Tony Benn Dies Aged 88 – An Icon of the English Left

Very sad to hear the news that Tony Benn has died. He had been very ill for a little while and when last I saw him in the flesh, which was a couple of years ago, he looked very frail.

I once saw him make a speech at The Free Trade Hall of all places in Manchester in I think 1980, and he was very powerful, electric even and really inspiring, and I left the event feeling as though the revolution was about to begin in the next week or so.

Times change of course, and the revolution (a peaceful one, of course) looks further away than ever now, but Tony Benn was the only figure on the left from the 70’s and 80’s and before that managed to keep up with the new politics of the left, attending Left Field at the Glastonbury festival for example and he could engage easily with the younger generations.

I thought of trying to get a video clip for this blog of Tony Benn in his prime, but in end thought it more appropriate to feature a recent one, like the one above, because he really did adapt with the times, and could be just as inspirational in his later years.

He will be sadly missed by all those of a radical political persuasion, young and old. He constantly reminded us of our power to change things, and to never give up hope. A great man indeed. 

Lib Dems beaten by Bus Pass Elvis Party in council by-election

This is the result of the Clifton North, Nottingham council by-election held yesterday.

Bishop - Bus Pass Elvis  67
Clarke - UKIP             536
Ferguson - Labour      1179
Marshall - Lib Dem        56
Rule - Tory                 1025

It would be remiss to let today pass without noting the highlight from last night's council by-elections. In Clifton North, Lib Dem candidate Tony Marshall was beaten into last place by David Laurence Bishop of the Bus Pass Elvis Party (Marshall received 56 votes to Bishop's 67). The party's policies include the legalisation of brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs.

Bishop told the Nottingham Post that he was now "confident" of beating the Lib Dems in the general election. He said: "I will either stand in Broxtowe or Skegness and I'm more confident of beating the Liberal Democrats than I was two days ago. It's not the best news for the Liberal Democrats. But perhaps people actually liked my policies of legalising brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs and holding an enquiry into the cost of vets fees."

The Lib Dems, who have lost their deposit eight times in parliamentary by-elections since 2010, have previously been beaten by Professor Pongoo, a climate change activist who visits schools dressed as a penguin.

Written by George Eaton and first published at The New Statesman

Russell Brand Interview - We need a Revolution

There is some enjoyable sparring between Paxman, clearly channelling the sentiments of thousands of PSE teachers parrotting the vacuous suggestion that those who criticize the failings of our 'representative democracy' should stop and instead involve themselves in it, and Brand, who channels the sarcastic teenagers who know all the reasons why the teacher is wrong and are happy enough with that. But this isn't a serious political debate or any sign that revolution is on the agenda.

Brand talks generically about the way in which differences within the 'political class' are more ephemeral than they seem, and how this has made people dissillusioned with the political system. Strip out the occasional nods towards leftist terminology (like saying 'political class' instead of 'Westminster Politicians') and this is mainly the stuff of a million pub conversations about how 'they are all the bloody same'. Nigel Farage could probably agree with 80% of it.

To be scrupulously fair, he does talk about the failure of the banking system, about unequal distribution of wealth and income, and about cuts and austerity. That's a good thing, and something we don't hear discussed in these terms often on mainstream TV.

But as another famous beardie once wrote, the important thing is not to interpret the world but to change it. Here Brand was utterly helpless in the face of the Paxman steamroller. Paxman says that the only way to change the political system is to participate in it; Brand knows that this is wrong but is unable to articulate why. That would require too much engagement with detail and with structure and process. Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky can do this, but they don't get prime time with Jeremy Paxman, and not many people would watch if they did. Brand does get prime time, precisely because he can't spell out a detailed critique of how 'representative democracy' screws us all.

It's a bit unfair to blame Russell Brand for not having a detailed political program or strategy, a point that he makes rather well himself during the interview. But it is important to recognize that talking about a revolution without actually expressing any idea about what that might mean is, in some sense at least, one of the safety valves of the political system. We have seen this in other anti-politics movements led by comedians and celebrities, notably the Beppe Grillo movement in Italy, that captured the rage of an important section of the population and then led into a blind alley with a program that again, Nigel Farage would have quite liked.

Lots of people have shared the interview video, excited that someone famous was at least using the R word. That's got to be a good thing, and it would be an even better thing if our party and the movement of which it is part would be able to engage with this sentiment, which goes far beyond the usual waters in which the anti-capitalist left usually fishes. But that in turn requires a political strategy for change that goes beyond 'vote for us, we are different to the rest of them'. And a vision of a revolution that is neither a fairy tale of opting out of capitalism to create a parallel world alongside it nor a nineteenth century insurrectionist fantasy.

Written by Jeremy Green

Sharon Shoesmith was unfairly dismissed – so she deserves a payout

The precipitous sacking of Haringey's former children's services chief over Baby P silenced debate over what went wrong. £600k is the price for that silence

Describe a successful outcome for a social services department trying to protect a child. I cannot. Every possible solution can legitimately be criticised. Only last month a senior family court judge criticised adoption and social services reforms as encouraging a propensity to remove children too quickly. On the other hand, if a child is not removed soon enough, the risk is a repeat of a tragic case like the death of Peter Connelly.

That is the tightrope that social services work walks on a daily basis, in the field of child protection and most other work. It is work which is de facto defined by its failure, as it can only be judged against totally unquantifiable alternatives. The death of any child in the hands of abusive adults is nothing short of a catastrophe. How many deaths are avoided each year by the removal of children from such situations cannot be quantified. The former is highly publicised, because – let's face it – dead children sell newspapers. The latter can never be reported.

A rise in the number of children removed from their families is also seen as a measure of failure to support. All this means that the relative "success" of such work is necessarily judged by the number of human lives it sought to make better, and did not. It is against this backdrop that I find the hysteria with which the Sharon Shoesmith settlement has been met deeply unhelpful and counterproductive. Tim Loughton, the former children's minister says it "stinks". Former children's secretary Ed Balls says it "sticks in the craw".

The underlying conclusion, explicitly stated by some newspapers, is that Shoesmith was ultimately rewarded for her failure. The court of appeal, however, decided that there is a process of natural justice for arriving at such a conclusion and that the process was circumvented. She was scapegoated for the sake of political expediency. For politicians to persist with trotting out that she had failed at her job, is to continue with precisely the same sort of conduct. Shoesmith was never afforded the chance of responding to the criticism in the report. Instead, she found out that she had been fired by watching a hastily convened press conference on television.

You may agree with that way of doing things or not. You may find it swift and decisive rather than precipitous. But the undeniable legal fact is that it was unlawful. And the penalty for the state acting unlawfully as an employer is compensation. It reflects the fact that, not only was Shoesmith's life destroyed without due process, but also that a proper conclusion about what happened around the case of that poor child's death cannot, and will never, be properly reached.

That compensation, the precise level of which we don't actually know but which is reported to be about £600,000, will include significant legal costs accrued during a lengthy battle and roughly £300,000 in salary, since this was a judicial review decision in which she was adjudged not to have been properly dismissed for the two years while the fight went on. Both those elements, which make up the bulk of her settlement, could have been avoided by the state acting properly.

The easy conclusion is to say that a woman directly responsible for a child's death has been rewarded with what Newsnight described as "a small fortune". The more difficult discussion is that perhaps, just perhaps, the death of children in the hands of cruel and evil parents can never be absolutely prevented within the current framework. This is the discussion that was denied a public forum by the government's actions. What is more, tragically, the way this case has been handled makes future tragedies more, not less, likely. It makes social work even more risk averse and focused on covering one's own back with paperwork, rather than helping people. It makes bright candidates, well suited to the field, less likely to choose it as a career.

The buck must stop with Shoesmith, pronounced assorted pundits. Why is that? That line is convenient, but rather arbitrary. Why must the buck stop with the head of a particular social services and not, for instance, the head of the local authority who allocated the budget and had oversight, or Ofsted which gave the services in question a good rating just before the circumstances of this case came to light, or the minister responsible at the time? It may well have been that through the proper process Shoesmith would be judged to have failed and to be the person ultimately responsible. We will never know. The debate has been silenced and £600k is the price for that silence.

There is another, perhaps more fundamental, tension that receives no attention. Many of the same commentators, who rightly tear their garments over every tragic incident, are precisely the same ones who want government to shrink, rail against the interventionist "nanny state", condemn local authorities for what they pay to senior staff and feel taxation – at whatever level – is too high. The positions are mutually exclusive. Well-funded, well-trained social workers and their managers cost money, which many are not willing to pay. A shrunken, non-interventionist, poorly funded state lacks the capacity to stand in the corner of every living room in the country, observe what people get up to and always intervene at precisely the right moment. So, which is it?


Written by Alex Andreou and first published at The Guardian

Labour Party Conference - Welcome to Brighton

The Green party welcomes Labour to Brighton with the message. We are the real opposition to the ConDems.

GMB Union’s move shows that unions feel sidelined by Labour

The GMB added this ominous statement to their press release: “It is expected that there will further reductions in spending on Labour party campaigns and initiatives.”

Much more will come out this weekend as the annual TUC conference kicks off in Bournemouth, but it’s telling that no one from any of the major unions was willing to make a statement on BBC World at One today. Only Ronnie Barker from the Bakers Union came on to say that he wouldn’t be surprised if other unions follow suit.

There’s a tendency for many within Labour to see their relations with Trade Unions as a battle of wills rather than an equal relationship. So many will interpret this as a ‘warning shot’ from GMB that requires a ‘robust response to show we’re not weak’ etc. But I think they forget that there are far more Britons who see their union as more relevant to their lives than the Labour party.

As George Eaton points out, the GMB has decided to slash its funding in advance, rather than seek to recruit members to the party. And they’re not even bothered about picking a public fight over this.

This is bad for the Labour not just because it deprives of the money, but because it indicates relations are so bad the unions are largely unwilling to work with Labour to make it a mass-membership party. They’re essentially saying: ‘if you’re going to treat us like this, then don’t expect us to help you‘.

If that attitude among unions hardens and becomes entrenched, especially if the Labour leadership decide to take it as a personal attack, then expect more unions to follow and eventually look at disaffiliation.

Written by Sunny Hundal who blogs at Liberal Conspiracy

Labour to End Affiliation Links to Trade Unions

 

The Guardian newspaper, amongst many other media outlets, reports that the Labour party is seriously considering cutting off affiliation to the trade unions in a move that would end over a hundred years of such arrangements, beginning in 1904 when the unions formed the Labour Representation Committee, which later became the Labour party.

There are many on the right in the Labour party who have wanted to make the break for a number of years now, but the Falkirk by-election candidate selection row with the union Unite, has given fresh impetus to the idea. Without knowing all of the facts surrounding what has gone on in Falkirk, it seems to me that Unite has not broken any Labour party rules, by paying Labour party affiliation fees for members of the union who live in the constituency. And Unite’s argument that it is only trying to increase the number of Labour party MPs from working class backgrounds from the paltry 9% currently in situ, does seem to be a noble aim.

Starting in the 1980’s when Neil Kinnock was Labour party leader, and then pushed much further by Tony Blair when he became leader, there has been a centralising of the decision making for Labour candidates in winnable seats. Some of the justification for this, to get more women into Parliament for example, was good in its intent, but at the same time they had to be the ‘right sort’ of women to benefit. In the main, these candidates’ men or women had to find favour with the Labour leadership in terms of political ideology. This system brought us such political titans as Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith, so enough said there then.

Unite is only playing the same game as the Labour leadership, in trying to influence the selection of candidates who are more in tune with the values of trade unionism, which given the huge amount of funding provided by the union to Labour (£3 million this year alone), is not in the least bit unreasonable.

So will Labour cut the link? I think there may be some reshuffling of present affiliation rules, but at the end of the day Labour needs the unions’ money. Tony Blair disastrously tried to move away from this dependence when he was leader, wooing wealthy individuals into giving donations, but various patronages scandals cast a shadow over this type approach (though it doesn’t stop the Tories) and it moved Labour even further away from the interests of the people who they were elected to represent. I have my doubts there will be complete break, but it would not surprise me if it happened. Labour has been travelling along this road for getting on for thirty years now.

I say to the unions, wake up and smell the coffee brothers and sisters, the Labour party will never be the party to represent the interests of your members ever again. Labour has become a party of the neo-liberal establishment, with all that that entails. Labour, even in these times of the abject failure of neo-liberalism, will not challenge the status quo, and will only throw a few crumbs from the table to your members.

The decision for the unions is quite simple really. The break with Labour will happen although probably slowly, so what should they do about it? The unions should either form their own party, or back the Green party, or perhaps more likely join a broad electoral coalition of the left, which should include the Green party, and build an electoral movement to change our grossly unequal and unrepresentative politics for good.  

Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Labour’s embrace of welfare reform is a victory for the right

The Labour Party leadership’s embrace of welfare reform – set out in Ed Miliband’s keynote speech on welfare to a select audience in Newham, East London – marks a victory for the right and describes another benchmark in the political degeneration of the party that created the welfare state.

From the moment the current global economic crisis hit these shores with the collapse of Northern Rock in September 2007, the singular objective of the right has been to turn what was and is a crisis of private greed into a crisis of public spending. It was a campaign given political credence with the election of the Tory-led coalition government in 2010, unleashing a political and economic assault on the poorest and most vulnerable section of society under the rubric of austerity.

In economic terms austerity is doomed to failure. The empirical and historical evidence leaves no doubt that in periods of economic downturn a government must spend more not less in order to re-inject the demand sucked out by the refusal of the private sector to invest as profits tumble

Investment strike

A story that appeared in the Express in April revealed that the government’s own Office for National Statistics had calculated that UK corporations, other than banks, were sitting on a combined surplus of £318 billion in the final quarter of last year – up from £304 billion in the previous quarter.

This is an investment strike by any other name, which the government has responded to with tax cuts for the wealthy and other inducements to invest in the shape of subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and so on. Picking up the tab for all this has been the poor and those reliant on the welfare state and public services in the form of swingeing cuts to public spending.

If we factor in the £375 billion pounds the government has thus far fed to the banks in the form of Quantitative Easing since 2009, what we have seen over the past five years of the economic crisis is the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich on a grand scale.

The fact that the government has been able to get away with this without meeting significant or effective resistance is a consequence of two processes that are interlinked. The first is the traction and persuasiveness of the simplistic analogy that the Tories and their bag carriers in the right wing press have drawn between a national economy and a household budget.

Contraction of demand

Yet as the US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman reminds us – unlike a household budget, when it comes to a national economy one person’s spending is another person’s income. Under the aegis of austerity, if no-one is spending then no one has any income, resulting in the contraction of demand leading to the stagnation we are currently witnessing.

The second of these two interlinked processes is a government initiated campaign of demonisation against the unemployed and those claiming benefits, resulting in the creeping criminalisation of poverty. Shifting the responsibility for poverty onto its victims – away from the vicissitudes of a free market economic system that could not function without creating poverty – has been one of the most vicious and callous policies of any British government in modern history. Sadly, as stated, it has met with inordinate success, reflected most recently in Ed Miliband’s speech on welfare reform, which amounted to the Labour Party leadership’s abandonment of the principle of social solidarity that underpins the welfare state.

The specific contents of Ed Miliband’s speech set out a pledge to in building homes in order to bring down a housing benefit bill that currently sits at £95 billion annually. Set against the paltry £4.5 billion the government devoted to building affordable housing last year, it is inarguable that the current expenditure in housing benefit is unsustainable. However its size indicates an out of control private rental market on the back of a three decades long housing crisis.

Bedroom tax

While any pledge to address this housing crisis is welcome, the lack of any policy on rent control to deal with exorbitant rents charged by private landlords – the real beneficiaries of housing benefit – is instructive. Also instructive, not to mention disappointing, is the lack of a firm pledge by Labour to repeal the present government’s iniquitous Bedroom Tax if and when elected, with its disproportionate impact on the disabled.
Listening to Ed Miliband’s capitulation to the right on welfare reform, the words of US billionaire investor Warren Buffet immediately sprang to mind:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Written by John Wright and published at Socialist Unity Blog

Green Party at 8% in National Opinion Poll

The national monthly (September) political tracker voting intention opinion poll by Ipsos Mori, put the Green party on an astonishing 8%. Regular readers of this blog will remember that I recently highlighted the strong showing of late of the ‘Others’ in voting intention polls. UKIP have generally been getting the largest share of the ‘others’ vote, regularly out polling the Lib Dems, with the Greens doubling our share, but still usually only half that of the UKIP share.

In the Ipsos Mori poll for September though, this situation was reversed with UKIP polling 4% against the Greens 8%. Unfortunately, the Green party is back to 3% in the October poll with UKIP on 10%, but you would expect some volatility in the polling figures for small parties, where the sample surveyed is usually around only a thousand respondents, and so smaller party support is harder to detect and predict than that for the main parties.

Another polling company,Survation, who very accurately predicted the Green party vote share in this year’s London Assembly election, have an interesting piece on another, methodological reason why some polling organisations understate the strength of small party support in their polls. Basically, companies like Yougov, prompt respondents when asking which party they intend to vote for, (Con, Lab, Lib Dem or Other), so people need to first select Other, then select the particular party from a secondary prompt, (UKIP, Green, BNP etc).

Also, Yougov list the party options in the order Con, Lab, Lib Dem, Other, whereas Ipsos Mori change this order randomly, except in the case of Other, which is always last. According to the Survation piece, this explains why the Conservatives always poll higher in Yougov polls, and therefore logic would indicate that these polls will understate the Other vote, for the converse reason. Survation themselves, do randomly prompt on the main parties, and now UKIP too, and UKIP polls higher on their surveys than any of the other polling companies.

One thing that seems to be fairly certain is that this trend of UKIP and the Greens polling well is set to continue, with the next UK wide elections being the 2014 European Parliament elections in which both UKIP and the Greens do best at. Expect some gains for both parties in the Euro elections and probably the local authority council elections that will be held on the same day. Unless something dramatic happens, the Lib Dems will be down to their ‘core’ vote of 8 or 9%, and so will not affect the outcome of elections as much as they have done in recent years.

More importantly, if this trend continues all the way to the next general election which is expected in 2015, and if between UKIP and the Greens they can take approaching 15% of the national vote, with UKIP taking their votes mainly off the Conservatives and the Greens taking them mainly off Labour, this could have a significant impact on which of the two main parties wins the election.

What’s more, Labour and Conservatives will know this is the case, as they study these opinion polls very closely, which makes them more likely to steal policies off UKIP and the Greens in an effort to minimise the votes lost to their smaller rivals. This is potentially a strong position for us Greens, where we can perhaps influence Labour policy leftwards, and for UKIP to drag the Tories rightwards (I know, it’s hard to imagine the Tories being even more right wing, but there you go).

The days of the Lib Dems maintaining ‘equidistance’ between Labour and Conservative, and so peeling votes off their right and left wings respectively, looks to be well and truly over. A new dynamic will shape the next general election, and the Green party will be right in the thick of it.

Opinion Polls – Under the Radar

When polling organisations conduct political party voting intention opinion polls, usually commissioned by a newspaper, the story is always of how the three main (perhaps that should be two now) parties are faring, and which leader has the best approval ratings.

The polls have been pretty consistent over recent months, showing Labour with a double digit lead over the Conservatives, and the poor old Lib Dems flat lining at around 10%, sometimes as low as 8%. But if you look more closely, the ‘others’ are doing surprisingly well. The ‘story’ will only mention this in passing, but if you look at the full results, as political anoraks like me do, there is something happening, which is much more of a ‘story’ than that put out by the commissioning media outfits.

What you see is an impressive (around 10%) showing for UKIP, sometimes beating the Lib Dems into fourth place, and an improvement in the Green party share, which is around 3 or 4%. An example is this recent Opinium poll commission by The Observer newspaper. 

Now, that may not sound all that notable, but from my observations over the years, the Green party normally polls about 1 to 2% in national polls, except when there is an election (proportional) coming up like the European Parliament elections, when I’ve seen us poll as high as 6 or 7%.

This is a trend which I reported on this blog here back in May, and recent opinion polls do seem to confirm this view. But why is this happening?

I think the reasons are varied to some extent. Labour, Tory and Lib Dems all offer very similar policies these days, for one thing. The MP’s expenses scandal still resonates amongst the public too, and it is the main parties MP’s that were involved in this fraudulent raid on the public purse.  But I think the main reason is a desire amongst the voters to ‘protest’ vote, “sod the lot of you” type of thing.

What has changed on the party political landscape in recent years is that the Lib Dems are no longer the beneficiaries of this desire to stick it up the political establishment. They are of course in government now, though you would hardly know it with the Tories dominating the coalition government’s policies.

Another opinion poll from Opinum sheds some light on this particular theory. Take a look at this graphic (right hand side). Of those who voted Lib Dem in the 2010 general election, only a third are intending to vote Lib Dem again, with Labour gaining the most (39%) of those who have changed their allegiance but 8% have switched to UKIP and 10% to the Green party. I find the idea that voters can switch from the most pro-European of the British political parties (Lib Dems) to UKIP whose whole raison d’etre is being anti-Europe, somewhat bemusing, but there you go.

The 10% planning to vote Green is what has doubled our opinion poll score, which is a significant advance for us Greens, if not signalling some kind of major breakthrough. But it also means that we have much work to do, if we are to translate this into seats at Westminster and elsewhere. These voters are on the left politically, and so are our natural supporters.

Put simply, we have to get more of those 39% of former Lib Dem voters that are intending to vote Labour next time, to vote Green. Which is why we need to go on the attack, and expose Labour for what it is, a ‘Tory light’ party, sometimes not even so light.

Labour Party – Are You Tories in Disguise?

We might have expected it, with Ed Balls, the Labour shadow chancellor, stating in a pre-conference announcement he will stick to the Tory public sector pay freeze beyond the next general election, should Labour win. But this year’s Labour party conference has gone even further though, with the leader of the party stealing the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservative party.

Ed Miliband isn’t the first Labour leader to snaffle this particular slogan of the pre Margaret Thatcher Conservative party. Tony Blair described New Labour as a ‘One Nation’ party in his (successful) bid to win over voters from the ‘middle ground’ in British politics. Of course, the ‘middle ground’ had shifted so far to the right in elite political discourse at that time, that it was probably not an exaggeration for him to claim it as a left wing position, as being akin to the Edward Heath led Conservative party of the 1970’s is indeed to the left all three main parties these days.

David Cameron depicted himself as a ‘One Nation’ Tory when he was attempting to detoxify the Conservative party brand, and so appeal to ‘middle ground’ voters, who are generally the most fickle anyway, and it worked, in a fashion for him too. I don’t think Cameron can play that card anymore though, with pressure from within the right of his party so strong now. So, in terms of positioning in the consciousness of the public, Labour and Miliband may well be onto something. Political ‘cross dressing’ doesn’t really surprise anyone these days, and it may be purely a presentational tactic.

But on top of the other portents that have been revealed at the Labour party conference this week, about the direction of Labour and the likely approach they would take to governing the country if they win the general election in 2015 (if the ConDem government lasts that long), this may well be more significant. Because make no mistake about it, the Labour party has staked its flag firmly on the already overcrowded centre right political compost heap, in Manchester this past few days.

The huffing and puffing of the unions has been ignored yet again, and it makes you think what on earth do the unions get out of funding a party that pursues policies that are so bad for their members? Hope of some crumbs here and there, I dare say, but is that really enough for the millions of pounds they put into Labour? Union members should ‘vote with their feet’ and support parties that represent their interests, and I think the Green party comes into this category, whatever union  leaders say about reclaiming the Labour party for working people. This is just a fantasy.

Liam Byrne, Labour’s shadow welfare secretary, is on record as saying that welfare benefits are likely to be slashed further under a future Labour administration, in line with Ed Balls taking a ‘zero-based’ review of public spending. Byrne claims that more benefits will be means tested, rather than universally available, such as free bus passes for the elderly, which is bad enough in itself, but does anyone really believe that Labour will restore Disability Living Allowance and Employment Support Allowance to those who have cruelly had it withdrawn from them under the ConDem government?

The leader of Scottish Labour, Johann Lamont went even further, claiming that we need to end the "something for nothing" culture, as applied to benefits in Scotland, and blaming the Scottish National Party led government north of the border for issuing ‘election bribes’ to voters. 

With no visible sign of irony, Andy Burnham the shadow health secretary, called for the reversal of the ‘rapid privatisation’ of the NHS, when the last Labour government opened the door to NHS privatisation with exorbitant Private Finance Initiative deals to build new hospitals whilst hiving off the most profitable parts of health service provision to private companies.  

And Ed Balls has ruled out taking the part nationalised RBS and Lloyds banks into full public ownership and using them as investment motors to get the economy moving again. He also refuses to confirm that a future Labour government would raise the top rate of income tax to 50%, let alone the 75% that the socialist government in France is introducing, or to raise corporation tax from the scandalously low rate it is, by even one penny in the pound.

The generous side of me thinks Ed Miliband would like to inch Labour slightly to the left, but it is clear that powerful voices within the party will not stand for it, and they get listened to carefully, unlike the unions.

So there you have it. The right wing press falls over each other in its praise of Ed Miliband’ speech and performance, and well they might. Nothing to fear here, on the contrary, business as usual for the establishment, as the rest of us continue to get shafted.

So much for the self-styled, ‘People’s Party’.   

Patriotism and the Left

My post on the London 2012 Olympics started a debate within Haringey Greens about patriotism in Britain and whether this is positive thing, or rather a reactionary, undesirable, and even dangerous concept. So, I’m expanding my thoughts here, and hope that my colleagues will post their opinions, either in a separate post, or via the comments section for this post.

I must say at the outset, that I’m not one for waving the Union Jack and like most people on the Left, patriotic behaviour makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I think this stems from patriotism’s association with Britain’s imperialist history and the propensity of the Right (especially the far Right) to wrap themselves in the flag and the xenophobic and racist outlook that inexorably seems to flow from this position.

The other troubling kind of patriotism, perhaps more accurately described as jingoism, is when it is related to war. I can still remember my horror during the Falklands war against Argentina in the early 1980’s when a kind of collective madness swept the country, and every young man it seemed, became an armchair general and weapons expert, egged on by the ‘red top’ press and the BBC. The term ‘Argie’ was coined to describe the Argentinians and I learnt never to trust the BBC’s reporting when the country’s armed forces are in action.

I have always separated sport from this kind of patriotism though, and tended to support Britons in sporting contests. Even then, although I have always loved football, it was mainly of the club variety, and my club, Manchester United in particular. United have always had something of the ‘Celtic fringe’ about them, and even before globalisation, were an internationalist club. At one time, I supported Scotland in the football against England, because there were quite a few United players in the Scotland team, and none in the England team.

Gradually, over the years, I have changed my mind on the England football team. With large screens in pubs these days to watch international football, I like the community feel of these events (always a disappointing sporting result), and the ensuing camaraderie of watching the game in communal surroundings such as this affords.

I’ve been lucky enough to be working in the Olympic park over the course of the London Games, and anyone who has been there cannot fail to have noticed the great atmosphere, with the flags of many nations displayed. There was a joyous, excited spirit amongst the volunteers and spectators and not even a hint of aggression, but instead a friendly and respectful ambience that was tremendous to experience. Coupled with the multi-cultural make-up of the British team, I think this was a positive type of patriotism.

The Observer newspaper published an opinion poll this week that finds that 75% of respondents believe that the Olympics showed Britain to be ‘a confident multi-ethnic country’. The same proportion of people said they supported all Team GB athletes equally regardless of where they were born. The same newspaper has a piece by Tim Soutphommasane, The Australian is a political philosopher and author of the book, The Virtuous Citizen: Patriotism in a Multi-cultural Society, who is advising the Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, on such matters. It is well worth a read.

Drawing on experience mainly from Australia, he says multi-culturalism has been about securing civic equality. A demand for inclusion and respect, not separation and privileged treatment, which has been undermined to some extent, by the emphasis on a ‘community of communities’. As though there could be no common ground, but only difference. He concludes that after the success of the London Olympics, many countries are looking to Britain as an example of a dynamic multi-cultural society united by a generous patriotism.

The political Left cannot afford to leave the monopoly of the concept of patriotism to the political Right, because it is a deeply embedded cultural phenomenon, and we should have the confidence not to cede this ground to their ugly, separatist type of patriotism. The London Olympics have showed us the way to celebrate our positive patriotism, multi-cultural, inclusive and respectful of our country and of other countries cultures and people. We can use this positive force to grab the flag back from those who would use it to divide us, at home and internationally.          

     

House of Lords Reform – Overdue but Hardly a Priority

MP’s will vote on Tuesday (10 July) on the House of Lords Reform Bill, which rather modestly seeks to have 80% of peers elected by 2025, with the remaining 20% appointed by a statutory appointments commission, and reducing the total number of representatives in the upper chamber from 826 to 450. Elections would take place on the same day as the general election on an open-list system from eight different regions. The open list system is designed to give voters a choice between voting for a party and individuals.

Up to 100 Tory MP’s have said that they will vote with Labour to defeat the ‘programme motion’ which would put a limit on debate in the House of Commons to a maximum of 14 days, therefore throwing  into doubt  whether the bill will pass through the Commons at all. Opposition can also be expected in the House of Lords itself, where there are considerable numbers of Tory peers unhappy with the proposals.

The last Labour government began Lords reform, in a piecemeal, incremental way, first abolishing most of the hereditary peers, and then finally moving to a fully appointed chamber after a few more years. Clearly, in a democratic system, the hereditary principle had to go, and appointing peers is not much better, and so further reform is necessary. In my opinion all members of the upper house should be elected, and by a fairer, proportional system which reflects the diverse support for each of the political parties, including us Greens.

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader is desperate for some kind of enduring ‘legacy’ for his deputy premiership and as some kind of justification for his party’s participation in the coalition government with the Tories. It is hard to see what progressive gains they have achieved thus far, so it is easy to understand Clegg’s determination to push this through and claim credit for the policy. Indeed, he has gone so far as to suggest that if the Bill does not pass, he will withdraw his MP’s support for the parliamentary boundary changes that the Tories want to improve their prospects at the next general election.

A recent Yougov poll for The Sun newspaper indicates that 76% of the British public support a fully or mostly elected House of Lords, but goes onto to say that only 18% regard Lords reform as an urgent matter. This seems about right to me, it is impossible to defend an unelected House, but it is pretty low on my list of political priorities at the moment. So many other issues, the state of the economy, jobs, welfare reform, privatisation of the NHS, climate change, public service cuts and education policy all dwarf constitutional reform at the moment in terms of importance.

If the price of losing Lords reform is the blocking of the parliamentary boundary changes in the Tories favour, then bring it on. And if this puts further pressure on the ConDem coalition government, perhaps even bringing about its early demise, as some have suggested, so much the better.          

How the Tories went from oak-tree logo to enemies of conservation

With unintentional hilarity, John Prescott once declared: "The green belt is a Labour achievement - and we mean to build on it." The fear among some rural campaigners is that the Conservatives really do.

Attempting to reduce more than 1,000 pages of English planning guidelines to just 50, the government has attracted the ire of the National Trust (which has over three and a half million members), the CPRE, Greenpeace and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, all of which warn that the reforms threaten the future of the countryside. The banally named Draft National Planning Policy Framework includes a reference to the need for "decision-takers at every level" to "assume that the default answer to the development proposal is 'yes'." It is this sentence, with its hint of a development free-for-all, which has so troubled campaigners.

It was not supposed to be this way. When the Tories adopted a green oak tree as their logo in 2006, it was regarded as symbolic of a renewed commitment to the environment. It was a nod to a strain of thought, dating back to Edmund Burke, which believes that mankind has a duty to preserve natural resources for future generations. The party's rural supporters, after 13 years in which they felt neglected by Labour, assumed that they would, at last, have a government that spoke for them. Yet from the attempted privatisation of the forests to high-speed rail and, now, the biggest changes to planning laws in 60 years, the Tories have taken the opposite side of the argument to its rural base. It has been left to Labour, loathed for banning fox hunting with dogs in 2004, to speak up for the shires.

Thatcher's dream

There are already uncomfortable echoes of the forests fiasco, when a campaign led by Rachel Johnson forced David Cameron to perform the biggest U-turn of his premiership and abandon the planned sell-off of 637,000 acres of publicly owned woodland. Mindful of this, the government, which had dismissed the protesters as "semi-hysterical" (Vince Cable), has agreed to listen to positive suggestions.

Is this a prelude to another U-turn? Unlikely. The Tories, fearful that Margaret Thatcher's dream of a "property-owning democracy" is in reverse, are determined to build more houses. Cameron and George Osborne believe that home ownership is vital to promote what Shirley Letwin once called the "vigorous virtues" of Thatcherism: "Being upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent-minded".

The reforms are also seen as central to the government's growth strategy. Whether you favour Keynesian stimulus or Hayekian austerity, the grim truth is that the UK faces reduced levels of economic growth. The reality that the economy has expanded by just 0.2 per cent over the past nine months means that the reforms have become more, not less urgent. In the words of the planning minister, Greg Clark, the government believes that it "can't be ambivalent about growth". Because of this single-mindedness, the Conservatives could yet become the enemies of conservation.

Written by George Eaton
First published at the New Statesman

We Need a Labour Government

Well, obviously we need a Green government, but sadly that will not come about at the next general election, which is planned to be held in 2015. It could be that we win a few more parliamentary seats, and if the result is close, possibly get some influence on a minority government. For me though, this could not be with the Conservatives, because they are just too right wing, and I think most Greens would agree with me on that.

So, that means that it would need to be a Labour led government, given the likely arithmetic, they are the only other party capable winning enough seats to be in with a chance of forming a government. It could well be that Labour wins an overall majority and doesn’t need to strike any deals with other parties, but even this is preferable to the present ConDem government, for two main reasons, one partisan the other not so.

Firstly, in general, it would be good for the country to have a Labour government, or at least not as bad as it is under the disastrous rule of the current incumbents, the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who have driven us into a double dip recession with their ideological obsession of cutting back the state. I say at least not as bad, because they too would be cutting almost as much and as fast as the government is, should they have won the last general election. 

The best thing that you can say about a Labour government, and it is pretty much what they say about it themselves, is that they would be slightly better than the Tories, and I suppose that is about right. I think a lot of other people are thinking this too, as they struggle with the consequences of present economic policies, and so Labour has become a more attractive proposition.

Take the recent London Assembly elections for example. Labour did very well as a ‘brand’ and only lost the mayorality to the Conservatives because Ken Livingstone was portrayed as shifty and hypocritical over his tax affairs. Which he was! Everywhere else they did well, mostly at the expense of the Lib Dems. The Green vote did increase slightly, but it looks as though Labour have swallowed up much of the disaffected Lib Dem vote, in London anyway.

So, let’s get rid of this ConDem government, and replace it with a Labour one.

Secondly, and in more partisan terms, I think the Green party does better under a Labour government. Hopes are always soon dashed by an incoming Labour administration, and the left type voters start looking for a credible alternative party to support, which was mainly the Lib Dems in recent years, but is less likely to be in the future.

Yes, it does take time to build into a party that can be taken seriously as an alternative government, a commodity we don’t have much of given the small window of time left to seriously tackle climate change, and the need to achieve real improvements to social justice for the people.

But if you keep making the arguments, particularly in a world where the status quo has clearly failed, and will continue to fail, you can bring people around. Admittedly, the UK is not in as bad a shape as Greece at the moment, but the spectacular rise of the Syriza left coalition which includes greens, from 4% to 27% of the vote in just three years, making them now the main opposition party in Greece, is an inspiration to us all.    

UK Voters Attracted to Small Parties

The Independent on Sunday reports on a ComRes opinion poll which indicates potential support for small parties in Britain is on the rise. Although the report highlights the possible rise in support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and a rise in Euroscepticism amongst the British public, with the resultant difficulties this could cause David Cameron and the Conservative party, it also looks just as favourable to other small parties.

One third of people who voted Conservative at the last general election now say they have now switched or are ready to switch to voting UKIP. With the current problems in the Eurozone, it is no great surprise that Euroscepticism is gaining ground and so too UKIP with its xenophobic stance on all things European. Indeed, I think UKIP would have won at least one seat on the London Assembly had they not for some reason changed their name on the ballot paper to ‘First Choice for London’.

But the report goes on to say:

‘The ComRes/IoS poll reveals deep dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties, with 37 per cent of their supporters seriously considering switching to smaller parties. Among all voters polled, 13 per cent are pondering backing Ukip, with the same proportion poised to vote Green. Four per cent are considering supporting the BNP, and 3 per cent could vote for George Galloway's Respect party. Only 38 per cent are not considering changing their allegiance.’

‘Among Labour voters, the disaffected are most likely to be looking to the Green Party (19 per cent), Ukip (11 per cent) or the Lib Dems (10 per cent). Of Lib Dem supporters, 28 per cent are considering switching to the Greens, 27 per cent to the Conservatives, 21 per cent to Labour and 14 per cent to Ukip.’

All of which means that for the Green party there is a quite large pool of potential voters, who are clearly not all that impressed with the big parties, and could well switch to us if we can show that we are a credible alternative. The British electoral landscape has never been so open as this poll indicates. Although Labour did well in the recent London Assembly elections, this poll shows that their support is far from rock solid and voters on the left are thinking about choosing the Green party to represent their views.

The Green party needs to win more seats at all levels of government to cement this position, but also, just as UKIP puts pressure on the Conservatives to be more right wing, the Green party can do the same job on the Labour party, although obviously pulling them to the left in our case.

This drop in support for the main established parties is echoed all across Europe with pro austerity parties paying the price for the failed laissez faire economic policies that have brought us to this sorry pass. People seem more open to listen to an alternative now, than at any time in the last thirty years, which presents the Green party with a unique opportunity to advance.  

Labour Reverts to Neo Labour

With what I think were heartfelt reasons, the Labour party (including their affiliated trade unions), elected Ed Miliband to the leadership of the party, to represent views that brought to a close the New Labour project. His brother David, the heir apparent, was defeated because he embodied all that Labour party members had come to despair about the party. Ed seemed to talk a good game about getting back to a form of social democratic politics at the leadership election, long absent through the Blair and Brown regimes, and this is what won him the contest in the end.

Tens of thousands of people have joined, or re-joined Labour since their 2010 general election defeat, many who I am sure wanted to vote for the new leader, and all with the optimistic hope that Labour would now get back to being something like the party it once was; a champion of the people, not the wealthy, big business and finance capital. They must be very disappointed.

Recent pronouncements from both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls the shadow chancellor have made it clear that Labour is not going to change at all. They will now not reverse any of the ConDem government’s cuts to public services and welfare benefits, and will effectively continue the present government’s programme of austerity, if they are elected to government at the next general election. Public sector pay freezes will remain in place under a future Labour government and the richest people in the country will continue to benefit from paying meagre amounts of tax. One really has to ask, what is the point of the Labour party these days?

The trade unions are quite rightly furious with this lurch to the right by the party they provide something like %80 of the funding for. Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union was spot on when he said: “Why should unions give money to the Labour party for policies that we can get from the Tories for nothing?”

It seems we live in a one party state, where all three of the main parties agree on the same policies, making elections redundant. The Green party does set out a new vision, an alternative to the disastrous neo liberal policies of last thirty odd years, but we are small, steadily growing, but unlikely to win the next general election. We might win enough seats to wield some power, if the result is close enough again, but that is all.

The times are crying out for a better, more just, sustainable model for the way we live, with the status quo found to be built on sand, and sinking fast. The worldwide Occupy movement, UK Uncut and other direct action groups demonstrate a desire for change, more widespread than the old media would have you believe. Support for the recent public sector union’s industrial action was slightly in favour amongst the public at large, according to several opinion polls. People do recognise that those least able, and the least to blame for the current financial crisis should not be forced to shoulder the burden of propping up the system, whilst those who are to blame, get rewarded for their greed and incompetence. To steal the Tories recent election slogan, ‘we really can’t go on like this.’

I had hoped that Labour could be a partner with the Green party in the pursuit of a fairer society electorally, chart the way towards the ‘good society’, sadly that seems not to be the case. Labour members and trade unionists should think about supporting and joining the Greens, that way they can help build us into a party of government that represents their views. Stop wasting your time supporting a party that will never deliver what you believe to be right.

Fortnightly Refuse Collections to Begin in Haringey

Beginning in March this year (although this may be delayed until the summer), fortnightly refuse collections are to be introduced in Haringey. In the first wave of this initiative, the wards of Muswell Hill, Highgate, Fortis Green, and parts of Bounds Green, Crouch End and Stroud Green, will move to the new arrangements. In June, the arrangement will be extended to Wood Green, West Green, Bruce Grove, Haringay and St Ann’s wards. In October, the rest of the borough will be brought in line with the new regime.

We were informed of this change in ‘Haringey People’, the council’s glossy, paid for by residents, Labour party propaganda magazine, in December.

Items that are currently recycled will continue to be collected once a week, but ‘residual waste’ (what we put in black bin bags) will only be collected on a fortnightly basis. Existing bins will be used in the first instance, but the ‘green box’ recycling bins will be replaced later, with small green wheelie bins, for glass, paper, tins and plastic waste. Existing garden waste bags and food waste containers will continue to be used for these types of refuse. The scheme will only apply to households who have front gardens or yards large enough to store the extra bins. To encourage food recycling, compostable bags for food waste will be provided free for six months only, and bones can now be put in food waste.

Of course, we in the Green party welcome a move to more recycling, although the current ‘co-mingled’ form of recycling practiced in Haringey (and set to continue) is far from ideal. By mixing different waste, some of it becomes degraded, paper for example, and becomes unsuitable for pulping, and so unrecyclable. Also, glass bottles are not reused or even made into new ones, but used to build roads in places like Malaysia, hardly a very ‘green’ way of dealing waste. All the same, even this limited type of recycling is preferable to landfill, and the new refuse collections are likely to see more waste recycled than at present.

Our old friends the Lib Dems are up to their old tricks again, calling for consultation with residents before the scheme begins, and of course consultation is important, as well as the education of residents, to ensure that implementation and continued usage is successful. But we all know by now what the Lib Dems modus operandi is, sit on the fence, and see which way the wind blows in public opinion, then claim they are speaking for the ‘people’. Shameless opportunism is the Lib Dems stock in trade.

I do though foresee possible problems with moving to a fortnightly collection system. Will residents cooperate in the way necessary to make it work properly? Or will people just dump rubbish in the street and other public areas, or over stuff their ‘grey’ bins so the lid won’t close? We already have a big problem with vermin in Haringey (and much of London) and this policy could well make matters worse. The food recycling bags should be provided free for as long the scheme runs, as I’ve had problems in the past with food waste not being collected because it was in the wrong bag, and they left the lid of the bin open, but no explanation as why it was not collected.

Residents should also be encouraged to reuse items where possible and to compost some waste, but all of this would lead to less refuse, and so less money for private contractor Veolia who will run the new scheme. And there we have the real reason that we are to move to fortnightly waste collection, it’s all about money. Money for Veolia and saving money for the council, in these cash strapped municipal days, not any great concern for the environment, local or further afield.

Veolia can be contacted about the new arrangements on 020 8885 7700 or at enquiries.haringey@veolia.co.uk.

The Party Conference Season Ends – Which Leader Impressed You Most?

David Cameron, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, gave a speech to his party’s conference on Wednesday which brought the political party conference season to an end. It was a surprisingly upbeat speech from Cameron, coming as it did on the day that growth figures for the UK economy were revised downwards, to a paltry 0.1% for the second quarter of 2011. He called on the British people to fight our way out of the dire economic situation we find ourselves in, saying we must have a ‘can do’ attitude. This is particularly hypocritical, given the way the government refuses themselves to do anything positive to aid economic recovery. As I reported here the only thing the government is going to do, other than making deep cuts in public services, is to print more money, which was swallowed up by the banks to improve their balance sheets, the last time this tactic was tried. No can do, seems to be the government economic policy, so why should the public listen to all this patriotic rhetorical nonsense?

The more I see of Cameron, the more I am minded of the Flashman character in the novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays. It is ironic that Flashman the public school bully, turned out to be a coward in the end, and surely people will see through Cameron, as the public relations man he is. Cutting benefits and public services for the most vulnerable in society, while throwing more money at the banks who caused our problems, and of whom he is scared to death of upsetting.

At least Ed Miliband, uninspiring a speaker though he is, talked about the need to change the current neo liberal economic consensus and strike a ‘new bargain’ in the way the capitalist system operates, particularly attacking the ‘asset strippers’ who wait vulture like to devour the carcases of the businesses and workers that their casino type behaviour have laid low. I think it is too early to say whether Labour really has changed under Miliband’s leadership, he said some interesting things, but he also praised Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government for curtailing worker’s rights and for selling council houses, without replacing this social housing stock. He needs to up his presentational game too, as he comes across as a bit nerdy. Unfortunately, these things matter in modern politics.

And so to the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg saw his party’s poll ratings soar in the wake of the leadership debates at the last general election, and this was mainly down to his performance in the debates. The problem for the Lib Dem’s is that many, probably more than half of the people who voted for them, are aghast that this led to a Tory government. Their conference was full of speeches by ministers telling everyone that it was the Lib Dem’s that were putting a brake on the Tory juggernaut, but they bear just as much responsibility for the damaging economic approach taken by the government, raising tuition fees for students, harassing benefit claimants and reducing workplace rights for employees. No amount spin changes this basic position.

The video above is Caroline Lucas, Green party leader, speaking to the Green party conference in September, and she has plenty to say to Lib Dem voters particularly. She has excellent presentational skills, charisma even, but compare the message to what you have heard from the other party leaders. She outlines a genuine alternative to the failed policies of the last thirty odd years, where people are put before profit, where principles are stuck to rather than abandoned for expediency, and where the good society can be become a reality. No contest really.

Green Party is the Real Opposition

This is an excerpt from Green party leader Caroline Lucas’ speech to the party’s spring conference in Cardiff. She lays into the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems as all pursuing the much the same policies. Thanks to Tower Hamlets Greens for the footage.