Is there in Truth no Beauty?

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....

Kill The King

Rainbow, IMHO, was one of the weaker heavy metal outfits of the late seventies. Vocalist Ronnie James Dio is (with the possible exception of Black Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell" LP) crap, and the whole sub-Dungeons and Dragons feel to the lyrics has never struck me as particularly interesting. They got better once Richie Blackmore replaced Dio with other vocalists (first Graham Bonnet and then Joe Lynn Turner) and switched over to love songs, producing two classics in "Since You've Been Gone" and "I Surrender", but even so, that's just about all anyone remembers from them nowadays. For straight-down-the-line rock'n'roll give me "Golden Earring's Greatest Hits Vol 3" anyday. 

But Rainbow did manage some good song titles, and one of them, "Kill The King", is the title for this post, and for a very good reason. 

Because, unusually, James Purnell is right. It's time to get rid of Gordon Brown. 

The guy has had two years to banish the disastrous aftertaste of the cod-Tory Blair era, and he's done almost nothing. Most of what he has done moves us in the wrong direction. We are stuck with stupid and disastrous policies - privatisation of the post office, ID cards, privatisation of welfare, a continuing commitment to a bloody stupid voting system, failure to reverse privatisation of the railways - I could go on and on. Meanwhile, the increase in public spending as a share of GDP to pay for improvements in services - one of the only remotely "progressive" things about new Labour - has been jettisoned because of the economic collapse, and we face a decade of retrenchment and spending cuts which will damage the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. 

Yes, Brown has averted disaster - at least for now - on the economy, and there have been a few good policy moves, like the 50p income tax rate. But it's nowhere near enough. This guy is the biggest disappointment as PM since - well, EVER. Sadly, those awful Blairites like John Hutton who said he would be an awful prime minister were right. 

There is an escape route - a way to prevent a Tory landslide at the next election. Alan Johnson can be installed as leader, do a deal with the Liberal Democrats to change the voting system to proportional representation, then dissolve parliament in the autumn and call an election under the new rules. I don't think the Tories can get anywhere near 50%. Even if the Tories went into coalition with the Lib Dems after an election, it'd still be better than sticking with what we've got. 

Both the left and the right of the Labour party realise this - Purnell included. Brown is left clinging to a shrinking island of support which will eventually just comprise himself, Nick Brown, and Ed Balls. He can make it easier for himself by resigning on Monday, after the Euro election results (which will be disastrous) come out. Otherwise it's gonna get very ugly indeed - we're likely to see mass resignations from the cabinet. Blears and Purnell were only the first wave. 

Of course there will be calls for an immediate general election if the leader is changed, but Johnson can play the plumber role; if he points out that he is conducting essential maintenance to the Westminster democractic system, which can't wait, he can turn the crisis of political legitimacy to his advantage. Then, we'll either have revolution (George Osborne as Che Guevara anybody?) or we'll have a new voting system. Either way, things must improve from where they are at now. 

I feel a bit like the guy with the cigar in the A Team: "I love it when a plan comes together". 

No Photoshop required this time

So Jimmy Purnell has stepped down from the Cabinet. And this time it's not some revisionist Photoshop job, but a genuine challenge to Gordon Brown.

Make no mistake, this is a much more bold challenge than Hazel Blears, who didn't mention Brown in her resignation statement. Purnell has said the following:

"I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely. That would be disastrous for our country.... I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning. As such I am resigning from government."

I don't see how Brown can survive much longer. We'll see the local election results tomorrow... but does anyone believe they won't be dire?

Who's gonna get it (in the neck?)

The last instalment in a three-post series analysing what the most likely - and (probably not the same) the most desirable - scenarios are for the next Labour leader.

As each day passes I'm driven towards the conclusion, which many of you will have reached already, that Labour is headed for an absolute landslide defeat. Probably down to less than 200 seats in the next parliament.

Polly Toynbee has recently been converted to the view that Brown should go before the next election - in fact, that he should step down now. She is now backing Alan Johnson as an alternative leader. This is a turnaround from the last few months, when she was saying Brown was the only hope - and then before that, in mid-2008, when she was saying Brown must go - and then before that, in 2007, when she was saying Brown was the best thing since sliced bread. I think Polly is very good on most things, but on this particular subject, she's lost it.

I don't think Johnno would do much good at this stage anyway. There's not enough time to put together a coherent political strategy between now and next June. The main battleground (apart from MPs' expenses) is the economy, where Alan has not really had much experience (not that Cameron or Osborne have either, but there you go). In 2006/07, even in 2008, I was saying yes to a Johnno bid for the leadership, but I think it's too late now.

I think Polly Toynbee is wrong anyway: best to let Gordon Brown take the hit and preside over an annihilation of the New Labour project. Then we can start over. It sure as hell ain't gonna be easy. But it doesn't have to be such a complete cock-up as the William Hague/Iain Duncan Smith era was for the Tory party.

Why? Because the Tories made the mistake of retreating into a more extreme version of the Thatcherite policies which the voters had soundly rejected in 1997. Hague and Duncan Smith were hard-line Thatcherites.

The analogue would be if a rump Labour party just retreated into a hardcore Blairite or neo-Blairite agenda - Alan Milburn/John Hutton/Steve Byers territory - after the next election. But I don't see any reason why they'd do this. The main leadership contenders - the Milibands and Cruddas - don't have a huge ideological attachment to Blairism. (OK, I'm not totally sure about David Miliband, but we'll come back to that). The party base and the unions sure as hell don't want it. Whether the parliamentary Labour Party wants it depends on its composition after the next election, which would take me too long to analyse at this point, but I would imagine that most MPs will be flexible enough to try a move away from the Blair/Brown agenda, rather than more of the same thing that has just destroyed the party electorally.

So, with Blairism (and Brownism, which is much closer to Blairism than most people think) discredited, there will be a space for genuine radical thinking in the Labour party - in the same way that Dave Cameron moved in with genuine (for the Tories) radical thinking after 2 election defeats for the post-Thatcherite agenda in opposition. The main thing, though, is that whoever the leader is, they need their shit together from day one (or at least Year One). Labour cannot afford to f*** about in opposition in a Tory 1997-2005 style, let alone a Labour 1979-83 style. (In fact Labour can't afford much of anything as the party owes millions - they will probably have to go bankrupt and start again - but due to the wonders of modern bankruptcy law designed to encourage 'entrepreneurial behaviour', that's no great problem, so we won't worry about it.)

Who should the next Labour party leader be? I would be happy to see either Jon Cruddas or Ed Miliband do it. Cruddas has the advantage that his powder is very dry, politically speaking - he's not been a government minister at any time - and he has a reputation for plain speaking coupled with an intelligent and logical analysis of political issues, which is an unusual combination. (Many current political heavyweights don't have even one of those attributes, let alone both). Ed Miliband has managed to be about as radical as one can be in the present New Labour cabinet without actually getting kicked out, and has been reasonably effective as Climate Change Secretary - overturning at least some of the shitty decisions that Gordon Brown has made on the environment. He's also a very good speaker, albeit with less of the common touch than Jon Cruddas. On the flipside, he's younger than Cruddas (but I don't know if youth is really that important. Ming Campbell was supposedly deposed from the Lib Dem leadership for being too old, but Vince Cable is one of the most popular politicians in Parliament, and he's almost as old as Campbell. Go figure.)

David Miliband, some journalists' favourite choice, would be less my inclination, partly because I felt the guy sucked up to Tony Blair far too much (indeed my nickname for him was "microBlair" at the time), and partly because I'm not really sure he has the same kind of progressive ideological backbone that Ed has. That's no barrier to a successful top-flight ministerial career - indeed he has already achieved that, as Foreign Secretary - but a decent Labour Party leader needs to have strong ideological convictions. The fatal flaw of Tony Blair was that he didn't in general - and on the occasion he did, they were brainstormingly right-wing. Gordon Brown claimed to have strong ideological convictions, but we've seen precious little of them from him as PM. In fact we've seen precious little of anything from Gordon - the word 'failure' doesn't even begin to cover it.

Other options for leader look dreadful or unrealistic. I've already covered Alan Johnson; I think he'll be seen as too old and he won't really want it anyway, except as a caretaker - but why go for a caretaker when you can have the real thing? The arguments against Jack Straw are pretty much the same as Johnson. Harriet Harman is popular with certain activists but would go down like a lead balloon with the public, and is not as radical as she claims to be, by any stretch. The old guard of Blairites - Milburn, Clarke, Byers, etc. - are delusional if they think they can run successfully for the leadership. How, exactly?

James Purnell is an interesting one. My instincts on Purnell are that he's pretty duff but an acquaintance of mine who works for him suggests otherwise, and as this acquaintance is not in the habit of talking bollocks, I have to at least weigh that in my deliberations. According to Guardian journalist Allegra Stratton, there is some kind of backroom plot among Blairites to pair up Purnell and Jon Cruddas in some kind of 'dream ticket' (a phrase last used about the Neil Kinnock- Roy Hattersley combination, which admittedly was somewhat underwhelming). I'm inclined to think this is just yer standard "journo attends think-tank party and is desperate to write something" bollocks - but it is nonetheless marginally intriguing.

You can assume that any Labour MP not mentioned here in connection with the leadership is either too boring, too extreme (which doesn't mean they wouldn't be good - John McDonnell, for example, would be a class act as leader, but he just ain't got the power base to run for it) or too damn heinous to spend any time on. But we can always come back to this as I don't think that election will be any time soon, no matter what expenses claims excitement emerges from the woodwork.