On holiday

Hope blog readers are enjoying the thoughts of Van Patten... I'm currently in the middle of a 3-week holiday in the US and will hope to post some thoughts from this side of the Atlantic soon but to be honest, after a very strenuous start to 2012, I'm really trying to recharge the batteries at the moment. Stay calm and normal service will be resumed soon.

Shades of Grey

Which was the 48th episode, and the final episode of the Second Season of Star Trek: The Next Generation,  and essentially consists of about 10 minutes of new footage involving one of the actors lying on a bed in a set interspersed with Clips from previous episodes. It's widely considered one of, if not the worst episode in the entire Star Trek pantheon. I was moved to write by the latest offering from the already mentioned Owen Jones, who, having left the sanctity of the Guardian to move across to the other fount of predictable idiocy The Independent has, in the face of strong competition, produced what has to be the most idiotic article I think I have ever read in any supposedly 'respectable' newspaper.

The articles byline is 'If Socialists really did run the show then working people would benefit' and as already stated the sheer number of inaccuracies and calumnies within an article is, I think unsurpassed in the history of 'quality' journalism. There's probably too many to list not to make this the longest article in the site's history, but I'll do my best:

'When I glanced at the Telegraph's front page later that day – which revealed that multi-millionaire Tory donor Adrian Beecroft had accused Vince Cable of being a socialist – I realised it must have been Karl Marx spinning violently in his Highgate Cemetery grave. The great man shouldn't take it to heart:'

In fairness, it's questionable whether a man should be held to account for crimes committed in his names after his death but I am moved to quote the late Lewis Namier, who was moved to inquire of the brilliant philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, when informed that the latter intended to compose a treatise on Marx as to why he was studying such a Poor thinker and one so blinded by class and racial hatred. However, given how influential (Disastrously) his ideas have been, to describe him as a 'Great man' (in the sense that Possibly Hitler and Stalin were 'Great men') is not beyond the realms of possibility.

'....it does demonstrate how "socialist" is regarded as the ultimate insult by much of our wealthy elite, who have been in a virtually uninterrupted triumphalist mood since Margaret Thatcher defeated their political opponents in the 1980s'

From reading this you might think (as indeed my co-blogger might well argue) that Thatcher gained her victory through franchise restriction and use, possibly of paramilitary forces to vanquish her and, by definition 'The elite's political opponents'. Never mind she won thumping victories both in 1983 and 1987, winning a majority of voters in the C1 and C2 Sociological demographics,two strata referred to quite frequently (and witheringly, for the most part) by The Guardian as 'Thatcher's children'. I can only assume that from Jones' perspective, these people, often amongst the early self-employed, small businessmen or employees in parts of the Public Sector where Union Leadership had had their restrictive practices curtailed by the Employment reforms of Norman Tebbit , would not be classified according to his eccentric world-view as 'Working people'

'In what was fortunate timing for Thatcher's acolytes, the Soviet empire began disintegrating as her project reached its climax. Although almost all socialists abhorred Stalinist totalitarianism (by the 1980s, at least), these were regimes that described themselves as "actually existing socialism". Their collapse was portrayed as the final discrediting of socialism, and the ultimate vindication of capitalism.'

Given that even the most Conservative estimates of the extent of Warsaw Pact influence within the Public Sector, Civil Service and other prominent parts of British civic life puits the number of COMECON country agents at around 15,000, it is something of a stretch to make the statement that 'Almost all Socialists abhorred Stalinist totalitarianism'. Besides which 'Uncle Joe' had been dead for almost three decades by the time Thatcher came to power. If my blanket use of the terms 'Soviet sympathiser' and 'Sino/north Korean agent' is to be disproved (and I apologise to readers as they have been over-used) then at least one should distinguish between the Stalin, Kruschev and Brezhnev eras. As is so often the case with Journalists of the Left, the absence of historical context is truly shaming and shocking.

'Beecroft's use of "socialism", then, relates to a theory called the "Overton window", which describes what is seen as politically acceptable at a given time. Rather than having to engage in a debate over the merits of bosses being able to dismiss their workers at will, an opponent can be dismissed as a "socialist", which – for Beecroft – is code for "extremist" or "someone with views outside of what is politically acceptable".'

A theory which is used regulaly in debates by (not Jones himself, curiously, which is to his credit) journalists of the Left to circumscribe debate on a whole raft of issues, most prominently race or sexual orientation - almost any mainstream politician daring to question the status quo that we need to do something to put limits in immigration into the UK has to lace such a statement with caveats and platitudes about ' the contribution diversity has made to the country' lest he be branded 'racist'. Similarly on the issue of Climate Change (Or Anthropogenic Global Warming), currently under severe pressure, the term 'Climate Change denier' is regularly bandied about. The issue being that unlike Socialism, neither 'Racism' nor 'Climate Change Denial' can put 90 million dead across two countries in their debit column. Forget Al Gore's vapid meanderings on the state of the planet. This is the real 'Inconvenient truth' that the Left would like airbrushed out of history.

'If socialists really were running the show in Britain, they would be building a society run by, and in the interests of, working people. Our banks – propped by the British people – would be taken under genuine democratic control, forcing them to operate in the interests of society as a whole. Our booming wealthy elite would be forced to pay a fair share of tax (or, in some cases, any tax whatsoever)....'

Again here, he hits on a partial truth - the banks shouldn't have been baled out by the taxpayer, for if markets are to work, however imperfectly, then there has to be the possibility of failure. Sadly it was the previous administration, by firstly propping up Northern Rock for heavily political reasons, then intervening in the difficulties of HBOS and RBS who set in tow the kowtowing to the Banks, who know that whatever their misjudgements, the taxpayer will now act as backstop.

I also like the idea that the Banks under state control would 'act in the interests of society as a whole' - And just who decides what that interest is? Are we going to have referenda on interest rates (for example?) Which well-paid coterie of bureaucrats will decide 'the popular interest'?

'After the disastrous failures of market economics, real socialists would be taking our utilities – such as the railways and rip-off energy companies – into social ownership: not old-style, statist nationalisation, but democratically run by workers and consumers. They would bring down welfare spending, not by kicking people at the bottom, but by building social housing, introducing a living wage, and creating jobs. And they would be reversing the scandalous lack of rights that workers have in the workplace, which is what ensured that wages were declining for many before the crash had even happened...'

What I find amusing here is that Jones (I suspect) is too young to remember the situation in the 1970s, and certainly too young to remember the 1945 to 51 government - which was a genuinely impressive administration, easy to knock with the benefit of hindsight but filled with ministers who had served patriotically during the warf, and with a genuine concern for working conditions and familiar with pre-war deprivation which the modern LEft have, frankly zero familiarity with. The Industries were taken into Public ownership with the intention of running them 'democratically'. That was quickly hijacked by the Unions themselves, who took over acting in the interests of producers, rather than consumers. A quick look at the scene today sees (for example) the London Underground, which is already partly in Public ownership, and under 'Workers control' - a scenario meaning a job that for the most part mechanisation should already have removed is paid a base salary of £59K. Is Jones saying that's the kind of wage levels he wants across the economy? It sounds like a rekindling of Tony Benn's laudable but ludicrous idea of a 'siege economy' to prevent Britain being battered by the then relatively nascent Capital markets, or at worst, something like the reaction of Apartheid South Africa in the face of global economic sanctions - Build up our own industries heedless of what is going in the outside world.

As I said in the previous post on Murphy, I wouldn't normally consider either party worthy of such detailed comment, but as these are two intellectual scions of the Ed Miliband Labour Party, I think it's worth seeing the level of intellectual rigour and total failure to understand historical context or even take a cursory look at history before coming out with suggestions. Ironically one thing both contributors lack is the realisation that things aren't always black and white - and in between, there are many Shades of Grey....

Mr. Murphy's Greenhouse Stone throwing

In my 10 months or so on Twitter, which is arguably responsible, at least in part for the paucity of posts here which I am forever seeking to rectify, I have encountered a myriad group of 'Twitterati': the Good, the learned, the Bad and the downright offensive. However, aside from a spate of so -called 'Pornbots', I have never felt it necessary to Block anyone who has cause to disagree with me. Nor have I had much cause, despite some strong words at times, to be blocked by anyone bar two Leading Tweeters, the baby-faced (and, sorry to say, Rather immature, at least in terms of his real-world experience) Owen Jones and the almost megalomaniac self-styled 'Number 1 economics blogger in the UK', the Norfolk - based former tax accountant, Richard Murphy, author of the tome 'The Courageous State', and rumoured to be one of the Leading advisors on Tax policy and overall economic outlook of the (potential) incoming Ed Miliband Administration in 2015. I think my jibe at Jones when he made a reference that with the death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il, 'Robert Mugabe's Christmas Card list was getting a bit shorter' to the effect that I'm sure he was still on it probably rankled but I know for a fact I am not the first to get the 'blocking treatment' from Murphy. This very cocksure blogger likes to boast about his advocacy of a 'Courageous State' but his courage doesn't seem to extend to allowing dissenting voices to post on his blog or indeed even follow his Twitter feed, thus rendering his credibility immediately suspect.

Arguably his most prominent and incisive critic, is Tax exile and ASI writer, Tim Worstall, disparagingly referred to on Murphy's blog as 'Tim Worstofall' (Such cutting edge humour..) who regularly blows holes in Murphy's master plan, much to the chagrin of my fellow blogger (who collaborated on the Courageous State) . Unlike Murphy, Tim operates a fairly open access policy on his blog and critical comments there don't tend to be banned or silenced, a policy I'd argue is far more courageous than Murphy's almost medieval inquisition-like 'silencing' of counter-voices.

Anyhow, ranting aside, I wouldn't normally pass comment on anything Murphy has to say, only that to anyone taking a passing interest in Global economic news of late, the situation in Greece is becoming increasingly desperate. Mired in a downward spiral of falling demand, cuts in expenditure and prisoners of a massively overvalued currency, rumours persist of people foraging through bins for food, together with reports Many businesses have folded with many more on the brink and of children being abandoned to churches due to their parents being unable to afford to feed them. With the situation in Greece being so intrinsically linked to Europe, and a perfectly titled episode of Star Trek (Plato's Stepchildren) available, a more lengthy post on Greece is surely in the offing, but what took my eye on the 'Tax Research UK' blog was this almost unbelievable piece by Murphy on how Greece can effect recovery.

A few choice examples of how misguided the man is:

'The present emphasis on export-led growth as a key solution to the Euro crisis, whilst benefiting successful economies like Germany and China, will not be enough to enable the rest of Europe to deal with its collapsing effective demand.'

Which obviously begs the question as to where the money to pay for anything is going to come from for Greece in the First instance, with other potential 'Exit nations' (Spain, Italy and Portugal waiting by the door) - But, wait, here's the answer....

'the European Central Bank (ECB) should immediately announce a Green Quantitative Easing (QE) Emergency Programme for Greece. It has been estimated that there are more than 4 million households in Greece and so its first investment should be 9 billion Euros spent on fitting free solar panels for the occupants of one million south facing roofs in Greece, and a further 4 billion Euros to train a ‘carbon army’ to install energy saving measures in all Greek homes'

And where exactly is the skilled Labour going to come from, Richard? who is going to be training them? and more importantly who is going to be controlling them? Murphy appears to be advocating, in effect that the EU continue its policy of treating Greece like some satrapy from the Middle-Ages. Arguably the most shocking incident thus far seen in Greece was 77 year old Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in Athens' Syntagma Square, with a strongly-worded letter condemning the austerity pursued by the 'Tsolkagolou' government - a reference I needed to look up to explain. Georgios Tsolkagolou was a Colonel in the Greek Army who signed the surrender of Greece to NSDAP forces in World War II and was tried after the war for treason. Is Murphy suggesting that another government programme imposed (or seen as being imposed) from Berlin will be acceptable to the Greek people. I cannot read Greek but those of my correspondents that can warn the language being used to describe both the former Papademos government and the EU itself by the Greek press is inflammatory and laced with references to the German Occupation of 1941 - 45.

Also, Murphy displays his profound ignorance of the EU, which for ordinary Greeks has become synonymous with a cosy coterie of Private businessmen (who, to give him credit he will condemn) and CRUCIALLY, senior Bureaucrats, both within the Greek State and at EU level (which, due to some misguided belief shared by my fellow blogger that all Public servants have a saint-like lack of self -interest and all Public expenditure is axiomatically good he won't) who have carved up the contracts and much of the resultant money that Greece has received since joining the EOK (Greek for EEC) in 1988. The money for his solar panels will simply disappear into the same well of corruption and nepotism that it has done over those intervening two decades.

'Of course, a Green New Deal is only part of the picture to regenerate Europe. Face to face caring and wider infrastructural renewal such as housing, schools, hospitals, water and sewers systems and maintaining the local road networks will provide the backbone for a labour intensive transition for most countries. The personal care can be paid for by the state, particularly once domestic and international tax dodging are tackled. With some modest state pump priming, the majority of the funding for the rest of the infrastructure programmes can be provided by pension and insurance funds and from personal savings via bonds. The secure returns that can be earned from such investments are just what such funding sources need. The local jobs and business opportunities provided will help rebuild the tax base and allow for an eventual reduction in public debt.'

Despite Murphy's insistence that tax havens are the problem, Greeks facing down the consequences of refusing to leave the euro have been piling their money OUT of the country. Even former Communist neighbour Bulgaria, itself no paragon of economic and bureaucratic virtue is seen as a relative safe haven, with huge deposits flowing in to those unable to afford to deposit in one of Richard's prime Bete noires, Switzerland (prosperous, DEMOCRATIC and with a limited state that seems to work quite nicely for them - no wonder he dislikes them so much) Again, the infrastructure projects thus far funded by the EU have been in many cases catastrophic(Visit the Parthenon if you want evidence of this), and Good luck using either Greek bureaucrats themselves or more likely, foreign 'Independent' Tax experts to chase down tax evasion, which in Greece, due to corruption is seen as a National Sport.

In short the article completely misses the point on almost every level. It show almost zero knowledge of Greece or the Greek psyche, no respect for national boundaries or Freedom of choice and overweaning arrogance characteristic both of the Man's blog and his Twitter feed (what I can discern of it since being banned) I have said that the state most like the 'Courageous State' that I can see in historical terms is the now -defunct USSR. In advocating a key rule for that unlamented behemoth's Spiritual successor, the EU, Murphy has unwittingly (or more likely unashamedly) showed his totalitarian side. Lord help us if he has any influence over an incoming Ed Miliband administration

Enjoying the post-election fall-out

For a left sympathiser such as myself there was much to cheer in the local election results and things have only got better in the couple of days since... I'll just pick out a few bits and pieces that struck me in particular:

• For the first time in living memory I actually underestimated how well Labour would do. I thought they'd get about 500 seats, lose Glasgow and Ken would lose to Boris narrowly. In the end they picked up over 800 seats - which led to the hilarious spectacle of Baroness Warsi saying Labour needed to win 700 seats to be credible, then upping the figure to 1000 when she was informed that Labour had already gone over 700. Ho ho. And they held Glasgow. 
• Ken lost to Boris, but not by much. Considering the number of own goals he'd scored, the massive bias of the press against him, and the attacks on him by his own side, being only 3% down after 2nd preferences was a pretty good effort. The fact that it was much tighter than the opinion polls suggested made it harder for the Tories (or indeed the Blairites) to spin the result as a disaster for Labour. 
• Ed Miliband emerges immensely strengthened from these elections and is now almost certainly safe until 2015. It may even be that some of the Labour right stops thinking about ways to get rid of him and starts trying to think about ways to win an election. He can but hope. 
• The fall-out from the results in the Tory camp has been hilarious. Badge of honour has to go to Nadine Dorres who is a total loose cannon, making the anti-Blair plotters of 2005-06 look completely tame. Did any Brownite Labour MP give an interview as incendiary as this at that time? 

More on Dorres: I agree that the Tories could probably find 46 signatures for a leadership election quite easily. Just look at some of the right-wing wackos on the backbenches and that's obvious. Whether an alternative candidate could actually beat Cameron is another matter. I don't really feel qualified to pronounce on that as I don't know what the average Tory activist thinks about Cameron nowadays (and remember the Tory leader is chosen by a run-off vote among party members, not MPs). It's possible, I suppose, although as Cameron has only really hit a bad patch in the last 2 months or so, I would be surprised if the party didn't give him more time to turn it around. If I were a Tory right-winger I'd be tempted to bide my time - if Cameron loses in 2015 then the right-wing would have a clear run at taking over, either through a fresh-faced hard right winger like my MP Priti Patel (god help us) or through the proven populist right-wing Trojan horse that is Boris Johnson. If Cameron wins in 2015, the right also has leverage - they can basically turf him out if he doesn't sign up for a hard-right programme. In fact my guess is they won't need to - Cameron is basically a right-winger on most issues (except gay marriage) and is currently operating concessions to the Lib Dems only because the parliamentary arithmetic means he has to. 

Turfing Cameron out this side of Christmas would present the new right-wing Tory leader with a problem; assuming the Lib Dems abandon the coalition at that point (which they surely would - they're spineless collaborators but they're not (mostly) fascist assholes), how is this new model Tory govt going to pass any policies? It would be a minority govt. The PM couldn't dissolve parliament early because he/she needs a 2/3rds majority under the Fixed Term Parliament Act 2011. So you see, there really is no viable right-wing alternative to the Coalition. What would probably happen is that after a few months of stasis, the Lib Dems and Labour would unite to pull the plug on the whole sorry affair... pass a no-confidence vote, refuse to form a govt for 14 days and then there would be a dissolution and an early election. 

So my prediction is that Cameron will survive until 2015 whatever the right thinks. But it's great fun to watch the Tory party tearing itself apart (or bits of it anyway). Meanwhile, Labour looks more at ease with itself than at any time since about 2001. Not an outcome many of us would predicted even a few months ago. 

Tomorrow is Yesterday

My fellow Blogger has posted his thoughts on yesterday's Local Elections in the UK, and has unsurprisingly focused on the London Mayoral Elections, which seem to be the single bright spot in an otherwise fairly dismal picture for the Coalition. More on the wider ramifications, which are a direct result of the questionable Budget on which I posted what seems like an eon ago, later in the week, but it's perhaps worth considering the scale of the Johnson achievement, which comes in the shadow of A:/ A pretty dire performance by the Conservatives within London even in the 2010 Elections where they were the largest party and B:/ In the face of National polling data which has seen even the much-maligned Ed Miliband presiding over a 13 point (at maximum) poll Lead, which has led even Erstwhile and somewhat tiresome Former Statesman blogger Dan Hodges to damn him with faint praise. ( 9.30pm London time: Warning - Lest I speak too soon - It appears the result is considerably tighter than predicted - it looks like it will go right to the wire. However, the basic critique remains valid although were Livingstone to win the ramifications for those unfortunate enough to live in London would require a separate post)

As my colleague has pointed out, anyone wanting to see the scale of Ken's achievement in managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of what would have seemed certain victory need only follow Andrew Gilligan's blog in the Telegraph which gives an almost daily dose of bile for those able to stomach it. This has been derided on the Left as a 'smear campaign' which given the outrageous calumnies against Boris seen almost Daily on Twitter suggests either a distinct lack of Irony or failure to take account of the phrase beloved of the late Peter Cook, 'Mote and Beam , sir, Mote and Beam' (Based on the Biblical quotation from Matthew 7:3)

'Why beholdest thou the mote that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye'

A quote the increasingly desperate bloggers such as Owen Jones  and Sunny Hundal  (who appear willing to forgive almost any outrage if it gets a Labour victory) would do well to bear in mind.  One can only imagine the reaction had Johnson made some of the verbal gaffes that Ken had. Who can forget this classic piece from the Ultra Left Compass think tank which would have touched the heart of the Late Joseph Goebbels with its use of selective quotations, dissimulation, out of context quotations and innuendoes back when Johnson first became a mayoral candidate in 2007? Given the state of the election, I'm surprised this wasn't used as a Bible for journalists to attack him!

As Hal points out, Livingstone's failure will have almost zero ramifications for Ed Miliband - he's considered as much a maverick by many across the political spectrum as was George Galloway, and if anything, I think Miliband will benefit from having, as far as possible kept a discreet distance from his candidate's antics.

So, what is the secret to Johnson's success?:

1/ He has kept a relatively Low profile throughout the campaign - A Savvy campaigner who since an unsuccessful bid for Parliament back in 1997 has an excellent track record, I think he quickly evaluated that Ken would do himself enough damage that his best bet was to keep quiet and leave discussion until the debate, where the visceral mutual loathing would do as much damage to Ken's campaign as to his. This lack of gaffes (and he has a track record here in terms of putting his foot in his mouth as anyone from the Liverpool area will testify) served only to magnify Ken's errors.

2/ The Labour Party managed to hang itself with a singularly unsuccessful and arguably the weakest candidate they could possibly have put in the field. Anyone who has lived under Ken and who worked in the Private Sector would have had no difficulty remembering Ken's record, which was to introduce huge tax rises with almost nothing in return except for a regular diet of Political propaganda, and procure contracts for his political cronies at, again , great expense to the taxpayer. His much-vaunted congestion charge merely had the effect of shifting commuter traffic outside the zone and made private motor transport the preserve of the rich. It is very hard to conceive of a single positive aspect to his period as mayor and suffice it to say, although I had fled London to the West of England by that point, the celebrations which followed Johnson's victory led to a less than productive Friday. Had Oona King been selected as candidate, given here popularity with Ethnic minorities and women, it would have been a tall order for Boris, even with a considerable cult 'Personal' following to overcome her.

3/ Although Boris has arguably been less effective than many hoped, he does possess a certain charm that sets him apart from the Coalition - various appearances on Have I Got News for You  combined with a carefully cultivated image as a shambling , quasi-cartoonish character has done much to negate the 'Tory contamination' that has affected almost the entire rest of the coalition and gives him a certain cachet amongst the apolitical voters especially. This, combined with his relatively calm persona in the face of quite vicious hatchet jobs from the Left has done a great deal to provide a personal bounce factor which has negated the otherwise dire Poll ratings for the Tories. By contrast, as I have pointed out to Hal, Ken's ruthless 'coalition-building' and effective use of Private Sector workers as cash cows for his political projects has led to an 'Anti-Ken' coalition (No prizes for guessing I was a member) of people who vote for anyone but Ken. Although many have left London for pastures new, I'd say only the BNP has a more polarising impact than that man.

(Update 10pm London Time - the last few thousand ballots are having to be counted by hand due to a failure of the counting machines, Don't you just love modern technology?)

Updated thoughts on today's elections

With many people going to the polls today for the local elections, I thought I'd update my previous advice on the London mayoral race, as well as offering a few predictions of what's going to happen on Friday.

It seems to me that Ken is probably going to lose - which has very little to do with his policy platform, but is rather a combination of two personality-based factors: (1) Boris Johnson appears to have a certain buffoonish appeal to a swathe of voters that disconnects him from national dislike of the Tories, and (2) a proportion of (people who would otherwise be) Labour voters are turned off by Ken to the extent that they won't vote for him.

The 'Boris factor' would probably give Boris a certain boost no matter who he was running against, while the 'Ken factor' would depress Ken's ratings no matter who he was running against. But it's the combination of the two that proves deadly to Ken's chances.

This suggests that Labour would be doing better with another candidate - one with less baggage - and I think that's the case. Oona King, for example, would probably have been in front at this stage, and Boris contemplating a return to Westminster.

The "tax avoider" slur, in particular, has hit Ken really hard. There is some truth in it - to the extent that everyone who sets up a company and pays themselves partially in dividends (which don't attract National Insurance liabilities in the way earnings do) is a tax avoider. In other words Ken is doing the same thing that millions of other people who are self-employed do - paying a lower tax rate than employed people. It's worth noting that even if he were registered as a self-employed sole trader rather than a company, he'd still be paying less tax than if he were an employee, because self-employed National Insurance is considerably lower than employee plus employer rates. In his current employment situation, the only way Ken could pay tax rates equal to what he'd pay as an employee is if he paid out all the income from his company (Silveta) as his earnings rather than dividends. But this logic would suggest that anyone who takes dividends rather than earnings is a tax avoider - so the Tories are left arguing the Marxist line that the return to capital from the production process should essentially be zero, and the return to labour should be 100%. It's a funny old world. Of course, if we had a system which was neutral between the taxation of earnings and dividends, then this issue wouldn't arise. But there you go.

My previous post indicated that if I were in London I wouldn't vote Ken. That's still true on first preferences, but on second preferences, with the race so close, I think I'd have to put him second, despite my misgivings. The guy is severely flawed, but at the end of the day, the priority is to keep Boris out. My first preference would be for Jenny Jones of the Greens.

My predictions overall are for Labour to get around 500 seats, for Ken to lose, and for Labour to lose Glasgow council to the SNP. The latter two will be treated as calamitous by the Blairites in the media (Wintour and Watt, Rentoul, Dan Hodges etc.) who have had thin pickings for their "Ed is crap" campaign of late; but the fallout from London and Glasgow is unlikely to damage Ed, simply because he's had little to do with either fiasco. Ken Livingstone was chosen as the London mayoral candidate before Ed even became Labour leader, and his poll slide is the result largely of unforced errors by Ken himself, coupled with a hugely hostile media - nothing to do with Ed. Similiarly, although I am no expert on Scottish local politics, as far as I can tell the Glasgow problem is also a result of serious problems in the local Glasgow Labour party which are very much below Ed's pay grade. I mean, if the loss to the SNP in the Scottish Parliamentary elections last year didn't result in a putsch against Ed - at a point where Labour was doing much worse in the polls than it is now - it's hardly likely that Glasgow council elections are going to precipitate some kind of uprising now, is it?

I also predict that any fillip to Cameron from a Johnson win will be short-lived - the Johnson/Livingstone duel is a one-off, with no real relevance to national politics except that it establishes Johnson as a formidable operator and campaigner who will move one step closer to being the next leader. But that factor could weaken Cameron in the long run a lot more than it helps him. If Dave looks like a surefire loser in 2015 we can expect to see Boris campaign for a parliamentary seat in the May 2015 election (amazingly, the Mayor is allowed to serve as an MP at the same time, as long as it's for no more than 6 months), get elected and then resign the mayoralty to stand for Tory leader. And given the collection of duffers currently jockeying for position in the Cabinet, it seems unlikely he won't get it, should he want it. Interesting times indeed.

Ken Livingstone, dinosaur machine politics, and the case for change in London

I have spent rather too much time towards the back end of this week following an entertaining, but at the same time philosophically deep, Twitterspat between the erst-while uber-Blairite Telegraph (and ex-New Statesman) blogger Dan Hodges and various other Labour bloggers and Twitterati from the left, right and centre of the party (including Owen Jones, Eoin Clarke, Mehdi Hasan, Luke Akehurst and Hopi Sen) concerning the merits of Ken Livingstone's campaign to win back the London mayorality from Boris Johnson. And specifically, whether Ken should be supported just because he's the Labour party candidate even if you have serious misgivings about him as a candidate.

Unusually, I find myself in a certain measure of agreement with Dan Hodges on this issue... in that I don't think Ken deserves the automatic support of Labour members, let alone the wider left or centre of London politics, just because he's currently the main challenger to Johnson.

We need to get something straight about what Ken isn't, first of all (and I'm speaking as someone who voted for, and donated money to, Ken in his independent mayor bid of 2000 - the last time I was eligible to vote in a London election - and who was also an enthusiastic supporter of his re-election bids in 2004 and 2008). He is not a "hard-left" Labour candidate; if anything he is a maverick centrist, who enthusiastically endorsed most of the New Labour agenda while he was mayor. That's not to say his two terms as mayor were particularly bad; on the contrary, he made many good innovations, including congestion charging, low public transport fares (at least on Oyster cards), the Oyster card itself, and the rather nice red "ON" in the "MAYOR OF LONDON" posters. But this was back in the day when he was mainly focused on policy, rather than making an increasingly bizarre sequence of unforced errors, for example:

• making ludicrous, borderline anti-semitic allegations about London's Jewish voters (as Jonathan Freedland has pointed out in an excellent article in the Guardian).
• emulating George Galloway by hanging out with a selection of reactionary and homophobic religious leaders (as pointed out by Nick Cohen, for example).
• making unwise remarks about denying the vote to tax avoiders - unwise because on some definitions Ken is a tax avoider himself (I will be devoting a specific post to this as it is important to clear up confusion about what "tax avoidance" consists in, but suffice to say for now that the right-wing arguments that Ken is a tax avoider DO have some validity, and the issue is a time bomb which has exploded in his face at just the wrong time).

The sad thing is that Ken's policy platform is basically sound - on transport policy, reinstating EMA, and many other areas. But he's become an electoral liability to the Labour campaign. I've been arguing for several months now that Ken was going to win this election - albeit narrowly - because he only lost by 6 percentage points in 2008, and Labour was at least 10 points down in the national polls then. Logically, with Labour now 5 to 10 points ahead in the national polls, Ken should be in front of Johnson by at least 10. But instead he's around 5 points behind. I think if Labour had chosen Oona King to be selected as mayoral candidate in 2010 rather than Ken, she'd be kicking Boris Johnson's ass (and god knows, that bastard needs to have his ass kicked).

Some people - notably the brilliant left-wing Labour commentator Owen Jones - have argued that there is a right-wing media conspiracy against Ken. And yes there is, but the Tory press EXISTS to put the boot in to Labour candidates by means fair or foul. Labour's failure to reform the media to make it more balanced despite several opportunities to do so from 1945 onwards ensures that - at least until the next Labour Govt - Labour candidates are going to have to struggle against a tidal wave of lies, bullshit and smear operations. So, given that we know that, isn't it a hostage to fortune to put Ken Livingstone -a very articulate politician, but also a guy who is often the rhetorical equivalent of a cluster bomb - in the hot seat? Why not go for someone less gaffe-prone?

There's then the final line of defence, which is to say that Ken should be backed just *because* he's the Labour candidate. One of the reasons I'm not in the Labour party is this kind of dinosaur machine politics, which has in recent years been mainly been the preserve of the Blairite right, but which elements of the Labour left are now showing they can do just as well. My view on this is quite simple: supporting Labour candidates who aren't worthy of the role is a bad idea. It degrades, and in the end is likely to destroy, the Labour party. Tony Blair wasn't worthy of being PM by 2005 and no way would I have advised people in Sedgefield to vote for him then. I'd have backed Reg Keys. Likewise, I don't believe Ken Livingstone is worthy of being mayor in 2012. I don't have a vote so this matters not a jot to the election itself, but if I did, I would be voting Jenny Jones of the Green Party as 1st choice on the ballot.

And who knows? If Ken continues to disappoint in the next couple of weeks it's quite possible that Jones, the Lib Dem Brian Paddick or the indepedendent candidate Siobhan Benita could start to move up in the polls. And then things might start to get really interesting.

EXCLUSIVE: Introducing Beige Labour

Following high-level discussions between several antagonistic factions across the Labour Party, which have been kept out of the news over the last few days due to Pastygate, Petrolgate, the Granny Tax and Bradford West, I can now reveal that the leaders of Blue Labour, Purple Labour, Red Labour, Green Labour, "In The Black" Labour and "White Flag" Labour have agreed to bury the hatchet and combine forces to fight the ConDem government on a unified basis.

"Beige Labour", as the new grouping will be called, combines the best of all six strands of Labour thinking for a truly progressive alternative.

Well-known Telegraph blogger and Labour party commentator Dan Hodges welcomed the move, telling us:

What we have here is an end to the bitter factionalism which has marred Ed Miliband's first eighteen months. I've been as guilty as anyone of putting the boot into Ed - you could almost say I've been earning a living from it - but when we got the leaders of the various factions of Labour into the same room, it was clear that beating this wretched Tory-Liberal coalition was the priority. And to do that, everyone has to pour their best ideas into the mix.

Dan was generously forthcoming about the fascinating process behind choosing the name "Beige Labour" for the party's new combined popular front.

We wanted Labour to be seen as relevant to the kind of hard-working people who go shopping on a Saturday afternoon, so Ed Balls suggested why don't we all get the tube down to Homebase at Ealing (Ed knew that particular store because Neil Kinnock used to live down the road from it), choose a tin of paint for each Labour colour, get the work experience guy on the 'paint station' to mix them all together into one big tin and see what comes out? Lord Glasman was particularly enthusiastic about a nice shade of cobalt blue he'd found from Farrow and Ball, as I recall.

When we did that we needed a pretty big paint tin because we had six separate colours going into the mix. And I think Eoin Clarke from Red Labour got some paint splashed on his deck shoes, but he was pretty relaxed about that.

So what was the result of this meeting of minds and colours in a West London DIY store? Dan suddenly looked enthused as he described the outcome:

What we had, in the end, was beige, which I have to say was pretty much optimal. If you'd set out to choose a colour off-the-shelf you couldn't have done better than light brown. It's an everyman colour - a working class but aspirational living room colour. What we have here is Dulux Paint Labour - it won't appeal to your average university lecturer, but the suburbs in the south east will lap it up. I think this is the day Labour painted over its differences once and for all. It means I'm going to have to find something different to write about in my columns from now on, but so what? It's worth it if it means we win the next election.

The ICI Corporation, which produces Dulux paints, was reported to be in conversation with Labour Party HQ at Victoria Street last night about a "sizeable donation to party funds", possibly in exchange for launching a range of new brushes inspired by Ed Miliband's "tough but functional" haircut.

The Gamesters of Triskelion

Having been off the airwaves for what seems like an age, a warm welcome back to those readers who have had nothing on the page to read that haven't fled for more fertile pastures. Regrettably the significantly smaller and more rapid-fire interaction available on Twitter has taken up much of my limited spare time whilst some of the rest has been taken on some winter vacations down to parts of the American South West. If 'A week is a long time in politics' is something of a trite expression, then four months seems like an eternity. Indeed last week revealed one of the most inept budgets I can recall in recent times, certainly since the heyday of the 'Iron Fist' or 'Man who saved the World' (sadly not a bastardised David Bowie reference but this man)

The title post refers, as always to a Star Trek episode, which I thought was going to be something of a tricky fit (I'm waiting for a John Redwood related story to try and fit in 'Spock's Brain') when coming up with the concept of posts encompassing all 79 episodes of the series, but the budget appears to me to show a worrying lack of political sense and direction. As Telegraph (!) blogger Iain Martin put it:

'At least Gordon Brown's budgets used to take a day or so to unravel'

This budget basically was two fingers to almost every sector of society, beyond the primarily London-based Super-rich. When even notorious Blairite blogger Dan Hodges wades in to the morass to condemn it and, to my great surprise even praise Ed Miliband, (whose Budget riposte, although perhaps not as much of a tour de force as certain Sino/North Korean collaborators in the Guardian would have liked certainly saw him have much the better of the exchanges.) You've got to know you've badly misjudged the public mood.

Indeed the reaction of the many UKIP and Ultra - Libertarian bloggers on Twitter has been one of almost total disbelief. As one, the irascible @Jim_Watford put it:

'I never thought he (Cameron) could lose to Ed Miliband but that's what's going to happen'

'Fuel Duty being raised again. does anyone in this government have a clue?'

So why does the Budget attract, in my opinion such justified opprobrium? For me, three measures stood out as politically naive or plain idiotic:

1/ Failure to scrap plans to increase the Fuel Duty by 3p a litre. Whilst the Green opposition has actually been relatively neutral on this, it had the effect of seriously annoying The Sun and by extension it's 3 million plus readers, many of whom are converted Conservative voters the party needs to win if it is to have any chance of retaining power after 2014 (although I have to say a 2015 election is looking likely if the current polling trends continue) I can recall (and more on the 'Second Petrol crisis' to follow, time permitting) the 2000 'Fuel protests' which took place when Petrol was hovering around the £1.00 per litre mark. Diesel is already hitting over £1.50 without the tax rises, and for most dwellers outside London, Public transport for grocery shopping simply is not an option. Indeed, Osborne needs to be looking to cut further into the Labour client state with a view to reducing Fuel Duty rather than increasing it!

2/ As both 'Stalinist state' advocate Richard J Murphy quite eloquently and Ken Livingstone, in typically racist fashion, have pointed out, and I have also understood, the threat of people moving from London to Dubai, Singapore or Sitzerland is typically overplayed. Thus at a time when living standards are stagnating, it seems insane to cut the top rate of tax. And even assuming that, as stipulated this was a revenue maximiser, then why cut it only to 45p - The political lack of nous is truly breathtaking. I'd certainly not have advocated cutting the rate to 40p, but at least such a move would have been intellectually coherent.

3/ By 'Freezing' the age-related allowances for pensioners Osborne appears to have reintroduced the famous 'Stealth tax' narrative into British Politics. As the CPS pointed out, even by 2004, Labour had, through this method, introduced 75 Stealth taxes. I, for one, didn't elect a Tory government just to see them do exactly the same as the 'Clunking fist'. Furthermore, the elderly comprise the overwhelming majority of Tory activists and much of their vote. As I have pointed out before, the kind of people who are manning the barricades at 'Right to work' protests, 'Occupying' Private property, or 'Marching for Alternatives' aren't going to vote Conservative no matter how much you try and appease them. Why, thus, put in a measure likely to alienate your base, especially at a time when due to the massive fiscal profligacy of the previous administration, elderly savers have been the victims of an almost ZIRP (Zero Interest rate policy) for nearly two years of this government, and 2 of the previous?

In short, the Budget was almost enough to push me, in Millenarian style, into the Miliband camp, if only to see if following five years of Hard Leftism, something reasonable might arise from the ashes. It seems I'm not alone, and recent polls now put a ten point gap between Miliband and the Tories. The by-election result alluded to in my colleagues earlier post seems, superficially to have been a respite for Cameron, only if we ignore that whilst the Labour vote was badly hit, the Tory vote collapsed to under 3000, losing their candidate her deposit. Thus the Tories face the very real prospect of being the next 'Heath government' with Miliband cast in the role of Harold Wilson - the parallels with the 1970s look more and more apt with each passing day!

Galloway

Some brief thoughts on George Galloway's surprise win in the Bradford West by-election.

Firstly I should put it on the record that I was in the past - naively - a strong supporter of Galloway. In the run-up to the 2005 election it initially seemed to me that Respect was a genuine attempt to build a left alternative to New Labour, initially involving Greens as well as Reds, and Galloway's main point - that Tony Blair was a Bush poodle who should be in the dock with his mentor George W Bush for war crimes - made perfect sense to me.

My stance on Galloway has since changed and I'm now not a supporter of his at all, for two main reasons:

• the unsavoury alliance between elements of the far left and reactionary religious extremists which Respect cultivates;
• Galloway's next-to-useless record as Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005-10 parliament, where he turned up to only 7% of parliamentary votes while pursuing a full-time outside media career - including an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, FFS.

Also it seems to me that other political groupings - the Green Party, Labour Left, Liberal Left, Compass and Occupy LSX - articulate a left political perspective more successfully, and stand more chance of widespread success, than does Respect.

That said, it is quite something for Galloway to win Bradford West despite being written off by the media and the Labour Party in the seat. What it shows, I think, is the fragility of the orthodox pro-cuts, pro-austerity consensus which the ConDems - and the right wing of the Labour Party - are spoonfeeding the public. There are a great many more people in this country who know bullshit when they see it than the Westminster bubble might believe, and that bodes ill for the centre-right's continuing attempts to convince the British public that the economic sado-masochism we have embarked on is (a) necessary, and (b) desirable.

Of course, the danger is that disenchantment with the current consensus can feed the hard right as well as the hard left. Galloway expertly combines elements of both, but in future by-elections I'd expect to find one or more of UKIP, the BNP, the Greens and Respect all making inroads. Less chance of that happening at a general election because the system is stitched up against these smaller parties - but even so, I would not rule out more Caroline Lucas style breakthroughs from the parties that are "fringe" at the moment but, as the economic situation deteriorates further, are likely to become the New Mainstream.

Some good comedy for you on Budget Day

This is probably going to be the grimmest of grim days for anyone who doesn't want the UK to degenerate into a winner-take-all corporate fascist state, so allow me to lighten the load with a brilliant political comedy sketch courtesy of Robert Philpott, who has accused Michael Meacher of starting "factional warfare" in the Labour Party in a recent New Statesman article.

Coming from the leader of an organisation whose raison d'etre is factional warfare - with the objective of replacing any semblance of genuine socialism or social democracy in the Labour party with a compliant Tory-lite leadership who won't rock the boat and will agree with everything George Osborne says - this is nothing short of breathtaking, laughable hypocrisy.

And congratulations to Michael Meacher for telling it like it is a few days beforehand, in the same publication.

The main "religiously oppressed" people in the UK are kids who happen to be the wrong religion for their local school

In the months since the May 2010 election and the formation of the ConDem government, it has often seemed like every day is "silly season" in the media. There are a number of Tories - both ministers and backbenchers - who specialise in trotting out loony right-wing theories taken directly from the US Christian right, eugenicists, far-right libertarians and other unsavoury sources. One of the worst offenders is Lady Warsi, who yesterday said that "militant secularisation" was taking hold of society.

On the face of it, this is a statement so ludicrous that it is hard to take seriously. Warsi's argument appears to be based on two recent court rulings:

1. Bideford Council, which was told it can't hold prayers as a formal part of council meetings (councillors are of course free to hold prayers before the meetings start should they so wish);
2. the Christian B&B owners who weren't allowed to turn away a gay couple.

It's hard to see either of these judgements as evidence for secularisation, militant or otherwise. In the Bideford Council case, it is very hard to see what prayers have to do with council business. In the case of the Christian B&B owners, if the judgement had gone the other way it would have been tantamount to a ruling that anti-gay Christians should be exempt from laws outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. If that were allowed to stand, one might as well say that Nick Griffin should be exempt from laws outlawing discrimination on the grounds of race. But this has nothing to do with religion versus secularism. It's to do with whether the law should be applied consistently or not. Lady Warsi appears to be suggesting that anti-discrimination legislation amounts to "militant secularisation"; the corollary of this argument is that we can only have "religious freedom" if we allow the oppression of gay people, ethnic minorities, women, or other groups. In which case... give me militant secularisation over religious freedom every day.

There is one area in which an element of our society is discriminated against on a regular basis: school choice. But, as Dr Evan Harris (the greatest Lib Dem leader we never had) pointed out on Channel 4 News last night, it is children from non-religious families (and the "wrong" religions) who are discriminated against, not children from the "correct" religious families. A faith school - for example, a C of E school - can refuse an application from a child whose parents are of a different faith, or no faith, solely based on that reason. This is blatant religious discrimination of a type outlawed in most other areas of public services and the private market. For example, a supermarket can't refuse to serve you on the grounds you're an atheist. An employer can't refuse to employ you on the grounds you're from the wrong religion (except, I think, in the case of teachers at faith schools - once again, blatant discrimination). If I have a criticism to make of the National Secular Society, it's that they are picking the wrong targets. Prayers at council meetings is a niche issue at best. Discrimination in the school sector affects millions of children, and could probably be stopped via a test case if a school was taken to court (and if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights). Having said that, disclaimer: my legal knowledge is pretty much zero so I could be talking complete rubbish here.

As things stand, the Mickey Gove education reforms are going to hand over huge chunks of the school system to religious organisations, making an already big problem worse. If I have kids in the next few years, home schooling - or one of the "progressive" schools like Steiner - may be the only viable option. At this point I'd say "God help us" but that would just be playing into Lady Warsi's hands.

Greece: taking the long and painful road towards default

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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...

...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

(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?)

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:

1. that the referendum is held by summer 2013;
2. 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?

(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:

1. 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.
2. 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

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

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

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.