeed be the case and that Cameron continues to confound his right wing critics by delivering electoral success in spite of my significant misgivings. With any luck, it could lead Toynbee, the appalling Brian Reade and other members of the 'democratic left' to more amenable shores, perhaps even here if they're feeling the need for some comfort from 'ideological brothers in arms' .

Thanks Nick Clegg - you've united the left for the first time in 30 years

2011-05-07T06:26:00.002+01:00

More left bloggers have been drinking the Kool Aid overnight over Labour's performance in the local elections - for example, Adam Lent at the RSA, and Polly Toynbee at the Guardian. It's weird how these memes take hold. Most of what we've been told for the last year from the left commentariat consists of repeated insistence that Dave Cameron is on probation within his own party after failing to secure an overall majority against Brown in 2010, how the government was in a weak position, and so on. Now - after the referendum and local elections - the same people are going around saying that Cameron is some sort of genius, the Tories will be in power forevermore, and the situation is hopeless.

Well I'm sorry people, but I'm just not buying it. Have a look at the voting patterns and a very different story emerges.

The Fib Dem vote collapse was quite amazing... a fall of about 10% from last year's elections, not quite as bad as the 13% fall which recent YouGov polling would suggest, but bad enough. (I'm using figures from Jeremy Vine's election commentary on the BBC yesterday, not the weird figures that came out of Tory central office and have been picked up by most of the press and run as neutral commentary(!?)) Meanwhile the Labour vote went up by about the same - 10%. The Tory share of the vote was more or less unchanged from last year.

So the gainers - in terms of vote share - are Labour. Not the Tories.

I'd argue that what's really happening here is that the Lib Dems have completely changed their electoral strategy and Labour is reaping the rewards. Ever since the formation of the SDP in 1981 (and possibly as far back as the Liberal upsurge of the early 1970s), the Left vote in the UK has been split, with a significant proportion going to a third party - the Alliance (and more recently, the Lib Dems). For sure, the third party took some votes from the Right as well. But not as many, which gives a very good explanation for why the Tories won majority governments in 1983, 1987 and 1992, despite declining vote shares each time - the Left vote was split, and that's fatal under First Past the Post. (I'll admit that if there had been a hung parliament in 1983 a Tory/Alliance coalition was probably more likely than a Labour/Alliance coalition due to Labour '83 being perceived as off-planet Marxists, but in later elections, this wasn't the case). In the 1980s and early 1990s political commentators spent much of their time lamenting the split in the British left.

It wasn't until Tony Blair came along in the mid-1990s that Tony Blair hit on an alternative strategy for victory, despite the split on the left; he made incursions into the Right's vote share by shifting policy so far to the right that by 2005, the Lib Dems were in many ways more left-wing than the Tories. This reaped electoral dividends in 1997 and 2001 (though less so in 2005), but at the expense of creating a political environment where it would be much easier for a future extreme right govt to come along and destroy much of our social fabric (which is what's happening right now). Thus, it wasn't a long-term sustainable strategy.

But following the election of Nick Clegg and the ConDem government deal of 2010, the "Fib Dems" have helpfully reunified the British Left - or started to, at any rate - by exiting stage Right. The Lib Dems, based on their official policy position, are now a right wing libertarian party, to the right of the Tories in some respects. Clegg has made it clear he's not interested in attracting left wing voters from Labour. Thus, he's thrown away a crucial part of the Lib Dem voter base and handed it on a plate to Labour.

And THAT, more than anything, explains yesterday's local election results. And it's good news for Labour. Because for the first time since 1966, there is the potential for a left-wing government in the UK with a substantial majority which doesn't have to pretend to be a Conservative government to get elected.

There is only the POTENTIAL for such a government, mind you, and no guarantees that Labour will actually get elected. That depends on a number of factors, e.g.:

the economy getting stuck in a 'lost decade' as Osborne's growth projections fall apart completely (highly likely);
Labour's policy review actually providing policy solutions relevant to people's lives in the post-crash world (I really don't know enough about who's involved in the policy review or what options are being considered to know if this is a realistic hope or not);
the Labour Party getting behind Ed Miliband as a strong choice for Prime Minister (again, seems a no-brainer to me, but unfortunately a lot of people in the Labour party seem to have less than no brain);
the Lib Dems not drastically reversing position - and this is a real worry because it's completely out of Labour's hands. In one way it would be fantastic to see someone like Tim Farron (or even Chris Huhne) wallop Clegg for the party leadership, dissolve the coalition, and go to the country as "the man who beat the Tories"; but that of course puts the Lib Dems squarely back on the Left and could leave the way open for a repeat of the election results of the 1980s, due to our daft electoral system.
no alternative Left force emerging to drain votes from Labour. The Green Party could start to emerge in some areas as a serious drain on Labour's FPTP vote share in the same way that UKIP has for the Tories. More serious in the short run for Labour is the huge shift to the SNP in Scotland - it's not clear whether this would be repeated at a general election but if it is, it would make a majority Labour government very difficult.

So, big challenges here for Labour to be sure - but commentators who are arguing that we are looking at a rerun of the 1980s, or even the 1930s, need to cease and desist. The current situation isn't really that much like either of those eras - although it could become so. But only if Labour is especially unlucky, or makes big mistakes. For now, the 2011 local election results represent a real comeback for Labour, and, combined with Nick Clegg's big favour in reunifying the Left, should be a cause for modest celebration rather than despondency.

Last thoughts on AV: bad question, sad answer

2011-05-06T20:50:00.002+01:00

Well, the AV referendum was lost by about 70% to 30%.

My erstwhile friend Tom Clark of the Guardian offers - like a vastly more erudite Jason Donovan - 10 good reasons why Yes lost. I won't duplicate that here because it's a fantastic analysis and I've covered a lot of similar ground in previous posts anyway. Instead I'll offer some thoughts on why AV was the wrong question to ask - and where future efforts at voting reform might go from here.

AV is a piece-of-cack voting system, really, mainly because it's too similar to First Past the Post to get far enough away from the huge problems with that system. Most obviously, it's not proportional. As the main (and justified) complaint of the Lib Dems (and before them, the Alliance, and before them, the Liberal Party) about the British electoral system was that it was not proportional, it's a bit odd that they settled on a referendum on a system that didn't address their main complaint. "Ah", the Lib Dems will tell you, "but the Tories weren't offering that." Fine - they should have said "no deal" then. And then allowed the Tories to go ahead with a minority govt. They would be in a far, far better place now had they done that. It would have been the Tories, not the Lib Dems, who lost 700 local council seats today.

In the event, the main pragmatic argument from the Lib Dems for voting yes to AV was that it was a stepping stone to further reform later on. But that would imply that AV was a more proportional system than FPTP - and there is no strong evidence for that. So therefore, the 'stepping stone' argument was always shaky. As was the argument for voting yes on its own terms. It was a fuzzy, confused campaign, for a "miserable compromise", neither-this-nor-that voting system. And that, coupled with the inept way the campaign was put across and the uniquely catastrophic contribution of Nick Clegg, did for it.

So what next for electoral reform? Unless we get a freak result where a shrunken Lib Dem party can nonetheless hold the balance at the next general election, it's going to be a long while before they're in a position to demand a PR referendum - and even less likely that anyone will agree to it. So it's down to the other smaller parties in that case - particularly the Greens and UKIP. And if we're looking to those guys to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament - it's gonna take a while to happen. Current MP totals: Greens - 1, UKIP - zero. The best chance for PR is that one party becomes so dominant (the Tories for example) that there is an 'anyone-but-Tory' electoral pact across hundreds of constituencies to vote in MPs who will legislate for a PR system, followed by fresh elections. Possible... but hard to pull off.

But if this wretched referendum has had any value, it's the way the "Fib Dems" have become a salutary lesson to any third party that thinks it can sell out principles for quick power, and play fast and lose with its voters. Any third force emerging in the future - and I think the Greens are most likely - will have to act with much more principle than the Fib Dems to be taken seriously. And that, in the end, is a good thing.

Local elections: will Labour bloggers pls refrain from the Kool-Aid...

2011-05-06T16:39:00.008+01:00

Well, most local election results, and the Scottish and Welsh results, are in now (but not the AV referendum - that's announced tonight) so time to have a round up. In fact, I'll focus on English local elections and probably follow up about Scotland and Wales separately (if I feel I can contribute anything sensible to what's already been written on those elections).

The first thing is that despondent Labour bloggers thinking of drinking the Kool Aid (the worst example of this I've found so far is on the terminally pessimistic - and misnamed - Labour Uncut) need to take the bottle back to the shop, buy half an aspirin instead, suck on it, and think things over.

Yes, the Tory vote held up at about where it was in last year's election. But the Fib Dem vote has collapsed. We've gone from a 3-party system in local government to 2 parties and a bit player (plus the Greens, who made some tremendous advances).

So what did you expect? Huge decreases in the Tory vote? That would be more likely if Labour and the Lib Dems were knocking spots off the Tories. We'd probably have seen that if this was a minority Tory govt.

But instead we have a Tory-led govt with Fib Dem collaborators - and the collaborators were punished. The net effect of all the switching between different parties was that the Fib Dems were down by about 10% from last year, Tories unchanged, and Labour up 10%.

And that's a great result.

If Labour gets (say) 39% of the vote at the next general election, and the Tories get 36%, it will emerge as the largest single party - and probably win a small overall majority. Even with the boundary changes, and even with the reduction in the number of seats.

What more do Labour supporters want?

Well, plenty more, of course, and it would be foolish to deny that the Labour machine is not firing on all cylinders yet - Sunny Hundal identifies a lot of the problems in this excellent post for Liberal Conspiracy. My own interpretation of why Labour didn't do even better would stress the following:

the party is still largely a policy-free zone. The policy review is scheduled to run until autumn 2012, at least. If you haven't got much of substance to put to the electorate, it puts you at a disadvantage.
You can win a big protest vote even if you don't have detailed policies - but you need to give people a sense that you're on their side to do that. Huge numbers of people are pissed off about virtually every aspect of this govt. UK Uncut and False Economy have been leading the fight against the ConDems; Labour has dipped a toe in the water, but hasn't really done anything of substance, and indeed has sometimes been openly hostile to the anti-cuts movement. So, not surprisingly, Labour is still part of the problem, not the solution, for many people.
Many Labour bigwigs were out campaigning for No2AV - in open opposition to Ed Miliband, and in support of Dave Cameron. Remember the classic game Downfall? "Be careful - you could be helping your opponent as well as yourself!" Probably a couple of percentage points of that Tory result, at least, is due to the hard work of misguided Labour politicians and activists. Well done guys and girls...
There is still a huge debate going on within Labour about whether to target the Fib Dems or the Tories as the enemy. I'd like to think that political activists were capable of fighting on 2 fronts at once, but maybe not. So, although the Tories took quite a lot of flak at the time of the VAT rise and the Budget, the crossfire seemed to thin out in the campaign itself. Again No2AV had a lot to do with this because their obvious enemy was Nick Clegg and hence this spilled over into the local election campaign.

Of these points, if the policy review is any good it will put paid to the problem of having no policies(!) And it's in Labour's own hands whether it provides a convincing 'Plan B' alternative to the cuts or not. Neither of these will happen overnight, but the direction of travel needs to be a lot clearer - and I believe, WILL be a lot clearer - by May 2012. The No2AV effect of confusing the campaign and boosting Cameron is a one off, presumably - even the most dunderheaded No2AV activists will now return to the fold.

Which leaves the question of whether to attack the FibDems or Tories. BOTH, obviously (doh!) but bear in mind that the lower the Fib Dems go, the higher the Tory support will be - other things being equal. And of course vice versa. Fib Dems at 15%, Tories at 36, Labour at 40 or so is a little tight for winning a majority at the next general election, but still fine for Labour. Labour at 40 with the Tories on 30 and Fib Dems on 20 would be much better under first past the post (which we're stuck with), of course, but at the moment that Fib Dem vote is the softest vote (so it seems), and better to win by annihilating the Fib Dem vote (even if the Tory core vote is rock solid) than to try to appeal directly to floating Tories, fail miserably, watch the Fib Dem vote creep back up and end up with a rerun of 1992 or something close to it. You take votes from whereever the hell you can get them. It's as simple as that.

So, by no means a perfect night for Labour in England. But a good one, whatever people try to tell you.

Chris Huhne: Game On or Moron?

2011-05-05T06:21:00.003+01:00

There has been considerable speculation over whether Chris Huhne is about to walk out of the ConDem government - and if so, what his next move is.

He's compared Baroness Warsi to Goebbels. He's openly attacked CamOS in cabinet. He's thrown a lot of toys out of the pram. But are some of them packed with explosives?

It's possible that all of this is smoke and mirrors designed to remind voters that the Lib Dems still exist, and increase the Lib Dem core vote (and hey, they're up as high as 11% in the latest YouGov tracker)... certainly there were some premeditated mild spats between Cameron and Clegg in the early stages of the referendum campaign.

I think this has gone more out of control than that, though. I think it's likely that Huhne genuinely can't stand the Tory cabinet and has had enough.

But the question of whether he will still be in the cabinet on Friday, or next month, is irrelevant to the survival of the Coalition; he could just be replaced by Laws or another Lib Dem. The interesting question is: will he challenge Clegg for the leadership?

I should say at this stage that I am no big Chris Huhne fan. I'd met him a few times at various roundtable events in London and found him a rather arrogant guy, difficult to like and I suspect difficult for the public to like as well - the closest comparison would probably be Ed Balls. In the Lib Dem leadership contest of 2007, I was backing Nick Clegg - unbelievably in retrospect, but I'd met him a couple of times as well and he seemed a nice guy - which just shows that you should disregard everything I say from now on about politicians' personalities. Having said that, we've got to the stage where it's Any Means Necessary to stop this ConDem govt destroying our society, and so if it has to be Huhne that's the hero, then so be it.

Could he displace Clegg? In this matter, for the first time ever I turn to advice from former Lib Dem director of communications Olly Grender, who writes the most annoying blog on the New Statesman site (even more annoying than right-wing Labour bruiser Dan Hodges, and that is really saying something). Unlike most hacks out there, Grender actually knows how the Lib Dem leadership rules work. Huhne would need either half the parliamentary Lib Dem party to ask Clegg to stand down, or 75 Lib Dem constituency associations to pass a fully quorate Extraordinary General Meeting to pass a motion saying that Clegg should be removed.

Olly Grender suggests this is an insurmountable barrier to Clegg's removal. To me, it looks more like a couple of boxes of Tic-Tacs stacked one on top of each other. Particularly the 75 constituency associations part... remember that Huhne only lost to Clegg by 50.6% to 49.4 in 2007 - in fact, as Van Patten has pointed out, if the votes had been properly counted (I thought Lib Dems were supposed to be the "fair votes" party?) he would have won. That means that presumably a good proportion of Lib Dem constituency associations endorsed Huhne for the leadership - and that was when Clegg's stock was reasonably high. It strikes me that Huhne could win a leadership ballot standing on his head - especially as it's a ballot of party members rather than MPs, and the Orange Book libertarian tendency is even less well represented among rank and file Lib Dems than it is among MPs (there has been some turnover of Lib Dem members since the election, but even so, I'd be surprised if Orange Bookers were more than a small clique at best).

So, assuming that Huhne stands for leader and wins - what then? Pulling out of this wretched coalition would seem to be a given. What I'm not clear on is what happens then. If there were a vote of confidence with Labour and the Lib Dems voting against the govt, and other minor parties also voting against or abstaining, the govt would fall. But then, is there an automatic general election or does Ed Miliband get a chance to form a govt with Lib Dem and minor party support? This is pretty crucial. The Lib Dems might not want to chance their arm at an election with only 10% support in the polls (although their polling might change radically if they left the coalition - in which case they might prefer the election option after all). Would Labour be happier to form a coalition with the Lib Dems under Huhne? Experience from the previous coalition negotiations suggests not, but this is an at least partially revitalised Labour party, and Huhne could be easier to deal with than Clegg. Or would Labour prefer an election with a possible shot at forming a majority government, given existing polling trends (which are more favourable to them than 2005?) Are either the Lib Dems or Labour confident that a Lib/Lab coalition with only a small effective majority could achieve much, before Labour has completed its policy review? Is there a danger that the Tories could regroup in opposition and emerge with a full majority next time round?

It's a very complex and fascinating set of considerations. All this is of course premised on the idea that Chris Huhne isn't just having a hissy fit but is actually serious. I have no idea whether that is the case or not. I hope he's serious... or at least I think I hope he's serious. But my opinion of the trustworthiness and reliability of the Lib Dems, never high at the best of times, is now shot to hell, and I wouldn't be surprised if the last few days of "Dirty Huhne" turns out to have been a storm in a teacup.

Lies, Damned Lies and Chris Huhne

2011-05-04T17:06:00.006+01:00

With the referendum only a day away, as per Giroscopers request, the Yes side has come out with various forms of calumnies and gone down low and dirty to try and pull out all the stops for a Yes vote.He launched into an attack on Monday portraying opponents of AV as on a par with Donald Trump and the 'birthers' making such a mockery of Republican pretensions to the presidency .

Whence this notion comes from is hard to explain. However, whilst it might take someone of Giroscoper's somewhat paranoid mindset to elicit the true motives of Nick Clegg's pushing alternative vote, the reason behind Huhne's motives are easy to discern. Perhaps one of the least enthused about the coalition, despite his cabinet position, it isn't much of a stretch to see him positing a leadership challenge, partly because:

A/ He thinks he probably should have been leader anyway. According to the analysis of results of the 2007 election (which he lost to Clegg) which include late delivered postal ballots he would have won by a very narrow margin. Had the Royal Mail been more efficient, could the country have taken a very different turn?

B/ By coming out with public attacks on the Conservatives within the coalition, he is no doubt hoping he can tempt back Libdem voters (who have proven their socialist credentials by defecting en masse to Labour) by some kind of 'John of the Cross' routine, wherein he can say, I tried to disassociate myself from it' and 'it's all Clegg's fault.' . It may not be a bad idea from the Libdem perspective to do this, as they risk suffering the fate of their 19th century predecessors who split over Irish home rule to the extent that the 'Liberal Unionists' were absorbed by the Tories .

However, where Huhne's attack falls down is in its somewhat simplistic portrayal of the Tories as mindless opponents of democratic reform 'throughout the ages'. Even a cursory look at any 19th century or early 20th century summary of British political history will reveal the Leading opponent of democracy (who many would say based on New Labour has been almost completely vindicated)Robert Lowe was actually a Liberal, and the Prime Minister who passed the second Great Reform Act, Benjamin Disraeli was a Conservative!

I'm afraid it's also difficult to take anyone seriously whose attitude to the EU is 'right or wrong, Europe is right'. Someone who supinely stood by whilst the EU took away our fishing industry. Someone who sided immediately with European partners behaving illegally against Commmonwealth nations whose soldiers died to protect this nation's freedom. Someone who doesn't believe in putting important constitutional questions on Europe to the people. So when Huhne picks the pieces out of the probable 'No' vote on Thursday night, he might care to look not at his 'coalition' partners, but perhaps himself, for the main reason as to why that is.